Chapter Eleven
Patrick
Mallory drummed her fingers against the fake laminated wood booth, a nervous tick that he wasn’t used to seeing from her. Except for her rebuke the other day, she’d been remarkably mute on the topic of his unplanned leave of absence. Had, in fact, let the two of them slip back into a mostly comfortable working routine without a rebuke or too many probing questions.
It was all part of that cool professionalism that marked her character, and that Pat felt lucky to be on the receiving end of.
“Why exactly did you want to come here? I thought you said you had a lead?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“I thought we could get lunch for one thing.”
Mallory gave him an arch look. “You like sushi?”
Pat shrugged. He didn’t, actually, he’d eat it because at the end of the day there wasn’t much that he wouldn’t eat if he was hungry, but he’d suggested this place because he thought that she’d enjoy it and if they were going to have a working lunch he could offer it as a peace offering. He just wasn’t sure how to say all of that out loud.
Mallory sighed and darted a glance over at the door as it opened, little bell tinkling. A tall figure in a slim cut dark suit stepped inside, brushing water off the shoulders of his trench coat. Mallory’s eyes widened fractionally, nothing Pat would have noticed if he hadn’t been looking directly at her.
Vector approached their table without having to look around, a small smiling crossing his face as he nodded at Mallory.
“Detective.”
“Agent,” she returned the greeting.
Pat frowned. Just when had these two met before? He wondered, wracking his brain. Had it been before or after the bloodstone?
Vector glanced between them and then took the seat next to Mallory when she slid over to make room for him.
“Thank you,” he murmured, folding up his damp coat and slipping open the front button on his suit jacket. He looked out of place under the harsh fluorescent lights of the Sushi-Go-Rround, but if he was uncomfortable he didn’t show any signs of it. Rather, Vector raised his head and took a delicate sniff of the air.
“Smells fresh,” he said.
Mallory’s lips curled in a smirk. “What a relief.”
Vector smiled back at her.
It was enough to give Pat whiplash. He fought back a scowl, but his cousin caught the look and laughed at him outright. Bastard, he’d always spent too much time with Pat’s sisters, picking up their bad habits, that is, their propensity to find a laugh at Pat’s entire existence.
“If you aren’t careful your face will stick like that,” Vector said.
For a beat, Mallory looked shocked, darting looks between them while she fought back obvious amusement.
“Wow,” she muttered under her breath.
“We’re here to work.”
“Where’s Grace?” Vector asked, glancing over his shoulder to where the restrooms were tucked into the back of the shop.
Beside him, Mallory shook her head and Pat felt his frown deepen.
“Why would Grace be here?” he asked.
Vector blinked. “No reason, I guess.”
The waitress interrupted anymore questions by appearing next to their table with a memo pad and a flush across her cheeks. This time of day they were teeming with customers. She took an order of tea for Vector and Mallory and water for Pat. He would have liked something stronger, not that it was easy for him to get drunk, but his clothes were wet from the persistent rain and Pat felt sure a glass of sake would have warmed him right up. Unfortunately, he was still on duty.
“So, I imagine you want to know what I found?” Vector asked, his attention nominally trained on the conveyor of colorful sushi plates sliding past their booth.
Mallory crossed her arms. “Working lunch?” she asked, looking at Pat.
He nodded, surprised at the disappointed look that flicked over her face. Vector shot her a commiserating glance and nodded at a pink rimmed plate.
“Grab that one, will you, Detective? Thank you.”
Pat watched his cousin and Mallory navigate around one another, she grabbing the plates while he measured soy sauce into a little dish between them, broke apart chopsticks, and then poured the hot black tea into two cups when it came. Vector shot him another look and asked if he was sure that he didn’t want tea as well? Pat shook his head dumbly, a sort of numbing shock filtering down through his limbs at the casual way the two sat there digging into their food. For a couple of minutes, no more words passed amongst the three, until Mallory noticed that Pat hadn’t reached for any food himself. She frowned at him, blotting her mouth with a napkin.
“What is it?” she asked. “This was your idea. Aren’t you going to eat?”
