Blood Walk Part 22

The woman said something Garreth could not hear. Loxton swore at her and she slammed the door.

Along the block neighbors came out onto porches to watch. Garreth grabbed the nearest man and stationed him in the intersection, then cautiously moved back to join Nat.

"Tom, call off the dog and put down the rifle," Nat said.

"Go to h.e.l.l!"

The dog snarled.

"What do you usually do with the dog?" Garreth asked.

"He's never been loose before. Tom must really be loaded tonight."

Garreth thought about the coyotes. He sidestepped and when the dog swung toward the motion, caught its eyes. He said, "Cochise, sit down and be quiet."

Whining, the dog backed up a step.

Loxton yelled, "Guard, Cochise!"

Garreth held its eyes. "Sit."

The dog whined again, but sat. Loxton leaped to his feet in rage. "You d.a.m.n mutt! Guard!"

"Your dog respects the law, Mr. Loxton," Garreth said. How close did he need to be to exert influence? He considered what he wanted to do, tried to decide if there could be consequences as negative as the ones of influencing the doctor and Serruto to let him come back on duty. He saw no obvious ones. Pus.h.i.+ng through the gate past the dog, he focused all his attention on the drunken man. "Why don't you just put down the rifle and show us you respect the law, too, sir?"

Loxton stared back at Garreth, his expression smoothing from rage to blank, then slowly laid the rifle on the swing.

Climbing back into the patrol car later, Nat said in awe, "No one but Tom and Millie has ever been able to control that dog before."

Cold chased up Garreth's spine. Had he been a fool to draw attention to himself with one of his vampire talents? Or could he joke it away as they had the other night? He made himself grin at Nat. "The Dolittle Animal Talk course was one of the electives offered when I went through the Academy."

Lightning arced across the clouds overhead, followed a few seconds later by a crack of thunder. More lightning followed, and thunder so loud it shook the car.

"s.h.i.+t," Nat sighed. "There goes the calf roping."

More and more lightning chased through the clouds. Garreth's skin crawled. The awesome show went on for ten more minutes before the rain started. That came first as a light rattle of drops on the roof of the car, then in blinding sheets.

The rain did not noticeably thin the traffic downtown, though, just transformed it into a glittering light show, headlights and reflections of lights off wet cars and rain-slicked paving.

Over the radio came weather reports from surrounding sheriff offices. Some places high wind was bringing down tree limbs and electric lines. Maggie Lebekov announced she was coming into the station. "Tell 303 the town is all theirs."

Minutes later, though, her voice came over the radio again, high with excitement. "206 Baumen. 10-48, Kansas and Pine. One victim is trapped. I need an ambulance and the fire department's extracting equipment."

Nat switched on the light bar and siren and threaded the car through the traffic. "This is bad weather for traffic accidents. We'd better help."

At Kansas and Pine three vehicles sat jammed together, two pickups with a Volkswagen accordioned between them. A yellow-d.i.c.kered Lebekov and a tall boy in a cowboy hat yanked at the driver's door of the Volkswagen. Inside the car a girl screamed and pleaded for help. Garreth smelled blood and leaking gasoline even as he came piling out of the car.

"It's jammed," Lebekov yelled above the thunder. "The steering wheel is pinning her, too."

The blood smell flowed thick and hot around Garreth, stirring a storm of hunger. The girl must be bleeding. Peering into the car he saw what the dark-blind eyes of the others could not, bone protruding from the flesh of one leg under the dash and blood running from around it.

He fought down a cramp of craving. They had to free the girl before she bled to death! Could the fire department's equipment arrive soon enough? Minutes might be too long.

"Turn your face away," he called into the car.

The girl did not seem to hear. She went on screaming and pounding on the steering wheel. Garreth wrapped the tail of his suitcoat around one hand and drove his fist through the window. Breaking out enough gla.s.s to give him a hold on the frame of the door, he braced a foot against the side of the car and pulled.

"Garreth!" Nat yelled, "you can't-"

The door tore loose in a scream of metal. Garreth reached in and levered up the steering column, then scooped out the girl.

Some part of him saw a crowd of people staring dumbfounded but his main attention remained on the girl. She bled profusely.

He laid her on the paving out of fire range, in case the cars went up, and whipped off his tie. "Loan me a baton."

Lebekov handed him hers, and used her slicker to keep rain off the girl's face while Garreth make a tourniquet. "Nice work, Mikaelian."

Nat said dryly, "I see the Hulk Course of Accident a.s.sistance was one of your electives, too."

Garreth gave him a fleeting smile. He had acted without thinking. Would it set people to wondering? "Amazing what adrenalin will do, isn't it?" Not that it mattered. Whatever the cost, he had had to do it. He could not let the girl die.

