Blood Law (3 page)

He’d been slowly restoring the Victorian manor on
the outskirts of Louisville in the five years since his retirement from the Bureau. Working on the house gave him something to do besides dwell on the past and the woulda-coulda-shouldas of his life. While much of the first floor was complete, the second floor was in varying stages of demolition and reconstruction.

On the first floor, he’d retained the original moldings around the dormant fireplace and high ceilings throughout, and the heart-of-pine wooden floors would glow a warm gold in the sunlight. Much of the home’s color scheme remained true to the Victorian era, but the walls of the front parlor were painted a light gray and the furnishings a mixture of burgundies, grays, and creams—colors that brought him comfort.

Comfort he wished he felt as he settled into a wingback chair and watched as Damian perched on the edge of a sleek burgundy leather sofa. “So, to what do I—”

Damian slid the file he held across the glass-top coffee table to Varik.

He stared at the FBPI seal emblazoned on the folder but made no move to pick it up. He met Damian’s steady gaze and shook his head. “I’m not—”

“Pick it up. Look at it.”

Varik sighed and grabbed the file. He flipped it open and was greeted with a full-color photo of a decapitated corpse—legs bound with yellow nylon rope, arms outstretched, and a cross-shaped stake driven through its chest. More photos followed. Wide-angle shots of a loading bay. Close-ups of the cross-stake. Another wide view of the scene, with a woman standing beside the body, a mix of horror and recognition on her face. A yawning
pit opened beneath him, threatening to devour him, and he closed the file. “When were these taken?”

“Four days ago.”

Varik glanced at the folder in his hands. His heart now pounded in his chest, and it sounded like a drumbeat in the stillness of the room.

“
She
needs you,” Damian said softly.

“Did she ask for me?”

“No, she asked for a mobile lab and two forensic techs.”

Varik smirked. “Then she doesn’t need
me.
”

Light from a tableside lamp seemed to be absorbed by the blue-black of Damian’s ebony skin, giving him the appearance of a humanoid black hole. He nodded toward the file. “That was the second. The first showed up over a week ago, and another body was discovered about an hour ago in a cemetery.”

“You can’t possibly think this”—Varik held up the folder—“has anything to do with Bernard’s murder.”

Damian shrugged. “A good investigator doesn’t rule out anything.”

Varik tossed the file onto the table and rose to pace to the archway. When he turned, he spread his arms wide. “Alex hasn’t asked for me. After—” He paused, fighting the flood of memories that crowded his mind. He pulled in a deep cleansing breath and released it slowly. “After what happened between us, she
wouldn’t
ask for me, even if she did think I could be of some use.”

“She’s in over her head.”

He threw his hands up in frustration. “I’m
retired
!
Don’t you understand that? I don’t work for you anymore.”

Damian drew himself up to his full height and produced a silver badge and identification card from a pants pocket. He set them both on top of the file. “I took the liberty of reinstating you with full pay and benefits—Director of Special Operations assigned to the Jefferson, Mississippi, field office.”

“Damian—”

“Mobile lab leaves from Bureau headquarters in two hours.” Damian rounded the coffee table and strode toward him. He paused as he drew even with Varik and gave him a meaningful stare. “I expect you to be there and ready to go to Jefferson tonight,” he said, and then continued toward the door.

“Do I have a choice?”

Damian’s coal-black eyes settled on him, and the vampire smiled, showing the full extent of his fangs. “Not really.”

The door closed behind Damian, and Varik crossed to the coffee table and slid the folder from under the badge and ID card. He pulled out the photo showing the entire crime scene, dropped the file on the table, and sank onto the sofa as he studied the woman in the picture.

Alexandra Sabian stood beside a vampire’s corpse, wind billowing her hair around her face, a moment frozen in time. Her emerald-green eyes, visible in the wash of lights from the loading bay, seemed to stare back at him. He knew all too well that the past had a habit of intruding on the present. Sometimes it was for
the best, but more often it was better for the past to remain in the past.

Now he had an opportunity to atone for some of his past by intruding on Alex’s present, something he’d sworn he’d never do unless she asked for him, which she hadn’t. But if by going to Jefferson he kept part of her past where it belonged, he owed it to the Sabian family to try.

