by Lisa Edmonds
“I’m sorry,” I told Rogue as he looked at me with dull eyes. “I’m looking for him.”
Sean approached the dog slowly, his hand outstretched. I’d seen dogs react to Sean in a variety of ways: some cowered in fear, while others barked up a storm or ran away. To my surprise, Rogue lifted his head, sniffed Sean’s hand, then licked it. Sean scratched the dog’s head.
“What time did Mark leave?” I asked, my eyes on Sean as he comforted Rogue. Despite his gentle treatment of the dog, I saw tension in his neck and back. Sean was angry. Very, very angry.
“’Bout nine fifteen or so,” Jo-Jo said. “He had a meeting he said he had to get to. He headed back up that path there, back toward the liquor store.”
I closed my notebook. “You heard what happened to him?”
“We heard about it.” He shook his head. “It’s not right, none of it.”
“Was anyone up there at the liquor store when he headed out last night?” I asked as Sean rose to his feet. The dog followed Sean back to me and I scratched his head.
Jo-Jo frowned. “I don’t think so.”
I pulled some business cards from my pocket and handed them to Jo-Jo and Mary Ann. “If anyone thinks of anything that could help us, please give me a call.”
“Will do.” Jo-Jo held out his hand and Sean and I both shook it.
As we turned to leave, the dog started to follow us. “Stay,” Sean said quietly.
The dog turned and went back to the tent. He lay on the ground and put his head back on his paws, his gaze on Sean.
Our walk back to the parking lot was silent. I didn’t know what Sean was thinking about, but my hands were shaking with a combination of grief and fury. The harnad had cut a path of death and suffering through the city. My desire for justice was swiftly being replaced by the need to inflict some commensurate level of pain and misery on those responsible. Blood magic sizzled on my skin.
“Alice,” Sean said from behind me, just before we reached the end of the path and the parking lot. I stopped and turned.
I knew my eyes were glowing. So were his.
We stood facing each other, our anger and our pain plain for the other to see. As an alpha, Sean often had to mask his emotions in order to lead his pack. I had learned at an early age to do the same so they couldn’t be used against me by my grandfather or his lieutenants. And yet, neither of us hid those feelings from the other. It hadn’t even occurred to me to do so. That meant something, if only I could figure out what.
Sean met my gaze with eyes like golden suns. An unspoken agreement passed between us. Justice was coming for John West and his harnad.
17
We now knew Mark had made it to the camp and left around nine fifteen. He’d been found just before midnight. It was a tight window. The draining would have taken time, a fact I was trying not to dwell on too much because it led to questions like whether he’d been conscious during the process—questions I planned on getting answers to, from the people who’d been there, right before I made sure they didn’t live to regret it.
When we returned to the parking lot, I checked the front of the liquor store. Sure enough, two surveillance cameras were pointed at the parking lot. “We need that footage,” I told Sean, gesturing at the cameras.
“Let’s get it.”
We went inside the store. It turned out Sean’s company had installed the system and it took very little persuasion to get the owner to help us out. Ten minutes later, we were in a back office with Ned, the owner, staring at a small monitor. The split screen showed both views of the parking lot.
Ned, a fifty-ish man with a spectacular beard and a well-worn biker vest, ran the recording back to the night before. Sean asked him to start the video at eight thirty and took his place at the controls when a customer out front needed assistance. I stood behind his chair, watching as he ran the video forward.
At eight forty-six, a familiar white van pulled into the lot and parked off to the side, in the same spot where Sean’s SUV was now. The door opened and Mark emerged.
My hand tightened on Sean’s shoulder, though I didn’t remember putting it there. He reached up and covered my hand with his as we watched Mark disappear out of the frame in the direction of the camp.
Sean ran the video forward. All the vehicles that entered the lot after Mark arrived were store customers, except for a police cruiser that sat for several minutes while the officer used his computer and appeared to fill out some paperwork before leaving a little after nine.
At nine twelve, Mark reappeared. Sean slowed the video to normal speed as Mark went to his van and climbed in. He sat in the van for several minutes, using his phone either to text or search online. At nine twenty, he tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, backed out, and turned left out of the parking lot. We watched as his taillights disappeared into the night.
I hadn’t expected to see Mark being kidnapped out of the parking lot, but I’d certainly hoped to see something that might help us. Instead, we had visual confirmation Mark left the store at nine twenty in his van alive and well, and not much else. I sighed.
“Hey, what’s that?” Sean asked suddenly.
“What’s what?”
He ran the video back to just before Mark left the lot and pointed to a dark shape in the upper right corner of the screen. It was a car, parked across from the liquor store. As Mark drove away, its headlights came on and it followed Mark’s van as both vehicles disappeared out of the frame.
We watched the short clip again, but the car was at the edge of the camera’s range and other than the fact it was a dark-colored sedan, there wasn’t much to go on. The license plate was unreadable. It wasn’t a black BMW—that much was obvious from the shape of the car and besides, I knew from Malcolm that John West was home when Mark was killed.
