Blood Crimes: Book One (22 page)

      Hayes had been following a single car length behind Colvin’s older model Buick Regal, maintaining the same forty mile-per-hour clip the homicide detective was staying at. Things changed quickly. Colvin’s window was rolled down and a blue light placed on the roof, and then the car took a hard U-turn leaving Hayes stuck. He pulled over, thought about trying to follow Colvin. His cell phone rang. It was Serena. He considered letting it ring to his answering service, instead decided to just get it over with and rip that band aid off with one clean pull.

      “Serena—”

      “Donald,” she said, cutting him off, her voice harder and more shrill than he had heard from her before, “I’m in Cleveland right now. Please tell me that you’re still in Cleveland also?”

      “Yeah, I am, but what are you doing here—”

      “Seriously?” She laughed a glass-crackling type laugh. “Donald, you should know why I came here. To talk with you, of course. It is so very important. But right now we’re having engine trouble. I was so hoping you could help us out.”

      His head was swimming as he tried to get a handle on her being in Cleveland at that moment.

      “I don’t understand—”

      “It’s very simple. Please drive by and pick up me and my companions. We so much need to talk.”

      She gave him an intersection for him to go to and hung up. He cursed himself for answering the phone. It would’ve been hard enough telling her long distance how he had to go to the police with what he had, but with all the bizarre shit he was already stuck in the middle of the thought of having to tell Serena in person made him sick to his stomach. For a long moment he considered driving back to New York and saying the hell with it all, but instead let out a disgusted sigh and picked up his map of downtown Cleveland. He located the intersection Serena had given him. It was only five or six miles away and he memorized the turns he was going to have to make. For whatever reason he wanted to see this through, and more than that, find
Jim
and figure out what the fuck was going on with him. As he drove the streets became more desolate and more of the storefronts were boarded up, and then it was as if were entering a ghost town—what used to be an old warehouse district, but now looked deserted. It seemed like an odd place for Serena to end up at. He found the intersection. She stepped out of a doorway and waved to him. Her lips looked unnaturally large and red as if she had smeared too many layers of makeup over them. Something about the way they looked gave him the willies. He drove over to her, and tried not to look again at her lips.

      “Donald, darling,” she said, “please open your trunk. But I’d rather that you not see what I need to put in it. It is private.”

      He didn’t like what she was asking but he also didn’t want to argue with her. A voice whispered loudly in his skull that it would not be smart to argue. He unlocked the trunk and walked back to the front of his car. A police cruiser sat several blocks away. He squinted hard and saw that it was empty. It didn’t seem to make any sense for it to be there. He heard other voices talking with Serena, and remembered her mentioning having companions with her. When they were done putting whatever it was in the trunk, he turned and caught a quick glance of the three men with her. They were like shadows the way they moved, and he had this sense that he didn’t want to look at any of them too closely, but was left with the impression that they all had the same similar odd-shaped cat-like features as Serena and
Jim
. He figured that they were all related, maybe some inbreeding going on. He noted that one of them was limping.

      “Donald, Darling, are you going to leave us standing here?” Serena asked, laughing.

      He got in the driver’s seat. Serena took the seat next to him and her three companions piled into the back. Normally it would be tight fitting three adults back there, but like Serena, they all had slender body types, and they fit without any trouble. Outside of one quick glance in the rear view mirror, he kept his stare focused straight ahead. He didn’t want to look at any of them. At least not directly.

      “There have been more killings, Serena. I think
Jim
is behind them.”

      “That is interesting, Donald.” From her tone it was clear that she wasn’t at all interested. “
M
ay I suggest we go back to your hotel room so we can talk in a more comfortable setting?”

      Hayes nodded. His instincts told him now was not a good time to fill her in on anything, especially along this isolated stretch of the city. As much as he wanted to peek over and see why her lips had looked so large and red before, he kept his stare frozen straight ahead. The silence inside the car unnerved him, but he knew it would be better to just keep his mouth shut for the time being. Now was especially not the time to tell her that he had talked with the police about
Jim
.

      He drove further up the street so he could pull into a driveway and turn around more easily, and saw what looked like red smudges on the door of the abandoned police car. He almost kept driving straight ahead so he could see one way or the other what was smeared over that door, but again, his instincts told him now was not the time for that, and he turned the car around as planned. Nervously, he tried making small talk with Serena, asking how her trip was. She casually dismissed him by telling him that she’d rather not talk right now—she was tired and would like to rest until they got to his hotel room. That got a chuckle from one of her companions as they sat in the back seat whispering back and forth. Hayes strained to make out what they were saying but couldn’t quite get it. He realized his hands and wrists were aching, and noticed how tightly he was clenching the wheel and how the veins were bulging from his arms. He sensed that Serena was noticing those veins also, and that sent a chill up his spine.

      “You’re sweating, Donald,” she said with a laugh.

      “I’ve had a tough day so far,” he muttered, more than anything not wanting to look at her, especially not wanting to see why her lips were the way they were.

      When he arrived at the hotel he started to pull into a parking space in front so they’d have to walk through the lobby, but Serena pointed out the hotel’s parking garage.

      “I think it would be better if you parked in there,” she said.

      Reluctantly, Hayes pulled away from the curb and drove into the attached garage. After parking, he got out of the car and heard Serena and her companions get out also.
M
ore than ever he didn’t want to look at them. Something told him not to. Even louder, the same gut instinct was screaming at him to run.

      “Do you need to get your things out of the trunk?” he asked.

