Natural Consequences (60 page)

“They’re all
locked up in their holding rooms?” asked Hauser. “Are they secured? Carlisle?”

“Yeah,” nodded
Lanier. He didn’t look at his boss. “Yeah, they’re all good.”

“The whole program’s screwed, Joe,” said Keeley. He put his hands down and looked at Hauser. “We’ve fucked it all up.”

“No. We continue the investigation. I knew it was a mistake to put them together, and I take full responsibility for it. But one bad interrogation doesn’t mean we’re sunk. We keep them all on ice for a while, we try again—“

“Joe, do you not understand?” Keeley pressed. “We gotta cut ‘em loose.”

“What are you talking about? We’re not cutting anyone loose.”

“Oh, for Chrissake, Joe!” snapped Nguyen. “Jones and Reinhardt! We have to let them go. That Cohen kid is right
. We can’t convict them for killing someone who we can’t prove ever even existed.”

“Chemical analysis,” muttered
Lanier, his eyes still on the ceiling. “My God, how did nobody ever think to do that?”

“We never investigated a murdered vampire before,” Nguyen answered, “and if we did, we never even knew. We didn’t have time to analyze the sample we got from their arrest.
Amber could’ve done that for us, but Hauser had her with Cohen every waking second,” she added, waving her hand at him absently.

Hauser ignored the critique. “He could be bluffing.”

“He’s not bluffing,” frowned Keeley. “Go look that kid in the eye. He knew exactly what he was talking about. The second they talk to Lopez, he’ll demand a full chemical analysis of all the evidence and that’ll be the end of it.”

“There are still the other charges—“

“What, for getting in a fight with some two-time losers with gang ties in a parking lot? You think they’ll make credible witnesses? Jones and Reinhardt will demand a jury trial, and you know the jury will sympathize with them. Lopez will demolish us in court and then they’ll walk. And that one-hundred percent conviction rate will walk right out the door with ‘em.”

“To say nothing of how many times Jones has demanded to see a lawyer,” Nguyen put in. “And now that he’s heard his buddy Cohen go off, he’ll know exactly what to say when he finally gets one.”

“Fine. They walk. Who are they going to tell?” Hauser shrugged. “We’ve still got Cohen and Carlisle over a barrel if they don’t talk.”

“And what if they don’t?” asked Nguyen. “They’re both ready to take the fall for Lorelei. You know as well as I do that we can’t convict her unless she confesses, and she’d have to be an idiot to do that. Christ, all we’ve got is a
babbling idiot convict as a witness and a year-old dead body. You think we’ll find a pathologist who can prove she screwed someone to death?”

“That’s enough, Agent Nguyen,” Hauser snapped. “
That
thing
broke into a Federal operation and assaulted Federal agents with intent to free suspected felons. Between that and what she did to Maddox and those cops—”

“Without a single injury?” interrupted Keeley. “Come on, Joe! She’ll get a slap on the wrist and be out in a few years
, and it’s not like deporting her for her sketchy citizenship is going to be more than an inconvenience for her.

“This whole program rested on nobody knowing about it. Now we have to cut two guys loose, we don’t even know where their witch friends are, and sooner or later we’ll have to let Lorelei out and God only knows what she’ll do then. And we still don’t know anything about that Rachel person!”

“We’re not spooks, Joe,” Nguyen pressed. “We don’t do any indefinite hold bullshit. We have to let them go.”

“Get ahold of yourselves
,” Hauser ordered. “All of you. We’re not letting anyone go yet. We’re not throwing in the towel and going home. This was never about those four guys. We keep them under lock and key and we keep our eye on the ball while we come up with a new way to win this.”

“What are we trying to ‘win’ again?” murmured
Lanier. His eyes came down to rest his gaze on Hauser. “Didn’t we come up here to find out what happened to the local vampires? I mean, we found that out, right? It looks like they’re all dead. What else was on the agenda?”

Hauser glared at him
and then stormed off down the hallway.

Lanier
glanced from Keeley to Nguyen. “Did that seem like an unreasonable question to either of you?”

* * *

It cannot end like this.

Hauser sat in his temporary office—just an old chair, an older desk, some cabinets and thankfully a working radiator—and stared out the window at Lake Washington while the sky grew dim. Since arriving a week ago, Hauser continually
forgot how much earlier in the day sunset came this time of year, so far north of Los Angeles.

All those monsters out there, laughing at the law. At the people they prey upon. Laughing at this nation and everything it stands for.

Laughing at you
.

The thoughts kept running through Hauser’s head, popping up continually no matter what he did to blot them out. Writing notes and starting up a report didn’t help. Staring out the window didn’t help. Seeing the release papers Keeley had drawn up for Jones and Reinhardt absolutely didn’t help.

They all hunt Carlisle, and you have him. They can’t be far. There will never be a better opportunity.

Hauser turned back to his laptop, moved the mouse to open up his email and check it for the tenth time—and without intending it, as if some invisible force had bumped his hand, opened up the file holding Maddox’s reports.

There has to be an answer somewhere
, said the voice in his head.
Don’t give up. Look. Look again.

He couldn’t wish for better results than Maddox delivered. That she went far out of bounds in getting romantic with Cohen was indisputable, at least from the standards of the FBI.
Even though he signed off on everything she did after the fact, Hauser had to worry about her emotional state. Either Maddox hid a heart of stone under that innocent face, or things had gotten away from her and all this would probably tear her up inside.

This isn’t a normal investigation.
We have to take risks. We can’t follow every rule. Sacrifices must be made.

Hauser glanced over her reports, but he returned once more to the fight in the bus tunnel and, in a second window, the explanation Cohen gave her. He read and re-read, wishing he knew how to get any of the prisoners to talk about Rachel. She seemed like the key. She stayed aloof, but when Carlisle was in danger, she came to the rescue… and, according to Cohen, there was a pattern there. An obligation. Something.

