Blood Hunt (20 page)

He read on down the list for other German or Russian sounding names. Goessel fit that, and Liebenthal. Then one name leaped at him: Pfeifer! Garreth turned hurriedly to the Kansas map and located Pfeifer. Liebenthal and another German-sounding town, Schoenchen, lay just miles from it. After locating Bachman on farther south, he clenched a fist in triumph. Yes! None of the town names sounded Russian but so many Germanic ones had to be more than coincidence. He might not need the anthropologist’s input...except facts should always be verified. In case your theory turned out wrong.

He tried Dr. Iseko again and this time reached him. “I’m a researcher working for the author James Michener. We’re interested in finding a community of German immigrants in Kansas living in close proximity to Russian immigrants.”

“
I’m afraid there are none like that in Kansas,” the anthropologist replied.

Garreth’s stomach dropped. He swore silently in disappointment. “What’s the ethnicity of...” He pretended to be consulting notes. “...the town of Pfeifer, then?”

“
Where exactly is that in Kansas?”

Garreth checked the road atlas. “Near Hays.”

“
Ah.” At the other end real papers rustled. “Ellis County. That area was settled by a group called the
Usere Lueute
, or Volga Germans — or Rooshans, as they’re called locally — Germans who immigrated to southern Russia 1763 at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who promised them land, religious freedom, and freedom from military conscription. When that seemed about to be revoked a century later, they immigrated to this country.”

Something electric sizzled through Garreth, standing his hair on end. “Rooshans? They’re a kind of mixed German and Russian, then? Does their language reflect that?” Claudia said Lane spoke a hodgepodge of German and Russian.

“
Yes, indeed. It’s a very unique language. An acquaintance of mine wrote his dissertation on it.”

Garreth’ pulse jumped. He forced his tone to remain politely inquiring. “How large an area did they settle?”

“
The Catholic group is mainly around Ellis County. However, there are Lutherans and Mennonites, too, spread out farther...into Bellamy and Barton counties, and some into Rush and Ness.”

Garreth wrote it all down. After thanking the doctor and hanging up, he scrambled back to his atlas. Bachman lay in southern Ellis County, about ten miles west of Pfeifer, and he located Baumen northeast in Bellamy County. Another call, this one to the reference librarian at the central library, who, when he again trotted out the magic name of James Michener, consulted the library’s collection of phone books and informed him yes, there were listings for Biebers in both Bachman and Baumen, Kansas.

He hung up with excitement almost negating the misery of daylight. It fit. It all fit. Lane had to come from that area, either Bachman or Baumen. Though he could not be certain without further investigation. Investigation not possible by phone.

He had to go there in person.

8

Garreth made his last visit to Harry an evening one, so he could leave straight from there and drive in the comfort of night. He sat telling Harry how much he looked forward to spending two weeks with his family and son. Feeling wretched every moment for lying.

“
I’ll miss you,” Harry said. Finally talking in a normal voice. Though still in ICU, he looked better every day, less like a cyborg with some of the tubes gone. “But I’m glad you’re finally getting away from everything here for a while.”

Lien walked him not just to the elevator but out to his car. “I didn’t want to talk around Harry.”

His gut lurched. That sounded serious. “Is something going wrong?”

“
Not with Harry.” She looked up at him. “Are you really going to Davis?”

“
Of course.”

She peered into the ZX’s back seat, at his suitcase and an ice chest there. “For how long?”

That caught him off guard. Surely she did not guess the ice chest held ice and jugs of rat blood.

Before he answered, she said, “You’re going after Lane Barber, aren’t you?”

He considered denying it but her eyes turned knowingly toward him. “I have to. I’m the only one who can find her.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“
It’s complicated.” Make that: impossible to explain. “Please don’t tell Harry.”

“
Not until he’s stronger.” She paused. “I consulted
I Ching
this morning.”

His gut did another lurch. “Did you get the maiden is powerful again?”

She punched his arm. “Hush and listen. Never forget that one...but today’s hexagram was number twelve,
Standstill
. It says that heaven and earth are out of communion and that all things are benumbed. Confusion and disorder prevail.”

He grimaced. That was certainly true for him.

“
Inferior people are in ascendancy but don’t allow yourself to be turned from your principles. There are change lines in the second and fourth places, advising that a great man will suffer the consequences of a standstill and by his willingness to suffer, ensure the success of his principles. However...” Her eyes bored up into him. “...acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. Setting one’s self up to alter things according to one’s own judgment can end in mistake and failure.”

That sounded like a warning against vigilantism. But he had no plans to take the law into his own hands, just find Lane and see she was arrested. “What else? The change lines make a new hexagram.”

“
The second one is number fifty-nine,
Dispersion
. It suggests success, especially after journeying and, of course, perseverance.” She smiled sadly. “That’s when I knew what you were going to do. Persevere, Garreth, and be true to yourself.” She threw her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. “Stay safe, please.”

He buried his face in her hair, throat tight. “I’ll do my best.”

9

While not dinner-plate flat as Garreth expected, the gold-brown Kansas hills, so unlike the yellow ones of California or those in San Francisco, rolled to an almost unimaginably distant horizon, sparsely dotted with trees and human constructs. The sky arched overhead, a cobalt bowl of infinity broken only here and there by wisps of cloud. The sun burned Garreth’s eyes even behind his glasses. Driving south toward Bachman out of Hays, he felt overwhelmed, a mote crushed between the immensity of earth and sky. He wondered whether it might have been wiser to drive from Davis during the day instead of only at night, sleeping wrapped in his air mattress pallet in the car at public campsites by day. Then he could have gradually accustomed himself to the broadened horizon instead of being suddenly hit by it on this drive.

