Death of an Immortal (13 page)

As his lesser pains began to diminish, the steady thrumming of the pain in Terrill’s chest returned in full force. He unbuttoned his shirt. The crucifix was sinking ever deeper into his flesh, and now it must be only centimeters away from his heart. What would happen when it crossed that final divide? Would he burst into flames?

He found it difficult to care. At least the pain would end.

He was about to drift off to sleep when he saw the flickering light of a campfire in the copse of trees at the edge of the rock outcropping.

He stumbled to his feet, dragging the tarp behind him.

For once in his long existence, when in danger and pain, he headed toward the light instead of the darkness.

Chapter 20

Brosterhouse managed to stumble out of the alley where the stranger had tossed him. He was covered in mud and God only knew what other kinds of disgusting fluids that had coated the asphalt. He reached the sidewalk before collapsing.

When he came back to consciousness, he was being loaded onto a gurney. The EMTs were having trouble lifting him.

He managed to sit up, provoking shouts of surprise. They were even more amazed when he managed to stand.

He avoided the hospital only because he personally knew one of the emergency medics. The young man owed him a favor for having screwed up some crime scene evidence.

“I’d really advise you to see a doctor,” the EMT said. “You might have a fractured shoulder, and you almost certainly have a concussion.”

“I’m fine,” Brosterhouse said. He hurt like hell, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He did a self-assessment based on his four years of college football and decided he’d live. He had kept playing after suffering worse injuries.

He was more shaken psychologically. He’d never been picked up and thrown like that, even by linemen bigger than him. Yet this scrawny guy with the posh accent, this Mr. Harkins, PI, had lifted him as if he was a child and thrown him an impossible distance.

But worse, Brosterhouse was certain he’d shot his attacker right between the eyes––just before the man had taken off running and disappeared down the other end of the alley. Either his senses were all screwed up, or… well, “or” nothing.
It had to be the concussion, right?
he told himself.

#

Brosterhouse went to work the next day with a headache, trying not to move his left arm too much. He’d swallowed some out-of-date pain pills and was feeling a little fuzzy, but murders usually didn’t get solved if they weren’t pursued immediately, and Brosterhouse had no intention of letting the Jamie Lee Howe case go cold without finding out why so many people were interested in it.

He turned on his computer and somehow managed to locate Google, which for him was an accomplishment.

As he thought, there was no evidence that a Mr. Harkins, PI, of London, England, even existed. Brosterhouse was slightly abashed that he hadn’t checked that out before talking to the man. Then again, there hadn’t seemed to be anything amiss at the time.

He got up to grab his first cup of coffee of the day. He’d probably drain the machine before the day was done, and the coffee would get progressively blacker and stronger, just the way he liked it. He returned to his desk, intending to plan out his investigation of the Howe murder.

He’d been sitting there for only a few moments when he got a call from the morgue.

“What do you mean, the body is gone?” he shouted. His head seemed to split in two. Each of the nearby detectives staring at him seemed to have a fuzzy-looking double. He waved them off and lowered his voice.

“When?”

Turned out the morgue guys didn’t know when Jamie Lee Howe’s remains had disappeared; it could have been any time between the delivery of the body and an hour ago, when the body was about to be autopsied.

Brosterhouse hung up and sat back in his chair. It was his fourth chair since he’d become a detective, and he’d bought it with his own money especially for his oversized body, so it wouldn’t collapse like the others. Even so, it let out a metallic groan.

What the hell was going on with this case? Once again, his memory flashed to the two neat puncture holes in the victim’s neck––and just as quickly, he dismissed it. No matter what, he wasn’t going there.

He searched the squad room. He was lucky; the officer he wanted to talk to was still on duty: John Funk, a cop who was just marking time until early retirement.

“Hey, Officer Funk,” Brosterhouse yelled out.

Funk looked up from his desk, startled. Probably watching porn on his computer or something. He saw who was yelling at him and winced.
A guilty wince
, Brosterhouse thought.
What is that about?

