The Vampire Chase

by Stephen Mertz

  “Enough,” said Madison. “In Chicago at the party that night after the gig, I made the mistake of telling Brocchi that he should check with you regarding why I joined the tour. Once he knew that much, though, he didn’t have to check. He was shrewd enough to pick up that I was no promo man very early in the game, and he added that up only one way. Even if we didn’t know who the vampire was, we were closing in. Lee decided to take immediate steps to protect himself by getting me out of the picture. Maybe then he thought the whole thing would slide by.”

  “That still doesn’t say how Jeremy had anything to do with it.”

  “That night at the party,” said Madison, “Keith left with that girl and I followed them. Brocchi followed me—and he brought Jeremy along. Jeremy had gone up to his room, but Brocchi could take the time to get him. Part of the band’s contract was that Brocchi had to know where each one of them went at all times.” Madison looked at Jeremy. “Lee made up the story that I was a narc and you bought it,” he said. “You went along with him, out to the North Side where Keith had taken his groupie. At the time you probably thought you were helping Lee to save Keith from a drug bust.” From behind his iridescent makeup, Keith Terrance’s eyes were smoldering.

  “She was a nice lady,” he said to Jeremy. “You had no right to kill her, man.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody, dammit,” said Jeremy. “Not Laura and not anybody else. This guy’s full of shit.”

  Madison ignored the interruption.

  “When you got to that girl’s house,” he told Jeremy, “Brocchi had you sneak up behind me and lay me out cold. Then you stayed there to watch me while he went inside and hustled Keith back to the hotel. You were supposed to slug me again if I started waking up, right? What musician ever had any love in his heart for a narc? Brocchi probably told you that he had an idea that would expose me and embarrass me right off the tour and you were all for that. But when he came back he went inside the house and cold-bloodedly killed that girl right in front of your eyes, probably before you could stop him, and set it up as if I’d done it and it was a drug kill. I’m guessing that you were innocent up to that point or you’d have wasted me right at first when you came up behind me. But now—as Brocchi surely reminded you—you were his accomplice whether you liked it or not; an accessory to murder.” From across the room, Mick Adamson was showing a renewed interest in the proceedings.

  “But even if what you’re saying is true,” he interjected, “why should Lee go through all that trouble to tie Jeremy in with him?”

  “He needed help in Chicago to get me out of the way,” replied Madison. “The way it worked, he knew damn well that Jeremy wouldn’t open his mouth and that’s the kind of cooperation Brocchi wanted. He tried for me again last night at the gravel quarry and he used his hold over Jeremy one more time to get Jeremy to help him. And he repaid Jeremy by telling him that you were screwing his wife across town.”

  Madison turned and addressed Jeremy directly again. “Connie Frazer told me about your savage streak on our first night in Chicago,” he said. “Brocchi must have known about it too. He also knew right where Mick and Laura were bedded down. I remember him giving me directions as we drove there last night. He gave directions to you, too, didn’t he, Jeremy, after the two of you split from trying to waste me at the quarry? He knew exactly what you’d do when you heard about Mick and Laura. Maybe he just wanted to cement your partnership. Now he’d have a murder over your head that you’d actually committed. Or maybe he knew he was finished by that time and just wanted to take everyone else down with him. Whatever, you did just like you were supposed to. You stormed across town in a blind rage and murdered your wife for sleeping with another man.”

  “I still haven’t heard anything I’d call proof,” said Jeremy.

  “The proof is on every tape recorder and video machine that was running this morning when you attacked Mick in the hallway of the police station,” Madison told him. “Those hysterics of yours were all part of the grieving husband routine. You accused Mick of killing your wife and of trying to kill me, remember? The only hitch is that the police hadn’t told anyone about the attack on me at the quarry at that point. So how did you know it...unless you were a part of it?”

  Arn Shapiro stared at Jeremy in disbelief. “Jeremy, is this true?”

  Jeremy responded promptly, but not with words.

