It was one-ten in the a.m. when I turned the Merc off the road and started up the winding drive. The vinelike branches of a dozen weeping willow trees stroked the roof of my car like fleshless fingers; my tires swirled up a backwash of crushed pink mimosa blossoms made bloody by the glow of the taillights. I was bracing myself for—what?
My accident victim from earlier this evening wanting to call Triple-A? Mr. Delacroix, returned from his fiery tryst with my pop-eyed vampire?
I parked in front of the garage and walked across the vast, sloped lawn, expecting a troupe of reenactors from The Night Of The Living Dead. Instead I was treated to a diorama of Van Gough's Starry Night: not a soul, living or shambling dead, in sight.
I walked the boundaries of the "yard" twice, the motion sensors triggering the house "security" lights that, perversely, made me an easy target for hidden assailants while effectively destroying my night vision for the next fifteen minutes. And it took that long just to run primary and secondary checks of the immediate area.
If you're thinking that floodlights are a useless security feature for someone with infravision, let me tell you now that it doesn't mean diddley-squat when your intruders have the thermal equivalent of ice water in their veins. Still, being outside with the lights on me wasn't part of the original design concept.
I cut corners on doing the full perimeter sweep: proof that I had been wise to cut my military career short. Though not as short as the men I'd helped court martial back all those years ago. Funny how you can face down a real monster in the here-and-now, yet find yourself more haunted by the ghosts of old memories.
I kicked an old pinecone into the woods and wondered whatever became of Birkmeister and his men. I had no real hope of finding out as their records had been sealed along with mine. One way or another, Uncle Samuel made us all disappear as a means of cleaning up the mess that had been made. I had gotten off easy.
But was it because I was innocent? My JAG lawyer had certainly made that case.
Or was it because my testimony had simplified matters for the military tribunals charged with laying the entire matter to rest?
I felt a flash of nearly forgotten anger—more proof that not everything that is buried, stays buried. I shook my head and turned to survey the slope leading back up to the house. Screw Lieutenant Lenny and the rest of the squad. That was then; this was now. I decided that I wasn't primed—mentally or practically—to do a wider sweep of the woods that bordered my property on two sides. And it just wasn't practical to step off the banks and into the waters of Gris Bayou in the back.
Still, there was plenty of lawn in-between. Not to mention pecan and oak and willow and mimosa and magnolia and dogwood trees—although they had lately begun to do battle with creeping vines of wisteria, clematis, trumpet, and honeysuckle. While I paid to have the grass cut regularly, the shrubbery had taken advantage of benign neglect. You could hide a whole marching band of corpses in my front yard—never mind the odd, ambulatory cadaver. Unkempt kaleidoscopic bursts of azaleas and lilacs and creeping phlox and fiery explosions of dwarf burning bush had mutated since Spring into unidentifiable, alien greenery that resembled kudzu on steroids. They had gone on to multiply like riots of bacterial blooms infecting a green petri dish. Some days I felt more like George of the Jungle than Milton the Monster.
I looked back at the silhouette of my stone-and-brick two-story house that was more fortress than home. Three—Mama Samm had said "three stories." Or tree to be precise. Did that mean she was less informed than she thought?
Or was she counting the subterranean level—the one with the safe room and the gun vaults that didn't show up on the official blueprints?
Stepping up onto the porch, I felt an unaccustomed grittiness under my left foot. I unlocked the door, rekeyed the alarm pad, and switched on the porch light. A mound of gritty white powder had been scuffed over and onto the doormat. Picking up a pinch, I rubbed it between my fingers and touched it to my tongue: salt.
Okay.
I studied the rest of the porch more carefully. Maybe I saw a couple of small stains on the concrete that hadn't been there previously. Or maybe not: Maybe it was residue from the accident guy who had dropped by earlier this evening. Hey, who studies their porch on a regular basis? I suppose someone, somewhere, is on intimate terms with their doorstep—but not because the ghost of his dead wife called him at the office to report an arrival of the departed.
I sighed and pushed the door open. My life would have been simpler if I had just gone ahead and died in the crash that killed my wife and daughter. Or if I'd become truly undead after my transfusion in Bassarab's barn. Being stuck somewhere between alive and undead made everything infinitely more complicated.
