Dark Hunger (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (3 page)

And she fell to the ground.

It was then that Rave spotted the gun on the floor not more than two feet away. She suddenly had it in her hand, a cold steel object. She wrapped her fingers around the grip and got her index finger on the trigger.

Then she stood up and pointed it at the man.

He didn’t notice.

And when he finally did, he froze. Then he got up slowly and said, “Give that to me.”

Rave suddenly remembered the safety.

And flicked it off.

“Stay back!”

Then something caught her eye—a wooden stake and a wooden mallet, lying on the floor near the edge of the couch. When she focused back on the skinhead, he was a step closer.

“Stay back I said!”

Suddenly the man lunged.

And Rave pulled the trigger.

Chapter Eight

Day Two—April 13

Wednesday Morning

______________

WEDNESDAY MORNING, Teffinger pulled himself out of bed before dawn, popped in his contacts, and jogged three miles up and down the Green Mountain streets through a black chilly rain. The storm fingered its way into his clothes and into his eyes. As soon as he got home it stopped, naturally, because that’s the way his life worked. He showered, dressed, and ate a bowl of cereal in the Tundra as he cruised east on the 6th Avenue freeway to headquarters.

The sun broke over the horizon and hung there as Teffinger came up on Wadsworth, blinding him as best it could.

He didn’t care.

The Denver motor-heads were already making their maniac moves.

He didn’t care.

He punched the radio buttons and couldn’t get a song to save his life.

He didn’t care.

This morning he would search Cameron Leigh’s house.

And get some answers.

BEING THE FIRST ONE TO WORK, as usual, he kick-started the coffee machine and then called Dr. Leigh Sandt, the FBI profiler from Quantico, Virginia, while the pot gurgled. She answered on the second ring. He pulled up an image of a classy woman, about fifty, with the best legs on the planet.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said. “I got something bizarre. Someone pounded a wooden stake into a young woman’s heart, as if she was a vampire. Have you heard of anything like that happening anywhere else?”

A pause.

“Who is this?”

He grunted.

“Not funny,” he said.

“What is it about that Rocky Mountain air? You get the most bizarre stuff out there, I swear.”

“No disagreement,” he said. “So do vampires ring any bells or what?”

No.

Not even close.

But she’d check around and get back to him.

“How are the women treating you?” she asked.

He grunted.

“They aren’t.”

“Really?”

“I’m in a dry spell like you can’t believe.”

“You?”

“Think Sahara,” he said. “Even the dogs in my neighborhood are scared to walk the streets alone.” He paused and when she didn’t say anything he added, “You’re actually pulling up a visual.”

“Yes I am and it isn’t pretty.”

SYDNEY WALKED INTO THE ROOM at 7:00, nicely dressed in a white pantsuit, wearing a sleepy, pre-caffeine face. She saw one cup of coffee left in the pot and headed straight for it, as if Teffinger would grab it if she let him get half a step.

Teffinger stayed in his chair and said, “I saved that for you.”

She rolled her eyes.

Then sprinkled creamer into a disposable cup, drained what was left in the pot on top and took a long noisy slurp.

Ah.

Good stuff.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked.

“I’m heading over to Cameron Leigh’s house,” he said. “You want to come?”

She chuckled.

“Let me put it this way,” she said. “Anyone who carries human blood around in their purse has my attention.”

“So you heard?”

“Everyone heard.”

“That reminds me,” he said. “Sometime today, I need you to get in touch with the hospitals and see if any of their red stuff has turned up missing.”

They made a fresh pot of coffee.

Filled a thermos.

And headed out.

TEN MINUTES LATER, they arrived at the victim’s house, which turned out to be a 50-year-old brick box on Race Street, with no driveway or garage. Teffinger circled the area for five minutes before finally finding a street slot big enough for the Tundra, two blocks over.

He felt good.

The coffee had entered his bloodstream.

The few clouds remaining from this morning’s rain were already burning off.