  Shapiro was standing between Jeremy and Madison. The lead guitarist grabbed Shapiro’s arm and pitched him at Madison. The heavyset promoter was caught completely off guard. He piled into Madison, hard, and the two of them rocked back against Keith and Mick.

  Jeremy darted from the room.

  Madison untangled himself. He charged in pursuit.

  “He’s all mine.” he called over his shoulder.

  “Somebody phone the police!”

  The hallway outside the dressing room was still choked with people. But between their heads Madison could make out Jeremy madly forcing his way toward the nearest exit. The two dumb rent-a-cops were standing next to Madison with their mouths open. Everyone else in the hallway was in the same state, looking around, trying to get out of the way, wondering what the hell was happening.

  Madison shoved and pushed his way through the crowd. He suddenly realized that he was unarmed. The cops had taken his gun?

  He swore fluently. But he didn’t slow down. It didn’t look like Jeremy was armed either.

  Jeremy charged through a doorway; The pounding, driving rock music from onstage was immediately louder. The nearest doorway to the dressing room had been the one leading out to the stage— and that was the escape route Jeremy was taking.

  Madison was right behind him. He burst through the doorway seconds later, onto the stage.

  Onstage, the music was deafening. The band was still ripping through their hit songs. The band members had seen Jeremy—so had the audience— but it takes more than someone dashing across a stage to stop a rock concert. The roadies, who were supposed to keep things like this from happening, appeared to be in a state of shock. All they’d needed was one look at Jeremy’s stage outfit to know who he was. Musicians are gods to the crews who handle the equipment, and they didn’t know how to react.

  Jeremy Bates showed no signs of slowing down. He was running across the full length of the stage as fast as his platform boots would carry him.

  Madison raced after him, brushing by the performing band’s lead guitarist. In addition to the axe the guy was strumming, the guitarist had three additional instruments lined up on stands behind him. Without slowing, Madison grabbed the nearest guitar by its neck.

  Closing in on Jeremy, he twirled the guitar above his head like a war club and let fly.

  Jeremy Bates glanced over his shoulder just as he reached the far end of the stage—and the sailing, rounded body of the heavy electric guitar caught him full-force in the forehead.

  The band’s music had finally begun tapering off as Jeremy spun and pitched from the high stage onto the sidelines.

  He was still out cold when Madison reached him.

  16

  Bright shafts of sunlight stabbed in through the hospital window, intensifying the stark whiteness of the room and all its furnishings.

  Connie Frazer sat propped up in bed against the headboard. She seemed no worse for the wear of last night. The smile was strong and fresh. The skin tone and the eyes were bright with the spark of life.

  Madison sat on the edge of the bed, and he had been doing most of the talking.

  Arn Shapiro was due to catch a flight back to New York within an hour. But it was his suggestion that he accompany Madison on this visit, and that Madison relate to Connie the events of the previous night which she had missed. The promoter wasn’t about to leave until he heard the last line, and Madison suspected that Shapiro just wanted to see if there was anything he’d missed the first few times he’d heard the story.

  During the telling, Connie Frazer’s hand had slipped across the bedcovers and into Madison�
�s. Her fingers seemed to make his palm tingle with their vibrant warmth.

  He gave the hand a squeeze as he finished up with the events at Mun Stadium.

  “And that’s about it,” he concluded. “The floor is open for questions.”

  “Just two,” said Connie. “How did Brocchi and Jeremy find out about your meeting with Mick at the quarry the other night, so they could be there waiting for you?”

  “I think I can answer that one,” said Shapiro. “Mick told Laura, Laura must have told Jeremy. And Jeremy told Brocchi.” He looked at Madison. “Right?”’

  “Close enough. I’m sure Laura didn’t make a point of mentioning it, but somehow it must have slipped out during a conversation between them and Jeremy was quick enough to pick up on it.”

  “Second question,” said Connie. “When did you first suspect that Jeremy had killed Laura?”