"Honey, I'm home!" I locked the door behind me and rekeyed the alarms. "What happened to our company?" I walked through the dining room and the den, half-expecting to find a stiff, relaxed and ensconced in my easy chair and making small talk with my now-you-see-her-now-you-don't wife.
Ex-wife.
Or, rather, deceased wife: ex-life.
I went through the entire house, basement and bathrooms included: no dead bodies, no ectoplasmic ex.
Olive Purdue didn't hear a voice on the other end of my phone call because there was no voice. My wife was more than a year dead and the dead don't come back and behave like refugees from a Thorne Smith story.
Yeah, tell that to my absent paramour.
Not that it would do any good. When Lupé stormed out of the house nearly two months before, she made it clear that I had to decide, once and for all, whether Jenny was just a psychic manifestation of the hemophagic virus mutating my brain cells—or the actual ghost of my dead wife. Either way, I was to resolve the situation so there would be no further ménage-a-haunts.
If I couldn't . . .
I gazed at Lupé's strong, dark features in a photo on the fireplace mantel. Her bronzed skin, dark eyes, and smoky black hair bespoke her Latin American ancestry more than her second-generation French Canadian heritage. Her features were strong and sensual in contrast to my dead wife's delicate porcelain beauty. There were no pictures of me. Cameras had a difficult time capturing my actual image now that I was becoming . . . what? The jury was still out on that issue. And since the my photos prior to the crash included Jenny or Kirsten, I had put them away months before meeting the woman who best understood my twilight existence.
If only she could understand my inability to let Jenny go in the more literal sense. If only I could. While I tended to agree with her theory that Jenny was only a manifestation of my inability to permanently "commit," I had yet to figure out how to exercise the marital clause of " 'til death do us part."
Perhaps "exorcise" was more apt.
Sighing, I walked into the den and booted up the computer. While I waited for it to churn through the latest infestation of Microsoft Windows, I scanned my bookshelves for material on Elizabeth Báthory and voodoo, telling myself that the dead don't go AWOL from the local cemetery and ring doorbells at midnight.
And, of course, there's no such thing as vampires.
It took a little digging to run down "Marinette Bois-Chèche."
Vodoun or voodoo is not a set theology, per se. When African slaves were transported to the New World, they brought a range of belief systems as varied as the tribes and countries of their origins. As tribes were blended with other tribes, separated, then diluted by subsequent generations, these beliefs were mixed and muddled with the white man's religions—particularly Catholicism—producing a general form and structure identifiable as voodoo but by no means definitive across time and geography.
The supreme and most powerful voodoo "god" is Damballah-Wedo whose symbol is the snake and is sometimes merged with the image of Saint Patrick because of his reputed influence over all serpents. I skimmed over a chapter on the symbology of snakes in myth and religion and noted that Ayido-Wedo was Damballah's "wife"—"the moon to his sun." Their children or "companions" are the Loa who manifest in over two hundred variants or avatars and are divided and shared among fifteen or so different sects.
Of course, the various source materials were mildly contradictory at best. And trying to quantify the Loa was nigh impossible. They weren't really gods or godlings, angels or demons. And "spirits" was such a generic, all-purpose term as to be virtually useless. The Loa were, well, just the Loa.
And, even then, they weren't always who you thought they were since they manifested different "aspects." As this happened rather frequently, each aspect or manifestation was identified through a variation on each one's name. Erzulie—or Ezili or Maîtresse Erzulie—for example, was the idealized figure of womanhood, the Loa of love and beauty. And, like most women, she expressed herself through a wide range of identities. There was Erzulie-Séverine-Belle-Femme, Erzulie as a beautiful woman; Erzulie Taureau, the aspect of Erzulie as the bull; La Grande Erzulie, the aspect of Erzulie as an elderly, grief-stricken woman; La Sirène or La Sirènn, the sea or serpent aspect of Erzulie; and Tsilah Wédo, the aspect representing wealth and beauty.
Like most characteristics of Vodoun there was a flip side. Erzulie could also manifest in facets of vengeance and ugliness. Some of these were Erzulie Mapiangueh, Erzulie Toho, Erzulie Zandor, and—most interestingly—Marinette Bois-Chèche. Unfortunately, there was little else chronicled beyond the names. Just a list of a few additional aspects—Erzulie Boum'ba, Erzulie Dantor, Erzulie Dos-bas, Erzulie Fréda, Erzulie Fréda Dahomin, Erzulie Gé Rouge and Erzulie Mapian.
