The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (5 page)

Lorna
remembered her mother walking through the glass doors of the
orphanage, into the blazing daylight. The woman never looked back.
Her receding form dwindled before disappearing into the waiting
car. Left behind was a feeble brunette child with large, melancholy
eyes who, while she wasn’t sure what had happened, suspected
something had been taken from her, and began to cry with a weak
mewling sound.

Why does it
always have to be about how much time is or isn’t left?

CHAPTER THREE

B
y the time Lorna arrived, the investigation of the Fargo
bank robbery was well underway. Yellow police tape stretched across
the bank entrance. A couple of uniforms interviewed shaken
witnesses outside the barrier. Three detectives milled around the
roped-off area. At the far end of the room, the massive door to the
vault containing the safety deposit boxes hung on its hinges,
halfway open. Everyone else had cleared out.

Counters
covered in faux marble balanced on dark wood trimmed in brass,
where customers once filled out deposit slips, sat in even
intervals down the middle. In an age of electronic banking and
ATMs, few used them, but they gave the place a comfortable,
old-time appearance. Parallel to the counters on each side and
behind ran a row of teller windows protected by clear, bulletproof
shields. Occupying the back third were the manager desks. Behind
them, the open vault. A clutch of uniforms, detectives, and crime
technicians buzzed in and out.

Lorna craned
her neck toward the focus of investigative interest.

“Why am I
here?” she asked the detective in charge, a sergeant. Normally, a
lieutenant didn’t attend routine bank robbery scenes, even ones
occurring in posh, upscale, gated communities.

With a jerk of
a finger in the direction of the vault interior, a man with a
slick, brown-skinned face responded. “I dunno. Mike wouldn’t let it
go until I called you.”

The back and
hindquarters of her favorite pain in the ass squatted among a pile
of long metal boxes. Each container had various widths and depths,
but all were narrow compared with the length. The thieves had
ferreted through the contents, leaving what they didn’t take
scattered in a hopeless jumble on the floor. They’d sought a quick
grab, cash or jewels, ignoring the rest.

“They tunneled
in from the building next door,” Mike said without interrupting his
inspection of the boxes and contents, mostly papers, on the floor.
He always seemed to sense her proximity. It irritated the hell out
of her.

“Why am I
here?” she repeated. “On the way over, I heard we caught the dirt
bags who did this.”

“True,
Princess, but lookey here.”

She glanced
around to see whether anyone had picked up on use of the reviled
“P” word. No one had. All present continued their work without
pause.

Coming
alongside him, she followed the direction of his attention to one
of the largest boxes. It lay at his feet, with the gray hinged
cover bent all the way back.

“If you want
to know anything about The Others, here’s the place to start.” He
held up what appeared to be the White Pages of an old but ordinary
telephone directory. The pages were brown, with splits on the
edges.

Taking it from
him, she thumbed through the digest. Each page held a list of faded
names along with their addresses. “It’s a register of the complete
community.”

“It’s not any
current record of you guys. Check out the date. It’s forty years
old.”

Continuing to examine the document, she sought out her
family surname.
The White clan took up the first several
pages. Lorna thumbed to the back of the book. At the bottom of a
page, the last name read “Baby Lorna”.

“Wow, there
are the names, along with contact information, of all the elders.
It’s been out of date for years, but a private collector would pay
a fortune for it and ask no questions.”

The idiot
robbers tossed aside what was probably the most valuable item in
the vault.

“That’s not
all.” Mike produced a handful of papers. “There are letters and
pictures. Here’s a photo of the First Parents in a family
portrait.” The photograph showed a tall, handsome vampire with dark
hair and eyes. His arm affectionately enveloped a small, red-haired
lycan.

“Except for
the retro fashion style, they look the same now as back then,”
Lorna said.

Mike held the
portrait up to the light. “Looks to me like the present Ed White
favors his granny in most every department except for being about
twice her size.”

Spying a
packet of letters, Lorna knelt to pick them up. Handwritten on
expensive stationery, they dated from the late forties. One or two
still carried a trace of perfumed scent, detectable at the limit of
lycan sensory range, and were addressed to Cassandra White from
someone named Claire Bevis. Lorna searched the litany of The Others
genealogy drilled into all the children by the teachers at the
orphanage.

