A Drop of Red (20 page)

Kiko put the camera away, even though it would’ve been nice to get a picture for Costin. “No photos then.”

“Thank you.”

Dawn held up her PDA. “Do you mind if I record?”

The woman hesitated, so Dawn put that away, too, getting out a pad of paper instead.

“No worries,” she said, much to the woman’s apparent relief. “I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”

Natalia already had her own trusty notebook out, and she was sketching Mrs. Lansing. Dawn measured the woman up, too: the reddened eyes, the pallid skin of someone who still hadn’t gotten over a shock, a weak chin that seemed to be thrust out so she wouldn’t cry. . . .

Earlier, Kiko had called her a fame whore, but she wasn’t striking Dawn that way. And she’d been thinking they would encounter someone meaner, too, based on how Mrs. Lansing had treated Kate.

Still, how many mothers—step or birth—could give interviews so soon after their daughter’s unthinkable death?

“We’re sorry about your loss,” Kiko said, starting the ball rolling. “Thank you for talking to us about Kate.”

Mrs. Lansing slid a bookmark between the pages of the spiritual quotations. “I’ve agreed to interviews because I hope to make other mothers more aware—and not only in Britain or . . .”

She looked to Natalia.

“Romania,” the new girl supplied, lifting her chin slightly.

Mrs. Lansing didn’t seem to pass the type of Roma judgment Natalia had clearly been expecting. Instead, she kept talking.

“Wherever it may be, all families could certainly benefit from Katherine’s story.” The woman laid both hands on her book, like she was drawing strength from it. “I cannot bring myself to think of how they found her. She was only eighteen.
Eighteen.
If I had known Katherine might end badly . . . If I could have done anything to prevent it . . .”

Dawn tried to sound reassuring. “You wouldn’t believe how much this interview is going to help, Mrs. Lansing.”

And that was the absolute truth—just not in the limited way the other woman was referring to. They were going to catch her stepdaughter’s murderers and then some.

There was a lull, the chirping of birds and the singing of the fountain hardly covering it.

Natalia had moved on to sketching the park itself, glancing around the courtyard, her smile wide and genuine.

Mrs. Lansing seemed to connect with her appreciation. “I’m thankful you agreed to meet me here. I’m a solicitor in an office nearby, and one of the upsides is being able to spend lunch in this garden. I come here when I need the world to slow itself down because there’s always comfort to be had within these walls.”

She smiled at the new girl, and Dawn could tell she’d taken to Natalia because of this one little moment of them both loving the park.

“I understand this was once a church.” The second psychic was putting Mrs. Lansing at ease whether she knew it or not. “How old is it?”

“Built in eleven hundred,” the older woman said, and for an instant, she seemed to be so much less haunted by Kate’s death. “Then it survived for over five hundred years only to be severely damaged in the Great Fire of London. They did manage to repair it after that. Christopher Wren even added that steeple.” She nodded toward the tower that speared out of the clinic. “Everything you see now was still standing after the bombs struck during World War II.”

Then Natalia asked something that almost blew Dawn out of her boots.

“Did you ever bring Katherine here?”

Instead of jarring the conversation, the segue led Mrs. Lansing to take off her glasses, then answer.

“Katherine and I were never close enough for that.”

Setting aside her small notebook, Natalia leaned her forearms on her thighs. “Was it because you’re her stepmother?”

“Most assuredly.” Mrs. Lansing stared down at her spiritual book. “Her natural mother passed on when Katherine was very young—four years old. I didn’t meet Adam, Katherine’s father, until she was ten. By then, she had come to see the family as consisting of merely her and Adam, and I was the invader. A usurper, in fact, because she had come to believe her mother was a perfect queen.”

As Natalia asked another question, Dawn leaned back, going with the flow. Kiko tensed, obviously realizing that he was just as shut out as Natalia had been at the coffee shop earlier.

“How did Katherine . . .” The new girl searched for a delicate way to continue.

“How did Katherine arrive at such a death?” Mrs. Lansing looked up. “It’s fine to come right out with it. I’ve cried all I can cry, and now I’m enraged. I’m doing everything in my power to make certain this doesn’t happen to any others.”

