Blood Games

by Lee Killough

  Following the walk up from the lot to the LEC entrance he found himself humming. Not that he felt good--the light pressed down on him just as hard and the glare of the sky sneaked around the brim of his cowboy hat and rim of his glasses--but he felt...euphoric. No doubt from oxygen shortage to his brain after the shock of writing a check that size to Duerfeldt. And he had others yet to go. His personal property taxes had probably skyrocketed, and judging by his insurance agent’s Ah! when he phoned from Duerfeldt’s, his car insurance certainly had. But glancing back at the lot where the Porsche gleamed darkly in the sunlight, he regretted nothing.

  Nothing except that Maggie would never ride in it. He pictured her...eyes alight, cheeks flushed as he picked a stretch of empty country road and floored the accelerator. “So I’ll use it for you, Maggie.”

  The clerk at the front counter studied the badge and ID he plastered against her glass and buzzed him on through. In the sheriff’s main office, a female deputy Garreth had seen before but did not know sat at a work station talking on the phone. “No, ma’am, you have been officially served. We aren’t required to hand you– ” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Sir, may I--oh--” Her eyes widened. “You’re Mikaelian! How can you be-- Ma’am, glass cleans pretty easily and isn’t a little tape better than a hole in your door from nailing--” Her voice went sugary. “You have a nice day, too, ma’am.”

  Above their heads the scanner said, “Bellamy County, Baumen Five.”

  Garreth started at his number and wheeled toward Dispatch to find Emma Carson beckoning to him. “Bellamy County clear,” her voice murmured from the scanner, then shouted down the room, “Garreth Mikaelian, you get yourself in here and tell me what you’re doing out of bed!”

  She had her door unlocked and open when he reached it. He pulled in the chair at the desk outside and while she went on working, gave her the public version of his activities and health status.

  Her brows rose. “Then you’ll be interested in knowing that we’ve heard from Denver, Spokane, Albuquerque, and Billings.”

  He straightened in the chair, satisfaction shooting through him. Yes! “Where?”

  She pointed at the sorter standing between the teletype and fax machines. “You should have plenty of time to read everything before Nick comes back from his press conference.”

  Press conference! Garreth froze in mid step toward the sorter. In his focus on the albino and bobbsey bitches he had forgotten all about the media. It was probably too much to hope that the press considered the briefing a sufficient source of information and had no interest in him. “It’s in some distant part of the court house, I hope.”

  She eyed him with amusement. “The county commissioner’s meeting room.”

  Distant enough. He still fought an urge to slink down in the chair while reading the printout. Denver had located the Lexus the van’s tags belonged on. Rather, the owner brought it to their attention by reporting the tags stolen. She had been parked in the long term lot at the airport for the past two weeks and while checking the car’s condition after arriving back this morning, discovered her front tag missing and an unfamiliar one on the rear. She had been shown sketches of the three suspects but could not identify them.

  Give the albino credit...a long term parking lot made a good source for tags. The theft might go undiscovered for days, especially when he replaced the rear tag of the Lexus with the front tag of some other car.

  The bad checks in Albuquerque had been passed over the course of a week in March... written to clothing stores, an appliance store for a CD/tape deck sound system, and a used car dealer for a 1993 Miata.

  While the description the car dealer gave came close to that of the albino, the choice of a Miata made Garreth doubt this was their suspect. Vampires, and surely a serious vampire pretender, too, wanted shielding from the sun, not a convertible.

  The credit card theft in Spokane occurred two years ago, three cards stolen over a one week period. A tall, thin, white-haired male in his twenties had bought a number of items with the cards. The victims denied recognizing the sketch and claimed to have no idea how the cards had been stolen. None had lost wallets or cash. None discovered the thefts until their next credit card bill arrived.

