A Passing Curse (2011) (22 page)

To his right a glass case, lined with red velour, displayed several dolls crudely carved from wood. Their rigid faces seemed in pain, their bellies swollen as if pregnant. There were jade and obsidian stones carved into various shapes: a bear, a cat, several large fish. Sandals. Other knickknacks. A small museum of sorts.

He counted three of the jade fish, perhaps three inches long. Whales, he guessed from their shape. They were striking in a minimalist way, bits of rock for eyes, but there had been four. The one missing had left a darker shade of crimson in the red velour.

Resting on a half-moon table, below a large painting of a lady cutting off some guy’s head, a cardboard box, a one foot cube, seemed out of place.

Recessed high into the wall, he noticed a four inch square stainless steel plate, four notches cut in the plate to accept an attachment, possibly a TV set or security camera.

He heard a click. On the far wall an outline appeared on the emerald wallpaper, a hidden door opened, and Ajax Rasmussen stepped into the room, absolutely beaming. “Do come in, Reese. Do come in.”

“I am in,” he said. Ajax had primped. His black hair was freshly oiled. His suit impeccably flat. Even his eyebrows glistened. All for him? He wondered. Ajax was supposedly in his fifties, but his eyes looked much older, there was space behind those eyes.

Ajax Rasmussen walked briskly to the desk, sitting in the leather chair with the air of a busy man. “Please have a seat. I was surprised by your call about Father Ramon’s death, most distressing. After we spoke, I called the Chief. You have his complete confidence.”

Reese settled into the chair. “That’s reassuring.” Above Ajax’s head, a security camera, brushed nickel, scanned the room at snail’s pace, back and forth, back and forth.

“Imagine,” Ajax said, “a priest killed in Santa Marina, at the mission no less. I told the Chief that I would gladly help.”

“I understand that you knew Father Ramon - ”

“ - Fire away,” Ajax interrupted.

He started again, but Ajax held up his hand. “I want you to know that I am a secret fan of yours. The remarkable way you stopped the Anaheim Vampire, Richard Lamb. Ajax touched one long finger to his temple, as if to isolate his next question. ‘What did Lamb say when he died?’

“Say?”

“His dying words.”

“We weren’t speaking.”

“Nothing?” Ajax said, disappointed. “Sad. Well then, would you care for a cognac?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to the ebony sidebar and filled two snifters from a darkly amber bottle, finely cut and elegant, a piece of art. He placed the glasses between them like opposing chess pieces. “He didn’t call out for his mother? Many do that.”

“No,” he said and took a drink. “He didn’t mention your name, either, if that’s what you’re asking. He didn’t tell me who he worked for.”

Ajax smiled but said nothing. He nodded toward the glass. “How do you like it?”

“Courvoisier, isn’t it?” It tasted expensive and Courvoisier was expensive. He was surprised that Ajax was still trying to impress him. Wasn’t the house big enough?

“Very good. But not just any Courvoisier. L’Esprit de Courvoisier, to be exact. A blend, but old enough to possibly contain a few of the precious drops that escaped Napoleon’s lips. That’s the rumor, anyway, a bit of Napoleon’s private stock. His personal caravan carried thirty casks of it. Into Russia and back out again. Space not wasted on rations, powder, or the wounded. The decanter is Lalique.” Ajax rubbed his hands together. He was enjoying himself. “Was Lamb really a vampire?”

“No. He was a freak. A killer who liked to think he was special. A cut above the rest.”

“I knew it. Advanced parasites do not kill their donors. It makes no sense to call him a vampire.”

“I never called him a vampire. That’s what the LA Times called him, but that was just to sell more papers. Don’t vampires kill their victims?”

“On the contrary. They nurture them. Like the farmer nurtures his milk cows. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.”

“Lamb was a killer. Nurturing was beyond him. The vampire part was hype. Phony Hollywood stuff, trying to sell newspapers and TV commercials.”

“But weren’t the bodies bone dry? Didn’t he have their blood stored in his room?” Ajax asked. “That certainly sounds like a vampire to me.”

“He had blood.” Reese said. “But it wasn’t the victims’ blood. It was your blood.” He searched Ajax’s face, but saw nothing. Like staring at a desert.

“Mine?” Ajax seemed shocked and touched his arm as if looking for leaks. “How could he have gotten any of my blood? I keep a close eye on it.”

