Blood Walk Part 37

Holle's steps faltered only a moment as he crossed to slide open the doors. "Of course."

Smiling politely, he saw them down to the front door.

As it boomed closed behind them, Girimonte bared her teeth. "We ought to have leaned on him, Harry. You know he's lying."

And hiding a h.e.l.l of a lot, Garreth thought. "But not lying about knowing where Lane is."

Harry nodded. "I'm pretty sure he didn't know anything about Mossman's murder or the attack on Garreth, either."

Girimonte scowled up at the house. "I'll bet he believes Barber did it, though, and what about that story of some friend looking for her?"

"Oh, I think that's true enough," Harry said. "The lie is he doesn't remember the friend's name. We may have to chat with him again about that, but for the time being, since Records says he's clean, we'll leave him alone. Besides, we have reports to write, partner . . . which we'd better start if Garreth and I want to make it home before Lien's dinner dries up in the oven."

9

Lights by the front door and s.h.i.+ning through the dark from the living room windows above the garage welcomed them.Another homecom ing, Garreth reflected, squeezing the ZX into the driveway beside Harry's car. How many evenings had he spent here?

Dozens. Hundreds. After Marti died it had been more of a home than his apartment had been . . . a sanctuary from the stress of the job, from personal pain. He climbed over the gear s.h.i.+ft and out the pa.s.senger door.

"Harry! Garreth!" Lien rushed out of the house with her salt-and-pepper hair flying around her face, throwing herself into her husband's arms first, then breaking loose to circle the front of the cars and give Garreth a fierce hug that almost smashed the trooper gla.s.ses in his breast pocket. The warm, salty scent of her blood flooded him.

Thirst seared his throat and closed like a fist around his stomach. Garreth fought for the control not to push her away.

Fortunately she released him and drew back, smiling. "It's so good to see you. This is just like old times . . . the two of you home after dark to a dinner kept from total mummification only by arcane Eastern cooking arts." Catching both their arms, she propelled them toward the door. "Honorable husband, you could at least have sent Garreth on ahead instead of making him wait while you finished your reports. I would have had time to find out all the personal news that bores you, like what his Maggie is like, and we could have finished off four or five rum teas and gotten comfortably smashed."

Harry grinned. "See the virtue of a Chinese wife? She still scolds, but with respect."

Lien pinched him through his suitcoat.

Longing twisted in Garreth. The welcome and the fond bantering echoed so many other evenings. If only this one could be like those others.

Inside, Lien steered them past the stairs into the family room. They had changed it a little but the general flavor still remained . . .

sleek, contemporary American furniture surrounded with oriental touches . . . a Chinese vase here, a j.a.panese flower arrangement, shoji doors closing off the dining area, paintings by Lien with brush strokes as clean and elegantly simple as Chinese calligraphy.

Lien vanished through the dining room into the kitchen, calling back, "Your rum teas are on the coffee table. Relax while I rescue dinner from the oven."

Dinner. Garreth grimaced inwardly.How are you going to fake your way through thisone?

He and Harry kicked off their shoes, shed their coats, and unclipped holsters from their belts. Harry plopped onto the couch.

Picking up his cup of tea, he leaned back and propped his feet on the coffee table. "It really is like old times. Cheers."

Garreth curled up cross-legged in an easy chair. "Cheers." The odor of the rum wafted up from the tea, setting his stomach churning. He pretended to start a sip, yelped, and put the cup back down.

"Too hot?" Harry said. "Sorry."

"No problem. I'll just let it cool a bit." In the course of which he could "forget" to drink it at all. But there was still dinner to face.

Could he even tolerate being at the table? The tantalizing smell of Lien's sweet and sour pork flooded the room, leaving him torn between longing at the memory of the taste and the nausea of his new preference's rejection of it.

Harry mentioned something about an evening several years before. Garreth nodded automatically, eyeing the patio doors.

Perhaps a few breaths of night air would help clear his head and settle his stomach.

"Garreth," Lien called, "will you please come help me?"

Harry winked at him. "Careful, Mik-san. She just wants a chance to cross-examine you about your girlfriend and your love life." He heaved to his feet and trailed after Garreth, still holding his tea cup. "I'll come along to protect you."

Lien raised her brows at them. "I might have known both of you would come in. Very well, but no snitching bites before everything is on the table."