To take his mind off the unexpected agoraphobia, Garreth thought ahead to Bachman, rehearsing his search strategy and cover story. Knocking on Bieber doors asking if they had a sister, aunt, cousin, daughter named Madelaine would alerting Lane to his pursuit. Instead, he had come purporting to hunt relatives named Pfeifer. Last month before her death, his grandmother had dropped a bombshell on the family, that she was not the natural mother of Garreth’s father. Phillip had been born to a Mary Pfeifer, who roomed with them for seven months...pregnant, though they never realized it until they found a newborn baby wrapped in a blanket on her bloody bed one morning with a note from Mary saying she was unfit to be a mother and she was leaving the baby for someone who would be a good mother. They never saw Mary again. Garreth’s newlywed grandmother raised the boy as her own. She knew nothing about Mary except a mention of Hays, Kansas, and a town name, Ba-something, on the smudged postmark of a letter Mary tore up. Garreth’s father had no interest in the woman who abandoned him at birth, but Garreth had decided to look for this unknown branch of the family tree...and maybe learn what happened to Mary. Among old family photos they had found one of three young women with his grandmother, the back labeled:
Me, Bridget, Mary, Kathleen
...without indicating which girl was which.

The photo and writing were real, one of Grandma Doyle’s taken in the late twenties when she and the other girls were all sixteen and seventeen and fresh from Ireland. The cardboard square stiffened the inside pocket of his jacket. Feeling it, Garreth remembered three days ago, when she handed it to him.

“
May it bring you she who killed you,” his grandmother said, “and then a peaceful sleep.”

She had known what he was the moment he walked in the house that morning. Behind his mother exclaiming in horror, “Garreth, you’re turning into skin and bones!” she reached for the silver cross on her neck.

After hugging his mother he reached out to his grandmother...only to have her back away and hurriedly leave the room. “Grandma!” He stared stricken after her.

His mother touched him on the arm. “Please forgive her. I think she just needs time to accept that, for once, her Feeling was wrong.”

Garreth gave silent thanks his mother misinterpreted the reason for his distress. “I understand.” Which did nothing, however, to lessen the pain of being feared.

Dread lay more on his side in telling his father about Harry when his father came home at noon...out in the back yard, away from his mother. He turned the incident in the restaurant into a little dizziness, which he said he had experienced now and again since “the Barber woman” caught him by surprise and slammed his head into the wall, the resulting concussion enabling her to overpower him. In Phil Mikaelian’s opinion, only psychos and wimps had panic attacks. Otherwise Garreth told everything fit for humans to hear, making no attempt to minimize his screw-up. And braced for the reaction.

Jaw tight, his father listened without interruption before exploding. “Son of bitch! Who the hell did you think you were: John Wayne, or Dirty Harry! Of all the stupid, irresponsible — ” He sucked in a breath. “I understand wanting to nail this scumbag, but it’s not like Shane strapping a blown knee and injecting pain-killers so he can play another game. No one’s life is on the line in football. You — ”

He cut his father off. “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t already hit myself over the head with a hundred times. Not even I.A. can make me feel worse than I do already.”

His father’s scowl smoothed. He sighed. “So what are they going to do to you?”

Garreth shrugged. “The review board won’t hold its hearing for weeks, probably. I won’t know until then.”

“
Well, it doesn’t matter.” His father slung an arm across Garreth’s shoulders. “You’ll man up and take your lumps without whining, right, even if it means suspension and being busted back to uniform?”

And lots of couch time, which Garreth refrained from mentioning. Shrinks, too, being only for psychos and wimps. “Right.”

“
Oh, and you’re going to straighten Judith out about this adoption nonsense, right?”

That mention tightened Garreth’s gut but he said, “Right,” again.

To his relief, after a slap on the back, his father left him alone, heading into the house for lunch.

Garreth sat down at the foot of their big oak tree. The earth welcomed him, easing some daylight’s discomfort. Lying back against the trunk, he had looked up and seen the platform his father built for Shane and him when they were kids. His father still tended it religiously, keeping it safe for Brian, and for Shane’s kids when they visited.

Brian. Garreth sighed. As soon as he went over to visit, the question of adoption was bound to come up again. He closed his eyes wearily. What should he do about it?

Feet whispered down the back steps and across the lawn toward him, but he left his eyes closed. The scent of lavender overwhelming that of blood told him who it was.

The feet stopped a short distance away. “
Dearg-dul
. Undead,” his grandmother said quietly.

Fighting his eyes open, he saw her lower herself into a lawn chair.

“
Why is it you’re walking?”

He sat up. “Grandma, I’m not dead! Look at me. I walk; I breathe; my heart beats. I reflect in mirrors. I can touch your cross, too.”

“
But what do you eat? Do you still love the sun?”

Rather than answer that, he said, “I’m still and always your grandson. I won’t hurt you or any of the family.” Then after hesitating: “I don’t drink human blood.”

She regarded him uncertainly, then, with a quick touch on the cross around her neck, patted the side of the chair. “Come to me.”

She sat in the sun, but he moved to the ground beside her.

She reached out to touch stroke his hair. “Is it to avenge yourself on she who did this to you that you can’t sleep?”

He considered several answers before giving the one she seemed to want. “Yes.”

She sighed. “Poor unquiet spirit.”

While he winced at that, he welcomed the easing of her fear. “I need your help.”

“
To find her?”

Garreth nodded. “And get away from here without upsetting Mom and Dad. I can’t stay without giving away that I’ve changed.”

She nodded. “So what will you be wanting me to do?”