Angel of Vengeance (18 page)

“It can’t be like this. We have to have rules.”

“We will. Whatever you want. Whatever you say.”

“Promise me.”

She looked me earnestly. “I promise.”

Shaking with emotion, I dropped my arm to my side and let the gun clatter to the floor.

Coraline wrapped her arms around me like twin white snakes and pulled me close. “There now, you see—it’s all going to be okay, darling. So long as we have each other,” she said, pressing her cool wet mouth to mine.

She tasted like fate.

When it came, the bullet took me by surprise; she always was good at surprising me. Looking down I saw the big ugly gaping red mouth the double-barrel Derringer she held had torn in my gut. Coraline smiled at me. Eyes on that smile, I stumbled back as the pain set in, fierce as a chemical burn. It was bad. Real bad, if you want to know the truth. But it didn’t hurt me half as much as that smile, because some smiles just hurt worse than bullets.

“Silver bullets?” I asked, jaw clenched against the pain.

“Only the best for you,” she said. “I got the gun special while I was out tonight. I was going to seduce you and then kill you while you slept in my arms—send you off with a bang—but this will work too.” She thumbed the hammer back on the second barrel and took aim. “Sorry, baby.”

The second bullet caught me in the neck. It was probably intended for my head, but I had benefited from the Derringer’s well-documented lack of accuracy. It was meant for close work. A whore’s gun. Seemed appropriate.

I collapsed on my back to the floor.

Dropping the empty pistol, Coraline moved toward me, fangs distending and eyes blackening as she came. Weak from blood loss and pain, I could only watch as she settled down atop me as she had so many times before. Only it wasn’t love she was after this time, it was death. Her fangs bit deep into my neck wound and I felt my life’s blood sucked from me in a torrent. The world grayed at the edges and I knew it was too late. This was how it would end.

Then something brushed my fingertips. Moving only my eyes, I saw the child over Coraline’s shoulder crouched nearby. Wide-eyed and silent, she had slipped up and pushed the .38 into reach. I can’t imagine the resolve it must have taken, the sheer terror she must have overcome to do it, but I didn’t have time to think about it. My heart was already beginning to sputter like an engine low on fuel.

I grabbed the gun, shoved it between us and emptied it into my dark angel. Gravely hurt, Coraline sagged atop me.

We lay there on the floor like spent lovers, and then, little by little, I inched myself within reach of her neck. I admired the cool Elizabethan white of it, kissed her to mark the spot, and then I let my fangs distend and I fed.

I drank her to the cliff’s edge of death, then I stopped and looked into her eyes. Without blood to sustain her, her skin was paper white. She looked withered; atrophied like some of the terminally ill I had seen during my time in the hospital. I could sense her pain. And her seething hatred. But mostly I could sense her fear. Her fear of the ever after and the punishment she suddenly worried might await her there.

As I watched, she turned back. Her eyes drained of blood. Her fangs and brow receded. Her jaw re-hinged. And for a moment I saw the girl I had met at that club way back when. The one I’d taken a fall for I could never get up from. My precious doe-eyed beauty who wanted to see the dark side of the world at any cost, and who had recognized in me the sucker who could show it to her. Well, she’d gotten her wish, hadn’t she?

Sure she had.

I pushed Coraline off me and somehow managed to get to my feet. The study door was open and the girl was gone. Off hiding somewhere. Smart kid.

With great effort I bent and picked Coraline up and carried her to the cold stone fireplace where I had burnt Brasher. Curled like the baby Jesus in a manger of ashes, her eyes followed me as I moved off and returned bearing a tin of kerosene.

I stood over her, trying to come up with something more to say, but there wasn’t anything. It had all been said and none of it had made a bit of difference. It was over. Everything was over. I hunted up a cigarette to fill the silence instead.

Coraline shuddered slightly as I doused her with the kerosene. It matted her hair and ran down her face and stung her eyes. She looked at me forlornly as I struck a long wooden fireplace match and lit my smoke with it. Her lips moved in a silent plea.

“Sorry, baby,” I said.

The match seemed to take a lifetime to fall. The first flames licked at her uncertainly, as if sampling an unfamiliar dish for the first time, and then deciding they liked the taste, rose and consumed her. Heartbroken and full of regret, I watched her blacken and die a vampire’s death. Like Brasher before her, Coraline’s eyes never left mine. Near the end, her lovely lips twitched again, but her final words to me were lost in a sigh of death and release.