Natalia nodded, encouraging the woman to continue.

“Katherine was rather rebellious,” Mrs. Lansing said, “as you might have guessed. She delighted in vexing me. I tolerated it while Adam was alive, but he lost his life in a construction accident at Canary Wharf two years ago. He was the foreman, and . . .”

She choked off, and they all waited, looking at each other and wondering if they should comfort this stranger.

But then she took the story back up, and her voice was stronger. “Katherine had elected to continue living with me since she was still in school and had no other close family. But I knew she would require a firmer hand than Adam used. He quite indulged her.”

“She didn’t take to your requirements,” Natalia said.

“Not at all. At first, we mourned together. Yet after she finished school, she began staying out later and later, coming home reeling with drunkenness. I knew she was up to no good. I ultimately took a stand one week ago. Secure a job, I said, because I would not suffer a daughter who had strayed so far from what Adam and I had attempted to teach her. I would not suffer a daughter who spent her nights drinking away her youth or who found herself on the dole.”

Dawn thumbed through her ever-expanding mental thesaurus. “The dole” was welfare.

As Mrs. Lansing leaned forward, her back arched. “Live by my rules or leave the house, I told her, because young girls should listen. They should mind what is right and proper.”

Her vehemence made Dawn straighten up on the bench. Here was the stepmom she’d expected.

Kiko had perked up, too, but Natalia remained cool.

“If Katherine had listened,” the new girl said, “she might still be with us.”

Mrs. Lansing looked gratefully at Natalia, then wilted. “Yes, but it all ended with Katherine choosing to leave instead. Yet I believed she would return within a day. I truly did.”

Natalia paused at the building emotion in the woman’s voice, so Dawn asked a question, not knowing whether they were being worked by their interviewee or not. Caution paid.

“Did you keep in contact with Kate at all?”

Mrs. Lansing lifted shaking fingers to her lips, and her brother started walking toward them before she held up her hand.

“I wished to contact her,” the woman said. “But, again, I believed Katherine would return soon, and I needed to maintain my stance. But a day passed. Then two. She’d left no indication of where she might have gone, so I finally rang her mobile, yet she didn’t answer. I then contacted her friends, but they hadn’t seen her since school nearly a year ago.” Their interviewee’s expression fell even more. “I thought she would be back when she tired of this new life. Katherine’s spending habits were rather impetuous, and as soon as she ran out of funds, I would have taken her back. . . .”

“Of course you would have,” Natalia said, coming over to Mrs. Lansing’s bench to sit near her. “You were only doing what you thought best.”

“It wasn’t enough.” The older woman glanced up at the steeple, her gaze damp.

“Mrs. Lansing,” Dawn asked, needing to steer things toward the vamps before it all broke apart. “Were there any friends you remember who could’ve been a bad influence on Kate?”

The woman was already shaking her head. “I’ve gone over this question myriad times, and still there’s no answer. Her friends from school were model girls and boys. I thought Katherine would assume their disposition at some point, only because they seemed to exert such a positive influence on her during her school days.”

Kiko was getting anxious, and Dawn guessed that he wanted to ask about Highgate Cemetery, seeing as that’s where his and Natalia’s visions had been centered.

But Dawn was getting there. “Were there any particular places where Kate hung out? Odd places where she might’ve met kids who influenced her negatively?”

“Not that I’m aware of. . . .”

If Kiko hadn’t been so hot to keep his mojo going, he probably would’ve rethought his next comment before it tumbled out.

“In America,” he said, “kids find trouble in gathering spots like malls or convenience stores or even graveyards . . .”

Oh, subtle.

“Graveyards?” Mrs. Lansing repeated, as if it conjured the image of Kate’s disembodied head buried beneath the dirt.

Her face broke into a perplexed scowl before she raised her hand to cover her expression.

And, as she started to cry, their interview came to a close, leaving them nowhere closer to an Underground than when the day had started.

THIRTEEN

THE TAkEOVER

BY
the time the team got back to headquarters, the sky had changed to a dark grumble of coming precipitation, so they went inside and shed their coats and jackets in the entryway while the Friends who’d guarded them swept off to mingle.

