Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(94)

“Then how about this? The girl was down and bleeding, and no vampires came to check it out,” she said. “Must be a good reason why.”

“Must there?” Amelie had a gift for sounding completely uninterested; had to give her that. “I’ll have to look into it.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve got Oliver doing right now?”

Silence. Deep, dark, uninformative silence. And then Amelie said, “Thank you for your call. Do let me know how I may assist you in the future.” The same disconnected, disinterested tone, and then dead air.

Hannah wasn’t sure if she’d burned a bridge or built one, but either way, she’d taken her best shot. She put the phone back in her pocket and glanced up. Eve was staring at her. She quickly looked away to wipe down the bar.

“So who was it? The girl, I mean.”

“Lindsay Ramson.”

“Oh shit!” Eve put her hand to her mouth in obvious dismay. “I know her. Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it . . .” Eve mimed fangs in the neck, the universal sign for the most common kind of injury in Morganville. Hannah shook her head.

“I don’t know what it was,” she said. “But damned if I’m not going to find out. You see Oliver, you tell him to call.”

She counted out dollars, and Eve didn’t argue; they’d had that battle before over paying for things, and as police chief, Hannah didn’t like to be beholden to people like Oliver, even for so much as a free cup of coffee.

She threw in a tip for Eve, which the girl tucked into her shirt with a nod.

“Be safe,” Eve said.

Hannah let a snort express her scorn for that thought, and left for the hospital.

? ? ?

Lindsay Ramson wasn’t dead, which was a nice surprise. Hannah had gotten so used to assuming the worst that she’d thought the poor girl would kick off. For a moment, as the doctor spoke, it felt like a heavy gray cloud lifted off her . . . and then settled slowly back down as he continued.

“She’s alive, which is the good news. The bad news is that there are going to be significant issues,” the doctor was saying. “I don’t think there’s much danger of her succumbing to her injuries at this point; she’s proving pretty tough. That makes it all the harder to tell her parents that the injury to her brain is likely catastrophic. She may wake up on her own, or she may never wake up. If she does wake, she’ll almost certainly have severe impairments.”

Hannah swallowed back the metallic, familiar taste of rage. “Such as?”

“The blows to her head could have any of a range of effects, from loss of language skills to motor skills to vision. Seizures would be likely.”

“Or she could recover just fine?”

The doctor—his name was Reed, and he had a good reputation—looked weary. “That’s not very likely, Chief Moses. I wish I could tell you that I thought a miracle would happen, but it’s not often I see someone that severely injured still holding on. We might have already used up our backlog of miracles. I’m pretty sure that cognitive impairment is going to be part of the landscape.” He hesitated for a few seconds. “I know it’s not professional to ask, but . . . any suspects?”

“Not any of the usual suspects, anyway. Crime scene was bloody.”

“It’s not their usual method,” he agreed. “So you’re looking at . . . the human population?”

“For now,” Hannah said, “I’m looking at everybody.”

She dropped by Lindsay’s bedside. Her parents were there, mother and father, with a couple of siblings hanging back and looking shattered and uncomfortable. Mom and Dad were each holding one of the girl’s still, pale hands. The only sound was the steady, slow pulse of the machines. Her head was completely wrapped from the eyes up, but other than that, she looked unmarked. Pretty, in a fragile way that reminded Hannah of Claire Danvers from the Glass House.

One of her brothers broke down suddenly in racking sobs and turned away. Hannah respected the family’s grief, but when the brother who’d wept left the room, she followed him to the chapel down the hall.

“Matt?” She’d already done her homework on Lindsay’s family. She already knew all their names. “I’m very sorry about your sister.”

“Thanks.” His voice sounded rough and uneven, but he took some deep breaths and got it under control. “Why? Lindsay was never any trouble to anybody.”

“That’s what I have to find out. Are you sure there’s nobody Lindsay had problems with? Boyfriends? Maybe someone she broke up with?”

“She was a shy kid,” Matt said. He was a big guy—Morganville right tackle in high school, she remembered, back in the day. In his thirties now, with the muscle softening to bulk. He worked at the father’s used-car place as a salesman. Married, two kids of his own. As the oldest son, he probably still felt responsible for Lindsay even though she was twenty-one and her own person in every legal way. “I know she’s had boyfriends, but it’s not like she talks a lot about them to us. I guess the most recent one was a kid called Trip. I think his name’s James Triplett, Jr. I’d probably want to go by Trip, too, if I was saddled with that.”

“Trip,” Hannah said, and nodded. “I’ll check into him. Were they still together?”