Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(74)

She stepped back, her own pulse thundering in her ears. She sagged into a chair and stared at the corpse. “How?” she asked. “How did this happen?”

Glauer only shook his head. He wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything, just staring into space. It was one of the paramedics who answered.

“It would take an autopsy and a tox screen to say for sure. But this is what I’m guessing.” He picked up the girl’s arm and turned it outward to show Caxton. She saw a puckered little wound on the inside of Raleigh’s elbow. There were other marks there, long snaky furrows under her skin. Much older, mostly healed.

Caxton looked around the room, then dropped to her knees and looked under the bed. An empty syringe had fallen down there, and she thought she saw grains of brown powder. Caxton had been trained to recognize heroin when she saw it.

“Most likely she took a massive dose last night before going to bed,” the paramedic said. “She probably passed out and stopped breathing shortly thereafter. If it’s any consolation, she didn’t feel any pain. In fact, she probably felt pretty good before she lost consciousness.”

“That’s no consolation at all,” Caxton said. “Now get out.”

“We can take her away for you, but we’ll need you both to move back so we can get a gurney in here. You’ll have to sign a receipt for the body and we’ll need to talk to the next of kin.”

“I told you to get out. You’re done here,” Caxton repeated.

“Hold on, I know this is a lot to take in right now, but there are rules about this sort of thing. There are laws—”

“You may not have noticed,” she said, “but I’m a cop. I’m the law here, and what I say goes. And what I say is you and your partner need to get the hell out of here.”

The paramedic frowned, but he did what he was told. That left her alone in the room with Glauer and the body.

“I don’t know how this happened,” Glauer said. Half of his mustache was in his mouth and he was sucking on it. “Special Deputy, I promise, I don’t—”

“You gave her the grand tour. You showed her the PCO room. And the computer crimes area. That’s what you said. You showed her the evidence room.”

“Oh, no,” Glauer moaned.

“You knew she was a heroin addict,” Caxton continued. “You should have looked out for drug-?seeking behavior.”

“She was in recovery! You saw her, she didn’t look like a junkie at all!”

Caxton was ready to fire him on the spot. “We took her out of a stable environment. She was already under incredible stress—fear for her life, familial grief. Then we put her in a place where drugs were available. How many risk factors did she need before she broke down? She saw all the drugs in the evidence room. All the drugs we’ve confiscated over who knows how long. She must have done something to distract you, if only for a second.”

“Yeah,” Glauer admitted. “She kissed me.”

“Oh, f*ck no,” Caxton said. She wanted to shoot something. Instead she picked up the remote control for the TV and stabbed the power button.

“It was—it was very sweet, I thought. I was showing her how we log in each piece of evidence. I was boring her, I thought. Then I turned around and she planted one right on me. Stood up on her tiptoes, threw her arms around my neck. The whole thing. I said—I don’t know what I said. I was so surprised I might have said anything. I probably said I was too old for her and she told me the kiss was just a thank-?you. For taking care of her.”

Caxton knew Glauer well enough to understand how he must have reacted to that. The big cop lived for rescuing civilians from danger. It was why he’d become a cop in the first place. Had Raleigh seen through him that easily? Drug abusers could be devilishly cunning when it came to getting their next fix.

“I turned around and walked out of the room, unable to say anything at that point. I took my eyes off of her for maybe a couple seconds, that’s all.”

“Plenty of time.”

“Sure. She could have palmed her works and a bag of heroin and I wouldn’t have noticed.” Glauer stared down at his feet. “This is terrible.”

“Yep,” Caxton said. She was seeing stars, she was so angry. She thought about firing Glauer. When she wrote up her report on this incident, he would at the very least go before an administrative hearing. Even if she spoke up on his behalf—and she wasn’t sure she would—he would be suspended without pay for a long time. He might get fired without her lifting a finger. “I asked you to watch over her. I saved her from her father and all I wanted you to do was keep her alive.”

“Hey,” Glauer said. “There’s no need to get personal about this.”

“No?”

“No! This was a terrible accident, but—”

Caxton’s eyes went wide. “Are you so sure? Are you sure it was an accident? What if it was suicide?”

“No,” Glauer said, denying the possibility.

Caxton couldn’t afford to do the same. You had to commit suicide to become a vampire. It was one of the rules—true accidents didn’t count. “Her father could have given her his curse.”

“No,” Glauer said again.

“He could have. Tonight, in just a couple of hours, she could open her eyes, and they could be red. She could open her mouth, and it could be full of those teeth. Look at her. She’s already lost all her color.”