If this doesn't make a compelling argument for the simplicities of monotheism, I don't know what does—even the concept of a Three-in-One trinity seems terribly uncomplex by comparison.
And the confusion didn't end with these multiple personality disorders: there were sects or families of Loa who couldn't seem to make up their minds as to who belonged to which clan. And then there was the little matter of form and intent as applied through invocation and ritual. Most voodoo was practiced in the Rada or "right hand" forms—healing, blessing, purification, praise and thanksgiving. Petro, on the other hand is for cursing your enemies, raising the dead, invoking evil spirits, and basically turning Loa's bad boys loose to raise some Hell. The vast majority of Vodoun's adherents practiced Rada rites and had nothing to do with the Petro perversions—Hollywood notwithstanding. But it was another example of how the same Loa could be invoked for both good and evil.
The Gédé clan, for another example, was the Loa of the dead—but they were also potent healers and the protectors of children. Their colors were purple and black. Baron Samedi, the head of the Gédé family was a powerful arbiter of justice between the living and the dead and very popular for a cadaverlike spirit who hangs out in graveyards. But, then, he was a snappy dresser, wearing top hat and tails and, as everyone knows: "The clothes make the man."
Another clan, the Ogou, comprised the warrior Loa whose dominion was often symbolized by the sword, metalworking, fire, lightning, and the color red. Different "aspects" of the Ogou were said to manifest as Ogou Baba, a military general; Ogou Badagris, the phallic or fertility aspect; Ogou Bhathalah, the Loa of alchemy; Ogou Fer or Ferraille, Loa of the sword, iron and metals; Ogou Shango, the Loa of lightning; and Ogou Tonnerre—or Baron Tonnerre, the aspect of thunder.
I sat back in my chair and contemplated Mama Samm's cryptic warnings. She had said the Ogou cast a long shadow here. Meaning . . . what?
It took nearly another hour of digging to find a significant reference to Marinette Bois-Chèche, also listed as Marinette Bras-Chêche, Marinette Congo, and Marinette Pied-Chêche. There wasn't a whole lot of material on her—a single sentence, in fact, was all I could turn up.
"Powerful and violent principal female Loa of the Petro rite."
That didn't sound good as the Petro spirits were already considered to be "highly vengeful, bitter, and most dangerous" of all of the vodoun Loa.
So whom was Mama Samm trying to warn me against?
The Witch of Cachtice?
Elizabeth Báthory?
And what would happen when she finally "put her red dress on"?
Normally—a word that was becoming more and more infrequent in my vocabulary—I went to bed around sunrise and slept through the day. Tonight I decided to retire early. I wanted to get a running start on the Delacroix matter and I was just plain exhausted.
Jenny "reappeared" as I put the finishing touches on my makeshift first aid. The electrical burns had settled into a dull ache but my leg still throbbed as if the wound from the vampire's claws had occurred just minutes before. I had smeared antibiotic ointment into the red furrows and was taping an old but clean pillowcase around my calf when the medicine cabinet opened in the bathroom and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide floated out and down to the edge of the sink next to the toilet.
"Did you clean the wounds thoroughly?" she asked.
I let it bleed and then rinsed with alcohol.
"I'm not a mind-reader, darling; you have to answer out loud."
"Not if you're a figment of my imagination." I wrapped a few more strands of tape to add pressure as well as anchor the bandage. "Where have you been?"
"I don't know. One minute I was looking out the window at the dead person on the front porch. Then I was someplace far away and it seemed to take me a long time to get back."
"You're telling me you had some kind of blackout?"
The bottle drifted back up to a shelf in the open cabinet. "Why do you ask? If I am a figment of your virus-ravaged imagination then you already know."
"Yeah? Humor me."
The mirrored door swung shut and I fancied I could see her dim silhouette in its silvered depths. "Why, hunkered down in the stygian pit of your subconscious, of course," she said sarcastically, "awaiting my turn to torment you afresh—just like the rest of the fairytale creatures that have haunted your life this past year."
"The real Jen never used words like 'stygian.' "
"The afterlife has a way of expanding one's vocabulary. But you've got bigger problems than whether or not I'm real."
"Not according to Lupé."
I heard her sigh. "I know you blame me, Chris, but I think she has issues."
"Hell yes, she has issues!" I sputtered. "You're the issue!"
