The Vampire Hunters (Book 2): Vampyrnomicon (24 page)

Alison responded on the tenth knock. She stormed into the hallway, ready to chew a second asshole into whatever obnoxious visitor made the racket. Her eyes softened when she saw Drake, but only a bit. He could tell by her expression that she viewed him as only slightly less obnoxious than a solicitor. Rushing up to the door, she pushed it open and held it in place with one hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” she greeted him.

“And good morning to you, too.” Drake motioned with his head to the box under his arm. “Grab that, will ya?”

Alison stepped forward. Placing one hand under the wooden crate and grabbing the handle with the other, she relieved Drake of his burden. Mobility restored, Drake maneuvered by Alison, banging his own crate against the jamb. Alison followed him inside. Drake placed his iced coffee on one corner of Alison’s desk, and then set the crate down on the sofa across from it. He took the second crate from Alison and placed it beside the first.

“What’s in those?” asked Alison.

“Is Jim here?”

“He’s upstairs.”

“Call him down. I’ll show you both together.”

Alison picked up the phone and paged Jim. Drake slid off his leather jacket and tossed it onto the coat rack, then took a long drink of iced coffee. By the time he finished, Jim came downstairs from his work shop.

“What’s up, boss?”

“I’ve got something I want to show you.”

Drake unlatched the two crates and lifted the lids with the enthusiasm of a ten-year-old showing off his favorite Christmas gift. Alison and Jim stepped forward to look in. Each crate contained a sword, the blade approximately a meter in length, with an ornately-carved hand grip.

“What are they?” asked Alison.

“I picked them up at the museum gift shop. They’re replicas of the swords the Conquistadors used during the conquest of Latin America.” Drake turned to Jim. “I thought you could adapt them for hunting vampires.”

“Are you serious?” asked Jim.

“Yeah. Can’t you do anything with them?”

“Not really.” Jim picked up one of the swords and turned it in his hand, examining the blade. “These are straight-edged weapons. You really can’t pimp them up other than decorating the hand grip. The only way to kill a vampire with one of these would be to slice off its head. And these are way too dull to do that.”

Drake tried to hide his disappointment. “Couldn’t we sharpen them?”

Jim shook his head. “These are display swords. I’d ruin the blades if I tried. In any case, they wouldn’t make good weapons.” Jim handed the sword back to Drake. “Sorry, boss.”

Alison placed a hand on Drake’s shoulder. “Guess you don’t get to fulfill your fantasy of running around Washington like Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“Ah, you’re just afraid of handling a man’s weapon.”

“Whatever.”

Drake stepped to the side to face Alison and feigned a pirate accent. “Are you showing thine timidity, wench?”

“Wench?” asked Alison, miffed.

Drake placed the tip of the blade under her skirt and lifted the material a few inches. Alison knocked the sword aside with her hand.

“Me thinks the wench’s petticoat is tied a bit too tight.”

“If that’s how you want to play.” Alison picked up the other sword and took up a stance.

“On guard, wench.”

Drake raised his sword and tapped it against Alison’s. With a motion of the hand almost too quick to see, Alison tipped her sword to the left and brought the point underneath the hand grip of Drake’s sword. With a single yank, she ripped the sword from his hand. His weapon tumbled to the floor. Alison lowered her sword and placed the tip against Drake’s groin. A wry smile pierced her lips.

“Me thinks you won’t be needing these anymore,” she said.

Applause from the entranceway attracted their attention. They all turned to see Smith by the hall door. He stood leaning against the frame, clapping. “Looks like I hired the wrong person as team leader.”

“Give me the word,” joked Alison. “I’ll make some headroom.”

“You better not. He still might be useful.” Smith stepped into the room. “Where did you learn to fence like that?”

Alison gave Drake’s crotch a slight tap with the blade tip, and then placed the sword back in its crate. “I had an older brother and two cousins who liked to play The Three Musketeers, and I always got stuck being Comte de Rochfort. So I learned how to fight back.”

“Remind me to thank your brother if I ever meet him.” Drake placed his own sword back in its crate, fighting back the urge to rub his crotch.

“I warned you I didn’t want to fence.” Alison sounded more apologetic than angry.

“Next time I’ll listen.”

Jim walked over to the sofa and closed up the crates. “Let me take these upstairs before someone gets hurt.”

“Don’t you want to hear what Smith has to say?” asked Drake.

“Not particularly.” Jim turned to Smith. “No offense, but every time you talk with Drake, we wind up traipsing around some God-awful part of the city. Other than that, I like you just fine. If you’ll excuse me.”

Jim picked up the two crates by their handles and brought the swords upstairs. Drake stepped over to Alison’s desk, retrieved his iced coffee, and headed for his office, motioning for Smith and Alison to follow. Smith took a seat in one of the easy chairs in front of Drake’s desk. Alison sat on the sofa underneath the painting of Nosferatu.

Drake slid into his chair behind his desk and sipped the iced coffee. “Sorry about Jim. He doesn’t mean to be rude.”

“Don’t apologize. The kid’s right. My visits usually precede you going on a bad hunt.”

“But if it wasn’t for you, I’d still be sitting in a Washington jail being traded for a carton of cigarettes.” Drake took a long drink of coffee. “What’s on your mind?”

“During the attack on the row house the other day, how many snuffies did you encounter?”

“Five,” said Drake.

“The four we ran into upstairs and the one that tried to escape through the basement,” added Alison.

“But no master?”

“No.”

Alison shook her head.

Smith sat quietly, thinking.

“You think we missed the master?” asked Drake.

“It’s possible.”

Alison leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “Why do you think the master is still alive?”