They entered the house using a copy of the key obtained from Cameron Leigh’s purse. When they opened the front door, a solid-white cat trotted over and rubbed against Teffinger’s leg.

He picked it up.

And couldn’t believe what he saw.

The animal had one blue eye and one green one.

Just like him.

Sydney noticed it and said, “This is too freaky. It’s like a little, furry you.”

Teffinger put the animal in her hands.

Not amused.

And headed for the refrigerator.

“No blood in here,” he said.

“Check the freezer.”

He did.

None there either.

Nor were there any plastic bags in the kitchen trash. “There’s no evidence that our mystery blood came from a hospital,” he said.

“You still want me to call around?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, it’s too important not to.”

Ten seconds later she said, “Hey, over here.”

She was standing at the living room wall to the right of the fireplace, a wall crammed with books, hundreds of them, on sagging wooden shelves dubiously stretched between cinder blocks.

“The mother lode,” Sydney said.

Teffinger scanned the spines.

“Vampire books,” he said.

“That’s an understatement,” she said. “I mean, look at all these things. I had no idea they even had books about vampires, much less billions of them.”

“Interesting.”

“This is way beyond an obsession,” Sydney said.

True.

Teffinger leafed through a few of them and then headed back to the refrigerator and poured a bowl of milk for the cat, which immediately attacked it with a fast pink tongue.

“You own him now,” Sydney said.

“Oh no.”

“What are you going to do? Just leave him here?”

“This is animal protection’s problem, not mine.”

“Animal protection? He’ll spend two weeks in a cage and then be put down,” Sydney said. “Is that what you want?”

He grunted.

“He wouldn’t do that to you, if you were the cat,” she added.

“How do you know?”

“Because even I wouldn’t do that to you, Teffinger.”

He raked his hair back with his fingers.

“So you say.”

NOTHING OF RELEVANCE TURNED UP for some time. Then they found something interesting in a desk drawer—a handwritten family tree. At the bottom was the name “Rave Lafelle.”

At the top was “Evan Radcliffe.”

“1837-1871.”

“Stake/Burned.”

“So what is this supposed to mean?” Teffinger asked, pointing. “That this guy was a vampire? And she was related to him?”

Sydney cocked her head.

“Looks that way.”

Teffinger shifted feet.

“I wonder if this thing is legit,” he said.

“As obsessed as she was, she checked it twenty times,” Sydney said. “You can bet your cat on it.”

THEY TRIED TO BOOT UP THE VICTIM’S LAPTOP but it had a security password that didn’t respond to Cameron or Vampire.

So Sydney tucked it under her arm.

And Teffinger tucked the cat under his.

And they headed outside.

“Wait a minute,” Teffinger said.

“What?”

“Wait right here.”

He ducked back inside the house and returned two minutes later.

“Alley,” he said.

“Huh?”

“That’s the cat’s name—Alley.”

“How’d you find out?”

“The grocery list on the counter says, Food for Alley.”

“You’re such a freaking detective sometimes,” Sydney said. “It’s downright scary.”

He chuckled and said, “Yeah, once I even found my own nose. And get this part—in the dark.”

Chapter Nine

Day Two—April 13

Wednesday Afternoon

______________

WHEN TRIPP LANDED at LaGuardia International Airport on Wednesday afternoon, he could still smell Rozeen in his clothes and taste her on his tongue. He could go for a fulltime diet of a woman like that, no doubt about it. He didn’t know how much he spent on her, but it had been worth every penny.

The U.S. soil felt good.

No, not good.

GOOD.

No doubt the French vampire’s estate was swarming with police and Paparazzi right now—poor Diamanda, not just killed, but brutally beaten to death, and stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake.

Such a tragedy.

Such a waste.

Whoever did it ransacked the house, looking for something.

TRIPP’S CELL PHONE RANG as soon as he stepped out of the terminal and the voice of Jake VanDeventer came through. Tripp pulled up the image of a rough, tanned face and piercing blue eyes, something in the nature of a bad guy from an old black-and-white spaghetti western.

