Known Devil (28 page)

Slattery
: Helter-skelter, of course. The race war will start here, but we have no doubt it’s gonna spread quickly, once other humans see that it’s possible to take a stand against–

[That was when his campaign manager grabbed Slattery’s arm, and he wasn’t gentle about it.]

Franks
: That’s it! We’re done here. Don’t say anything more, sir. Not another word!

All four of the Patriot Party guys stood up and headed toward the door. Franks was in the lead along with his boss, still maintaining his death grip on Slattery’s arm, as the group headed down the central aisle between the chairs on their way to the door. Behind them, the murmur of conversations started again, as the cops asked each other what had just happened. Several of them stood up and made their way into the central aisle as well, probably figuring that the show was over. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

McGuire and I looked at each other but didn’t have to say anything. We knew what had just happened. There was a lot we had to talk about, once the crowd had cleared.

One of the detectives who had already stood up was Karl, who had taken a few steps that put him next to the media room’s only door. He wasn’t blocking the way, but anybody who wanted to leave was going to have to pass pretty close to him.

This move wasn’t part of the playbook that we’d worked out earlier, and I wondered what Karl had in mind. Maybe he hoped to get one more shot at Slattery with his Influence as the PP leader and his entourage left the room. But things didn’t quite work out that way.

I turned in my chair, and watched as the Patriot Party foursome made their rapid way toward the exit. Franks, the campaign manager, must have noticed Karl standing near the door, because he let go of Slattery’s arm and turned to say something to Brody, the bodyguard posing as an administrative assistant.

The instructions that Brody had received became clear a couple of seconds later. As the group reached the door, Brody put his wide body between Slattery and Karl – typical bodyguard behavior, even though Karl hadn’t made any kind of threatening move. But then Brody did something that wasn’t so typical of his profession: he reached inside his coat and came up with a crucifix, extending it out toward Karl they way all the vampire hunters do in the movies. I’ve done the same thing myself – for the simple reason that it works.

I was still in the front of the room and too far away to hear what Brody said, with all the other voices in the room competing with his. But from his posture and expression, I had no trouble guessing that it was something like “Get your ass back, bloodsucker!”

I sucked in a breath. We hadn’t planned for this, either. Franks must’ve figured out that Karl was a vampire, even though it was common knowledge that no member of the undead could possibly be up and about this long after sunrise. I guessed that I wasn’t the only Sherlock Holmes fan in the room, because Franks had clearly adopted one of the Great Detective’s core principles: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Quite a few of the cops were milling around in the aisle now, asking each other variations on the “What the fuck?” question. I shoved my way through them, in a hurry to get to Karl so I could do something about that cross Slattery’s bodyguard was using to threaten my partner. Brody was still standing in his Van Helsing pose, even though the tactic had already served its purpose: Slattery and the other three had slipped out behind him and were probably halfway to the front door by now. I didn’t know what Brody intended to do – maybe the big man wasn’t sure himself. I just knew I wanted to get that cross away from him before the situation went from bad to worse. But this seemed to be my day for surprises.

Karl had flinched from the crucifix at first, turning away and using his arm to shield his face, just like movie vampires have been doing since Bela Lugosi – the real ones have probably been doing it a lot longer. But then something strange happened.

Karl slowly turned back toward Brody and looked right at the cross that the bodyguard was pointing at him like a pistol. I couldn’t see his face then, but Karl’s body was tight with tension as he reached out his left hand and grabbed Brody’s wrist.

I’d made enough progress through the press of bodies in the aisle that I was close enough to hear my vampire partner say, “That’s a nice piece of religious art you’ve got there, Brody. Mind if I take a look?”

Karl must have tightened his grip as he spoke. Brody was big and tough, but his muscles and pain threshold were no match for vampire strength. After a couple of seconds, his hand opened involuntarily, letting the cross drop from his grasp. It was falling toward the floor when
Karl reached out his other hand and caught it.

I stopped pushing my way through the crowd then and just stood still, watching. I don’t think my jaw dropped, but it might’ve. The conversations in the room, which had been fading as more people saw what was going on, went completely silent, as if the talk had been coming from a TV that somebody had just turned off

Karl let go of Brody’s wrist then, glanced down at the crucifix in his palm and said, “So, where’d you get it – Vlad-Mart?” Brody didn’t say anything. He was staring at Karl as if a three-headed alien from the Planet Mongo had just beamed down in front of him and asked directions to the White House.

Karl looked down at the cross again. “It’s nice work,” he said. “Not too elaborate. I always thought less is more, myself.” I think he was trying for a casual tone, but to me, at least, the strain in his voice was unmistakable. “I bet you had it blessed by a priest, too, didn’t you? Maybe even the bishop himself.”

Brody took a step back, stared at Karl a few seconds longer, then turned on his heel and walked rapidly out the door. In the silence, I could hear his footsteps in the hall outside, receding rapidly. He was not quite running.

The buzz of talk came back all at once, twice as loud as it had been before. I shook off the paralysis caused by amazement and made my way over to Karl. Now that I could see his face, the strain of what he’d just done was obvious.

He tried for a smile but it barely displayed the points of his fangs. Handing the little crucifix to me, he said, “Just as well it’s not made of silver. That would’ve made things… difficult.”

“Difficult,” I said, and grinned at him. “Yeah, absolutely.”

Karl’s smile broadened into something more genuine. “Guess Doc Watson had it right, after all,” he said.

I was about to say something clever involving a pun on “elementary”, but I never got the chance – because suddenly Karl’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor. I knelt to check his pulse before realizing just what a futile exercise that would be.

 

“Rachel?”

“Ummpf.”