Rachel faced down a mob of vampires and werewolves and kicked ass. Maddox saw it. She’d have died there without that intervention.

She’d do it again, wo
uldn’t she?
Hauser thought.
She didn’t protect Carlisle from us, but we’re not monsters… maybe that’s the difference?

He stared at the report, waiting for it to come to him.

Look higher. Scroll up.

Hauser followed the silent advice, moving back on the report to the part before Rachel appeared. He read and re-read Carlisle’s exchanges with the vampires. Their posturing. Their declarations. The tension Maddox saw between them, and her sense that they shared some obligation
avenge Kanatova.

They have to kill Carlisle, or their social compact breaks down,
something told Hauser without ever being heard.
They have to kill him.

He considered
explaining that to Carlisle—and maybe even Lorelei. Maybe that would be enough leverage to pry their mouths open.

A second, unbidden thought overrode the first:
Rachel must protect Carlisle. They must kill him… and she cannot allow that.

We must take risks. Sacrifices must be made.

The room grew dark as he stared at the screen. The words repeated in his head over and over, drowning out other thoughts and objections until the unthinkable seemed rational, and even necessary:

We must take risks. Sacrifices must be made.

Hauser blinked and rubbed his eyes, looked out the window and then checked the clock. He closed his laptop, stood, and opened up the cabinet that served as the team’s improvised evidence locker. Personal belongings confiscated from Carlisle, Jones and the rest sat in marked bins.

One particular bin held a leather jacket, a roll of cash,
a pair of axes light enough for throwing, some old Nordic jewelry, and a partially dismantled cell phone. Hauser pulled out the latter, put the pieces back together and reactivated it.

Potentially, the owner’s friends had enough connections that they could track the phone as soon as it turned back on. It seemed unlikely, though; while they weren’t Luddites, they didn’t catch on quickly to all the opportunities of modern technology. The organization and minimal usage of the phone in Hauser’s hand testified to that. It did, however, have a mapping application.

Hauser scrolled through the contacts list. Few of the names meant anything to him. One name stood out for him, though he didn’t think too much as to why.

Hauser opened up a text message to Unferth. He inserted a link to the mapping application… and paused.

Everyone knows the risks. Sacrifices must be made.

He hit the send button and then turned off the phone.

The angel speaking at his ear stepped back. Donald’s hands slipped off Hauser’s. His shoulders sagged as he experienced a bout of weariness normally unknown to his kind.

Guardian angels offered suggestions and guidance to their charges all the time. It required imagination and finesse, but little effort. Direct manipulation such as this—something Donald had never attempted before—drained him much more than he expected.

It would be worth it, though. It was all for the greater good.

* * *

Bellevue offered a number of posh houses, but even this one wasn’t remotely as opulent as Wentworth’s Manhattan home. The area likely boasted grander lodgings, but as in any matter of travel as this, one had to weigh stealth and discretion over comfort. Claim too great a home and the neighbors and friends of the owners might notice the changes in their behavior. The less wealthy the resident, typically, the easier it was for new occupants to go unnoticed… but Wentworth had his standards.

Wentworth awoke shortly after sunset, moving swiftly from oblivion to full awareness as he usually did. In his breathing days, he would shift and stretch and groan about the earliness of the hour or whatever
noises his servants made. Now his eyes simply snapped open, suddenly marking him as an animate corpse rather than an ordinary dead body in a bed.

He found the lady of the h
ouse and her adult daughter kneeling before his bed—no longer the mother’s or her husband’s in his mind—dressed in nightgowns just as he had instructed. They waited for him to drink from them, happy to be made of such use. Any vampire could bestow pain and terror or addictive, mind-bending euphoria through their bite. To Wentworth, the latter seemed the obvious choice. Terrorized servants always harbored thoughts of escape or rebellion, both of which bred inefficiency. Well-rewarded slaves, like his host family, gladly opened their homes and threw familial obligations to the wind in hopes of enjoying the brief ecstasy of his fangs.

Wentworth fed lightly upon them both, leaving them on the bed in a state of
bliss while the man of the house dressed him. Satisfied, he ventured out of the bedroom to check on his staff and allies. His mortal servants from New York would have been up through the day, monitoring events in his home city and the local news here in the northwest. One waited outside his door to hand him a copy of the New York Times as he walked through the halls.

His eyes stayed on the paper as he moved, but his mind wandered. Tonight would see a final meeting of his allies and an assessment of their quest for justice. If he could not demonstrate his ability to find Carlisle again, the coalition would fray. All understood the need to kill the boy. Regardless of
Anastacia’s fate, Carlisle’s existence was simply intolerable after what he had said and what he did to Cornelius. But first he had to be found, and clearly his guardian presented a formidable problem. Wentworth counseled patience and recovery as his allies licked their wounds, but he worried that inaction would weaken his position of leadership.

He descended the stairs as he read the headlines. Rounded the landing and shuffled down the hall. Reconsidered his support of a candidate for mayor. Pushed open the door to the kitchen. Passed by the sliding glass door and the deck overlooking the backyard. Glanced up at the gaggle of strangers staring at him from the other side of the glass. Crossed the kitchen to the dining room to double-check seating plans for the meeting tonight.

Stopped. Turned. Looked again.

A collection of roadside trash stood on the deck, all looking into the kitchen. A man and woman wore the denim and leather chaps of bikers. Two or three of the others, dressed in ordinary faded jeans and t-shirts, immediately struck Wentworth as truckers. The tall woman at the front of the group with her hair cut down to a short brown stubble looked like some hippie hoping to hitch a ride on the freeway… except for the intensity in her eyes and the cocky attitude of her grin.