  “Not until after I’d learned that Brocchi was our vampire,” said Madison. “Someone else had to have killed Laura and that’s when I started thinking about Mr. Bates. Also, I couldn’t ignore the vibes I picked up yesterday afternoon after we all got back from police headquarters, when the band and Brocchi were having their “wake-business conference” in Mick and Keith’s room. After what had happened, Jeremy should have been trying to tear Mick’s liver out. Think of it. Jeremy’s wife had died that night in Mick’s bed. But everything at the meeting was cool. Terrance probably thought that he was keeping Jeremy and Mick away from each other. Hell, Mick probably thought the same. But Jeremy was just doing his best to keep a low profile. He’d done his bit down at the police station to make himself look innocent when he attacked Mick there. Now he just wanted to flow with things and hope they’d blow over. Like I said, it just didn’t play right. When I started thinking about it, everything else began falling into place.”.

  “You were a lot faster on the uptake than I was,” said Connie. “I walked right into Brocchi’s trap yesterday, didn’t I? He came on so friendly. He started asking a lot of questions about you and what progress we were making for Arn on the assignment.

  I remembered you saying in Chicago that he might try to play us off against each other and I decided to play him along and see what I could learn.” She shook her head. “And boy! did I learn something!”

  Madison gave her hand another squeeze. “That was last night,” he said. “This is today, and the sun is shining. A good day for forgetting.”

  “Have you heard anything new about Jeremy?” Shapiro handled that one.

  “He’s copping a temporary insanity plea on Laura’s murder,” he said. “He’s leaving out the vampire business. We all are.”

  “Jeremy would be a fool to bring that out,” said Madison. “If he did, the murder of that girl in Chicago would probably be linked in and he’d have to explain his role in that. So, he’s sitting tight, and that’s fine with Arn. Right, Arn?”

  “It could be worse,” conceded Shapiro. “A kinky road manager and a love nest killing don’t exactly make good press, but it sure beats hell out of a world-wide vampire spree. As long as Brocchi got his, and Jeremy’s guaranteed on being locked away, what’s the difference? Keith and Mick were the soul of The Screaming Tree anyway. They still are. The occult material is all theirs. That’s what sold the group. They’ll ride out the storm. Smaller groups have made it through worse ones. Then we’ll get them another guitarist and we’ll be back in business.” He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of business, I’ve got a plane to catch. I’ve got The Eagles booked into the Garden tonight. Can’t miss that one! Madison, you get crazier every time you work for me, but I can’t bitch about the results. You earned your fifteen g’s on this one. Connie, I’ll see you in New York.”

  He gave a wave and started toward the door, audibly humming Hotel California.

  “I’ve been trying to get out of this hospital all morning, Arn,” Connie said after him. “They keep saying they’re going to release me, but they don’t say when. But I’ll be back in the office by tomorrow morning, I promise.”

  Shapiro had already opened the door. He stood in the hallway, looking back into the room with one hand on the knob. He stopped humming for a moment.

  “I said I’d see you in New York,” he said. “I didn’t say when. You need relaxing and recuperating and plenty of it.” He looked at Madison. “See that she gets it, Steve, if you want any more calls from me.” Then he closed the door and was gone. He could be heard humming another Eagles song, growing fainter and fainter down the corridor.

  Madison was still holding the lady’s hand. Now that they were alone it felt even warmer, more vibrant, to his touch. “I’ve got a ranch outside of Durango,” he told her. “Some Rocky Mountain air might be just what Dr. Shapiro ordered, Connie, if you’d care to join me for a week or two.”

  There was a pause that lasted longer than it should have. She seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. But find them, she did. “I’d just have to know one thing, Steve. You lost a woman on this tour who meant a lot to you. I think we could have a beautiful time in Durango. But I don’t want to compete with a ghost. I don’t want to think that the only reason I’m out here is to help you forget her.”

  “I lost Laura a long time ago,” Madison told her. “It was a different person entirely that I met on this tour. I wasn’t sure at first, but I am now. I felt bad for the person she’d become. I felt a lot of things and some of the feelings took me awhile to understand. But I didn’t know her anymore. She told me that she’d become another person and she was right. We both had.”

