30 Days of Night: Light of Day (22 page)

She hoped she could make her vengeance drawn-out and painful, so Larry would really have time to understand that you don’t fuck with Marina Tanaka-Dunn. Not unless you’re invited to.

B
EING INSIDE THE
C
ASE HOUSE
made Alex physically ill. His stomach churned and complained, and once he had to step outside and spit hot bile into the yard. He hoped he wasn’t contaminating any evidence.

Greg Fielding and Larissa were still inside, walking through the scene again and again, trying on different scenarios for how it might have all gone down.

Alex spat once more, took some gum from his pocket, unwrapped a stick and shoved it into his mouth. He didn’t like gum, but he kept some on hand for just such occasions, and because it was sometimes a handy icebreaker to offer to a witness or a suspect. Chewing hard, tasting a blast of spearmint, he took a last breath of fresh air and went back in.

They were still at it, rehashing events with all the enthusiasm of football fans running down the winning plays of the big game. “… did the mother last,” Greg was saying. “Because she wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight.”

“Yeah, I’m sure the killer took out Wanda first, then her mom,” Larissa said. “Boom boom.”

“Are we sure it’s the same guy?” Alex asked. “He’s
always picked single victims before, never a household.”

“Serials can escalate, right?” Greg replied. “Anyway, Wanda’s been drained. That’s a pretty good sign that it’s our so-called vampire.”

“She fits the profile in every other way, and so does the approach,” Larissa said. “Maybe he didn’t know there would be anyone else here. Or maybe like Greg said, he’s escalating. Just taking one life isn’t good enough anymore. It’s become old hat, not the thrill it once was.”

“Could be,” Alex admitted. “I’ll feel better if we can find some fingerprints or DNA matching the earlier crime scenes, though.”

Larissa met Greg’s gaze and did an eye roll. She didn’t think Alex could see, but he did. “I know,” Alex said. “I know how you feel about DNA, but hell, fingerprints? That’s old-time police work, isn’t it? The kind you’re okay with?”

“I’m okay with anything that scrapes the scum off the street, Alex,” Larissa said. “But you know we haven’t found anything useful at those earlier scenes. Plenty of prints and DNA, but no match to anybody we’ve been able to find.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t match one scene to another,” Alex said. “Then at least we’d know if we’re looking for the same guy here, or someone else altogether.”

“Same guy,” Greg said. “I can feel it.”

“You’ve …” Alex let the sentence trail off, unfinished. Greg had only been to one of the other scenes, the one in Tinley Park. He hadn’t seen the ones in the city, or the other suburban ones. Any gut instincts he had on this one were based on almost zero evidence.

But Larissa regarded him like he was some sort of cop genius, a badged Da Vinci.

As if her worshipful gaze wasn’t enough, she said, “I think you’re right, Greg.” She might as well have been shucking her top and sliding down her pants.

“I’m going to talk to the neighbors,” Alex said. “See if maybe somebody saw something.”

“Okay,” Greg said. “Good idea.”

Obvious idea, anyway. But Alex wanted to be out of the house, and away from Larissa and Greg before they started holding hands or something.

He went to the house directly across the street first. Lights burned inside and he had seen someone at a window looking out at the emergency vehicles when he had arrived. Those had mostly gone away now; a coroner’s bus waited to take the bodies away, and there were a couple of squad cars parked outside, along with the unmarked he and Larissa had driven down from Chicago.

He rang the doorbell, waited a minute, punched it again. Moths whirled around a light fixture above the button. A man pulled open the inner door and stared at him through the screen. He was African-American,
maybe fifty, stocky with short gray hair and an expression of distrust. “Yeah?”

Alex showed him a badge and jerked a thumb toward the Case home. “You know what happened over there tonight?”

“Someone killed ’em?”

“That’s right. You know them?”

The man shrugged. “Some. Not well. We stick to ourselves mostly, they did the same.”

“Still,” Alex said. “You’re neighbors. What happened over there … could just as easily have been here, right?”

“I guess. Maybe.”

“So let me ask … did you see anything tonight? Anything at all unusual, out of the ordinary?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Well, did you or didn’t you? It’s a pretty simple question, isn’t it?”

