Transylvania's Most Wanted (4 page)

“Yeah we’re from here,” he said glancing at
McElroy. “I was hoping you could pull the permit applications of
any witches that came in the past couple of days.”

“I can do that since you’re a policeman,”
the girl said like Tom wouldn’t have known that.

She went over to file drawer and pulled out
a folder. She brought it over to the counter and started pulling
out forms. Finally she laid about two dozen down on the counter and
Tom started looking through them.

“Usually we only get about seven or eight a
day, but since it’s Halloween tomorrow, business has picked up. I
think we’ve had six come in already today,” she explained.

Tom found what he was looking for. A form
filled out by Pandora. He quickly checked her answers to the
questions the form asked, but she’d left the most important box
empty, the one that asked where she’d be staying.

“Did you question her why she didn’t write
down where she’d be staying?” Tom asked pointing at the empty box
on the form.

“I did,” the girl said, “but she didn’t
know. You both seem awful young to be detectives.”

“Well, both of us were officers in the war,”
McElroy told her. “I think that helped.”

“Thanks,” Tom said straightening the stack
of papers before handing them back to the girl.

“Are either of going to attend one of the
fancy balls tomorrow?” she asked.

“We were just talking about that,” Tom said,
figuring he’d rib Inspector McElroy some. “Mac here’s planning on
going all alone to one.”

“Really?” the girl asked. “How come?”

McElroy blushed with embarrassment. “Well
it’s because I’m married,” he told the girl.

“That actually sounds like a reason you
should not be going alone,” the girl said. “Doesn’t your wife want
to go with you?”

“We’ll she has not passed over yet. She’s on
Earth still.”

“Oh, then you’re not really married then.
Not until she arrives here and both of you determine you want to be
married to each other once again. How long ago was it since you
died and came here?”

“Five months.”

“And how old is she?”

“Twenty three.”

Tom could see a glimmer of hope in the
girl’s eyes then.

“So it may be forty, maybe even fifty or
sixty years, before she dies. And she may remarry before then. Most
likely she will,” the girl said making her argument. “That’s a long
time to be all alone and I’m sure she was very beautiful and
charming for you to have fallen in love with her.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Of course she would never forget you, but
fifty years is a rather long time.”

“It is,” McElroy said, seeming confused
now.

“How long were you two married?”

“About a year.”

“I’m sure she will always consider that the
best year of her life,” the girl said, “but I would not want
someone I loved to never go out on a date again after I left. Maybe
just like to see a movie, or go on a walk with or attend a ball.
Did you know that you can ask the Administration if your spouse has
remarried?”

“I did ask actually,” McElroy admitted, “but
they want you to wait a year first before you inquire.”

“We’ll I can understand your reluctance not
to want to be unfaithful toward her, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind
you having a date for Halloween,” the girl said wrapping up.
“Especially Halloween in Transylvania City. I would go with you if
you wanted me to.”

McElroy was clearly torn, he wanted to be
faithful to his wife, but he also didn’t want to spend the next
fifty years sitting at home every night. “Well if you’d like to; I
suppose that would be alright,” he said.

The girl jumped a foot off the floor. “Oh
thank you,” she exclaimed. “And I am an excellent dancer.”

McElroy told her she would have to meet him
at the Hotel Triumph, since he would need to be there well before
the ball started, but he said he would bring her by a ticket later
that day.

They left then. Back on
the sidewalk McElroy headed back toward the TCPD building while Tom
headed for his car. He drove to the offices of The
Transylvania
Raven
and at the reception desk he asked where he could find Lou
Mitchell. He was told to go up to the second. Tom found him
drinking coffee with some beat reporters and a couple of them
seemed to know who he was.

“How can I help you detective?” Mr. Mitchell
asked as Tom approached. Tom recognized him as the photographer who
had snapped his and Rebecca’s picture the day of his encounter with
Stone on the Vlad the Impaler Bridge.

“Could I speak to you in private?” Tom
asked.