“Your company. Three bags of A negative, packaged by Cirrus Industries three weeks before I found it in Lamb’s closet.”

“What was he doing with it?”

“According to the coroner, he was drinking it. He drank your blood when he ran out of fresh blood. It was his stash, so to speak. His rat pile.”

“My blood is fresh,” Ajax said. “It is very fresh.”

“Fresh out of the body fresh.”

“I see,” Ajax said. “Did you find out how he obtained our blood? We’re very careful. Our blood only goes to hospitals and the occasional doctor.”

“He got it from you.”

“Me?”

“You personally.”

“That’s absurd.”

“It is.”

Ajax shrugged. There was a hint of a smile on his face. At least someone was having fun. “Didn’t you want to talk about Father Ramon?”

He’d come, in fact, to rattle the billionaire, but Ajax did not seem rattled at all. “Sometime early this morning,” he said, “Father Ramon was strung feet first from a rafter in his room. Do you know anything about it?”

“Is it information you want or an alibi?”

“I doubt if you come up with either, Mr. Rasmussen.”

Ajax, still having a good time, leaned back in the chair and pointed to the painting. “Gentileschi’s work. Judith Slaying Holoferness,” he said. “One similar hangs in the Uffizi in Florence. Been there? I think not. They now suspect theirs is a copy.” He touched his chest. “Myself, I do not know. What is a copy? What is an original? Nothing is new under the sun, No? The only real difference is time. Getting back to Father Ramon…I saw nothing. Was there something else you wanted?”

“Who might have killed Ramon? Any ideas?”

“Consider this, Ramon was killed in a room several hundred years old. What secrets does that room hold? Let us delve further. If there had been no room, there would have been no killing. Simplistic, perhaps, but if there were no mission, there would be no Father Ramon. There would be no reason for you to be here. It’s all very ontological, of course.”

“There’s Cheevy.”

“Cheevy?”

“He was killed yesterday. Right after I watched him ride his moped through your gate. The Chief didn’t tell you?” Reese asked. “I thought you two were buddies.”

“The Chief doesn’t tell me everything.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t,” Reese said. “So, you’re saying you don’t know Malcolm Cheevy? You’re not business partners? He told me he was helping you develop a computer game. He made it sound like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. He said you were the hero, a vampire. An advanced parasite, your words.”

“Did he, now?” Ajax asked primly. “A computer game? I have no idea what you’re talking about. As for you seeing a person named ‘Cheevy’ ride through the gate, well, the guards often hire people, usually transients, to clean weeds from the security cameras and the perimeter fence. I’ll check with them. You have no idea how many people claim to know me. There’s always a second cousin or some such trying to borrow money.”

“And you still feel misunderstood?”

Ajax smiled. “Exactly.”

“Maybe the guards hired Homer?”

“Homer?” Ajax seemed amused. “So many questions, sir. I’m having trouble keeping up. Who is Homer? Is there a connection between him and me?”

“You might say that,” Reese said. “Homer Wermels and Richard Lamb were the same person. Homer worked for you. This was right before he went to Los Angeles. This was right before he started mutilating young women.”

“Thousands work for me, and, unless you’re speaking of the poet, I don’t know a Homer. And I’m hardly on a first name basis with my employees. Not that it wouldn’t be charming.”

“You’re denying you knew Homer Wermels?”

“Emphatically,” Ajax said. “100 percent, yes. I thought you were worried about Father Ramon? But you seem to have come armed with a bag full of questions. I only wish I had more answers.”

“I’m thinking Cheevy made a last minute donation,” Reese said. “He came to see you. He came to tell you how his meeting went with me.”

“I killed him, too?”

“That’s your business.”

“Killing people?”

“Let’s just say you’re not doing anybody any favors when you buy their blood for the price of a bottle of cheap wine and sell it for enough money to buy a case of good scotch.”

“I admire your sense of imagery,” Ajax said. “But your depiction is naive, you see, times have changed. I’m in the business of saving lives, improving lives. My donor complex in downtown Trinidad, the Hemo Caribbean, is the area’s largest employer. Compensation that the donors receive feeds their families. What used to be a slum is now a lower-middle-class neighborhood. Do you have any idea what my expenses are? My overhead? I have to collect the blood. Test it. Separate the blood into its myriad components. I have to package it in a sterile environment. Label it. Ship it.” Ajax smiled and stroked his nose. “You have no idea. My overhead. I barely break even.”