“Well, some people think the visitors are unusual, but you know, if you know how to watch for ’em you see ’em all the time.”

“The visitors?”

“From the Pleiades.”

“Like, UFOs?”

“Only that assumes they’re unidentified. It’s more like they’re illegal aliens—they got no papers but it’s no big secret where they come from.”

“And you saw these … aliens from the Pleiades across the street tonight.”

The man nodded, and even through the screen door Alex could see the liquid glint of madness in his eyes. “They hover over that house all the time. That’s why I keep my family away from there.”

“I see.”

“You think I’m nuts.”

“Did I say that?”

“Any time someone like you says ‘I see,’ that’s what they mean.”

The man was right, and there was no way Alex could see to extricate himself with any grace. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression,” Alex said. “But the fact is, I don’t have jurisdiction over residents of the Pleiades, so I may have to put this down as unsolved.”

“Wish I could help you more,” the man said.

“Yeah, me too.” Alex started backing away from the door. “Thanks for your time, though.”

“Glad to,” the man said, beginning to push the inner door closed. “Watch out on the next new moon— that’s going to be a very active time for them!”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll keep that in mind.”

After the door had closed, Alex walked back across the street to try the houses on either side of Wanda Case’s. This was the kind of cop work Larissa loved: canvassing the neighborhood, wearing out shoe leather, going one on one with the citizenry. So why was she inside the house, presumably examining forensic evidence, while he was out here?

Because he was weak, that was the only answer
he could come up with. Because he couldn’t tell Larissa how he felt about her—he’d hinted at it, tried to demonstrate it, but he couldn’t just come out and say it. And since she had developed her instant crush on Greg Fielding, he had hardly been able to talk to her at all. He ought to be brave enough to either say what he thought or turn his back and let her find happiness with Greg or someone else, if she could. Instead, he swallowed his pain and tried to hide.

He went to the next house, blinked, and rang the doorbell.

“I might have something,” Alex announced when he walked back through Wanda Case’s front door. The coroner’s people had been taking a body out, and he had to wait outside while their gurney passed through. He swallowed, tasting bile again. He was going to have to see a doctor one of these days, see if the burning in his gut meant ulcers.

“What?” Larissa asked. She came down the hallway, from the direction where the mother’s body had been. Greg followed. Alex couldn’t help looking for signs that they had been fooling around—makeup smeared, clothing out of place. He didn’t see anything.

“Well, discounting invaders from the Pleiades, someone around the corner …” He checked his notepad. “… Mrs. Williams, saw a white van parked there during the evening. For a couple of hours, she said. She noticed it because her husband drives the same kind of
van, for his locksmithing business, and at first glance she thought it was his and wondered why it would be parked where it was. Then she realized it wasn’t his, but it also wasn’t a vehicle she had ever seen in the neighborhood. The longer it sat there, the more notice she took.”

“She get a plate?” Greg asked.

“Just a partial. She only remembers the letters DMP because her daughter is Darla MeShelle.” He had to check the notes again to confirm the spelling. “I’ve already called it in, waiting on a call back.”

“Do vampires travel in vans?” Greg asked.

“I guess they’d have to get around somehow,” Alex said. “If they were real.”

“All I’m saying is, I’ve been thinking. I mean, we all heard about that Bureau guy, and what he said about them. That they’re real and all.”

“And the Bureau said he went nuts and murdered his own family, then became some sort of loner wack job living off in the Alaskan wilderness. I don’t put much stock in what he said.” He glanced at Larissa, as if for confirmation. Greg was sounding as nuts as the Pleiades guy. “
We
don’t.”

“Alex is right,” she said, backing him up. “We’ve basically discounted that theory. But Greg’s right, too, Alex … we keep finding bodies that have been partially or largely drained of blood. That’s not natural. What if we’re ignoring an important possibility because we don’t believe in it?”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Alex said. “But then, what if it’s the Wolf Man? Or a ghost? If we start down that road, where do we draw the line?”

Greg’s jaw was tight as piano wire and his hands were curling into fists. Alex didn’t want to let him push Larissa into accepting impossibilities, since it would only make everyone’s work harder. He had to keep up the pressure, and just hoped it wouldn’t make Greg attack him.

