Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(99)

“That new Baptist minister was here, too. And some of her friends.”

That seemed like a good opening, so Hannah asked, “Did the rest of your family go home?”

“My husband’s gone to get us some dinner, but my sons had to go. They’ll be back tomorrow.”

Hannah thanked her and, for a moment, rested her hand lightly on Lindsay’s. She bowed her head. It was partly prayer, and partly promise. I’m going to see it right.

Then she left and drove to Matt Ramson’s house.

It was dark, so the place was shut up tight, in true Morganville fashion; the street outside was deserted, but most of the houses had brilliant lights burning inside and out. False security, but that was better than none, Hannah supposed. The house was a sprawling seventies-style ranch thing, one floor, and a couple of colorful kid-sized bikes leaning up against the porch railing. She knocked on the thick wood door, and it opened up to show her a tired-looking young woman with a toddler clinging to her leg.

“Can I help you?”

“Chief Hannah Moses. I’m here to see Matt.”

“Matt?” His wife looked suspicious, and afraid, and took a long step back. “He’s not here.”

Didn’t have to be any kind of a human lie detector to hear the stress in that lie. “I’m going to step inside,” Hannah said. “Is that all right?”

“I . . .” The poor woman didn’t know what the right response should be. Vampires couldn’t cross thresholds uninvited, and Morganville residents always took it as a sign of respect to enter to prove humanity—it was almost an instinct. And that instinct smashed into her need to cover for her husband, and paralyzed her long enough for Hannah to step across the doorway and ease the door shut behind her. “I don’t think you should be here. Matt’s not here!”

“Mama?” The little girl tugged at her mother’s pants. “Daddy’s in the dark place.”

Mrs. Ramson froze, eyes going wide, and then looked directly at a plain white door off the hallway.

The dark place. That sounded horror-movie creepy, but Hannah knew what the little girl meant.

The basement.

She walked straight for the door, ignoring Mrs. Ramson’s frantic lies, and pulled it open. It wasn’t dark. All the fluorescent lights were on downstairs, and she went down fast and quietly, one hand on her sidearm.

Best to be ready.

Matt Ramson was destroying evidence. Too bad, but on the positive side, there was too much for him to get rid of quickly—beakers of chemicals, an entire Breaking Bad set covering most of the basement’s square footage. He was wearing a protective breathing mask as he poured chemicals into a hazardous materials barrel.

“Matt,” Hannah said.

He whirled, saw her standing on the stairs, and she saw it in his eyes. Not just horror. Not just misery.

Guilt.

There were a lot of things he might have done, in that moment. He might have run, or charged her, or gone for a weapon.

Instead, he just put the beaker down, sealed the drum, and removed the breathing mask as he sank down on a plastic chair in front of a table. Defeated.

“I was trying to do good,” he said. It might have been to Hannah, or maybe to himself, or maybe he was talking to his sister half the town away. “The first stuff didn’t work. Should have worked, but people got sick. I had to test it. I had to.”

“So you gave it to your little sister?”

“I told her it would help keep the vampires away. She was happy to do it.”

“At first.”

He nodded, turning the mask in his hands. “She started feeling sick, and wanted to stop. I told her it was natural, just the body starting to adjust, but she . . . she wanted out. When I asked her to keep going, she said she was . . . she was going to tell Oliver. Our Protector.” The scorn he put into the word was hot enough to burn. “You know what he’d do.”

“Stop you.”

“Kill me. Make me disappear. I couldn’t let that happen. I have kids!” He looked up at her then, eyes shimmering with tears. “I just . . . I wanted to protect her. I’ve got a blood disorder, you know. And a donation waiver. They don’t want what I have, and if I can give it to other people . . . It’s not supposed to make her sick. Just . . . not so tasty.”

“Why’d you hit her?”

“She was walking away and calling Oliver. I hit her to stop her, that’s all. Just to stop her from calling him. I didn’t mean to . . .” He put his head in his hands and sobbed. “I thought she was dead. I thought she was dead.”

Hannah shook her head, walked over to him, and—as kindly as possible—got him up and handcuffed. She was just snapping the ratchet on his left wrist when she heard a slight creak on the stairs, and looked up to see Oliver standing there, watching her.

He wasn’t trying to look like anything but what he was now—a dangerous predator. There was a shine in his eyes that wasn’t quite full-on vampire, but was definitely not human.

“You may go,” he said to Hannah, and glided down the rest of the steps. “This is mine to do.”

“Hell if I will,” she said, and tightened her grip on Matt’s arm. He was still sobbing messily. “This has nothing to do with you, Oliver. Or the vampires. It’s a human crime, and that makes it totally my jurisdiction.”