“Ready or not, here I come,” he said, and shoved the photo back into the file before heading upstairs to pack.

October 14

“I’M SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS,” ALEX SAID, RETURNING THE
evidence bag containing Eric Stromheimer’s wedding ring to her jacket’s inside pocket.

Natalie Stromheimer hid her face behind her hands and sobbed.

Alex looked away from the woman’s grief. It was a raw, private emotion not meant to be viewed, but she’d seen others in the same state. They all reminded her of her own loss, a constant ache deep inside her that never went away.

She studied the tidy family room adjacent to a spotless kitchen. Plush carpet felt springy beneath her hiking boots. Floral pillows added a touch of brightness to the mocha-colored sofa upon which a distraught Mrs. Stromheimer wept. The neutral beige walls were lined with photos: A black-and-white photo of Eric and Natalie on their wedding day. Natalie holding an infant in her arms. Snapshots of ball games, birthday parties, and vacations. A portrait of the Stromheimers with a gangly
teenage son and a shaggy dog at their feet. Evidence of the all-American suburban family who thought violence was something that happened to “other people.”

She’d seen another example of domestic bliss shattered by violence in the small town—the only unsolved case on her books. Claire Black had been killed a couple of years after Alex arrived in Jefferson. She had worked the case, exhausted all her leads, until the trail fell cold.

Irritated with herself, she turned her attention back to the new widow in front of her and was startled to find that a grayish-white mist had settled beside Natalie and seemed to enshroud her thin shoulders. Natalie appeared not to notice the wispy fog surrounding her, and then Alex understood. The spirit of Eric Stromheimer had found its way home. Natalie couldn’t see or feel the mist around her, but later, when her mind gave out and she fell into an exhausted sleep, her subconscious would replay the message being imparted now. Alex was witnessing a husband’s final farewell.

“Mrs. Stromheimer,” she said softly. She cleared her throat and leaned forward in her chair. “I know this is a difficult time, but I need to ask you a few questions about Eric.”

The mist quivered and roiled like a gathering cloud as Natalie shifted her position, smoothing her dark hair away from her reddened face. “Of-of course,” she sniffled. “I’ll d-do what I can.”

“When was the last time you saw your husband?”

“Two days ago, when he left for work.” Natalie brushed a tear from her cheek. “He works offshore as a roughneck on an oil rig.”

“Is that why you didn’t report him missing?”

“He usually called when he reached the platform, but sometimes, if the weather is bad, I may not hear from him for a few days. I just assumed—” Her voice cracked, and fresh tears leaked from the corners of her closed eyes.

The spirit-mist beside Natalie shivered. Alex gave the woman time to compose herself and studied the undulating vapor. Its edges rippled, lengthened, and took on a vaguely humanoid form before shuddering and returning to a translucent cloud.

She wondered, not for the first time, if her father had visited her mother in the same way after his death. Had he come to her? She remembered the bizarre dreams that had plagued her sleep soon after her father’s funeral. Endless mazes. Hallways filled with doors. Strangers begging for her help. Then one night, the dreams stopped.

“I don’t understand how this happened,” Natalie whispered, pulling Alex’s thoughts back to the present. “Why would someone do this to Eric? He worked hard. He was kind and gentle. He never harmed anyone!”

Alex watched the cloud slip from the sofa and drift on an invisible breeze to hover over her and Natalie’s heads.

“Eric was a good man,” Natalie said, anger creeping in to replace the sorrow. “He was a terrific father—oh, God.” Her anger evaporated as quickly as it had manifested. “Marshall.”

“That’s your son?”

“He’s at Mississippi State studying engineering.” Natalie’s
head dropped into her hands once more. “What do I tell him? How do you tell a child his father is dead, murdered?”

Alex clenched her teeth as the memories surfaced. Sunshine. Butterflies. Blood-splattered tombstones. A child’s scream.

She forced the memories into the darkness of the past and focused on the spirit of Eric Stromheimer floating overhead. The mist pulsed, thinned, and finally dissipated, leaving her alone with a sobbing widow in what was once a cheery family room, and desperately trying to hold back her own tears.

“Whoo-eee,” a brunette waitress whooped. “Are you single?”