  The death in Billings occurred a year and a half ago...a black female approximately eighteen years of age found with slashed wrists in the suite at the Sheraton Billings Hotel where she had been staying for two days with her alleged uncle. Although hesitation cuts on her arms and her fingerprints on the new kitchen knife found by the body were consistent with self-inflicted wounds, champagne bottles at the scene, the high alcohol content of her blood, and semen and white pubic hairs found on the body, made the Billings PD wanted to talk to a male seen leaving the suite–Caucasian, twenties, over six feet, thin, pale skin, white hair. Her alleged uncle--Caucasian, middle-aged, approximately six feet tall, heavy-set, glasses, mustache, greying hair--was also wanted. The investigation discovered that the credit card he used had been stolen from a local businessman the day before he checked in.

  Billings also faxed a photo of the victim. She had been a pretty, waif-like girl...wide eyes, exotic cheekbones, definite Negroid features but light skinned and fine boned. Hard lines around her mouth suggested that in life she had been sly and street-tough.

  Garreth frowned. He would not rule out the albino in any of these cases except Albuquerque. But in Billings, who was the other male and how did he fit in? “May I use the fax machine?”

  Busy with a phone call, Emma nodded.

  He stepped out into the office after the suspects’ sketches. In taking them down, the photocopier caught his eye. He ran the sketches through, and the information from Billings and Spokane. Who could say when he might need personal copies of it all? Then he returned to faxed Spokane and Billings the suspects’ sketches.

  As the last of them fed out of the fax machine, Emma said, “I’d have thought you’re too young for Cenotaph’s music.”

  He blinked at her. “Who’s Cenotaph?”

  She raised her brows. “The singing group? Self-proclaimed Cassandras of social conscience? Very big at the end of the sixties?”

  None of it rang any bells. “Okay...but why bring them up?”

  She rolled her eyes. “For heaven’s sake...you’ve been humming their ‘Shades of Midnight’ ever since you came in.”

  A quick check of memory found he had been humming something...nothing familiar, though. “I don’t know why. I don’t recognize the tune.”

  “Well, you grew up in California with Berkeley and San Francisco and hippies practically next door. I was one of those hippies, did you know that? Until Vietnam. My brother was killed over there and that ended the Age of Aquarius for me.” She shrugged. “Anyway, you probably heard it as a child and something triggered the memory today.”

  He could not imagine what. Then, abruptly, he did. His dream. Someone had been singing it to the baby with Maggie’s eyes.

  “I can still remember some of the words. Among us there live shadow brothers, Disenfranchised from the light, something something something something Forced to live in shades of Midnight.” She broke off to answer the radio and run a registration check for a deputy. “It ends with a warning that the disenfranchised just might reject light and embrace the Dark Side. I think it’s from the Night Gardens album.” She eyed him in concern. “Are you all right?”

  Garreth forced a smile. “I’m fine.” Just suddenly feeling cold as hell. Hearing the words brought the same blast of menace he felt out there on I-70. If the albino were vampire, Garreth doubted he had been raped into the life but, like Lane, wanted it.

  He heard the knob on the office door.

  “Emma!” Reichert’s voice boomed. Garreth glanced over the top of the partition to see the sheriff stalking up the office. “I hope someone made coffee this morning.”

  “It’s in Records as always.”

  Reichert punched the combination on the Dispatch door keypad and let himself in. “M
orning, Mikaelian.” He breezed past and on through the half door connecting to the Records section the SO and PD shared. Garreth heard him joking with the clerks, then he returned with a mug of coffee and leaned back against the half door. “God, I need this. You get the feeling the media, that obnoxious clothes horse from KAYS in particular, thinks if we’re not out there racing up and down every road then we’re just twiddling our thumbs waiting for them to drop from the heavens.” He eyed Garreth. “They found out you signed yourself out of the hospital and will be looking for you. I didn’t tell them you’re assisting in the investigation but they’ll twig to it if they catch you hanging around here. Speaking of walking out of the hospital, you look like you sure as hell shouldn’t have.”

  Garreth thought fast. “Of course I don’t look bright-eyed. For sixteen years this has been my bedtime. Here. These came in while you were being grilled.” He handed Reichert the teletype printouts. “I took the liberty of sending Billings and Spokane the suspects’ sketches.”

  Reading, Reichert nodded. “Albuquerque doesn’t look much like our suspect, though, does he, and I wonder about Billings. But...it never hurts to see.”

