Midnight Bites (30 page)

“Not any of the usual suspects, anyway. Crime scene was bloody.”

“It's not their usual method,” he agreed. “So you're looking at . . . the human population?”

“For now,” Hannah said, “I'm looking at everybody.”

She dropped by Lindsay's bedside. Her parents were there, mother and father, with a couple of siblings hanging back and looking shattered and uncomfortable. Mom and Dad were each holding one of the girl's still, pale hands. The only sound was the steady, slow pulse of the machines. Her head was completely wrapped from the eyes up, but other than that, she looked unmarked. Pretty, in a fragile way that reminded Hannah of Claire Danvers from the Glass House.

One of her brothers broke down suddenly in racking sobs and turned away. Hannah respected the family's grief, but when the brother who'd wept left the room, she followed him to the chapel down the hall.

“Matt?” She'd already done her homework on Lindsay's family. She already knew all their names. “I'm very sorry about your sister.”

“Thanks.” His voice sounded rough and uneven, but he took some deep breaths and got it under control. “Why? Lindsay was never any trouble to anybody.”

“That's what I have to find out. Are you sure there's nobody Lindsay had problems with? Boyfriends? Maybe someone she broke up with?”

“She was a shy kid,” Matt said. He was a big guy—Morganville
right tackle in high school, she remembered, back in the day. In his thirties now, with the muscle softening to bulk. He worked at the father's used-car place as a salesman. Married, two kids of his own. As the oldest son, he probably still felt responsible for Lindsay even though she was twenty-one and her own person in every legal way. “I know she's had boyfriends, but it's not like she talks a lot about them to us. I guess the most recent one was a kid called Trip. I think his name's James Triplett, Jr. I'd probably want to go by Trip, too, if I was saddled with that.”

“Trip,” Hannah said, and nodded. “I'll check into him. Were they still together?”

Matt shrugged, a little helplessly. “She doesn't talk about that stuff to me so much. I know she brought him to Christmas dinner. He seemed like an okay guy, pretty laid-back. My dad didn't like him, but she's his little girl. Hell, I've got a daughter, and I'm damn sure going to hate every guy who comes near her.”

“Lindsay didn't have any sisters. What about close girlfriends?”

“Sure, a few. I mean, in high school, some in college, but I don't know who she's hanging out with now.” That question, curiously, had made Matt uncomfortable. “Why are you asking?”

“Because I'm hoping she might have said something that could give us a lead.”

He saw the sense of that, but reluctantly, and he finally gave a shrug. “I guess check her cell phone? I don't know.” He did, though. He knew something and didn't want to give it up; his body language seemed off. Hannah let him keep the secret for now, because the cell phone was in Lindsay's effects, and she'd already collected it for processing. She thanked Matt, trying to be gentle as possible, but his gaze was already fixed on the nondenominational stained-glass alcove at the front of the chapel. Lost in his own thoughts, or prayers.

She left him to it.

•   •   •

Lindsay's cell phone was full of contacts; though Matt had described her as shy, she seemed a popular kid after all. Hannah sat at her desk in the Morganville Town Hall building and went through the list methodically, checking off those that she knew about already. That accounted for about half.

She was still studying the list when one of Morganville's two police detectives walked in and took a seat in the chair across from her desk. “Hey, boss,” he said, and put a folder in her in-box. “Got the final write-up done on the Garza robbery. The case is going to court next month.”

“Slam dunk, Fred?”

“Three-pointer,” he said, and made an invisible basketball shot. “Didn't even have to get in close. Crowd goes wild.”

She didn't smile. She liked Fred, but she maintained a distance from those she had to manage; besides, he was a vampire. A vampire police detective. Trouble was, he was good at it—too good, sometimes. And she always felt that movie-star smile of his held just a touch too much arrogance for comfort.

Fred always dressed in suits. Today's was a nice gray thing, tailored and elegant, with a bright blue paisley tie and a lightly striped shirt beneath. His hairstyle still seemed faintly antique to her, as if he had to resist the urge to slick it down in 1920s style, but he had fully embraced modern fashion.

