Blood Hunt gmd-1

by Lee Killough

  He smiled at her. “Feeling righteous. I finished all my reports.”

  “So you’re leaving for your folks’ soon?”

  He shook his head. “I have a couple of things to see to here first.” At the flash of concern in her eyes he said, “Housekeeping. Shopping.” He plucked at the jeans beginning to hang on him like a homeboy’s. “A few new clothes.”

  Necessary at some point, true…sooner if his boots quit fitting. Today he shopped for Eldon Lukert.

  Letting his fingers do the walking…sitting in his apartment with the phone book. He started with the A’s in the nursing home section of the yellow pages and worked his way through the listings. one phone call at a time. If necessary, he was prepared to call every home in the Bay Area.

  He thought he might have to. He struck out on every San Francisco facility down to the W’s. Then he thought Lady Luck smiled again. Not only could he feel sunset coming, the woman answering at the Windsong Adult Care Home said, “Eldon Lukert? No, we don’t have a patient by that name now but it sounds familiar. Just a minute.” She went off the line.

  Garreth crossed his fingers.

  She came back several minutes later. “We did have an Eldon Lukert until last month.”

  “That’s the gentleman I need. Can you tell me where he went?”

  She paused. “I’m sorry. He didn’t leave in the sense you mean. He died.”

  Garreth hung up and slumped back in his chair. Crap. Dead ends came no deader than that. Now what? Trying to track other former associates needed their names, which meant attempting to look at the Bieber file. Even if he managed that and got the names…and found some of them — he lucked out with Claudia — would they know anything more personal than Claudia had. The closest they had to personal information on her were her belongings.

  The apartment had to be the key. Somewhere among those pieces of her, collected and kept over the years, there must be a clue to where she came from, and from that, some indication where she might go to hide. If only he could find it.

  Driving to the apartment, he approached the door with caution. He had been invited in once. Would it still hold good, as the legend said? Or would the fiery pain bar him again?

  At the door, his body still felt cool and comfortable. He leaned against the door. Still no fire seared him.

  Wrench!

  That hurt as much as ever.

  He leaned against the wall inside, breathing deeply until the pain faded. How dark the hall had looked that first time he walked down it behind Lane Barber. No more. For once he felt appreciated his vampire vision; he could move around the apartment and study it all he needed without lights to arouse the curiosity and suspicion of neighbors.

  He stepped into the living room…and jerked to a halt in shock.

  It had been stripped clean! The furniture remained, but the paintings, the sculpture, the books and objects on the shelves had all gone.

  Garreth ran for the bedroom and jerked open the closet. Her clothes still hung inside. In the kitchen he found the few items in the cupboards untouched, too.

  Back in the living room he stared around him. When had she come back? Sometime since yesterday morning, obviously. She had come back and taken the items important to her. How did she know the apartment was not being watched?

  Perhaps because she herself had been watching?

  He sat down at the desk, swearing. She must never have left the city. What had she done, checked into one of the cheap residence hotels in the Tenderloin in some kind of disguise? With her height, she could even pass as a man. She had stayed, even with the whole police force looking for her, and watched, and when it was safe, coolly retrieved her belongings.

  What was it her agent had said? All ice and steel inside. Yeah!

  A shiver moved down his spine. The maiden is powerful. Beware of such a maiden. Made of ice and steel and with over forty years head start on him in vampirism and living experience, did he really stand a chance of finding her? What might she do if she suspected he was after her?

  Then he shook his head. Personal danger should be the least of his worries. His life was already gone. All she could take away from him now was existence. On the other hand, she had the capacity to harm a great many more people if allowed to continue unchecked.

  So…he must keep going.

  He needed a direction, though. Any help he might have gained from her belongings had disappeared. He had to proceed on what he already knew. What did he know?

  The writing paper still remained in the desk. He took out a sheet and itemized his knowledge. She came, probably, from a Germanic background. She sometimes used Germanic names. She spoke a German and Russian combination.

  He made a note to find out through one of the local universities the location of German and Russian groups near each other in the United States around World War I when she was born.

  Could any of her belongings regionalize her? Too bad he did not know rocks well enough to describe those in the type tray to a geologist. If all of them were childhood “treasures” as other objects in the tray seemed to suggest, and if two or more came from a single geographic area, it might have been a lead. All he remembered, though, was the black shark tooth. Was that something he could use?

  The apartment had given him as much as it was ever going to. He left, checking out the window beside the door to make sure the street was clear before passing through to the porch, then drove down to Fisherman’s Wharf.

  A few of the shops in the area remained open, catching late tourist trade. He wandered into one. “Do you have shark teeth?” he asked the girl behind the counter.

  She took him to a section where the wall displayed small circles of jawbone lined with rows of wicked teeth.

  He studied the teeth. They looked the same shape as the teeth he had seen, but were all white, not black.

  “Do you have any black shark teeth?”

  She blinked. “Black? I’ve never seen black ones before.”

  He tried a similar shop farther down the pier with the same result. Neither the two clerks nor a customer there had never seen or heard of black shark teeth, either. The time had come, he decided, to seek expert advice. In the morning he would call one of the universities and ask them where black shark teeth came from.

