Blood of the Demon

Chapter 29

A pounding on my front door jerked me out of the soundest sleep of my entire life. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I moaned as I yanked the pillow over my head. I needed sleep. I deserved sleep.

The pounding came again about three seconds later, and I lifted a corner of my pillow, a bleary glance at my clock showing me that it was nine in the morning. Okay, so I’ve slept for twelve hours, but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve even more sleep. Especially after the heinous day I’d endured.

I sighed as the pounding came yet again. I knew who it was even without going to the door. There was only one person who would bother to drive out here just to yell at me. And I had no doubts that he would yell.

I grumbled an obscenity under my breath and hauled myself out of bed, groaning as every bruise, scrape, and pulled muscle announced its presence. I plodded to the front door and pulled it open without bothering to look through the peephole.

“Your car went off a fucking bridge and you didn’t even fucking call me?”

I squinted at Ryan in the morning sun. A deep scowl etched his angular features, and a small vein stood out on his left temple. He didn’t look as if he was about to lose his cool. He was way beyond that. “My phone got wet,” I said. I’d thought about calling him. Briefly. But I hadn’t wanted to expend the emotional energy that calling him might take, especially since our last conversation hadn’t exactly ended on a pleasant note.

He made a strangled noise. “Your phone …” His hand tightened on his own phone, and for a brief crazy instant I thought he was going to squeeze it into a crumpled pile of metal and plastic. Then he glared at me again. “You couldn’t find another phone to call me from? After your car went off a fucking bridge?”

Leaving him in the doorway, I groaned and started walking to the kitchen. “What are you, my father? I was a little occupied and a lot exhausted. The only real rest I had yesterday was the ambulance ride to the hospital.”

He shut the door and followed me. “Were you hurt? How badly? Why did you need an ambulance?”

The level of stress in his voice surprised me and—I had to admit—sort of secretly pleased me. It was cool to know that anyone would worry about me like that—especially him, and especially after the other night.

I glanced back at him as I pulled the carafe out of the coffeemaker. “No, I wasn’t hurt, except for a lot of bruising and a cracked rib.” I dumped the remains of yesterday’s coffee into the sink and began to wash the carafe out. “I submitted to the ambulance only because I knew I’d be able to lie down—which I would not have been able to do in the back of a state police vehicle.” Since the accident had happened on a state highway, the state police had taken over the investigation. Unfortunately, that detail hadn’t kept everyone with the barest trace of authority in Beaulac PD from descending on the ER to question me ad nauseam about what had happened.

“So you’re all right?”

I gave him a nod, surprised at how tired he sounded. Maybe he’d been as upset about our fight as I had. Hearing that I’d almost died had to be pretty fucking awful, especially considering that our last words were less than pleasant. “Yeah. Car’s toast. Lost my gun. And my notebook. And my phone.” I gave a fatalistic shrug. “I’m still here, though.” I hesitated a breath. “I’m sorry. I should have let you know I was all right.”

He jerked his head in a nod of acceptance of my apology, then frowned, eyes on me as I shuffled around to make coffee. “What happened?”

“Still not really sure. I don’t know if it was an accident or an attack.” I got the coffee started and then leaned back against the counter, sighing. “I blew a tire and almost lost it. Then a big blue pickup rammed into me and I went over the side.”

He sat down at the kitchen table, expression dark and troubled. “I don’t like it.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly liking it yesterday either. And I don’t really much like it now, to be honest, since I hurt like hell.”

Ryan glowered. “Let me guess: The doctors wanted to keep you overnight for observation, and you refused.”

I gave him my best smart-ass sweet smile. “Such a smart boy you are. You’re right. I couldn’t stand it for another minute, and I had Jill take me home. I have a cracked rib and bruised sternum, and I’m on prophylactic antibiotics since I aspirated some water as well. I came home, stayed conscious long enough to change clothes, and then fell into bed.” A shower was definitely high on my list of needs. I’d been too exhausted and depressed last night.

He slouched back in the chair. “Well, I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, tension beginning to clear from his face.

“Thanks,” I said quietly. He met my eyes and gave me a smile that was rife with a number of emotions, foremost among them apology. I returned the smile. We were cool again. Or as cool as we could be with so many uncertainties and questions hanging between us. A pang went through me at the thought that we might never get past all that. There was so much about him that felt so very right—like the fact that he clearly gave a huge fuck whether I lived or died.

“Anyway,” I continued, “I owe my life to a guy who was fishing on the river.”

“He helped get you out?”

I gave him a brief synopsis of what happened after the car went into the river, though I left out the bit about the guy hearing someone telling him to go to the bridge. I didn’t want to think about that too much, didn’t dare get my hopes up too high, only to have them shattered if Tessa’s body couldn’t survive long enough.

