Bloodshot

by Cherie Priest

  I knocked, and I heard a flurry of activity inside before someone came to the door. The peephole went dark for a moment, then a series of locks worthy of my abode in Seattle went clicking and retreating, until only a chain remained. The door opened as far as the chain would let it, and a man’s voice asked, “Who’s there?”

  An eyeball followed the voice into the narrow crack permitted by the chain; it belonged to someone middle-aged, and suspicious.

  I held up the badge for the eyeball’s perusal and said, “I’m Raylene Jones, a cold-case detective with the Atlanta Police Department. I was hoping I could talk to you about your daughter.”

  The door closed, and a second voice came to confer with the man. They spoke in rapid Spanish that was too muffled for me to follow. I understand it a little but not much, and not very fast. But through the solid old door I couldn’t pick up anything but a spare syllable or two.

  After almost a full minute, the chain slid back on the other side and dropped swinging against the door with a clatter. The knob turned and the door opened, revealing a matched set of fifty-something Latinos who’d begun to look alike, as long-married couples sometimes do.

  “Mr. and Mrs. deJesus?” I guessed.

  They nodded. The mister was half a head taller than the missus, with a balding pate and a badly matched shirt and pants off the JCPenney specials rack orbiting his waistline. The missus was wearing a plain blue dress and flat shoes. The missus said, “Please come inside. You can sit down.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and followed her. The mister stayed behind me and rebolted the locks. I liked him already, even if I wasn’t wholly keen on the idea of being secured within the smallish home with the Catholic-ish décor and worn green shag carpeting.

  I followed them to a terrifying gold-and-cream couch and sat down on the end, on the edge. They sat across from me, interrogation-style, like they’d be the ones asking the questions.

  “Our daughter has been missing for years,” the missus said flatly. “Why you here, now?”

  I dug deep and called up every episode of relevant television I could recall and said, “I’m from a cold-case unit. It’s my job to take a second look at cases that were closed, or went … erm … cold. And I understand that your daughter’s case—”

  “Our daughter’s case was closed.” The missus cut me off. There was no eagerness in her face, not like her husband’s. He wanted to talk, he wanted to ask questions. I could see it in the perk of his eyebrows. But she wasn’t going to let him. She’d run out of hope, and she refused to borrow any of his.

  I told her, “I realize this. We think it might have been a clerical error. And I’d like to ask you about Isabelle. According to our records, police believed she ran away. They didn’t believe she’d been abducted. Do you think she left on her own?”

  The mister shrugged quickly and said, “She left. We don’t know why.”

  “But were you surprised?” I pressed.

  Even the mister, the almost-optimist of the pair, was forced to admit, “No. She was unhappy. Her brother—”

  At this, the missus seized hold of his arm and mumbled something accusatory in Spanish and, when the mister dug in his heels for a moment of back talk, they excused themselves to the kitchen, where they argued some more in that speedy clip of chatter.

  Their behavior told me plenty, of course. The missus didn’t want to admit domestic disharmony, and since she didn’t believe Isabelle was coming home anyway, she didn’t see the point in being helpful. And the mister was daring to hope that maybe the APD was back and something new might come of his daughter’s case. It made me feel a little like a heel, that I was taking advantage of these people’s confidence. But the truth was, I did intend to do their daughter a favor if I could—and if I couldn’t, I’d use her experience to help other people.

  Or other vampires. Whatever.

  While the couple argued quietly in the other room, I scanned the living area and saw no pictures of Isabelle or her all-too-briefly mentioned brother. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn that these two somber, matching older folks had never procreated. There were no awards, no family photos, no trophies or tokens of anybody’s childhood. Not even the ghosts of little pitter-pattering feet that once made the parents proud.

  Somewhere off in the kitchen, the mister put his foot down long enough to come back into the living room and ask me, “Do you really mean to help? Are you really with the police?”

  “Yes,” I said, my eyes as innocent and sincere as I could force them to look. “Absolutely. Look, sir, I can’t make you any promises, except that I promise to try. I know that the situation wasn’t handled very well the first time around; I know there were screwups and gaffes.” It was an easy guess. He didn’t contradict me. “But my job is to help find your daughter.”

  He swallowed, and cleared his throat. “And if she isn’t alive anymore?”

  “If she isn’t, then maybe I can give you closure. Even if I can’t give her back.” I knew I couldn’t give her back. Not even if I found her, and she’d escaped, and all was well and she was happily sipping a too-true-to-description Bloody Mary in a nightclub, and sleeping with the drummer of the skeezy house band. But I needed to know, and I swore to myself, if not out loud to the trembling mister, that if I learned anything benignly useful or helpful, I’d hold up my end of the charade and pass the information along.

  Since he seemed disinclined to keep talking, I tried nudging him again. “Please, if there’s anything at all you can tell me about what happened to her, or—”

  “Her brother,” he whispered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He glanced over into the kitchen, where the missus was loudly banging glasses and pans around, pretending to do something. Maybe she was angrily making coffee. I don’t know. But he said again in that lowered, soft-shoe voice, “Her brother. Adrian. He went looking for her.”

  The brother again. I seized on it, and asked, “Did he have any luck?”