  “I wish I could say the same for Jeremy,” said Connie. “He asked me to go for a ride after we arrived in town yesterday. I told you that we’d been lovers, long ago. He still had that little boy smile that could melt your heart—and underneath he was still the same slimy creep. All he wanted was to use me the same way he used everyone else. He asked all kinds of questions about you and Brocchi. He seemed real concerned about what I knew about everybody on the tour. I guess he thought if the smile had conned me once, it would con me again.”

  “He was trying to keep his game straight after helping Brocchi in Chicago,” said Madison. “I guess he figured you were his best bet.”

  “He asked me other things,” said Connie. “He wanted to shack up. I—I almost puked. The whole lovey-dovey thing with Laura in front of others was just an act. I was so disgusted that I made him drop me off way on the other side of town. I couldn’t even stand being in the same car with him. I had to walk by myself for half the afternoon before I felt clean again. He was still wearing that horrible boyish smile when he dropped me off. And before the night was over he was trying to kill you at that gravel quarry— and he did kill Laura!” She shuddered. “What a monster. I hope they never let him out.”

  “Lee Brocchi may have been a schizoid homicidal nut,” said Madison. “But he did say one thing about Laura and what happened to her that made a lot of sense. She was the type of lady who gave everything she had to her man. When Jeremy started spitting on that, destroying it and throwing it back in her face, she just gave up and started sinking and soon she just didn’t care anymore at all. That’s when she tied up with Mick. Jeremy had killed her long before the other night, Connie.”

  “And now that he’s been put away... can you say it’s over, Steve? Can you turn your back on it and walk away?”

  “I won’t live in the past, lady,” he assured her. “If you come to Durango with me I’ll be there. Body, mind and spirit. That’s a promise.”

  There was another pause. Then the lady’s lush lower lip curved into a smile and seeming to make the bright hospital room even brighter.

  “I just hope Arn knows what he’s doing,” she said with a musical laugh that matched the smile. “I’ve got a feeling that after Durango, I may never want to.”

  A Look At Fade To Tomorrow (Steve Madison Mysteries)

  By Stephen Mertz

  In the title novel, As an Army Ranger, Steve Madison saw action from Iraq to Ce
ntral America, from Somalia to Kosovo. But with his discharge from military service, he thought he'd seen the last of violence, bloodshed and sudden death. He was wrong.

  As an "industrial consultant" to the music industry, Madison specializes in extricating pop stars from scandals that threaten to destroy multi-million-dollar careers. Johnny Willow is the hottest superstar of his generation; a young, gifted, blind musical genius whose addictions drove him into rehab and an extended hiatus at the height of his career. Now Johnny is back, clean and sober, with a new CD debuting at number one on the charts and a sold-out concert beginning a world tour. But one rainy night in St. Louis, Johnny's past returns with a vengeance and everything is threatened in a twisty maze of ghetto gang bangers, the Mafia, the DEA, a missing shipment of cocaine, kidnapping . . . and murder. That's where Steve Madison comes in.

  In the short story, “A Hit for the New Age,” when high-powered agent George Kodopolous is found murdered in a locked dressing room just before rock star Tony Jardeen’s concert, Private Detective Steve Madison is hired to find out who did it—and comes face to face with a ghost from his past.

  And, in “The Death Blues,” a record producer comes to a private detective swearing he just heard a blues singer, who was supposed to be dead, alive and signing in a downtown club. But hen the detective is hired to find the man, he stumbles into a simmering neighborhood of anger and violence, and the only song he might be heading next is a funeral dirge.

  AVAILABLE DECEMBER 2019 FROM Stephen Mertz AND WOLFPACK PUBLISHING.

  Also by Stephen Mertz

  Night Wind

  Devil Creek

  Blood Red Sun

  The Korean Intercept

  The Castro Directive

  Hank & Muddy

  Cold In The Grave

  The Moses Deception