1 Blood Price (6 page)

“Brandon? It’s Vicki Nelson.”

His weighty Oxford accent—his telephone voicelightened. “Victoria? Good to hear from you. Been keeping busy since you left the force?”

“Pretty busy,” she admitted, swinging her feet up on a corner of the desk. Dr. Brandon Singh was the only person since the death of her maternal grandmother back in the seventies to call her Victoria. She’d never been able to decide whether it was old-world charm or sheer perversity as he knew full well how much she disliked hearing her full name. “I’ve started my own investigations company.”

“I had heard a rumor to that effect, yes. But rumor . . .” In her mind’s eye, Vicki could see his long surgeon’s hands cutting through the air. “. . . rumor also had you stone blind and selling pencils on a street corner.”

“Not. Quite.” Anger leached the life from her voice.

Brandon’s voice warmed in contrast. “Victoria, I
am
sorry. You know I’m not a tactful man, never had much chance to develop a bedside manner. . . .” It was an old joke, going back to their first meeting over the autopsy of a well-known drug pusher. “Now then,” he paused for a swallow of liquid, the sound a discreet distance from the receiver, “what can I do for you?”

Vicki had never found Brandon’s habit of getting right to the point with a minimum of small talk disconcerting and she appreciated him never demanding tact when he wouldn’t give it.
Don’t
waste my time, I’m a busy man,
set the tone for every conversation he had. “That article in yesterday’s paper, the blood loss in Neal and Jones, was it true?”

The more formal syntax returned. “I hadn’t realized you were involved in the case?”

“I’m not, exactly. But I found the first body.”

“Tell me.”

So she did; information exchange was the coin of favors among city employees even if she no longer exactly qualified.

“And in your professional opinion?” Brandon asked when she finished, his voice carefully neutral.

“In my professional opinion,” Vicki echoed both words and tone, “based on three years in homicide, I haven’t got a clue what could have caused the wound I saw. Not a single blow ripping through skin and muscle and cartilage.”

On the other end of the line, Brandon sighed. “Yes, yes, I know what happened and frankly, I have no more idea than you do. And I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing considerably longer than three years. To answer your original question, the newspaper story was essentially true; I don’t know if it was a vampire or a vacuum cleaner, but Neal and Jones were drained nearly dry.”

“Drained?” Not just massive blood loss, then, of the kind to be expected with a throat injury that severe. “Oh my God.”

She heard Brandon take another swallow.

“Quite,” he agreed dryly. “This will, of course, go no further.”

“Of course.”

“Then if you have all the information you require. . . .”

“Yes. Thank you, Brandon.”

“My pleasure, Victoria.”

She sat staring at nothing, considering implications until the phone began to beep, imperiously reminding her she hadn’t yet hung up, jerking her out of her daze.

“Drained . . .” she repeated. “Shit.” She wondered what the official investigation made of that.
No, be honest. You wonder what Mike Celluci made of it.
Well, she wasn’t going to call and find out. Still, it was the sort of thing that friends might discuss if one of them was a cop and one of them used to be.
Except he’s sure to say something cutting, especially if he thinks I’m using this whole incident as an excuse to hang around the fringes of the force.

Was she?

She thought about it while she listened to the three-year-old upstairs running back and forth, back and forth across the living room. It was a soothing, all-is-right-with-the-universe kind of sound and she used its staccato beat to keep her thoughts moving, to keep her from bogging down in the self-pity that had blurred a good part of the last eight months.

No, she decided at last, she was not using these deaths as a way of trying to grab onto some of what she’d had to give up. She was curious, plain and simple. Curious the way anyone would be in a similar circumstance, the difference being that she had a way to satisfy her curiosity.

“And if Celluci doesn’t understand that,” she muttered as she dialed, “he can fold it sideways and stick it up his. . . . Good morning. Mike Celluci, please. Yes, I’ll hold.”
Someday,
she tucked the phone under her chin and tried to peel the paper off a very old Life Saver,
I’m going to say no, I won’t hold, and send somebody’s secretary into strong hysterics.

“Celluci.”

“Morning. It’s Vicki.”

“Yeah. So?” He definitely didn’t sound thrilled. “You complicating my life with another body or is this a social call at . . .”

Vicki checked her watch, during the pause while Celluci checked his.

“. . . nine oh two . . .”

“Eight fifty-eight.”

He ignored her. “. . . on a Thursday morning?”

“No body, Celluci. I just wondered what you’d come up with so far.”

“That’s police information, Vicki, and in case you’ve forgotten, you’re not a cop anymore.”

The crack hurt but not as much as she expected. Well, two could play at that game.

“Come to a dead end, eh? A full stop?” She flipped over pages of the newspaper loud enough for him to hear the unmistakable rustle. “Paper seems to have come up with an answer.” Shaking her head, she held the receiver away from her ear in order not to be deafened by a forcefully expressed opinion of certain reporters, their ancestors, and their descendants. She grinned. She was definitely enjoying this.

“Nice try, Mike, but I called the Coroner’s Offiee and that report was essentially correct.”

“Well, why don’t I just read
my
report to you over the phone. Or I could send someone over with a copy of the file and no doubt you and your Nancy Drew detective kit can solve the case by lunch.”

“Why don’t we discuss this like intelligent human beings over dinner?”
Over dinner? Good God, was that my mouth?

“Dinner?”

Oh, well. In for a penny in for a pound as Granny used to say.
“Yeah, dinner, you know, where you sit down in the evening and stuff food in your mouth.”