  Morning. He chafed at that. Why did it always have to be during the day when he could accomplish anything? He crossed Jefferson and began wandering through the arcades of the Cannery, peering into its shop windows fuming in impatience. Nothing was open when he felt most like working. Lane had taken convenience from him, too.

  Then, in the window of a jewelry shop, he saw them…earrings hanging on a T-shaped plastic stand, hooped for pierced ears, with small black teeth dangling from them! The shop sign said Closed, but the lights remained on and a man moved along a counter inside. Garreth rapped on the window.

  The man turned and pointed at the sign in the window stating business hours.

  “I just want to ask where the shark teeth earrings come from,” Garreth called, automatically reaching into his jacket pocket before remembering he had no badge there.

  The man stared tensely until Garreth’s hand came out of the pocket empty, then: I’m closed, he mouthed. Come back tomorrow.

  “I just want to know where those earrings come from!”

  But the man shook his head and walked into a back room. Moments later all the lights except the security lights went out.

  Garreth debated what he might accomplish passing through the door and following the man, other than frightening him…and maybe tripping an alarm the man also set from the back room. Better not risk that.

  He leaned his forehead against the window, straining to read the card under the earrings. Without luck. Letters upside-down and backward he could work out, but not print that size from this distance.

  Standing there, he tasted life without the badge…no authority, no leverage. And realized how alone he stood against his quarry. The maiden is powerful. He shivered in a ch
ill blowing down his unprotected back.

  7

  The TV morning news warned citizens to drive cautiously. Fog had rolled in overnight and blanketed the entire city so heavily that it lay in a dim, shadowless twilight. Foghorns sounded from Mile Rocks east to Fleming Point and from Point San Pablo south to Hunters Point. Garreth reveled in it. Daylight remained above it, weighting and weakening him, but not as heavily. He felt almost comfortable on the sofa, feet on the coffee table, dialing the number of the biology department at the University of San Francisco.

  “My name is Garreth Mikaelian. I need to talk to someone who can tell me where certain kinds of shark teeth are found.”

  He would have thought that was a simple request, but the phone went on hold for what seemed an eternity before a reedy male voice said, “This is Dr. Edmund Faith. You’re the gentleman who needs to know where to find certain breeds of sharks?”

  “No, I need to know where their teeth are found. The other day I cane across a black shark tooth in a shop on Fisherman’s Wharf and I’d to find another and have a pair of earrings made for my wife’s birthday. However, the girl in the shop had no idea where the tooth came from and neither did anyone else I asked.”

  “A black shark’s tooth?”

  “Yes. What part of the world do they come from?”

  “A black one would be a fossil. You need to talk to a paleontologist.”

  Par for the course. How many investigative lines had he followed that went just like this. “Can you suggest someone, please?”

  “Try Dr. Henry Ilford.” He gave Garreth a phone number.

  Garreth jotted the number down, and dialed the new number.

  Dr. Ilford, a secretary informed Garreth, was out. Please leave a number.

  Garreth remembered from his brief college days how difficult it could be finding a particular professor when one needed him. “Might I talk to a grad student, then.”

  “I’ll see if any are in their office.”

  The phone went on hold again. Garreth drummed his fingers. As much as he preferred phoning to running around in daylight, perhaps he should have driven to the campus. On hold he found it too easy to imagine the secretary finishing a letter then going on coffee break, forgetting about him.

  Before long, though, another voice came on the line, pleasantly female.

  Garreth repeated his question. “Can you tell me areas of the US where black fossil shark teeth are found?”

  “Well.” She drew out the word. “Fossil shark teeth can be found in about seventy-five percent of the country. It’s almost all been under water at one time or another.”

  Garreth sighed. Seventy-five percent? So much for the tooth as a lead to Lane’s background.

  “But,” the young woman went on, “the only places I know to find the black ones are on the eastern seaboard and in western Kansas.”

  Garreth scribbled in his notebook. “Just there? How easy are those teeth to find?”

  “I think you have to dig back east, but they’re close to the surface in Kansas.”

  Close to the surface. “Then a kid might find one without much trouble?”

  “I’m sure he could. I’m told it’s possible to pick them up just walking across a plowed field or in the cuts along roads and streams.”

  Which could be how Lane acquired hers. He recalled the other fossils in the type tray. “Are there many kinds of fossils available in the Kansas area?”

  “The limestone is full of small things like shells, yes.”

  He thanked her and lung up, then sat staring at his scribbled notes. Kansas. The postmark the lab brought up on the burned envelope had a 67 in it. Harry said that Zips starting with 67 were all in Kansas. He ticked his tongue against his teeth. Did the trail smell warmer?

  Garreth went back to the phone book, this time for the number of the anthropology department. “I need to talk to someone who can tell me where immigrant German and Russian groups settled in this country.”

  That brought him more interminable time on hold while the secretary hunted up a likely prospect. She came back suggesting he call in two hours, when a Dr. Iseko would be in his office. He had no grad student or teaching assistant handy.