A clock chimed an hour past dusk, ushering Frank into the room. “How’d it go?” He was dressed in his dark sweatshirt and cap like he was ready to charge out the door.

“It wasn’t
my
best of days.” Kiko brushed a hand through his blond hair.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Dawn said, “ ’cos we do have a new lead or two.”

As Natalia took out her notepad to show Frank her scribblings and sketches, they related the details of Justin Abberline’s interview and asked Frank to follow up with another one.

He agreed, and they moved on to Mrs. Lansing.

“Anything I can do there?” Frank asked afterward.

“I don’t know,” Dawn said. “Nobody seems to think she’s vampy at all. Might be a good idea to put her on the back burner and concentrate on those possible vampire girls Kiko saw in Justin’s vision.”

Taking up position in front of a tall, iron-grated heater, Dawn held out her hands, trying to absorb warmth as the wind keened outside. All the way home regret had eaten at her as she’d realized, minute by minute, how removed she’d been during the interview with a woman who’d tragically lost a stepchild.

Couldn’t she have stepped outside of her investigative role and shown a little more compassion, just like Natalia?

But every time Dawn quizzed herself, she wondered how else she was supposed to shovel through the facts they needed to find their quarry. How else she could get through hearing stories about dead girls and the agony of their parents.

As Natalia joined her, Dawn leaned closer to take in more from the heater.

The new girl spoke. “Mrs. Lansing does appear to be a normal woman. . . .”

“But?” Frank asked.

Kiko took the notebook Frank was holding and flipped to Natalia’s sketch of the stepmom. “This is pretty much what we got from her. She was an odd duck, and not just because she didn’t want to be recorded in any way.”

Seeing a chance to make up for what she hadn’t offered back at the interview, Dawn talked over her shoulder. “There’re people who don’t like to go on the record, and maybe Mrs. Lansing’s just one of them.”

“Uh-huh,” Kiko said.

“And I don’t think she’s a fame whore,” Dawn added, turning to the heater again.

“For your information,” Kiko said, “I take that back. Listening to her changed my mind.”

“Then why’re you still dwelling on bad vibes?” Dawn asked.

Kiko folded his arms over his chest. “Maybe I’m just like you, Dawn, and I don’t feel good about how she treated Kate. Mrs. Lansing seemed like she’d be a hard-ass to live with.”

Frank interceded. “What were your impressions, Natalia?”

The new girl pulled away from the heater, seeming shocked to be included.

But when Dawn looked at her expectantly, that seemed to get her talking.

“I know how to listen to myself,” Natalia said carefully. “My instincts . . . my own inner voices . . . And my senses have never disappointed me. That’s why I don’t doubt what Mrs. Lansing presented to us today.”

Dawn rubbed her hands. “Maybe we’ll have another chance to observe her at the coroner’s inquest. It should be open to the public.”

“Heck,” Kiko said, “we could be knee-deep in vamps
tomorrow
.”

“Then,” Frank said, “let’s ask the boss if we should put a Friend on the woman, just to see what we see.”

No one objected. Same with getting surveillance on Justin Abberline. Dawn only wished they had enough Friends to cover all of London.

“The boss awake yet?” she asked her dad.

“Yeah, I talked to him for about a minute. But he sounds kind of off tonight.”

Dawn turned away from the heater, stuffing her hands under her armpits. “I should get up there. Maybe he didn’t feed himself from a refrigerated bag yet.”

“Jeez, Dawn,” Kiko said. “You’d pee for him if needed.”

Dawn fake laughed.

Yet before she dashed off for the stairs, her dad said, “You want to know about the kid in the freezer?”

Her attention was all his.

“I wouldn’t look so hopeful if I was you,” Frank added. “Information about the boy’s fingerprints came back. Or, should I say, no information came back.”

Kiko made a disgusted sound. “Interpol couldn’t make anything of his prints?”

“Right. We’ve got ourselves a Kid Doe.” Frank went to Natalia to give her notebook back, then sent her a smile as a bonus.

The new girl beamed, and Dawn looked away.