Night and Day (3 page)

“Nah, we can talk about it with Charlie,” Nedelmann said, shaking off her hand, a half-smile
on his lips. “Charlie’s like family, right? Second cousin, twice removed.”

He looked back at me, the smile still on his lips. “They see a pair of headless corpses
stretched out in the back of the van.”

“Vee?” I asked.

“You bet,” Nedelmann said. “Twelve-gauge blasts to the chest, heads chopped off to make
sure they were really dead. Bodies looked like they’d been worked over pretty good before the
shooter pulled the trigger.”

“How could they tell?”

“Bloodsuckers heal quick, but they don’t always heal right, if you know what I mean. Break
some bones, they knit fast, but sometimes they knit crooked. From what I heard, these two
bloodsuckers were pretty crooked.”

“They identify them?”

Shelly had apparently decided the damage was done. “Wasn’t hard,” she said. “Vics had
their wallets. Cash, credit cards, everything.”

“Heads were in the van too,” Nedelmann said. “Made the picture on their driver’s licenses
useful.”

“Anybody interesting?”

“One was a guy named Jeremy Cross. Owns a couple of uptown
slurp-clubs. Other was his bloodchild. Pitzo, Pinozzo, something like that.”

“Mike Ponittzo?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Mike Ponittzo. Know him?”

“Met him once,” I said. “He was connected with a case Joshua was working a few months
back, uptown job. I got to the office after sundown one night and Ponittzo was there with Joshua
and another guy. Ponittzo was young, mid-twenties. Chubby. And definitely a weird one. Black
suit, slicked back hair, spoke very formally, fake Hungarian accent. Probably saw too many
Dracula movies before the war.”

I pointed at my mouth. “Had stick-on plastic fangs stuck to his teeth. Made it hard not to
laugh, especially since the fangs kept banging into his lower lip.”

“Didn’t hear anything about plastic fangs,” Nedelmann said, draining his coffee. “Maybe
they came loose when his head fell off.”

“Whatever,” Shelly said. “It’s a mess and they’re freaking out Uptown. Dead Vees are a
problem nobody wants. Uptown watch commander called Central watch commander, then
called Captain Mutz down here. Captain suggested they call the Uptown night shift district
chief, but nobody’s anxious to do that. Flannery is enough of a prick when he’s well rested.
Wake him up early and you might end up walking a beat.”

“Or worse,” Nedelmann said.

“Or worse,” Shelly repeated, nodding.

“You bet,” Nedelmann said. “So after they recovered the wallets, they threw a tarp over the
van to keep the corpses from going bad, put a couple of patrolmen around it. Then some genius
decided to set up a perimeter around the station, two blocks in every direction. They pull in
everybody inside the perimeter to be held till night shift can question them, and nobody outside
the perimeter comes in.” He paused. “I hear they’re running out of room in their holding tanks.”

Shelly hadn’t touched her coffee. “Anyway, if you were thinking about going uptown to see
about the Klinger girl’s body, you might want to wait,” she said. “Only thing you’re going to see
today at Uptown station is the inside of a cell.” She slid out of the booth, and Nedelmann
followed.

“I’ve got another case uptown. Won’t hurt to swing by Uptown station, see if I can talk my
way in.”

“Another missing person?” Shelly asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, missing girl. Fifteen years old.”

“Hope you find her before she ends up in a dumpster,” Nedelmann said. He glanced at
Shelly. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Thanks for the information,” I called after them. Nedelmann raised his hand in
acknowledgment as they went out the door.

I slid out of the booth. “What’s the dinner special, Han?” I asked.

“Thinking of doing meatloaf this afternoon,” he said, still busy at the griddle.

“Great. Save me a plate.”

It was a running joke between us. Hanritty didn’t believe in being all things to all people.
He made what he made, like it or not. Breakfast meant eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, home fries,
oatmeal, cold cereal. Lunch meant tuna and chicken salad, burgers, hot dogs, french fries.
Dinner meant meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and a vegetable, usually corn or peas.

