Blood Walk Part 47

"Corinne Barlow?" The receptionist frowned. "I'm sorry but I don't know the name. What does she do?"

The rear wall had a large fireplace with a door to one side. Nothing identified what might be beyond it. Garreth remembered seeing double sliding doors on down the hallway. They probably opened into the same room as this door. Which would be what, an administrative office?

"Corinne works with computers," Fowler said.The accident report had mentioned that in vital statistics about the victim.

Garreth eyed the doorway to the hall. He could see the bottom of the stairs through it. Nothing indicated what lay up them, however.

The receptionist's frown deepened. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid-oh." Her breath caught. "Now I remember.

There was an Englishwoman. I'd completely forgotten her, she was here so short a time."

"She got sacked? d.a.m.n." Fowler feigned disappointment beautifully. "I don't suppose you'd know where she went."

"She wasn't fired." The lovely model's face settled into lines of sympathy. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you. She was killed in a car accident just a couple of weeks after she arrived."

Fowler also acted out shock and grief with the skill of a professional actor. "d.a.m.n." His throat worked, then he smiled faintly.

"Well, thank you. Sorry to have troubled you." He headed for the hall.

Garreth moved up to the desk . . . to the end, so that the receptionist had to look away from hall door to face him.

She regarded Garreth with surprise. "Aren't you with the other gentleman?"

"No, we just met on the steps outside. I'm Alan Osner."

The front door opened and closed. A moment later Fowler slipped past the doorway and down the hall toward the back of the house.

"I've been staying at Leonard Holle's-I'm sorry," he said contritely as her eyes filled. "I didn't mean to upset you." Inwardly, he noted her reaction with satisfaction. They knew Holle here all right . . . very well.

"No, that's all right." She groped in a desk drawer. "I'm fine."

"I take it you knew Leonard?"

"He was our chapter president." The groping hand came up with a tissue. She carefully blotted her eyes and inspected the damage with a small mirror from the same drawer. "It's been a terrible-who are you looking for, Mr. Osner?"

Fowler reappeared in the hall and started up the stairs.

"Miss Irina Rudenko. Leonard's housekeeper said I might find her here."

On the bottom step, Fowler started, turning to stare at Garreth for a moment before continuing up the stairs.

"I'm sorry," the receptionist said. "Miss Rudenko isn't here right now. Would you care to leave a message?"

"I'd rather see her personally." He forced his voice to remain casual, to ignore the drumming urgency in him. "Do you have a home phone for her?"

"I can't give out that kind of information, sir."

Garreth casually took off his gla.s.ses.

Such improbably blue eyes had to be a product of tinted contacts. The depth and wideness was her own, though, and for an uneasy moment as he caught her gaze, Garreth wondered if a vampire could ever become trapped in his victim's eyes. He forced himself to widen his focus beyond the twin cobalt pools.

A mistake. A pulse pounded visibly in her long neck. The tantalizing warmth of her blood scent caressed him, perceptible despite the spicy odor filling the room. Hunger exploded in him. She stared into his eyes, lips parted as though in antic.i.p.ation.

Antic.i.p.ation seared him, too . . . the feel of her in his arms-pliant, yielding-the throb of that pulse against his lips and searching tongue . . . the exquisite salty fire of her blood in his mouth. He started around the desk toward her.

Laughter whispered in his head . . . eager, mocking. Lane's laughter.

Garreth caught himself in horror. Jumping back, he jammed on his gla.s.ses and shoved his hands in his coat pockets to hide their tremble. He fought to steady his voice. "Do you think Irina might be in later?"

The receptionist blinked up at him with the puzzled expression of a waking sleeper struggling to orient herself. "I . . . don't know. Mr. Holle gives-gave her the run of the place since her mother works for the Foundation in Geneva, but sinceshe doesn't work for us herself we never know when-" She hesitated a moment, then smiled. "I guess I can tellyou , though."

The hair on his neck rippled. "Why me in particular?"

She gave him a brilliant smile. "Your aura, of course. People with black ones always seem to get preferential treatment around here. See, I have this gift for seeing auras. Mostly I don't tell people because they laugh or get nervous, like they're afraid I'll read their minds or something. The people here at the Foundation don't mind, though. Mrs. Keith, that's Mr. Holle's secretary, even said it's one of the reasons they hired me. I usually see black just around dying people, but yours isn't the same kind of black. It's . . .

bright, if that makes any sense, a very intense, fiery black. Very rare. Miss Rudenko has your kind of aura, though, and so does one of the bloodbank techs who works nights. The Englishwoman the other gentleman was looking for had it, too."

Garreth breathed in slowly. This had to be the vampire connection Ricky the hustler and Holle's housekeeper hinted at. He remembered the blood in Holle's refrigerator. How much of the blood Philos collected ended up somewhere besides hospitals and the Red Cross?

