Blood Hunt

16

Wednesday, their dead buried, the majority of Baumen began moving on. Halloween decorations disappeared from yards. Scott Dreiling resumed driving just short of violations and pushing his home curfew. The real flowers in the memorials on 282 wilted. Nat handed Garreth a memo from Danzig. The department was beginning to receive requests for the home security checks Garreth had volunteered to perform, so he needed to make appointments with the citizens whose names and addresses appeared on the bottom of the memo.

He groaned. Gaining access to Baumen homes seemed hardly worth the effort now, no longer than he was likely to be here, but…he better play his role to the end. With the sun setting about six-thirty now, late afternoon and early evening inspections should not be too uncomfortable.

Before going out on patrol, he called the citizens and made appointments for the next three days, then spent the rest of the week being invited into dwellings before going on duty, working his shift, riding herd on the now-normal Friday/Saturday cruises…and except for Saturday night, coming home to find Maggie waiting for him.

A Maggie who wanted to talk as much as have sex. Fine by him. Marti, too, had liked to talk. As then, he was content to listen, since it came without Judith’s implied You will be tested later. With Maggie he definitely preferred listening over, say, answering questions about Grandma Mikaelian. The trouble with lies was remembering what he said about her bogus death and Depression era boarding house.

While the apartment and bed felt lacking without Maggie, solitude did let him force himself to sleep so he could drag out for Maggie and Martin’s waffle and sausage feed in the morning. Arriving in dark glasses and his cowboy hat to fend off the bright autumn day, he found a crowd in their back yard similar to get-togethers at his parents’, except with fewer cops…just Nat and his family, Bill Pfannenstiel, and Sue Ann. Once Maggie handed him a plate of waffles and sausage and introduced him to everyone — Martin’s VFW buddies, fellow members of St. Thomas More, a gaggle of aunts and uncles, plus Pfannenstiel’s wife and a soft-spoken hulk and a female toddler who turned out to be Sue Ann’s husband and daughter — he further resisted daylight by sitting on the ground under a big cottonwood tree. There he cut the waffle and sausage into small bites and pretended to eat, while surreptitiously sneaking the pieces to four dogs who came with other guests but gravitated to him.

Looking around, it did not surprise him how many of the faces looked familiar from seeing them around town, nor that he had met two of the aunts without knowing their relationship to Maggie. He ran security checks at their houses on Friday. It would not have surprised him, given the town’s interlinking kinships, to find Anna here, too. He sat feeding the dogs and brooding about her. If only she were here, since he had been unable to arrange an encounter this week…not seen her in her yard nor out shopping on Thursday. With the weather appearing to bear out her prediction of an early, cold winter — temperatures crisp by day, dipping near freezing at night — he needed to know how that was affecting her thoughts about Acapulco.

Familiar blood and skin scents announced Maggie’s approach. She grinned. “Are all of us so overwhelming that you’re driven to a retreat with dogs?”

“No, I’m fine, just savoring the sausage. My compliments to your Uncle Leo.” He held up his fork with one of the last bites on it.

“Since that’s the case…” She brought more sausage.

To the dogs’ delight.

Settled against the tree and earth, he started to doze, when a boy’s voice roused him. “Blue doesn’t usually take to strangers.” One of Nat’s sons, staring at the Blue Heeler with its head on Garreth’s knee and along with the other dogs, mournfully eyeing the empty plate.

Yes, what was it with dogs and him. The thought prompted a joke reply. “It’s a kinship thing. He senses my secret identity as a werewolf.”

“Is that how you’re going to the wedding? I always thought weddings were boring but Dad says this one will be cool. Mark and I get to go trick and treating first and then wear our costumes to the wedding. I’m a Jedi.”

“I can’t go; I’m on duty.”

“Too bad.”

An opinion everyone at the station seemed to share when he came in Monday for duty.

Nat urged him to at least drop by the reception. “That’s where I’m catching up with Charly and the boys after I go home and change.”

