Black Knight 02 - Back in Black (3 page)

"Do you know when rehearsal was due to be over?" I was trying to keep the questions simple, so he didn't have to push too hard to answer, but still felt like I was giving him some attention. Since I knew he had nothing to do with this, I could only hope that by running interference with the spouse, I was freeing Greg and Sabrina up to do the real investigating.
 

"He was supposed to finish up around ten, then walk down to meet me. We did this all the time, and nothing like this had ever happened..."
 

I gave him a minute to pull himself together before starting in on the more direct questions. "Do you know anyone who would have any reason to hurt Stephen? A jilted former lover, perhaps, someone he beat out for a part in a show, anything like that?"
 

He took a minute to think about it before answering; I had to give him that. Most spouses in this situation sanctify the injured party, and all of a sudden a wife-beating SOB with a twelve-pack-a-day Miller habit becomes a choirboy who helps little old ladies cross the street. "No. We've been together for more than five years now, and I'm pretty sure he's never cheated on me, and I've never cheated on him. And as far as competition at work goes, somebody might put Icy Hot in his dance belt, but I can't see a modern dancer beating someone almost to death." He gave me a wry smile. "Stereotypes exist for a reason, Detective. Gay men aren't all sissies, but we're not usually beating people up in alleys, either."
 

He had a point. I didn't know a whole lot about Charlotte's gay culture, if there was such a thing, but I couldn't imagine a guy putting another guy in the hospital by beating him with a point shoe. I then made a note to ask somebody if male dancers wore point shoes. "Alright, Mr. Glindare, that's all we need for now. Would you like one of these officers to drive you over to the hospital, or do you think you can make it there safely on your own?"
 

"I'll be alright. Just, please, catch the bastard that did this to Stephen." His blue eyes became fierce, and I revised that opinion about sissies on the spot.
 

"We'll do everything in our power, sir." I didn't bother to mention that our power included a few things not normally in the police arsenal, but I shook his hand and headed back over to Sabrina and Greg.
 

Chapter 4

Sabrina and Greg were back at the blood smear with a nebbishy looking man who was pointing some kind of laser measuring device at the wall. Sabrina introduced me to the blood spatter expert, whose name I promptly forgot, and motioned me over to the side, leaving Greg to geek out over all the button and LEDs on the man's toys.
 

"What did the partner say?" She asked.
 

"Husband." I replied absently, going through my mental notes to prepare the recap.
 

"Huh?"
 

"Husband. They were married out of state last year."
 

"Okay, what did the husband say?" There was something in her eyes that I wanted to ask about, but in a fit of discretion, I decided to let it go. Obviously there was something going on with this guy, and if she wanted me to know, she’d tell me.
 

"He doesn't know anything, nobody would want to hurt your friend, the victim walked alone this way fairly often, blah, blah, blah."
 

"Kinda what I figured. There's not going to be anything here of any use, either. At least there hasn't been at any of the other scenes."

"So now what?" Not being well versed in police procedure I didn't know if we all had to stand outside for the rest of the night in freezing weather, or just her. Like I said, the cold didn't really bother me and Greg, but with no blood of our own, it took a long time to warm back up after being outside for a while.
 

"We go to the hospital."
 

"Good deal, I'm getting a little peckish." Even if my blood hookup didn't work at the hospital, they were good sources of nutrition for so many reasons.
 

"You ate just a couple hours ago. How can you still be hungry?" Apparently there had been a few holes in Sabrina's vampire education. I blamed Greg.
 

"I had one pint tonight. The human body holds about ten pints. I need to replace all ten pints at least every three days, preferably every two. And for me to be at full strength, I need ten pints daily. So what you saw was the equivalent of a decent breakfast, but nothing near enough to keep me going all night, especially if we run into anything we have to fight."
 

"Wow. I had no idea." She looked a little pale, probably thinking about exactly how much ten pints of blood really is. The answer is a gallon and a quart, which is a lot of blood.
 

"Fortunately, most people don't. Now you have some idea why blood banks are always running short, even though they're constantly doing blood drives. It's not just humans and hospitals that are getting that blood; it's vampires too. And some of us aren't as thrifty and me and Greg."
 

"That must get expensive, and what do you do if your guy takes a vacation? Do you have to go back to...you know?"
 

"Eating on the hoof? Not always. Our guy has a nice little network of assistants and backups, and there are other places to get blood if really need it. Don't ask, because I promise you don't want to know. But sometimes, if supply gets tight, we have to hunt. Greg refuses, and he learned some kind of Zen yoga trick that lets him hibernate until the flow is restored, but I'm not against grabbing take-out from time to time."
 

She wrapped her arms around herself a little tighter. I could tell this was not what she wanted to hear from a guy who might be turning into more than an investigative asset, but I also knew she needed full disclosure if we were ever going to be anything serious. "I guess it's just a little unnerving hearing you talk about it like that, like it's nothing."
 

"Well, look at it from my perspective," I kept my voice calm, and purposefully didn't look into her eyes. I didn't want any spare mojo messing this up. "You guys make blood all the time. We don't. It takes you about 24 hours to replace a pint of lost plasma, and about a month to replace that many red blood cells. And you'll never miss it. So as long as I'm not drinking more than a pint or two at the most, the worst thing that happens is my donor feels a little woozy when they wake up. And in a few days, they're back good as new. But if I don't eat, I will die. I will get weak, then I'll get a little nuts, then I'll get really nuts, then I'll turn into a monster. Then I'll eat, with no regard for leaving anything behind, and then we've got a bigger problem."
 