She began sobbing hysterically. He reached down to catch her chin and force her eyes to his. "You're going to be all right, miss.

Just relax. If you breath deeply, the pain will ease up. Come on, try it. Take a few deep breaths for me, will you?"

She took one, then another.

"See. That's better, isn't it?"

She nodded. In the shelter of Lebekov's slicker, her face relaxed in relief.

Garreth felt his own tension loosen. He savored the clean wetness of the rain streaming down his face, drowning the blood smell. So this vampire ability to control others could be used for more than personal gain. It might actually serve others. So could his strength. In the sound and fury of the storm, that brought a little comfort to his personal corner of h.e.l.l.

8

"That's Mada in the middle," Mrs. Bieber said.

The photograph showed three little girls sitting on the running board of a twenties-style touring car in front of a house that looked like this one minus an addition and part of the porch. The description Mrs. Armour had given of the photograph in Lane's bookcase made it sound like a copy of this one.

"The other two are my daughter Mary Ellen, who's a year younger than Mada, and their cousin Victoria. Mada and Victoria were about seven then." She c.o.c.ked her head, smiling at him. "Are you sure you don't have anything more exciting to do with your evenings off than visit an old woman who isn't even a relative?"

Not when he needed to learn everything possible about his quarry. It meant using this friendly old woman, though, which filled him with guilt even as he smiled at her. "You're a friend, aren't you?" He bent over the photo alb.u.m. "She's about the same size as the others."

"She didn't start growing so tall until later. Here's a picture of her at ten."

There was no mistaking her now, towering over her younger siblings. With the October night chilly and windy outside, Garreth leafed through the alb.u.m and easily picked Lane out in the subsequent photographs, head and shoulders above any other child she was with.

"She's the brightest of my children. Let me show you something." Mrs. Bieber led him into the dining room and pointed proudly to rows of plaques on one wall, each announcing a First Place in spelling, debate, or archery. "Mada won all those, but she would have given up every one in a moment to be six inches shorter. My heart ached for her so often. She used to come home crying because the other children taunted her about her height. I never knew what to say. Maybe if I'd been older and wiser, but I was barely more than a girl myself, just sixteen when she was born. Later she stopped crying. She developed a terrible temper, flying into a rage at the least remark. She was always fighting someone. That only made matters worse, of course."

Of course. Children, and even adults, turned like animals on someone who looked or acted different. Lane must have made an easy target, too.

Mrs. Bieber said, "'I hate them,' she would sob to me, with such savagery in her voice. 'Someday they'll be sorry. I'll show them they don't own the world.' I tried to teach her to forgive, to be kind to her enemies, but it was many years before she could."

Garreth doubted that Lane ever did. She simply gave up threatening. After all, shehad her revenge . . . living off their lifeblood, reducing them to cattle, leaving some of them nothing but dead, dry husks. When she had been bitten by the vampire who made her, whoever it had been, wherever it had happened, how had she felt? Had she cursed, or wept in confusion and dismay, loathing her body for what it had become? Looking at the pictures in the alb.u.m, imagining the world through the eyes of the tortured child she had been, he thought not. He suspected that she had seen instantly what the change would bring her and embraced h.e.l.l willingly, even happily, greedily. In her place, perhaps he would, too.

In sudden uncertainty, he snapped the alb.u.m closed and thrust it back at Mrs. Bieber. Maybe this visit was a mistake. He wanted to know Lane, not sympathize with her, to understand how her mind worked, not feel echoes of her pain in him.

"Is something the matter?" Mrs. Bieber asked in concern.

He gave her a quick smile. "I was just thinking about your daughter's childhood. No wonder she ran away."

She laid her hand on his arm. "It wasn't all that bad. We had happy times here at home. It's still good when everyone gets home together. There's a tenseness and . . . distance in Mada when she first comes that makes me wonder if she's really any happier in all the glitter of those exotic places she goes, but at least she's content and happy here."

He carried the last remark away with him, echoing through his head, chewing at him. She enjoyed coming home. Only this time, instead of a happy family reunion and carefree holiday, she would find a cop waiting, a date with retribution and justice. Mrs.

Bieber would be hurt, too, when he arrested Lane.

Unbidden, Lien's quotation fromI Ching the day he left San Francisco came back:Acting to recreate order must be done with proper authority. Setting one's self up to alter things according to one's own judgment can end in mistake and failure.

Driving home through the windy night, Garreth felt a nagging doubt and wondered unhappily about the rightness of what he was doing.

9

Handing the keys to the patrol car over to Garreth, Maggie sighed. "Are you sure there isn't any way I can talk you into going on Afternoons? What if I give you my body?"

He grinned. "Danzig is the one to sell yourself to if you want Nights. What's the matter-rough s.h.i.+ft today?"