Pat shook himself and stared morosely at the plates trundling by. He still didn’t care overmuch for the food here, but he was hungry and it would be weird if he suggested a place that he didn’t eat at. He grabbed a plate, mostly at random and broke out his own chopsticks. Everything tasted a little fishy because of the seaweed but also the fish, cold and starchy because of the rice, a chewy texture that caught in his teeth, but nevertheless did the job of filling his belly so he kept eating it. Across from him, Mallory kept shooting little glances between her phone next to her cup of tea, turning on the screen as though to check the time, and then turning it off. Vector seemed absorbed by the food, he ate in neat, precise bites interspersed by sips of tea that he sprinkled raw sugar into. Pat envied their apparent ease.
“How is Mr Graham?” Mallory asked after a protracted pause.
Vector swallowed and sipped, braced his elbow on the table and sighed.
Pat had to remind himself who the hell she was talking about, and he was ashamed that it took him a minute to place the name, that it took the drawn look around Vector’s mouth for the answer to come to him. He stared at his cousin with some degree of intrusive curiosity.
“Both better and worse than could be expected. The very fact that he’s alive after what happened is remarkable. Lucky, I should say. It’s damned lucky. They killed at least three people that we know of using the same methods, and Lachlan was very close to... The fact that the paramedics got him to the hospital as fast as they did…”
Mallory pursed her mouth and stabbed at a tuna roll on her plate. “You’ve got Rodriguez to thank for that.”
“I’m quite aware.”
“I’m still a little pissed at you for that.”
Vector’s mouth quirked at the edges. “I’m aware. But if he hadn’t done what he did for Lachlan…”
“I know. I don’t blame you. But I don’t like it.”
Pat frowned at the two of them, though neither seemed to notice that he hadn’t followed a single word of what they were talking about.
“So, better in that he’s not dead, but…?” Mallory prompted.
“Lachlan doesn’t appreciate being cooped up so much. He’s only been out of the hospital for a month and, well, he doesn’t like being so dependent on other people. Plus there’s been his mother—” Vector pressed his lips into a thin white line. “There have been a few unpleasant scenes that only exacerbate his lungs.”
Mallory frowned.
Vector cleared his throat and shot a look across the booth. “But that’s not why Pat asked me to lunch. This is surprisingly good,” he said gesturing at the food. “When did you develop a taste for decent sushi?”
Pat grimaced. “I didn’t,” he said, feeling awkward.
Vector tilted his head at him. He always looked like a dog when he did that, ever since they were kids listening in on conversations taking place a mile away or through soundproofed walls. Vector had been a nosy kid, but he could hardly be faulted for it, and look where the two of them had ended up? Working as investigators who got paid to ferret out people’s secrets for the government.
“You know, I think this is Patrick’s concession to the two of us,” Vector mused, shooting Mallory a quick fleeting look.
“Trust me, I am aware. Why do you think I’m still here?” she replied.
Pat scowled. “We’re here to work.”
Vector topped off his mug of tea and leaned forward, lowering his voice to a more conspiratorial tone. “Of course. And you’ll be happy to know that I was able to pick up your victim’s trail without too much difficulty. As far as I can tell she was transported to that alley in a horrible smelling vehicle. Probably a van of some type based on the amount of pollution it left behind. They didn’t drive far, however, about a mile.”
“They didn’t want to be seen transporting her,” Mallory said.
“My assumption as well. Most likely it wasn’t an attack of opportunity. There was some calculation to it. They meant to grab someone and kill them.”
“Who?” Pat demanded.
“Vampires, certainly. I think you’re onto something, what you were saying before about how there has to be a bigger vampire population in the city than the official estimates. I picked up several distinct scents. Now, vampires aren’t my specialty, and I’ve never actually had cause to track one before, but the old blood scent is quite distinctive even if it gets…muddled.”
Mallory shifted in her seat watching them.
“Do you know what I mean?” his cousin asked him.
Pat nodded slowly. He had an idea.
Vector turned to Mallory to explain, “There’s a scent that’s them, the remnant of whatever they smelled like when they were alive. There’s also the layers of everything their physical body comes into contact. That’s all standard, everyone has those two scent profiles. But then vampires, they take into themselves the blood of other people, other humans, and everyone’s blood smells a little different because it came out of their biochemistry. So a vampire’s scent profile gets muddled up with all of the smells associated with their recent meals.”
