Blue Twilight (7 page)

“The visitor center is closed,” Jay said. “I stopped there on the way into town. The place is abandoned.”

“Then we can case the town, check for any other
place where she might have stopped. Diners, gas stations, that sort of thing.”

Lou nodded. “I'd like to talk to the local police chief myself, see what he has to offer. Helpful or not, it's a good idea to let him know we're here and we're looking for her, put him on alert to keep an eye out and contact us if anything turns up.”

“There's no point, Lou,” Jason said. “The local cop doesn't even believe she was ever here,” Jason said.

“It won't hurt anything to talk to him,” Lou said. “What was she driving?”

“Little red Neon,” Jason said. “Only two years old.” He swallowed hard. “She works part-time waiting tables to make her payments.”

“You have the plate number?” Lou asked.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“So we can have the local cop keep an eye out for the car, too. Like I said, it can't hurt.”

Max stroked Jason's upper arm. “Lou's right, hon. We should use every resource we can, even if it does seem unlikely to pan out.” She glanced at Stormy. “I think we should run a check on this town. See if anything like this has happened before.”

“I'll get the laptop out of the car,” Stormy replied.

Lou put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her even as she turned to go. “Let's book ourselves some rooms first, huh? Set the computer up in one of them?”

Stormy heard it in his voice, loud and clear. He didn't trust Jason. He wanted a place where they could talk without him hearing every word. “All right.”

“I'll take care of the rooms,” Max said.

Lou shot her a look and seemed about to say something, then bit it back. Maxie rolled her eyes at him. “A double for me and Stormy, and a single for you,” she told him. “That suit you, Lou?”

“Fine.” He pulled out a wallet, reached for a credit card.

Max put a hand over his. “This is going on the company card,” she said. “It's our first official case.” She headed off to book the rooms.

Lou sighed, turned and went after her. Stormy didn't blame him. She was liable to have him sharing a bed with her if he didn't keep an eye on things. And he'd pissed her off all morning without even meaning to.

Once they had gone and she found herself alone in the room with Jason, she cleared her throat. He walked to the bed, folded up his map.

“Is it going to be hard, working with me?” she asked.

He looked up at her, sent her a sad smile. “If I have trouble working with every girl who ever turned me down, Stormy, I'm in for a pretty tough existence. No. It'll be fine.”

She thinned her lips.

“I heard you'd been in the hospital,” he said. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

She shrugged. “Bullet to the head, a few days in a coma, no big deal.”

He swung around to face her, his features expressionless. “Tell me you're kidding.”

“'Fraid not,” she said. “But it's okay, really. I'm fine
now.” She wasn't. Far from it, in fact, but that wasn't anything he needed to know.

“Someone
shot
you?”

She nodded.

“Who, for God's sake?”

“The bad guy.” She rolled her eyes. “Sheesh, who did you think?”

“Jesus, Storm, how can you joke about something like this?”

“Because it doesn't matter, that's how. It's over. History. Gone.” God, she wished that were true.

Jason came closer to her, reached up a hand to brush it lightly through her hair. She lifted one of her own to cover it, guided it to the spot where he could feel the misshapen bump, the scar. When he did, his eyes fell closed. “I'd have come if I'd known.”

“Max was there. Until she had to go after the jerk who did it, at least.”

“Did she get him?”

“Not entirely. She fucked up his plans, saved some people he'd intended to hurt as much as he hurt me, set him back a whole lot, but in the end, he got away.” She shrugged. “Someone will put him in the ground sooner or later.”

Jason let his hand remain in her hair a moment longer than he needed to, but then he lowered it slowly. “It means a lot to me, your coming down here like this,” he said.

“We couldn't not come.”

“I know.” He lowered his head, paced away from
her. “I knew that when I called you. I'm not going to let anything hurt you, I want you to know that.”

“That's an odd thing to say. No one here has any reason to want to hurt me. Do they, Jason?”

“No. Of course not, it's just—well, hell, you got hurt on your last case, didn't you?”