"Snitching bites? Us?" Harry said innocently.

Garreth smoothed his mustache. That was an idea.

He feigned pa.s.ses at the food while he and Harry helped move it into the dining area and sat down. And he kept talking, answering all Lien's questions about Baumen and Maggie at great length, telling every amusing anecdote he could think of, including Maggie setting up his patrol car. Lien seemed to have relaxed her rules about forbidding shop talk, but he did not want to push his luck.

Lien shook her head. "I really believe the biggest danger you face on the street is other cops. I remember when this one was in uniform." She pointed at Harry. "Nickles glued over keyholes, lockers turned upside down, windows and doors of other patrol cars sealed with fingerprint tape with the officers inside, and then, of course, we mustn't forget the Fourth of July, that wonderful holiday when he could throw bottle rockets into other patrol cars as he pa.s.sed them."

Harry grinned.

Garreth winked at him. "I guess I'd better not tell her about the time you and I unplugged the mike in Faye and Centrello's car and it took them most of the morning to figure out why they couldn't roger their calls or reach Dispatch."

Lien rolled her eyes. "Boys in blue indeed."

Miracle of miracles, she did not appear to notice that he only stirred his food around on his plate instead of eating it.

Then Harry, reaching for the pork a third time, stopped with his hand on the serving spoon to raise a brow at Garreth. "Hey, Mik-san, you're falling behind. Better clean up your plate before you lose your chance for seconds."

Now they were watching him. Garreth cursed silently. Could he possibly swallow one bite and keep it down for a few minutes?

The lurch of his stomach said no. So did memory. That last solid meal he had eaten, in the hospital after Lane attacked him, had done an instant reverse. "That's all right. This is plenty. My eating habits have changed since I left." The understatement of the year.

Perfectly true, though. Yet guilt p.r.i.c.ked him as though he had lied.Well, didn't you? By implication, by omission, hiding the truth and separating himself from two people he cared about. Starting a fire on his bridge he could blame only on himself.

10

He tried to sleep. With people here expecting him to live by daylight, he had to make himself rest at night. Surely he could manage that for a few days; he had before, in the beginning. The earth pallet and sheer tiredness should have helped, but his mind kept churning, tossing up images of Lane, Fowler, his grandmother, and Holle, of a small woman faceless but for violet eyes, of burning bridges and gothic houses full of shadows and chill with danger. Garreth rolled over and pulled the top sheet up over his shoulders, but the images continued to spin behind his closed eyes, mixing together in endless varieties . . . Lane and the bridge, Fowler and the bridge, his grandmother and violet eyes, Lane and Fowler, Fowler and Holle.

Fowler and Holle! Garreth came wide awake, sucking in his breath. He sat up in bed. That could happen. Harry had no probable cause for requesting a search warrant for Lane's apartment, but Fowler's pa.s.sion for details about his characters might well take him to Holle to charm his way into accompanying Lane's friend on the next visit to her apartment. Cold crawled up Garreth's spine. One look around, at the photographs duplicating some of Anna Bieber's, at the books inscribed to "Mada" and "Madelaine," and Fowler would know what the police file on Mossman's murder might have already suggested, that Lane Barber and Madelaine Bieber were the same person.

Garreth had not looked in this kitchen, but in her other apartment the kitchen had been empty, its cupboards barren of anything to cook in or eat from, not even a drinking gla.s.s. Lane, he knew, considered it a backstage area she never expected anyone to see and therefore not worth the trouble of stocking with props. What would it suggest to a horror writer, though, after reading the autopsy report on Mossman and seeing file photographs of Garreth's body and the wounds on his throat?

Garreth sucked in his lower lip. Fowler must not see the apartment. How to stop him, though? Attempting to keep the writer away from the apartment might draw his attention to it instead.

"d.a.m.n." His gut knotted. Throwing off the sheet, Garreth swung out of bed and paced the room. His grandmother was right; he should never have come back to San Francisco.

The urge to run beat at him. His suitcase sat invitingly by the dresser. All he had to do was slip away. Except it was too late to pack up and retreat. The very act of coming had brought the means for his destruction, and Fowler would still be here even after Garreth- The thought broke off in a hurried reverse. Pack up? He grimaced.You're a thick mick, you know that Mikaelian? If there's a stake in your future, you deserve it. He had been looking at the problem with Fowler from the wrong end. The solution was not preventing the writer from seeing the apartment, but keeping Lane's belongings out of his sight.

