Blood Hunt

7

Whatever the attitude of those doing the hiring might be when the subject came up, Nat had clearly created some interest here in the PD office. When Garreth walked up to the glass of the front desk a bit before eight, a plump young woman swivelled from a long communications desk that divided the receiving area from one with desks and file cabinets and gave him a bright smile.

“You must be Garreth Mikaelian.” She hurried over to eye him with interest through the glass, from head to the sport coat he put on for the evening, to jeans and boots, then opened a door at the end of the desk to let him in. “I’m Sue Ann Pfeifer, the evening dispatcher.”

A real Pfeifer. Who smelled of blood and…chocolate?

“Would you like a chocolate chip cookie? I brought a fresh batch this evening.” She pointed to a plate of cookies sitting between the radio and teletype on the communications desk.

The smell brought a vivid memory of his mother baking. He remembered the taste…so sweet then, nauseating to think of now. “No thank you. I’m not a cookie eater.”

She sighed and patted a generous hip. “I shouldn’t be either. Tomorrow — ”

“…You’re going to go on a diet.” Nat appeared out of a hallway at the back of the room, buckling on his gear belt. “I’m glad you decided to come. Maggie Lebekov here is just getting ready to go off duty, so come and meet her.”

He stopped beside a desk where an attractive, trim brunette in her twenties sat typing a report.

“Maggie is our Afternoon officer, our expert with juveniles and domestic disputes. Maggie, this is Garreth Mikelian.”

Garreth came around the communications desk, holding out his hand. “Glad to meet you.”

She glanced up no farther than his hand, and returned to typing. “Nat, I forgot to mention Scott Dreiling has the keys to his Trans Am again. I guess Mama couldn’t stand her baby not being able to drive himself to school and football practice.”

Garreth examined his fingers for frostbite. Terrific. They had Up-Against-the-Car Duncan and Ice Queen Lebekov. So much for being a friendly department. Did he really want to work here?

Nat’s ears reddened. “Let me show you the rest of the station.”

That consisted, downstairs here, of the complaint, communication, and officer desk areas, a locker room for personnel that doubled as an interview room, and across the hallway from it, a look through a glass panel into Chief Kenneth Danzig’s office, which also held the evidence lockers. All of which could fit into Homicide’s office with room to spare. Upstairs they had three cells — male, female, and juvenile — and a drunk tank. Empty at the moment.

“These are basically holding cells.,” Nat said. “Anyone with real jail time goes to the county lockup in Bellamy.” He sighed. “I apologize for the reception you got from Maggie. It’s my fault. I was telling her all about you and Wayne, making it pretty clear I hoped I could talk you into applying here. If you come on, you’ll get the shift I have now, which she’s been wanting.”

A perfect shift for a vampire, but… “She would have seniority, though, so — ”

Nat cut him off with a head shake. “Nope. Danzig’s okay with female officers but he won’t let one patrol alone at night.”

Lebekov was gone from the officer area when they came downstairs again. Nat picked a portable radio out of a rack by the hallway. “Okay, Sue Anne, we’re going 10-8.”

She beamed at them. “Let’s be careful out there.”

He saluted and led the way down the hall out the rear entrance to the parking lot. After running through a check of the patrol car’s lights, siren, and shotgun, Nat steered out of the parking lot and east on Oak.

“Sorry you didn’t get to meet more of us tonight.” He peered in his outside mirror at a battered pickup which passed them going the other direction. “Briefly, Danzig’s been chief for three years. Came from the Wichita PD. He’s…pragmatic…prefers keeping the peace to law enforcement, following the spirit of the law more than the letter of it. He listens to complaints and ideas we have, cares that we have decent equipment and continued training…because good equipment keeps us safer, he says, and pride in it makes us better cops. But you need to always be straight with him. Don’t step out of line or he’ll land hard on you, and your arrests and evidence better not get thrown out of court for irregularities.

“Lieutenant Byron Kaufman is a twenty year man who definitely prefers peace keeping. I doubt he’s ever drawn his weapon except to qualify at the range. Never had to. If talk won’t work on an offender, he’s a ninja with a baton. He knows this town and the people inside out, and remembers every detail of every case since he joined. Bill Pfannenstiel, our other officer, is almost a carbon copy. They’re both a little old fashioned about women in police work.”

