No Rest for the Wicked (18 page)

“Peter's one of those shiny stars in the department's cap,” said Nancy. “They'll be very careful not to fuck with him.”

I sighed. “Good.”

“Problem is getting him to actually take the time off,” said Nancy.

“I couldn't agree more.” I cast a look toward the door to Peter's room. “He's really taken this one personally.”

“I'm not sure it's the case,” said Nancy. She looked around the crowded reception area. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

* * *

Kaiser's new wing had a new stylish cafeteria. It wasn't nearly as depressing as the old one had been. Maybe because it hadn't yet absorbed enough despair, pain, and fear.

Nancy sipped at a cup of coffee. “You've noticed Peter's been working overtime for months now?”

“He gets sucked into cases,” I said. “He's got over a month of vacation time coming to him and he keeps promising me he's going to take it, but then another case pops up.”

“You know what he said when I asked him about it? He said he needs the bonus pay.”

“Peter?” The cafeteria had stale, crusty doughnuts with pink sprinkles on them. They were solid grease and sugar, and they tasted delicious. I licked my fingers and told her, “He just doesn't want to admit that he's obsessed with his job.”

“Is that it? I mean, are you sure?”

I stopped sucking on my pinkie and studied her seriously. “What do you mean?”

“Peter doesn't have a gambling issue does he, Adam? Or…or any kind of…unusual debts?”

“No,” I said.
I
was the one with
issues
. “Peter is perfect.”

She smiled sadly. “That's sweet.”

“It's a fact. Listen, I'm not some doe-eyed innocent. I've seen a lot of good guys go bad.”

Myself being one of them. “There's nothing hinky about Peter.”

“Then why does he think he needs money?”

I had a sudden chilling thought. “I have no idea,” I told her. “But I'll find out.”

“Good.” She nodded and blotted her mouth carefully with a napkin. A small pink stain was left on it. “Do you mind if I ask you another question?” And without waiting for my answer, “Do you ever wonder who did this to you?”

“You mean…” I pointed to my throat.

She nodded, stirring her coffee.

“Yeah, I wonder sometimes.”

“You know, Peter considers yours an unsolved homicide.” She was avoiding my gaze, sipping her coffee.

“You're shitting me.”

She set down her cup. “You didn't hear it from me.”

I had a thought. Hey, it happens occasionally. “Funny coincidence that you were the one the agency sent down on the Lake killing.”

Those expressionless gray eyes didn't blink. “Yes. Quite a coincidence.”

“I'll bet Peter was surprised.”

“He didn't say.” She picked up her spoon and stirred her coffee. I noted that she didn't use creamer or sugar and the coffee had to be tepid by then.

“Let me ask you this, Adam. Would you even care to know who did it?”

“What?”

“How long have you been like this?”

I rubbed at my head, thinking. “Almost a year now.”

“Is that all? Have you…have you noticed any changes? Besides the obvious.”

“Changes?”

“I had a long conversation with your friend Drew. He almost seemed to think you were a different species. It's an interesting perspective,” she said, “isn't it? I should think it would start to change the way you felt about things. About people.”

“I try not to think about how I feel,” I told her.

That measuring look. “Peter is a great cop.”

It was an odd non sequitur. I raised my eyebrows at her.

“I admire him. A lot of us do. He deserves…”

“Better,” I finished for her.

“I wasn't going to say that.”

“Weren't you?” I grabbed my plate and empty cup and stood. “Listen, I think I'm going to get out of here after all. What are you going to do?”

“I've still got reports to write and a debriefing that I am
not
looking forward to,” said Nancy grimly. “They said they'd release Peter in the morning if he seemed better. Who will…?”

“I guess Jonathan,” I said.

She looked up at me. “That young man is devoted to Peter.”

“Yeah. Yes, he is.”

I didn't like whatever her expression was trying to convey. “I'll be in touch,” I told her.

* * *

Jonathan was atilt and half-asleep in one of the uncomfortable plastic waiting room chairs.