  Hanging up, Garreth sat considering Zip codes. If the one on the envelope did start 67, maybe he could find a western Kansas town with the letters visible on the postmark. What had they decided? The first letter had to be B or D, with the slanted visible feet making the next letter most likely an A, followed by something with a curved lower line: C, O, or U. Or G or Q. He brought his road atlas in from the car and went through the Kansas section of the index for possible matches to the town name on the postmark. Eight started with BA or DA followed by C, U, or G. Possibly wasted effort if Dr. Iseko said Swedes and Scots settled Kansas. With a town named Dauphin, Frenchmen may have. Bachman and Baumen sounded German, though.

  He read on down the list for other German or Russian sounding names. Goessel fit that, and Liebenthal. Then one name leaped at him: Pfeifer! Garreth turned hurriedly to the Kansas map and located Pfeifer. Liebenthal and another German-sounding town, Schoenchen, lay just miles from it. After locating Bachman on farther south, he clenched a fist in triumph. Yes! None of the town names sounded Russian but so many Germanic ones had to be more than coincidence. He might not need the anthropologist’s input…except facts should always be verified. In case your theory turned out wrong.

  He tried Dr. Iseko again and this time reached him. “I’m a researcher working for the author James Michener. We’re interested in finding a community of German immigrants in Kansas living in close proximity to Russian immigrants.”

  “I’m afraid there are none like that in Kansas,” the anthropologist replied.

  Garreth’s stomach dropped. He swore silently in disappointment. “What’s the ethnicity of…” He pretended to be consulting notes. “…the town of Pfeifer, then?”

  “Where exactly is that in Kansas?”

  Garreth checked the road atlas. “Near Hays.”

  “Ah.” At the other end real papers rustled. “Ellis County. That area was settled by a group called the Usere Lueute, or Volga Germans — or Rooshans, as they’re called locally — Germans who immigrated to southern Russia 1763 at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who promised them land, religious freedom, and freedom from military conscription. When that seemed about to be revoked a century later, they immigrated to this country.”

  Something electric sizzled through Garreth, standing his hair on end. “Rooshans? They’re a kind of mixed German and Russian, then? Does their language reflect that?” Claudia said Lane spoke a hodgepodge of German and Russian.

  “Yes, indeed. It’s a very unique language. An acquaintance of mine wrote his dissertation on it.”

  Garreth’ pulse jumped. He forced his tone to remain politely inquiring. “How large an area did they settle?”

  “The Catholic group is mainly around Ellis County. However, there are Lutherans and Mennonites, too, spread out farther…into Bellamy and Barton counties, and some into Rush and Ness.”

  Garreth wrote it all down. After thanking the doctor and hanging up, he scrambled back to his atlas. Bachman lay in southern Ellis County, about ten miles west of Pfeifer, and he located Baumen northeast in Bellamy County. Another call, this one to the reference librarian at the central library, who, when he again trotted out the magic name of James Michener, consulted the library’s collection of phone books and informed him yes, there were listings for Biebers in both Bachman and Baumen, Kansas.

  He hung up with excitement almost negating the misery of daylight. It fit. It all fit. Lane had to come from that area, either Bachman or Baumen. Though he could not be certain without further investigation. Investigation not possible by phone.

  He had to go there in person.

  8

  Garreth made his last visit to Harry an evening one, so he could leave straight from there and drive in the comfort of night. He sat telling Harry how much he looked forward to
spending two weeks with his family and son. Feeling wretched every moment for lying.

  “I’ll miss you,” Harry said. Finally talking in a normal voice. Though still in ICU, he looked better every day, less like a cyborg with some of the tubes gone. “But I’m glad you’re finally getting away from everything here for a while.”

  Lien walked him not just to the elevator but out to his car. “I didn’t want to talk around Harry.”

  His gut lurched. That sounded serious. “Is something going wrong?”

  “Not with Harry.” She looked up at him. “Are you really going to Davis?”

  “Of course.”

  She peered into the ZX’s back seat, at his suitcase and an ice chest there. “For how long?”

  That caught him off guard. Surely she did not guess the ice chest held ice and jugs of rat blood.

  Before he answered, she said, “You’re going after Lane Barber, aren’t you?”

  He considered denying it but her eyes turned knowingly toward him. “I have to. I’m the only one who can find her.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.” Make that: impossible to explain. “Please don’t tell Harry.”

  “Not until he’s stronger.” She paused. “I consulted I Ching this morning.”

  His gut did another lurch. “Did you get the maiden is powerful again?”

  She punched his arm. “Hush and listen. Never forget that one…but today’s hexagram was number twelve, Standstill. It says that heaven and earth are out of communion and that all things are benumbed. Confusion and disorder prevail.”

  He grimaced. That was certainly true for him.

  “Inferior people are in ascendancy but don’t allow yourself to be turned from your principles. There are change lines in the second and fourth places, advising that a great man will suffer the consequences of a standstill and by his willingness to suffer, ensure the success of his principles. However…” Her eyes bored up into him. “…acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. Setting one’s self up to alter things according to one’s own judgment can end in mistake and failure.”