“Maybe you’d like to buy me a drink at the
pub on the corner.”

“Sometime for sure,” Tom said as they
stepped away from the other newspapermen, “but I’m hoping you’ll
have what I need here in the building somewhere.”

“What’s that?”

“Photographs of the U.R.R.K. zeppelin’s
arrival here twenty two years ago. More specifically a witch that
arrived here on it. She would be the only witch coming from there.
”

“
Let’s see what we can
find.”

Mr. Mitchell led him upstairs to where old
photographs were stored in storage room. A clerk there found a box
from 1922 on a shelf, and inside was a file labeled - Grand
Zeppelin visits Transylvania City.

Mr. Mitchell dumped the file out on a table
and they started going the photographs, more than fifty of
them.

“I wonder if this is her,” Mr. Mitchell said
sliding one out from the pile. He handed Tom the black and white
photograph.

It was of women carrying a suitcase. The
woman looked pretty, if rather ordinary. You would have never known
she was a witch looking at her. She didn’t wear a pointy hat of any
kind or even have much of long nose like witches usually have.

“What makes you think that’s her?” he
asked.

“It was me that probably took that photo. I
was there when the zeppelin arrived. The only people getting off it
were creatures. She don’t look like a vampiress. So I figure she’s
got to be a witch.”

Just behind the woman in the picture came a
golem. And while all golems are little distinguished from another,
this one was rather taller and slimmer than your typical golem has
more of a square shape.

“
Can I keep
this?”

“Sure, take it.”

“
Thanks,” Tom said. “I got
to be going.”

He headed for The Transylvania Cab Company
then, which is known for its bright yellow cabs that are easily
distinguished from The Vampire Cab Company’s cabs that are coffin
black in color. He found the supervisor and showed him his
identification.

“You must keep some kind of log book when
you send a cab to pick someone up right?” Tom asked.

The supervisor nodded and then gestured for
Tom to follow him. They went in to dispatch where a dispatcher
talked to cabbies over a radio.

“Where’d we send the cab?” the supervisor
asked.

“Pendle Hill, yesterday.”

He pulled a clipboard off a hook and ran his
finger down it. “We sent Willie out there.”

“Where can I find Willie?”

The supervisor picked up the shortwave
dispatch radio and asked for Willie to answer his radio.

“This is Willie.”

“Where are you?” the supervisor asked.

“Waiting in line at the Monte Christo.”

The supervisor looked at Tom then.

“Tell him to stay there,” Tom said. “Tell
him there’s a Vlad note for him if he can help me out with
something.”

Tom drove to the Monte Christo and found
Willie in the line of cabs waiting to pick up fares. He wore a
bright yellow cap as part of his uniform. Tom showed him Pandora’s
photograph.

“Yeah I remember her,” Willie said.

“You took her to get her permit at city
hall?”

“That was our first stop, yeah.”

“Then where did you take her?”

“Well she showed me a newspaper clipping of
a goblin she said she wanted to find.”

“A goblin whose photograph was published in
the paper?”

“That’s right,” Willie said. “You know the
one that helped capture Jack the Ripper.”

“Fixx?”

“That’s him.”

“Why did she want to find him?”

“I asked her that,” Willie said. “She said
she needed to find a friend of hers that she had lost touch with
and she figured Fixx, being so well connected and all, would know
how to find him.”

“So where did you take her?”

“So we made a few stops at some creature
friends of mine and one of them told us Fixx was staying at the
Shadow’s hotel.”

“You took her there?”

“That’s right. She went in while I waited
and then she came back out and told me she’d found Fixx and that I
could go.”

“Thanks,” Tom said handing Willie a Vlad
note.

He drove to Murder Street and parked in
front of the Shadows Hotel. It is a purposely run-down looking kind
of place, with a crooked sign that had been missing some bulbs for
some time now. Tom thought this was meant to give the place some
kind of scary ambiance that was meant to attract tourists, but it
had just the opposite effect. The place really did scare tourists
off.