I swallowed back the black mood that threatened, then opened the fridge and peered in doubtfully. I didn’t have a whole lot to eat in the house. Grocery shopping hadn’t been a huge priority lately. I glanced back at Ryan. “Did you bring donuts?”

He snorted. “No, sorry. I was more concerned with making sure you were all right.”

I made a hmmfing sound. “I’ll be fine once I get coffee, a shower, and some food.”

He stood. “Go shower. I’ll make breakfast.”

“You cook?” I asked, brightening.

“No, but I’ll fake it,” he said with a grin. He pulled the carafe out of the coffeemaker and poured a mug full, added a ridiculous amount of cream and sugar, then handed it to me. “This is how you like it, right? Like drinking a candy bar?”

I laughed and took the mug. “You definitely hang out with me too much.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Go shower. You stink.”

I felt better after the hot shower, though a lovely pattern of bruising was beginning to show from where the seat belt had been. I dressed in jeans and a PD T-shirt and then came back out to the kitchen.

I laughed when I saw the white box on the kitchen table. “Did you drive code 3 to the donut shop?”

He glowered at me, but his eyes were dancing. “You don’t have shit to eat in this house.”

I snagged a chocolate donut out of the box, groaning softly when I realized they were still warm. “I seem to recall mentioning that. I’ve discovered that it’s a great way to lose weight.” I took a bite, savoring the rush of sugar and fat and everything else that was bad about a donut.

Ryan laughed. “Dear God, you look like you’re having an orgasm.”

“No, this is much better. Can you give me a ride to the PD? I need to check out a new vehicle. Jill said she’d come get me when I was ready, but since you’re here, I’ll impose on you instead.”

“Sure thing. What about your gun and phone and everything else?”

I scowled. “Well, once I get the car, then I can go to the cell-phone place and get a new phone, and then go to the gun shop and buy a new gun.” Beaulac PD didn’t issue duty gear or guns. Officers were allowed to purchase their own as long as it was on the list of approved firearms. Nice in some ways. Not so nice in others.

He grimaced. “That’ll get expensive.”

I sighed. “I know.” That was the not so nice part. I picked up the donuts. “I think it’s going to be a whole-box kinda day.”

I’d only thought my old Taurus was a piece of shit. I was now the proud “owner” of an ancient Chevy Caprice, whitish, with the remains of old Beaulac PD decals clearly visible on the sides beneath a not-very-recent paint job. It stank to high heaven of cigarette smoke, the gas gauge was broken, and the foam steering-wheel cover was coming off in gritty little bits. It’s free, I reminded myself. No car loan, no gas bill, no insurance, no maintenance.

After plunking down an uncomfortable amount of money at the gun shop and the cell-phone store, I headed back to my office. A pair of blow-up swimmies had been taped to my office door, along with a flyer for swimming lessons at the community pool. “Nice,” I murmured with a smile. I pulled the swimmies off the door, my mood dimming at the sight of the note underneath telling me to report to my captain’s office when I got in. If I have to tell that damn story one more time …

There was a stack of papers and a padded mailer in the in-box by my door, and I snagged them as I unlocked my office. I dumped the donuts and swimmies on the desk, then took a quick glance through the papers. It was all the information I’d requested in my subpoenas, and I skimmed quickly, finding nothing at all that contradicted Elena’s statement to me concerning her financials.

Not that it mattered anymore.

I tore open the mailer to find a DVD within. It was labeled with the name of a local security company and a date and time stamp, and it wasn’t until I dug through the envelope and found the accompanying note that I realized it was the surveillance video from the gate at Brian Roth’s subdivision.

I pursed my lips as I looked down at the DVD. The Roth cases weren’t mine anymore, so the proper procedure would be to hand it over to Pellini. But will he even bother to look at it? Sifting through surveillance video was tedious and boring, and I didn’t exactly have the utmost confidence in Pellini’s drive to find out what really happened.

I compromised. I fired up my computer and burned a copy of the DVD, stuck the copy in my bag, then stuffed the original back into the mailer and dropped it in Pellini’s in-box. I even scrawled a brief note on a Post-it explaining what the DVD was and why I’d requested it. Who knows. Maybe he’ll actually go that extra mile. I wasn’t going to hold my breath, though.

Unfortunately, now I had to deal with my rank. After my previous captain, Robert Turnham, had been promoted to chief of police, a lieutenant from the patrol division had been tapped to become the captain over investigations—all of this happening in the time that I was “dead” and the first couple of weeks after that, before I returned to duty.

Captain Barry Weiss resembled a bulldog in darn near every possible way except for the fur. He was short and stocky and slightly bowlegged, with broad shoulders and a lower jaw that jutted out just enough to make the resemblance complete. I had met him a few times on scenes but so far had very little real face time with him.