Doris, looking bonier than ever in a witch’s costume complete with pointed hat, said, “You could bring me back a piece of the cake, maybe a piece of a tower, and tell me all about what everything looks like.”

“Are you going?” Garreth asked Maggie.

She shook her head. “I’d feel awkward since I wasn’t invited, but your uniform will look like just another costume. I’m going home to help Dad with the trick and treaters.”

He had seen the small forms as he walked to the station…tramping along the dark sidewalks undeterred by the appropriately heavy mist- Jedis and witches, ghosts, fairy princesses, a Crayon box, a TV set — glow sticks and loot bags in hand, followed by parents with flashlights. With trick and treaters calling Anna to her door, this might be a good night to catch her.

If Halloween mischief did not keep him busy elsewhere.

“How much vandalism should I anticipate dealing with?”

Nat and Maggie exchanged considering looks. Nat said, “There’s not usually too much and it’s rarely serious. Decorations knocked over, pumpkins smashed…at least one yard hit with toilet paper, usually a high school teacher’s. Soap or shaving cream on car and store windows.”

“Last year someone we never identified used a caulking gun on windows downtown,” Maggie said.

“With three different colors of caulk.” Nat grinned. “They were actually kind of artistic designs.”

Maggie frowned. “The store owners didn’t appreciate them. One year when I was still dispatching we had tombstones tipped over and spray painted.”

“So keep your eyes open,” Nat said, “but use your judgement in dealing with the situations.”

Doris added, “Drive careful later. We’ve got a frost warning tonight.”

That could be a good thing, Garreth reflected, pulling on a jacket as he left the station. This mist freezing on mischief-inclined goblins might drive them indoors to warmth. The temperature was already dropping. Faint puffs of breath preceded him on his check-out walk around the patrol car.

Leaving the parking lot, he headed straight for Anna’s. If he wanted to catch her, he better try before parents took their chilly trick and treaters home. But to his disappointment, Anna appeared to be out. Only the light over the side door was on…not the front porch’s nor those in the front rooms. Lady Luck had frowned at him this week.

Cruising back down Pine, he passed the high school. Light shone inside the windows around the top of the gymnasium and streamed out through open double doors. A delivery van with Carolyn’s Catering and a Bellamy address and phone number on its side sat backed up to the doors…getting ready for the wedding reception.

He rolled on to Kansas Avenue…cruised down to the Pizza Hut and then north to Sonic. They had a few cars yet in their parking lots, and more vehicles parked around the Brown Bottle and VFW revealed customers and members there. Otherwise, very little stirred downtown. He crossed the tracks and started back south, mist turning the streetlights and the stoplight ahead of him fuzzy.

No…something stirred. A roar of loud pipes and chorus of haunted house shrieks came at him from the far end of Kansas. The pipes he recognized: Scott Dreiling’s Trans Am.

As the car neared him, he saw Scott had attached an oval device to its grill with lights inside flashing in sequence, giving the impression of a single light sweeping side to side…making the Trans Am look like KITT from Knight Rider. In honor of the season, Scott and a buddy in the passenger seat wore skull masks, with the passenger waving a plastic scythe out the window. Giving Garreth a one-finger salute, Scott gunned up Kansas — unfortunately holding his speed at twenty — squeaked through the traffic light on yellow, and trailing the shrieks, shot on north into the mist.

Garreth guessed Scott would turn onto River Road and take it to 282. While he debated heading that way himself to see if Scott still stuck to the speed limit there, Duncan came on the radio, voice oddly muffled.

“Five Baumen, I’m 10–14, Signal S.”

The ten code meant escort, but…Signal S? They had no such code…did they? Garreth thumbed his mike. “Clarify, Five. Signal S?”

Duncan shot back: “Shivaree, city boy! If your twenty isn’t Kansas, get yourself there.”

Moments later the blare of multiple car horns erupted to the south.

The wedding!

Garreth parked on the Oak Street crossing.

