The Spinoza Trilogy (6 page)

I sat back and drummed my fingers on the table. Veronica’s story was credible. But it was hearsay. I needed to talk to the source.

I needed to find Veronica. Or Valerie.

I packed up my laptop, polished off the latte thingy, and decided to start fresh in the morning.

After all, I had had enough of vampires for one night.

Hell, for a lifetime.

Chapter Six

We were in bed together.

Roxi had wanted to make love, and I had just wanted to talk. I know, lame. Of course, all it took were a few seconds of persuasion and I soon saw her side of things.

Now, panting and sweating and feeling as if I might very well have a heart attack, I turned on my side and looked at her. Roxi was lying on her back, panting a little herself. Her skin glowed softly from the ambient light coming in through the partially open blinds.

I said, “There’s something screwy going on here.”

“There was a lot of screwy going on here, babe.”

“
Of the investigative kind.”

She told me to tell her about it and I did. I had never felt that sense of shyness with Roxi. Ever. It’s one of the reasons why I thought we might just have a chance of making it. I caught Roxi up to date on the case. As always, she had listened with complete attentiveness. Another reason I was falling in love with her. That, and she always called my big stomach a “donut”. You gotta love that.

When I was finished, Roxi said, “Lots of people are talking about vampires here, but no one’s talking about a girl who is no doubt seriously delusional.”

“
Or perhaps somehow suffering from the traumatic and horrific events of the night her parents were killed.”

“
Perhaps Veronica had been hurt, too. Didn’t Gladys tell you she showed up at her door bloodied and bruised?”

I said, “But the cuts and bruises could have just as easily been from running through the wooded park at night.”

“Fine. So let’s say she witnessed something horrific happen to her parents,” said Roxi. She crossed her hands behind her head and stared up. “Why is she going around telling people it had been a vampire attack?”

“
Maybe what happened to her parents was too horrible to deal with, especially for a fourteen-year-old girl,” I said. “And to make sense of it she replaced the reality with something fantastical.”

Roxi nodded, somehow following my logic. “With something that did make sense to a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“But vampires?” I asked.

“
Who knows. They’re everywhere these days. Not to mention we don’t know the depth of her psychosis.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. Outside her apartment I heard a lot of street noise. But the noise was steady, soothing. I felt my eyes growing heavy.

I said after a while, “So now she’s hunting vampires.”

“
Or what she thinks are vampires.”

“
And somehow convinces a few fanatics that she’s a vampire slayer.”

“
Wish fulfillment,” said Roxi. “These are vampire lovers, and now they have a girl in their midst who claims to not only have seen one kill her parents, but to hunt them as well. She’s practically their hero.”

“
Much like I’m your hero?”

She rubbed my donut. “Something like that.”

“So, if we can agree that there’s no real vampires, then what the hell is she hunting?”

“
That,” said Roxi, rolling over and kissing me lightly on the cheek, “is the million-dollar question.”

* * *

I woke up, gasping and weeping.

My son again. Same mad dash through the forest. The smell of burning flesh. The tormenting sound of running water. His blackened hand.

Jesus.

The mad dash through the forest was only in my dreams, of course. The reality had been far different. Twisted car metal, the smell of gasoline, people screaming, my son trapped...reaching for me. A fire under the hood, spreading rapidly. Myself half-unconscious, but too drunk to help my own son....

Sweet, sweet Jesus.

I wept some more, quietly, so as not to disturb Roxi, who slept contently on her side. A few minutes of this later, I realized grimly that Veronica and I were not so different. After all, we had both seen loved ones burning....

Burning....

Oh, God.

We have something in common,
I thought.
Something two people should never, ever have in common.

And as I sat there in bed, with fresh tears on my cheeks and complete hopelessness in my heart, I suddenly remembered something Roy had told me. Something that hadn’t made sense at the time.

“Her first attempt failed.”

I focused my thoughts, tearing them way my son. So what the hell had Roy meant by that? And now Veronica was apparently up north. How far up north? And what attempt had failed? Had she tried to kill a vampire and the attempt failed? Was she following a vampire north, somehow?

I got quietly out of bed and padded into the kitchen. There, I opened my laptop, fired it up, and soon I was online, jacking into Roxi’s wireless network.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t even know what to Google. Hell, I had the complete World Wide Web at my fingertips, and I didn’t even know where to begin.

And so I tried random phrases:

Vampires. Seattle.

Oh, sweet Jesus. That turned up more than I bargained for. Apparently, this was
Twilight
country. If Veronica was up there, then any information I had hoped to garner was lost to me. Still, I waded doggedly through fifty or so pages, but nothing stood out.

I tried
Washington, vampires.
I told Google to remove any mention of the word Twilight or Stephenie Meyer. Good, better. Not quite so many hits, and many of these pages were new to me. Still, after about a half hour of searching, nothing stood out. I moved on.

Portland, vampires.

I scanned and scanned. Same shit. This was feeling like a big waste of time. Needle in a haystack came to mind. I predicted that a serious beating was in Roy the bartender’s immediate future. He wasn’t telling me something, and I was going to kick the shit out of him until he gave it up.

