Blood Hunt

11

The evening began with promise.

Maggie invited him to eat with them on Sunday. “We like going to early Mass, so we have the rest of the day free. Come over at ten for waffles and my Uncle Leo’s homemade sausage, the best sausage you’ll ever eat.”

He accepted, despite the daylight time and food he needed to weasel out of eating. The invitation counted the most, making him feel accepted.

Out on patrol, traffic moved smoothly. He saw no sign of Scott Dreiling’s Trans Am. No one reported stolen Halloween decorations, though a dog did break out of its yard to attack a scarecrow at the neighbor’s house. The dog followed Garreth back to its yard. Its owner agreed to restore the scarecrow. Problem solved without further action necessary…giving him freedom to locate Dorothy Vogel’s Vega at Dillons.

Luck continued to smile. Duncan radioed a request they meet and Garreth suggested the parking lot of Gfeller Lumber, from which he could watch the Dillons and Walmart exits.

Duncan wanted to crow about locating the driver who had taken off from Phillips the night before without paying. “And I did it with a partial tag number and clerk at Phillips just remembering it was a light colored Galaxy.”

Garreth only half listened to the long narrative of how Duncan ID’d the car and driver, watching the exits south of them. He caught the end of the recitation, though, and gave Duncan the praise he wanted…and deserved. “Good work. What does the guy say about not paying?”

Duncan snorted. “That he ‘forgot’ because he was thinking so hard about getting home.”

An orange Vega wagon pulled out of the Walmart lot and turned up the highway. Turning onto Pine gave Dorothy a straight drive across town to Anna’s place. Garreth set a clock in his head. She never hurried, in case her mother wanted to pause along the way to say hello to a friend, so he had a few minutes before he needed to be there…time enough to avoid arousing Duncan’s curiosity by rushing off.

“Is the Phillips manager prosecuting?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. Got to set an example.” Duncan chuckled. “Mr. Absentminded has to pay for the gas and the fine for not paying in the first place.”

Garreth put his car in gear… “Expensive fill-up. Again, great job.” …and with a salute, pulled out onto the highway.

He timed his pass at Anna’s house so Dorothy had pulled into the driveway and begun taking bags out of the open back. Anna was disappearing in through the side door of the house.

He parked, telling Sue Ann he would be on high band, and climbed out of the car with his portable radio. “Mrs. Vogel, can I help you with those?”

Dorothy looked around, took a moment to recognize him, then smiled. “Mother’s ancestor hunter. She said you’d moved here and joined the police. Is this the serving part of serving and protecting?”

Garreth smiled back. “Yes, ma’am. Which bags would you like me to take?”

Between them, they managed everything in one trip. The side door opened into a small porch with another door opening into the kitchen.

There Dorothy set the bags she carried on the table. “Put it all down here.” She raised her voice. “Mother, come see our new grocery boy.”

Shortly, Anna appeared through a hallway door and seeing him, raised her eyebrows. “In a snazzy uniform, too.”

Garreth shrugged. “I was passing and saw your daughter with a load of groceries to bring in, so I gave her a hand.”

“That’s very kind. Thank you. I’m glad you stopped.”

“Do you want this in your sewing room?” Dorothy picked up a Walmart bag bulging with red plaid flannel.

“That’s a lot of flannel,” Garreth said.

Anna nodded. “I’m making a set of queen size sheets. Yes, the sewing room please.”

“A chintzy wedding present if you ask me,” Dorothy said over her shoulder.

Anna waved that off. “Sometimes you need more than love to keep you warm…and my old bones say it’s going to be an early, cold winter.”

Garreth leaped at the chance that gave him to ask about Lane. “Let’s hope not too severe to keep Mada from making it home for Thanksgiving.”

Anna cocked a brow at him. “Garreth — may I call you Garreth — I wanted to talk to you yesterday but you — ”

His radio interrupted. “Baumen Seven, 10–47, Kansas and Maple.”

Garreth silently cursed the interruption while rogering the call.

“And there you go off again,” Anna said. “If you have a chance before it gets too late, will you come back? I do want to talk to you.”

“I’ll be back.” One way or another.

The traffic accident proved to be a minor fender bender with both ladies involved apologizing to each other…without any influence on his part. Discretion prevented intervention with the parents of two juveniles caught trying to steal cigarettes at Rexall Drugs…two of the thirteen-year-old trio who stole brandy on Monday. But he did urge the store owner to press charges. Maybe juvenile court would shake sense into the idiots…or teach the parents to enforce grounding.

Impatient as he was to go back to Anna’s, conscientiousness made Garreth hold off until after the stores closed and most of the cars left downtown. Some previous nights Anna’s lights remained on after eleven. He just had to hope for that tonight, too.

The hope paid off. When he cruised past he found not only house lights on, but the porch light. She was waiting for him. He called in a break for himself and rang her bell.

The sidelight curtain twitched aside briefly, then Anna opened the door, smiling. “You did make it. Can you stay for a while?”

“I hope. I’m on break.” He came in, tucking his cap under his arm. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

“Mada, of course. Come in the diningroom. I baked an apple pie this evening. Would you like some?”