“Like tending a herd of milk cows.”

“Touche’. Wonderfully put. You can’t kill your milk cows. You’d go out of business.”

“Your own words, again. You talk about a donor complex and donors, but you’re paying the donors. Isn’t that a contradiction?”

Ajax shrugged. “It’s a matter of semantics, Reese, only that. The farmer, after all, feeds his cows.”

He’d been looking at the speck on the corner of the desk for ten seconds before deciding it was blood. He touched it with his index finger and turned the finger so Ajax could see the red smear. “Did one of your cows get loose?”

Ajax shrugged. “Yes. I suspect the cleaning service. I believe they were here this morning. One of them must have cut himself.”

“Yes,” he said. “I can smell the bleach.” He figured Ajax had probably slapped the butler hard enough to throw blood and the poor bastard had missed the speck when Ajax made him clean it up. He almost felt sorry for both of them. And then again, it might be left over from Cheevy. He wiped his finger off under the desk. He stared at Ajax.

“More cognac?” the billionaire asked.

“Whiskey would be better.” He had not seen whiskey on the sidebar. “Cognac’s too weak to start the day on. Even L’esprit.” Get Ajax out of the room. Search it. “Did Napoleon start the day with cognac?”

“Milk and toast, I believe.”

“Graveyard stew,” Reese said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Milk toast. You eat it when you’re sick. When you have one foot in the grave. Graveyard stew is what my grandmother used to call it.”

“That is funny,” Ajax said. “Would you like some? My chef should have no trouble. He’s French. A little milk toast should be no trouble at all.”

“I’m not sick.”

Ajax wagged a finger at him. “One never knows. You may have your foot closer to the grave than you think and all it takes is one slip.”

“The whiskey’s fine.”

“Coming right up,” Ajax said with some finality. “Cognac is no foundation.” Like a ghost, he disappeared through the hidden door.

Mindful of the camera, Reese sidestepped to the large cardboard box. From: Cirrus Industries. To: Unicorn Medical. HUMAN BLOOD PRODUCT. A postage strip across the top read $41.50. The camera reversed directions. There seemed to be blood everywhere.

He stood in front of the painting, faking interest, certain Ajax was watching. The lady in the painting, brawny white arms matched to a studied glare, was sawing off the head of a man who, oddly enough, resembled Ajax. More blood. The lady, her hair jet black, also looked familiar.

The camera swept past him.

Inside the box, plates of cardboard crisscrossed, cutting the box into a hundred squares. He palmed a lipstick sized vial and marked the side of the box with his fingernail.

The camera was on him. If Ajax caught him snooping, there might be some excitement. On the other hand, Ajax might be enjoying the show. If the giant butler got involved, so much the better. He was a lot tougher than Cheevy. He doubted that Cheevy or Ramon had hit the butler, had put the marks on his face, no evidence that either had put up a fight. Maybe Ajax and the butler were involved with each other, a case of domestic abuse. Maybe Ajax liked to serve up a good beating on occasion, to keep the help in line and relieve tension. That would explain the blood on the desk.

Keeping an eye on the hidden door, he opened the desk’s top drawer, saw a large gold-plated cross with chain. Next to the cross was a small box. He shook the box, something rattled. Without thinking, he put the box in his pocket.

In the top drawer, he rifled through a bulging folder containing newspaper articles. One, dated August 1975, showed him leaning against a brown stucco wall in Watts, his blood appearing black in the picture. In the background, the shooter’s feet stuck awkwardly from an anonymous doorway. Headline: ROOKIE COP BLASTS ROBBER.

More articles, more killings, more mayhem. An article of him pulling three kids out of a burning apartment. He recalled that the mom, who’d started the blaze with her crack pipe, hadn’t made it.

The last clipping detailed the short but prolific homicidal run of Richard Lamb, filled with vampire speculation, plus a paragraph about Reese Tarrant, rogue cop, possible killer, possible whack job.

He heard the door click, too late. His hand slipped on the drawer before he could shut it, costing him seconds. Caught. He turned.

But Ajax was casually backing into the room carrying something.

He was already back in his chair when Ajax finally turned, fumbling with a silver tray loaded with a bottle of Jack Daniels and two large tumblers, acting as if he hadn’t wanted a confrontation, but had wanted Reese to search, wanted his attention. Reese said calmly, “You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”