I knocked on the frame of his open door. He looked up from his computer, peering at me over his glasses, then gave me a tight smile and waved me in.

“Hi, Kara, good to see you. I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. You feeling all right?”

I nodded and sat in the chair in front of his desk. “Mostly bruises. I got lucky. Have state police found anything?”

He shook his head. “They collected some glass fragments at the scene, but it’s a metal-grate bridge, so most of it probably went into the river. But I’ll be sure to let you know if anything comes back. They’re still trying to get the car out.” He frowned. “Divers say it’s a real mess.”

I didn’t say anything. They wouldn’t believe any explanation I could give for the state of the car, so I figured it was safer not to offer any. And I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for answers from the glass fragments. I already knew it was a blue Chevy pickup that had hit me, but in this area of rednecks and good old boys, that narrowed it down to, oh, say fifty thousand suspects, give or take ten thousand.

“Look, Kara,” he said, leaning back in his chair and grimacing, “I hate to rag on you since you’ve just been through all that, but I got a call from Mandeville PD.”

I winced. “Captain, I know I was out of line there. I’m sorry about that.”

“Yeah, you were completely off base,” he said with a scowl. “There’s already a shitload of pressure to get this case closed, and now our only suspect in the Davis Sharp case is dead, by suicide, with a confession, right? So what’s the damn issue? Let’s get this case closed and get everyone off our backs.”

“I’ll tell you what the damn issue is, sir,” I said, matching his scowl and forgetting to censor my words into a properly respectful tone. But I’d been through enough shit lately that I was pretty much beyond caring about tact and diplomacy. “Yes, Elena Sharp is dead, but she was never a strong suspect, and due to inconsistencies at the scene in Mandeville, I have serious doubts about whether or not she killed herself. To close the case now by naming her the killer is not only grossly unfair to both her and Davis Sharp, it will also allow whoever did kill them to go free.”

He narrowed his eyes and made a hmmfing sound. “Well … I can respect that. Do what you feel is right.” Then he fixed me with a glare. “But if you ever act up like that on a scene again—especially with a cooperating agency—I’ll suspend you so fast your goddamn little head will spin. Y’got me?”

I gave him the properly acquiescent nod he was expecting. “Yes, sir. It won’t happen again.” I knew I was damn lucky that he wasn’t suspending me anyway.

He blew out his breath, once again reminding me of a bulldog. “One more thing. You’ve been recommended for an FBI task force dealing with white-collar crimes and other special circumstances.” I thought for an instant he was going to roll his eyes, but he managed to restrain himself and limited it instead to merely a sour expression. “Chief Turnham has already approved it. You’d be working with Special Agents Ryan Kristoff and Zachary Garner.” He settled his glare onto me. “Don’t think this will relieve you from having to take your share of cases in this jurisdiction, though.”

“No, sir, of course not,” I answered, caught more than a little off guard by the abrupt announcement of the recommendation. “Thank you for allowing me this opportunity.”

He snorted. “Thank the chief, not me. I think it’s bullshit.” He shook his head, and I had to hide a smile at his stark honesty. “That’s all.” He waved a hand at me in dismissal, and I gladly took the opportunity to leave.

After departing my captain’s office, I continued on out of the station. Technically, I was on medical leave for another day, which gave me a perfect opportunity to finally take care of the warding on Tessa’s house and that damn portal. I headed to my aunt’s house—stopping first at the Kwik-E Mart to buy Oreos and chocolate ice cream. The last twenty-four hours had been hell, and I needed all the chocolate and fat I could get my hands on right now.

I mentally reviewed the conversation with my captain as I drove. I definitely deserved the dressing-down I’d received over my behavior at Elena’s condo, and even I could admit that the only reason that I hadn’t been rewarded with unpaid days off was because of the accident. In that respect, I should probably be grateful to my attacker.

Of course, that was the only respect. I’d had to push my credit card dangerously close to its limit in order to replace my gun and holster as well as my phone, though I was holding out a ridiculous hope that the department insurance would cover some of it. Wouldn’t that be a nice change of pace.

I climbed the steps of Tessa’s house and did a quick othersight scan of the front-door area but didn’t feel anything amiss this time. The aversions were still in place and apparently unaltered. I sighed and pushed in after unlocking the door, then headed to the kitchen and shoved the ice cream into the empty freezer. The piece of paper that had the names and lines and circles was still on the kitchen counter—our attempt to find some sort of connection between the murders. I folded the paper and stuffed it into my bag. After losing my notebook in the river, I knew I would need to start re-creating as much as I could remember.

