Midnight Bites (31 page)

Hannah knocked on the door and stepped back to wait. It didn't take long before she heard footsteps, and knew she was being checked out through the security peephole. Locks snapped back, and Claire Danvers offered her a quiet, calm smile only a little nervous around the edges. “Hannah,” she said. “Hi. What's up?”

“I'd like to get your opinion on something technical,” Hannah said. “If you've got the time.”

“Sure.” Claire stepped aside, and Hannah followed her in and closed the door behind her. By common Morganville courtesy, there was no invitation given, and Hannah made sure the lock was fastened. Second nature to folks here in Vampire Town. “What is it?”

“Got some blood analysis that I'd like you to see. I figure you've seen enough working with your crazy vampire boss to be able to spot anything interesting in it.”

Claire led the way back through the living room. Shane Collins was sprawled on the couch, asleep, with a comic book covering his face.
Wolverine.
That seemed appropriate. Neither of them commented on him, and Claire led the way into the kitchen, to the table.

“Can I get you something? Coffee?”

“Sure,” Hannah said. Her Common Grounds fix had worn off, and she had the feeling it might be a long night ahead. Claire pulled the pot off the burner and filled two cups, then carried them over. Hannah slid the folder over in exchange for the coffee, and Claire sipped as she opened it up to read.

“Lindsay Ramson?” Claire glanced up at her, startled. “She was attacked, wasn't she?”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “Word travels fast, I see.”

“If Monica's involved, it does. Do you think she—”

“No,” Hannah said. “I don't. She'd never have stuck around to claim credit for finding her if she'd done it in the first place. And she's easily bored. That girl was attacked a whole lot earlier.”

Claire nodded and went back to the blood tests. A small frown grooved itself between her brows as she shuffled papers. After a few minutes, she began laying the papers out in a specific order, turned toward Hannah.

“Something's happening to her,” Claire said. “See this result, right here?” She put her finger on a particular value. It had an impenetrable chemical code for a name, so Hannah just shrugged. “It means that something was happening to her blood. Just this last entry, though; the rest look pretty normal. I'm not a doctor, though. You'd need to have someone else look at it. She stopped giving blood, though, so I can't tell if it got better, or worse.”

“What effect would these changes have had on her blood?” Hannah asked. “What you're pointing to?”

“I'm not . . . really sure. But I think it would have made her anemic. Fewer red blood cells. Maybe it's something like leukemia.”

“Maybe,” Hannah said thoughtfully, and drank her coffee as she stared at the printed pages. “Maybe.”

But in that case, why try to kill someone who was already so ill?

She was so immersed in the thought that she almost failed to hear
Shane coming into the kitchen, but her peripheral vision caught the motion and yanked her vividly to attention. She looked in his direction, and it must have been too quickly, because Shane came to a sudden stop, holding up both hands in surrender. One of them still held the rolled-up
Wolverine
comic. “Don't shoot, Officer,” he said. “I'm not armed.”

“And not dangerous,” she said, at which he looked preciously wounded. “Good morning.”

“We keep night-owl hours around here. Best to stay awake when the creatures of the night prowl.” He advanced on Claire, who was still absorbed in the paperwork, and did a B-movie loom with clawed fingers.

She ignored him, except to say, “Do you want some coffee?”

“Why? Has all the Coke run out?” He veered off to open the fridge and pulled out a frosty can. “Thank God. You had me scared.” Shane popped the can's top and slid into the third rickety chair at the table, and ran a hand through his bedhead-messy hair. He gave Hannah a charming smile. “I'm going to be happy you're here, and not get all paranoid about why you're here.”

His eyes met Claire's, and held, and so did his smile. She returned it, dimples and all, and reached over to take his hand. “She's asking me to look at something.”

“Smart-girl stuff, got it. What's the deal?”

Claire's smile dimmed. “A girl got hurt today. It's her blood tests. Hannah thinks that it might have had something to do with why she was attacked.”

“Attacked? Is that 1950s code for . . .”

