Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(96)
“Let’s get one thing crystal clear, Chief Moses,” Oliver snapped. “You don’t summon me for information. I summon you. That is the natural order of things.”
She counted to three, just to make sure she didn’t sound ruffled. “I need to understand why the vampires avoided that crime scene. You’re the one who can tell me.”
“Can I?” She waited him out. It was a long wait, one that crawled up and down her nerves, but she was finally rewarded with an irritated sigh. “Very well. She had an unusual scent to her blood. Off-putting.”
“Does she make regular blood bank donations?” Because Morganville residents were required to, and as her Protector, Oliver would have first choice of those donations.
“She’s running behind,” he said. “Two months behind, in fact; she was just added to the list for a visit from our Bloodmobile. Prior to that, her blood wasn’t unusual in any way.”
“What can cause that kind of change?”
“Illness. Some types of drugs, perhaps.” He paused for a second. “It occurs to me that she’s not the only one falling behind in the past few months . . . more than normal, I think. Now, I trust that’s enough information for you to pursue your investigation. Call me again, and I won’t be as welcoming.”
He ended the call without another word. She was fine with that, because her mind was busy working. Morganville always had some percentage of people who got behind on blood donations at the blood bank; usually the collectors let it slide at least three months before they started active pursuit, which involved driving the Bloodmobile to the deadbeat’s door. She hadn’t paid much attention to that; people knew how the system worked, and it ran without much police intervention.
But maybe it was worth a trip to the blood bank just to see what was going on.
? ? ?
The receptionist at the blood bank was Leanna Bradbury; the Bradburys were original town residents, though the family had thinned out through the years, and Leanna was the last of them. Given her charming personality, it wasn’t too likely there’d be any more after her.
As Hannah pushed her way through the front door, the electronic bell dinged, and Leanna looked up. She didn’t bother putting down her romance novel, and from the expression that crossed her face, she wasn’t any too pleased to have a visit from the police. “Help you?” she asked, and then a shade too late to be polite, “Chief?”
“I’m looking for information about Lindsay Ramson’s donation record,” Hannah said.
“Are you?” Leanna’s plucked eyebrows rose up slowly. “Well, I don’t know. I think I have to run that by Director Rose before I can let you see any actual records. There are federal regulations about—”
“Leanna, this is Morganville, not Dallas, and you’ve never so much as set eyes on anybody from the federal government, and you never will. Don’t give me bullshit.”
“I still have to call . . .” Hannah gave her a steady glare, and the words trailed off into mutinous silence. Leanna’s broad jaw set stubbornly. “Fine,” she said at last. “Come with me.”
She pushed away from the desk. There wasn’t anyone in the shabby waiting room; the old magazines fluttered in the cold, dry breeze from the air-conditioning, but that was the only movement in the room except for the broad sway of Leanna’s skirt backside as she led Hannah down the hallway, past the slightly murky tank with its lazily swimming fish. The place always smelled sharply antiseptic, but there was some undercurrent of smell to it, too—something Hannah had never been able to pinpoint, and was a little glad she couldn’t. She made her donations here, but she never lingered. No one did. There were treatment rooms on either side of the hallway, each with empty donation stations. It had the oddly unsettling look of a movie set, waiting for actors.
At the end of the hall was a closed door with a sign that read NO ADMITTANCE. Before they reached it, Leanna turned left, to another door. OFFICE STAFF ONLY. Inside, a workstation with a fairly new computer and printer, a copy machine, and ranks of filing cabinets. Leanna made straight for the computer, logged in, clicked keys, and began printing pages.
Hannah looked at the labels on the cabinets. On one side of the room, the blue cabinets were marked DONORS. The other side, the red side, had only a single file cabinet marked CONSUMERS.
No mystery about that. The only odd thing was the vampires had allowed those files to be kept. They didn’t usually allow that kind of thing from the human population; too much info on individual bloodsuckers made them feel vulnerable. Not that their particular preferences in drinking plasma would make much difference.
“Here we go,” Leanna said with false cheer, and gathered up the sheets as the last of them hissed out of the printer. She straightened them with the religious concentration of an obsessive, and then stapled them with a single, sharp rap of her hand on the stapler. She held them out, and Hannah took them. “She’s not the only one in that family who hasn’t kept up with donations. Her brother—oh, wait. He’s got a medical waiver. Some kind of blood disorder.”
“Did she have one?”
“It’s not in the file. Her results looked like she was fine, up until this last one. Then she fell behind.”
“Thanks.” Hannah folded the pages and put them in her pocket.