Stephen Leather - Once bitten

"Those are the cases from this afternoon," he said. "There were another dozen or so last night. I didn't get home until dawn, and then De'Ath called me just before noon and hauled me back in."

"Good old Black De'Ath," I said. "He thinks that because he works twenty hours a day, everybody else should."

"Yeah, well at least you're here now," said Rivron. "There's a wolfman down in Room C that you'd love to get your teeth into. Or vice versa."

I looked at my watch. "Hell, I can't. I've got a meeting." Rivron looked as if he was going to throw his computer at me so I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender. "I won't be long, I swear to God I won't be long. I've got a see a guy from UCLA, that's all."

"About a case?" he asked.

"About a case," I said emphatically. "I'll be back in two hours, and then you can clear off home."

He didn't appear any happier but there was nothing he could do because, when it came down to it, I was his boss. Not that I'd ever pull rank, but with Rivron I knew I wouldn't have to. I patted him on the shoulder on the way out.

The bar in which I'd arranged to meet Rick Muir was a fake Olde English pub, lots of plastic beams, a dartboard, warm beer and chicken in a basket. It was run by a couple of homosexual expatriates whose camp act seemed to be every bit as fake as the decor.

Rick was an expatriate, too, but his libido was heavily on the side of heterosexuality which I always reckoned was his main reason for moving to the West Coast. He spent more time prowling the beaches for babes than he did in his lab, but he put out enough papers to justify his grants and was climbing pretty quickly through the academic hierarchy. He had the look of a Californian beach bum, blonde hair that he tied back in a ponytail while in the lab, clear blue eyes, broad shoulders and a film star tan. He was sitting at a table with a pint of something brown from the North of England in a tall glass in front of him.

"Jamie, how goes it?" he asked, getting to his feet and shaking my hand.

A waitress hovered at my shoulder hoping to catch Rick's eye. He gave her one of his come-tobed smiles and I practically heard her whimper as he ordered a beer for me. Oh yes, did I mention it, he's a good ten years younger than I am. About Terry's age, I guess.

"It's going well," I said as we both watched the waitress strut to the bar.

"Nice," he said.

"Very," I said.

We chatted for a while about the weather, about the relative merits of Californian and English women, about my divorce and about his sex life, and then I finally got around to what I wanted Rick Muir, PhD, to do for me. I handed him the envelope. "Can you run that through your carbondating equipment?" I asked.

"Sure," he said. "What is it?"

"Hair," I said.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Human hair?"

"Yup."

He pulled a face. "How old do you think it is?" he asked. "I mean, is it fosilised or something?

You know as well as I do that carbon-dating is no good for recent samples. Even for something five hundred years old it's only really accurate to plus or minus a century. And even to get that degree of accuracy you've got to be shit hot with the technology."

"Which you are," I said, and ordered us two more beers from the waitress who looked only at Rick while I spoke to her.

"Which I am," he agreed, smiling at the girl and giving her a boyish wink. "What I'm saying, Jamie, is that there's no point in giving me a lock of a girl's hair and asking me to find out how old she is. That's not how it works. I can tell you if something is ten thousand years old, or five thousand, but I can't tell you whether human hair is five weeks or five years old."

"But you would know if it was recent or not?"

"Well, yes," he said hesitantly, "but you could do pretty much the same by looking at it through a microscope. Or stroking it. Hair dries out pretty quickly once it's been cut. An easier way would be to do a chemical analysis, probably."

"What do you mean?"

"Check it for pollutants and the like. A lot of the shit in the air and in the water wasn't around fifty years ago so their presence in animal or plant tissue can give a pretty good indication of its age. That can be a darn site more accurate than carbon-dating."

I nodded and called for the check. "Just humour me, OK. Run it through your equipment, and if it doesn't work I'll try something else."

"And you won't tell me what it's all about?"

The check arrived and I paid. The waitress thanked Rick. "It's crazy," I said. "Just humour me.

If you find something, I'll tell you everything. And believe me, there'll be one hell of a paper in it for you." That seemed to satisfy him and he put the envelope into his blazer pocket. I left him talking to the waitress and, by the look of it, getting her phone number.

Rivron was in one of the interview rooms when I got back to the precinct so I left a message for him on his desk saying that he should call it a night and I phoned down to the desk sergeant to see what else there was to do. I was told there was arsonist in room E who'd killed a family of four by throwing a home-made Molotov cocktail through a bedroom window. He was claiming that they were Satanists who'd been casting spells on him. I ran him through the program and it showed that he was perfectly sane so I told the investigating officers and they went back for another chat with him. I was in the office typing out a report when De'Ath rolled in like a tank in top gear.

"My man," he said, a big smile on his face. "Are you winning the battle against the dark forces which are plaguing our city?"

"Who wants to know?" I said. I didn't trust him when he was in such a good mood. It usually meant he had bad news for me.

"Only I, your loyal ally in the everlasting struggle between good and evil." His grin widened and he sat on the edge of Rivron's desk, his legs crossed at the ankles.

"OK, I give in, Samuel. What's happened? Has my car been towed away? Or burst into flames? Or have immigration finally decided that I've overstayed my welcome?"

He removed a file from under his arm and waved it triumphantly in the air.

"Terry Ferriman," he said. "The vampire."

"Alleged vampire," I said.

"She isn't," he said.

"Isn't a vampire? Or isn't Terry Ferriman?"

"The latter, my old friend. Whatever she may be, she ain't Ferriman, Terry. Not unless she's one of the Undead. Or Living Dead. Or whatever it is you call them."

"What the hell are you talking about, Samuel?"

"Alan and Claire Ferriman died when she was eleven years old. In Utah. Car accident."

"I know that Samuel. She told me, remember. She said she was an orphan."

He grinned. "Yeah, but what she didn't tell you, my man, was that Terry Ferriman died in the same car crash!"

"Are you sure?"

"Man, what do you take me for? The birth certificate she used to get a passport and driving license belonged to the original Terry Ferriman. The kid was born in Los Angeles, but because she died out-of-state there was no cross-referencing done. Once our lady, whoever she is, got the birth certificate the rest was easy. All the credit cards are genuine, and so is the social security number, but it's all based on a lie. There's a warrant out for her arrest right now. You will call if you see her, won't you?" His eyes narrowed, though he had the same easy smile on his face. Like the cat that had got the cream.

"Yeah, Samuel. I'll call you."

"Be sure you do," he said.

"Any more evidence on the murder thing? Anything that'll tie her in to it?"

"Nothing. Yet. But that girl is sure as shit up to something." He waved the file under my nose.

"You don't go to all this trouble unless you've got something to hide. We're trawling through as many computer data bases as we can looking for people with her characteristics. And we're waiting for a run down on her fingerprints."