  Garreth glanced at his watch and stood. “I need to see the county treasurer about registering a car and transferring my tags.”

  The sheriff did not look up. “Did you get a real vehicle this time?”

  Garreth opened the door of Dispatch. “That depends on whether you define ‘real’ as having four-wheel-drive or going vroooom!” He left Reichert shaking his head.

  Beyond the front desk a door connected the Law Enforcement Center to the rest of the courthouse. Garreth kept watch for reporters as he stepped through but spotted none. The treasurer’s office seemed clear, too. He took a number and filled out a set of forms while he waited.

  “Excuse me, you in the dark glasses,” one of the clerks said.

  Already? He carried his forms to the counter.

  The clerk leaned across it toward him and lowered her voice. “Emma in the Sheriff’s Office called and said I should send you back to the office right away for a call from Cheyenne.”

  It took all Garreth’s control to make himself walk casually. In the office he found Reichert on the phone at a work station. The sheriff held up two fingers to identify the line number and pointed to the phone at the other work station.

  As Garreth picked up, Reichert said, “We’re being joined by another officer involved in our investigation. Let me repeat for him what you’ve told me. Mikaelian, Detective Dana Bradshaw showed our sketches to Mr. Greenstreet. Mr. Greenstreet said he’s never seen any of the three suspects before.”

  “But...” Garreth prompted. Reichert’s tone implied the word.

  From Cheyenne came a whispery voice. “But...he was lying through his teeth.”

  Finally...a break!

  Bradshaw went on, “Not about the male. He didn’t turn a hair at that sketch. But he definitely recognized one of the females. The thing is...I talked to him at his business, which is a Christian book store. I’m thinking that since it’s a juvie female he recognizes, it might be more productive to re-interview him in less...restraining surroundings. So I wondered if one of your deputies would like to sit in on the interview.”

  Reichert tugged at his free ear. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m a little tight on man--”

  “Sheriff!” Garreth waved at him. “I’m free to go.”

  “Let me put you on hold for just a minute,” Reichert told Bradshaw. He frowned at Garreth. “Mikaelian, you’re riding a desk, remember...working the phone, letting your fingers do the walking?”

  “This isn’t much more.” Garreth leaned toward Reichert. “I wouldn’t be conducting the interview, just shadowing Bradshaw, and Greenstreet isn’t a suspect, after all, but a victim. Where’s the problem in me going?” He shoved his glasses up on his head, ready to persuade Reichert by whatever means necessary. Urgency pulsed in him. “Come on; we need to know all we can about these people.” Like whether they hunted a vampire or wannabe. “Let me go.”

  Reichert frowned somewhere past him, not meeting his eyes, but after a long pause, the sheriff reconnected with Cheyenne and said, “I do have someone free. When did you have in mind to do the interview?”

  “How soon can your officer be out here?”

  Garreth answered for Reichert. “We have a memorial service this afternoon for the officer who was killed. How about tomorrow morning?”

  “That’s fine. Meet me at the Criminal Investigation Division at 9:00 o’clock.”

  As he hung up, Reichert still frowned. Garreth said, “It’ll be all right. You won’t be sorry.”

  Now Reichert focused on him. “It better be all right, because if in your zeal to find these turkeys you come anywhere near crossing the line, this department and I will be just as deep in doo-doo as you are.”

  The color of law. Garreth met his gaze, but with no attempt to trap it. “I’m well aware of that...and I won’t forget it.”

  “Well, just so you don’t...” He left the room, and presently returned carrying two magnetic signs. “Put these on your car as a reminder.”

  Garreth eyed the signs Reichert handed him: reproductions of the department emblems, a six-pointed gold star with the Kansas state seal in the center and lettered. Bellamy County Sheriff. He grinned inwardly, visualizing them on the Porsche. That should raise some eyebrows.

  Thought of the Porsche reminded him he needed to finish registering the car. “I’ll put them on before I leave town. See you at Maggie’s memorial service.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Although not wall to wall law enforcement officers like police funerals Garreth had attended in San Francisco, Maggie’s drew enough from area agencies--dress uniforms spotless and knife-creased, leather gleaming--to widen the eyes of the family and friends who filled the remainder of St. Thomas More church.

