Transylvania's Most Wanted (16 page)

“I repeat my question,” D.A. Campbell said
becoming annoyed with Count Vasili, “Did you provide the witch
Pandora a ticket to the Halloween Ball?”

Count Vasili turned toward the district
attorney. “I did.”

D.A. Campbell pointed accusingly at the
count then as the crowd erupted and the judge banged on his gavel.
“You confess then to assisting in the plot to assassinate Prince
Marko?” he shouted at him.

“I do not,” Count Vasili answered calmly as
his lawyer protested D.A. Campbell’s attempt to put words in his
client’s mouth.

“Abstained,” Judge Hopkins yelled over the
crowd noise.

D.A. Campbell continued questioning Count
Vasili then, asking him if he had every met with the Vampire
Krakov.

“I ran into him a few times over the years.
We were both from the U.R.R.K.”

“Did you provide him a ticket to the
ball?”

The crowd sat on the edge of their seats
waiting for the count to answer.

“No.”

“
That’s a nice suit,” D.A
Campbell said unexpectedly, gesturing at the clothes Count Vasili
was wearing.

“Thank you.”

“Where could I get a suit like that?”

“I don’t remember where I bought this.”
Count Vasili said barely looking down at his suit.

“Maybe you could take a look at the tag.
Would you mind?”

Count Vasili opened his suit coat and looked
at the tag. “Oh yes, this is from Harrah’s of Londonium.”

“You just came back from Londonium is that
right?”

“Yes.”

“You attended a gala there. A gala held for
the U.R.R.K. delegation. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you buy all your clothes from
Harrah’s?”

“No of course not.”

“But you do have an account there?”

Count Vasili hesitated, but then admitted he
had an account at that store.

“Is that because you regularly purchase
clothing from there?”

“That’s the whole point of an account,”
Count Vasili said, causing some in the crowd to laugh
nervously.

“Yes, isn’t it? Kind of an exclusive
place?”

“Wouldn’t hurt you to shop there,” Count
Vasili said and the crowd laughed again.

“You may step down,” D.A. Campbell said
smiling, taking the dig in stride.

Count Vasili seemed like he was going to ask
something, but then he looked at Mr. Underwood, who gestured for
him not to. The count stepped off the witness stand and as he
hobbled back toward his chair, he gave D.A. Campbell an odd sort of
stare as he went past. The look was caught on camera as many bulbs
flashed in the room then.

Chapter 27

King Takes
Bishop

Tom stood up, smiled at Rebecca and then
started down the aisle when D.A. Campbell called for Inspector
Thomas Flynn to take the witness stand. As he did, camera bulbs
flashed.

“Please no pictures while a line of
questioning is going on,” Judge Hopkins reminded the photographers
in the room.

Tom was sworn in and then before he could
even sit down, the district attorney began questioning him.

D.A. Campbell was clearly enjoying his time
in front of the packed courtroom. He was about sixty, with a head
of white hair and he wore a nice, yet conservative suit. He had a
habit of tapping the table he was standing nearby with the ring on
his finger and when not doing that, he liked to hold onto the
lapels of his coat like Abraham Lincoln did. “Inspector Flynn, you
are the detective who tried to arrest the suspect Krakov after the
attempted assignation and successful kidnapping of the princess
last night?”

“Yes.”

“You ended up having to shoot and kill
Krakov once you approached him in Goblin Park just minutes after
the shooting?”

“Yes.”

“After he was killed did you go through his
pockets?”

“Inspector Meriwether did.”

“Did he find a white handkerchief, like the
ones the King’s Guard were wearing that night, in his pocket?”

“He did,” Tom said and the crowd began to
stir as this was the first time this information was made public.
The district attorney approached a small table in front of the
judge’s stand and lifted up the white handkerchief in question, for
the crowd to see. It was all white except for a red star on it.

“Is this it?”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell me what is embroidered on
the bottom corner of this handkerchief?”

Tom accepted the handkerchief from D.A.
Campbell and read what was there. “It says Farley’s”

“That’s a department store here in
Transylvania City, right?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind trying to peel off the red
star on that handkerchief?”