I typed in:
San Francisco, vampires.

And on about the tenth page, something turned up. An article from the
San Francisco Chronicle
about a book signing taking place tomorrow. A popular vampire author. Not necessarily the break I was looking for, since I had by now come across a shitload of articles about vampire writers. But it was the title of the article that caught my eye.

“
Security Beefed Up For Popular Vampire Author”

Oh? I read on. The author, James P. Storm, had apparently been attacked by a fan four days earlier at the Glendale Barnes & Noble. According to the article, his assailant had been wielding a silver stake. The article went on to state that the attacker had escaped, and because of this, security had been heightened at all of Storm’s signings.

With my heart now pounding steadily in my chest, I scrolled down and found a picture of Mr. Storm signing books. He was smiling at one such fan as he handed back a book. The man’s skin was unusually tan. Almost golden. Hell, he practically glowed. But there was something else. Although he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, something seemed to be reaching down to partially cover the back of his hand. A tattoo.

I right-clicked and saved the picture. I next uploaded it into my photo viewer. Blew it up twice as big.

Indeed, it was a dark tattoo, but the picture was too pixelated to tell for sure what it was. But if I had to guess, I would say that I was looking at something that looked like a claw.

A dragon’s claw?

As I stared at the picture, completely and utterly fascinated, I found myself wondering if I was looking at an actual vampire....

Chapter Seven

It was early. Too early for someone who’s his own boss. But if I wanted to make it to San Francisco with plenty of time to spare by the 2:00 p.m. book signing at Borders, well, I had to get moving.

Roxi had barely stirred when I got up to dress. I kissed her on the cheek and told her I would be back tomorrow. She murmured that she loved me, which was news to me.

I smiled down at her and told her I loved her, too, but I think she was already asleep.

Now I was on the road with a Starbucks mocha between my legs and a belly full of scone. What the hell is a scone, anyway? I’ll Google it later.

The sun was rising to my right, in the east, as I headed steadily up the 5 Freeway. Or, as my friends in San Fran call it,
5 Freeway
, minus the article
the
.

San Franciscans are weird.

Cool, but weird.

So I was heading up
the
5 Freeway, listening to the wind whistle across my partially open window, and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.

Maybe I should have listened to Roy.

Maybe I should have laid off the case. After all, wasn’t Veronica, or Valerie, nearly an adult now? Hell, hadn’t she basically been on her own since witnessing her parents’ murder three years ago.

Yes, and yes, but one thing shouldn’t be forgotten here: More than likely Veronica was delusional. More than likely she had erroneously pitted the blame on an innocent writer of vampire fiction. And if she had attacked him with a fucking silver stake, well, she was still a threat to the man.

For his safety, she needed to be stopped.

For her mental health and her own safety, she needed to be stopped.

And I was just the guy to do it?

Apparently so. After all, I didn’t pick the cases, they picked me.

As the sun came out in full force, I dropped my shades and headed steadily north.

On
the
5 Freeway.

* * *

I called Detective Hammer of the LAPD Missing Persons Division. He picked up on the fourth ring.

“
So I’m a fourth-ring friend now?” I asked.

“
Since when were you a first-, second-, or even a third-ring friend?”

“
Now that’s just mean.”

“
I happen to be a busy man, Spinoza. You’re lucky I picked up at all. Now what the hell do you want? I’ve got a mother waiting outside my office who hasn’t seen her seven-year-old in five hours.”

My own stomach plummeted at the thought and my heart went out to her. I made a mental note to check up on her and offer my services.
              I said, “I need you to put me in contact with a buddy of yours on the San Francisco PD.”

“
You think just because I’m with LAPD that I have friends around the country?”

I waited.

“Okay, you’re right. I don’t have time to fuck with you. What’s this about?”

“
Our friend the vampire slayer.”

“
Talk to me. Fast.”

I quickly caught him up to speed. When I was finished, Detective Hammer whistled lightly. “Yeah, a real nut job. Here’s a name and number. Detective Sparks. A good man.” He gave me his number and added, “So this guy really writes vampire novels?”

“Yes, apparently.”

“
Aren’t most vampire novels about teenage girls running around and, you know, acting retarded?”

“
I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But you seem to be some sort of expert.”

He said something derogatory about me and my hygiene, reminded me once again that I was nothing more than a glorified mall cop, and hung up.

* * *

I called Detective Sparks with the SFPD and caught him up to speed. I did my best not to mention the words “vampire slayer” until the very end. And when I finally did—because I inevitably had to—I could practically see the detective’s eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead. I had never met Sparks or heard of him, but I had a mental image of a man shaking his head and his eyes rolling up.

“Vampire slayer?” he said.

“
Yes,” I said.

“
As in, you know, vampires?”

“
Yes.”

“
Okay, now I’ve heard everything.”

“
Sadly, now you have.”

“
And you have a picture of this girl?”

“
Yes.”