Sean ran the recording back and we discovered the sedan arrived minutes after Mark parked at the store. He found the best view of the car and sent the image to both our phones, then took the footage between eight thirty and nine thirty and uploaded it to Maclin Security’s server so we had a copy. I opened the picture on my phone and stared at it.
“I hear your wheels turning. What are you thinking?” Sean asked, rising from the desk.
I held up my phone. “Everything else aside, what do you see when you look at that car?”
Sean took my phone and studied the image. “Nondescript, heavier body, dark window tint. Could be a Crown Vic, maybe, or something like it.”
“It looks like an unmarked police car.”
“You’re right; it does, very much so.” He swore under his breath.
“Everything good in here?” Ned appeared in the doorway.
“We’re good.” Sean handed my phone back and shook the older man’s hand. We followed him into the front of the store. “I’ll send someone out to do a free software upgrade on your system,” he told Ned as we went to the front door. “We appreciate your help today.”
“Always glad to help. Y’all have a good day.” Ned held the door for us and we exited the store.
When we were in the SUV, Sean turned to me. “So, what now?”
I gestured across the street at the empty lot. “No other security cameras around here that might have a better view of the car, which is probably not accidental. They’re too smart to get caught on camera.”
“Is someone with the police department mixed up in this?”
I shrugged. “Even if that is an unmarked car, it doesn’t help us right now. The police department has dozens of them, and there’s no way to tell who was driving that one last night.”
“What if that’s how they got him?” Sean asked. “Pulled him over somewhere where they knew there weren’t any cameras, hit him with a Taser before he knew what was happening.”
“It would make sense. I wondered how someone got the drop on him. He probably wouldn’t have suspected a cop. It’s just a theory for now, though, and not one we can afford to focus on without more evidence.” I paused. “There’
s something else. I managed to check Mark’s body for magical trace last night. I sensed two mages: one low-level air mage and one very strong blood mage.”
Sean raised his eyebrows. “John West?”
I shook my head. “No, someone else, someone not quite as powerful as West, but their trace was familiar. I realized this morning that I recognized it from the wards I sensed through Adam’s connection to Felicia yesterday. Whoever killed Mark also set the wards holding and hiding the victims.” The blood mage was also the creator of the razor wards, which meant he or she was sadistic as well as powerful.
“So, another member of the harnad, then?”
“Probably. I doubt they’d bring in an outsider to set those wards.”
Sean’s phone beeped. He checked the screen, tapped some keys, and my phone buzzed. “E-mail from Cyro,” he told me. “It looks like the crime scene and the medical examiner’s reports. He’s still working on the phone records. Apparently it’s much harder to hack into the cell phone company’s computers than the police department system, which is not surprising.” His eyes searched my face. “Do you want to read the crime scene report, and I’ll look at the M.E.’s file?”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll read them both. Might as well start with the M.E.’s report and get that over with.” I opened my messages, found the attachments Sean had forwarded, took a deep breath, and opened the autopsy report.
We read silently. The clinical language helped me stay detached. The only defects the M.E. found on Mark’s body were the two holes in his neck; there was no evidence of a Taser or stungun attack or any other injuries, so there went that theory about how Mark had been incapacitated. There were also no signs of a struggle or that he had been restrained, so how he’d been taken and immobilized while being drained remained a mystery.
The report noted the amount of blood remaining in the body was so minute it could only be estimated in milliliters. There was no way to know if the victim had been conscious while being drained, the report stated. Blood work and other tests were pending and would take several days to several weeks to complete. If he’d been drugged somehow, that wouldn’t show up until the tox screens came back, if at all, depending on what they’d used.
The cause of death was listed as homicide by means of exsanguination. “The wounds, while not conclusive, are consistent with the bite of a vampire,” the report stated on the last page. “Lab tests confirm the presence of vampire saliva in and around the punctures. A DNA match may be possible, should a suspect be identified.”
I’d hoped a closer examination of the neck wounds, combined with my objections, would lead the M.E. to at least question the presumptions he’d made last night at the scene, but no such luck. The M.E. went in looking to find proof a vampire was responsible, and that was precisely what he’d found.
It occurred to me to wonder whose saliva they had planted on Mark’s body and how they’d gotten it. I dashed off a quick text message to Bryan: Harnad may be holding a vampire prisoner. Do we have any reports of missing vamps?
His response was immediate: Will investigate and advise.
I switched back to the report, flipped to the next page, and found myself staring into Mark’s sightless eyes. It was a photo, a close-up of Mark’s face, gray and slack in death.
My stomach heaved. I dropped the phone on the seat, fumbled for the door handle, and got out of the SUV, slamming the door. I leaned against the side of the vehicle, closed my eyes, and took several deep, ragged breaths.
I thought I was prepared to see pictures of Mark at the autopsy, but I wasn’t, not even close. In the stark white light of the M.E.’s lab, Mark had been reduced to just another body on a metal table. It wasn’t a photograph of a living person; it was a picture of a corpse, taken simply to document its condition. I was no stranger to death, but this was different. This was Mark, my friend, my mentor, the first person I’d been able to trust since my parents’ murders twenty years ago.
