Sanguine Vengeance

by Dias, Jason

  How much of her story was bullshit?

  She could have put those boys’ clothes in the Father’s storage locker. No evidence the secretary knew anything. Could have been a set-up all along.

  No, there was evidence. Enrique knew where the bodies were buried. Metaphorically speaking.

  When I started awake, that was the first I knew I’d been finally drifting off to sleep.

  Enrique.

  My blood went frosty. He’d told me in plain English that Ysabeau had made contact with him. “Yeah. It was weird. Actually, she’s kinda weird. But special. Eccentric. But kind, smart. Pretty, in a petite sort of way.” I hadn’t made the connection, but I should have made it. I’d been so confused and off-balance and…

  And so selfish. I hadn’t thought of anyone but myself in days.

  Now I felt anxiety, shame, and fear for Enrique all at once. I’d flopped a sweat and couldn’t lie still on the shoddy mattress any longer. I moved to the bench against the front wall of the camper, tablet in hand.

  Shit. Another worry: I hadn’t disabled GPS. I did that now, struggling to remember how, flipping through screens until I had it. Maybe too late. Then I worried about whether I could be triangulated from cell towers if I made a call. I’d never tried it and I didn’t know enough about the technology to guess. Best to turn the thing off and leave it off. In a minute.

  A shadow on the window. Somebody knocked. A flat, unfortunate sound: a plastic door in a plastic frame. I went still and silent.

  Police would need a warrant or probable cause to force entry. If they knew about the camper being stolen, that might fly as cause, or they could ask the owner – the deceased’s next of kin. I’d been careful and careless both. No crime is ever perfect. You always overlook something, and that something gives you up.

  Whoever it was knocked again. No way to see them without giving myself away, so I just sat there, transfixed.

  They moved along. I listened. My life depended on it. They knocked again at the next RV. I heard a conversation, too torn apart by the wind to be helpful. A minute later the chatter quieted.

  I risked cracking the door and peeking outside. The door pushed something on the step. It thumped and sloshed: a water bottle. I peered up the street. Two doors down, a woman stood outside the next RV with a big basket in her hands. The resident took water and a shopping bag of food from her. They exchanged a few words, then the woman moved down the line.

  Enough panic for one morning. Sleep would have to wait. Ricky was in danger. I would have to risk calling him, then move somewhere safer.

  I changed into the clothes from my gym bag: jeans and a sweater. Stuffed my gun in the bag with the clothes I’d been wearing. Around the outside of the camper then into the truck, driver’s side, unobserved so far, gym bag on the floor of the passenger side. Once I was moving, away from the park where I would likely be camping again later, I told the tablet to call Enrique.

  After a few seconds, it made the phone-ringing sound meant to reassure the caller that the phone is indeed ringing at the other end. I had time to recall having read an article stating that was not really the sound the recipient’s phone was making, and thinking today it must seem so obvious because phones don’t ring anymore. They play music or sound effects.

  Enrique did not spoil the chain of thought by answering. My worry index nudged up a point higher. Hard to imagine it could get worse. My foot wanted to mash the accelerator. To drive it like I hadn’t stolen it.

  If life were a TV cop show, I’d have been busted twenty times before I came near the offices of the Catholic Diocese. Traffic cameras. Some tech-savvy youngster would hack into them with the ambiguous approval of their boss and watch everyone with facial-recognition technology. I had wished to have access to such luxuries. My life as a detective already seemed long ago, distant, hazed with nostalgic sepia tones.

  I had to park far away and hike across a big parking lot. I didn’t know what Ricky drove these days so no sense scanning the lot. I’d have to go in and just hope my former colleagues hadn’t set up cordons here.

  Through smoky glass doors, into a lobby buried under six floors of administrative building. An aging blonde lady sat in a huge desk, like a skinny person who just lost a lot of weight and hasn’t bought new clothes to fit. I must have looked lost or out of place because she said, “How can I help you?”

  Not can I, but how can I. Directive language disguised as a question. “I need to see Enrique Sanchez.”

