A Drop of Red (19 page)

Dawn held back a surprised laugh. One for Natalia.

Kiko looked annoyed as they turned the corner, where a row of fast-food places, banks, and storefronts stretched toward the train station. The grimy stench of car exhaust from busy George Street mixed with the autumnal temperature as commuters and urbanites came at them in a rush.

“So how does Justin tie in?” Dawn asked.

Before answering, Kiko glanced around, then waved her and Natalia over to the front of a travel agency, where they stood by the glass door in relative privacy.

The scent of jasmine signaled that a few Friends had circled around them, keeping a lookout for anyone who might get too close.

“First off,” Kiko said, “I highly doubt Justin’s what we might call a ‘client.’ ”

“How can you be sure if you can’t sense our ‘clients’?” Dawn asked.

Natalia spoke up. “I have to agree with Kiko. Justin seemed very human. Very different from either Frank or even you, Dawn.”

That little black spot Natalia had seen on Dawn charred into her even now.

“Then what
did
you see in Justin, Kik?” Dawn asked.

He lowered his voice and stepped closer, where they huddled over him.

“First, I saw Justin sitting on the floor of what looked like a murky flophouse, with other kids smoking, drinking, bundled up in dingy blankets. It was Justin and two other guys, plus a girl who looked real out of place because she seemed the type who would shop at Harrods instead of hanging around with them. They were all shooting up. I didn’t see any of them very good at first—too dark. I need to do a mental replay.”

Natalia gave Kiko a sidelong glance. “Those people who were with them . . . Were they ‘clients’?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“This girl,” Dawn asked, “didn’t happen to be Kate Lansing, did she?”

“Didn’t look like her silhouette,” Kiko said. “Kate had longer, reddish hair. And even though I couldn’t see an exact color for this girl, I know she had a short, smart, Posh Spice style. If this took place a while ago, maybe Kate could’ve grown it out. Or maybe it’s just a different girl.”

“Maybe,” Dawn said. “By comparing how Justin is now against how he was then, can we suppose that this did happen a decent amount of time ago? He couldn’t have cleaned himself up that quick, holding down a good job in a business hotel and looking as healthy as he does.”

Natalia was pensive. “He is rather pale. Perhaps he still goes out at night and indulges?”

“No way,” Kiko said. “His eyes. He doesn’t have junkie eyes.”

He cleared his throat, and Dawn rested a steadying hand at his nape.

“Then perhaps,” Natalia said, watching Dawn and Kiko from her side of the circle, “his mother’s sickness, then death over a year ago, changed his life for the better.”

“It cleaned him up,” Kiko added.

Natalia kept on going. “And if that’s the case, Kiko’s vision would have taken place
over
a year ago.”

The newbie was really catching on. “A year wouldn’t have allowed the girl’s hair to go from Posh Spice to Kate-long, would it? Unless she got extensions.”

“Let me get a definitive answer right now.” Kiko closed his eyes, using the screen of his mind to expand the vision that’d come to him in such a flash at the hotel. “After Justin and his three buddies shot up, they went out on the town. I can see street signs . . .” He smiled. “They were in Brixton, going in the direction of the railway station.”

“There’re warnings about that place at night,” Dawn said. “Druggies. Bad scene.”

“And the girl . . .” Kiko shook his head. “Nope, I can see now that she’s not Kate. They passed under a streetlight, so I can see her better. God, she’s young, way younger than any of the group. Maybe sixteen?”

“Yikes,” Dawn said, thinking that if she had a little sister that age, the older guys would’ve had a mouthful of fist if they even touched her.

Natalia seemed to understand what Dawn’s “yikes” meant. “Here, the age of consent is sixteen.”

Dawn had already read that somewhere, but it didn’t make her feel any less protective.

Kiko continued. “Before they actually got to the station, there was a dark street, an alley . . . I can’t see any signs to ID the exact place, but no one is around. Looks like the back of a restaurant, with empty delivery crates and vegetables dropped on the ground. And then . . .”

He opened his eyes, smug as a thug who knows he’s being dug.

“Then . . .” Dawn said.