“Do they give Lebekov static?”

“Not as such, but they tend to be condescending…sure she’s just playing cops and robbers until Mr. Right comes along. She wants to prove she isn’t and is as good as any male officer. Danzig hired her not long after he came. She was a dispatcher before, on Sue Ann’s shift, wanting to be an officer…but Sewing, the old chief, didn’t believe in women cops. Neither did the mayor and council until Danzig argued we needed a female for handling juveniles, domestic situations, and rape victims.”

So they presumably had to approve him, too.

“She’s homegrown like Kaufman, Pfannenstiel, and me. Duncan’s semi-homegrown, from Russell. Came here after a hitch in the Marines to share a house with his sister and her two kids.”

“He’s not a peace keeper type.”

Nat shook his head. “But a big stick can be useful.” They turned on to Kansas Avenue. “Welcome to the teen cruise and, along with tomorrow night, our heaviest traffic of the week.”

It was, Garreth reflected, a matter of perspective and proportion. Hardly heavy traffic by Market Street or Embarcadero standards, but still…a stream of cars, pickups, and vans looping south to the Pizza Hunt and across the tracks north to the Sonic Drive-In and back across the tracks south again. The vehicles frequently pulling up alongside each other for the occupants to call across the space between. Considering Baumen’s size, the number impressed Garreth.

“Do you really have this many teenagers?” Every one with a vehicle and a driver’s license must be here.

“They come in from the farms and down from Lebeau, too. There isn’t much else to do Friday and Saturday night other than the movies, and football this time of year. And tonight the football team isn’t playing.” Ahead of them a girl leaned out a passenger window toward the car next to them. Nat burped the siren. “Stay in the car!”

She made a face but pulled back inside.

“Do you write them up for things like that?”

Nat shook his head. “Duncan sometimes does. I tend to cut them slack. I’ve — ”

“Been there?” Garreth said.

Nat grinned, then frowned. “Now he…” he said, pointing at a black Trans Am dodging between lanes on the other side of the tracks, “…is something else. Scott Dreiling, perennial offender…or at least perennially offensive.” He whipped the car over the tracks at the next crossing and worked his way toward the Trans Am. “Daddy’s on the city council, which Scott thinks entitles him to diplomatic immunity.” He pulled alongside the Trans Am and shouted across Garreth toward the blond boy at the wheel. “Scott, try driving like you want to keep those car keys. Officer Duncan is on duty tonight, too.”

They pulled ahead. In the side mirror, Garreth watched Scott raise a middle finger after them. “Does the threat of a big stick work?”

Nat rolled an eye toward him. “That was a reminder, not a threat. Just listen to Duncan run DL’s and registrations tonight to warn the kids he’s watching. And speaking of the devil…”

Garreth glanced over to see another patrol car overtake them on his side. Duncan grinned across at him. “You should have told me you were a cop the other night instead of letting me make an ass of myself.”

Garreth bit back the obvious reply.

“Is it true you broke every bone in Hepner’s hand? Good going! I wish I’d been there to see it. Has Nat convinced you to apply here yet? We need someone else who knows how to get physical.” Giving Garreth a thumbs up, he pulled on ahead.

Garreth stared after him. “Tell me you don’t see me as the next big stick.”

Nat laughed. “Nope. We only need one. The way you handled Wayne in the Main Street made me think of Bill Pfannenstiel talking raging drunks to their knees in tears.”

The radio crackled. “Baumen Three. See Mrs. Linda Mostert at 215 South Cottonwood about a missing person.”

Nat keyed the mike. “En route. It sounds like Mr. Halverson is wandering again.”

Mr. Amos Halverson turned out to be Mrs. Mostert’s father, a healthy but sometimes confused old man who regularly took walks and forgot his way home. By talking to people in yards along the street, they learned the gentleman had headed north. Twenty minutes later they located him working on his third beer in the Cowboy Palace and drove him home.

Returning to patrol, Garreth said, “I wonder if he’s all that confused. You realize we paid for his beer and gave him transportation home?”