Hannah held out the phone list to him. “Anything jump out at you?”

He studied it, and without looking up said, “Is this from your dead girl's phone?”

“She's not dead.”

“Okay.” He shrugged, as if it really didn't matter to him, and then handed the paper back. “No vampires.”

“What?”

“No vampires in her calling list. Not a single one.”

Staying well away from vampires was good survival strategy for a human in Morganville, but what was strange was that Lindsay hadn't programmed in her Protector's phone number. In Hannah's experience, Morganville residents
always
kept their Protectors on speed dial.

But Lindsay hadn't. Even though her original Protector had died, she should have still had the previous number in the list, because people rarely remembered to delete contacts . . . and Oliver's number should have been in there as her new one.

“Anything else, boss?” Fred asked. “I've got a thing.”

“What thing?” she asked, and glanced up to meet his blue eyes. He had very lovely blue eyes, wide and innocent-looking. He must have led a lot of victims to their deaths with that friendly look, and she'd long ago stopped taking vampires at face value. She'd never known Fred to step outside the lines of vampire good behavior, but she was always on guard for it.

“One of my people asked me to be there for her daughter's baptism,” he said. “That okay with you? Nothing burning a hole on my desk right now.”

Vampires, as Hannah well knew, had religion—often the same one they'd been born into. There were Catholic vampires, and Jewish vampires, and Muslim vampires. A couple of religious institutions in town catered to vampires as well as humans with night services. Still, it was unusual to see a vampire attending any kind of daytime human religious ceremony, except funerals. “Sure,” she said. “Have fun.”

He gave her a smile that showed off even, white teeth—hiding the fangs—and stood up with an easy grace. “Good luck on that thing,” he said. “Sounds like human on human to me.”

“Maybe,” she said. Her gaze followed him out the door. “Maybe so.”

•   •   •

Hannah interviewed Lindsay's boyfriend, Trip; he'd been eager to help, clearly knocked off-balance by what had happened, but he hadn't had much to offer. She had a pretty clear sense that he was just what he seemed: a well-meaning guy with no real drama. Lindsay had good taste in stable guys. That hadn't helped her much, in the end.

Halfway back to the station, her cell rang. She glanced down and saw it was Oliver's number. When she answered, she didn't even have time to deliver her standard
Chief Moses
greeting before his voice was growling at her.

“Let's get one thing crystal clear, Chief Moses,” Oliver snapped. “You don't summon me for information. I summon
you
. That is the natural order of things.”

She counted to three, just to make sure she didn't sound ruffled. “I need to understand why the vampires avoided that crime scene. You're the one who can tell me.”

“Can I?” She waited him out. It was a long wait, one that crawled up and down her nerves, but she was finally rewarded with an irritated sigh. “Very well. She had an unusual scent to her blood. Off-putting.”

“Does she make regular blood bank donations?” Because Morganville residents were required to, and as her Protector, Oliver would have first choice of those donations.

“She's running behind,” he said. “Two months behind, in fact; she was just added to the list for a visit from our Bloodmobile. Prior to that, her blood wasn't unusual in any way.”

“What can cause that kind of change?”

“Illness. Some types of drugs, perhaps.” He paused for a second.
“It occurs to me that she's not the only one falling behind in the past few months . . . more than normal, I think. Now, I trust that's enough information for you to pursue your investigation. Call me again, and I won't be as welcoming.”

He ended the call without another word. She was fine with that, because her mind was busy working. Morganville always had some percentage of people who got behind on blood donations at the blood bank; usually the collectors let it slide at least three months before they started active pursuit, which involved driving the Bloodmobile to the deadbeat's door. She hadn't paid much attention to that; people knew how the system worked, and it ran without much police intervention.

But maybe it was worth a trip to the blood bank just to see what was going on.

•   •   •

The receptionist at the blood bank was Leanna Bradbury; the Bradburys were original town residents, though the family had thinned out through the years, and Leanna was the last of them. Given her charming personality, it wasn't too likely there'd be any more after her.