“Then a crowd of young girls walked up. Seven of them in matching skirts, boots, shirts, and ties. Very swank. One girl—she had long brown hair, blazing eyes that looked purple . . . She just started talking to them, like they were in a bar and not in a deserted, vegetable-rotting alley. She had this clipped, upper-crust accent. Harrods. Know what I mean?”

Dawn nodded. “Sounds like they’re the same type of girls as the one Justin was hanging out with—Posh Spice Girl—except this group’s got their act together.”

“Exactly,” Kiko said, clearly thrilled that he was providing good material. “The thing is, the brunette seemed to be focusing on the girl Justin was with, almost like the guys were of secondary interest.”

Natalia had gotten out her notebook and was scribbling furiously. “Did this brunette and her group . . . You know. Do what ‘clients’ do?”

She’d hit the jackpot with Kiko, his eyes lighting up. “I’m just getting to the best part. The brunette invited them to this nearby club, and when she smiled she had . . .”

He pointed to his teeth, then executed a soft, dramatic cackle.

Natalia dropped her pen and then picked it up, flowing right back into note taking.

Dawn nudged Kiko for trying to scare the newbie.

Loving it, he added, “But when Justin looked at her again, the teeth were back to normal. I mean, they were slightly messed up like most of the chompers you see around here, but they were teeth.”

“Think the drugs had anything to do with what Justin spied?” Dawn asked. “He could’ve been tripping and seeing weird tricks of what light there was.”

“He could’ve been.” Kiko’s expression said he doubted it.

“And then?” Dawn asked.

Although Kiko’s grin didn’t change, something in his eyes did.

“Anything more?” Natalia asked, her pen still.

He shut his eyes again. “Justin and his buds hung back to pop a couple pills while his female friend went off with the toothy brunette and her crowd. The guys followed them into a club down the street—loud music, strobe lights, confusion. Then one of Justin’s pals disappeared with the girls, and . . .” He opened up. “Everything fades out after that.”

Natalia and Dawn traded glances, and the new girl put her notebook down.

“It all has to mean something,” Kiko said, “because that’s what Justin thought about when I whispered the key word.”

Vampires.
But was Justin’s state of mind reliable?

“Your visions can be symbolic and cryptic,” Dawn said.

“But my touch readings have been straightforward.”

“They weren’t so much with Frank.”

A muscle jerked at Kiko’s jaw. He knew Dawn was right because, last year, when they’d been searching for her dad, the psychic had been able to access Frank by touching his shirts. The readings had been scrambled and painful for Kiko, even throwing him into an intense, altered state of consciousness some nights.

Regretting that she’d put a damper on his success, Dawn said, “I wonder if we can get Frank to contact Justin for some follow-up questions tonight. I sort of alienated our interviewee back there in the coffee shop and I doubt he’d give any of us the time of day again.”

“Tell me about it.” Kiko had come out of his brooding long enough to comment. “It looked like you went all puppet master on him. Is that mental punch of yours morphing?”

He had no idea how much she’d wondered about that, too. “Who knows.”

Natalia kept her peace, taking in everything, as Kiko brightened up a bit.

“Can you imagine the possibilities?” he asked. “You could jerk people around even better, Dawn.”

“It was probably just a glitch.” Did they have to talk about this?

She turned to Natalia, who raised her notebook and pen again. “Frank doesn’t have any kind of PI license, so he can use a fake name while telling Justin he’s trying to find a missing niece. He can make a search for Posh Spice sound like a personal mission, and Justin should respond to that.”

Natalia was wearing a doubtful look.

“What?” Dawn said. “It’d be a bad idea to march up to Justin and announce that Posh might’ve partied with ‘clients’ and we’d like to find her, please. It’ll be bad enough that Justin gets two weird personal visits so close together. But Frank can use his silver tongue to explain that away.”

Natalia thought that over, then took more notes. But she didn’t say she understood, and Dawn wondered if she was altogether on board.

Kiko started to walk off, and they followed, the jasmine scent lifting away while the trio merged with the crowd on the pavement.

“For some reason,” Natalia said, “I thought you were real private investigators. That’s what I sensed.”

Dawn dodged a woman with a massive baby carriage. Faux-British Kiko would’ve called it a “pram.”

