Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(21)
She switched off the lights, but the Coke machine filled the room with a baleful red glow. She ignored it, lay down on the cot with the pillow still in her arms, and was asleep before she could even think of covering herself with the sheet.
Four hours later her eyelids popped open and she was awake. Her body creaked and moaned when she sat up, protesting that it needed more sleep, but her brain knew better. She glanced down at her watch and saw it was just after noon. Half the day gone and she had accomplished nothing. Well, she’d been upgraded to an honorary Fed, but that didn’t feel real yet, not at all. She turned in her pillow and her neatly folded sheet and headed back to her car. There were a lot of people she needed to notify of her new employment status—including the Commissioner of State Police and, more important, Clara. As she drove toward Harrisburg, fighting with herself to stop yawning so much, she reached for her cell phone, only to find that its battery had died sometime during the night. Worrying that she might have missed some important call, she plugged it into her car charger. Instantly the phone chimed at her. She had new messages—a text message and at least one new voice mail message. Exactly as she’d feared.
Caxton looked at the text message first—and dropped the phone. When she picked it up again and stared at the words on the screen, she felt her blood run cold.
’Twas a nice service, Laura.
He was brought to tears.
Caxton bit through a hangnail on the side of her thumb. There was no signature on the message. The phone said it came from an unknown number. She knew exactly who had sent it, though, based just on the archaic phrasing. Justinia Malvern. The ancient vampire couldn’t speak, at least not the last time Caxton had seen her. She was too decrepit to even sit up in her coffin. She had been able to communicate only by tapping out cryptic messages on a computer keyboard. It looked like she had learned how to text as well.
It also looked like she had been watching the ceremony over Jameson’s empty grave. No, Caxton thought, that was impossible. The ceremony had taken place during the day, when Malvern would be dead to the world inside her coffin. Which meant that she must have sent a half-?dead to observe it. The whole time she was arguing with Jameson’s kids, some undead freak must have been standing close by, keeping an eye on her.
She wondered how long Jameson and Malvern had been watching her. The idea made her skin crawl. If only to clear her head, she decided to listen to her voice mail. She held down the one key until it automatically dialed her voice mail, then put it on speaker mode. “You have six new messages,” the phone told her. “First new message.”
“Trooper, it’s Glauer. Just checking in. I took Raleigh home, just like you said. Except it’s not exactly what I would call a typical residence. Some kind of weird hospital or halfway house or something. A big old mansion, red brick with ivy all over the front. Really big lawn, and the whole place is surrounded by a ten-?foot wall. She said I couldn’t go inside, that it’s for women only. I figured that was okay, so I just dropped her at the gate and confirmed your appointment to come talk to her. I’m headed back to HQ
now. I’m probably going to go home in an hour or two, but I’m on my cell if you need me.”
“Next new message,” the phone said.
“Hey, cutie! It’s me, the much-?neglected but still wonderful Clara. I’m at work right now and I can’t really talk. The sheriff and his boys have knocked over another drug lab. No shots fired, thank God, everybody went quietly. I’m taking pictures of all these bags of heroin and stacks of money. I’ll bring you home something nice. Just kidding! Actually I’m calling because I miss you, like, a lot, and I’m going to be done here by one or two and I thought we could have lunch. That way at least I’ll know you’re eating. I miss you. Did I mention that? I really do. Call me.”
“Next new message.”
“Trooper, this is Glauer. I just got into work and I heard—well, I heard what happened last night. It’s all anyone wants to talk about here at HQ. I was glad to hear you’re alright, and sorry to hear about Angus Arkeley. This is—I guess this is what we’ve been bracing ourselves for the last two months. It’s funny, I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. Between you and me I’m kind of relieved. Listen, I’m sitting here with no direct orders, so unless you need me for something I’m going to get to work. Kenneth Rexroth has been talking to the local police in Mechanicsburg. They left me a message last night saying he had all but confessed to the two homicides—they said he was gloating about those kills. I want to get out there and talk to him myself. I know what you said, that he’s just a wannabe and that he’s not worth our time. But, Trooper, this is a real bad guy. You did a real good thing putting him away. I’ll talk to you later—I’m on my cell phone if you need me.”
“Next new message.”
“It’s Clara. Again. Call me. Please, call me as soon as you can. I love you.”
“Next new message.”
“Trooper, it’s Glauer again. Things have gone from weird to worse. I arrived in Mechanicsburg about an hour ago. I met with the cops there and asked to talk to Rexroth. They said he was sleeping—he sleeps all day, because he’s supposed to be a vampire. They asked me if I wanted them to wake him up, but I decided I’d get more information out of him if I waited. I thought maybe I’d made the trip for nothing, but the locals had some information for me themselves. It turns out that Kenneth Rexroth is an alias, that the kid’s name is actually Dylan Carboy. He’s nineteen years old and lives with his parents up in Northumberland County, in Mount Carmel. Lives—lived, I guess. The Mount Carmel cops sent a car out there to try to contact the Carboy family and got no response at the door. They popped the lock and went inside and found three dead bodies, all in states of advanced decomposition. The victims were, let’s see, Mark Carboy, father, forty-?three years old, Ellen Carboy, mother, thirty-?nine, and Jenny Carboy, sister, seventeen. The two parents were killed with shotgun blasts, the same gauge as the shotgun you took off Dylan at the storage facility. The sister was strangled in her bed, and had…Jesus. She had bite marks on her neck. Made by human teeth, not vampire. I don’t think he woke her up first. I really don’t think he did. I don’t want to think he did. They recovered a bunch of stuff from Dylan’s room. Notebooks full of handwritten journal entries and newspaper clippings. They sent them on to Mechanicsburg, where I got to take a look at them. I asked if I could borrow the notebooks to show you and the locals said that would be fine, as long as I left a receipt in case they need them for the trial. The kid had plenty to live for, Trooper. He had one prior, for possession of marijuana, but the judge threw it out as long as he promised to go back to school. He was in community college studying to be a chef. You need to see these notebooks, Trooper. I think you should see them. They have your name all over them. I’m going back to Harrisburg now. I have my cell phone if you need me.”