I roused him enough to force him to put on my leather jacket, then I went and chatted up the

male nurse with the white hands who was kind enough to find an empty bed for Jonathan to lie down on.

“Listen to me,” I told him. “When Peter wakes up he's going to want to go back to work.

Don't let him leave this hospital. You got me? Call me the minute he wakes up. He'll tell you not to bother, but you ignore him and call me anyway. Those doctors won't be able to keep him here by themselves.”

He nodded, rubbing at his swollen red eyes. “Okay.”

I used the key to Peter's condo for the third time. While I was fitting it into the lock, an elderly woman came out of the door opposite and smiled at me.

“Good morning.”

I gave her a nod. “Mornin'.” Of course, the key was new and so stuck in the lock.

She just stood there, looking me over curiously. The frickin' key still would not turn, and it occurred to me that she might wonder what I was doing trying to force a key into the lock of Peter's door, so I said, “I'm a friend of Peter's.”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “The other policeman.”

The tumblers finally turned and I opened the door. But then I heard her words. “Yes? Did he mention me?”

“Oh,” she sighed. “He talks about you all the time. He was right. You are very handsome.”

* * *

In Peter's bedroom, his low secretary desk sat beneath the window. The desk was immaculate and clean on top. Nothing but a leather blotter and a pen set that bore the LAPD

sheriff's insignia and a ten-year plaque. It was where Peter sat to pay bills and write the monthly letter to his sister, but I'd never looked into it. The middle drawer held pens, paper clips, and stamps. The left drawers were file cabinets with hanging file folders labeled by hand: Taxes, Insurance (auto), Insurance (health). The drawer on the right side was locked.

After a moment I checked my key ring. The smaller key I had assumed was for Peter's mailbox fit into the drawer lock, and I opened it.

There was another group of hanging file folders. Two skinny ones and one thick one that held what I recognized immediately as an LAPD murder book.

I really didn't have to lift it out and open it. I knew what it contained. But I felt almost irresistibly compelled. The photos of the place where I'd died were there, the original report that had been, I noticed, filed by Peter's partner, Stan.

Detective Ortiz was sedated and transported to St. John's Hospital, Santa Monica
. After yours truly bled out in front of him. There were quite a few additional pages of reports.

Witnesses I'd never heard of. A deposition from a Mexican mafia member who was currently incarcerated in San Diego. The date was two months previously.

Peter was still investigating my murder.

I tasted bile in my throat as I closed the book and took out the files that remained. One was, as he had told me, a will. He'd left most of his worldly possessions to his sister and her kids, thank Christ.

I took out the other skinny file and opened it.

On top was an envelope with my name on it. I removed it and set it down on the blotter unopened. Underneath was a thick stack of heavy bond paper.

There were literally hundreds of municipal and city bond certificates in there. Each one in my name. I thumbed through the stack. I'm no mathematician but there were obviously some tens of thousands of dollars in value there upon maturity.

I can't describe what I felt sitting there. A multitude of emotions took turns racing through me. Anger being one of them. At myself. At Peter. At fate in general.

I eyed the envelope. It hadn't been sealed shut, and the urge to slip the single folded sheet of paper out of it was as strong as the urge to shove the whole mess back into the desk.

In the end, I chose the coward's course and did neither. I set everything down and went into the bathroom instead. I opened the medicine cabinet and looked at the prescription bottles in there one at a time.

There were the usual expired doses of antibiotics. A bottle of Tylenol plus codeine that reported twelve count and held eleven. Typical Peter, would never take drugs if he could avoid it. Whereas yours truly took them whenever they were offered.

Time was I'd have had a moment of quandary standing there with the pills in my hand, but I just dumped them back into the bottle and took down the other two. Fat, new, the dates only a

few weeks old. I didn't know the names of the drugs, so I went back into Peter's bedroom and booted up his laptop.

While waiting for the old dial-up connection to warm up, I picked up the envelope again.

In a moment of blind idiocy, I slid the paper out and opened it.