  “Who should I say is here for him? Miss…”

  “Sanchez. I’m his wife. Ex wife. It’s important.” I must have looked like an ex-wife in yesterday’s jeans.

  “Personal?”

  “No, and also none of your business.” I hadn’t been called in to turn in my badge and my gun. I had the former in my wallet, back pocket; the latter jammed into the back of my jeans, covered with the chunky sweater. I could lay out the badge to hurry things along – but only if I totally necessary. That might lead to confirmation calls to the office, and we couldn’t have that. Bad enough I’d given my real name.

  She dialed his office on speaker, poised to pick up if he answered. He didn’t. Just that same ringing tone, a meaningless platitude in the face of growing desperation.

  “He didn’t come in this morning.”

  She looked up at me. “If you knew that-”

  “I didn’t. I’m asking. Is he actually here or not?”

  “I’d have to-”

  “Go do it, then. Quick. Look, he’s in danger. Hurry.”

  She slid out from her chair and opened a door in the marble desk-top. She sort of trotted down a tiled hallway, tall heels clacking, pencil skirt riding up. Impatient, I followed. She hurried through a security door and I drafted behind her. When she reached his office and knocked, I just pushed past her.

  Unlocked, unoccupied.

  “You can’t-”

  “Hush. Call his boss. Alert everyone you can think of that Enrique is missing. Everyone who knows him.”

  “I’m calling the police.” She turned to trot back to her oversized desk.

  Time for the badge. “Miss, due respect, I am the police. I’ll have uniforms out combing the streets in ten minutes but you are going to be the most effective operator. My guys will have to ask a thousand questions your guys already know the answers to. Find him. Now.”

  She stood in the face of my barrage, uncertain, moving from foot to foot. Then she seemed to decide. Instead of running back down the hall, she slipped behind Ricky’s modest oak desk and started dialing on his multi-line phone.

  I didn’t wait to find out who she was calling. This place was a bust, so I’d try his house. Another gamble: this time that the flustered receptionist wouldn’t call the police right away.

  Safely ensconced in the truck, I looked up Ricky’s address, making unauthorized and improper use of the Department of Transportation’s database. He lived in the direction of the Captain’s house, if not as far north. Assuming he kept his information updated with the DMV, twenty minutes away through town. The tablet powered down to prevent any pinging of cell towers. Turning it off also had the side-effect of quieting the steady stream of calls and emails from the office. The police channel radio stayed reassuringly quiet. Nobody seemed to be looking for me.

  That couldn’t last.

  Eventually all the unanswered calls and emails and now texts would start to add up. Even if I miraculously avoided being a suspect in the crime I was on camera for, I would be a missing person, police family, and the search teams would go out. I had maybe another day for that to begin earnestly. Most likely someone had already let themselves into my house to make sure my head hadn’t twisted itself off in the night.

  I drove slowly, painfully, through town. No incidents. Every black-and-white turned my blood cold but nobody bothered me. Enrique’s neighborhood felt upscale but not ostentatious. I drove by his bungalow. Mailbox outside, SANCHEZ stenciled neatly on the side. Lawn. Everybody had a lawn in this
part of town. My neighbors had given up, letting climate change claim the dirt. His curtains were open. A Lincoln sat in the driveway, one of the big SUVs. I parked around the corner and walked back, just a neighbor out for a stroll, jeans and sweater anonymous in suburban America. Only my shoes would stand out and nobody looks at those.

  Straight up his driveway. Exposed. Anyone home could be watching from the other houses in the row. I pulled open a storm door and tried the front door. Open. Let myself in. The storm door whined and banged behind me.

  Dark inside. A short entryway opened to a hallway on the right and the sunlight-splashed living room on the left. He wasn’t on the burgundy couch. A magazine rested on a coffee table made of distressed pine and smoky glass. A big wooden cross adorned one wall, complete with suffering Christ. Kitchen ahead – not there, either. Dishes stowed away, sink clean, fresh hand towel hung neatly from the handles of the under-sink cabinet. Back to the hallway. Three closed doors. Probably a toilet and two bedrooms. Hardwood floor. Hard to be stealthy in cop shoes. Tried the first of two right-hand doors. Bathroom. Dark, smelling of hand soap and nothing else. Fuzzy mat, fuzzy towels, ambiguous color in the dim.

