Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 12)

62

The apartment was so much nicer than the one we'd just come from. It was clean and neat enough to have pleased even my stepmother, Judith. Well, except for the dead woman on the carpet and the blood trail leading back to the bedroom. Other than that, the apartment looked freshly scrubbed.

I know by now that murder happens in the best of neighborhoods. I know for a fact that economics, or neatness, or niceness are not barriers to violence. I know that, because I've seen dead bodies in some of the nicest houses. Everyone wants to believe that violence only happens in horrible places, where even the rats fear to go, but it isn't true. I didn't think I had any illusions left about murder and murderers, but I was wrong. Because the first thing I thought when I saw that neat-as-a-pin, well-decorated apartment with the dead woman on the carpet was, the body would have fit in Jack Benchely's apartment better. Hell, you could have hidden her body in the coffee table debris.

The body lay so close to the door that they'd had to move her arm just to open the door enough to let Arnet and Abrahams inside. Abrahams had transferred over from sex crimes. I glanced at him across the room, standing near the neat, sparkly kitchen. He was tall and thin with dark hair and an olive complexion. Brown seemed to be his favorite color, because I'd never seen him when he wasn't wearing it. He was talking to Zerbrowski, who was taking notes.

So far I hadn't learned enough to need to take notes. Maybe it was because the body was right at our feet. Arnet's and mine. Dead bodies can be a real conversation stopper. The body was on its stomach, legs slightly spread, one hand reaching out toward the door, the other arm folded back where Arnet had moved it when she opened the door.

Arnet was standing beside me, looking down at the body. She looked a little pale around the edges. Maybe it was only the lack of makeup, but I didn't think so. She was actually wearing a little eye makeup and pale lipstick. But her eyes were a little big, and her skin pale against her short dark hair. Not like pale with contrast, but pale like I was ready to grab her elbow in case she started to faint on the body.

I wanted to ask her if she was alright, but you don't ask cops that, so I tried to get her talking. "How did you know she was in here?" I asked.

She jumped and turned startled eyes to me. She was seriously spooked.

"Why don't we step outside and get some air?" I said.

She shook her head, and I knew stubborn when I saw it, so I didn't argue. "I saw blood under the door, or what I was almost certain was blood."

"Then what?"

"I called for backup, and we kicked the door open."

"You and Abrahams," I said.

She nodded.

"The door bounced into her arm, but we didn't know it was her until we shoved the door again. I took low, and I was kneeling on the ground, so I saw her first. Saw that we were trying to shove the door through her." Her voice shook a little at the end.

"Let's move over there by the kitchen, okay?"

"I'm alright," she said, and was angry suddenly. "Why is it that you think you're the only woman that can handle this kind of shit?"

I lifted eyebrows, but didn't say anything for a count of five. I wasn't mad, I just wasn't sure what to say. I finally tried the truth. "I'm not the one that's pale and looks ready to faint."

"I'm not going to faint," she hissed at me. Angry whispers always sound so evil.

"Fine, then we'll stay right here."

"Fine," she said, still angry.

I shrugged, strangely not angry. "Fine. You checked the woman, found she was dead, and then..."

"You know, I don't have to report to you. You're not my boss."

That was it. "Look, Arnet, if you've got a personal beef with me, fine, have a personal beef with me, but not on her time." I pointed down to the body.

"What do you mean, her time, she's dead. She doesn't have any more time."

"Bullshit. We're on her dime right now. This is her murder, and catching the son of a bitch that did this to her is more important than anything else right now. You stonewalling me and acting like some damn rookie is just giving him more time to run. We don't want him to run. We want him to be caught, right?"

She nodded. "I am not acting like a rookie."

I sighed. "I apologize for that, and if you want to fight, we can fight, but later, when we're not wasting valuable time, when we're not wasting her time."

Arnet looked down at the body again, mostly because I pointed again. Maybe it was overly dramatic, but I already spent time fighting with Dolph at crime scenes, I didn't need another prima donna on my hands. Murder first, personal stuff later, that had to be the order of things, or you lost your way.

Zerbrowski was behind her. I noticed him walking up, but I don't think Arnet did. "Go outside, Arnet, get some air," he said, smiling, trying to take some of the sting out of it.

"I'm a detective on this team, she isn't." She pointed at me with her thumb.

"Outside, now," Zerbrowski said, and his voice had lost all of its hail-fellow-well-met cheer.

Arnet stood there glaring at him.

"If I have to tell you to go outside again, Arnet, it won't just be for air."

"What's that mean?" she asked, and her hands were starting to tremble. She was so angry she was shaking. What the hell had I done to make her this pissed about me? Was it about Nathaniel? Hell, she'd never dated him. She'd never met him before he was already living with me.

