Blood Hunt (32 page)

The photograph showed three little girls sitting on the running board of a twenties-style touring car in front of a farm house — fields lay visible off to one side behind it — whose porch had a fan of gingerbread between posts and roof. The description Mrs. Armour gave of the photograph in Lane’s bookcase sounded like a copy of this one.

“
The other two are my daughter Mary Ellen, who’s a eighteen months younger than Mada, and their cousin Victoria. Mada and Victoria were about seven then.”

He studied the photo. “She’s the same size as the others.”

“
Here’s the school picture when she was nine.”

No mistaking Lane now...towering a head above other children.

“
Look at these.” She turned pages to show him grade cards with all A pluses — except for Deportment — and certificates for First Place in spelling and debate, blue ribbons in Archery and Track. “Mada is the smartest of all my children. She won all those, but would have given them up in a moment to be six inches shorter. My heart ached for her so often. She would come home crying because the other children taunted her about her height. When we sent her to high school in town, she stopped crying. She developed a terrible temper, flying into a rage at the least remark. She was always fighting someone. That only made matters worse, of course. ‘I hate them,’ she would say to me, with such savagery in her voice. ‘Someday they’ll be sorry.’ I’m so glad she’s past that now.”

Past anger because now she had her revenge.... living off people’s blood, reducing them to cattle, leaving some of them nothing but dead, drained husks. When she had been bitten by the vampire who made her, whoever it had been, Garreth doubted she loathed what she became, as he did. He suspected she had seen instantly what the change would bring her and embraced hell willingly, even greedily. In her place, perhaps he would, too.

In sudden uncertainty, he closed the album. He wanted to understand how Lane’s mind worked, the better to deal with her, not sympathize with her...not feel her pain.

“
Is something the matter?” Anna asked.

He gave her a quick smile. “I was just thinking no wonder Mada ran away.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t all bad. We had happy times, too. It’s still good when everyone’s home together, once Mada relaxes. She’s always upset at first by the things that have changed since her last visit. Once she said she wished she could stop time so everything and everyone here would stay the same forever. Her hugs almost crush me when she leaves again, and I see tears in her eyes. I think those exotic places she works don’t make her happy.”

Guilt pricked Garreth. Lane enjoyed coming home. Only this time, instead of a happy family reunion and holiday, she would find a cop waiting, a date with retribution and justice. Creating yet more victims, as the arrest wounded Anna and the rest of the family, especially when made by someone they had thought friendly.

“
So I’m a little surprised she says that instead of coming home this year, why don’t I come to her and spend the winter in Acapulco, where it’s warm.”

Dismay knocked out the guilt, like a shot to the gut. Lane not come here? Dodge the trap he had given up so much to set? “It would be warm. Are you going?”

She sighed “I don’t know. I can’t imagine Thanksgiving and Christmas away from my children and grandchildren. Maybe I’ll go after Christmas.”

Garreth forced a smile. “Let me know if you’re going, and where you’ll be staying. I’ll send you postcards from the shivering north.”

He worked the rest of his shift feeling sick and hollow. His head argued for calm. If Anna wanted to remain here through Christmas, Lane might still come home. But his gut felt otherwise. She knew he was still alive and looking for her, and even if Anna said nothing about him remaining in the area, Lane probably assumed he had notified local law enforcement to watch for her. She would not risk being seen here. Which meant he had to follow Anna to Mexico.

So at every call, guilt stabbed him. Staying on Lane’s trail meant abandoning this job...violating an oath he had just taken. Deserting people who had taken a liking to the person they thought he was...who would be angered and hurt learning friendship and trust had been betrayed.
I Ching
reverberated in his head:
Acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. Setting oneself up to alter things according to one’s own judgement can end in mistake and failure
. Was he guilty of just that...acting without authority, proceeding entirely according to his own judgement? Had he doomed himself to failure?

12

The questions still churned in his head when Garreth woke. He tried pushing them aside, telling himself just to wait and see what Anna did. Meanwhile, he had a job to do, a job that deserved to be performed to the best of his ability for as long as he could.

Stepping outside and hearing distant yells from the direction of the football stadium reinforced that thought. Oh, yes, the big Homecoming game against Bellamy. Kickoff was supposed to be at, what, seven? That meant light cruise traffic downtown now...turning crazy after the game. Especially if Baumen won. Maggie and Duncan had traded shifts for tonight, Garreth remembered. He looked forward to the contrast of working with Duncan.

An ear-splitting shriek greeted him coming up the hall at the station, Sue Ann, bouncing up and down in her chair, two fists pumping the air. “Yes, yes, yes!”

Garreth stared at her. She wore a Bride of Frankenstein wig and a Timberwolf tattoo on one cheek.

Nat looked up from a typewriter with a laconic smile. “TD by Baumen, answering the one Bellamy made five minutes into the game.”

“
How does she know — ” Garreth began.

Breaking off as Ed Duncan’s voice, triumphant, came over the radio. “
Extra point. Seven all. One minute to go in the quarter
.”

“
Ed took a radio to the game with him.”

Sue Ann still danced in her chair. “I told him to, so I’d know what’s happening.”

“
KBEL is broadcasting the game,” Nat said.

“
KBEL!” Sue Ann blew a raspberry. “They’re all about how
won
derful the
Cougars
are! I don’t give a damn about the Cougars...except whipping their asses! Go Timberwolves!” She threw back her head and howled.

Garreth shook his head. This was worse than home when Shane was playing. “I think you need to calm down, Sue Ann. You’re making your hair go all frizzy.”

She stopped and blinked at him, then patted the wig, giggling. “You like my new look?”

“
It’s over a week to Halloween isn’t it?”

“
This isn’t a costume. It’s part of my bridesmaid dress I picked up today and I thought I’d try out.”