As Hannah pushed her way through the front door, the electronic bell dinged, and Leanna looked up. She didn't bother putting down her romance novel, and from the expression that crossed her face, she wasn't any too pleased to have a visit from the police. “Help you?” she asked, and then a shade too late to be polite, “Chief?”

“I'm looking for information about Lindsay Ramson's donation record,” Hannah said.

“Are you?” Leanna's plucked eyebrows rose up slowly. “Well, I don't know. I think I have to run that by Director Rose before I can let you see any actual records. There are federal regulations about—”

“Leanna, this is Morganville, not Dallas, and you've never so much as set eyes on anybody from the federal government, and you never will. Don't give me bullshit.”

“I still have to call . . .” Hannah gave her a steady glare, and the words trailed off into mutinous silence. Leanna's broad jaw set stubbornly. “Fine,” she said at last. “Come with me.”

She pushed away from the desk. There wasn't anyone in the shabby waiting room; the old magazines fluttered in the cold, dry breeze from the air-conditioning, but that was the only movement in the room except for the broad sway of Leanna's skirt backside as she led Hannah down the hallway, past the slightly murky tank with its lazily swimming fish. The place always smelled sharply antiseptic, but there was some undercurrent of smell to it, too—something Hannah had never been able to pinpoint, and was a little glad she couldn't. She made her donations here, but she never lingered. No one did. There were treatment rooms on either side of the hallway, each with empty donation stations. It had the oddly unsettling look of a movie set, waiting for actors.

At the end of the hall was a closed door with a sign that read
NO ADMITTANCE
. Before they reached it, Leanna turned left, to another door.
OFFICE STAFF ONLY
. Inside, a workstation with a fairly new computer and printer, a copy machine, and ranks of filing cabinets. Leanna made straight for the computer, logged in, clicked keys, and began printing pages.

Hannah looked at the labels on the cabinets. On one side of the room, the blue cabinets were marked
DONORS
. The other side, the red side, had only a single file cabinet marked
CONSUMERS
.

No mystery about that. The only odd thing was the vampires had allowed those files to be kept. They didn't usually allow that kind of thing from the human population; too much info on individual
bloodsuckers made them feel vulnerable. Not that their particular preferences in drinking plasma would make much difference.

“Here we go,” Leanna said with false cheer, and gathered up the sheets as the last of them hissed out of the printer. She straightened them with the religious concentration of an obsessive, and then stapled them with a single, sharp rap of her hand on the stapler. She held them out, and Hannah took them. “She's not the only one in that family who hasn't kept up with donations. Her brother—oh, wait. He's got a medical waiver. Some kind of blood disorder.”

“Did she have one?”

“It's not in the file. Her results looked like she was fine, up until this last one. Then she fell behind.”

“Thanks.” Hannah folded the pages and put them in her pocket.

“Those are confidential, you know.”

“So's my investigation,” Hannah said.

“Investigation?” Leanna really hadn't taken her nose out of her book, apparently.

“Lindsay Ramson,” Hannah said. “She's in the hospital.”

“Oh . . . I think she was due to get a visit from the Bloodmobile this week. Should I reschedule that, or—”

“She's in a coma,” Hannah cut in flatly. “So I don't think rescheduling would be such a great idea right now. I'll let her family know you were concerned.”

Leanna looked stricken, then bitterly offended. “Why, I had no idea she was so badly hurt—don't you go saying something like that! Why, they'll think I'm some kind of monster.”

“Yeah, Leanna, it's all about you,” Hannah said. “Thanks for this.”

“I'm telling Director Rose about this!” Leanna called after her as she left.

Not for the first time, Hannah thought it was a damn shame that as the law, she no longer got to flip people off.

•   •   •

The next stop, after a fast lunch at Marjo's Diner, was the Glass House on Lot Street. The old Victorian was ramshackle, but sturdy; the paint was fresh, and the kids were doing a decent job of keeping the place looking nice. Eve had put up a wind chime made of black, shiny skulls that clattered in the hot breeze, and someone had shoved a threadbare old armchair out on the porch, but other than that, it was just the same as always. A mirror of her grandma's old Day House.