Tom did as D.A. Campbell asked, and peeled
off the red star.

“It was just ironed onto the handkerchief
with a little glue, wasn’t it?”

“It appears so.”

Next he picked up a black armband.

“Did you also find on Krakov a black
armband, like the ones you and the other TCPD officers in
attendance last night were wearing?”

“Yes.”

“Is this it?” D.A. Campbell said holding it
above his head like he was cheering some sporting team on.

“Yes.”

“Did you find a gun on him?”

“Yes.”

“This gun?” he said setting the arm-band
down and picking up a gun off the table as a number of camera bulbs
went off.

“Yes.”

“
After the attempted
assignation, were you instructed to head for the Lost Souls
Hospital?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you do there?”

“We arrested Count Vasili for having planned
the kidnapping of Princess Alexi, and the attempted assignation of
Prince Marko.”

“Did Count Vasili try and escape when you
went to arrest him?”

“He did. He tried to jump out a window, but
we were able to grab him and subdue him.”

“Put up quite a fight didn’t he?”

“He did, yes” Tom answered.

“Despite him having been shot twice?”

“His wounds were not serious,” Tom said
glancing at Count Vasili.

“Apparently wounds to the thigh and shoulder
of a vampire are not too debilitating?” D. A. Campbell asked.

“No they are not.”

“I personally did not know that,” D.A
Campbell said. “In fact I would propose that information in not
widely known.”

“Could the district attorney please state
what point he is trying to make by informing us of Count Vasili
wounds?” Mr. Underwood asked.

“Nothing really… but…,” D. A Campbell said
tapping his ring on the table again. He did this twice more and the
sound of him doing it was nearly the only sound in the courtroom
and then finally he said, “I’m sure this is common knowledge among
vampires, especially those who have a history of gun violence as
did the Vampire Krakov.”

The crowd erupted again and the judge banged
on his gavel until they fell silent. “I see where you going with
this,” Judge Hopkins told D.A. Campbell, “but for the sake of the
record and for the newspapermen who might not have gotten your
meaning, will you please state what point you are trying to
make.”

“Certainly. I’m merely suggesting that the
Vampire Krakov shot Count Vasili not intending to harm him, but
instead wounded him with the sole purpose of wanting to alleviate
any suspicion of him as having been part of the conspiracy to
assassinate the prince,” D.A. Campbell said. “Did you find anything
else of interest on Krakov’s body?” he asked Tom then.

“Yes.”

“What exactly?”

“A coat check claim ticket.”

“Did you present the ticket at the Hotel
Triumph?”

“I did.”

“What did you collect?”

“A hat and overcoat.”

D.A. Campbell went to the evidence table
then and took out, from a brown bag, an overcoat. “Is this that
coat?”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind reading from the tag sewn
onto it?”

Tom took the coat from the district attorney
and read the tag. “It says Harrah’s of Londonium.”

Again the crowd murmured, and they grew even
louder as D.A. Campbell approached the table, picked up a top hat
and announced that it too had been purchased from Harrah’s of
Londonium.

Judge Hopkins banged his gavel until the
courtroom settled down and then he asked for a short break so he
could scribble some notes down on a pad of paper. Tom noticed, Lou
Mitchell, the newspaper photographer, entering the courtroom
carrying a large camera then. When Judge Hopkins gestured that he
was ready again, D.A. Campbell thanked Tom and excused him from the
witness stand. As Tom made his way down the aisle, Lou Mitchell
took his picture from where he was standing up against the side
wall of the courtroom. Tom went and sat next to Rebecca again,
wondering where Red had gone.

Chapter 28

Mr. Slang left the courtroom not long after
the young detective, Inspector Flynn, finished giving his
testimony. He seemed to be Chief Inspector Meriwether’s main
confidante.

As he went down the steps of the court
building there was no question in Mr. Slang’s mind that he was
being watched. He just wanted to know by how many pairs of eyes. A
short side trip should do the trick. There was also no question in
his mind that his opponent knew the game was afoot then, but he
wondered just how much Inspector Meriwether really knew.