Now Garreth blinked. “Bridesmaid dress?”

“
My cousin Julie is getting married on Monday so it’s a Halloween theme wedding. Doris is switching shifts with me. We women are all Brides of Frankenstein, though Julie has even bigger hair than this, and the men are Draculas and the wedding cake is a Dracula Castle. Guests are invited to wear costumes, too. The wedding’s at seven but Communion and Mass ought to be over by eight-thirty so come by the reception at the high school gym. It’s going to be a blast!”

Nat said. “My wife Charly and I will be there with our dancing shoes on.”

“
Is Julie your niece, too?” Garreth asked.

“
Jason, the groom, is my nephew.” He cocked his head at Sue Ann. “What do you think...between the two of them, they’re related to a third or better of Baumen?”

She laughed. “Probably.”

A voice of sanity came over the radio. “
Six Baumen. Requesting a 10-28 on local K-king, five-five-three
.” Maggie, running a car registration.

Before Nat finished going over wants and warrants and the day’s activity with Garreth, the second quarter started. Garreth left with Sue Ann howling behind him as Baumen made a field goal.

He patrolled with Duncan’s game updates coming over the radio, voice grudging when Bellamy scored, exultant when Baumen scored. Radios all over Baumen blasted out KBEL’s broadcast...in the bars, in the Main Street, from cruising cars whose drivers and passengers had not gone to the game.

Despite trying to ignore it, Garreth found himself caught up in the game. Bellamy made its own field goal in the second quarter, so the half ended tied. Bellamy scored in the third quarter, to Duncan’s disgust, but Baumen answered it in the fourth, tying the game and sending it into overtime. Where both teams made field goals. In the second overtime neither team made much progress, each defense digging in and holding ground until the other side had to punt. Then Bellamy managed to fight its way to the fifteen yard line and with one minute thirty seconds left in the game, lined up for a field goal. The excited KBEL announcer reported the kick was aimed straight between the uprights.

Until Baumen’s Darrell Wiltz leaped skyward in a jump that, as Duncan described it later, matched anything by an NBA pro, and intercepted the ball. Darrell landed running, cut through the stunned Bellamy line, and with Duncan screaming into his radio, outran a Bellamy player who had shown phenomenal speed all night to score the TD. And to put a final flourish on the victory, they faked the kick for the extra point and one Benjamin Danzig ran it in for two points.

All along Kansas Avenue, wolf howls erupted from cruising cars. Garreth parked parallel to the tracks across from the Pizza Hut to monitor the traffic soon to be coming out of Poplar. Serk and Chuck George, another of their reserve officers, were directing traffic at the stadium. Maggie radioed that she would monitor 282. None of them needed clairvoyance to foresee a long, busy night.

Within minutes cars began appearing, some peeling off south onto 282 toward Bellamy, a few cutting across onto northbound 282, but most turning up Kansas...horns honking, occupants howling and waving Timberwolf flags out the windows.

About fifteen minutes into the exodus Garreth spotted a Ford F-150 with a Cougar banner stretched across the truck bed, the pole at each end of the banner stuck in the pickup’s front stake pockets. Cougar fans, came his first thought, but two teenage males illegally standing in the back wore Timberwolf sweatshirts. They howled and waved middle fingers at a big Silverado following almost on the 150's trailer hitch. A passenger in the Silverado leaned halfway out the window shouting threats at the 150. In the seconds it took Garreth to guess the situation — Cougar banner stolen and the teenage owners trying to recover it — the two pickups shot across Kansas and gunned up 282...using excessive speed in addition to the other violations.

Garreth hit his mike button and radioed descriptions of the two vehicles to Maggie.

Shortly her voice came back: “
I see them. Radar says...fifty-five.
”

In a forty-five zone.

“
I’m lighting them up.”

He expected her next transmission to be asking Sue Ann for registration and drivers license checks. Instead, Maggie came on with her voice high and urgent. “
10-48 times three, at the Co-op! I need Fire Rescue!
” He had already flipped on lights and siren and started forcing his way into the traffic when she finished with: “
Possible 10-40
.”

Three vehicle accident with injuries and a fatality!

Once through the traffic onto 282, Garreth floored the accelerator.

The lights of Maggie’s car flashed up 282 by the Co-op. Approaching, he saw the car parked behind the Silverado, with the F-150 sitting sideways across the southbound lane looking t-boned by a third vehicle. His first thought was to cut in at Gfeller Lumber and drive around the accident to block the southbound lane, but as he arrived the driver’s doors of both pickups opened. The Silverado's driver staggered out and toward the 150, cursing, fists waving.

The 150’s driver almost fell out of his vehicle, but caught the door and stayed upright...then dragged himself around the door to grab the pickup’s hood for support, screaming, “Diane! Diane!”

“
Garreth, stop him!” Maggie shouted from the far side of the 150.

First he need to stop the Silverado’s driver, whose intent seemed to be bodily harm. He leaped out of his car into a flood of human and vehicle fluid smells...caught up to the driver and spun him. “Hey. Hey! Look at me! Stop. You need to lie down. Lie...down.”

The driver’s knees buckled.

Garreth eased him to the pavement. “Stay there.”

Then he ran after the 150’s driver...reaching him as the boy round the front of the truck, still yelling the girl’s name. Beyond him, Garreth saw with dismay why Maggie wanted him restrained. A female sprawled on the hood of a Ford Fairlane with her head embedded in the windshield.

Inside the Fairlane a female passenger screamed hysterically, almost drowning the male voice trying to calm her. Maggie straightened beside the driver’s window and headed for the bed of the 150.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

As Garreth dragged the boy back and turned him, to his further dismay he spotted a second motionless figure...this one male, lying on the highway several yards ahead of the Silverado, a dark stain spreading around his head.