Knowing I could never live here now, I spilled more kerosene and set the whole place ablaze. If I hadn’t had the kid to worry about I might just have sat down and let myself burn up with it. But I did. With Coraline’s death I’d sealed a pact to rise above my nature. To be better.

I found her hiding among dust bunnies under a canopied bed in a darkened guestroom. She let out a piercing brain-freeze scream and kicked her buckled shoes at me as I bent and peered at her under the dust ruffle.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s me. What’s your name?”

“Lisabeth.”

She trembled like a rabbit as I helped her out from underneath and lifted her small form into my arms. She grabbed onto my neck for dear life and I carried her from the house like that as it burned down around us. Outside, the growing wail of sirens pierced the night like screams of horror. I loaded her into the passenger seat of Brasher’s Cadillac, went around, got in.

“I want my mommy,” Lisabeth whispered, as I started the car up and put it in gear.

“Me too, kid,” I said.

She just looked at me. I just drove.

21

T
hrough the red haze of pain racking my body I come around to find Coombs and Elliot in the interrogation room with me again. I’m so out of it I’ve totally missed their entrance.

“What’s going on? You on the drugs, son?” Coombs asks.

“Son” he calls me. I’m old enough to have banged his grandmother. Hell, maybe I did.

“Looks like narcotic withdrawal to me,” Elliot says.

If he only knew. What I’m going through at present makes narcotic withdrawal look like a day at the beach. I would know.

“You play ball with us, maybe we could get you a little something to help you out with that. Something to take the edge off,” Coombs says.

The only thing that’s going to take the edge off at this point is running through his fat-clogged arteries. The way things are looking, I might just have to take him up on that offer. I’m going to have to get some blood in me if I’m going to get out of here. I’m in too much pain, too weakened to escape without it.

The door opens and the blue-suit who took me to make my phone call steps in.

“The witness here?” Coombs asks.

The blue-suit nods. “We’re all set up.”

“Good.”

“Sure you don’t want to make a confession before we go through with this, Angel?” Elliot asks me. “It’ll be too late to cooperate after this guy fingers you.”

“Okay, I confess—I think your nose is way too big for your face. Makes you look like one of those caricatures they draw down at Venice Beach.” I smile. The pain is making me mean.

The punch comes from Coombs. A hard one in the gut. It knocks the breath out of me, doubles me over the table.

“You didn’t see that,” Coombs says to the uni still standing in the doorway.

“See what?” the guy says, an ugly grin spread over the lower half of his face like bacon grease.

“You know, you’re a pretty funny guy, Angel,” Elliot says, leaning close. “But guess who’s gonna be laughin’ when you’re sitting on your ass on death row?”

“Been there, done that.”

“Fuckin’ guy’s delusional,” Elliot says.

“Whaddya expect? He’s a junkie,” Coombs says with disgust. “C’mon, let’s get this over with before he starts shittin’ an’ pukin’ himself.”

They uncuff me and drag me off to the lineup.

It’s me and seven other guys, most of them grungy looking undercover cops. We stand in front of a one-way mirror under bright lights and a series of numbers. We go through the usual process. Me, I’m lucky number seven.

An authoritative voice comes over the loudspeaker. “Number six step forward.”

Six, a denim-clad beanpole with a scraggly beard and greasy ponytail, steps forward.

“Say the line,” the voice says.

“That’s as good as it’s going to get around here for you,” six says, just like the five others before him did.

“Step back.”

Six steps back.

“Seven, step forward.”

I feel like I’m going to collapse any minute, but until then I do as I’m told.

“Say the line.”

I say it.

“Step back.”

I step back and wait while number eight goes through the rigmarole. Then I wait some more. I sense the eyes on me from the other side. They don’t know it, but if I strain I can hear them talking. Faintly.

Coombs asks Tom if any of us look familiar to him and I am surprised to hear Tom say, “No.”

“Take another look, Mr. Kelley,” Elliot says, a note of irritation in his voice. “Take your time.”

I feel the eyes on me again.

“No. None of them,” Tom says at last.