How does it go? First Parents Sam and Jim had triplets Ed,
Cassandra, and Claire; the next litter, Louie and Beatrice, died
from the plague. Ed arose from Ed. Claire bore…
The rest became confused in the
complexities of genealogy.

“This must be
very personal to someone,” Lorna thought out loud. Then she turned
to Mike. “I want you to personally bag and inventory any contents
you find belonging to this box. Put it somewhere safe. Make two
extra copies of the inventory. One for me, the other you keep.
Treat the contents with extreme care, because I think someone will
be after it soon.”

After two
days, the technicians completed sorting the contents of the
ransacked boxes by owner and bagged all the items, to be held as
evidence until the trial. Many of the wealthier families in the
area kicked up a fuss about the delay in returning their property.
Lorna stood by every day while police brass far above her pay grade
or even the level of Watch Commander Bell dealt with brush fires
surrounding the issue. A few of the complaints received run time on
the local news. Email to members of the Regional Congress
overloaded the congressional server, but the corporation’s weigh-in
on the matter remained conspicuously absent.

CI made its
move the next week.

Carrying a cup
of coffee along with a case folder she’d taken home the day before,
Lorna stepped out of the elevator to begin her Saturday shift.
Outside, a full moon painted the building front across the street
pale white. She passed the captain’s office, instead of the usual
whine of chair springs, he called out, “Lieutenant Winters, I need
to see you.”

Talk about a
first. “Be right there, boss.” Poking into her office long enough
to drop off the file, she stepped into his.

Waiting behind
a well-worn desk with a smile on his pasty face, as if the
expression pained him to put it there for her, he narrowed his
eyes. “The watch commander wants to see us.”

“Now?”
Normally, he arrived at the more civilized hour of seven a.m.

“Yes, now,”
Gregg said firmly. “He’s in the main conference room.”

“Well,” Lorna
answered with airy nervousness, taking a gulp of coffee that was
too much. The hot, sugar-laced, liquid caffeine burned going down.
“Let’s not keep the Big Guy waiting.”

Right away she
suspected the pre-dawn meeting concerned the documents. Watch
Commander Bell had no equal as a boss, but he was also a man of
uncompromising routine. To get him to the office three hours early
on a weekend took some real doing. They met their big boss in his
office from where he hustled them to a conference room a few doors
down the hall.

The motivation
for Watch Commander Bell’s uncharacteristically early appearance,
Lorna realized when they entered the room, was Assistant Chief
Durning. With him were two elderly people Lorna didn’t recognize at
first. Each was about seventy-five years old. The man curled up in
a chair, a compact little fellow with a wrinkled face and clear
blue eyes. The bend to his back made him appear gnomish. Recalling
the information gleaned from several Internet excursions in search
of information on the White family, Lorna realized who they
were.

Biographical
pictures, taken decades before and posted on the company site,
showed the man’s chalk-white hair once was reddish-blond. The woman
was taller, with gray hair. Like her companion, youthful portraits
showed a willowy dark haired beauty, but that splendor had receded
with age into frail elegance, augmented by the best cosmetic
products and medical procedures available, according to the
tabloids. One thing was sure. They wore expensive clothes, better
than the brass’s upper end off-the-rack stuff. The three occupied
chairs at the far end of a dark, wood table. The polished top
showed one or two damaged spots.

Upon Lorna’s
entrance, the assistant chief and the strangers rose to their feet
with a loud scraping of chairs. “So kind of you to come,
lieutenant,” he said with an engaging twinkle in an angular face.
To the captain and watch commander, he said, “Thank you, gentlemen.
That will be all.”

Both of them
hesitated, partially because they seemed disappointed at being
excluded, but also because in the back of any supervisor’s mind,
Lorna well knew, was at least the glimmer of unwillingness to
abandon a subordinate to the clutches of senior brass without
knowing why. It’s a loyalty burned in the blood—one even a
self-serving asshole like Gregg couldn’t purge from his system.