“Oh, dinner. Why didn’t you say so?” Vicki could hear the smile in his voice and her mouth curved up in answer. Mike Celluci was the only man she’d ever met whose moods changed as quickly as hers. Maybe that was why. . . . “You buying?” He was also basically a cheap bastard.

“Why not. I’ll deduct it as a business expense; consulting with the city’s finest.”

He snorted. “Took you long enough to remember that. I’ll be by about seven.”

“I’ll be here.”

She hung up, pushed her glasses up her nose, and wondered just what she thought she was doing. It had seemed, while they talked—
All right, while we indulged in the verbal sparring that serves us for conversation—
almost like the last eight months and the fights before hadn’t happened. Or maybe it was just that their friendship was strong enough to pick up intact from where it had been dropped. Or maybe, just maybe, she’d managed to get a grip on her life.

“And I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew,” she muttered to the empty apartment.

Stumbling to the right to avoid annihilation by a loaded backpack, Norman Birdwell careened into a stocky young man in a leather York University jacket and found himself back in the corridor outside the lecture hall. Shifting his grip on the plastic handle of his attaché, he squared his narrow shoulders and tried again. He often thought that exiting students should be forced to move in orderly rows through the left side of the double doors so that students arriving early for the next class could enter unopposed through the right.

By sliding sideways between two young women, who, oblivious to Norman’s presence, continued discussing the sexist unfairness of birth control and blow-dryers, he made it into the room and headed for his seat.

Norman liked to arrive early so he could sit in the exact center of the third row, his lucky seat ever since he’d written a perfect first year calculus paper in the spot. He was taking this evening sociology class because he’d overheard two jocks in the cafeteria mention it was a great way to meet girls. So far, he wasn’t having much luck. Straightening his new leather tie, he wondered if perhaps he shouldn’t ask for a jacket.

As he slid into his seat, his attaché jammed between two chair backs in the second row and jerked out of his hand. Bending to free it, his mechanical pencil slid free of his pocket protector and rolled back into the darkness.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered, dropping to his knees. He’d been experimenting with profanity lately, hoping it would make him sound more macho. There’d been no noticeable success.

There were legends about what lurked under the seats in York University lecture halls but all Norman found, beside his pencil—which he’d only had since Sunday night and didn’t want to lose—was a neatly rolled copy of Wednesday’s tabloid. Clipping the pencil back where it belonged, Norman spread the paper on his knee. The professor, he knew, would be up to fifteen minutes late; he’d have plenty of time to read the comics.

“VAMPIRE STALKS CITY!”

With trembling fingers, he opened it to the story.

 

“Get a load of Birdwell.” The thick-necked young man elbowed his companion. “He’s gone white as a ghost.”

Rubbing bruised ribs, the recipient of this tender confidence peered down at the solitary figure in the third row of the hall. “How can you tell?” he grunted. “Ghost, geek; it’s all the same.”

 

“I never knew,” Norman whispered down at the black type. “I swear to God, I never knew. It wasn’t my fault.”

He . . . no, it, had said it had to feed. Norman hadn’t asked where or how. Maybe, he admitted now, because he hadn’t wanted to know.
Don’t let anyone see you,
had been his only instruction.

He peeled damp palms up off the newsprint and raised them, smudged and trembling, into the air as he vowed, “Never again, I promise, never again.”

The gong sounded for another order of Peking Duck and while it reverberated through the restaurant, a mellow undertone to the conversations occurring in at least three different languages, Vicki raised a spoonful of hot-andsour soup to her lips and stared speculatively at Mike Celluci. He’d been almost charming for this, the first half hour of the evening, and she’d had about as much of it as she could take.

She swallowed and gave him her best
don’t give me any bullshit, buddy, I’m on to you
smile. “So. Still holding tight to that ridiculous angel dust and Freddy Kruger claws theory?”

Celluci glanced down at his watch. “Thirty-two minutes and seventeen seconds.” He shook his head ruefully, a thick brown curl dropping down over his eyes. “And here I bet Dave you couldn’t last a half an hour. You just lost me five bucks, Vicki. Is that nice?”

“Quit complaining.” She chased a bit of green onion around the edge of her bowl. “After all, I’m paying for dinner. Now, answer the question.”

“And here I thought that you were after the pleasure of my company.”

She really hated it when his voice picked up that sarcastic edge. Not having heard it for eight months hadn’t lessened her dislike. “I’m going to pleasure your company right into the kitchen if you don’t answer the question.”

“Damn it, Vicki.” His spoon slammed into the saucer, “Do we have to discuss this while we eat?”

Eating had nothing to do with it; they’d discussed every case they’d ever had, singly and collectively, over food. Vicki pushed her empty bowl to one side and laced her fingers together. It
was
possible that now she’d left the force he wouldn’t discuss the homicides with her. It was possible, but not very likely. At least, she prayed it wasn’t very likely. “If you can look me right in the eye,” she said quietly, “and tell me you don’t want to talk about this with me, I’ll lay off.”

Technically, he knew he should do exactly that—look her in the eye and tell her he didn’t want to talk about it. The Criminal Investigations Bureau took a dim view of investigators who couldn’t keep their mouths shut. But Vicki had been one of the best, three accelerated promotions and two citations attested to that, and more importantly, her record of solved crimes had been almost the highest in the department. Honesty forced him to admit, although he admitted it silently, that statistically her record was as good as his, he’d just been at it three years longer.
Do I throw away this resource?
he wondered as the silence lengthened.
Do I refuse to take advantage of talent and skill just because the possessor of those talents and skills has become a civilian?
He tried to keep his personal feelings out of the decision.

He looked her right in the eye and said quietly. “Okay. genius, you got a better idea than PCPs and claws?”