  The mister stiffened. He said, “I could not say. I do not know. But I think he might have.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked too fast, almost dropping my Cool-Professional-Cop-Voice. “Your son went looking for your daughter and you what … you just didn’t ask about it?”

  “He is no longer part of this family!” he said almost loud enough to halt the banging in the kitchen, but not quite.

  “How does that work?”

  “He isn’t … He’s not like us. He never has been like us,” the mister said, leaning on his words for some emphasis that I was just too thick to parse. Did he sprout antlers? Take up cannibalism?

  “Not like you … how?”

  The mister was getting frustrated with me, but that only made the feeling mutual. He grabbed for a phone stand and seized a piece of paper from it, then scrabbled around until he’d found a pen. “You don’t understand,” he mumbled, writing quickly.

  The noise in the kitchen stopped and he froze, as if he’d been caught doing something naughty. Then he wrote faster, wrapped up his brief message, and shoved it into my hand.

  The missus emerged from the kitchen with a Crock-Pot inexplicably in hand. She grumbled in top volume and rapid-fire Spanish and the mister whined back, denying something. I squeezed my fist around the scrap of paper and could guess exactly what she suspected.

  They argued for another few seconds, and I rose from my seat, stuffing the note into my pocket and announcing that I was going to leave before the missus had a chance to throw me out. I barely made it; she was ushering me to the door before I could even reach the hall to make my big exit.

  I felt bad for the mister, standing behind her as she herded me out. His head was bowed and he was still holding the pen he’d used to tell me something—something important, but unspeakable. He didn’t look up as I left; he turned his back and stood in his living room, or that was the last I saw of him as the missus shut the door with a slap, a click, and then the subsequent sound of locks being reset
.

  I wanted to yank the paper out of my pocket, uncrumple it, and read it on the spot, but I waited until I got back to my car. I wanted to be out of that woman’s reach. She scared me. Sort of. Her type scared me, anyway. I half expected her to reach out through the living room window and snatch it out of my hands.

  I locked my car doors because, well, I lock everything. And I was sitting in the dark, parked on a street in a Not-the-Best-But-Not-the-Worst part of town. I wasn’t really worried about being mugged, but I didn’t want to be interrupted. Maybe if I’d been hungrier I might’ve welcomed a bit of thuggish attention, but I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t want it.

  I stuck my feet down past my car’s gas and brake pedals and straightened my body enough to reach into my pocket for the paper. The car’s overhead lamp was yellow and feeble, but with eyes like mine it was enough to read by. The note said “2512 W. Peachtree Circuit. Sister Rose.”

  Or at least that’s what I thought it said. The mister’s handwriting was bad, and rushed. I scanned it again, concluded that I’d been right the first time, and wondered exactly which “Peachtree” street “Peachtree Circuit” might be. If you’ve never been to Atlanta, then let me save you a bit of grief. If someone tells you something’s on “Peachtree,” you must demand that they get more specific. There are probably a dozen incarnations of Peachtree, going in at least that many directions through every part of town.

  In short, even though I’m fairly familiar with the city, I’d need to find a phone book or an Internet connection before I could draw any conclusions about where this place was located.

  All the way back to my condo I wondered what the address was, and what it signified. Sister Rose. I could’ve gathered by the deJesus home décor that they were Catholic, but were we talking a convent? Did they even have convents in downtown Atlanta? Upon reflection, I was forced to admit that I didn’t see why not, but that didn’t make it feel any less weird to me.

  And if Sister Rose was a contact for Adrian deJesus, I’d have to do my best to look her up. Thank God (or whoever) that lore about the crucifixes isn’t true.

  I made a mental note that I shouldn’t assume Adrian shared his family’s last name. For whatever reason, he obviously wasn’t considered part of the family anymore, so he might’ve renamed himself.

  Back at the homestead, I ran a search through Google Maps and was a bit surprised (and aggravated) to learn that the address was less than five miles from the deJesus home. In fact, the longer I stared back and forth between the helpful little map and the squished piece of paper, the more I suspected that I’d drawn some incorrect conclusions about Sister Rose and the nature of the location. Another quick Internet search confirmed my new suspicions.

  This was the address of a drag bar called “the Poppycock Review.”

  Sister Rose indeed. No wonder the mister didn’t want to talk about what junior was up to in his spare time. Or, erm, her (?) spare time. I’ve never been very clear about how the pronouns were supposed to work in such circumstances as these. I decided to err on the side of caution and assume that, just in case … Sister Rose might be a woman who knew Adrian deJesus. And I’d sort out the particulars later.

  I would’ve gone out that same night, except that I didn’t want to drive all the way back out to the heart of the gayborhood when I’d practically been right there not an hour before. Atlanta traffic is not the sort of stuff that inspires a body to commute, even in the evenings.

  Especially in the evenings, in that part of the city. It’s a popular destination.

  Instead, I settled in with a long hot bath and the television remote, or that was the plan until I figured out I hadn’t paid my cable bill in a couple of years. Therefore, confronted with the wasteland of network television—until I realized that my TV wasn’t even compatible with the “digital revolution”—I closed up all my windows, locked everything lockable, and called it a day.

