Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(36)

“—are next on the list,” Fetlock finished. “Jesus.” He pressed his fingers against his temples and then ran them down his cheeks. “There are two of them, right? Raleigh, and Sam?”

“Simon,” Caxton corrected. “He’s twenty, she’s nineteen. Way too young to die. I don’t know which of them he’ll approach first, but I already have an appointment to talk to Raleigh tomorrow. She lives outside of Allentown. That’s up in coal country, near where I grew up, actually. It’s an area I know well, so it’s a good place to make a stand. If I can be there when Jameson arrives, I can set up an ambush and maybe that’s all it takes. As for Simon, I don’t know. I tried to talk to him recently, but he was adversarial to say the least. He won’t want to cooperate. He’s farther away, too. He’s a student up at Syracuse.”

“You’re not limited by state jurisdiction, now that you’re a Fed,” Fetlock said. “I can send some deputies up there to scoop him up. Put him in protective custody. The Marshals Service has all kinds of safe houses we can use. We administer the Witness Protection Program—we can definitely put the kid up for a couple of days.”

“But not against his will. Like I said, he’s not going to cooperate. Not happily.”


“No. But if we can convince him his life is really in danger, why would he refuse? How sure are you about this, about him going after his kids?”

“Ninety percent. On the phone he told me to stay away from his family. I think that’s a pretty clear indication of—”

“Excuse me?” Fetlock took a step toward her and leaned in close, as if he wanted to hear her better.

“Did you just say you spoke with Jameson Arkeley on the phone?”

There was no point in denying it. “Yeah. Earlier, he procured a cell phone from the lead unit in the assault here. I called that number hoping to speak with the trooper in charge, but that man was already dead. Jameson answered in his place, and tried to warn me off. It’ll all go in my report, I swear.”

Fetlock straightened up and scratched under his nose. “That’s—that’s interesting.”

She bit her lip. “I’ve…heard from Malvern, too. Via text message.”

Fetlock went a little pale.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to get you a new phone. We’ll just switch out the SIM card, so you can keep the same number. But the phone I give you will let you record incoming calls. It’ll also allow me to listen in. If he calls you again, we’ll at least have a copy of anything he says.”

Caxton frowned. “I’m not sure I’m all that comfortable with you listening to my calls. That’s kind of intrusive, don’t you think?”

“Part of the job. Besides, it’s not like you’re using your phone for personal calls. It’s just a work phone, right? The government pays for those minutes, so they belong to the taxpayers, not you.”

Caxton forced herself to smile. “Alright, Deputy Marshal.”

“Looks like you have your work cut out for you. Tomorrow you can start securing the kids. What about tonight, though? Is Arkeley going to strike again, somewhere else?”

Caxton shrugged. She thought about what Vesta Polder had said—about Jameson sulking in his lair. There was a better reason to believe he was done for the night, however. “Probably not. He’s fed enough to keep him full for a while, and he hasn’t reached the point yet where he’s killing for fun. Thank God.”

Fetlock nodded in agreement. “I want to know everything that happened here tonight. But I can see you’re exhausted. Get out of here and get some sleep. You can write up everything in your incident report and get it to me tomorrow.” With that he took his leave, taking Vesta Polder with him. The chief of the Bellefonte Police Department showed up shortly thereafter. She shook his hand and gave him a very quick idea of what had happened. She didn’t want to go into the gory details—his own people could tell him about those. Having officially turned the scene over to him, she found herself more than ready to leave.

She found Glauer still going from door to door, telling Astarte’s neighbors there was nothing to worry about. She called him back down to the street and told him it was time to go home. “I’ll drive you back to HQ. We should both be in bed before midnight—there’s going to be a lot to do tomorrow.”

He didn’t say a word. She led him back to her car, but he just stood there, staring up at Astarte’s house. A number of lights had been turned on inside and the front door stood wide open. Caxton could see local cops inside bent over the bodies of the three half-?deads in the foyer. Flashes of light told her they’d brought a photographer to document the scene, which made her think of Clara. Clara, who would be waiting for her at home. Maybe there would even be hot food there for her.

“Come on, Glauer, I’m tired,” she said.

The big cop turned and looked at her with haunted eyes. He made no move to get into the car. She knew what was under his skin. “It was us or them,” she said.

“They were police officers.”

“They were half-?deads,” she said. “They weren’t themselves anymore.”

“They were police officers before they were half-?deads,” he replied. “You sent them here. You sent them here knowing he was going to kill them.”