      “They’ll be fine where they are,” Serena said.

      Hayes led the way to the elevator, then stood staring at his hands folded in front of him. He could tell Serena and her companions found it amusing that he couldn’t get himself to look directly at any of them. He led them to his room, and once inside, went straight to the minibar and poured himself a scotch and water.

      “Would any of you like one?” he offered the rest of them.

      “No thank you,” Serena said, again laughing that shrill, glass-crackling laugh. “Your hand is shaking, Donald.”

      “It’s been a tough day.”

      “Yes, I’ve heard already. You’re repeating yourself.”

      “Sorry.”

      “No need to apologize for that—after all, you’ve had a tough day.” That brought sniggers from her companions. Serena continued, adding, “I certainly hope you haven’t been expensing those.
M
otel minibar drinks are ridiculously marked up.”

      “Don’t worry. I don’t expense my food or drinks.”

      “You’d be much better off buying a bottle at a liquor store.”

      “Thanks for the advice.”

      Hayes drained his drink and poured himself another one. He could sense that all of them had moved closer to him.

      “You mentioned something about more killings earlier…” Serena started.

      It all clicked in place then. With a clarity of thought, Hayes knew what had happened with
Jim
. He knew why those killings happened, why none of the witnesses remembered seeing
Jim
’s girlfriend in that theatre.

      “Yeah, I did mention something like that,” he said.

      “You think my
Jim
was involved?”

      “Yeah, I do.”

      “Donald, I am paying you quite a lot of money for your services.”

      He nodded. His throat had tightened, and he knew he’d have trouble talking. He tilted his glass and finished off what was left of his second scotch. It helped.

      “It looks like he killed two more people today,” he said. “Both members of a local Cleveland drug gang. The Blood Dragons.”

      “What an adorable name,” Serena said. “Yes, I do like that name. Any guess why my
Jim
would do something like that.”

      “I have a guess. I think he got in some trouble with them.
M
aybe he took something of theirs, and maybe they took something of his to get their stuff back.”

      
M
ore curious than anything else, she asked, “What would they take of his?”

      “His girlfriend.”

      One of her companions snorted out a loud laugh.

      “That reminds me, Donald, you never did fax me that girl’s drawing.”

      Hayes nodded, fished a copy of the drawing out from a folder and handed it to Serena. It was purely reflex, he couldn’t help it, but he turned to look at her and found himself staring at Serena’s mouth. He understood why it had looked so big and red before. It had been smeared with blood, so much so that it looked caked on. He then looked from her to the others. Their clothing was bullet-riddled, splotches of blood covered both it and their skin. One of them had a four-leaf clover-like pattern of gunpowder burns in the middle of his forehead. Hayes thought he had smelled gunpowder earlier when he was in the car with them.

      “I think I could use another drink,” Hayes said.

      “I think you’ve had enough, Donald. I’m afraid I might get a bit tipsy if I allow you to have another.”

      All of it made sense then. Those bodies missing all that blood, Serena and her companions splattered with it. Their freakish looks…being able to rip a man’s arm off…tearing another man’s head from its body…It was insane but it all made sense.

      Hayes made a move for the door. Serena showed an amazing quickness and stepped in front of him, grabbing both his arms. It was like being held by steel bands. He couldn’t move.

      “Donald, I have been very impressed with your work, otherwise I wouldn’t be having you join our little family. I know you may not think so right now, but you should feel quite honored.”

      “You must be satiated from before,” one of the others was telling her. “If you’d like I could take care of him. That wouldn’t be too gay, would it?”

      She laughed at that. “I don’t think so, but Donald and I have developed a very special bond. He’s been aching for my touch for so long now that it would only be right if I did the honors.”

      She looked hard into Hayes’ eye. All he could see were two empty dark holes.

      “Please…” he said.

      “You’re quite welcome,” she told him.

      She picked him up and swung him to the floor, then bent over him. Her lips touched his throat. They were like ice. With some shame he realized he was both terrified and excited. He was unable to move, unable to breath, his heart pounding as he waited. It seemed a long time before she bit his throat, her teeth sinking deep into his flesh. He knew she had severed his jugular. It hurt, but not as much as he would’ve thought. He closed his eyes and waited to die. Death didn’t come, though. Instead it started hurting. Bad. And it only got worse. Like he was on fire. Like he would go out of his mind. The world disappeared on him, leaving him nothing but pain. Before too long he wished he were dead already.

* * * * *

      Zach bound Hayes’s wrist and ankles using strips that he had ripped from a spare bed sheet taken from the hotel room’s closet. The PI moaned softly, but mostly lay still on the floor. Zach pulled on the strips and tightened his knot. He stood up, faced Serena and wrinkled his nose as if he smelled bad cheese.

      “That sheet is some sort of polyester-cotton blend. We’d be lucky if it were even a hundred thread count.”

      “I know, darling.”

      Zach’s head pivoted slowly in a half circle as he took in the room, his disgust showing plainly on his face. “Unbelievably tacky,” he said.

      “Think of it as roughing it for a night, darling. Like we were camping.”

      Zach nodded sullenly. Wilfred had joined him so he could prod Hayes in the back with the toe of his boot. The PI stirred slightly, but not much more than that.

      “Do you think that’s going to hold him?” Wilfred asked.

      “For a few hours maybe,” Zach said. “But after that I don’t think so. We could use some chains.” He shifted his gaze to Serena. “Is he worth this annoyance? If we got rid of him we could find someplace nice to spend the night. Why stay cooped up in this dump?”