"Do you want to be off this case?" Zerbrowski asked, voice low and suddenly not at all like Zerbrowski's voice.

"No," she said, and she looked sullen, but surprised, as if she hadn't known that he had a voice like that in him. Me, neither.

He looked at her, it was a look to match that new voice. "Then what should you be doing?"

She opened her mouth then closed it until her lips were a thin pink line. She turned on her sensible, two-inch heels and marched out.

Zerbrowski sighed loudly and frowned at me. "What did you do to Arnet?"

"Me? Nothing."

He gave me a look.

"I swear, I didn't do a damn thing to her."

"Katie says Arnet was pretty pissed at something you said at the wedding."

"How does Katie know she was pissed?"

His look got really narrow. "You did say something, didn't you?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, and glanced down at the body. "We're wasting time with all this personal shit," I said. Okay, I also hadn't wanted to discuss my boyfriend situation with Zerbrowski, but we really did have a murderer to catch.

"True, but when this slows down, you fix this between you and Arnet."

"Me? Why me?"

"Because you're not wicked pissed at her," he said, and his face was as matter-of-fact as his words.

I wanted to argue with the logic, but as far as it went, it made sense. "I'll do what I can. What did Abrahams tell you?"

"Arnet saw the blood under the door. They called backup and entered. Searched the place and didn't find one Avery Seabrook. The bed was unmade, and the blood trail seems to start in the bed."

"Not in the bedroom, but the bed," I said.

He nodded.

"Do we have an ident on her?"

Funny, he didn't ask who "her" referred to. "Purse is beside the bed with her neatly folded clothes. Sally Cook, age twenty-four, 5'3", and I never believe the weight on a woman's driver's license."

"Yeah, women fudge the weight, but men will add an inch to their height."

He grinned at me. "Most of us just aren't smart enough to remember how tall we are."

I smiled at him and resisted the urge to punch him on the shoulder. He can have that effect on me, even at murder scenes.

"I noticed you were doing fingertip push-ups looking at the body. You messed up our blood pattern."

"I wasn't doing push-ups, and I touched as little as I could. But I know why she bled out, at least partly why."

"Talk," he said, he was starting to sound like Dolph. Not a bad a thing, just a little unnerving.

"She's got a partial bite mark on her very inner thigh. Looks like it punctured her femoral."

"Why did you say 'partial' bite mark? Either he bit her, or he didn't."

I shrugged. "He bit her, but it looks almost like he started, then either she jerked away, or he wasn't able to finish. For lack of a better analogy, it's like being bitten by a snake. If it's not poisonous, you're better off not jerking away. Vampire fangs are recurved not as much as most snake teeth, but still, if you pull away abruptly, you're going to tear yourself up worse than if you just let it chew on you and try to pry it off, sort of gently."

"It's instinct to pull away from something that's biting you, Anita."

"I'm not arguing that, Zerbrowski, I'm only saying that it's not a good idea. You will tear yourself up."

"So he bit her, and she pulled away, and that tore her femoral open. Are you saying he didn't mean to kill her?"

I shrugged. "I'm saying that you can bleed out from your femoral in about twenty minutes, maybe less. Most people don't understand that."

"Anita, don't do this to me."

"Do what?" I asked.

"I saved the best for last. She's got a little case in there with what sure as hell looks like a stripper outfit to me. All fringes and not much else. If she's a stripper, then we've got one of our vampires. But you're standing here telling me that he didn't mean to kill her. If that's true, then he isn't one of our guys. I'm in the process of getting you a warrant of execution for his ass. I'd hate to have you killing the wrong guy."

I shook my head. "He was responsible for her death, Zerbrowski. The way the law is written, he's dead either way. If he's part of our serial killer team, he's dead. If he accidentally nicked her femoral and either didn't know enough to call 911, or panicked, or maybe dawn caught him before he could finish. It doesn't matter which it was, by accident or by design. The law says it's murder when a vampire kills a human being using its bite. There is no charge of manslaughter, if you're a vampire."

Zerbrowski looked at me, and his eyes were very serious behind his wire rimmed glasses. "You think it was an accident, don't you?"

I shrugged again. "If he meant to rip her femoral open, I think the bite would be different, more vicious. I've seen a lot of vamp kills, Zerbrowski, a lot. This looks like a new vamp, a really new one, that doesn't know how to use its fangs yet. Someone who's two years dead shouldn't make mistakes like this."

"So he did it on purpose."

I sighed. "I'm beginning to wonder what kind of education the little vampires at the Church of Eternal Life are getting."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that I thought their mentoring system was like most of the wereanimals that I know. You teach the rookies how to hunt, how to kill, clean, and efficiently."