"If I'm not real, then how can I be the issue? Wouldn't that make you the issue?"
I grunted. "Me . . . you . . . she made it clear that she didn't want to come back until this particular issue was settled."
"I don't see what the big deal is, here. I thought I'd made it clear from the very beginning that I approve of her. I think she's very good for you."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It may be one of those woman things that we men are kind of clueless about but I think she doesn't appreciate being 'approved of.' "
"Well, that's too bad. What am I supposed to do? Disapprove? I've gotten a lot better about knocking before I come into the bedroom. Let's face another possibility: She just may not be the right woman for you."
"Not the right woman for me?" I jumped up and stalked back into the bedroom. "She's a werewolf, for God's sake!"
"And . . . ?"
"My God, Jen! I'm infected with one-half of the combinant virus that turns the living into the undead courtesy of a blood transfusion with Count Dracula—"
"Prince, not count," she corrected, "Vlad Drakul Bassarab."
"—I've shared blood with a lycanthrope and sampled Tanis leaf extract," I continued, ignoring the interruption. "I've got vampires and metamorphs from at least three major enclaves hunting me, a dead wife haunting me. Then there's this necrotic virus ticking away in my brain like a time bomb that, when it goes off, will blow my eccentric little coping mechanisms into a total disconnect from reality. What kind of normal woman is going to put up with that?"
"You'd be surprised what 'normal women' are capable of putting up with," she answered quietly. "But you've got a bigger problem, right now."
"What? The dead guy on my porch tonight?" I fell back on the bed. "I think you must have been mistaken. There was a car crash just down the road and the driver—who was pretty banged up—came by earlier to use the phone. It may have been him coming back. . . ."
"What? You don't think I know dead when I see it? No. And I'm talking about that vampire that seriously jacked you around tonight."
I crammed the extra pillow under my throbbing leg to elevate it. "He's dead. Case closed."
"Maybe the virus is starting to rot your brain. What if he was rogue?"
That stopped me. "What are you getting at?"
"As I see it—or as you do since I am only a figment of your imagination—there are three possibilities. One, there is an enclave in Northeast Louisiana . . ."
"Not bloody likely," I said. "I looked at all the maps back in Seattle. The only demesne in Louisiana is down in New Orleans. There are only eighteen in the entire country and there hasn't been a new enclave since the 1960s. There will probably never be another enclave—the other demesnes wouldn't permit it."
"So that leaves us with two possibilities, darling. Your vampire is either a rogue or an enforcer."
During last year's Seattle sojourn, Stefan Pagelovitch had acquainted me with the demesne system by which territory was divided and held by the various undead populations. These little "underground" fiefdoms were quite jealous of their own autonomy and, as a rule, only cooperated on the issue of rogues.
A newly minted vampire, left to its own devices, was a danger to the safety of every demesne. As a result, there were rules governing the existence of all who were reborn as creatures of the night. Broken down to basics, if you make another like yourself, you're responsible for "it." Teach it to exist subtly, hunt judiciously, and eliminate all evidence of feeding. It shouldn't leave telltale corpses lying about or visible bite-marks on the living. It should learn how the delicate art of mental domination can erase those awkward memories that might otherwise require a bloodier solution to the problem of witnesses.
And, most importantly, you bring it into the enclave where it must swear fealty to you and to the Doman, the ruler of the demesne who adjudicates all of the laws for that particular enclave. Any vampire attempting to exist apart from the watchful "protection" of its Sire's society was declared rogue and automatically assumed to be a risk to all demesnes.
"And it doesn't really matter," I said slowly, "whether this one was a rogue or a hunter."
If Robert Delacroix's dance partner was a rogue, I could expect a dozen or more vampire regulators to be hot on his trail. If he wasn't rogue, then it was likely that he was a rogue hunter hot on another newborn's trail and that there would be others around like him—the cell phone practically guaranteed it. Either way, it meant that my home territory was about to come under a lot of undead scrutiny.
And I had a bigger bounty on my head than any ordinary rogue.
"So, the question is," I continued aloud, "whether to hunker down and hope that I can stay off the radar as the Wild Hunt passes by or pull up stakes—"
"So to speak," Jen smirked.
"—and move again. The problem is, it's probably too late to make such arrangements without calling more attention to myself."