“It’s not like you haven’t heard other rumors,” Greg said. “I mean, you’re a big-city detective and all. You’ve heard about those attacks in Barrow. That woman sheriff from there who wrote a book about it and was the center of some big crisis in L.A. There’ve been plenty of stories.”

“I’ve heard them,” Alex countered. “And the same names keep coming up, when you get any actual details at all. Andy Gray is one of them. The Olemaun woman who wrote that book, and wanted to sell copies, is another. I’ve heard a lot of stories about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, too, but people have been trying to find them for years without any luck. That’s because there’s real life, and science, and there’s storybook nonsense, and I’m not going to go into an investigation looking for the storybook crap because that’s the best way to make sure you never get anywhere. We need to stick with the
real
leads. We have a vehicle description and a partial plate, and that’s what I plan to focus on.”

“Well, I think Greg might be on to something,” Larissa said. She had read the situation, kept her distance from the two men equal, made sure her hands were raised toward both. Playing peacemaker, even as she took Greg’s side. “Discounting any possibility is dangerous. Bodies keep piling up, and we’ve got to keep our minds open.”

Alex was about to answer when his phone rang. He flipped open his notepad to an empty page, clicked his ballpoint pen, and tucked the phone between cheek and shoulder. “Ziccaria,” he said. “You got the scoop on that plate?”

As he listened, he wrote down the information, pressing hard on the paper as if he could force the other two cops to trust him through sheer will.

He doubted it would work. But with them or without, he would follow through on this, their first real potential lead, and he would bring an end to all this vampire nonsense. Maybe this was even the edge he needed—if he could prove to Larissa that Greg Fielding was a nut case, he could shake Larissa’s crush on him.

He wasn’t sure which would give him more satisfaction, that, or cracking this case at last. Doing both at once, though, would be good. And doing it before another half-dozen blood-drained corpses showed up? That would be the best of all.

T
HEY MADE
Y
OUNGSTOWN THE
first night, most of the den sloshing around in the back of an RV, Rocco, Shiloh, and Angel in the cab. They all holed up inside that day, curtains drawn against the offending sun. But when night fell again, they were hungry and cooped up and had to run and stretch before the next leg of the trip.

Rocco made everyone stay put while he drove around looking for a good spot to play. He settled on a sad little enclosed mall on the city’s fringe. Blank spots on the walls showed where signs had once been, but few remained, and some of those were unlit, indicating that they’d be coming down soon. Clusters of vehicles huddled near the entrances, though, so the place wasn’t entirely deserted.

Rocco parked the RV near the food court entrance. “Okay, folks,” he said. “There are multiple exits, and people in stores with land lines and cell phones. We’re not going to be able to stay for long. But after we’re gone, they’ll be talking about us for a long time.”

“Let’s do it!” Goldie called from in back. “I’m starvin’!”

“What are you waiting for?” Rocco replied. “Get in there and make a mess!”

The back door opened and
nosferatu
poured out, screeching and howling and hollering. They dashed across the parking lot and through the double glass doors. Shiloh grabbed Rocco’s hand and held it all the way in, laughing and letting out an occasional whoop. They were the last ones inside, Rocco watching all the way in to make sure no one observed them until they made it in. The mall’s air-conditioning wrapped them in a chill as soon as they cleared the doorway.

Panic had already started. The food court wasn’t crowded, but there were a few diners there, and people staffing seven of the eleven restaurant spaces. The vampires had charged into the court and spread out quickly. Over the aroma of greasy food and the screams of the humans, Rocco smelled spilled blood and heard the satisfied gnawing of his kind. Pride filled him, the pride of a father watching his kid graduate from college or of a business owner seeing his enterprise succeed. He looked upon the carnage, and he smiled.

Maryann Choi didn’t
love
her job—she didn’t know how one could love working at a struggling shoe store in a failing mall—but she didn’t hate it, either. Yes, people’s feet sometimes stank, and some of them didn’t want to accept their real sizes, or wanted to wear shoes because of the style regardless of whether or not they fit correctly. Customers could be brusque, rude, even
downright nasty. But sometimes they were pleasant, nice, appreciative of Maryann’s efforts, and those were the ones who made the job more than simply bearable.