The Bloody Mary Diet: The Detective Adele Series Book 1 (12 page)

I also burned down his house and he didn’t
report it. Funny, I wonder why. I am going to call in an anonymous tip about an arson in the area and hope that he tries to collect insurance.

This morning w
e are finally able to go back to Prof. McNeil’s house and look around. The fire fighters are gone and the whole area is tapped off. It has been confirmed as a crime scene. The fire was set and a skeleton was found in the master bedroom.

The forensics guys go in first
through the front while Trevor and Michael and I try the back door. The firefighters had kicked it in so try it is not the right word really. We just walk in. The smell is overwhelming. I don’t think anything has been cleaned or dusted in about fifteen years.  There is trash everywhere.  The backdoor opens into the kitchen and if it is at all representative of the rest of the house I have seen enough. I will get the report from the fire marshal. He is a good guy and I know he will go off the record to get it to me fast if need be. I ask him to call me on the way out and he nods.

I have to get to the
morgue and look at the file for Gretchen McNeil.

Trevor is on me like white on rice because Jan told him about me writing “D”ou
che Bag on Demetri’s card yesterday. I need to explain to her about girl talk again but she is a werewolf and that makes Trevor her alfa so I know she will tell him anyway.  I have talked to her about this before, it doesn’t help. As we are driving to the morgue I get a call from the forensics guys.  A body was buried in the hole we had found. They had hair, bone and clothing samples. Whoever had dug it up had done it fast and sloppy.

I hun
g up and called the fire marshal. Everyone calls him Rainy. I don’t even know his real name. He only had a preliminary report but it was a good one. The fire had originated and stopped in the master bed room in the bed. It had been started using an accelerant, probably gasoline, which had used up all the oxygen and almost put itself out.  There was also a muddy skeleton in the bed. Not a body that had been burned to a skeleton but just a skeleton. Female, approx 5’3”.

We have found Christine Vail.
I know it.

When we get to the morgue Creepy Carl is waiting. Trevor asks to see the records for Gretchen McNeil and he is back way too
fast, like he knew right where it was. A fifteen year old file and he has kept up with it all this time. I have to keep reminding myself not to ask too many questions and appreciate the resource.  Even if the resource does stare at my tits. Gross.

I open the file and show the first photo to Trevor. It is all he has to see. Mrs.
McNeil’s feet and lower legs are hugely swollen and black almost to the knees. By far the worst of any of the victims. I ask Carl if he can tell me from the report where she is buried and he doesn’t even have to look. She is in the graveyard behind the church at St. Agnes. I have to ask how he knew this without looking. I don’t want to. I literally have to.

Carl
answers, and I swear it, “I took her body when she came in for postmortem. When the new cases came in I noticed the similarities right away. I had never seen it before or since. No one else had either. Not until four weeks ago.”

Trevor shows his fangs and asks, “Can you please tell me why you failed to mention this?”

Creepy Carl smiles and shrugs as if it is an inside joke. I turn around and throw up on his desk. Nausea can be the result of a traumatic head injury. Or maybe Carl just makes me sick. I am really glad I had that third coffee.

We call Michael
s on our way to the cemetery. I know where McNeil will be and I don’t want any regular badges there. Christine is with him or in him and she is way too dangerous. Michaels pulls up behind us and steps out with his gun in his hand. He won’t need it. The professor is too far gone and you can’t shoot a ghost.

As soon as we pull up I see him standing there. Almost in the middle of the graveyard, in the rain, no coat with his head bowed.  Trevor pulls his gun too
and we spread out to move in.  When we get close McNeil looks up, straight at me. It looks like he is trying to scream.  His mouth is wide open but not a sound comes out. I can see the terror. But those are not his eyes. I would have remembered them. They are turquoise blue. They are Christine Vail’s eyes.

He lunges forward
to touch me and the whole thing flashes in my mind. All the images I should have seen with the other bodies slam into my head in one mad rush. Michaels tackles the professor as Trevor pulls me back but it is too late. I have already seen it and you can never unsee anything. Ever.

I see him killing Christine and burying her in the yard. I see her taking his wife over and as revenge and killing both her and the baby in the process. I feel Christine laying
alone and forgotten in that cold dark hole for almost fifteen years instead of passing on just so she can torment McNeil. She started taking the other bodies when he started trying to sell the house and move away. She wasn’t going to be abandoned again, first by her family and then by him. It was her way of keeping her man. She didn’t care if they died as long as he suffered like she had. More if possible.

Then I realize that she is trying to push me out. She wants my body. My majik. I was
too distracted to stop her and now she has a hold. A strong hold. I am pushing back as hard as I can but she is still gaining ground and I am beginning to fade. I am going to die and I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t even draw in a breath to scream. Her hate and rage are filling my mind along with her warped memories. I see it all from her point of view. Through her eyes. Her parent’s rejection, McNeil’s denial of her baby and his abandonment of them both. She fells totally betrayed and lost. I am becoming her and I will disappear. I have seconds left. Maybe less. My spirit won’t have an anchor or a door. I will be lost. Forever.

Then I feel Trevor. He has realized what she is doing. I have never felt power like this
, not even close. His power is cold as steal and sharp as a razor and it is immense. Huge. The strongest single power I have ever felt. He rips Christine’s spirit out of my mind and body like pulling a tree out of the ground by its roots. The pain is excruciating. My own spirit immediately snaps back into place. It is a dizzying sensation. I feel disoriented and nauseated. I have seen too much.

I saw it all and there is no one I can
ever really tell. This is why we all go crazy. That’s why Gran didn’t last. None of us last…

I
can actually hear my mind snap.