Elliot says something in irritation that I miss, then Coombs pipes up. “You gave us a description of the guy you saw that night. Read it to him, Ray.”

Paper rustles and Elliot reads from something. “Caucasian. About six foot. A hundred seventy pounds. Dark hair and eyes. Pale. Unshaven.”

“Your words,” Coombs says. “You telling me you don’t see anyone in there that meets that description?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tom says. “But I don’t see anyone I recognize.”

“How ’bout you take a guess,” Elliot says. “Pretend you have to give us someone so we don’t start thinking you were the last person to see the girl alive.”

“Is that a threat?” Tom asks.

“No, sir. But look at it from our perspective. You say there was someone else there that night. We only have your word for it. If you can’t give us something more to go on than that, then we have to at least consider the possibility that maybe there wasn’t, don’t we?”

“You do whatever you have to, Detective, but I’m not going to pin a murder on someone I don’t think did it just ’cause they fit a description. That would be wrong.”

“Wrong. You mean like a married father of three taking a stripper home from a club at three in the morning?” Coombs asks.

Tom’s voice gets tight. “You’re right. I shouldn’ta been there, but I didn’t have anything to do with that girl’s death. If you think I did then arrest me. Otherwise I’m catching a red-eye home to Des Moines tonight.”

There’s a tension-filled pause, then Coombs says, “Get him outa here.”

I hear the sounds of shuffling, a door open and close, and Elliot say, “You think he did it?”

“That guy couldn’t kill a fly,” Coombs says. “Besides, someone was there that night. Someone busted his nose.”

“Maybe it was the girl. Maybe that’s why she’s dead.”

“There wasn’t any sign of a struggle. She didn’t have any of his blood on her. No, I think the son-of-a-bitch that did it is standing right in there.”

There’s a long pause and I feel their eyes on me.

“Whaddya wanna do with him?”

“Look at him. He’s at breaking point. Let him sweat a little longer. Then we’ll take one more stab at getting a confession out of him.”

I sweat bullets waiting for them to come back. When they finally do, they come in and stand over me and stare, trying to build the suspense. Too bad for them I’ve already seen the end of this picture.

Finally, Elliot looks at Coombs and says, “You wanna tell him or should I?”

“I told the last guy. You do the honors,” Coombs says.

Elliot looks at me and shrugs matter-of-factly. “The guy fingered ya, Angel. Picked you out first try.”

Even if I hadn’t heard all that had gone on, I’d have been able to sniff this whopper out.

“Tell you what, though. You come clean with us right now, sign a full confession, and we’ll tell the D.A. you gave it to us before the lineup. Make it look like you were cooperating all along.”

“It’ll go a lot better for you that way,” Coombs says. “Might even be able to get a plea.”

Even with all the pain I’m in I can’t help but smile at the ploy. Lying is all part of the game. Cops lie during interrogations all the time. There’s no law that says they can’t. It’s funny. They lie, they’re pursuing justice. You lie, you’re obstructing it.

“Hey, pal,” Coombs says, “you just got picked as the main suspect in a capital murder case. You’ll be lucky you don’t get the needle for this. You think there’s something funny in that?”

“Yeah I think it’s funny,” I tell him. “I think it’s funny you two think this bullshit lie is gonna get you a confession.”

“You think we’re lying to you?” Elliot says all shocked and offended-like.

“I know you are. That guy couldn’t have picked me out of the lineup.”

“Oh? And why not?” Coombs asks.

“Because I was never in that goddamn house.”

22

I
’m on the street again a half hour later. I’m weak as hell and in a world of hurt, but at least I’m free.

To fix.

I make sure I’m not being tailed, then I hail a cab to Griffith Park. I sense the driver thinks it’s more than a little strange to be dropping someone off here at this hour. I could explain it’s because I need to find a grave where I stashed the human blood I need to survive, but I don’t think it will ease his apprehensions any. I pay him instead and disappear into shadow.

I find the grave and dig with hands like garden trowels. I locate my kit and the cooler of dry ice and vials of blood. I’m so blood-deprived I can hardly feel my hands at all anymore and it’s a world-class struggle just to tie my arm off and get the blood in the needle. It’s even more difficult to find a vein and depress the plunger. Somehow I manage. I am a pro after all.