“We have a problem,” VanDeventer said.

The man sounded stressed.

“How so?” Tripp asked.

“Abbot didn’t call last night or today,” VanDeventer said.

Tripp understood the implications.

Abbott had gone to Denver.

He was supposed to check in every night.

The same way that Tripp did.

Not doing so either meant that Abbott had been killed.

Or was in custody.

“What do you propose?” Tripp questioned.

“I’m catching the next plane to Denver,” VanDeventer said. “I want you to meet me there.”

Tripp turned around.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

Chapter Ten

Day Two—April 13

Wednesday Morning

______________

THE SHOT TO THE SKINHEAD’S FACE last night blew away most of his nose and killed him on impact. Rave dropped the gun, sank to the floor, leaned against the wall and stared at the body. She didn’t feel sorry. It was self-defense, pure and simple. But she did know that her life had just changed.

How big and how far, she couldn’t tell.

But a change had come.

London turned off the lights, pulled the window curtain to the side and looked out. The surrounding houses remained dark, showing no evidence that anyone had heard the shot.

“Thank God for the storm,” she said.

“I suppose we should call the police,” Rave said.

“No.”

The word surprised Rave.

“Why not?”

The Jamaican woman sat on the floor next to Rave, put her arm around her shoulders and said, “Lots of reasons. For starters, that gun is illegal as hell. It isn’t registered and the numbers have been ground off. That’s a felony offense, in case you’re not aware.”

Rave swallowed.

“Why?” she asked.

“You mean, why is it an illegal gun?”

“Right.”

“In case I ever had to use it,” London said. “I can’t afford to get connected to a homicide.”

“Why not?”

“Because I already got connected to one once before,” she said.

“You did?”

“I’ll tell you about it later. The important thing now is to figure out what to do with that,” London said, referring to the body.

“I shot him, it’s my problem,” Rave said. “Just take your gun and leave.”

“And then what? What do you tell the police when they ask where the gun is?”

“I don’t know—”

“And what do you think they’re going to say to that? Oh, okay, never mind. I guess we’re done here. Have a nice day, ma’am. They’re going to pick you apart. You’ll end up taking the fall. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“So what do we do?”

“I say we dump the little prick somewhere and stay the hell out of the whole thing.”

Dump him?

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” London said. “Up in the mountains somewhere. We got nothing to lose. Even if we somehow get caught doing it—which we won’t—we can still fall back on the story of what really happened.”

“Except they might not believe it if they find out we dumped the body,” Rave said. “We’ll look guilty at that point.”

“We have his DNA in your carpet,” London said. “We can prove beyond doubt that he got killed in your living room if we need to. You can also prove that you never had any association with him before tonight. Why else would you kill him, if not in self-defense? So if we do get caught by some chance—which we won’t—we simply tell the truth about what happened and say we panicked afterwards and did something stupid. By then the gun will be gone and we can tell the police we threw it in a lake or something—we give them a false location and they never find it. That way at least we don’t have to face an illegal firearm charge.”

Rave chewed on it.

“Plus, once your record shows that you killed someone, even if it’s found to be self-defense or justifiable, it’ll follow you around for the rest of your life,” London said. “That little seed of doubt will always be there. If you ever do something else, they’ll figure that you may have gotten away with something the first time, but they’ll be real sure it doesn’t happen twice.”

Rave nodded.

That made sense.

“That’s the situation I’m in right now,” London said.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we’ll dump him.”

London said, “It’s going to be light in a couple of hours. Let’s get some sleep and figure the rest out tomorrow.” She paused and added, “I’ll do it. You don’t even have to be involved.”

Rave exhaled.

“What?” London asked.

“No way. You came here to protect me,” Rave said. “If you hadn’t been here, I’d be dead right now. So I’m the one who owes you, not the other way around.”

“Okay, we’ll both do it then.”

THAT WAS LAST NIGHT.

Now it was morning.

Time to dump the body.