30 Days of Night: Light of Day (19 page)

The perpetrator (or perpetrators) had so far managed to avoid leaving much behind in the way of trace evidence. What there was, occasionally a hair or fiber or bit of soil or skin cells, was stacked up in the crime lab behind a lot of similar evidence from other crimes. That didn’t bother Larissa in the least, but Alex found himself grinding his teeth in his sleep, thinking that something was getting past them that might lead them to the killer.

They had arranged to meet a local detective at the Tinley Park location, and he was waiting in his Crown Vic when they pulled up. He made them for cops, got out, showed his badge. He was young, thirty tops, with thick blond hair and an open face. To Alex he didn’t look like he’d been on homicides long, because that job put lines in your face that he didn’t have. The detective’s arms and shoulders strained the seams of his navy blazer.

“Wow,” Larissa said.

“What?”

“He’s hot.”

“I guess,” Alex said.
If you go for tall, handsome, and muscular.

“Just saying.” She opened her door and strode briskly toward the local. Alex had to hurry to keep up.

“You the Chicago detectives?” the man asked, putting away his badge.

“That’s right. Alex Ziccaria, Larissa Dixson.”

“Pleased to meet you.” He shook Larissa’s hand first, then Alex’s. “I’m Greg Fielding. I’ve been inside already. It’s a mess, I’m afraid.”

He said it like he was personally responsible, like he had invited them to his house and failed to clean up for company.

“We’ve seen others,” Larissa said.

“Yeah, I heard there were some in the city. I guess someone’s branching out.”

“Chances are,” Alex said. “The only way to find out is to have a look, isn’t it?”

“What happens if they are related?” Greg asked. “We form some kind of interdepartmental task force?”

“Something like that,” Alex said. “You, us, sheriff’s detectives.”

“Cool. I mean … it’s not cool that some skeeve is icing people, here or in the city. But I haven’t been out of uniform that long, and I haven’t had any task force experience yet. Kind of looking forward to it.”

“Can we see inside?” Alex asked.

“Oh, sorry, sure. Come on.”

The yellow tape blocked off a yard that needed weeding and a house that could stand a paint job. The peeling wood siding was a reddish brown that bordered
on rust. Or dried blood, Alex noted. The windows were dirty, the curtains moth eaten and sun bleached.

“Who’s the victim?” he asked as they went up the walk.

“Rosana Orozco,” Greg said. “Legal immigrant, trying to get citizenship, but this kind of puts a crimp in her plans. She worked swing shift at a dry cleaner’s and cleaned houses for a few families in Oak Park.”

“Any drug connections?” Larissa asked. “Or smugglers?”

“Not that we know of. Seems like she was a pretty straight arrow.”

“Witnesses?”

“We canvassed the block. Nobody saw or heard anything. Here we go.” Greg opened the front door. Alex took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the last fresh air they would get for a while. Then he followed Larissa and Greg into the house.

Apparently cleaning other people’s homes didn’t leave Rosana Orozco a lot of time to deal with her own. It was neat, but not spotless, with a layer of grime on the kitchen cabinets and an overflowing wastebasket in the corner. The smell of her last meal hung heavy in the air. Budget store furniture and appliances, cheap dinnerware, some candles with saints on them. The pantry was sparse, the refrigerator bare. She had a stack of Spanish-language magazines;
telenovelas,
they were called. She had DVDs of American and Mexican movies, mostly romances. A shelf was filled with Happy Meal toys.

“She have a kid?” Larissa asked.

“No. Neighbor said she had a cousin somewhere in the area who came by sometimes with her two toddlers, but Rosana lived alone.”

“No roommate?”

“It’s a two-bedroom house,” Greg said. “But the second one is tiny. She has an ironing board in there, and a mending basket. She wasn’t making piles, but her landlord says she was never behind on the rent. And we found a bankbook. Twelve hundred bucks in a savings account.”

“Hardworking woman,” Larissa said. “Putting money away. Came to a new country, alone, to try to make something different of her life. It’s a damn shame.”

“And she did it the right way,” Greg said. “Followed the rules.”

“Where is she?” Alex asked.

“In her bedroom.”