I did a quick check of the library and the rest of the house, not sensing anything out of the ordinary, then locked the front door and headed upstairs to my aunt’s summoning chamber. She had her chamber in her attic since there was no way in the world for her to have a basement where she lived. Basements in Louisiana were pretty damn rare, since the water table was so high. The only reason I was able to have one was because my house was situated on a hill. It was yet one more reason why I knew I would never sell that house.

Fortunately, the staircase to the attic was a real one and not a rickety pull-down ladder, since Tessa occasionally brought the demons she summoned down to her library. In theory, the attic could have been used as an additional bedroom, albeit a small one. I tugged the door open, making a face as a wave of warm air flowed over me. I flicked the air vent to the full open position, then stood in front of the vent for a few minutes as cooler air poured in.

Finally, when the temperature was bearable, I moved to the center of the room, pulling a piece of chalk out of my pocket. I sketched out a storage diagram, then sat back on my heels and channeled as much potency as I could scrape up into it—which wasn’t much. But my idea was to continue to do this throughout the day—little bumps of potency that hopefully wouldn’t wipe me out too much.

My plan for the rest of the day was to alternate between channeling potency, eating Oreos, and watching corny movies. Tessa had a huge number of DVDs, so after I came down from the attic, I settled myself in front of the TV and began to browse her collection. However, I quickly discovered that her taste in movies was similar to her taste in just about everything else—quirky, eccentric, eclectic. The Killing Time. Metropolis. El Topo. The Heroic Trio. The Night of the Hunter. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. What the hell was that? I thumbed through, hand abruptly pausing on Barbarians at the Gate. I still hadn’t looked at the video from the gate surveillance at Brian Roth’s subdivision.

I retrieved the DVD from my bag and popped it into Tessa’s player, then settled back with the Oreos and the remote. The screen was split into four sections—views from the main cameras at the entrance and the exit and then views from two lower cameras, designed to record the license plates of cars that came and went. The multiple cameras made viewing the video challenging, but after a few minutes I learned to ignore the license-plate views and focus on only the two main cameras. Good thing I had plenty of sugar in my system.

At the one-dozen-Oreos point, I saw a blue Prius exit the gates. I ran it back and checked the view that showed the license plate. Yep, that was Carol’s; 6:30 p.m. Half an hour later on the video, I saw Brian’s Ford F-150 enter. Well, that eliminated the outside possibility that Carol had killed Brian and then gone off to meet whomever she’d met, and it also helped clinch my theory that Brian hadn’t been the one who killed her at the motel.

While my eyes glazed and my stomach protested the sheer number of Oreos that had been stuffed into it, I dutifully fast-forwarded through the next several hours of video, watching to see if the Prius returned or Brian’s pickup left.

A flash of red caught my attention and I sat up, jamming my thumb down on the pause button. I slowly ran the video back, exhaling in astonishment as a familiar red Mercedes convertible came into view. “What the hell?”

I quickly checked the license plate view, then sighed. False alarm. Not Elena Sharp’s after all.

But I kept the video paused on the view of the license plate. Frowning, I picked up my cell phone and dialed the Beaulac PD dispatcher.

“Detective Gillian here. Can you run a tag for me, please?”

After about a minute, I thanked the dispatcher and hung up. Matching red Mercedes convertibles. It wasn’t Elena’s car. It was her husband’s.

I checked the time on the video: 11:30 p.m. I replayed the section several times, then ran it forward to find the point where the car exited the subdivision: 11:50 p.m.

I sat back, image of the red Mercedes frozen on Tessa’s TV. I felt equally frozen. I’d wanted a connection between Brian Roth and Davis Sharp. Now I had it—but I still had to make sense out of it. Maybe Becky the Cardio Barbie was wrong, maybe it was Brian that Elena had been sleeping with, and not his father. If so, maybe Davis found out that Brian and Elena were sleeping together, and went and killed Brian in revenge. That’s fairly plausible. But that didn’t explain Carol’s death.

I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. Just because Davis had been in that subdivision didn’t mean he’d killed Brian. It didn’t even mean he’d gone to Brian’s house. Stick with what you can determine for now, I chided myself.

I hit the step button on the remote, taking the video forward one frame at a time. It was possible that it wasn’t Davis driving the car.

No, a few frames later, the distinguished councilman was clearly visible in the driver’s seat. But there’s someone with him, I realized. Perhaps his wife? If he was confronting her lover, would he make her come along? Unfortunately, the angle of the camera made it impossible to see anything other than a dark shape in the passenger seat. I muttered several nasty words as I stepped the video back and forth, searching all views for any glimpse of the passenger. I knew it was a person because I could see movement, but that was the most information I could glean. I scowled. In the movies, the detective would simply take the video to the crime lab, and a high-tech computer would magically remove the glare and pixelation and windshield so that I could ID the passenger.

“Fucking real-world technology,” I muttered.