Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(26)
By the time they got back to the HQ building it was already four o’clock. The sun was starting to set and pink clouds streaked the sky. Stepping out of her car, Caxton studied the horizon as if there were some clue there. Night was falling, which meant Jameson Arkeley would be active again. He had killed at least twice so far. Would he kill again tonight? she wondered.
All vampires started as people with individual personalities, with moral codes all their own. Eventually they ended up all the same. How long had Jameson lasted before he killed his first victim? Probably longer than most. He had fought it, she was sure, with every fiber of his being. He must have spent night after night curled around himself in his lair, desperate to go outside, to hunt, but knowing what it would make him.
Then again—maybe he had given in early. Maybe he had known it was inevitable, and decided it wasn’t worth torturing himself just so a few humans could live another day. Vampires saw death—human death—through a very different lens than she did. For vampires, human beings were simply prey. Game animals to be culled as needed. Angus had been given the option of becoming one of the predators. When he refused that gift, Jameson must have seen death as the next best thing for his brother. She shivered uncontrollably.
“You okay, Caxton?” Glauer asked.
She blinked her eyes and looked away from the sunset. Phosphor afterimages glared behind her eyelids.
“I’m fine. Let’s get inside.”
Down in the basement she booted up her computer and started composing her report of the previous night’s events. When she’d worked with Arkeley, when they took down Malvern’s brood, and later when she’d defended Gettysburg during the massacre, she had never worried so much about paperwork. Maybe Jameson had filed reports every night, but she’d been mostly concerned with staying alive. Now that she was head of the SSU she wasn’t able to avoid it anymore. The Commissioner of State Police demanded constant updates on her investigation and forms filled out every time she discharged her weapon. Every time she discovered a body she had to fill out a Non-?Traffic Death Investigation Report, a much more complicated form than the traffic fatality reports she’d filled out as a highway patrol officer. It took her hours every day to type up all the necessary official files, and hours more to create files for the SSU database. She’d actually taken a touch-?typing course at the academy in Hershey just to speed things up, but still much of her day was filled up with bureaucratic nonsense. At five o’clock, when people with normal jobs finished their days (or so she believed, having never held a normal job herself), she sat back in her chair and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She was just getting started.
When Fetlock came up behind her and cleared his throat she jumped and banged her knees against the underside of her desk.
“Deputy Marshal,” she said, remembering how she was supposed to greet him. “I was just writing up a report.”
He nodded and came to lean against the edge of her desk. “I’ll want a copy, of course. Send it to my email.” He stuck a business card between two rows of keys on her keyboard. “In fact, send me every document you create from now on. Just so the Marshals Service has a record.”
“Yeah, of course,” she said. “So I have Officer Glauer—I think you met him at the SSU
briefing—Officer Glauer is organizing the mopping up at the motel crime scene. He’ll head over there tomorrow and see what we missed in the dark. I haven’t heard yet from your forensics people—”
“They’ve come and gone already, Special Deputy,” Fetlock said. “They’ll have something for you tomorrow.”
Caxton nodded. “In the meantime I have a guard on Angus’ body and—”
“Fine,” he said.
She frowned, not understanding. “You don’t want to hear this?”
“Not particularly. Like we said, it’s your investigation. I didn’t come by to check up on you, if that’s what you think.” He smiled warmly down at her. “I may do things a little differently than other people you’ve worked for. A little more hands-?off. Actually, I just came down to give you this.”
He handed her a manila envelope with her name on it. She opened it, hoping he might have brought her something useful—a description, perhaps, of the man who had stolen all of Jameson’s files from the USMS archives. Instead she found a thick brochure, printed cheaply on newsprint. It was a federal government employee manual, laying out among other things the nature of her employment as an independent contractor and information on civil servant pay grades.
“Oh. Thanks,” she said.
“You need to sign the last page and fax it to me as soon as you get a chance.”
She nodded. Then she started to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. He smiled at her as if he didn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” she said, clutching her lips. “It’s just that…” She shook her head, unable to go on. “Less than twenty-?four hours ago I was fighting for my life. Now I’m supposed to be thinking about pension plans.”
He stood up from the desk and shot the cuffs of his suit. He looked mildly annoyed.
“I am sorry,” she said, getting control of herself. “I’ll make this a priority. Now, was there anything else—” She stopped as her cell phone started ringing. She looked up at him and he shrugged. She took the phone out of her pocket and saw the incoming call was from Astarte Arkeley. This ought to be good, she thought. Maybe the old bat wanted to accuse her of adultery again. She flipped the phone open. “Hello, ma’am.”