But rank hath
its privilege. After vacillating a moment, they backed from the
room, closing the door quietly behind them. Assistant Chief Durning
made introductions. “Lieutenant Winters, I want you to meet Thomas
White and Karla May. They represent Coven International and are
here today about some of the material you found in a recent bank
robbery.”

Lorna surveyed
the corporate pair. “Mr. White, you favor your grandmother,
Samantha. But not as much as your half-brother, Edward does.” She
directed her attention to the woman. “You, on the other hand,
resemble your mother, Cynthia the fashion model.”

The pair
turned to each other, then back to Lorna. “I am impressed,” said
Karla. “You’ve done your homework. My brother and I are fraternal
twins. Our mother was Cynthia Meadows.”

Once again,
Lorna delved into the results of her internet search. “Even now,
over seventy years after her untimely death, the entertainment and
world opinion in general, still consider your mother a classic
beauty whose name comes up on any list of the most beautiful women
who ever lived.”

“Right again,”
Karla said.

Lorna warmed
with satisfaction. “I try to keep up.” Leaning forward, she met
them with a level gaze. “How can I help you?”

Thomas took up
the conversation. “You have in the custody of your department
certain documents misplaced by our family for years. Our brother
wonders if some accommodation about their return may be
reached.”

Lorna glanced
at the assistant chief’s noncommittal expression. Turning back to
Karla and Thomas, she replied, “As I’m sure you know, they’re part
of the evidence in a major criminal investigation. To return them
prematurely could ruin the case, possibly letting felons walk.”

“We see your
position, but these documents have great personal as well as
historical value for not just our family but the community in
general. They are to us what the Declaration of Independence
represented to the former United States. If that document had been
among your findings, would you treat it like common evidence?”
Thomas stated with measured temperance.

“I understood
the priority was to catch criminals and lock them up.” More sarcasm
slipped into her tone than she wanted. Her eyes implored the
assistant chief for support.

Ever the
politician, he framed a neutral response. “No one disputes your
dedication, Lieutenant.” He paused a moment, glancing to the twins,
then back to her. “We all understand the law, placing release of
evidence before trial under your purview and the district
attorney’s. Perhaps there’s room for compromise.”

“We came out
of courtesy,” Karla said. “These documents have great personal
meaning for our grandparents and brother, along with the rest of
the family. If they are damaged, destroyed, or stolen, the loss
will be unfathomable. To safeguard them and ensure their return, we
will use all of the resources at the corporation’s command. Careers
are made or ruined on less.”

Lorna’s eyes
narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

Karla’s eyes
locked on Lorna’s and she continued in the same brief, foreboding
tone, “It isn’t a threat, it’s a promise you can count on. If one
paper is damaged, you’ll be walking a beat in Parramore for the
next thousand years.” Then she addressed her brother. “Come on,
Tom. Let’s go. I told you it wouldn’t work.” Signaling the
meeting’s conclusion, she snapped to her feet.

Assistant
Chief Durning’s face went ghost-white. Going to war against Coven
International was insane, even for a large police department. Eyes
wide in desperation, his mouth opened and shut without making a
sound, like a fish out of water. “Wait,” Lorna thundered above the
noise of heavy wooden chairs sliding backward. “Perhaps if we went
to the evidence locker and I showed you how secure your property
is, you might be satisfied. After all, the trial shouldn’t take
more than a year to come up.”

The siblings
considered the proposal. After a moment, Karla’s internal pressure
appeared to drop. “Well, I suppose it won’t hurt.”

The floor
above the morgue contained the evidence room. In an age of utility
rationing, they were the only parts of the building with full air
conditioning. When the party approached with Lorna in the lead, a
bored, sleepy little clerk raised her eyes from a crossword puzzle.
She sat on a battered, wooden folding chair behind a steel Dutch
door. Metal bars comprised the upper half. Behind her stretched a
vast, rambling space of loaded metal shelves. A musty odor of old
paper and, to Lorna’s lycan senses, small animal droppings, seeped
around the clerk from the room behind.