“I don’t know if she is. None of the police who were on the raid reported seeing anyone leave the row house, and no one was found inside during the search. To be honest, I have no reason to believe the master is alive other than intuition.” Smith snorted. “Not much to go on, is it?”

Drake smiled. “One thing I’ve learned in this business is that intuition will save you nine times out of ten.”

“Maybe. But we’re still at a dead end.”

“Not really. If the master was killed during the raid, either by us or by the police, then chances are her ashes are still there. It would have been easy for the police to have missed them.”

“Little good that does us,” said Smith.

“On the contrary.” Drake finished the iced coffee and dropped the empty cup into the waste basket. “All we have to do is go back to the row house and look for her ashes ourselves.”

*     *     *

Fate always shined
on Preston. It had for as long as he could remember. Whenever life dealt Preston a shitty hand, which seemed to be frequently, Fate allowed him to draw an inside straight. It had served him well throughout his life, especially during his years with the police force. It enabled him to survive political crises when men with lesser luck had been crushed. Yet having good luck was only half the battle. Fate might let you draw an inside straight, but if you did not know how to properly play your hand then little fucking good it would do you. And Preston was a skillful poker player.

This time, Fate allowed him to draw a damn good hand.

As Preston made his way through police headquarters heading for the squad room, he marveled at how things had worked out for him once again. Rodriguez had become a liability. He knew as much as Preston did about these things plaguing the city, which made Rodriguez a serious threat to Preston if the former decided not to cooperate. Normally that would not be a concern, because over the years Rodriguez had proven himself to be a good cop, both reliable and loyal. Lately, however, Rodriguez had shown signs that he could not be trusted. First, he filed a false report about the attack on the row house. Then, even worse in Preston’s opinion, he lied about letting Drake Matthews and the others escape, indicating sympathy with Matthews, at best, or collaboration. In either case, Preston could no longer rely on Rodriguez and saw him as a potential threat to Preston’s plan to manipulate this situation to his own advantage. Preston decided to sideline Rodriguez from this investigation, getting him out of the way long enough for Preston to profit from the current crisis. That would have been next to impossible given Rodriguez’ stellar performance record and the partiality Roach showed toward him, until Fate intervened on Preston’s behalf.

Arriving in front of the squad room, Preston entered. As expected, he found Rodriguez reading at his desk. As Preston drew closer, he noticed the title.
The Science of Vampires
by Katherine Ramsland. So, the bastard really did believe they were dealing with the undead. Rodriguez glanced up and saw Preston approaching. He closed the book, set it on his desk, and placed a copy of
The Washington Post
on top of it, doing so in a nonchalant manner as if he were not attempting to hide anything. No matter. It just reaffirmed Preston’s decision to get Rodriguez off of this case.

“Afternoon, sir.” Rodriguez sounded cheery. “What can I do for you?”

Preston flopped down into the wooden chair beside Rodriguez’ desk. He dropped a manila folder on his blotter. “This came across my desk this morning. I need someone I can rely on to run herd on it.”

“Someone you can rely on?” Rodriguez slid the folder in front of him and opened it. “What’s wrong with this case?”

“What isn’t wrong with it? The victim is Michael Fletcher. He was the vice principal of Marion Barry Junior High School.”

“Was?” Rodriguez turned the page to a crime scene photograph showing Fletcher dead on the sofa, sitting in a pool of blood. “Jesus.”

“His wife returned home late last night and found him like that. Bastard bled to death. The sick part is, they never found his dick.”

“Charming.”

“It gets better.” Preston leaned forward and rested his left arm on the desk, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard. “One of the cops who first arrived at the scene checked out Fletcher’s home computer to see if there were any e-mails or instant messages that might offer a clue to who did this. That’s when he found those nine one-Gigabyte thumb drives tucked away in his desk drawer.”

Rodriguez flipped to the last page of the folder where the thumb drives sat in a clear evidence bag stapled to the back flap. “Let me guess. Bondage and SM?”

“Kiddie porn. Teenage girls. All thirteen to sixteen years old.”

“Fuck.” Rodriguez aspirated the exclamation. “Any of them from Marion Barry Junior High?”

“Not sure, but probably. We won’t know until you print out photos of the girls’ faces and show them around the school.”

“You realize it’s going to take a while to do that without panicking half the parents in the school system or having it wind up on the front page of the papers?”

Which will keep you out of my way while I deal with this vampire issue
, Preston thought. “I know that. That’s why I’m asking you do to this. I need someone who can not only get this done thoroughly, but can carry it out diplomatically.”

“I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“Not really.”

Rodriguez sighed. “When is the autopsy being performed?”

“It’s not. Since the cause of death is obvious, the family arranged to bypass an autopsy and go directly to internment.”

“Isn’t the family interested in catching the killer?”

Preston shook his head. “Given how he died, and the fact that the killer was probably a teenage girl, my guess is the family and the school are going to brush this under the rug and claim he died of a heart attack or something like that.”

“How the hell did they pull that off?”

“Fletcher had some influential friends on the School Board and in the mayor’s office who don’t want this to become a media circus. Fuck the truth and the sodomized teenagers, just as long as we keep the school system’s precious reputation intact.” Preston reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “Fletcher’s now at the Serra Funeral Home in Georgetown. Swing by there and pick up his personal belongings. And see if the mortician can give you any further insight into how he died. If we can’t get an autopsy, at least we might be able to get something from the preparation of the corpse.”

Rodriguez folded the scrap of paper and slid it into his pocket. “So what are my marching orders? Find out what’s going on, or make sure this whole thing stays hidden under the rug?”

“For now, find out what’s going on, but do it quietly. Once we have a better handle on what Fletcher was involved in and who his victims were, then we can reevaluate whether it’s worth expending political capital on this.”