You could mix and match, a chicken salad sandwich at breakfast like the guy in the booth
next to me, or eggs and mashed potatoes for dinner. But that was as flexible as Hanritty got.

“I’ll catch you later, Han,” I said as I went out.

My office was on the fourth floor of the Triangle Building, across Expedition Square, where
Second Street and Expedition Avenue fork. I could almost see my window from the street in
front of Hanritty’s.

I cut across the square, moving quickly in the cool morning breeze. The old ladies sitting on
their benches around the fountain continued to throw pieces of bread to the arrogant, fearless
pigeons that gathered there by the dozens. Other benches were occupied by bums and winos,
soaking up some morning sun after a night spent hiding in whatever dark hole they called home.

I took the stairs up to the fourth floor. There’s an elevator, but it’s a hundred years old, like
the rest of the building, and I don’t think the elevator inspectors have been around in decades.

The glow of florescent lights through the frosted glass of the door meant Cynthia had gotten
in. NIGHT AND DAY INVESTIGATIONS is what’s lettered on the glass. I’m the day half.
Joshua is the night.

Cynthia wasn’t at her desk. I was almost across reception to the big wooden door in back
when it swung open, almost hitting me.

“Good morning, Charlie,” Cynthia said as she brushed past. She maneuvered around the
potted plant on the floor beside her desk and sat. “There’s fresh coffee in the carafe on your
desk, two folders that Mr. Thomas left on your blotter, and a note from Miss Tindell about last
month’s expense report on your chair.”

Mr. Thomas was Joshua, my partner in the agency. Miss Tindell was Sara Tindell, Joshua’s
secretary. Cynthia had never met either of them, since she’s always locked in her apartment
before the sun goes down. Barring a formal introduction, she didn’t consider it quite proper to
refer to them by their first names. She’s funny about things like that.

“You’re a bundle of energy this morning.”

She nodded. “I woke up early.” She paused. “Too early to come in.” Another pause. “So
while I was waiting to leave for work, I guess I polished off a whole pot of coffee instead of my
usual two cups.” Another pause. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“You eat any breakfast?” Cynthia is an attractive woman, mid-thirties, with short, jet-black
hair, but she’s thin. Painfully thin. Anorexically thin.

“I don’t eat breakfast,” she said. “You know that.”

“Or much of anything else,” I said. Before she could reply, I asked, “Who’s that cop you
know at Uptown station? Mendez?”

“Montez. Joe Montez. He’s a booking sergeant.”

“Give him a call. I need him to make sure that MaryAnn Klinger’s body is still in their
cooler.”

“Oh, no,” Cynthia said, her voice soft. “Her poor mother. After all she’s been through . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “If the body is still there, and it should be, tell Montez to put a hold on
processing or disposal. I’ll be coming by the station later this morning to make arrangements.”

“Okay.”

“Also ask him to pass the word that I’m stopping by. They found a couple of dead Vees
outside the station this morning, and they’ve sealed up the area. I’d like to get in and get out
without a lot of bullshit.”

“Got it,” she said. “Anything else?” Her pen was poised above a pad on her desk.

“One more thing,” I said. “And make sure you write this down. It’s very important. Eat.
Properly.”

Before she could look up, I was through the door and into my office. As the door closed, I
heard the pen hit it.

The office that Joshua and I shared was roughly triangular. Against the front wall, next to
the door, was a leather couch and a couple of armchairs, grouped around a small, oblong coffee
table. Joshua uses it from time to time for meetings with self-important Vee clients who don’t want to look at him
over a desk. I don’t use it much, but I had a feeling I’d be sitting there when it came time to tell
Jane Klinger that her daughter was dead.

In the back of the room are a pair of desks. Mine is on the left, backed by a wide window
that looks down on Expedition Avenue and Expedition Square beyond. Joshua’s desk is on the
other side. Heavy drapes covered the window on his side of the room.