“She wasn't raped,” Hannah said. “She was hit in the back of the head with a blunt object and left to die.”

“Oh.” Shane sipped cola and fidgeted slightly in the chair, gaze fixed in the middle distance. He seemed to be debating something,
and finally he shifted and looked Hannah in the eye. “Look, you're Captain Obvious, and encouraging vampire resistance is kind of your deal with that, so I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know, but . . . was she one of the guinea pigs?”

“One of the
what
?”

“Oh, man. You don't know, do you?”

“Know what?” When Shane wasn't immediately spilling it, Hannah leaned forward, and he leaned back. “Tell me what
you
know. Now.”

He looked torn, and miserable, but he shrugged. He didn't look at Claire, although she was staring directly at him, eyes wide. “I only heard it through the grapevine. I thought for sure you'd already be all into it.”

“Shane.” She put her impatience and implied threat into it, and he looked away again, focused now on the sweating can of Coke in his hands. “Now.”

“Some older guy thought he'd mastered some kind of treatment that was supposed to make blood less tasty to vamps. He was dealing it under the table at a couple of clubs. All I know is it made some people sick, word got around, and he quit selling it. Said he was going to test it out more first.”

“Who was it?”

Shane shrugged again, still not willing to risk direct eye contact. “Never met him, Hannah. Sorry.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“I know. It's complicated. He's a friend of a friend of a friend. You know how it is.”

“A girl is lying in a hospital bed with her skull crushed,” Hannah said, and stood up. Shane, startled, did look this time. “I don't know if you've lost your courage, or your humanity, but either way, if you find it, give me a call.”

Claire took in a deep, startled breath, but said nothing. Shane slowly stood up. It was hard not to be aware of how tall he was, how broad-shouldered, and how still and hard his face had gotten.

“Don't go there,” Shane said. His voice had gone deceptively soft. “This isn't my fault.”

“It is if you know something that could be vital to finding this son of a bitch.”

“Maybe it's a vampire who did it. You going to go arrest him,
Chief
? How do you think that'll go? Slap on the wrist. Hell, if she's in the hospital, she didn't even die. Amelie probably won't even make him pay a damn fine!”

“Are you done? Because I can promise you, not every crime in Morganville is caused by vampires,” Hannah said. “And I
will
bring this man—or woman—to justice. You have my word.”

“I don't think we've got that in Morganville. Justice.”

“We won't if we don't fight for it.”

The silence stretched. Claire reached out and put a hand on Shane's arm, and he almost flinched at the contact, so intensely was he concentrating on Hannah. “Shane,” she said, in a steady, quiet voice. “Tell her. It's important. Don't make this some us-versus-them issue if it isn't.”

“And if it is?” he said, but then shook his head. “You're right. Okay. The word is that the older guy selling the stuff was named Matt. That's all I heard. I didn't ask for details because I didn't want to know. Don't know if that even helps anyway.”

Matt. Matt.

For a second, it didn't connect, and then it did.

Then it all made a horrible kind of sense.

•   •   •

Matt Ramson wasn't at the hospital when she stopped there; his mother was, still sitting silently at the bedside of her pale, bandaged daughter. Hannah waited a moment, out of respect, until the haunted woman's eyes rose to meet hers. “I'm sorry, ma'am. How is she?”

“No different,” Mrs. Ramson said. Her voice sounded as if it came from far away. “They're saying it'll be a good sign if she wakes up soon. But it'll be a miracle if she's the same girl she was before.”

“Miracles happen,” Hannah said. “You hold on to that.”

Mrs. Ramson nodded slowly. “Father Joe was here. He told me the same thing.”

“He ought to know, don't you think?”

“That new Baptist minister was here, too. And some of her friends.”

That seemed like a good opening, so Hannah asked, “Did the rest of your family go home?”

“My husband's gone to get us some dinner, but my sons had to go. They'll be back tomorrow.”

Hannah thanked her and, for a moment, rested her hand lightly on Lindsay's. She bowed her head. It was partly prayer, and partly promise.
I'm going to see it right.