She grimaced. "Aside from breaking up another major a.s.sault between Phil and Eldora Schumacher, there was a ten-minute lecture from Mrs. Mary Jane Dreiling on how we're hara.s.sing her precious little Scott and I am single-handedly dooming the sanct.i.ty of the American Family by not sitting home breeding babies like a normal woman! My teeth still ache from smiling at her."

"What did you ticket little Scott for this time?"

"Playing Ditch'em at fifty miles an hour in that hopped-up van of his. I wish you'd had the watch. Nat's told me that every time some turkey starts giving you a bad time you just peel off your gla.s.ses and say, 'It's a nice day, isn't it?' and suddenly you're dealing with a p.u.s.s.ycat. What's your secret? Come on, share with a needy fellow officer."

Did he really use his hypnotic ability that much? Frowning, Garreth hefted his equipment belt, readjusting it. The worst part of being back in uniform was becoming reaccustomed to all the weight around his hips. He made himself smile. "It can't be told. The trick is my Irish blood, Maggie darlin'."Dearg-due blood. "It's the gift o' blarney."

She sighed. "I might have known. Well, have fun tonight. You're all alone. With Nat off, Pfannenstiel's working and you know he'll be on his b.u.t.t somewhere all night working nothing but his mouth." She disappeared through the station door of City Hall.

Garreth checked the equipment in the car and trunk before sliding into the driver's seat still warm from Maggie's body and smelling of her blood. He did not dread the s.h.i.+ft. Bill Pfannenstiel, who worked Evening and Morning relief, liked to talk and could be maddeningly slow, but he had twenty-five years of experience and knew every inch of the town. And unlike some of the older generation of officers Garreth had met, he was always willing to try talking through a situation before resorting to force. Garreth suspected that Maggie's dislike stemmed from Pfannenstiel's tendency to call herMaggie-girl honey .

Maggie's remarks about persuasive ability echoed around in his head while he patrolled.Did he use the vampire ability too often and without thinking? He tried not to, no more than necessary. He preferred to act like normal people.

He moved through the business district, checking doors and keeping an eye on the Friday night traffic. He spotted the Dreiling boy's blue van in the thick of it as usual. The kid saw him, too, and leaned out to give him the finger before pulling away.

Later as his and Pfannenstiel's cars parked together in the Schaller Ford lot while they watched traffic, Garreth asked, "What is it with the Dreiling kid? He's inviting someone to come down on him."

Pfannenstiel grunted. "Daring us is more like it. He doesn't think we can touch him. After all, his folks are plank owners."

Garreth blinked. "What?"

"One of the founding families. The town belongs to them."

Garreth eyed the pa.s.sing cars. "We'll see. The first chance that comes along, I'm writing him up good. It'll cost him his license."

Pfannenstiel sighed. "That badge is a pretty big stick, but you want to be careful you don't trip over it."

While Garreth digested that bit of philosophy the radio came to life, putting them back to work. He checked on a barking dog, then rounded up three juveniles who had ripped off two six-packs from a local liquor store. Their parents met him at the station. With the beer paid for, the liquor store owner dropped charges, but watching the boys being dragged away by enraged parents, Garreth wondered if juvenile proceedings might not have been gentler and more humane than what what waited for them at home.

"Like some cookies?" Sue Pfiefer asked. "They're fresh chocolate chips."

He shook his head.

The Evening dispatcher looked down at her plump self and sighed. "I envy your will power." The phone rang. "Baumen police:"

Her expression went grim listening. "We'll be right there:" She slammed the receiver down. "That was the Brown Bottle. Bill Pfannenstiel went over to break up a fight and someone hit him. He's unconscious."

Garreth raced for the door.

He found a crowd at the sidewalk outside the Brown Bottle and sounds of breakage coming from inside.

Each crash made the bartender wince. "Mr. Driscoll will be mad as h.e.l.l about this. Get that lunatic out of there."

"Where's Officer Pfannenstiel?" Garreth demanded.

"Still inside."

Garreth eased around the door, keeping low, baton in hand. He spotted Pfannenstiel immediately, sprawled against the bar with blood running down his face. Anger blazed up in Garreth. He would nail the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who did this.

A few patrons still remained . . . but flattened against the walls, too frightened to move toward the door.

With good reason. In the middle of the barroom floor, methodically reducing tables and chairs to kindling, stood a colossus of a man. Garreth guessed his height at near seven feet. His biceps looked bigger around than Garreth's thighs.

"Who is he?" Garreth whispered back at the bartender.

"I don't know. Part of the road crew repairing 282 south of here. His buddies smoked out when he hit Bill with a chair."

Some times talking wasnot the answer. This was one of them.