"Then you'd better hope Mama Samm is the only speed bump in your elaborate paper trail," my ghostly conscience warned. "Seriously, Chris; I feel a constant prickling in my ectoplasm these days. It's like there's something very old and very evil hovering just beyond the range of my senses. I felt it coming closer just before I . . . went away. Something is out there, something terrible! And its power is growing! This might be a good time to call Olive and tell her—oh I don't know—something like you're taking a couple of weeks off to go fishing."
I considered it as I walked into the closet and punched in the combination on my gun safe. "Blowing town might be just as attention-getting as actually moving," I decided finally, reaching in and withdrawing a box of ammo and a zippered pouch. "But I do think I'll give up jogging for a couple of weeks."
I closed the safe and walked back out and over to the bed.
"Now this looks like a bad idea," she said.
"I have a license to carry." I unzipped the pouch and removed the handgun. "This is a ten-millimeter auto Glock 20."
"Does that mean it's special?"
"The Glock 20 ranks with the most powerful automatic pistols ever made."
"Isn't Dirty Harry's gun bigger?" she asked with that gee-whiz, innocent tone that signaled standard baiting mode. "Or is that just Hollywood special effects?"
"If you add up the total foot-pounds of muzzle energy represented by the fifteen rounds in its high-capacity magazine, it's more like: 'Go ahead . . . make my week.' "
She giggled. "Was that supposed to be Jack Nicholson?
"Clint Eastwood."
"Don't quit your night job."
Laying out the cleaning kit, I proceeded to strip the handgun down and repeat the cleaning and oiling process I had just completed two weeks before after visiting the shooting range.
"I think this whole P.I. fantasy has gone to your head."
"If it had gone to my head I would be sporting a shoulder rig every evening as I chase after unfaithful husbands and follow up on insurance claims."
"Do you really think that will protect you from things that are already dead?"
I grinned as I reassembled the Glock and wiped it down. "Well, it won't protect me from your nagging but I don't mind. You nag me when you're worried about me." I laid the pistol on the nightstand and picked up a pair of magazines. "As for stopping dead things, I've got some special loads that I've been wanting to try for a while."
"Why is it that every guy thinks a gat in the hand means the world by the tail?"
"You watch too much Bogart."
"No, you watch too much Bogart," she said. "I'd like to watch the Lifetime channel but you've always got the satellite set to Turner Classic Movies. If we had cable, I could go watch in the other room."
I opened the box and began loading bullets into the fifteen-shot magazines. "These are 10 mil Glasers."
"Wad-cutters?"
"You didn't learn that from watching Lifetime." I held up the epoxy-jacketed projectile. "It's the equivalent of a standard 'Silver' Glaser—which isn't really. They call them that to differentiate them from 'Blue' Glasers."
"Who comes up with these names, anyway?"
"Originally? The inventor, Colonel Jack Cannon, named it for his friend Armin Glaser. I'm not sure why or whether Armin's still proud of his namesake. The idea was to produce a round that wouldn't endanger innocent bystanders from over-penetration. APs and FMJs have a tendency to pass through various substances—bad guys, walls, cars—"
"Honey, you're lapsing into SEALspeak and losing me."
I thought about arguing that she understood perfectly since she was really—aw, hell with it. "Armor Piercing and Full Metal Jacket ordnance are designed for military use as you really need that penetrating ability." Not to mention the fact that the Geneva Convention had decided they were more humane than mushrooming bullets and minié balls.
"Law enforcement, on the other hand, needed bullets that could be used in populated areas, hostage situations, and so on. If you shoot the bad guy, you don't want the bullet going through him and into the house across the street."
I paused as I considered the idea of the local cops using ammo that was outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
"JSPs and JHPs—sorry—Jacketed Soft Points and Hollow Points were designed to mushroom or flatten once they entered the target, expending their energy on impact so they wouldn't keep going."
"Sounds humane."
I knew that tone all too well. "Well, it is. For the innocent bystander."
"But for the person who's shot, it makes a little hole going in and a great big hole coming out."
I nodded. "Except, for my purposes, it's better if it doesn't come out. That's why I'm trying modified Glasers." I started back to loading the ammo magazines. "The rounds are filled with birdshot covered by a crimped polymer end cap. Upon impact, the projectile fragments, with the birdshot spreading like a miniature shotgun pattern. The frag-spread guarantees most major arteries and blood vessels in the vicinity will be penetrated causing immediate unconsciousness from catastrophic blood-pressure drop and possible death from exsanguination within minutes.
