At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(68)

The radio clipped to her belt sputtered.

“We’re right outside the gate,” Officer Smith said. “We’ll stand by until you say otherwise.”

Without probable cause, the officers weren’t—strictly speaking—there as backup. They couldn’t even walk onto Helskin’s property. But this was their beat, and if a judge ever asked, they happened to be in the neighborhood.

“Still no dogs?” Addie asked.

“We can’t see everything, but it’s quiet as a grave back here.”

“All right. We’re approaching the front door.”

“Roger that.”

One of the CACC men led the way up the path to the front door. He walked with the stun gun in his left hand, a long stick with a crossbar in his right, his head swiveling from one side of the yard to the other and back. Spits of rain struck his shoulders and darkened his tan raincoat. Addie found herself braced for the dogs to come leaping out of the gloom under the porch to take them down. She kept her eyes on the chains, looking for the slightest shake.

At the front porch, the dog control agents stepped aside. Addie pressed the doorbell. A hollow buzzing came from inside the house.

The porch creaked beneath their feet. A sudden flow of water overran the choked gutter and splashed into the yard. The CACC agent on Addie’s left twitched.

She rang again, then rapped the door three times with the side of her fist. “Police. Open up. We need to talk.”

From somewhere deep in the bowels of the house came a low, repetitive booming.

“Dogs barking,” said one of the handlers. “Wonder what took ’em so long to start up?”

Patrick twitched back his trench coat, clearing his gun.

The front door flew open with a fingernails-on-chalkboard screech, and a man who looked to be in his late teens stared at them through the screen door.

Tristan Walters. One of the men who’d been in the front yard the night before. She recognized him from his DMV photo.

The teen’s hair was shaved close on the sides and long and tousled on the top—a classic undercut—the top hair pulled back into a messy bun. A short beard covered his cheeks and chin. He wore gray sweatpants but was shirtless and sported a series of intricate tattoos on his chest and arms—runes and a stylized hammer and the symbol Addie recognized as a Valknut.

“Good morning, Mr. Walters,” she said.

The teen’s bloodshot eyes regarded them blearily, the stink of last night’s alcohol oozing from his pores. He swayed and then grinned. Still drunk. Or high. Likely both.

“Po-lice,” Walters said.

She held up her badge. “I’m Detective Bisset with Chicago PD. This is Detective McBrady. We’d like to have a few words with Hank Helskin.”

The teen slung an arm across his thin chest and scratched along his ribs, his fingernails leaving white trails on his tanned skin. “I don’t think Hank’s around. His truck’s gone. You wanna talk to Ruley?”

Ryan Ruley, the man who owned the truck parked in the driveway. She pulled up a mental image of a heavily tattooed twenty-six-year-old white male from the suburb of Buffalo Grove.

“We’d love to talk to Mr. Ruley,” she said.

“Um, okay.” Another yawn. More scratching. The kid was off in Oz somewhere. “You wanna come in?”

Police and vampires.

All they needed was an invitation.

“Thank you,” Addie said as the kid pushed open the screen.





CHAPTER 21


Freshly showered and changed after taking Ginny out that morning, Evan pushed his way through the magnificently carved door of Levair’s Used and Rare Books.

He was greeted by a two-story space with cream-colored walls, dark wood trim and railings, and glassed-in twelve-foot-high bookshelves. The polished wood floors gleamed in wide stripes between thick oriental rugs, and display cases held tastefully arranged rare volumes and small archaeological relics. Lighting was discreet and recessed, and no windows opened into the room; the sun’s rays were anathema to preserving ancient or even merely old texts.

This area of the shop was reserved for rare and expensive things. It was beautiful and enticing, but Evan actually preferred the basement, with its crowded wood-and-metal shelves of books that had been much loved—old tomes heavy with the knowledge and memory they held in their dog-eared pages.

The shop smelled of paper and history. And this morning, a hint of rain, tracked in on Evan’s shoes.

It also, Evan was happy to note, smelled of Assam black tea and warm scones. Raspberry, if he wasn’t mistaken. He found himself immediately soothed. And hungry, despite having had a decent breakfast. Chasing killers—even through their writings—required sustenance.

The sweeter the better.

He closed the door behind him, locking it as Simon had requested when he called to say he was five minutes away. Official business hours weren’t until ten. He removed his Mackintosh, hung it on the coat tree just inside the door, and headed toward a library table in the center of the room.

“Simon?” he called, his voice swallowed by the bound equivalent of miles of paper.

“Coming!”

A door in the back opened, and a sixtysomething man the same faded brown color as much of his merchandise emerged carrying a tray with tea and pastries. Not tall, gently rotund, and owning a long face bracketed by drooping earlobes, Simon Levair resembled nothing so much as a contented basset hound.