Nat shrugged. “He’s earned it. He ran a grocery store when I was a kid and a lot of times gave me and my sisters free candy. Once when my dad was out of work for six months, he carried us on credit ‘til Dad could pay again.”

Not something that happened these days, although Garreth remembered being told that Mr. Campera, the bodega owner Wink O’Hare killed, had done that for some regular customers. A kindness which added to the outrage the neighborhood felt at his death.

Past the Pizza Hut Nat turned left onto 282 and checked the businesses along there. He had a conversation with a couple parked behind Walmart before letting them leave — “Minors,” Nat said — but found no one behind the Dillons supermarket and Co-op. Radio traffic indicated Duncan was indeed busy running car registrations and drivers licenses. Which did not include Scott Dreiling’s.

Another pass along Kansas at eleven found the cruise traffic down to a last few vehicles, the Sonic and Pizza Hut closed, and the last of the late show patrons at the movie theater leaving for home.

Nat returned to 282 and pulled into the American Legion parking lot. “Time for a break, before Ed goes off duty.” He keyed his mike. “Three Baumen, 10–10 at the Legion. We’ll come sometime when the dining room’s open. Best steaks in town. But the bar food is good, too, and that’s served until the bar and hall close at one.”

Garreth followed him inside. “I ate earlier.” Finished the last of his blood supply. Tonight he needed a cattle run. “I’ll have tea, though.”

“Why not check out the pool tables. The game room is that way.” He pointed.

The game room had two pool tables along with card tables and dart boards. Both tables had players but as Garreth came in, the men at the nearest one looked up to eye him with interest…both early forties, a fit-looking country club type and the other instantly recognizable as a cop, with shoulders capable of battering through a felon’s door.

Country Club smiled. “Are you looking for someone?”

“No…just checking out your tables while Nat grabs a bite at the bar.”

“Nat Toews?” Country Club’s eyebrows rose. “Are you the guy who helped him rescue that waitress last night? Glad to meet you. Al Dreiling.”

“Garreth Mikaelian. Are you Scott’s father?” Which made him one of those responsible for approving police hires.

The cop turned back to the table without introducing himself…not acting hostile, just more concerned about his game. With reason, Garreth saw. The six ball sat literally behind the eight ball and not in line for the pocket.

“You’ve met my son?” Dreiling beamed. “Great kid isn’t he.”

Garreth hunted a diplomatic reply. “I’ve only met him in passing so far.”

The cop smiled.

Dreiling said, “Care to join us for a quick game, since I think my esteemed opponent is stymied and we might as well start over.”

Not hardly stymied. Garreth’s fingers itched for a cue. “May I have a try?”

“Be my guest,” the cop said.

Garreth picked a cue from the rack, chalked it while studying the table, lined up, and hit the cue ball low. It jumped the eight ball and kissed the six, which brushed against the nine and deflected just enough to slide along the cushion into the pocket. Then Garreth finished clearing the table.

Dreiling blinked. The cop laughed. “Nat said don’t bet against him.”

Nat said. Suspicion flared in Garreth.

Nat appeared in the game room door. “Let’s roll, amigo. We’ve got a domestic. Tom Loxton.”

The name meant nothing to Garreth but the cop swore, confirming Garreth’s suspicions.

“You set me up,” he said as they ran for the car. “That was Chief Danzig with Dreiling.”

“Guilty.” Nat flipped on his light bar and peeled out of the parking lot. “He wanted a candid look at you. I didn’t know he’d bring Dreiling, but the man was smiling so I’d say it worked out.”

Garreth hoped. “I take it this Loxton’s bad news?”

“Oh yeah. Not only a mean drunk who’s put his wife in the hospital a couple of times but he has man-eating Rottweilers. If they’re loose we can’t get to the house.”

Get to the house. Remembered fire blazed in Garreth and he stood again at Wink O’Hare’s kitchen door, paralyzed by the flames. Why did he think he could work for this or any department? For all the houses he might be invited to enter, there would always be those the occupants did not want him in. And another officer could suffer for it.

They pulled up in front of a house with a six foot chain link fence around the property and three Rottweilers with bared teeth barking viciously from the middle of the yard. Duncan stood at the fence with a pepper spray canister while neighbors crowded their own fences or sidewalks watching. A woman screamed inside the house.