Relief and resolution washed away his weariness. Dressing, Garreth slipped out into the hall. Voices murmured in Harry and Lien's bedroom. He glided silently past their door and down the stairs to the front door.

Wrench.

Outside, lights still showed in the houses along the street, each behind its narrow strip of gra.s.s and hedge. Except for a man walking his dog and an occasional pa.s.sing car, though, the neighborhood lay quiet. Garreth drew a deep breath, savoring the briney scent of the sea and the muted symphony of city sounds . . . distant traffic, barking dogs, threads of voices and music from nearby houses. Very different from night in the hills around Baumen, where a cow's bellow or coyote's yodel carried for miles in the stillness and the stars glittered cold and brilliant as ice chips overhead, but no less enjoyable.

Climbing into the pa.s.senger side of the ZX, he reached back behind the seat for his thermos. A few swallows finished off the remaining blood. Now the question was, should he refill it and risk storage in Lien's refrigerator, or depend on nightly hunting withits attendant hazards?

That question could be answered later, he decided, crawling over the gears.h.i.+ft into the driver's seat. Turning the key enough to free the steering wheel, he slipped the car into neutral and let it roll backward out of the drive, then swung out and pushed it down the street. Harry knew the snarl of the ZX's engine too well for him to risk starting it in front of the house.

"Can't you get it started?"

Garreth spun to find the dog walker eyeing him from the sidewalk. The man's thoughts ran almost visibly across his face:Man pus.h.i.+ng car down the street in the middle of the night. Very suspicious. Possible car thief. Garreth thought fast. "The d.a.m.n battery's down. I thought maybe if I got it rolling, that'd be enough to turn the engine over."

He gave the car an extra hard push to make it move, then jumping in, cranked the key. The motor roared to life. With a smile and a wave at the dog walker, Garreth drove away.

Two blocks later he let out his breath, but even then he made himself drive around at random for fifteen minutes, watching the rearview mirror for patrol cars, in case the dog walker had gone ahead and reported him as suspicious activity. Of the several black-and-whites he spotted, though, none showed any interest in him. Finally he headed for Lane's apartment.

11

Cleaning out the apartment went more smoothly than he had dared hope. The neighborhood was even darker and quieter than Harry's had been. Garreth parked at the curb, slipped soundlessly into the house and up the stairs through the apartment door to release the dead bolt from the inside. None of the furniture went, of course, just her personal possessions, as on her flight from Telegraph Hill, and four heavy cartons he found in the bedroom closet held everything. No doubt the very boxes she had used to move everything in. Four soundless trips downstairs had them all stashed in the car, albeit somewhat tightly, then he relocked the dead bolt from the inside and left.

Coasting down the hill before he started the engine, it struck Garreth that of course packing her effects was simple; Lane had planned it that way. She kept only what had personal meaning, like mementos of her past, and things of value that were easy to carry, nothing c.u.mbersome or that could be replaced with a charge card at any department store.

There was the small matter of what to do with everything once he had it out, of course, but he had had the drive over to North Beach to think about it. When he left San Francisco he had stored his own belongings. Lane's things could join them. From the apartment he drove down to Hannes-Katsbulas Storage on the Embarcadero, parked, and slipped through the wire fence around the warehouse.

Less than fifty feet inside, three huge Rottweilers charged around the building, teeth bared.

Garreth stared straight at them. "At ease, fellows."

The dogs slowed, foreheads wrinkling.

"Sit."

They sat.

He patted each on the head in turn. "Good boys. Okay, come on with me. Let's go find the security man." And he trotted on with the three escorting him.

The security guard was having a cup of coffee in his office. Garreth's appearance in the doorway brought him jumping up out of his chair, clawing for his gun. "Who the h.e.l.l are you? How did you get in here?"

Garreth stared him straight in the eyes. "I have some things to put away. Will you please unlock the front gate for me?"

The gun barrel wavered . . . returned to the holster. The guard moved to obey. In ten minutes Lane's cartons joined Garreth's in the compartment a.s.signed to him.