Shortly, Duncan’s car crossed the tracks at Poplar and turned up Kansas, light bar flashing. Followed by three black convertibles with tops down, then a string of cars with lights and flashers on, horns honking. A whooping Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula stood up in the rear of the first convertible, seemingly oblivious to the weather…her voluminous nightgown-looking dress, his cape, and their breath billowing around them. The next two held bridesmaids of Frankenstein and more Draculas, also standing up and yelling, and also ignoring the cold.

When Duncan passed him, Garreth saw the reason for the muffled voice: Duncan wore a Darth Vader helmet.

Between whoops, the bride and groom reached into a carton on the car’s seat and threw out handfuls of wrapped candy…onto the sidewalk, at parked cars, in the driver’s window of two cars they passed, and onto the railroad crossing where he sat. A glance out the window spotted candy kisses, some wax lips, and candy eyeballs beside the patrol car. In the bridesmaids’ car, Sue Ann jumped up and down, waving wildly, calling his name and screaming like a teenager.

The shivaree made two full noisy circuits, the bride and groom throwing out more and more candy as the horns and yelling drew customers and members out of the Sonic, Pizza Hut, Brown Bottle, and VFW. Three quarters of the way through the third circuit, they turned off at Pine. Heading for the reception.

Garreth grinned after them. That had been entertaining. It looked like a fun wedding indeed, and maybe he would look in on the reception.

Right now, Doris jerked him back to the job, sending him to see a Lawrence Ashe, whose Halloween tombstones had been painted with his own name…more or less. He found the actual new red lettering read: Lard Ashe. Neatly painted, Garreth noted, taking Polaroids…nice controlled spray with artistic flourishes around it in gold.

Breathing down Garreth’s neck as he took the photographs, Ashe grumbled, “I expected a low crime rate in a town this size.”

“It’s Halloween, Mr. Ashe.”

And the high school parking sticker on the car in Ashe’s driveway suggested the identity, or at least the approximate age, of the prankster.

“A man still has a right not to have his property destroyed!”

Garreth stayed polite. “I don’t think you have permanent damage. Talk to Mark Wiesner at Sherwin Williams downtown about how to remove the paint.” Much less trouble, for example, than hooking sodden toilet paper out of the big oak in Ashe’s yard.

“But I want this vandal found and punished! What are you going to do to find him?”

That attitude killed all inclination to suggest a student was responsible. Ashe would likely make finding him — or her — a personal mission, turning the school upside down in the process. “Let me talk to your neighbors.”

Canvassing them — securing him entry into several more dwellings — located one who saw someone in Ashe’s yard, but happily she could only describe the costume, the Grim Reaper.

That news did not please Ashe. “There has to be some way to find him.”

His portable radio clicked. Duncan said, “Seven, 10–43 high school. Code R.”

Being cute again. If he wanted to meet at the high school, Code R must mean Reception. But it offered an escape from Ashe.

He rogered the call and told Ashe, “We’ll stop Grim Reapers and check them for paint cans.”

Small chance of finding an armed Reaper, Garreth figured, but it placated Ashe.

At the high school, Duncan, still in his Darth Vader helmet, stood by his car. “I am your father, Luke,” he intoned, “and I tell you it’s criminal to miss what’s inside.” His voice returned to normal. “You gotta at least take a look. I’ll mind the store.”

After watching the shivaree, Garreth had to admit to curiosity about the reception.

A blast of sound and blood scent greeted him when he stepped through the gym door…the roar of overlapping voices, laughter, some whooping…and even louder than the voices, music: “The Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A DJ’s sound table sat on a stage at the far end of the gym, the DJ himself dressed as a zombie. Under a ceiling of a monstrous black spider centered in an even more monstrous black and orange crepe streamer web, dancers in line dance formation sang along as they followed the song’s directions — led by the groom and bride, whose dress now had a shingling of green…money pinned to it. A jump to the left, a step to the right, hands on the hips. On the stage, the DJ danced to the music, too. Garreth spotted Nat and Charly in the middle of a line, costumed as an Old West marshal and dance hall floozie, doing the pelvic thrusts with enthusiasm.