  One door on the left. Master bedroom. Big bed in the same distressed pine as the coffee table. Burgundy and black color scheme. Masculine. Mirror, dresser, clothes horse and a chair and a treadmill, everything squared away. Not so much as a stray sock on the floor. Pine wardrobe full of clothes and sensible shoes. Three crosses on the wall opposite the window. From coffins, taken after each funeral: his grandfather, his grandmother, his father. I took one, stuck it in my waistband like a pistol in a gangster movie. Thought again and took another. I’d apologize to the deceased when they demonstrated they were inconvenienced.

  After the attached bath, empty but for sunshine, just one room left.

  Back out, door on the right.

  Guest bedroom.

  It held an unmade twin bed, a glaring sore in a house kept so neatly it didn’t seem lived-in. No clothes or personal effects. Empty nightstand. No crosses on the walls but a dark spot where one had hung. The wallpaper all around had faded in years of sunlight but that one spot had been covered. Like a man who takes off his wedding ring when he goes to the bar, not realizing how obvious his tan-line is.

  Nothing else to see but a built-in closet. It had whitewashed doors with little slats in them. Two builder-grade pulls. I used them, holding the second crucifix ahead of me like a priest in a movie.

  No clothes. No old work-out gear, nothing that belonged in a guest-room closet.

  Only a little coffin, five feet high, standing in the darkness.

  Lightness

  An announcement: “I have him.” She might as well have painted it on the door in blood.

  I sat down on the floor, braced against the bed, the strength gone from my legs. My fault. All my fault. A week ago I’d been happily lonely, eyeballing retirement with a long history of service behind me. And now I lived at the center of a tornado that had destroyed I loved and threatened everyone I loved.

  Air came raggedly. My body wanted to sob but I ran dry of tears. Despair and rage mingled, an impotent hate that sapped strength rather than empowering fists.

  Sirens in the distance.

  Probably nothing. Maybe something. I could sit on Enrique’s guestroom rug and surrender. Why not? Nothing I could do with freedom except perhaps cause more harm. Ysabeau had been ahead of me all the long race. Not a person: a force.

  The sirens grew slowly louder.

  I shook it off. Physically, like a wet dog shakes off water. I contained something ragged and hard, a thing that refused to sob, that also refused to stand still and accept handcuffs. That part of my being had shot a few days ago rather than be stabbed; it had shot an innocent man last night rather than accept the justice of a shotgun blast to the face.

  That thing, that essential self, dragged me upright and set my feet shambling out of that place.

  I had sense left, too. I turned back for the coffin. It weighed nearly nothing. I threw the crucifixes in it. Two options: one, every single word she had said and every dream she had shown me was bullshit. Two: she wasn’t a thousand steps ahead in some trans-dimensional chess game. She’d fucked up.

  I burst out the front door, banging the coffin against the screen door and its whining piston. Then I ran down the street, crucifixes tumbling around inside the box tucked up under one arm. I threw the whole mess into the truck and this time I didn’t drive casual. I gunned it and rolled with urgency out of that neighborhood before regaining some semblance of control out on the highway, ten minutes later. Police passed me going the other way, lights blazing. Police band lit up. “Looks like a bum steer. If they were there they were clean. Place looks like a museum.” Another voice: “Neighbor reports a white female, fifty to sixty, carrying a coffin under one arm and running around the block. Neighbor smells of marijuana.” Nothing about a camper truck. Nothing about Enrique: the receptionist had not bothered the department so far, maybe thinking I’d check in later. I did that, driving with my knees and waking up the tablet.

  It called the Diocese office on my command.

  “Catholic Diocese, how can I help you?”

  That how again. “This is Detective Sanchez.” I hadn’t collected her name so I waited for her to confirm her own identity.