The note Sara had left on my chair was a reminder to get in my expense report from the past
two weeks so she could reimburse me. I don’t know what Sara did for a living before the war,
but she was conscientious about keeping the financial side of Night and Day Investigations
running smoothly.

I stuck the note in the corner of my blotter and sat. The first file Joshua had left told me
what I already knew, that MaryAnn Klinger was dead. One of Joshua’s contacts at Uptown
station must have known we were working the case, so he’d passed the report to Joshua. There
was a yellow sticky note stuck to the police report, with the word “Sorry” scrawled in Joshua’s
sharp, distinctive handwriting.

I threw away the note and scanned the report. MaryAnn had only one wound, at the carotid,
which ruled out a slurp-club. That was something, at least. Death in a slurp-club can take hours.
Or days.

What was interesting about the wound was that it wasn’t made by a sharp object. Unlike
their fictional counterparts, Vees don’t have fangs. They have whatever teeth were there when
they were human. In a pinch they could probably chew through skin to an artery or vein, but
normally they just cut and suck.

The police report said MaryAnn’s wound was caused by an unknown object, possibly a
medical instrument of some kind. Not a knife or even a scalpel.

Whatever caused the wound, almost every ounce of blood had been drained from her body.
She’d been tapped dry, as they say. Which was interesting because being tapped dry was usually
more saying than reality.

The human body has a little more than five quarts of blood. Useful to know if you need to
figure out how much is missing. Since all of it was missing, I had to consider something else.
The human stomach doesn’t hold five quarts.

Either her blood had gone to feed more than one Vee, or somebody was putting blood away
for a rainy night. Based on what little I knew of Vee feeding habits, most of them seemed to be
sippers, not gulpers. If a single Vee had decided to gorge himself for some reason, he would
have been puking up blood long before he had drained her completely.

And Vees don’t like to waste blood.

The rest of the report was a lot of nothing. The Uptown officer who’d written it hadn’t
speculated further about who and what caused the girl’s death. Unknown perpetrator, unknown
weapon. That was it. Case closed. Throw her body in the cooler. If it wasn’t claimed in
seventy-two hours, toss it in the incinerator with the rest of the trash.

I shook my head and put the folder to one side. I’d go over it again later, see if there was
anything I missed. But it didn’t really matter. We’d been hired to find MaryAnn. She’d been
found. It wasn’t the way her mother wanted, or the way I wanted, but that was how things played
out more often than I like to admit.

I’d just opened the second folder, a case Joshua was working that involved a bartender
who’d been skimming from his Vee employer, when Cynthia rapped on the door.

“It’s open,” I called.

She stuck her head in. “I talked to Sergeant Montez,” she said. “The Klinger girl is still in
the Uptown station cooler, and he’ll make sure she stays there till you show up.” She paused.
“He strongly suggested that you stay away from the station today and come by tomorrow
instead.”

“You told him I was coming today, right?”

Cynthia nodded. “Of course. He said he’d do what he could, but he wasn’t making any
promises. They have the station completely locked down, and he’s not even sure he can get word
out to the patrolmen on the perimeter.”

“Good enough. Thanks.” I looked back at the folder in my hands. The door closed.

The odds were that the skimming employee, a guy named Jedron Marsch, had gone to
ground somewhere in the Expedition Square neighborhood. He had an apartment on Hennessy, a
few blocks east of the square, and was seeing a girl who lived on Fourth Street.

It wasn’t the kind of case I liked. If I found Mr. Marsch, and we turned him over to his
employer, it wouldn’t be pretty. Vee employers generally look at their employees as property,
the pendant around their necks like the collar on a dog. And you can do what you want with
what you own.

Still, I couldn’t feel sorry for Marsch. If you work for somebody, human or Vee, you don’t
steal from them. And if you think it’s okay to steal, face the consequences. However harsh.

I pushed the folder aside and stood. With the mess uptown, I’d be lucky to get back before
sundown. Jedron Marsch would have another night of freedom.