"The 'Silver' Glaser uses slightly larger birdshot and has a couple of extra inches of penetration and stopping power over the 'Blue' version."
"Except," she interrupted, "your so-called 'Silver' version uses actual silver for the birdshot, anticipating major damage to undead flesh. Sort of like the Lone Ranger using a shotgun."
I looked around again; this open-mouthed response was getting to be a habit.
"Don't look so surprised, Chris. I'd have to have been pretty inattentive all these years not to know how your mind works by now."
Well, that made one of us.
The dream slammed through my head with all the ugly power of last year's memories of Bassarab's barn.
Four large flaming braziers, one in each corner of the room, can't provide enough warmth or enough light to adequately illuminate the dark stone walls. She likes it that way. Even though she has many aboveground chambers as well as the courtyard to work with, she prefers the dark, underground warrens where she can practice in the eternal shadows beneath the keep.
The Dark Arts aren't so named on the basis of intent and final product alone.
The sounds of the great Carpathian forest echo in these manmade canyons of dressed stone and iron-girt doors: the constant moaning of the wind, the screech of the owl, the scream of the lynx, the growls, yips, and howlings of the wolves . . .
Only, there is no wind down here in the blocky bowels of Cachtice, no winged birds of prey, no four-legged animals—the beasts that inhabit this burrow, the hunters and the prey alike, walk upon their hind legs and make fading claims to being human.
Other sounds shatter the auditory illusion: the harsh slap of leather upon splitting skin, the subtle hiss of the heated irons, the skeletal shiver of chains and the perverse squeal of hinges.
And the soft pattering sounds of rain that falls, not from a cloud but from a spasmed clutch of flesh embraced by a metal cage of bars and blades and spikes.
The moaning fades as if the wind—or something—has nearly died.
She stands beneath the Devil's showerhead like Botticelli's Venus—if that master had painted his masterpiece during a scarlet period in counterpoint to Picasso's blue. Clad in nothing but crimson from head to toe, she opens her eyes, making two hollow openings in a curtain of red. She cups her hands above her groin and scrapes her belly in an upward motion that fills her palms until her insolent breasts are given a second undercoating.
Then she holds her unholy offering out to me, the thick, viscous (steaming!) blood dribbling between her fingers.
Share my bounty, she says, her teeth surprisingly white and shockingly long.
Share my power . . .
I jolt awake to the shrill bleating of the telephone and a disturbing hardness between my legs.
I rolled over and peered, bleary-eyed, at the telephone next to my bed: I had switched the ringer off but had forgotten the downstairs phone. The clock on my "night"stand proclaimed the time as 10:17 in the a.m. Picking up the phone was easier than getting up to close the bedroom door so I did.
"Mr. Haim?"
"Speaking." But just barely. My mouth was dry and my throat clotted.
"You're the private investigator with the office in the old railroad car?"
"Ummm." A migraine started to unfold between my temples like an origami sculpture made of pig iron. It pulsed in counterpoint to the throbbing in my leg.
"I want to hire you." A small portion of my mind not occupied in cataloguing my misery noted that the voice belonged to a woman.
"My office hours are eight p.m. to four a.m. I'm teaching a night class at the university and won't be in until after nine tonight. Come see me at ten."
"I work the night shift."
"So do I. How did you get my home number?" It was unlisted, of course.
"Mama Samm D'Arbonne gave it to me. She said you'd want to talk to me."
So all of a sudden the old fortuneteller was giving me referrals? I furrowed my brow. It hurt.
"Did she say why?" I tried to arrange a ménage a trois between my head, the telephone receiver, and the pillow.
"No sir . . ."
"Is it a divorce case?"
"No sir, it's—"
"If it's important enough to take off work for, you can tell me after nine tonight. At my office."
"Well—"
"Goodnight, Ms.—"
"Delacroix. Chalice Delacroix. Good morning, Mr. Haim."
I sat straight up in bed as the receiver clicked on her end and a bloody iron rose bloomed behind my left eye. My turn to dial star-sixty-nine.
"Ms. Delacroix? Sam Haim. I'll meet you at my office at twelve noon. . . ."
Imagine Vanessa Williams and Halle Berry as the ugly stepsisters: Chalice Delacroix was Cinderella.