  “Oh, yes.” Confirmed. “Everyone is so worried. No, he didn’t arrive for work this morning. He’s been acting strangely. Furtive. Nobody answered at his house and nobody has seen him.” She took a breath to talk some more.

  “Thanks for your assistance, ma’am. He turned up. Car accident last night, everyone is fine but he’s staying at the hospital for observation. Material witness, nobody will be able to see him, but everything will be normal in a few days.”

  “Oh. Goodness. Really? And he’s okay, you said?”

  I tap-danced and mollified for a few minutes then pried her off the line. One more person I needed to talk to.

  “Call Jolene.”

  The device complied.

  That ringing noise. I imagined her phone buzzing and playing Like A Virgin, her ringtone for me. She picked up before long. “Dom? Where have you been?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No. Hang on.” I listened to her navigate her environment, no sounds strong enough for clues to her location. A minute later, a toilet flushed. Relative privacy. “Talk.”

  “I’m in deep shit. Actually, everyone on Earth is in deep shit, but me most immediately.”

  “I love you, girl. Now make some ever-loving sense, okay?”

  “I can’t make much. First, vampires are real. There is no head-twisting seizure-plague. Obviously. Second, I killed the Captain last night, and her husband. Third, the vampire has Ricky and I don’t know what to do. Fourth, and I guess why I’m laying this all on you right now, you’re in serious danger from her. I need to collect you. Keep you with me until she loses interest or something.”

  “You killed the Captain? Suzie Daniels?”

  “Yeah. Where are you?”

  Her voice echoed in the bathroom even as she dropped to a whisper. “Why’d you do that? Is she a vampire?”

  “Of course not.” I neared the exit for downtown. The morgue waited a couple blocks south of the exit. “Are you at the office? Meet me outside.”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I did yesterday. But what is all this talk?”

  “Trust me one more day. Meet me outside. I can’t find Ricky and keep you safe at the same time.” Not that I could seriously keep her safe at all. It would make more sense to set her to running. I idled at a stop light, pulled ahead on green. Made a right. There was the County building, morgue underneath where it was naturally cool in case the refrigeration ever went out. “Are you coming?”

  “Almost there. Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you? When I get in your car, you’d better tell me you’re joking.”

 
I saw her come up the basement level stairs and out across the concrete. “No car. Camper truck. GMC. See it?” I waved.

  She hung up and trotted the last twenty yards. Sensible skirt, sensible shoes. I’d caught her with no jacket and the skin on her hands puckered with cold. I realized the coffin took up the passenger seat. I had to take it around back and throw it in the camper. When I slid back into the cab, she was there, buckled in, eyes alert.

  “What the fuck?” she said.

  “Just what I said. Those are the facts, fucked up or not.”

  She sighed. “I’ve seen a lot of people lose their shit, Dom. You’re a little old for a manic episode or a psychotic break, unless you’ve been holding out on me all these years.”

  “Trust that. And it’s not drugs, either. Just think about what you know for five seconds and tell me a vampire is a crazier idea than a spate of seizures that snap necks, and nothing else, and drain the victims completely of blood without spilling any of it.”

  “I can’t. You’re right, I can’t. But one thing being impossible doesn’t put all the impossible alternatives on the table.”

  I didn’t even know where to drive. Back to the highway, and south maybe. “No, that’s all true. But then add in the evidence of my senses. I’ve seen some things. Awful things. True things. Worst of all, I don’t know what’s even true anymore.”

  “You said everyone was in danger. Like, the human race.”

  “Think about it for five seconds, Jo. If vampires are real, then what else is real? Reality is stood on end and everything we think we know crashes down. Up is down, black is white, day is night.”

  “I brought my bag.” She had. I hadn’t noticed. “Do you need a shot of something? A little Pam-Pam to help settle your nerves? You’re talking like a manic girl.”

  “I know. Reality is crazy sometimes. I haven’t slept in a long time and things are moving fast. But think. If vampires are real, then how much other crazy shit could be real, too? No shots. What I need right now is a clue. Somewhere to go, something to do when we get there.”