Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

George thought she’d recovered rather nicely. He put the binoculars to his eyes. “What’re they having for supper?”

“Men.” She looked around her, deliberately avoiding Ernesto’s house. She reached out and he gave her the binoculars. “Hey . . . there’s a guy over here, in this house, and he’s got binoculars, too! He’s lookin’ right into the kitchen from his second floor. . . .”

“Let me see,” said George. He looked, and then said, “Well, roses and boobs seem to attract an audience.” He grinned and handed the binoculars back to Louise.

“Disgusting,” she said, and didn’t look back at the man in the house again.

The light was fading fast. “What say we head back to Des Moines?”

Louise nodded. “Sure.”

They pulled slowly away from Ernesto’s, and as soon as they had turned the corner, George said, “Not quite hungry yet. You?”

“We just ate,” she said, deep in thought. After a moment, she asked a question.

“I’m supposed to work this alone, right?”

“For now. Low-key,” he said. “You need any assistance, you can call the task force member nearest you, and they’ll help out.”

“What if I need help in a hurry?”

“Make sure you don’t,” he said. “You’re just gathering information. But you need help really fast, call anybody you can. We can clean up the details later, if necessary. Don’t endanger yourself over this. Okay?”

She nodded, and neither of them spoke for at least ten miles.

“I better call my buds,” she said, “and tell them I’ll be late.” She pulled her cell phone from the front pocket of her blue jeans.

George glanced over while she dialed, and noticed how the blue light from the phone made her look quite young.

“Hi, it’s me,” she said. “I’m just headed back in to DM, so it’ll be a while. Yeah. No, I’ll probably catch up at Ho Jo’s.” There was a pause, then, “Oh, yeah. See you then.” She terminated the call.

“How’d you manage to choose me?” she asked.

“You were recommended.”

“Who?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “Need-to-know only. I just got tapped for the briefing part.”

“Oh.”

“Glad I did,” he said. “Nice to know you. Nice to have you on board.”

“Thanks,” she said.

Back in Des Moines, he let her off at the academy parking lot, where she’d left her car.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said.

“Yeah, okay.” As she reached her car, she turned and waved.

Still in the lot, George called Ben. “Done. Where you want to meet?”

George found Ben and Norma at the Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery, just off University Avenue in West Des Moines.

“How’d it go?” asked Ben.

“Not bad,” said George. “Couple of surprises, but not bad overall. I think she’ll do.”

“Tell her anything she didn’t already know?”

“Twice, I think. I’m pretty damned sure she didn’t know we had captured one, and shipped him alive and well to CDC in Atlanta. Had to tell her that, to substantiate what we knew and how we got it. She asked about them being immortal. I told her about the one they blew away in Missouri. I think that surprised her.”

“What about her and the target?” asked Norma. “How’d she handle that?”

“Well,” said George, “about how you’d think. I’m not sure if she had any real idea what was going on with him, with the venom and that stuff. She almost blew her cover, though, I think. Just for a second. But,” he said, with some disappointment in his voice, “she seems like just about any other addict. Either denying the facts, or thinking she’s the one to beat it through willpower. Won’t get her, any way you cut it.” He shrugged. “What with that hypnotic crap, who knows? She probably won’t ever wake up to the real danger until she’s dead.” He reached for some Doritos. “Anyway . . . We did the general stuff, the case history, all that. Then I showed her that art supply store he runs, and she managed to be surprised. Said she’d handled a theft case there, ’bout two years ago.”

“That’s what her boss told us,” said Ben.

“Yeah. Sticking to the truth always helps. So, I asked her if she knew where his house was, she said she didn’t, so we went there, too. Drove by, then up to the end of the block, and parked so we could see the approach he’d take. She did just fine there, too.”

Norma nodded, took a sip of her drink, and said, “Cool one, huh.”

George nodded. “She’s good. But then he comes walkin’ his bike home, and he’s got this sweet young thing with him. She started to misfire right about then. Covered pretty good. Then him and the gal go on into the house, and she started to sound kind of pissy.”

“Really?” Norma leaned forward. “Like, how?”

“Well, Ernesto let the gal go up the porch stairs in front of him, Louise says something about how he was just checking out her backside.”

“That’s it?” asked Ben.

“Nope. Then she said the gal was pretty much beggin’ for it.” George took a sip of his beer. “Can women really tell that sort of thing?”

“Why do you ask?” Norma had a sly smile on her face.

“Be a handy thing to learn,” said George.

“We can discuss that later. What else did she say?”

“Well, we watched the place for a while, and she was right back to normal, and then the lovebirds show up naked in the kitchen window. At least topless. I mean,” he said, “as far down as we could see without gettin’ out of the car and standing on the roof.”

“No shit?” Ben laughed.

“Yeah. She got real upset about them being naked. The gal had a rose tattooed on her left breast, and that got Louise really testy.”

Ben nodded. “Sure.”

“Then, you know the surveillance we got goin’ on Ernesto next door? Damned if she didn’t spot our man upstairs, with binoculars. Better get that to him, and get his ass out of there. Ernesto finds that out, I wouldn’t want to be there.”

“Crap, we better do that tonight,” said Ben, and took out his cell phone.

“Already called it in,” said George. “I think I covered it pretty well, but I thought we shouldn’t take chances on this dude.”

The food arrived, and the conversation changed to the weather for a minute or two.

Alone again, Norma asked, “She made three cell calls, you want to know to who and when?”

George nodded.

“Around three ten,” said Norma, consulting her BlackBerry, “she called Ernesto at his store. Said she was in Iowa City, that she had a task force member with her, and that it looked like things were going well.”

“When she was in the john at Mondo’s,” said George. “I thought it might be something like that. Hated to stop there, but we were way too early for Ernesto to go home, and I wanted her to see him.”

“Then, about eight fifteen. You were outside Iowa City then.”

“She had to call her friends back at the Academy,” said George. “Tell ’em she was gonna be late. I was right there. Who was she really talking to? Ernesto?”

“You bet. He told her he needed to see her when she got back.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Then, about the time you called Ben, she was on the phone to Ernesto again. She said, and I quote, ‘I’m in.’ Then she called him an ‘asshole’ and asked if ‘the little slut with the tattoo on her boob’ was still there.”

“Pissed, like I said.”

“So,” said Ben. “What do we think?”

“I think we got our inside snitch with Ernesto,” said George. “She just don’t know it.”

“Now, we decide how to utilize her the best way,” said Norma.