She frowned, searching his face, wondering why the stupid flashes that came at the most inopportune times weren't coming now, when she would have liked them to. If they turned out to be some sort of…of psychism, she would have liked a clue about whatever it was Jason
wasn't
saying.

But then Max and Lou were back. “Lou's in four and we're in three,” Max called, holding up a diamond-shape plastic key ring with a worn-out numeral on its face and a copper-colored key dangling from the end. “Got you an extra key, Storm, but the pimply-faced adolescent in the office says we're dead meat if we lose it.”

“That would be Gary,” Jason said.

“I didn't like him,” Max informed him.

“I guessed that already.” Jason smiled at her. “You haven't changed a bit, Max. God, it's good to see you.”

“You, too,” she replied with a smile. Then she hugged him, more firmly than she had before. “It's gonna be okay, Jay.”

Lou cleared his throat. “Let's go visit with the local police chief. Best to coordinate with him from the get-go. Even if he isn't any help.”

Jason seemed to want to argue, but he changed his mind.

Max nodded. “Maybe we can get some lunch while we're at it? My belly button is touching my backbone.”

“There's a diner across the road, just a little ways up. And another near the police station in town,” Jason said. “I'll give the chief a call and let him know we're coming.”

“If it's okay with you guys, I'm gonna stay here,” Stormy said. “I can get settled into our room and maybe catch a nap.”

Max frowned at her. Stormy told her with a swift glance not to start in with the “Are you okay?” refrain, and Max, reading that look, kept quiet. “I'll bring you back a sandwich,” she said instead.

“Thanks.”

 

Chief Fieldner had red, scraped knuckles. Maxie noticed it right off the bat. She also noticed his pale skin, gaunt face, beady eyes and the mustache that cried out to be trimmed. It hung, white and gray, like a walrus's whiskers, drooping to his chin on either side of his mouth. She didn't like him. And she told Lou so the first time the man left their presence, ostensibly to go look through some files or something.

“I don't like him,” she whispered. Short and to the point.

She was sitting in one of two chairs in front of Fieldner's spotless, tiger-maple desk. Jason sat beside Max, and Lou stood, his eyes working the room like hawks at a pigeon farm. Though there wasn't a hell of a lot to see. Couple of phones, a bulletin board with six layers
of posters and memos pinned to it. A wall's worth of filing cabinets and a coffeepot.

His busy eyes slid to hers then. “What's not to like? He's no prime hunk of youth,” he said with a pointed look toward Jason, “but—”

“Jesus, Lou,
look
at him.” Max pretended not to notice the look he sent Jason. If he was a little jealous, fine. Better than fine. But she seriously doubted it was anything like that. He didn't like Jason. Hadn't from the moment he'd heard his voice on the phone, and his dislike and distrust seemed to be growing with every minute he spent in Jason's presence. She couldn't do anything about that right now, so she kept her focus on the matter at hand. The only cop in Endover. “If it wasn't daylight outside, I'd peg him for a vamp, no question. And I don't mean the good kind. Lily-white skin just hanging off his bones like sheets on a clothesline. Nothing underneath. No fat or muscle or…soul. And those eyes.”

“Vamp?”
Jason stared at her, his eyes widening.

“As in
vampire,
” Max whispered.

Lou glanced toward the door through which the cop had gone. The only thing visible back there were file boxes stacked high.

“You don't suppose he's found some way to overcome the natural aversion to daylight, do you?” Maxie whispered.

“Jesus, Max, you don't actually believe in that sort of thing. Do you?” Jason asked.

Maxie and Lou both looked at him. Max said, “You've missed a lot since you've been gone, pal.”

“I hope you're planning to fill me in.”

Lou jumped in before Max could answer, steering her back to their conversation. “You're jumping to conclusions, Max. You've got no evidence that Fieldner's a vamp. You're just wrought up about Stormy begging off the way she did.”

Max had to look away, because he was dead right on that score. Stormy, claiming to be tired and wanting to hang out in her motel room and maybe take a nap—that was totally off. “It's not like her to admit to needing a rest—even when she does.”