Varik Baudelaire groaned inwardly, and the two men entering the Waffle House diner behind him snickered. They’d been driving for several hours straight and had finally reached the southern side of Memphis, but they still had a long way to go.

After Damian’s visit, he’d packed and left a message with a neighbor that he would be out of town for several days. He’d then driven to FBPI headquarters to meet the mobile lab and the forensic techs, Freddy Haver and Reyes Cott, a duo he’d quickly nicknamed “Beavis and Butt-Head.”

Freddy had displayed a level of hero worship upon meeting Varik by stating he’d read all of Varik’s case files—a statement he’d found hard to believe, since most of the cases he’d worked before his retirement in 2004
were still considered classified, according to FBPI standards. Despite his fondness for gushing, Freddy seemed to recognize that his behavior overstepped boundaries and had backed off.

However, Reyes had annoyed him from the start by drooling over Varik’s Corvette and asking, “Dude, how many hoochies have you scored with this thing?” when they were introduced. His behavior progressively worsened during their travels, to the point that Varik found himself entertaining violent thoughts toward the younger vampire.

Damian assured him that Reyes was one of the Bureau’s best trace evidence and latent print analysts. He was willing to trust Damian’s judgment, but his patience was wearing thin and he wasn’t in the mood for the aggressive flirtations of a middle-aged human waitress. Nonetheless, he continued to the elevated bar, eyes on the woman who’d addressed him. The other men settled in a booth on the opposite side of the small diner.

The waitress grinned as he approached, folding her arms on the bar and leaning forward, which effectively tightened her gray uniform’s too-small shirt over her too-large bosom.

He mirrored her stance, glancing at her prominently displayed name tag. “Well, Rachel, that depends on who’s asking.”

She puffed out her chest to the point that Varik believed the buttons on her shirt would litter the floor. “Oh, that would be me, dahlin’,” she drawled.

“I see.” He slowly removed his denim jacket, aware of the way she stared at his flexing biceps beneath his
black button-down shirt. He laid the jacket on one of the raised stools beside him and ran a hand through his long ebony hair, draping it over his shoulder so it brushed the top of his jeans.

Rachel’s gaze followed his movements and drifted over his chest, down to his waist, and stopped. “Hey, are you a cop or something?”

He patted the silver badge clipped to the front of his belt. “Enforcer, actually.”

Her eyes widened, and her spine straightened.

Varik smiled, showing a hint of fang.

Rachel blanched and fell back two steps.

Freddy and Reyes in the booth across the diner roared with laughter.

Varik snapped his fingers and pointed at them without taking his eyes off the frightened waitress. The laughter ceased, and he picked up his jacket. “So, Rachel, how about a round of coffee, black, for my friends and me?”

She nodded silently.

The forensic techs snickered when he slid onto the bench opposite them a moment later. “Shut up.”

“Sorry, sir.” Freddy coughed and grew somber.

“First it was those hoochies in the Porsche in Louisville,” Reyes said, and used his fingers to keep count. “Then it was the clerk at the gas station in Nashville. Now the waitress here.” He shook his head. “Dude, does this happen every time you go somewhere?”

Varik studied the laminated menu on the table before him and tried to ignore the thought of slamming Reyes’s
head through the plate-glass window, which played through his mind like a film reel.

“I bet it’s the hair,” Reyes whispered to Freddy, nudging him in the ribs. “Chicks dig the hair.”

“Shut up, Reyes.” Freddy nudged him back.

“Have you noticed that
Monsieur
Baudelaire still has a hint of Paris in his Kentucky drawl? Between the hair, the accent, and the car, he’s
got
to be getting laid regularly.”

“You’re talking out of your ass again.”

“What do you think, Freddy? I could grow out my hair and fake the accent. Then all I need is the car.”

Varik sighed. It was time to end the madness. “You can do all that, but you still won’t get the attention.”

“Why not?”

“Well, to put it bluntly, Reyes, you’re just plain ugly.”

Reyes’s jaw dropped, revealing a crooked left fang, and his overly large eyes bulged out farther from their sockets.

Varik shrugged. “Sorry, dude.”

Freddy cackled, and Reyes slumped in the booth like a man who’d been dealt a death blow.

Rachel arrived with their coffee. She hurriedly set three steaming mugs in front of them and scurried away.