Then she left and drove to Matt Ramson's house.

It was dark, so the place was shut up tight, in true Morganville fashion; the street outside was deserted, but most of the houses had brilliant lights burning inside and out. False security, but that was better than none, Hannah supposed. The house was a sprawling seventies-style ranch thing, one floor, and a couple of colorful kid-sized bikes leaning up against the porch railing. She knocked on the thick wood door, and it opened up to show her a tired-looking young woman with a toddler clinging to her leg.

“Can I help you?”

“Chief Hannah Moses. I'm here to see Matt.”

“Matt?” His wife looked suspicious, and afraid, and took a long step back. “He's not here.”

Didn't have to be any kind of a human lie detector to hear the stress in that lie. “I'm going to step inside,” Hannah said. “Is that all right?”

“I . . .” The poor woman didn't know what the right response should be. Vampires couldn't cross thresholds uninvited, and Morganville residents always took it as a sign of respect to enter to prove humanity—it was almost an instinct. And that instinct smashed into her need to cover for her husband, and paralyzed her long enough for Hannah to step across the doorway and ease the door shut behind her. “I don't think you should be here. Matt's not here!”

“Mama?” The little girl tugged at her mother's pants. “Daddy's in the dark place.”

Mrs. Ramson froze, eyes going wide, and then looked directly at a plain white door off the hallway.

The dark place.
That sounded horror-movie creepy, but Hannah knew what the little girl meant.

The basement.

She walked straight for the door, ignoring Mrs. Ramson's frantic lies, and pulled it open. It wasn't dark. All the fluorescent lights were on downstairs, and she went down fast and quietly, one hand on her sidearm.

Best to be ready.

Matt Ramson was destroying evidence. Too bad, but on the positive side, there was too much for him to get rid of quickly—beakers of chemicals, an entire
Breaking Bad
set covering most of the basement's square footage. He was wearing a protective breathing mask as he poured chemicals into a hazardous materials barrel.

“Matt,” Hannah said.

He whirled, saw her standing on the stairs, and she saw it in his eyes. Not just horror. Not just misery.

Guilt.

There were a lot of things he might have done, in that moment. He might have run, or charged her, or gone for a weapon.

Instead, he just put the beaker down, sealed the drum, and removed the breathing mask as he sank down on a plastic chair in front of a table. Defeated.

“I was trying to do good,” he said. It might have been to Hannah, or maybe to himself, or maybe he was talking to his sister half the town away. “The first stuff didn't work. Should have worked, but people got sick. I had to test it. I had to.”

“So you gave it to your little sister?”

“I told her it would help keep the vampires away. She was happy to do it.”

“At first.”

He nodded, turning the mask in his hands. “She started feeling sick, and wanted to stop. I told her it was natural, just the body starting to adjust, but she . . . she wanted out. When I asked her to keep going, she said she was . . . she was going to tell Oliver. Our
Protector
.” The scorn he put into the word was hot enough to burn. “You know what he'd do.”

“Stop you.”

“Kill me. Make me disappear. I couldn't let that happen. I have
kids
!” He looked up at her then, eyes shimmering with tears. “I just . . . I wanted to
protect
her. I've got a blood disorder, you know. And a donation waiver. They don't want what I have, and if I can give it to other people . . . It's not supposed to make her sick. Just . . . not so tasty.”

“Why'd you hit her?”

“She was walking away and calling Oliver. I hit her to stop her, that's all. Just to stop her from calling him. I didn't mean to . . .” He put his head in his hands and sobbed. “I thought she was dead. I thought she was
dead
.”

Hannah shook her head, walked over to him, and—as kindly as possible—got him up and handcuffed. She was just snapping the ratchet on his left wrist when she heard a slight creak on the stairs, and looked up to see Oliver standing there, watching her.

He wasn't trying to look like anything but what he was now—a dangerous predator. There was a shine in his eyes that wasn't quite full-on vampire, but was definitely not human.