BloodWalk Lee Killough(1)

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you should take it easy for a while. Make sure he does, Harry. Here's your new
badge, ID card, and gun. Be sure to qualify with it on the firing range.
Here's your temporary driver's license. Now, I suppose you want to know how
we're doing on your redhead?"
"Yes, sir."
"We haven't found her," Harry said. "The APB is out with the names Barber
and Alexandra Pfeifer. Odd alias, isn't it? I suppose it sounds more authentic
than the standard Anglo-Saxon ones.
"It's all crazy. Did you know we dusted her apartment, but the only prints
we found belonged to your name on the letter, Madelaine Bieber, but she turns
out not to be Barber, but a sixty-seven-year-old woman who was arrested for
assault in 1941? We can't find her, either."
Garreth bit his lip to keep from telling them that Lane and Madelaine
Bieber were the same woman. Once he accepted Lane as a vampire, it followed
that her apparent age bore no relation to her actual one. If he told them, and
they believed him, then they would inevitably realize what he had become. He
had no desire to learn how they might react to that.
Little wonder, though, that Lane hunted so efficiently; she had had decades
of practice.
He asked, "Did you ever learn anything from the burned papers in the
fireplace?"
Serruto shook his head. "The lab only managed to bring up a partial
postmark with two of the ZIP numbers, a six and a seven."
"Doesn't that help?"
Harry sighed. "It might if we knew for sure whether they're the first or
second two numbers. If the ZIP is sixty-seven something, the letter came from
the middle of Kansas. If it's something sixty-seven something, it could have
been mailed in any one of nine states. I had the fun of going through a ZIP
directory to check the possibilities." He laughed. "Isn't being a detective
exciting?"
"Show him the picture, Harry," Serruto said.
Harry brought it in from his desk. Studying the photograph, Garreth saw
that most of the envelope had burned away. In what remained, he saw a postmark
circle with the two numbers at the bottom. At the top of the circle, partials
of three letters also remained, and below the postmark, an ornate M. He
recognized the letter as part of the address on the envelope he had seen. Too
bad they were unable to see the return address. Addressed to her real name, it
must have come from someone who knew her well and from a long time back.
"Did you learn anything useful from her driver's license or car
registration?"
"Just that the information given for the license was false," Harry said.
Serruto frowned. "We ran her through NCIC, even asking for Wants on anyone
fitting her description. I know she's dirty. She stinks of 'fugitive.' She
must be wanted somewhere for something."
Garreth found satisfaction in knowing that he was no longer the only one
who felt that way.
"Anyway, that's where we stand now," Serruto said. "More is up to you two."
He eyed Garreth intently. "Are you sure you feel like working?"
Garreth returned his gaze steadily. "I feel just fine."
Serruto waved them toward the door. "Then crack the whip over him, Harry."
Harry nodded, grinning. On the way back to their desks, he said, "I tried
calling you a couple of times, to see how you were doing, but you never
answered."
Garreth doubted a mere phone could wake him in the daytime. "I turned off
the telephone bell so I wouldn't be disturbed." Even the small lie bothered
him.
"Lien was so worried I almost drove over to check on you personally."
Garreth breathed a sigh of relief that he had not.
"She's down at City of Paris today. Why don't I give her a call to tell her
what the doctor said about you, and ask her to make enough sweet-and-sour pork
for three tonight?"
Garreth hoped the stricken plunge of his heart did not show on his face. He
could never eat sweet-and-sour pork again, nor eat with Harry and Lien again,
for that matter. He did not have to fake the disappointment in his voice. "I
wish I could, but . . . I have a date."
Harry's brows went up.
"A nurse I met while the doctor was checking me over."
Harry slapped his shoulder. "That's great. You get along well with nurses.
Glad to see you back in the game."
"Does this mean you'll be playing Cock of the Walk with the rest of the
boys now?" Evelyn Kolb eyed him over the cup of tea she was pumping from her
thermos.
Garreth paused in the act of putting his glasses back on. "What a sharp
tongue you have."
She smiled. He eyed her thermos. That might be how to reduce the number of
times he had to hunt. After all, the ability to store food was supposed to be
an advantage of civilization.
He walked over to her desk and picked up the thermos. "Does this work very
well?"
"Very well. Tea I put in in the morning is still hot enough to burn my
tongue twelve hours later."
He toyed with the pump spigot on the top. "How much does it hold?"
"A quart. Why?"
"I'm thinking of bringing tea to work the way you do. They come in larger
sizes, too, don't they?"
"Sure, but how much do you expect to drink in a day?"
He shrugged, noting with dismay how easily he lied these days and to how
many people. Why? Right now he could have replied truthfully that he was
thinking of buying a thermos. The wicked flee where no man pursueth, he
thought ruefully.
Garreth returned the thermos to her desk and watched her put it away in the
kneehole. A thermos full of blood would keep him several days. The flaw in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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