“I know.”

“You're worried about her, too, then?”

Lou nodded.

Jason said, “Do you…have some reason to worry?” When they both looked at him, he went on. “She told me about the shooting. Is she really all right?”

“That's what the doctors keep telling us,” Max said.

“But you don't believe it?”

Chief Fieldner came back into the room, moving on legs that seemed too thin to carry a normal-size torso around. Yet despite his gauntness, he seemed strong. Almost unnaturally so. He had a map in his hand and was unfolding it even as he worked his way across the room to the desk, to lay it out.

“Here we go,” he said. A skinny finger with a cracked, chipped nail pointed to the map. “This is a map of the entire town. Here's that visitor center you were asking about.” He lifted his dead, pale blue gaze to each of theirs in turn—they lingered longest on Ja
son's face. “You have some basis for being curious about that particular spot?”

Yeah, Max thought. Stormy got an odd feeling about it. She hadn't said so, but Max had seen her reaction. It wasn't something she was willing to ignore. But she kept all of that to herself. Lou would think it was foolish, and it wasn't anything the others needed to know.

“Just seemed a likely place to start,” Lou said.

“It's closed, you know. Been closed for years.”

Lou nodded. “We passed it on the way into town. Wouldn't have known it was closed to look at it. Maybe the girls didn't, either.”

The chief sighed and returned his attention to the map. “Well, there's not much out there. Parkin' lot. Woods out back. You can see, those woods spread out some. Run right down to the coast. But I did a walk through myself, last night. Didn't find a thing.”

“You searched the woods?” Lou sounded surprised.

“Well, sure. I took a look around after this young fellow told me about his sister and her friend vanishing like they did. I couldn't do anything official, them bein' gone only a matter of hours at the time. No sign of foul play. No basis for a case. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to help out if I could.”

Lou sent Max a look, almost as if he were saying “See? I told you he was an all-right guy.” She rolled her eyes, because she didn't agree. Lou turned his attention to the cop again. “How thoroughly did you search them?”

“As good as you could. Probably better, bein' I know my way around out there.”

Lou nodded.

“You won't mind if we take a look ourselves all the same, will you?” Max asked. “Just for my peace of mind?”

“You wanna waste your time, be my guest,” the chief said. “Fact is, even if they did run off, I don't think two girls slipping away from their families to raise some hell would go into the woods to do it. No, I expect they'll turn up anytime now. You'll see.”

“Still, I'd like to go out there,” Lou said.

The chief nodded. “Fine by me. Just make sure it's before dark.”

Max went silent, turning wide eyes on Lou. His were just as startled, and then they both turned to stare at the chief. “Why's that?” Lou asked.

“This town has a dusk-to-dawn curfew in effect,” he said. “Didn't you see the sign?”

“A little town like this?” Max asked. Her voice had gone soft. She didn't want to start thinking what she was thinking. But damn. Vanishing girls. No one allowed out after dark. Scrawny pale guys? What was she
supposed
to think? “Mind if I ask why?”

The chief shrugged. “Aah, we had some trouble a few years back. Kids coming down from bigger towns, raising hell. It was starting to turn into party central for the college crowd. Beer bottles all over the beaches. Goddamn metal music blasting from their car radios.” He shook his head. “It was a nuisance. So we instituted a curfew.”

It was not, Max decided, a very logical reason.

Lou sighed. “As a professional courtesy,” Lou said, “one cop to another—”

“You're a cop?” Fieldner asked.

“Yeah. Twenty years on the force in White Plains. I'm retired now.”

“I see.” He seemed to mull that over and looked not at Lou, but at Jason.

“So as a favor to a fellow officer, would you give us permission to be out after dark if we need to?” Lou smiled his friendliest smile. “After all, it's not like we're going to have a beer party on the beach.”

Fieldner held Jason's gaze until Jason looked away, then slid his cold eyes back to Lou. He said, “Last thing I need is for more of you to come up missing. Those woods are dangerous in the dark. I prefer you honor the curfew.”