A bridge troll was working the desk and Tom
flashed him his badge as he approached the counter.

“I figured you for a cop,” he said.

“Why?”

“Only humans that come in here are either
lost or they’re cops.”

Tom placed the picture of Pandora down on
the counter. “I guess you would remember her then?”

The troll looked at the picture; in fact he
brought his head down so close to it on the counter that his breath
fogged it. “We ain’t got any women staying here.”

“I think she just came in to see
someone.”

“Who?”

“Fixx.”

“I remember,” the troll said, nodding his
bulbous head. “Yeah she came to see Fixx.”

“
Is he here
now?”

“Is it noon yet?”

“Not just yet,” Tom said looking at his
watch.

“Then he’s in his room asleep.”

“What room is he is?”

The troll looked behind him where keys were
hung on a board. He found the hook that had Fixx written under it.
“204,” he said then.

“You got a key?”

The troll handed Tom a pass key and he
started up the creaky stairs. He found room 204, but didn’t bother
to knock; he simply unlocked the door and slipped into the room. It
was a tiny room with cheap furniture. Fixx, wearing pants and an
undershirt was sound asleep on top of the covers. His hat covered
his face as he slept on his back. Tom went to the side of the bed
and lifted the covers up, so that Fixx rolled off onto the floor.
Fixx rose to his knees, rubbing his head. He looked over at
Tom.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked, upset.

“Them hell hounds nearly killed me,” Tom
said. “I think you knew they were there.”

“I tried to warn you,” Fixx said.

“Not very hard,” he said walking around the
bed to pick Fixx up off the floor.

“What time is it?” Fixx asked as he sat on
the edge of the small bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“
Almost noon,” Tom said,
pulling the picture of Pandora out of his coat. “Why did this witch
come to see you?”

“She needed some help with something and she
knows me.”

“From the paper?”

“I knew her before.”

“How?”

“We both come here from the U.R.R.K.”

“You’re from there?” Tom asked.

“
I am.”

“What did she want your help with?”

“She wanted to know where to find him,” Fixx
said pointing at the golem in the picture.

“Who’s he?”

“His name is Titan.”

“Why was she looking for him?”

“He’s from there as well. He used to work
for her family, I think.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“I told her she could probably find Titan at
Dempsey’s gym, Titan’s the name he adopted when he arrived here,”
Fixx explained. “She didn’t know where that was so I ended up
taking her there.”

“
Dempsey’s gym, what’s
that?”

“Just the gym a lot of boxers work out
at.”

“This Titan is a boxer?”

“That’s right. He lasted almost ten rounds
against Stone a while back.”

“Did she say why she wanted to see him all
of a sudden?”

“No,” Fixx said. “But like I said, they are
old friends.”

“You said you took her there. Did you stick
around, see what they talked about?”

“They went down the hallway, but I stuck
around to watch the boxers working out, and then they come back and
say to me ‘hey you know Stone right?’”

“Why would they ask you that?”

“
They wanted to know what
is going to happen to him, with the charges he’s facing and
all.”

“Why would they care?”

“I don’t know, but I told them he’s probably
looking at a hundred years easy. Then they asked me if he’s allowed
to have visitors.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I said I didn’t know anyone who would want
to visit Stone, but I think he’s allowed to have visitors –
yeah.”

“Is there a phone around here?” Tom
asked.

“In the lobby,” Fixx said.

“I’d like to see a shirt on you when I come
back.”

Tom went down to the lobby, called the
station and asked to be transferred to the jail. When the jail
answered he asked them to check the visitor log and see if Stone
had any visitors the last couple of days. He was told a golem had
come to see him. Titan had used a fake name, but one of the
jailers, a boxing fan, recognized him.

Tom went back to Fixx’s room, wondering what
message Pandora had passed on to Stone.

“
How about you buy me
lunch since it’s almost lunch time,” Fixx said when Tom stepped
back in the room.