"Do you suppose it's genetic?" the receptionist said. "Maybe you're all related somehow."

Hunger still licked at him. He avoided looking at her throat. "We share a common bloodline, yes. You were going to tell me something about Irina?"

"Oh yes. She mostly comes by in the evening, when she's bored with running around town, probably. We're closed then, except for the bloodbank staff, of course,"-she pointed at the ceiling-"so when you come back tell them Meresa said for you to."

In the hall, Fowler slipped down the stairs and past the doorway. The front door opened and closed, and a moment later Fowler hurried into the front room. "I beg your pardon, but-"

The receptionist stiffened. "How did you get back in? The door is locked on the outside."

"Really? Perhaps it didn't closed solidly behind me. Be that as it may, I came to inform this gentleman that his car has apparently slipped out of gear and is inching its way along the curb toward freedom. I do think you ought to getout there. Immediately."

Garreth caught the emphasis. "s.h.i.+t!" He raced for the door. "Harry and company?" he muttered at Fowler.

"Quite. I spotted them from the hall window upstairs."

"How far?"

"Half a block."

Garreth's stomach dropped. That close? Step on the sidewalk and they would spot him. Yet where else was there to go? He looked around desperately as the outside door closed behind him.

The s.p.a.ce between this and the adjoining building caught his eye.

Fowler followed his gaze in dismay. "You must be joking. Only a shadow will fit through there."

It did look narrow. However . . . he could see Harry and Girimonte coming closer every second. Their attention appeared to be on each other and the open notebooks in their hands but the moment they looked up, they would see him.

He vaulted over the side of the steps and dived between the buildings. It was a tight squeeze. It had to be even worse for Fowler. Somehow, though, the bigger man worked his way through the gap after Garreth.

"G.o.d bless adrenalin, which lowers every fence, lightens every weight, and widens even the eye of a needle for a desperate man," Fowler panted as they wormed their way free into the alley behind the Foundation building. He brushed at cobwebs clinging to his suitcoat. "I do hope all this is worth something. Am I wasting my breath asking who this Rudenko woman is?"

Garreth blinked. "From your reaction out there in the hall, I thought you knew her."

"Not her." Fowler shook his head. "Mada's stories mentioned a Polish woman named Irina Rodek and I thought at first you were going to say her name." He lifted a questioning brow. "This is the fourth name now you've pulled out of the air."

"Not quite."Careful, Mikaelian. They headed down the alley toward the street. "She's the woman who asked Holle about Lane. The housekeeper mentioned the name."

The writer stared at him in disbelief. "I think I'm going mad. There must be a chain of logic tying all of this together, but it totally escapes me."

"No logic, I'm afraid, just the luck of the Irish." Garreth gave him a wry grin. "What did you find out about the rest of the house?"

"That it's quite true you can go anywhere if you appear to know what you're doing. No one questioned my story about checking the photocopiers. Fortunately I do know something about the contraptions from all the time I've spent tinkering with mine to keep it running. I chatted up a secretary in an office at the back of the house downstairs and some medical technologists and a computer operator on the first floor. None of them know the name Lane Barber; neither have they seen a tall, red-haired woman like Barber at the Foundation. What did the receptionist have to say?"

"I just asked her about Rudenko. I can't risk her mentioning to Harry and Girimonte that they're the second people interested in Lane Barber today."

Fowler sighed. "Quite. Well, then, did she tell you where to find Rudenko?"

Garreth shook his head. "I think she knew, but she wouldn't say.""Wouldn't say!" Fowler stopped short and spun around to scowl at him. "You didn't press her?"

Memory of what had nearly happened when he started to set him shaking again. "No."

"Christ! How the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l do you expect to learn anything! That creature is out there killing people and blaming you and you're walking away from potential sources of information!"

Why was he so angry? "Hey. Easy. You sound like you're the one being framed."

"And you're b.l.o.o.d.y casual about it all!" Fowler snarled. His eyes narrowed. "Don't youwant to find her? Don't youcare she's going to put you in the dock and maybe make you swing?"

"We use lethal gas in this state." A correct hanging that broke his neck would be one way to kill him, though.

Fowler's hands came up as though to grab him by the throat, but before he actually touched Garreth, he stopped short, blinked, and backed away, grimacing sheepishly. "Good lord. I am sorry. I don't know what the devil got into me. Identifying with you, I suppose . . . like I do with my characters. Forgive me."

Garreth eyed him. "No problem. The receptionist did tell me Rudenko comes in evenings. I plan to call back then. For now, you must be starved. Let's get something to eat and head back to Bryant Street before Harry puts out an APB on us."