Adam,

If you're reading this, I'm dead.

And you're probably drunk or well on your way to it. Maybe you're even a little high. It's
okay, buddy. I get it.

Tomorrow morning you'd better get your ass to an NA meeting, though. Don't make me
come down there and make you!

That was a little postmortem humor there.

I'm hoping however it happened, it was quick. And I'm hoping to hell you didn't have to see
it. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Keep an eye on my sister and her kids. Find something constructive to do. We both know
you're happier when you feel useful.

When I picked up my pen to write this, I had it in mind that I was going to tell you all the
things I never said out loud. But as I sit here, I realize you know. You always knew.

It was worth it. Every second, buddy. I haven't one regret.

Thanks for a life that was anything but ordinary.

Love.

Peter

I barely got to that last bit. I refolded the thing hard, creasing it repeatedly, and then angrily I tore it up.

“You son of a bitch,” I told the empty envelope.

The computer had warmed up by this time, and I got my head together enough to punch the names of the prescription drugs into a search window.

Peter was on prescription blood pressure meds. And something that was given for anxiety.

My first instinct was to get the hell out of there. Jump on my bike and just ride until I'd escaped my own thoughts. I fumbled with the computer, trying to shut it down, trying, unsuccessfully, to think straight amidst the maelstrom of crap that was happening in my brain.

That's when I noticed that my mailbox had eight hundred and thirty-two new messages.

Which gave me pause, as they say. I opened one. It was in response to the blog Drew had set me up on. Then I noted that most of the other e-mails were responses to the blog as well.

Dear Mr. Vampire. Do you have pictures of Peter? Can you post them?

wantstobeavampire

Dear Mr. Vampire. I hate school. Why do I need to go to school? I want to come to Los
Angeles and become a vampire! How do I do it?

vampireclub

Dear Mr. Vampire. Will you come to my house and make my stepfather to stop hitting my
mother?

angeleyes

I clicked on one of the e-mails and was taken straight to the now-familiar blog page. I was able to navigate with a little less clumsiness than I had the last time, but still it was more or less a hit-or-miss operation as I tried to scroll through all the comments.

Fucking hell.

I did see that someone had responded to some of the comments. I assumed it was Drew.

Dear Mr. Vampire. I think you are probably very sweet not to kill real people and I would
like to be like you when I'm a vampire.

Drew had responded.
According to our studies, approximately 98 percent of vampires do
kill humans for sustenance. Those who have a choice between organic or bio-ident manufactured
blood seem to prefer the organic. Some claim that the bio-ident blood has side effects.

An anonymous blogger had responded to Drew's comment.
It is a matter of willpower, isn't
it?

And Drew had written.
Hypothetically, interesting topic. Most subjects (vampires) do not
intellectualize this choice.

The anonymous blogger had responded with a link, which I clicked, and I was taken to the Web site Drew had found the other day that had led us to the clot of bloodsuckers downtown.

A prickly intuition was crawling up my spine. I brought out my cell phone, noted the dozens of messages left by Betsy while I'd been worrying over Peter, and called her number.

It went straight to voice mail.

I called Caballo and Drew in turn, and both of those also went straight to voice mail.

I stuffed all the papers back into Peter's desk and relocked it. Then I hopped on my bike and headed to headquarters.

The rooms above the Empress Parlor appeared to be empty. I ran through them, noticing Caballo's electronic toys tossed around, Betsy's leather jacket, and Drew's laptop still plugged in and running.

I hit the space bar and saw the blog page again.

The biohazard bin where the empty bags were tossed was overflowing and there were actually a few bags on the floor, smeared blood and drips all around. I spotted that and backtracked a bit, listening and sniffing.

That's how I found Frank hiding in the storage closet.

“Where's Betsy?”

His face was completely demonic and smeared with blood. His fingernails might have been long when he was turned but they looked like claws now, yellow and tinged with the blood he'd been gorging on.

There was a puddle of blood near him, and blood trails all down his shirt and on his shoes.