Even half-blinded by the daylight and wearing polarized contact lenses behind EPF10 Ray Bans, I could see why admirers at the funeral home had surrounded her last night. She was chocolate perfection in a black pants suit and crisp white blouse. All the more impressive as hardly anyone's clothes are still crisp by midday between July and October in Louisiana.
Most impressive of all: she held a doctorate in biology and worked in the genetics division at BioWeb Industries. Where her father was a janitor. Hmmm. . . .
"My father's funeral was supposed to take place today," she said. "We should have lowered his casket into the ground two hours ago." Her eyes glistened. They were moss green and liquid like deep woodland springs where only the surface seems still. "Now that there is no body to bury, there doesn't seem to be much point."
I steepled my fingers and leaned my elbows on the desk blotter. "The body is missing?"
She gave her head a little shake while she searched for the words or her voice. Maybe both. "My father's body was vandalized. Stolen from his casket and . . . and . . ." She looked down and tears dripped into her lap, some finding the handkerchief clutched in her hand, some not. "It was shoved into the crematorium oven in the basement and half incinerated before the fires were extinguished. The medical examiner recommended that we complete the cremation process once the police are finished with their investigation."
"So the police are investigating?"
"They're running the paperwork."
"You're anticipating racial bias?"
She gave her head another little shake. "Nothing so virulent, Mr. Haim. This is, after all, the New South." The irony in her inflection was nearly invisible. "But Robert"—she pronounced it "Robaire"—"Delacroix was an old and poor black man. He was already dead and there was no physical harm done to anyone else. Emotional harm doesn't count for much when the court dockets are filled with stabbings, gunshot wounds, and lost and found bodies. The police would be unlikely to do more than push paper for an old and poor white man."
"So you want me to look into it."
She nodded and I resisted the impulse to take her hands in mine. "Did your father have any enemies?"
She shook her head.
"Ms. Delacroix," I cleared my throat, "in order to do my job I have to know as much about your father as possible. That means poking around and asking personal questions—even embarrassing or insulting questions."
She nodded.
"For instance, did your father gamble? Did he owe anyone any money?"
"No. He was a custodian and he spent every spare dollar that he had to put me through medical school. Between the two of us, we still owe the government a good deal of money in student loans. Do you think the Feds might be upset that he defaulted by dying?"
Now I did take her hands in mine. "Ms. Delacroix, I am sorry for your loss." You don't know how sorry. "But there is a standard series of questions that come with an investigation like this . . ." Who was I kidding? There was nothing standard about Robert Delacroix's assignation with a crematorium oven. " . . . and I have to pursue every possible lead until I can reasonably prove a dead end. I promise to be discreet and remember that you and your father are the victims, here. But I wouldn't be giving you your money's worth if I didn't consider every possibility."
"Money," she said, withdrawing her hands from mine. "I don't have much but I was thinking that if you were to speak with the management of the funeral home—"
"I'm sure they'd be more interested in a settlement than a lawsuit."
She gave a little shake of her head. "I do not wish to extort money from them, Mr. Haim. I was simply thinking that it would be in their best interests to help bring this . . . vandal . . . to justice. That they might contribute to your expenses and we could fund your investigation jointly."
"I'll talk to them. I'm sure something can be worked out. Plus I'm giving you a fifty percent discount over and above what they contribute to the case."
She looked a little startled. "Why?"
"Because this isn't a divorce case. And one further stipulation: if I don't find out who did this, I won't charge you one red cent."
She gave me a look that asked the question I dared not answer honestly.
"Company policy," I lied. "I guarantee results."
The truth was her father had saved my life. Robert Delacroix had already gotten my promise to avenge his death and protect his daughter. The creature that precipitated his fiery dissolution had already perished and discorporated in the furnace in question. And the only person that witnesses could place at the scene of the crime was yours truly. The fact that I had been front row and center when Chalice's daddy ended up in the crematory oven didn't mean that I could just fake an inconclusive paper trail and blow off the investigation. I couldn't take money from the Delacroix family when the debt was mine here. And, whatever I might finally reveal to Ms. Delacroix, I needed to find out how many other red-eyed bloodsuckers with cell phones were hanging out in Northeast Louisiana.
And what forces were at work when corpses climbed out of their graves and coffins to battle vampires and do business with a man trapped in the twilight realm between the living and the dead.