Garreth tore his vision from that to go check out the cake. Half of it had been sliced up, but enough remained to recognize a castle. Cake slices and punch bowls with skull-shaped cups flanked it, while a generous buffet spread down the table next to it, tended by a cowboy and French maid.

The music ended in cheers from the dancers.

Nat and Charly came over to him, panting a little. “Quite a bash, huh.” Nat raised his voice to be heard. “Try the punch. The orange, not the blue; it’s unleaded. The eyeballs are edible and not bad tasting. I think this will count as the wedding of the year, and probably acquire mythic proportions in memory.”

Charly laughed. “Exactly what Naomi, mother of the bride, is afraid of. Look at her.” She pointed at a table across the dance floor. “That has to be the stiffest upper lip in history. She’s been planning the perfect fairytale wedding since Julie was born and I’d love to have been a fly on the wall the day Julie announced her and Jason’s plans. I have it on good authority Julie delivered that news with an ultimatum to cut off Naomi’s histrionics: my way or the highway…threatening to elope.”

Garreth followed the direction of Charly’s finger, but instead of the bride’s mother, he saw Mary Catherine Haas and Anna Bieber at the next table. Oh, yes, last week she said something about making a wedding present. “How is Anna Bieber related to the couple?”

“She’s Jason’s great-grandmother,” Nat said.

“Then you’re related to Anna, too?”

“Only by marriage. Her son Jacob married my father’s sister Alicia.”

The DJ picked up a mike. “Now, folks, radio Z-O-M-B-I brings you music directly from the Mos Eisley Cantina! Please secure the safety on your weapons before entering the dance floor.” Music started again, this time the bar music from Star Wars.

Charly grabbed Nat’s arm. “I love this. Come on, twinkletoes. Dancin’ time!”

They charged back onto the dance floor.

Garreth circled around it to Anna’s table. “Good evening, Anna. So this was the wedding you mentioned. Do Julie and Jason like the flannel sheets?”

“Very much. Let me introduce you around…if you can hear me. Everyone, this is Garreth Mikaelian, the young man who came hunting his grandmother. You know Dorothy and my sister Mary Catherine. This is another daughter Emily, and Martina, wife of my son Edward, and Leona, wife of my son David. And this is someone I think you’ll be especially interested to meet…my daughter Mada.”

His pulse leaped, thoughts ricocheting from amazement — Lane still came, and early! — to panic over how to handle her here, in a crowd with her family. Until he saw where Anna pointed. Then his gut plunged in dismay. He stared across the table at a total stranger…at a ruined face, stretched so much by face lifts no elasticity remained, only a tight mask looking more like plastic than skin.

Mada was not Lane.

“She decided to surprise us by coming for the wedding. Isn’t that nice?”

His face felt frozen into stone. Smiling used all his will, so did keeping his voice normal. “Very nice.” Somehow he also forced out a polite greeting to the woman. Not Lane. The words reverberated in his skull.

She nodded, murmuring a reply lost in the din of music and voices.

At a loss what to say or do next, he retreated…held his radio to his ear and shouted at Anna, “I’ve got to go. You all enjoy the reception.”

In the car he leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. “You’re totally screwed up,” Serruto had said. He was…but where did he go wrong? His mind churned. The shark’s tooth and postmark led him here. That was Lane’s picture in the high school yearbook and in Anna’s photo album. How could Mada not be Lane?

Someone rapped on the passenger window. He looked over to see Mada outside. Though he just wanted to get the hell away, he ran down the window. “May I help you?”

She smiled. “I’m hurt, Inspector; don’t you don’t recognize me?”

The voice jolted him like electricity. Lane’s voice! He peered more closely at her. Those were Lane’s eyes in that travesty of a face.

Before he could find his voice, she climbed into the car. “Didn’t you come all this way to find me? Now you have. Where do we go from here?”