"A new vampire."
 

"Yeah, a new vampire. If I go nuts and drain somebody completely, unless I take precautions, they're coming back. And most of the time, we don't want that."
 

"Most of the time?" She looked at me questioningly.
 

"Okay, I can't think of a time that I'd want to turn somebody, but it might happen. But yeah, we don't want that. So sometimes I go out for dinner. I don't go after anyone that's been fed on recently; and since Greg and I are the only vampires in Charlotte..."
 

"That you know of."
 

"Fair enough, that we know of, it's easy to avoid going back to the well too many times. And now you know far more about the feeding habits of vampires than you ever wanted to know."
 

"True, but it was probably pretty high on the list of things I needed to know."
 

"Which coincides with just about everything you never wanted to learn." Said Greg from where he'd joined us behind Sabrina. She jumped, he giggled, and she kicked him in the shin.
 

"Lay off the shins, people. Much more of that and I'm going to have to add to the uniform." He whined, rubbing his leg.
 

"Costume." I teased.
 

"Uniform."
 

"Costume."
 

"You wanna walk home?"
 

"Uniform."
 

"That's what I thought. Anyway, your Dr. Fishbein was very enlightening, Sabrina. As we suspected, a large part of the attack took place well above the ground, with the victim's head"
 

"Steve's." Sabrina interjected in a small voice. Greg toned down the professorial tone a bit and continued.
 

"Sorry, Steve's head was held at nearly eight feet off the ground and beaten severely against the wall. I asked Dr. Fishbein to speculate on what could have done such a thing, but he was reluctant to do so." Greg looked a little chastened, like the blood spatter guy had spanked him over something.
 

"Let me guess," said Sabrina, affecting a hunched posture and nasal quality to her voice "I do not
speculate
, Mr. Knightwood. I leave that to the
detectives
."
 

Greg looked relieved. "Yes, exactly. I wondered exactly what it was that he has against detectives, but I didn't want to stick my nose in where it didn't belong."
 

"There's a first." I shot.
 

Sabrina snorted and punched me in the arm. She was a lot stronger than she looked, that punch actually hurt a little. "He's failed his pistol qualifications seven times. It's the only thing keeping him from coming into the department and starting out as a gold shield, and he's a little bitter. Don't sweat him, we've got bigger issues."
 

"Like what?" Greg asked as Sabrina walked past him to her car.
 

"We gotta go to the hospital to talk to the victim." I said, following her.
 

"Oh good," he exclaimed, digging in his costume for his car keys. "I'm a little hungry."

Chapter 5

It was far from a comfortable ride to the hospital, mostly because Sabrina wasn't talking to either of us. I tried a few lame jokes, but they fell even flatter than usual. She was obviously worried about her friend, but I felt like there was something else going on. As we walked past the nurse's station on the way to Stephen's room, I grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop.
 

"What's going on?" I asked in a low voice. I didn't want a huge scene if we could avoid one, but I was not going in that room without all the information.
 

"What do you mean? There's nothing going on, it's just a case." She didn't look me in the eye, which is generally a good idea with vampires, but Sabrina was immune to our mojo somehow, not to mention the fact that she knew I'd never use it on her even if it worked.
 

"Sure," I said, sarcasm dripping from my words, "It's just a case where you know the victim and for some reason your heart is beating twice as fast heading to his hospital room as it was at the very bloody crime scene. So do you want to tell me what you're afraid of, or do you want to keep trying to BS a guy who can hear the very blood in your veins?"

Sabrina looked up and down the hall, and seeing no one, pulled me and Greg over to a sitting area by the elevators. She took a deep breath, and then began. "I wasn't telling you everything."
 

"Wanna move on to the things I didn't already know?" I shot back.
 

She took another deep breath, dashed a tear away with the back of one hand, and went on. "Stephen isn't just an old friend, he's my cousin."
 

"Oh crap." I leaned back against the wall. "And you haven't told anybody in the department because..."

"Because they'd throw me off this case so fast it would make your head spin, and I'm the only detective that cares enough to actually try to find out who's doing this."
 

"Not to mention the only with the appropriate extra-curricular resources to actually get anything done."
 

"And that."
 

"What else?" I asked, leaning in to make sure we weren't overheard as a nurse wheeled a cart of expensive-looking equipment past us.
 

"What do you mean?" Sabrina doesn't do innocent very well, and it works even less when she's been crying.
 

"Really? You're still going to try to lie to someone who can read your blood pressure from ten feet away?" I put a hand on her shoulder and looked in her eyes, no mojo. "Tell me. I'll do anything I can to help. And I won't even be a smartassed jerk about it, I promise."

"Stephen wasn't exactly the golden child in our family. His parents were – are – very Southern, and very Southern Baptist." She looked from Greg to me to see if we understood what she was saying. We looked at each other. We got it perfectly.
 

"So you're saying the he wasn't exactly welcome for Thanksgiving once it became obvious that he wasn't ever going to bring home any grandchildren." I said.