“That sounds complicated,” she said.
“It can be. But it also makes it quite distinctive when you catch a whiff of one. If you weren’t looking for it? Could just smell like a lot of people all crammed together. But since we’ve got the bite evidence and Pat’s theory about a shadow coven—”
“I didn’t call it that,” he protested.
“—I went in looking for a vampire. Or several. It’s just hard to pinpoint exactly how many we’re dealing with. That’s my point.”
“More than one though?” Pat asked.
“Yes. And I believe they’re operating close to where your bodies were found. I tracked the scents all over a couple city blocks and to several clubs. It’s surprising, actually. They didn’t try to hide or cover up their tracks at all.”
“There aren’t many werewolves working for the SPD,” Mallory said.
Vector shot Pat a quick, pinched look and drank his tea.
She wasn’t wrong. Pat was the only werewolf with the South Precinct; once upon a time, years ago, Vector had been the token wolf in the West Precinct. As far as Pat knew, they’d never replaced him with another wolf. At least not one from the McClanahan pack.
“So, we’ve got more than one vampire operating in a relatively small area that’s got a club scene and two dead girls. Could it have been an accident?”
Vector shrugged. “Someone’s feeding went too far?”
“Or a new vampire who doesn’t have good control?” Mallory suggested.
“With a network of people around them in a position to clean up the mess.”
“Or it was intentional,” Pat said, “and they just didn’t care that they killed either of them.”
“That’s quite a conspiracy,” Vector said.
His cousin braced both elbows on the table and gave him a hard look. They sat in silence, Vector just staring at him. It was Mallory who interrupted.
“Do you know about Sloan?”
Vector frowned. “His partner?” A blank looked passed across his face before something like understanding bloomed. Vector didn’t jump, but there was a sudden tense and release of his muscles as he processed the implications; Pat could almost see the wheels in his head turning as he put one piece of information together with another, shot a look at Mallory that reevaluated her presence and re-accounted for it, before spitting out some sort of…
Vector turned on him and said in a dull voice, “What happened to Adam?”
Pat swallowed hard and looked away. There was a hard knot of guilt lodged in his throat, threatening to choke him.
“He died,” Mallory said into the silence. “Vampires.”
“And the files you said you requested…?”
“Sloan’s. Part of an investigation he was carrying out on his own time.”
Pat ground his teeth together and stared at the fluorescent lights until his vision began to swim.
“Gods damn it,” Vector muttered. “I didn’t realize.”
“Why should you?” Pat asked. “You hardly knew him.”
“Well, but I can see why you’re so interested in this case.”
“I’m interested,” Pat said, “because two girls are dead, and I’d like to avoid finding a third. Or a fourth.”
“I’m still waiting to hear back about my request for any Bureau information on the local vampire population. I’ll let you know as soon as I have something.”
“In the meantime, you said you tracked the scents to a couple of clubs?” Mallory asked. “Can I get the addresses?”
Vector took out a notebook from his jacket pocket and tore out a page to give to her. “Your victim was also present at the location I starred. As far as I can tell that’s where they picked her up. If it’s also where she died, or if she was dead when they left in the van, that I can’t tell. And the premises were closed, locked up tight, no sign of the living when I went by.”
“Thank you,” Mallory gave him a little smile.
“Anything I can do to help.”
“Thanks,” Pat muttered.
Vector checked the time on his cell phone and reached for his wallet, but Pat reached over and slapped it closed.
“I invited you out,” he said.
“Well, thank you. I hate to eat and run, but Lachlan’s got a medical appointment to keep this afternoon so I’ve got to get back.”
“When did you start driving?” Pat asked.
His cousin grimaced as he shrugged into his jacket and overcoat. “Since the accident. Lachlan hated taking a taxi all of the time, but he’ll surprisingly put up with my driving. I don’t get it either,” he said with a laugh. He left the sushi place with a brisk nod to the both of them.
“Lachlan Graham, the detective,” Pat muttered to himself.
“Yes, I’ve met him,” Mallory groused.
“I wasn’t—I keep forgetting. They were partners back before Vector joined the FBI.”
“I’m aware.”
“Sorry.”
“You miss a lot when you take off without warning,” she said, stacking the empty sushi plates according to color and waving over the waitress for the check.