Garreth did not let himself linger. Just seeing the furniture, the boxes of his own books and photographs, and the big pastel an artist in The Cannery had done of Marti, set pain twisting in him. So many memories, sweet and bitter, were entombed here. Would he ever again have an apartment where it could all sit in the open? Did he ever want to? He locked the compartment.

At the gate he patted the dogs and caught the guard's eyes one more time. "Please forget about this visit."

The padlock snapped closed through the gate chain with the guard's eyes staring through Garreth, already having forgotten him.

12

Driving north along the Embarcadero, Garreth sucked in his lower lip. Now what? He still needed information on Irina. Calling on Holle at this time of night was probably not socially acceptable, however, even if the man did keep company with vampires. His thermos also needed refilling. Despite the risk of Lien discovering the contents of the thermos, he decided he preferred to have several days' food supply on hand than to count on being able to slip out hunting every night. But it was rather too early now to skulk around piers after rats. Someone might see him. The traffic remained heavy along here and would be so until the clubs in North Beach closed at two o'clock.

North Beach. Garreth pursed his lips. Lane always found her supper there. Maybe Irina had discovered the same hunting ground. And maybe someone had seen her.

He parked just off the Embarcadero at the foot of Broadway. From there he walked up toward Columbus and within a few blocks had plunged into the show he thought about so often while watching Baumen's Friday and Sat.u.r.day night cruisers. Baumen must have tempered his memories, though, because he did not remember the sounds, lights, and smells as being this overwhelming .

. . a bright sea of neon signs, jewel strings of head and tail lights from four lanes of traffic, rumbling motors, honking horns, human voices calling and laughing, the raucous voices of barkers rising above all others as they shouted the virtues of the shows in their particular clubs at the humanity swarming along the sidewalks. The crowds jostled Garreth, people wearing everything from ragged jeans and torn sweats.h.i.+rts to evening clothes, smelling of sweat, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, perfume and cologne, and . . . blood.

Hunger surged in him, searing his throat. He shoved clenched fists into the pockets of his sport coat. Were the blood scents really so much stronger now than he remembered from that first visit up here after his change, or was it that all blood smelled alike to him then? Experience had taught him the subtle differences between individuals . . . and between the clean, salty metallic scent of healthy blood and the sour, bitter, or occasional sickeningly sweet edge warning of pollution by disease and foreign substances.

Good thing you'renothunting supper here, he reflected. So many of the men and women pus.h.i.+ng past him smelled of tainted blood, more than he had ever noticed in Bellamy or Baumen. It almost killed his appet.i.te. Almost. Some people, it was obvious from appearance alone, had been indulging in drugs and alcohol. With others it was just as obvious that their problem was disease.

Some, though, looked outwardly so healthy. In Baumen, where he knew people, he could usually stop to greet someone like that and in the course of a conversation casually remark that the person did not look well and perhaps should see a doctor. Here, as in the theatre in Bellamy, Garreth had to make himself let them go, even the man who pa.s.sed him arm-in-arm with a healthy-smelling young man.

Watching the couple, Garreth suddenly listened to his own thoughts and grimaced bitterly. He walked up what he had always considered a vital, pulsing artery, where before he had always found excitement in the crowds and color, and what did he think about? Blood.

Setting his jaw, he made himself forget about his thirst and look at faces. Familiar ones began emerging from the crowd, mostly hookers, pimps, pickpockets, and a.s.sorted other vermin out from under their rocks for the night. Unlike on previous visits to the area, though, they failed to recognize him in return. Several of the hookers even started to approach him, then veered off with a disgusted expression that told him they had belatedly spotted that indefinable something in his moves and carriage which stamped him cop.

Only one portly, well-dressed man failed to notice him; the pickpocket was too intent on prey, a couple at the corner with the flashy look of well-heeled tourists. Garreth watched the dip start forward to "accidentally" b.u.mp the man and in the course of it relieve the tourist of his wallet.

Garreth glided close behind. "I wouldn't, Hickham," he murmured. "The tree of evil bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The shadow knows."

Then from the corner of his eye while he pretended to be focused on a display of s.e.xy photographs outside one club, Garreth watched with an inward grin as the pickpocket flung around looking in vain for a known face that had to be the source of the voice.

An instant later, glee died into dismay. Beyond Hickham, pedestrians surged across the street at the light change. Among them came another familiar face . . . Julian Graham Fowler's.