“Things are different now,” Dawn said. “Back in L.A., after the boss recruited Kiko and Breisi, he made sure they had enough investigative work hours and education to qualify for licenses. Even while they pursued acting careers on the side, it was a part of their training while he homed in on the ‘clients.’ Thanks to some fancy work by the boss here, Kiko can work as a PI, but even back in California, we sometimes needed to come up with a less freaky reason to interview people than reality provided. It doesn’t mean we’re not investigators. We just aren’t official right now.”

“Were you a PI, Dawn?”

“No. I guess I’ve always been a shadow associate. I never had the time or inclination to fulfill any licensing requirements, so I’m actually more . . . physical aid.”

“I see.” Natalia fell a step behind Dawn.

Kiko added a comment over his shoulder. “Listen, if you’re not comfortable with how we go about it . . .”

She caught back up. “I . . . am.”

But she sure didn’t seem like it as she hunched into her red coat.

They’d come to the railway station, which wasn’t a big one spacewise, even though it saw a lot of traffic. Since it was about lunchtime, they grabbed sandwiches from a small stand and got on a train headed back to Victoria Station.

Their scheduled interview with Kate Lansing’s stepmother wasn’t until 2:30 PM, so they had time to stop by headquarters, where they grabbed naps. Then they took a quick tube trip up to the old St. Dunstan-in-the-East church ruins, which served as a miniature public park these days.

Mrs. Langley had asked them to meet her here, and Dawn suspected that the request had come about because the woman didn’t want to host them in her Tufnell Park flat.

When they arrived at the ruins, a wiry, hatchet-faced man in a gray wool sweater stood with his arms barred over his chest at the entrance near the health clinic that had claimed residence on the old church’s premises.

The Friends took up the perimeter as the ugly guy watched the team pass. Nodding civilly—Dawn was totally getting good at that—they found themselves in a serene courtyard with damaged gothic gray walls coated by scraggly ivy and light beards of moss. A burst of scarlet gold trees, flowers, and bushes circled the center, where bricks were laid around a low, raised fountain that burbled over the hustle of the city outside.

A skinny woman with gray hair tucked under a floppy tweed hat sat on one of the wooden benches, a book open on her lap. She wore glasses low on her long nose, and she moved her thin lips while reading.

They were the only ones in the public park, so Dawn made some noise by shuffling through a patch of fallen leaves.

The woman glanced up, folding her book closed with veined hands and keeping her place marked with a long-nailed finger. She was reading spiritual quotes.

“Mrs. Lansing?” Dawn asked, guessing their subject’s age to be in the late fifties. The woman hadn’t kept herself up that well and, for some reason, Dawn had expected a hipper stepmom judging from Kate’s youth.

“Hello,” Mrs. Lansing said in an anemic yet refined voice.

She didn’t stand, but she did extend her hand as they all introduced themselves, providing false names, of course. Dawn actually had some nicely forged U.S. press credentials on her because she’d used the journalist ruse before, but Mrs. Lansing didn’t ask for anything.

And Dawn didn’t offer, because if there was a big rule of hunting, it was to never give more info than you had to.

After the interviewee had spent one extra, interested glance on Kiko, they sat on an adjacent bench. Dawn had taken care to have her crucifix necklace in full sight, yet it had no vampy effect when the older woman spied it. She did offer an approving smile though.

Kiko clenched and unclenched his fingers, and Dawn guessed he hadn’t gotten any clear readings from shaking Mrs. Lansing’s hand. Then, as if to put that behind him, he took a digital camera out of his outer jacket pocket since he was playing “photographer” while Dawn and Natalia would serve as reporters for two different articles.

The man they’d seen at the entrance wandered into the courtyard, leaning against the clinic wall as he stared at Kiko. His chin seemed to fold up disapprovingly to his mouth, making him look like one of those shrunken apple heads.

Mrs. Lansing noticed the direction of their gazes. “My brother. He’s been very helpful.”

“Is he keeping time for your interviews?” Kiko asked.

“That and making certain that there are no photographs. I’m sorry if I didn’t make it clear earlier that I wish to have none taken. They unsettle me, as if I’ve become a breed of celebrity to be captured. I discovered a swarm of flashbulbs outside my flat this morning after you called.”