Chapter 12: Done

I am on administrative leave. Which everyone, including crazy Jan knows, means I am done. I will be drinking Bloody Marys and talking to all my invisible friends by breakfast in no time. Just wait.

Professor
McNeil is going to be charged with the death of Christine Vail, she was the skeleton in the yard. The one he tried to burn in his bed. He will probably spend the rest of his life in a phyc lockdown for violent offenders. They all think he is crazy but he is not. She is in there with him. When he burned her body he destroyed her anchor. The one thing she used to remain here. She had to jump when he tried to burn her and he was the only vessel near. So she jumped in with him and allowed him to stay. He will be locked in his own body with the girl he murdered until the day he dies and probably for a very long time after that. She can never move on and I can’t imagine she will let him either. They will be buried together. In the same casket beside his wife, forever.

He can hear her and feel her and knows that she is there but she
won’t let him tell. She won’t let him say a word. His face is frozen in that permanent scream I saw at the graveside. He had gone to visit his wife one last time with Christine in tow. Or maybe she made him go there, who can say. He never will.

It has been four days since we had our run in at the cemetery and I have been staying at
Trevor’s house the entire time. I guess it is really our house but it doesn’t quiet feel like it yet. I talk to Gran and Charles a lot. They are still in Ireland. Trevor has taken a leave of absence and spends most of his time at home with me. I haven’t slept much and I have nightmares when I do. Nightmares that I am buried alive in a cold dark hole. I can hear a baby crying but I can never reach it. I have never seen even seen the baby but I know it’s mine. I guess Christine did leave something behind after all. Sleeping pills just make the nightmares last longer. I look and feel like shit.

Today we got a call from Michael
s. The paper work and the computer in the car I trashed linked Demetri and Vic to a blood club in the warehouse district called “Venom”. He sent over some pictures from the outside and inside the club via e-mail. It looked really familiar but I couldn’t place it. It is up an upscale trendy place where vampire junkies and wanabe’s hang out. It’s got a better weekday crowd then most places have on weekends but I know I have never been there. I never have gone anywhere.

It still just looks way too familiar.

He also had some less pleasant news. The Jag that we had thought belonged to Demetri actually belonged to Viktor. The blood was human but we cannot link it directly to Demetri. Viktor definitely but not Demetri and there is no way Viktor would ever roll on his boss. Even better than that last night the car disappeared from police impound. The security video had been destroyed and none of the officers on duty remembered anything. Either it is an inside job or someone had been compelled. Without the car the evidence would be thrown out because we had nothing to link it to either Viktor or Demetri. Evidence had been mishandled and in a capital murder case that is reasonable doubt. Fuck.

I can’t seem to move away from this job and it isn’t even mine anymore. After the meet and greet with Christine in the cemetery there is no way I will ever pass a
psych eval. I wonder if she even realizes we were trying to help her. At least to find some justice for what happened to her. It doesn’t matter now.

I have heard from my brother several times during the last few days
. He is close but he is always inside. I can’t get a location from inside a place I have never been before and he is not close enough to just reach out and find. David is in trouble. The man who had been with him, the older man I had seen had double crossed him taken the drugs and the money and shot the other two men. I can get that much and I think that is why he is not dead yet.  The dickhead in charge wants to use him to find the other dickhead and then he will get rid of both of them. Just an educated guess about getting rid of both of them but I can’t believe they would use him again. It would send a bad message to let him fail them and live. David is in a very bad place. If they take him outside and I can get a landmark I will find him. If not, I don’t know, it only comes in flashes. My dad has stopped calling.

I hear someone come in through the front door and I hurry down to meet Trevor. I am half way down the front stairs when I realize I don’t sense him, I didn’t hear the Alfa. Fuck.

There is a large mean looking man in a shiny but expensive looking suit standing in the entryway. Money can’t buy taste. His hair is military short and a scar crosses the right side of this face. His eyes are set in a permanent glare. I wonder how many centuries he has been intimidating girls just like me. It is an art with him. He looks scary and he knows it. Hell, he is scary and he knows it. He wants me to be afraid. Mission accomplished.

There is a reason there are so few female vampires. Only the physically stronges
t survive the transition. Women almost never make it. That’s also why most vampires are young and strong. The old and weak don’t make it thought either. That’s why we have specimens like Douche Bag here. Very young looking and very strong.

He holds up a white card with a red seal. I
can’t read it from here but I know what it says. It is the letter from my In-Box and it say “D”ouche Bag.  That was a bad choice. Mr. Mean and Icky smiles at me. It is Demetri, I know it and I am properly fucked.  I should have seen it coming. Three prostitutes were killed on the south side of town last night and Trevor and Michaels were called in to confirm them as vampire kills. Trevor didn’t want to leave me but I knew it wouldn’t take long. I also pointed out that if he quit working then they had succeeded without even trying.

The bodies were
exsanguinated with no blood at the scene. Dual puncture marks to the left carotid artery. Vampire kills. Duh. Two hours there and back. No worries in my opinion. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Someone had made sure I was home alone and now Demetri was going to make it hurt.
Just like he had promised. I am frozen in place. No gun, no phone, just my black ratty sleep shirt that says I am ready for a funeral. Irony.

I
use my majik to make the door slam behind him so hard the house shakes. He flinches but only barely. Demetri smiles and stands there for a minute. He is giving me time to absorb his awesomeness.  He is going to play for a while. Make it last. He is looking forward to it, I can feel it. He is projecting the thought at me. I am going to pray I was dead before he is done. I project the image of Newt bending over and smiling. Demitri is getting a chubby, he doesn’t even try to stop me. Disturbing, very.

“So, should I introduce myself or would you just like to call me douche bag?”

“You are Demetri. You threatened Trevor.”