“I can’t reached the bastards with the spray. Why can’t we just shoot the damn things?”

“They haven’t attacked us,” Nat said.

“So you go in and when they charge you I’ll pick them off.”

The woman screamed again.

Duncan scowled. “We gotta do something. He’s killing her in there.”

Garreth thought back to the coyote the other night. Might a domestic dog react the same? He walked up to the fence. “Hey, fellows.”

Their barking shifted into hysteria. One dog started forward — the alpha? — only to halt. He stopped barking, too, and lifted his nose, sniffing. Then he stared at Garreth, head tilted in obvious confusion. The other two dogs, one male, one female, looked at the alpha and stopped barking, too.

Garreth stared back. “That’s better. Nice dogs.”

His peripheral vision caught Nat, Duncan, and the neighbors gaping from him to the dogs. Son of a bitch. Did he have yet another Vale of Chablis here?

The woman in the house screamed again…higher, louder, sounding more in pain.

What was it the deputy said: the good Lord looks after fools. “I think I can handle the dogs.” He hoped.

He eased open the gate enough to slide inside, keeping his gaze locked on the alpha’s. Slowly he walked toward them. The dogs stood rooted.

“Good dogs!”

Their stubby tails wagged. When he reached down to gingerly pat the alpha’s massive head, its tail wagged faster, and faster yet when he rubbed its ears. The other two crowded in for a pat, too.

“I think they’re all right now,” he called back toward the fence. “Come on in.”

“Not on your life,” Duncan said. “Not until they’re locked up.”

Oh, yeah…Vale of Chablis.

“Hurry if you can,” Nat said as the screams in the house rose still higher. “There’s a dog run in back.”

Garreth gave the alpha a light slap… “Hey, let’s go for a walk. Come on. Heel.” …and set off around the house.

The alpha fell in beside him, followed by the other two.

Halfway along the house the sounds from inside the house included Duncan and Nat’s voices, both shouting orders. Then a man screamed and swore…not Duncan or Nat. Loxton. The alpha halted, head turning toward the house and his master’s voice.

“Hey, fellow.” Garreth rubbed his knuckles hard on the dog’s head to pull attention back to him. “Come. Heel.” He grabbed the dog’s collar and tugged.

To his relief the dog came with him. He broke into a jog while the woman’s screams turned to profanity and: “No, stop that! Let go of him! I’ll kill you!” Every cop’s nightmare on a domestic call…the victim turning on her rescuers.

The dog run occupied most of the back yard. Garreth pushed open the gate and walked inside. “Kennel up, guys.” When the alpha paused again at Loxton’s curses, Garreth raised his voice. “Kennel up!”

The dogs followed him in. He gave them a last hurried pat, backed out, and latched the gate tight. Then sprinted for the front door desperately wondering how to enter the house. Maybe stand at the door and shout in asking if they needed him?

To his relief, he dodged the bullet. Duncan was dragging a cursing cuffed male down the front steps, Loxton’s red face and eyes squeezed tight in pain testifying he had received the pepper spray Duncan could not use on the dogs. “You’ve blinded me you fucking bastard! I’ll sue you. I’ll have your badge for killing my dogs!”

On the porch Nat struggled with the victim, who despite a bloody nose, swelling eyes, and bruises forming on her throat, was trying to claw at Nat’s eyes. She had connected once. Three scratches crossed one of his cheeks.

“Let me go you nazi bastard! I’ll kill you!” She tried to kick him. “Tom, Tom baby! I love you! Let him go! Don’t hurt him! He hasn’t done anything wrong! It was my fault!”

Garreth leaped onto the porch and behind Nat. Did the woman still have enough vision to see him? Could he even get her attention in her hysteria?

Before he could try, she suddenly ran out of steam and sank to a sobbing heap on the steps. “My fault. I just upset him. I know better. Please don’t hurt him.”

Duncan, meanwhile, had Loxton almost to his patrol car. “You’re not blinded and you know it. We didn’t kill your fucking dogs, either!” He shoved Loxton onto the edge of the rear seat and brought a bottle of water from the trunk. “Look up and open your eyes!” And poured the water into Loxton’s eyes to wash out the pepper spray.