  The media had sent representatives, too, but only a handful...reporters from the papers in Baumen, Bellamy, Russell, and Hays and a pair from the TV station in Hays. They were held to the fringes, blocked from the family by the seemingly accidental but persistent wall of uniforms. When Garreth appeared, widening eyes, too, then given a series of thumbs up from fellow officers, he received the same protection.

  Martin Lebekov started, then beamed, seeing him, and had his sister Susan bring Garreth forward to the family pew instead of letting him join the Baumen PD contingent. “You’re almost family. You should have been.”

  The words twisted in Garreth. Maybe he should have been.

  He sank gratefully onto the pew beside Martin.

  The way Chief Danzig’s eyes narrowed at the sight of him, it seemed judicious to delay contact there in any case. At sixty and hair mostly grey Ken Danzig retained a physical presence no less intimidating than when Garreth joined the department.

  Susan said, “I don’t think you should be out of the hospital yet, Garreth. You look terrible.”

  Good. He felt terrible, and to emphasize that–following Irina’s advice not reveal how fast he was healing–he had tucked his glasses in his breast pocket and come hungry. The combination of daylight’s pounding glare and the flood of blood scents left him cramping and dizzy. The fresh bandage on his forehead should also help the effect he wanted. Under the gauze pad and tape, only a red line remained of the laceration, and in another day or two, all sign of the wounds would be gone. The only scars that ever remained were the ones on his neck from Lane’s attack, faint silvery ridges webbing the skin to remind him where he came from and what he was. He had not bothered to re-bandage his arm since his uniform shirt sleeve covered the area.

  Martin glanced around, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen so many badges at one time, and the last time I was in a group of armed men this large I was shipping out for Korea. I’m overwhelmed.”

  Garreth smoothed his uniform trousers over his knees while he swallowed the knot in his throat. “It’s no more than Maggie deserves. She died doing her job.”
And every officer here knew that another day this service could be for him or her.

  And who was to say it should not be Garreth Mikaelian, Garreth reflected later while Chief Danzig delivered the eulogy. Fate continued to play cruel games with him, destroying Maggie, who wanted life, who deserved it, yet preserving him. A large photograph of her stood on an easel before the altar in lieu of a coffin, Maggie in uniform, staring into the camera trying to look serious and professional and not grin down at her shiny new sergeant’s badge. It brought back memory of her with the force of a physical blow...her laughter, the feel of her skin, the smell of it and her blood. I’m so sorry, Maggie, I couldn’t...wouldn’t save you. I hope you can understand why. And I hope you finally know everything about me you wanted to.

  It occurred to him that now he was talking to her with a freedom he never did in life. The thought brought a pang of guilt.

  At Martin’s house afterward, the mourners quickly separated into civilian and law enforcement groups, with Garreth swept from the hugs of Sue Ann and Helen Schoning into the middle of the latter circle. Danzig did not join them, Garreth noticed, but huddled with Reichert in a private corner. Garreth took a deep breath. He did not need Grandma Doyle’s Feelings to know that before the end of the day he could expect a chat with his chief.

  A number of the law enforcement group had participated in the pursuit, so after expressions of condolence and wisecracks about how good Garreth looked for someone DOA, the conversation turned to the chase.

  Dan Seward expressed the thought probably uppermost in all their minds: “I don’t understand why the hell we haven’t found that van.”

  Echoing him, other voices reflected their combined anger and frustration. The ATL had gone out statewide and to Nebraska, Missouri, and Colorado as soon Garreth and Maggie were found. The information that the suspects were armed and dangerous and had killed a police officer guaranteed every similar vehicle would be stopped, every rock kicked over. Yet so far there had been no sign of either van or fugitives. The group speculated whether the suspects had gone into hiding, or abandoned the van and acquired other transportation. Stolen car reports in the area warranted double checking. Though someone looking like the albino should be easy to spot whatever he drove, and if they dumped the van, why had it still not been found?