The Eye of the Moon (31 page)

De La Cruz slapped his keyboard one last time and turned his attention away from the computer’s monitor and fully on to his partner.

‘Feelin’ what?’ he asked.

‘I’m feelin’ bothered by what happened with the retarded guy,’ Hunter replied, scratching his chin.

‘Oh that,’ De La Cruz grimaced. ‘Nah, matter of fact that’s not what’s bothering me. Not exactly, anyway. It
is
bugging me, but not as much as what happened right afterwards. It’s bugging me more that Benson gave his name to the person on the other end of the guy’s cell phone. What the fuck was he thinking?’

‘Yeah, that’s pissin’ me off too. You reckon it was the Kid on the phone?’

‘You even doubt it?’ asked De La Cruz, tapping the space bar on his keyboard a few times to make a pointless little tune.

‘Yeah, I know. Benson’s ego is gettin’ totally out of hand. Discretion’s not exactly his middle name, is it? You think we should be doin’ somethin’ about it?’ Hunter already knew the answer.

‘Yeah. He’s becomin’, like, a liability. I got absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Kid’s gonna be after him now. And he may already be after
us,
too. We’ve lost our element of surprise here, Hunter, and we’ve killed the Kid’s fuckin’ retard brother. If he’s not after us yet, he soon will be, once he’s tracked down Benson. I mean,
fuck
…’ De La Cruz had succeeded in winding himself up, and he made it obvious when he smacked the space bar a bit harder. ‘Benson gave away his own name easily enough. He’ll give up our names to the Kid too, once he’s put under a bit of pressure. This is fuckin’ serious, man.’

De La Cruz’s mood was visibly darkening as he spoke aloud what they had both been thinking, but not saying, ever since the previous night’s kill.

‘You want me to make Benson disappear?’ Hunter offered.

‘I do, yeah, but there’s a problem. I can’t get a hold of him. The slimy bastard has fucked off somewhere. We’ll deal with him all in good time, but I think our first plan is to try and get to the Bourbon Kid before he gets to Benson and our beloved buddy starts singing like a goddamn canary.’

‘You don’t reckon Benson could handle the Kid?’

‘Hunter,
you
could handle the Kid and
I
could handle the Kid, but Benson’s just too much of a loose cannon. If our new strength is as great as we think it is, any one of us should be able to wipe the floor with that bourbon-drinking sonofabitch. But let’s not take any chances by sending Benson after him.’

‘Okay. So what you got in mind?’

‘Take a look at this,’ said De La Cruz spinning the monitor part-way around so that Hunter could get a good look at what was on screen.

‘What’s this?’ the other asked, checking out the black-and-white video image on the Captain’s screen.

‘CCTV footage.’

‘Of what?’

‘The massacre here at headquarters on the night of the eclipse last year, when the Bourbon Kid killed all the on-duty cops, as well as that good-lookin’ receptionist Amy Webster.’

Hunter took a look at the flickering CCTV footage, which was currently paused and hard to make out. ‘What part is this?’ he asked.

‘This is the bit where he kills Archie Somers by sticking that fuckin’ book into his chest.’

‘How in hell did you come by this?’ asked Hunter. ‘I didn’t know there was CCTV in the station.’

‘I found it on YouTube.’

‘You don’t say!’

‘No, dumbass. It turns out Internal Affairs secretly installed CCTV cameras some time ago in order to check up on all of us.’

‘But surely that’s illegal?’

‘They did it in
Lethal Weapon
3,’ said De La Cruz, shrugging.

‘Oh well then,’ said Hunter, grimacing. ‘If they can do it in the movies, I guess they can do it here.’

De La Cruz shrugged again. ‘You got it, Dick.’ He tapped the space bar and the video started running again. Hunter watched the last few moments of Archie Somers on screen as the detective first attacked the Bourbon Kid and then, after a brief struggle and an exchange of words, staggered back in a ball of flames and finally turned to smoke and ash. Once Somers was gone, the Kid (who had his back to the camera) made his way out of headquarters and the tape ended.

‘Nice,’ said Hunter. ‘We learnin’ anythin’ from this?’

‘Well, actually, yeah – I think we are,’ said De La Cruz, tugging nervously with one finger at his shirt collar. ‘You see, the Kid’s not what you think.’

‘Well, I think he’s a mass murderer. Is he a mass murderer?’

‘Well, yeah … ‘

‘Then he’s exactly what I think.’

De La Cruz faked a smile. ‘Funny guy, huh? But here’s the thing. I’ve seen this clip a hundred times before, and one thing has always bothered me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Why does the Bourbon Kid leave
The Book With No Name
behind? Is it just because he’s not bothered about it, or is it because of this?’ He used the computer’s mouse to drag the ‘play’ bar on the screen back a little. Then he hit the space bar again and the video started playing again. ‘Look at this.’

Hunter looked more closely at the screen. He watched the footage unfold, and concentrated hard on trying to spot something he’d missed before. Nothing jumped out at him as once again he watched in fascination as the old detective departed for the depths of Hell in a fireball. As the clip drew to an end he watched the Kid put his hand up to his neck and then pull it away again to look at his fingers. A second or two later he pulled his hood back up over his head and walked out.

‘Well, he’s clever enough never to let his face be seen by
the cameras that
we
didn’t even know we had hidden in this place,’ Hunter observed. ‘But we’ve always known he’s smart like that. We don’t have any footage of his face anywhere. Guy’s too smart, always knows where the cameras are. Even if
we
don’t.’

‘You missed the key moment there,’ said De La Cruz, once more resetting the ‘play’ bar on the screen. This time he went back a little further, pausing on the struggle between Somers and the Kid just before Somers began to smoulder and smoke. Hunter stared at the screen for a few seconds, then picked up on what De La Cruz was showing him. His captain was nodding.

