28
The phone rang. I groped for it and found nothing. I raised my head and found the nightstand empty. The phone was gone. It had even stopped ringing. The radio clock was still there, glowing red. It read 1:03. I stayed propped on my elbow blinking at the empty space. Was I dreaming? Why would I dream that someone had stolen my phone?
The bedroom door opened. Richard stood framed in the light beyond. Ah. Now I remembered. He'd taken the phone into the living room so it wouldn't wake me. Since he was having to wake me every hour, I'd let him do it. When you're only sleeping an hour, even a short phone call can screw things up.
"Who is it?"
"It's Sergeant Rudolf Storr. I asked him to wait until I had to wake you, but he was pretty insistent."
I could imagine. "It's all right."
"Would fifteen minutes have killed him?" Richard asked.
I swung my legs out from under the covers. "Dolph's in the middle of a murder investigation, Richard. Patience isn't his strong suit."
Richard crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the doorjamb. The light from the living room made strong shadows on his face. The shadows cut huge square shapes on his orange sweater. He radiated displeasure. It made me smile. I patted his arm as I went past. I seemed to have inherited a watchwolf.
The phone was sitting just inside the front door, where the other phone jack was. I sat down on the floor, putting my back to the wall, and picked up the phone. "Dolph, it's me. What's up?"
"Who's this Richard Zeeman that's answering your phone in the middle of the night?"
I closed my eyes. My head hurt. My face hurt. I hadn't had a hell of a lot of sleep. "You're not my father, Dolph. What's up?"
A moment of silence. "Defensive, aren't we?"
"Yeah, want to make something of it?"
"No," he said.
"You call just to catch up on my personal life or is there a reason you woke me up?" I knew it wasn't another murder. He was being too cheerful for that, which made me wonder if it couldn't have waited a few hours.
"We found something."
"What exactly?"
"I'd rather you just come and see it for yourself."
"Don't do this to me, Dolph. Just tell me what the fuck it is."
Another silence. If he was waiting for me to apologize, he was in for a long wait. Finally. "We found a skin."
"What kind of skin?"
"If we knew what the hell it was, would I be calling you at one o'clock in the freaking morning?" He sounded angry. I guess I couldn't blame him.
"I'm sorry, Dolph. I'm sorry I snapped at you."
"Fine."
He hadn't exactly accepted my apology. Fine. "Is it connected to the murder?"
"I don't think so, but I'm not some hotshot preternatural expert." He still sounded pissed. Maybe he wasn't getting much sleep, either. Of course, I bet no one had smashed his head into a sidewalk.
"Where are you?"
He gave me the address. It was down in Jefferson County, far away from the murder scene.
"When can you be here?"
"I can't drive," I said.
"What?"
"Doctor's orders, I'm not to get behind the wheel of a car tonight."
"How bad are you hurt?"
"Not too bad, but the doctor wanted me woken up every hour, and no driving."
"That's why Mr. Zeeman is there."
"Yeah."
"If you're too hurt to come tonight, it can wait."
"Is the skin where it was found? Nothing disturbed?"
"Yeah."
"I'll come. Who knows? There might be a clue."
He let that go. "How are you going to get here?"
I glanced at Richard. He could drive me, but somehow I didn't think it was a good idea. He was a civvie, for one thing. He was a lycanthrope, for another. He answered to Marcus, and to a degree to Jean-Claude. Not a good person to bring into a preternatural murder investigation. Besides, if he'd been human, the answer would have been the same. No deal.
"Unless you can send a squad car, I guess I'll take a taxi."
"Zerbrowski didn't answer his first page. He lives in St. Peters. He'll have to come right by you. He can pick you up."
"Is that okay with him?"
"It will be," Dolph said.
Great. Trapped in a car with Zerbrowski. "Fine, I'll be dressed and waiting."
"Dressed?"
"Don't even start, Dolph."
"Touchy, very touchy."
"Stop it."
He laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. It meant not many people had died this time. Dolph didn't laugh much during serial-killer cases.
He hung up. So did I.
"You have to go out?" Richard asked.
"Yeah."
"Do you feel well enough to go?"
"Yes."
"Anita..."
I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. "Don't, Richard. I'm going."
"No debate allowed?"
"No debate," I said. I opened my eyes and looked at him.
He was staring down at me, arms crossed.
"What?" I said.
He shook his head. "If I told you that I was going to do something, no debate, you'd be mad."
"No, I wouldn't."
"Anita." He said my name the way my father use to say it.
"I wouldn't, not if your reasons were valid."
"Anita, you'd be pissed, and you know it."
I wanted to deny it but couldn't. "All right, you're right. I wouldn't like it." I stared up at him. I was going to have to give him reasons why I was going to go out and do my job. It wasn't a pretty sight.
I stood. I wanted to say I didn't have to explain myself to anyone, but if I meant this marriage thing, it wasn't true anymore. I didn't like that much. His being a werewolf was not the only hurdle to domestic bliss.
"This is police business, Richard. People die when I don't do my job."
"I thought your job was raising zombies and executing vampires."
"You sound like Bert."
"You've told me enough about Bert that I know that is an insult."
"If you don't want to be compared, then stop saying one of his favorite things." I walked past him towards the bedroom. "I've got to get dressed."
He followed me. "I know that helping the police is very important to you."
I turned on him. "I don't just help the police, Richard. The spook squad is just over two years old. The cops on it didn't know shit about preternatural creatures. It was a garbage detail. Do something to piss off your superiors and you get transferred."
"The newspapers and TV said it was an independent task force like the major task force. That's an honor."
"Oh, yeah, right. The squad gets almost no extra funding. No special training in preternatural creatures or events. Dolph, Sergeant Storr, saw me in the paper and contacted Bert. There was no training in preternatural crime for law officers in this country. Dolph thought I could be an adviser."
"You're a heck of a lot more than an adviser."
"Yes, I am." I could have told him that earlier in the summer Dolph had tried not calling me in right away. It had seemed like a clear-cut case of ghouls in a cemetery getting a little ambitious and attacking a necking couple. Ghouls were cowards and didn't attack able-bodied people, but exceptions to the rule and all that. By the time Dolph called me in, six people were dead. It hadn't been ghouls. So lately Dolph had started calling me at the beginning before things got too messy. Sometimes I could diagnose a problem before it got out of hand.
But I couldn't tell Richard that. There might have been a lower kill count if I'd been called in this summer, but that was no one's business but Dolph's and mine. We'd spoken of it only once, and that was enough. Richard was a civvie, werewolf or not. It wasn't any of his business.
"Look, I don't know if I can explain this so you'll understand, but I have to go. It may head off a larger problem. It may keep me from having to go to a murder scene later on. Can you understand that?"
He looked perplexed, but what came out of his mouth wasn't. "Not really, but maybe I don't have to. Maybe seeing it's important to you is enough."
I let out a deep breath. "Great. Now I've got to get ready. Zerbrowski will be here any time. He's the detective giving me a ride."
Richard just nodded. Wise of him.
I went into the bedroom and closed the door. Gratefully. Would this be a regular occurrence if we married? Would I be forever explaining myself? God, I hoped not.
Another pair of black jeans, a red sweater with a cowl neck, so soft and fuzzy that it made me feel better just to wear it. The Browning's shoulder holster looked very dark and dramatic against the crimson of the sweater. The red sweater also brought out the raw-meat color of the scrapes on my face. I might have changed it, but the doorbell rang.
Zerbrowski. Richard was answering the door while I stared at myself in the mirror. That thought alone was enough. I went for the door.