  When the sun set and I woke up the next evening, it was far too early to approach any self-respecting drag bar. Instead, I made a point to pick up a new stash of disposable cell phones—buying one each from three different drugstores. I memorized the numbers and stuck the phones in a drawer, just like I kept them in Seattle. And after I’d done a ritual Checking of the Living Space, I concluded that no one was listening and no one was watching, because if I didn’t, I couldn’t make the necessary phone calls with any peace of mind.

  I didn’t call the Bad Hatter. I didn’t have anything new or important things to say to him, and it would only piss him off if he thought I was wasting his time just to tell him I was alive. I couldn’t call the stray kids because—if they’d followed directions—they didn’t have a phone anymore. So I sealed one of the new phones into a padded envelope and express-mailed it to a post office box a few blocks away from my old warehouse. Pepper had a key to it. She knew to check it. She’d probably already done so.

  No, my first call was to Pacific Northwest Information, and then to a handful of other out-of-the-way reference-type institutions, none of which were very well known and two of which were not strictly legal. Then I spent another few minutes on the Internet, and before long, I had the Minion Cal’s real name and a potential phone number.

  It was risky, yes. But I needed to talk to Ian.

  The digits I dialed didn’t look familiar, and I didn’t recognize the area code. I could feel myself flushing as the line rang, rang, and wasn’t answered. I was nervous—intensely nervous—about trying to contact Ian. There was always the hypothetical possibility that I was putting him in danger, and I didn’t like the thought of that even slightly.

  But I needed to ask him about Isabelle deJesus. And by God, I was gonna.

  Voice mail picked up, without a personalized message—only the electronic robot-woman informing me that customer number 8862 was not available right now, and I was welcome to leave a message.

  I did. I said, “Cal, I’m looking for my client. Have him call me at this number.” And then I hung up. I knew I was leaving my callback digits in the other phone’s memory, so now it was only a matter of time and luck.

  Then, on a different phone—just in case the message to Cal didn’t work out and I had to junk it—I called Horace.

  He answered on the first ring, with his typical flair.

  “I don’t know this number,” he began, and without taking a breath he added, “and if I don’t know you, you shouldn’t know mine, either—so I’m going to assume this is someone entitled to the information. Now speak up fast and prove me right, or this conversation is over.”

  “Jesus, Horace. Lighten up.”

  “Raylene!” I heard an honest element of glee. “It’s you! Jesus, woman. I was starting to wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “Where you were. What you were up to. Did you know your voice-mail inbox is full? Well, it is.”

  I tried not to smile too big, lest he hear it and infer that I was happy to talk to him. I said, “Since you’re one of the only people who ever calls me, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve had something to tell me.”

  “I might’ve made a call or two. Haven’t you been checking it?”

  “No,” I admitted. “And you may as well trash that number. I don’t expect to be using it again anytime soon … or … well … ever. Just pretend it never happened. For the time being, you can reach me through this phone—as long as you don’t abuse the privilege.”

  “Darling, is something wrong?” I heard real concern, but I knew better than to assume it was concern for me, personally. It was concern for how he was going to get his crazy white woman in touch with whatever property she wanted stolen.

  “I’ve had to relocate somewhat unexpectedly.”

  “Relocate?”

  “Think of it as a reboot. I needed to get out of town for a bit. I might’ve attracted a little attention of the most unwanted variety.” I was taking a chance telling him that much, but I told myself that I wasn’t sharing anything he cou
ldn’t guess.

  He proved me right by making another logical leap. “That client. You put me off because you said you had a new client. Did he get you into trouble? If he did, you just let me know right now, and I personally will pay some very burly people to kick his ass.”

  “It’s not his fault, Horace. It’s got something to do with his case, yeah, but he didn’t do anything, and if I thought for a moment that you could track him down or wound him, I’d have my hands on your throat within an hour,” I lied. Horace was in New York City. It’d take me at least four or five hours.

  “Be that as it may, I don’t like this. You never accepted my new case—the rich white weirdo with indigenous myth-envy.”

  “And I still can’t make you any promises, not right now. This case, from this guy,” I said, and only then did I realize I’d revealed Ian’s correct pronoun. Horace had assumed it, but I’d confirmed it. I wanted to kick myself, but there wasn’t time. “I can’t explain without giving you more information than I’m prepared to share, but I need for you to understand—this guy’s case, it has something to do with me, too. His mystery and his mission have gotten personal.”

  “Okay …”

  “And I’m only telling you this much because I don’t want you to think I’m bailing on you to chase down cash from another source. I’m not putting this client’s needs above yours, my felonious pimp. I’m simply trying to sort out something that affects him quite deeply, yes—but it affects me, too. In a very concrete and unpleasant way,” I added under my breath, but not so quietly that he didn’t hear me.

  “Old boyfriend?”

  “What?”

  “Is your client an old—”

  “No, no. Christ, no. It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  “It’s like …” He wasn’t going to let it go. I knew he wasn’t going to let it go, so I fished for something to throw him off the track, but meaty enough to keep him from digging further. “It’s … we have something in common,” I said. “A medical condition.” Which was sort of true, wasn’t it?