Mr. Slang hailed a carriage and asked the
driver to take him to St. Paul’s Cathedral of the Damned, the most
visited tourist spot in Transylvania City. As the carriage pulled
away from the curb, he took a quick glance around and spotted a man
coming out the court building. The man wore a black bowler and gray
raincoat. He looked to be about five-foot nine and maybe a hundred
and sixty pounds, a few years past fifty.

Sitting in the back of the carriage on the
way to the cathedral, Mr. Slang planned Princess Alexi’s demise. It
is simple enough to kill a person, at least when you know where to
find them. Right then Mr. Slang did not know where she was, and his
task was further complicated by the fact that he needed to frame
certain enemies of his employer for her death. That had been made
more difficult now.

When he arrived at the steps of the
cathedral, Mr. Slang immediately joined a tour group headed inside.
The nun leading their group began telling them their first stop
would be a number of beautiful paintings just along the side wall
of the cathedral. She mentioned some of the names of the artists
brought here, during various lifetimes, and commissioned to produce
a work of art to hang on the walls of the cathedral; Renoir (his
third life) Michelangelo (his fourth life) and other impressive
names. Mr. Slang would have liked to spend some time looking over
their works, but instead he immediately headed upstairs to the
balcony. He went and stood by the stain-glass window and looked
back outside.

He spotted the man with bowler and gray
raincoat that had followed him out of the court building standing
across the street from the cathedral now. He could even see his gun
when his coat blew open a little and right then he was sneaking a
sip from a flask he tried to conceal.

The tall, muscular black detective was
spotted next. He was trying to mix in with the tourist crowd
looking up at the cathedral bells, but the detective never bothered
to look up at the bells or toward anything other than the front of
the cathedral where Mr. Slang had gone. That made for two
detectives following him.

Mr. Slang went back down to the floor of the
cathedral then and began looking through the people sitting in the
pews. One man, a young man, was one of the few of them either not
praying or looking through a pamphlet of some kind. Mr. Slang
spotted the slight bulge the detective’s gun made under his coat.
That was three.

He rejoined the tour group and spent the
next twenty minutes enjoying the paintings and other works of art
inside the cathedral, never spotting any others tailing him and
then he abruptly left the group and headed toward the entrance. The
young detective, pretending to be a tourist all alone, followed him
outside. The black detective finally looked up at the cathedral
bells as he passed by him, and the third detective still stood on
the other side of the street. That seemed to be all of them. They’d
hadn’t any notion that Mr. Slang might have been on to them, and
that made them easy to spot.

Chapter 29

As Red came down the hallway toward the
inspectors’ offices, Miss Kensington waved him over to her
desk.

“Chief Rogers left a message for you,” she
told him. “It seems Krakov’s brother asked for permission to send
Krakov’s body home to the U.R.R.K. He already approached the
U.R.R.K. delegation and Colonel Popov okayed it. Sometime after the
zeppelins arrive here Chief Rogers’s is going to have Krakov’s body
delivered out there.”

“
Call Chief Rogers back
and tell him I’ll take care of those arrangements,” Red told her.
“Insist upon it if you have to. Oh and another thing. When
Inspector Flynn returns, tell him the desk sergeant called up here
to report some civilian had called in claiming to have seen Stone
out by Harper’s Junction.”

“Stone was spotted out by Harper’s
Junction?”

“No,” Red said, “but I need to keep
Inspector Flynn busy for a while. I’ll explain everything later,”
he said. “Right now I need to call Horace Sokoloff.”

Chapter 30

After Count Vasili’s hearing adjourned, Tom
had a quick bite of lunch with Rebecca and then walked to the TCPD
building. He wanted to talk with Red, but as he came into the
inspectors’ offices, Miss Kensington told him Red wasn’t there.

She did tell him that a call had just come
in saying Stone might have been seen out by Harper’s Junction and
she asked Tom if he would drive out there and check it out. Tom
told her he would.