‘Yep, you got it. Our old buddy Somers planted a bite on the Kid’s neck. Count to ten from there and the Kid’s halfway to becoming a bloodsucker. He can’t touch the book any more because Somers has turned him. He’s a fuckin’ vampire, like the rest of us.’

‘Holy shit!’ Hunter whispered aloud, his jaw dropping open, betraying his utter astonishment. ‘I can’t believe we missed that before.’

De La Cruz was deep in thought, staring hard at the glass-panelled door of the office, which wasn’t quite shut properly. ‘Well, you know what,’ he mused. ‘I don’t think it was ever that important before. Kinda an irrelevance, really, but I just got to thinking. Y’know, the Kid’s now got a little more than he bargained for. This helps us in a big way. We can track him down now. I’m certain of it.’

‘How so?’ asked Hunter. ‘How’ll this help us find him?’

‘Think about it. The Kid now has all the same vampire instincts that we have, right? That’s only natural.’

‘Okay, yeah, so he’s gonna have the thirst, the hunger for human blood, and he can be killed by things like the book, right?’ Hunter paused. ‘I’m not gettin’ it, am I? What are you drivin’ at?’

The other detective continued to stare ahead at the glass door, but leaned forward over the desk a little to make his point. ‘Think a tad more laterally, my friend. If he has
all
of the vampire instincts, he’s gonna have suffered one major personality change that you haven’t mentioned.’

Hunter shook his head, baffled. ‘Which is?’

‘Companionship. The Kid has always been a loner right?’

‘Fuckin’ A!’ It finally dawned on Hunter what his captain was trying to say.

‘You think he’ll have joined one of the clans?’

‘Yep,’ said De La Cruz, looking back at the monitor and smacking the keyboard’s space bar again, before watching the Kid being bitten by Somers once more. ‘Our boy will have been living amongst us for some time. ‘Course, the big question is, what name does he go under? And, just as importantly,’ he said, shaking a finger at his colleague, ‘which clan is he hiding in?’

‘My God! If he hasn’t worked out that you and I were involved in the killing of his brother by now, it won’t be long before he does find out. Word has flown around the clans already, and
fuck,
even Sanchez knows, or guessed, and he’s just a fuckin’ bartender.’

De La Cruz nodded, frowning. ‘Yeah, I know. But I have a plan,’ he said, reaching into one of the drawers on his side of the desk. He pulled out the cell phone they had taken from Casper after they had slaughtered him. ‘Take this phone with you to the Nightjar. Press redial, and see whose phone rings. That’s when you find out who the Bourbon Kid is and which clan he’s in. Just kill the person whose phone rings.’

‘What if no one’s phone rings?’

De La Cruz sat back in his chair, exasperated. ‘I dunno. Don’t kill anyone. Or better still, kill everybody.’

Hunter could see that his senior officer’s patience was wearing thin, but he didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. ‘You know, with that kind of attitude, Captain, you should consider a career in the Church.’

‘Damn right I should. I think they’re missing out on some great ideas. Now just take this phone, will you, and get the fuck outta here.’

He tossed the phone over to Hunter who caught it and stood up from his seat ready to go.

‘You comin’ with me?’ he asked.

‘No. By all means call me if you need me. But for now I’m gonna try and find out what the fuck has happened to Benson.’

After his visit to police headquarters, Sanchez had headed out of town to a shopping mall for the afternoon. After an exhausting few hours traipsing around clothes shops and stumbling into the back of other shoppers who insisted on stopping dead in their tracks for no apparent reason, he had finally managed to get a cab back to Santa Mondega in the early evening.

The shopping trip had been a success, more or less. He’d picked up some pretty decent new clothes for Jessica, having discovered that morning that she had woken from her latest coma. He had been awoken by the sound of her coughing in the early hours, and had been delighted to find her wide awake. She was still too weak to get out of bed, and she couldn’t speak much, but with her phenomenal healing powers it would only be a matter of time before she was up and about.

He had bought quite a selection of items of clothing for her, ranging from miniskirts and stiletto-heeled shoes to tracksuits and Hawaiian shirts. He’d even gone to the trouble of having a white T-shirt specially printed for her, bearing the legend ‘I WAS SHOT BY THE BOURBON KID AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY COMA’. Then, because he hated shopping so much, he’d also done a lot of his own clothes shopping, just to get it all done in one go and save himself from having to make another trip out of town that year. He stuck to the basics for his own clothing. Three pairs of baggy black trousers and a selection of short-sleeved shirts in different colours. He’d also bought some dark hair dye specially made for men. He was starting to show signs of going grey (as well
as thinning out on top). Restoring his once-thick black locks to their former glory seemed like a smart idea, particularly as Jessica was now back in the world of the living.

The cab had dropped him at the edge of town. The driver, an annoying, tough-talking Frenchman, had refused to drive into the city centre because he was too fucking scared. He had claimed he was in a rush, but this was a blatant lie, as Sanchez well knew. Out-of-town drivers had heard all the rumours about the undead within the city, and just didn’t have the balls to cross the line marking the city limits.

The two carriers full of clothes he was carrying were making the slightly overweight Sanchez sweat excessively, and after walking for fifteen minutes or so he felt in need of a serious breather. His white ‘FUCK OFF’ T-shirt, now sporting large sweat patches on the back, front and under the armpits, was beginning to stick to him. His heavy black pants were making his ass sweat to the point that his buttocks were starting to make slurping noises as he walked. He trudged on through Santa Mondega’s dusty streets under the glare of the setting sun, and as he did so he began to feel an incredible thirst coming on.