I swallowed hard and bent over, my hands on my knees as I fought nausea. My eyes burned but the tears wouldn’t come. I remained dry-eyed, even as grief made me ache.
I stayed in the parking lot until my stomach stopped churning and I could breathe slowly and evenly. I forced the pain down into a box, closed the lid, and put it away. There would be time for grief later, when those responsible for Mark’s death were held accountable for it and Felicia and the rest of the survivors were rescued.
Sean looked up from his phone when I opened the door of the SUV. He seemed to know the last thing I needed was sympathy or questions. Instead, as I settled back into my seat and pulled the door closed, he held up his phone, where he’d been reading the crime scene report. “No trace on the body that didn’t come from the alley. No surveillance in the area, no witnesses except the two Haze addicts who found him. No prints, no tire marks. Nothing left of the van after they burned it.”
“Thanks.” I picked up my phone and closed the autopsy report. I opened the crime scene report and began reading.
It didn’t take long to read through it; as Sean said, the whole report boiled down to a great big nada. The CSI team found the remains of Mark’s gun and holster in the cargo area of the van, where he never would have left them, so they had been tossed back there by whoever killed him or torched the van. There was no trace of Mark’s cell phone, so presumably whoever had taken Mark had it, or had disposed of it.
“Can Cyro track Mark’s phone?” I asked.
Sean shook his head. “I already asked. It’s off. He’s monitoring it, though, in case it gets turned on. When the phone records come in, we might at least be able to figure out where Mark was the last time it was used.”
I went back to the photos of the crime scene and the burned-out van. My breath caught when I saw a close-up photo of a metal cylinder lying on the van’s front floorboard and realized it was what was left of my coffee thermos.
“Alice.” Sean touched my hand. “You don’t have to look at all of the photos.”
“Yes, I do. I have to see it. I owe him that much. I can’t look away and pretend it was less terrible than it was.”
To my surprise, Sean nodded. “I understand.”
I finished looking through the photos. Something nagged at me about the report, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I flipped back through, skimming over the sketch of the scene, the CSI team’s notes, the list of items found in the van, the inventory of the items Mark had on him when he was found—
Full stop.
I reopened the autopsy report and read through the list of items removed from Mark’s body: shirt, undershirt, jeans, underwear, socks, shoes, watch…and no wedding ring. His hands had been bagged at the scene or I’d have noticed it then.
“Son of a bitch,” I said out loud.
Sean looked up from his phone. “What?”
“They took his wedding ring. It wasn’t on him when the police got there.” Anger made magic spark on my fingertips. However I might feel about Sharon, Mark hadn’t taken his ring off for any reason in three decades. His wife deserved to have it.
“There could be a lot of reasons to take Mark’s phone, but why take his ring?”
“Mark wore that ring for thirty years, so it would be resonant with his magic, but I don’t know what good that would do them if he’s dead. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Could you trace it?”
I thought about it, then shook my head. “If I’d realized it was missing last night, and had some other item belonging to Mark to use as a focus, maybe, but not now. The trace will have faded too much for me to sense unless I was nearby. Damn it.”
I switched back to the crime scene report and moved on to the statements of the two men who’d found the body, taken by a detective named Brody. They’d gone into the alley to go dumpster-diving, according to their accounts, and called the police to report the body. Brody noted both men were clearly under the influence of Haze, but their statements were consistent and more or less coherent.
He determined there was nothing suspicious about their story and no reason to hold them. They’d been released around two in the morning.
I was about the close the file when my eyes went back to the names of the men who’d found Mark’s body: Jake Travers and John Andrews. I frowned. Where did I know those names from? How would I know those names? I certainly hadn’t crossed paths with many Haze addicts. There were no photos of them in the file, but I could swear I knew those names from somewhere.
I jerked suddenly when recognition dawned.
“What?” Sean asked.
I held up my phone and pointed to Brody’s report. “I’ve met these assholes before,” I told him. “The last time I saw them, I left them unconscious in an alley not six blocks from here, after they attacked Carrie Davis.”
He stared at me. “This sounds like a story I need to hear.”
I hadn’t given John Andrews and Jake Travers, a.k.a. Dipstick and Twitchy, any thought since the night a month ago when I’d rescued Carrie from them. Had I not taken the time to go through their wallets that night, I never would have made the connection between Carrie’s attackers and the two men who’d allegedly stumbled across Mark’s body.
I told Sean the story while we sat in the liquor store parking lot. I expected him to fuss at me for taking on three drug dealers alone in an alley in the middle of the night, but he surprised me. “That was incredibly brave,” he said. “And not at all unexpected, knowing what I know about you.”
“That’s what Mark said,” I said with a sigh. “I guess I’m well-known for doing stupid shit like that on a regular basis.”
Sean frowned at me. “You’re well-known for trying to save people on a regular basis, at great risk to yourself. That’s not stupid; it’s heroic.”