He had finished and was pushing Loxton the rest of the way into the back seat, when a Chevy Malibu wagon pulled up behind him.

Chief Danzig climbed out and assessed the scene. “I take it we lucked out and the dogs weren’t loose.”

“Oh yeah they were,” Duncan said, “and ready to eat us alive…until the California Kid here worked some kind of voodoo that turned them into pussycats.”

Danzig started. “You’re joking.”

A chorus of neighbor voices swore to the story.

He eyed Garreth in amazement. “No one but Loxton has ever been able to control his dogs.”

Garreth shrugged in pretended modesty. “Dogs like me.” Or he had been damn lucky.

“You’re full of surprises.” Danzig turned to Nat, who had the wife on her feet again, still sobbing, and was steering her down the sidewalk. “You about to take her to the hospital?” At Nat’s nod, he said, “Then I’m stealing your ride-along. Hop in, Mikaelian, and let’s talk.”

Not immediately, however. Danzig drove in silence, pulling finally into a parking area in Pioneer Park. Still saying nothing, he led the way down the sidewalk and over a swinging bridge to an artificial island created by a loop of the Saline River. They sat on the steps of the bandstand in the middle of the island, where Danzig lit a thin cigar from a box in his jacket pocket. The sweet smoke curled around Garreth, mixed with Danzig’s blood scent.

“Do you want a job here?”

Shades of Phil Mikaelian, cutting to the chase. And as with his father, Garreth decided to answer in kind. “I already have a job back home.”

“Which I understand you have reservations about.” Danzig took a puff. “Yet here you’ve demonstrated yourself a capable officer, so…what’s the story?”

“Didn’t Nat tell you?”

“Let me hear it from you.”

Always be straight with him, Nat had said. Okay. Leaving out only mention of vampires and his real reason for being here, Garreth told Danzig everything…from Lane’s attack to Harry’s shooting. Danzig listened without comment to the end, smoking his cigar and leaning back against a post supporting the bandstand roof.

With the cigar smoked down to its plastic mouthpiece, he ground out the butt on the steps and dropped it in his pocket. “Assuming you’re right about trust of you being forever tainted out there, which I’m not convinced is the case, what’s holding you back from taking a job where you have a clean slate? The admittedly big hit in salary? Reluctance to let go of the familiar? Trying to make family and friends understand why you’d trade a Cadillac department for a Go-cart?” He smiled wryly. “I ran into that, taking this job. From my wife, too, at first, though now she’s glad we’re here.”

“I never thought about salary,” Garreth said. “The rest, yes.” But he might as well confess the strongest reason. “At Loxton’s, when I knew Nat and Duncan were having to fight the wife as well as Loxton and thought they might need me inside, I couldn’t even think of trying to go through the back door. They didn’t need me but what if they had? Can this department risk me freezing up again at a door?”

Danzig eyed him. “Are you going to let fear cripple you and keep you from a job it seems to me you enjoy?”

If only there were a way to ensure entry into dwellings when he needed to be there. Maybe there was, he thought suddenly. What if he volunteered to conduct free home security checks for everyone in town. Use his own time to do it, even when it meant suffering daylight. It would be good public relations for the department, good for the homeowners, and good for an invitation in everywhere.

Danzig’s brows rose. “Did I just see a light go on over your head?”

Why not answer. “Thinking about going into homes gave me a public relations idea.”

Danzig listened to it, and smiled. “That sounds like a yes, you want the job.” He sobered. “After dealing with Hepner and Loxton I don’t have to tell you this job is just as hazardous as in a city, but you ought to know it can be worse. Remember the Clutter murders in Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood? Those were here in Kansas. We also had a pair of spree killers named York and Latham come through in 1959. They were tried and convicted over in Russell. We’re on the drug traffic pipeline and almost every year there’s a highway patrol trooper killed making a routine stop on 1-70. Sometimes there isn’t much backup.”

“Nat’s told me.”

Danzig stood and stretched. “I also want to tell you if you do prove psycho and present a danger to the your fellow officers, I’ll shoot you down like a mad dog. Come in Monday, then, and fill out an application and we’ll go from there.”