No problem ducking this offer. “Thanks but I’m not a desert eater.”

She sniffed. “I can see that. It wouldn’t hurt to put a little more on your bones you know. Come in the diningroom anyway.”

While he took a chair there and laid his cap on the table, she opened a lower door of a sideboard with a picture of the Virgin Mary hanging over it. “Did you find your grandmother?”

“No…but it doesn’t matter anymore.” Give her an acceptable reason for that. “Looking was…something to do while I sorted out a personal situation.” Almost the truth. “Now it’s resolved.” With luck.

She turned holding a photo album. “Mary Catherine told me about saying Mada is probably your grandmother. I can assure you she isn’t. Since it made enough sense that Mary Catherine might be right, the next time Mada called, I asked her straight out if she was Mary Pfeifer, or the visitor calling herself Maggie Bieber.”

Garreth’s stomach sank. He cursed silently. Lane knew about him. He could only hope she was unaware of him still being in town.

“Mada swore she has never been pregnant and never stayed at a boarding house in Sacramento. She also said she wasn’t Maggie Bieber…because she’d have to give a damn about someone to visit them and back then everyone except Ben and me could go to hell as far as she was concerned.”

“That’s cold.”

Anna sighed. “She was such an angry child.” She laid the album in front of Garreth and opened it and flipped a couple of pages. “That’s Mada in the middle.”

The photograph showed three little girls sitting on the running board of a twenties-style touring car in front of a farm house — fields lay visible off to one side behind it — whose porch had a fan of gingerbread between posts and roof. The description Mrs. Armour gave of the photograph in Lane’s bookcase sounded like a copy of this one.

“The other two are my daughter Mary Ellen, who’s a eighteen months younger than Mada, and their cousin Victoria. Mada and Victoria were about seven then.”

He studied the photo. “She’s the same size as the others.”

“Here’s the school picture when she was nine.”

No mistaking Lane now…towering a head above other children.

“Look at these.” She turned pages to show him grade cards with all A pluses — except for Deportment — and certificates for First Place in spelling and debate, blue ribbons in Archery and Track. “Mada is the smartest of all my children. She won all those, but would have given them up in a moment to be six inches shorter. My heart ached for her so often. She would come home crying because the other children taunted her about her height. When we sent her to high school in town, she stopped crying. She developed a terrible temper, flying into a rage at the least remark. She was always fighting someone. That only made matters worse, of course. ‘I hate them,’ she would say to me, with such savagery in her voice. ‘Someday they’ll be sorry.’ I’m so glad she’s past that now.”

Past anger because now she had her revenge…. living off people’s blood, reducing them to cattle, leaving some of them nothing but dead, drained husks. When she had been bitten by the vampire who made her, whoever it had been, Garreth doubted she loathed what she became, as he did. He suspected she had seen instantly what the change would bring her and embraced hell willingly, even greedily. In her place, perhaps he would, too.

In sudden uncertainty, he closed the album. He wanted to understand how Lane’s mind worked, the better to deal with her, not sympathize with her…not feel her pain.

“Is something the matter?” Anna asked.

He gave her a quick smile. “I was just thinking no wonder Mada ran away.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t all bad. We had happy times, too. It’s still good when everyone’s home together, once Mada relaxes. She’s always upset at first by the things that have changed since her last visit. Once she said she wished she could stop time so everything and everyone here would stay the same forever. Her hugs almost crush me when she leaves again, and I see tears in her eyes. I think those exotic places she works don’t make her happy.”

Guilt pricked Garreth. Lane enjoyed coming home. Only this time, instead of a happy family reunion and holiday, she would find a cop waiting, a date with retribution and justice. Creating yet more victims, as the arrest wounded Anna and the rest of the family, especially when made by someone they had thought friendly.

“So I’m a little surprised she says that instead of coming home this year, why don’t I come to her and spend the winter in Acapulco, where it’s warm.”

Dismay knocked out the guilt, like a shot to the gut. Lane not come here? Dodge the trap he had given up so much to set? “It would be warm. Are you going?”

She sighed “I don’t know. I can’t imagine Thanksgiving and Christmas away from my children and grandchildren. Maybe I’ll go after Christmas.”

Garreth forced a smile. “Let me know if you’re going, and where you’ll be staying. I’ll send you postcards from the shivering north.”

He worked the rest of his shift feeling sick and hollow. His head argued for calm. If Anna wanted to remain here through Christmas, Lane might still come home. But his gut felt otherwise. She knew he was still alive and looking for her, and even if Anna said nothing about him remaining in the area, Lane probably assumed he had notified local law enforcement to watch for her. She would not risk being seen here. Which meant he had to follow Anna to Mexico.

So at every call, guilt stabbed him. Staying on Lane’s trail meant abandoning this job…violating an oath he had just taken. Deserting people who had taken a liking to the person they thought he was…who would be angered and hurt learning friendship and trust had been betrayed. I Ching reverberated in his head: Acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. Setting oneself up to alter things according to one’s own judgement can end in mistake and failure. Was he guilty of just that…acting without authority, proceeding entirely according to his own judgement? Had he doomed himself to failure?