Funk didn’t shout back, but got up and made his way over to Brosterhouse, his carefully nonchalant manner radiating the message to his fellow cops that there was nothing unusual going on, that they should go back to their own business. It seemed to work; by the time he crossed the room, the usual murmur had started up again.

“What can I do for you, Detective Brosterhouse?” he asked softly.

“You know this Richard Carlan guy, right? Went to school with him or something?”

Again, Funk looked guilty. Brosterhouse didn’t have the patience for that. “Look, I really don’t care what you’ve been up to. I just want to know when Carlan left Portland.”

“He stayed a couple of days,” Funk said.

“Yeah, and somehow he got access to the traffic reports. Did you ever think that information might be useful to me?’

Funk didn’t answer.

“Never mind,” Brosterhouse said. “My own fault for not checking myself. That’s all, Officer Funk.”

The other cop walked back to his desk, trying to act like nothing had happened, but it was obvious he’d been dressed down by his superior.
Not much damage done,
Brosterhouse thought. Just about every junior cop had been on the receiving end after he’d been disappointed.

He lifted the phone. “Henry? Get me the phone number of Officer Richard Carlan, Bend Police Department. Should I call back? No? You got it? Thanks.”

Brosterhouse hung up, feeling a little embarrassed. These younger cops might be lazy, but they knew how to use the technology. He was becoming a bit of a dinosaur in the department. Then again, his solve rate was twice as high as anyone else’s, so no one said anything.

#

He decided to be blunt, to try to catch Richard Carlan off guard.

“What did you do with her, Officer Carlan?”

Carlan sounded confused. “Her? I just visited her, is all.”

“When?” Brosterhouse asked. This might be all he needed to make Carlan the prime suspect, and all the just cause he needed to pursue the case.

“As soon as I got home. Sylvie needed to be told what happened.”

“Sylvie? Who’s Sylvie?”

“Wait, who are you talking about? I assumed when you asked about ‘her,’ you were talking about Jamie’s sister.”

Brosterhouse paused. The man sounded genuinely mystified. But who else would have taken the corpse? Nothing else made sense.

“Someone took Ms. Howe’s body from the morgue,” he said.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Carlan said in a quiet voice, “There’s something weird about this whole thing. I’m glad you called, detective. There’s been a break in the case. I served a search warrant at a local motel. We found evidence which ties in to Jamie’s––that is, Miss Howe’s murder.”

“You have a suspect in custody?”

“Well… no. He got away. He was stopped at a roadblock and ran. What’s weird is the trail went cold right away, even with the K-9 units. Not a trace of him.”

“How did you arrive at this suspect?” Brosterhouse was furious. This was his case; the murder had happened in his town, on his watch. It appeared that Carlan had withheld evidence, which was a breach of professional courtesy, to say the least.

“I found a traffic ticket issued the same day on the same street as the crime scene. When I realized the suspect had driven to Bend, the hometown of the victim, I obtained a search warrant.”

Truly amazing
, Brosterhouse thought. How was it possible that such a flimsy connection was enough to obtain a legal search warrant? Still, maybe it would break open the case.

“This is my case, Officer Carlan,” he said coldly.

“I realize that. I didn’t want the suspect to get away.”

“And yet he did. I’m coming over to Bend. I’ll be there in a few hours. Assemble all the evidence and write a status report before I get there.”

“But…”

Brosterhouse hung up before he said something he couldn’t take back.

#

He drove over the pass in three hours, which was a personal record. The winter snows hadn’t started falling yet, and the traffic was light. He pulled up to the Badlands Motel at 2:30 in the afternoon. He’d called ahead, making sure that Carlan was there waiting for him.

Carlan was hanging out in the lobby along with a young patrolman, Cam Patterson. They showed him the motel room and what they’d found.

“You shouldn’t even be involved with this case,” Brosterhouse said to Carlan when they were done. Patterson had done most of the talking, but Brosterhouse had heard Carlan’s words being spoken in the cop’s voice.