She’d gone home around 8.30, pleading exhaustion. I could hardly have blamed her. But this call was absolutely necessary.

“It’s Stan. Stan Markowski.”

“Whaa? Stan who?”

“Rachel, Karl’s dead.”

There was silence on the line for three or four seconds, and when Rachel’s voice came back there was no sleepiness in it at all.

“You don’t mean
undead
, but dead for
real
?” she asked.

“That’s the problem – I don’t fuckin’
know
.”

“What happened?”

I ran it down for her, starting with the arrival of the Patriot Party crowd and ending with Karl’s swan dive to the floor of the media room.

“Karl handled a
crucifix
?” Her voice was as dubious as mine would have been, if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

“Bet your ass he did,” I said.

“Without any burns on his hand, or any other ill effects?”

“Nope, none at all – unless you count what happened there at the end.”

“Handling holy objects,” she said, as if to herself. Then, a little louder: “There’s nothing in the spell that should have given him that kind of power. Although, I grant you, it’s still experimental, so who knows?”

“I don’t think it was the spell that did it.” I briefly explained the sessions that Karl had been having with Doc Watson to see if his aversion to holy objects was only psychological.

“That’s fascinating,” Rachel said when I’d finished.

“Yeah, fascinating,” I said. “But it doesn’t do anything about the fact that right now, my partner’s doing a pretty good imitation of
something that you’d pull out of a drawer at the
county morgue
.”

More silence from the other end. “Rachel? You still there?” I shouldn’t have raised my voice to her like that – but it had been kind of a stressful morning. I decided to start acting like a grown-up. Better late than never.

“Shut up – I’m thinking. Or trying to.”

After a few seconds, she said, “Where’s Karl now?”

“In the trunk of my car, zipped up in a plastic body bag.”

“What’re you going to do with him?”

“I was kinda hoping to get some advice from you on that question.”

I heard her breath go out in a long sigh. “My Goddess, Stan, we’re dealing with stuff here that nobody else has ever had to
think
about, as far as I know.”

“Well, then, I guess it’s time somebody started,” I said. “I nominate you for the honor.”

“My cup runneth under,” she said. “Alright, let’s try to think this through. There’s nothing unusual about a vampire appearing to be a corpse during daylight hours, because he
is
a corpse – until sunset.”

“When were you planning to tell me something that I don’t already know?”

“Stan,” she said tiredly, “stop. I know you’re worried about Karl, and so am I. But please, just… stop.”

I made myself take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, alright. Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“But what
happened
, Rachel? This was the day that Karl
wasn’t
supposed to be a corpse, remember? He was supposed to be alive and kicking, all day long. What went wrong?”

“Any answer I might give to that is pure speculation at this point. Maybe the spell doesn’t affect every vampire the same way. The one that Annabelle worked with was conscious and functioning the whole day, she said – but it’s always a mistake to generalize from a sample of one. That’s true in both science
and
magic.”

I’d been about to say, “If you didn’t know whether it was safe, then why did you
do
it?” when the truth stood up and hit me right in the mouth.
She did it because you and Karl asked her to, smart guy.
Asked
her – shit, you both practically
begged
her.

So, instead of making a
complete
ass out of myself, I just said, “Uh-huh.”

“Or maybe having to deal with that jerk holding the cross caused more stress than Karl’s system could handle, considering the strain he was already under.”

“Yeah, the cross was something none of us had counted on,” I said. “But, Rachel, you should have
seen
him – taking hold of that goon’s wrist, then catching the cross when it fell. I was so proud of him…”

“Yes,” she said, “as well you should be.”

I had to swallow a couple of times before I went on. Keeping most of what I was feeling out of my voice, I said, “It’d be nice if I get the chance to tell him that sometime. You think I will?”

“The simplest answer to that is also the most difficult,” she said, “because it involves waiting. Make sure you’re with Karl at sunset. Not to be blunt about it, but either he’ll rise or he won’t. Then we’ll know.”

“That’s
it
?” I said. “That’s the best you’ve
got
?” The promise I’d made myself to remain calm hadn’t lasted very long.

“Well, there is one
other
method,” she said, sounding like someone whose patience had just been used up. “The advantage of this one is you can do it right now, as soon as you get out to your car. But it does have something of a downside, as well.”

“
What
?” I practically yelled. “What is it?”

“If Karl is still among the undead, then he still possesses all of a vampire’s vulnerabilities. The sun’s shining nice and strong today – from my window, I can hardly see a cloud in the sky.”

I thought I could see where this was going, and I didn’t like it.

“So what you do,” Rachel said, “is open the trunk, unzip that body bag, and take hold of Karl’s arm. Pull it out of the bag until the sun is shining on it. If it bursts into flame, you’ll know that Karl’s OK – apart from his arm, of course. I imagine it’ll heal, eventually. Are you willing to do that to your partner, Stan? To your
friend
?”

“The
fuck
I am,” I said.

“No, I didn’t think so.” We were both quiet for a bit, being pissed off at each other, but when Rachel finally spoke, the anger had drained out of her voice. “I knew you couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t do it, either. So, I guess that means we wait, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said dully. “Shit.”

“And if you think the hours between now and sunset are going to be one tiny bit easier on me than they’ll be for you, Stan…”

“I know, Rachel. I know.”

“You’ll be with Karl then. Come sundown.”

“Fuckin’ A right I will be.”

“Then when you, uh, know for sure, call me, OK? No matter… no matter what.”

“Count on it.”

 

I sat in McGuire’s office, sipping from a cup of his excellent coffee and telling him what Rachel’d said about Karl. The coffee’s rich taste aside, I was just grateful for the caffeine. I felt more tired than I had in a long time, and only part of it came from being short on sleep.