8

Harry and Girimonte dragged into the squadroom after five. Harry headed for the coffee pot. Girimonte flung herself in her chair, propped her feet on her desk, and lit a cigar. Puffing it, she eyed Garreth and Fowler, who sat at Harry's desk with cups of tea and the Mossman and Adair files. "Well, don't you two look comfortable and satisfied with yourselves. Where've you been all day?"

"Retracing my nightmares," Garreth replied. True enough considering the incident with the receptionist.

"You mean visiting the Barbary Now and places like that?"

Garreth sipped his tea. When she and Harry played Bad Cop/Good Cop she must do one h.e.l.l of a job in the tough role. Her question smoldered with accusation. "Was someone killed there this afternoon?"

She blew out smoke. "Cagy, Mikaelian, but it doesn't answer the question."

"Oh? Is this an interrogation?"

Fowler slapped the Adair file closed. "What this is, is juvenile! I'll answer the b.l.o.o.d.y question. Yes, we visited that club,and the alley, and the Jack Tar, the Fairmont, and half a dozen other sites connected to the case. We also had coffee at Ghirardelli Square and visited a book store so I could buy a couple of little gifts." He picked up three books from a corner of the desk.

Fowler had spotted the Book Circus while they were working their way around the block back to the car and dragged Garreth in. "Call it professional curiosity, or vanity." He grinned at Garreth. "I want to see which of my books they carry."

Looking around as they entered, Garreth wondered if they would be able to tell. The store consisted of three houses joined by doors cut through the common walls. Book shelves covered every available inch of walls.p.a.ce, floor to ceiling, even along hallways, up staircases, and under windows. Tables of books and revolving racks also filled the center s.p.a.ce in bigger rooms. The sheer abundance left Garreth dizzy.

A clerk drifted over while they stood staring around, wondering where to start. "Is there something in particular you were looking for?"

"Books by Graham Fowler," Fowler said.

The clerk had nodded briskly. "Those would be in Mystery and Suspense. That's up the stairs and the last door on your right.

Paperbacks are in the same room. If you collect Fowler, you'll also want to see our British editions. His horror novels have never been published in this country. Go through that door on the left, clear through the room and the door on the far side, then up those stairs. The first door."

They visited both rooms. Looking over the British editions, Fowler grimaced. "Good G.o.d; they have everything. Doctors bury their mistakes, barristers argue about them, and politicians deny them, but the indiscretions of a writer's youth haunt him on bookshelves forever."

Garreth eyed the t.i.tles. Ones likeShadow Games andWinter Gambit sounded typical of spy thrillers, but others had a ring of horror:Nightoaths. Wolf Moon. Bare Bones. "Which are the indiscretions?"

"You don't really think I'm daft enough to say, do you."

Garreth reached for one calledBlood Maze.

Fowler blocked his hand. "Have you considered there might be sound reasons American publishers don't want my horror? If you want a book let me choose something."

Now Girimonte reached out a long arm to take the books Fowler had picked out. "The Man Who Traveled In Murder. A Safe Place To Die. A Wilderness Of Thieves.I've read the last one and some of your others. They aren't bad, though you do have a thing about tall, long-legged women." She pulled out the bookmark the clerk at the cash register had tucked into the book. "The Book Circus, Union Street." She tapped the ash off her cigar. "That's a bit off the path. City Lights is handier when you're running around North Beach."

Harry, Garreth noticed, had said nothing since coming in, had just poured himself coffee and without adding cream or sugar, moved over by a pillar and stood drinking the coffee, listening. Garreth's gut knotted. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he remembered Harry drinking black coffee.

Garreth looked around at Harry.

Expression inscrutable, Harry said, "A Union Street book store is in the neighborhood of the Philos Foundation, though."

The knots tightened.

"The what foundation?" Fowler said.

"The Philos Foundation, where you went this afternoon using aliases and asking for the daughter of a friend of Holle's and a staff member who died several years ago."

"Did we really?"

Garreth winced.Shut up, Fowler; you're only making things worse.

"Come off it!" Girimonte slammed the books down on the desk with a pistol-shot report that brought detectives whirling toward the sound and Serruto tearing to the door of his office. "While we were there a secretary came in to ask the receptionist if the copier serviceman was still in the building. The receptionist knew nothing about any serviceman. So the secretary described him-a tall, good looking Englishman, she said-and the receptionist said, 'I rememberhim, but he wasn't here about copy machines. Where did you see him? After I told him Corinne Barlow was dead he left . . . until he came back to tell the skinny little blond guy in the sungla.s.ses that his car was slipping downhill.' Skinny little blond guy in sungla.s.ses running around with a tall Englishman." Girimote stared at Garreth. The scent of her cigar circled him.

"Takananda!" Serruto's voice cracked like a whip. "I want all four of you in my office."