“Which is why I turned it over to Patterson,” Carlan said defensively.

No doubt manipulating the younger officer every step of the way,
Brosterhouse thought. “It doesn’t matter. I’m taking over the case, as of now. I need you to hand over all the evidence. We’ll have our own labs do the analysis.”

“But we’d be quicker,” Carlan argued. “You guys in Portland are backed up for weeks, from what I’ve heard.”

“They’ve shortened that to mere days,” Brosterhouse said. Well, more like a week and a half, but he was tired of this small-town cop’s obstructionism. “How’s the search for the suspect?”

“We think he’s still in town somewhere.”

“Oh? What’s to keep him from leaving?”

“We’re a small town,” Carlan said, sounding confident. “There’s an APB out for him, and he’s been all over the local news, so there’s no way he can rent a car or get on a plane or bus without being ID’d. Unless he steals a car, the only other way out of here would be by hitchhiking––and it’s more than a hundred and thirty miles in every direction before he’d get anywhere. I’m betting he’s still here, hiding.”

Brosterhouse groaned inwardly. He wanted to get back to Portland, but as long as there was a chance of catching this guy, he needed to stick around the sticks.

He walked back into the lobby and booked a room.

Chapter 21

With his night vision, Terrill could clearly see the path to the camp, though it had been covered by loose brush in an obvious attempt at concealment. The fire probably couldn’t be seen from the road, because it was behind a lava outcropping beneath some old junipers.

Cans and bottles littered the area, but the camp itself was tidy, almost as if it was a nice outdoor retreat for tourists. Five raggedy men who were passing around a bottle of whiskey surrounded the campfire. They weren’t on guard, so they didn’t realize Terrill was there until he was almost on top of them.

If he had remained in the dark, they never would have seen him, but in the flickering firelight, his shape probably came in and out of focus, much as his consciousness did. The short hike to the light of the campfire had taken all he had.

“What the hell!” one of the men shouted upon seeing him. The others jumped to their feet, reaching for clubs and knives. One of them even had a gun.

“I’m sorry,” Terrill said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.” The fire was like sunlight to his eyes. He wanted to run away into the darkness, but he was in no shape to move. He tried to sit down, to get the spinning in his head under control, but somewhere between standing and sitting, he started falling. He hit the ground with a splat of soft dust.

One of the men came closer. Terrill could grab him, get just a taste, nothing more––just a taste. But despite his hunger, he remembered: a vampire never stopped feeding once he’d begun. He was in such bad shape that all five of the men were danger of being drained once he started.

“Don’t come near me,” he tried to say. He was uncertain whether any words actually emerged.

And then he fell into welcome darkness, a blackness that was comforting and familiar.

#

Jamie didn’t believe him. They never did.

“No, really,” he insisted. “I am a vampire.”

“Well,” she said, looking at him with an amused expression. “It takes all kinds.”

Obviously, he’d been too sane and convivial the rest of the evening for her to believe this outrageous assertion. Nevertheless, he tried again.

“I am a vampire, and you must be out of this motel room in the morning.”

He’d woken with a start in the middle of the night, surprised to find she was still there.

He’d woke her up and paid her, giving her twice as much as she’d asked, and told her, in as firm a tone as he could summon in his lassitude, to leave at once.

She had objected. “Let me stay a little longer. I like you; I like your touch. I haven’t been cuddled like this in months, and I miss it.”

That’s when he’d told her, “I’m a vampire.”

Her laugh was delightful. He wanted to hear it again.

“No, really,” he said again. “It’s important that you believe me.”

He thought about extending his fangs for a moment, but he was too tired. If she fled screaming, he’d have to get up and disappear. That seemed like such an effort––and it was probably unnecessary. She was a professional. Surely she understood his instructions, even if she didn’t quite believe his reasons for them.

She laughed again. “OK, Terrill,” she agreed. “I’ll be gone by the time you wake up, I promise.”