“Show us.”

“You got it. Coroner’s people will be glad to get the okay to come and get her.”

“Was there any sexual assault?” Larissa asked.

“Doesn’t appear to be.” Greg opened the bedroom door. The stench came out in a rush. Rosana’s bladder and bowels had evacuated at death, and those smells overwhelmed those of blood and mortality. For now, anyway, although Alex knew that the smell of death was one that could conquer almost anything, given a little time.

Her body was on the floor, at the foot of an unmade bed. Like the others, her throat had been sliced open. The olive skin was pale underneath the pigment, with little blood in the veins to darken it up. Rosana was short, probably just topping five feet, if that, and on the stocky side.

“Has there been a crime scene team in here?” Alex asked.

Greg laughed. “That would be me,” he said. “We’re a small-town force, don’t have much in the budget for that sort of thing. Way I see it, good police work is all you need.”

Larissa looked at Greg and smiled. She had already been checking out the swell of his arms against that blazer.

Just what I need,
Alex thought.
For her to have a crush on some local yahoo.

Not that she was interested in him. That, he could live with. But if she started dating someone like Greg, and he had to hear about it every day?

That was the kind of thing that drove a man to the bottle, or worse. As far as Alex was concerned, it wouldn’t be a very long trip.

He just hoped he could stay sober long enough to find out who was killing women in his town, because drunk he wouldn’t be worth a damn.

Z
ACHARY
K
LEEFELD’S DESK WAS
like something from another era, a massive construction of wood with slabs of what looked like marble inlaid into it and ornate gold filigree accenting that. He kept its surface free of anything but a couple of telephones and whatever paperwork he was looking at. When he needed to use a computer, he had a separate workstation for that, in another part of an office nearly large enough for a formal ball. Where much of the black-bag budget went, Marina supposed. As long as she got hers, she wasn’t about to pass judgment.

Zachary Kleefeld labored under no such restrictions. He was a master at passing judgment and not shy about letting people know it. Just now he was looking at Marina with his head tilted slightly back, brows raised, wrinkles cresting across his bald head like waves moving toward shore. His nostrils were flared and she half-expected him to snort. “What do you know about someone named Barry Wolnitz?” he asked.

“Is he a vampire?” Playing innocent, not that he was likely to buy the act.

“No, but he was the
victim
of a vampire.”

“Then nothing, I guess.”

“You didn’t meet him when you went to Senator Harlowe’s office?”

“I met a lot of people, but the senator made the biggest impression.”

“Marina, we’ve shown Wolnitz’s photograph to the crew on the airplane you took that night. We know it flew the two of you to Philadelphia. Where Wolnitz died. His body was mostly consumed by a building fire, but not entirely, and the Philadelphia police department was very disturbed by what they found in the ruins.”

Marina shrugged. The truth was that she had been more shaken than she wanted to admit about Barry’s death. She kept picturing his face when she closed her eyes. She hated it when her people died, but at least they knew the risks going in. They were trained to be able to handle themselves. Barry’s life had been in her hands and she had screwed up. She couldn’t afford such mistakes, especially not when the lives of her own people were at stake, too.

If this was conscience, maybe she could find a way to have hers surgically removed, because she didn’t like it one bit.

“Okay, maybe I knew him a little. He blackmailed me into taking him along. But he made a mistake and let himself get eaten, so I left him there.”

Zachary shook his head slowly. “My God. What are we supposed to do with you?”

“Well, I don’t know. Do you have anyone else who’s as good at finding and killing bloodsuckers?”

“You know we don’t.”

“How about anyone else who has an understanding with Senator Harlowe, guaranteeing continued funding with no questions asked?”

“Not that either.”

“Then I guess you leave me alone and let me do my job. You could give me a raise if you wanted.”

He smiled, which made his jowls jiggle like semi-inflated balloons. “Let’s just leave things as is for now.”

Marina started to get out of the visitor’s chair. “If that’s all—”

“It isn’t,” Zachary said. “You’ll want to see this.” He shoved a photograph across his desk. Marina reached for it, perused it briefly.