"You confessing to something for your furry friends?" he asked, and he wasn't smiling enough for the comment, not for my peace of mind.

"Animals, Zerbrowski, animals. Jean-Claude hasn't brought over any new vamps since I've been hanging with him, but I've seen other vamps that were around two years dead, and they aren't rookies. They aren't experts, but this is a rookie mistake. Remember when Jack Benchely said that they'll give the vamps victims, but they make it clean and neat, and not fun?"

"Yeah."

"What if feeding on the femoral, the inner thigh, is considered too taboo, too sexual for the church to teach its members?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know the theory that if we don't tell teenagers about sex that they won't think of it on their own."

"Yeah," he said and smiled and shook his head, "speaking as someone who was once a teenage boy, and who will one day have a two teenagers on my hands, it's a nice theory, but it doesn't work that way."

"Yeah, I know that, but what if the church is like the right-wingers? If you don't talk about it, or tell the new little vamps about the dirty stuff, they won't do it, or think of it on their own."

"Feeding from the inner thigh is too much like oral sex for the church," he said, and there was no teasing in his voice when he said it. He was working, thinking.

I nodded. "Exactly."

"But Avery, our newish vampire, did think of it, and did try it, but didn't know what he was doing."

"Yes, and because he'd had no information, he didn't know how dangerous it could be. It's like the kids who came up pregnant in junior high, because they used candy bar wrappers for condoms."

Zerbrowski looked at me. "You're joking."

"My hand to God, I am not making that up. The point is that if you don't educate the newly emerging vampire, just like the newly emerging teenager, you end up with them doing stupid shit. Dangerous things that get them or others, killed, or hurt. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to basic sex ed, or beginning blood donations for vampires. Ignorance will get you killed in both."

He looked down at the body. "She fits the physical profile of the first vic. If you ignore the difference in height, she's even blond, which fits all three vics."

"But this one's not a natural blond."

Zerbrowski frowned at me.

"I don't mean that, I mean her roots are showing. I didn't really check that closely, but it looks like she either shaved everything, or had very little body hair to begin with. A lot of strippers shave."

"Like your new boyfriend," he said, his voice was mild, but his eyes weren't.

I shook my head. "None of your damn business, Zerbrowski."

"You guys were getting pretty cozy on the dance floor, but then he's living with you now, isn't he?"

"Somebody talks too much."

"Hey, I'm a trained detective, I detected that you're shacking up with a stripper who's what, seven years younger than you?"

"As the detective in charge at the scene, shouldn't you be solving this murder?"

"I'm thinking. Teasing you always helps me think."

"Glad to hear I inspire you. What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking that I want to talk to Avery Seabrook before he gets executed. If he's part of the other murders, then I want the names of his friends. If he did this by accident, then I think we need to know that, too. If you're right, and the church isn't teaching basic vampire 101 safety to its members, then we've got hundreds of potential accidental deaths walking around out there tonight. That ain't good."

"Legally, we can't do anything to force the church to change its teaching methods. Separation of church and state, and all that."

He nodded. "I can't, and Federal Marshal Blake can't, but Anita Blake, sweetie to the Master of the City, might."

"Are you encouraging me to encourage someone else to put undue pressure on an upstanding member of the community?"

"Would I do that?"

I nodded. "Yep."

"My head's sore," he said, "I give up. How the hell do we catch a vampire and hold him for questioning without getting anyone else killed?"

"He's only two years dead, Zerbrowski. He's not that big and bad."

He glanced down at the body. "Tell that to her."

He had a point.

"If this was an accident, then he might, just might, run to the church for sanctuary or absolution, or whatever."

"What if it wasn't an accident?"

"Then he's off joining up with his killer friends, and I have no idea where to start looking for him. We know his hunting ground is across the river in the clubs."

Zerbrowski nodded. "Sheriff Christopher, who you met, is putting all his men on alert. The Staties are helping out, trying to keep it low profile."

"You're not going to keep it out of the media much longer."

He shrugged. "I know."

"So if extra people are patrolling the clubs, then we can check out the other theory."

"The church," he said.

I nodded.

"I'll talk to Abrahams, let him know what's up. You go outside and make nice with Arnet."

"Zerbrowski..."

"Do it, Anita, I don't have time to baby-sit any more feuds. You've got less than five minutes to fix this. I'd go outside and get started if I were you." He had that strange un-Zerbrowski-like tone to his voice again. Not hostile, but no room to debate. It was a voice that expected to be obeyed, and strangely, I did. At least I went outside. I had no idea how to fix things with Arnet. You can't fix something until you know what's broke. I couldn't believe she was that pissed about not being able to date Nathaniel, and if it wasn't that, I was clueless. Yet another interpersonal relationship that I had no clue about. Was it just me, or are people really this confusing?