“That’s the missing scientist,” she said. “Greenbarger.” He had been photographed from above, pumping gas into a pickup truck. Insects buzzing around overhead lights showed up in the picture as glowing spots.

“Larry Greenbarger, yes.”

“When was this taken?”

“Two nights ago, in Little Rock, Arkansas.”

Little Rock,
Marina thought. The agency had been buzzing about Little Rock. “So he’s alive.”

“Not necessarily,” Zachary corrected. “You heard about the little difficulty there the other day.”

“Of course. A vampire causing havoc in the daytime. I was planning to head out there this week.”

“We’ve determined that a household on the corner, right where the vampire went berserk, was used as
a base of operations. The house’s resident was found inside, dead and drained. Her credit card was used at a gas station the night before the event, but after she apparently died. When it was determined that the card had been used fraudulently, we looked at the gas station’s surveillance video. He turned up, and facialrecognition software identified the presumably late Dr. Lawrence Greenbarger.”

“So you think he’s one of them?”

“We
know
he is. Once we had that, we went back over the victim in the house. Greenbarger’s DNA, not the berserk vampire’s, was found on her wounds. He sucked her dry.”

“Fascinating.”

“Troubling, I’d say.”

“Well, that, too.”

“Obviously someone’s been in the house. Any sign of where he might be now?”

“Not that we’ve found,” Zachary said. “But you might want to get out there. I don’t know what the good doctor is up to, but we need him stopped.”

Marina smiled. This was the kind of challenge she enjoyed.

Especially when “stopped” was a euphemism for “killed.”

“I’m on it, Zach. Send me everything you’ve got. I’ll be on the road.”

“That’s just where we want you, Marina,” he said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “On the road. Please.”

L
ARRY FELT LIKE HE
had pushed his luck far enough in the South, for now. Little Rock was a fair-sized city, but he would feel more comfortable losing himself in the more populous northern states. He started working his way up Interstate 55, not worrying about covering much distance and leaving plenty of time to hunt, to find safe haven, and to continue his research as he went.

He had spent a couple of days at a motel in Overland Park, on the edge of Kansas City. Deeply immersed in some difficult calculations, he paid little attention when the sun went down. Hours passed, and Larry worked.

Then he achieved a satisfactory result. The answer he was looking for, or so he believed. He smiled and pushed away from the little motel desk.

He was starving.

He had been working so hard, he’d paid little attention to the demands of his body. He still had more calculations to go, to apply the answer he had just found more specifically to the problem at hand. But he needed to feed; now that he had noticed, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate until he’d had his fill.

He slipped from his motel room, shutting the door quietly behind him. The motel had two buildings, at right angles, with parking in the middle. Each building had two floors.

Larry walked quietly to the other building, found the staircase next to a humming soda machine and a grinding ice machine. Condensation from window air conditioners pooled on the sidewalk. He climbed the stairs and strolled along the upper walkway, glancing at each curtained window he passed. Finally, three rooms from the end, he saw a light burning and heard the faint mutter of a television tuned to a porn channel.

Stopping in front of the door, he tapped lightly. Immediately, the rustle of sheets sounded, then feet brushing across the carpet. A man opened the door wide, wearing only red bikini briefs, gold chains around his neck and wrist, and so much cologne that Larry almost choked. He had a bottle of cheap champagne and two glasses on the nightstand. “Really?” Larry said. “I don’t know who you’re expecting, but wearing that?”

“Hey, fuck you, who are you?” the guy demanded. He had a deep chest but a bigger gut, arms that showed the results of occasional exercise or manual labor, and skinny legs that seemed inadequate to support his weight. His hair was curly, his face florid. He started to swing the door shut, but Larry moved into it, shoving it open again, barreling into the man at the same time and driving him back into the room.

“Look, you gotta get out of here,” the guy began. “I got company coming.”

Larry cut his complaint off with a hand around the man’s throat. The guy made gagging sounds. His ruddy face started turning purple, his eyes bulging. Larry kept up the pressure, intensified it. The man went limp, his red briefs soaking through at the same time.

Not Larry’s ideal situation, but a meal was a meal. He dragged the guy into the bathroom, put him in the tub, sliced him open and drank deep.