Charlaine Harris - Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

“I’m looking for the guy at the hospital who knocked my sister around.”

His face softened, just a little. “Your sister, she’s okay.”

Suggesting I was not. “C’mon, Weems. I’m trying to catch an asshole here.”

“And what’re we doing?” For an instant, I thought he’d either hit me or have a heart attack. He balled up his fists and turned a shade of red that would have made Santa’s tailors envious.

“You know what I mean.” I tried to look desperate, no stretch, under the circumstances. “Man, come on. It’s Claudia .”

The stories would have you believe that vampires are incredibly alluring. It’s true, they produce a pheromone that seems to make people around them comfortable, which helps vamps in their healing work. Add a good dose of empathy, and yes, vampires hold a definite attraction for normals, who think of it as sexual.

Something about Claudia had long ago hit Weems hard, right between the eyes. She’d hate me throwing her under the bus like that, but if it got me past his defensiveness . . .

I could see that Weems was torn, but he wasn’t going to pass up anything that made him look good in front of Claudia. “We got one vic, and it’s a wet one. Or it was, a couple of days ago: it’s pretty dried up now.” Weems looked greenish; he never could stand the sight of blood. “Chest sliced open . . . and the heart removed.”

“Jesus.” I swallowed. “Got an ID?”

“Homeless guy. My guess, he was either flopping in the shed over there, or he was lured in.”

“You said sliced open?”

“You’re a ghoul, Steuben.” He sighed. “ME says a big knife, it looks like. They need more tests.”

I nodded. If there was one thing we could agree on, it was the reluctance of the ME to spill details.

He hesitated. “The chest was opened up like . . . ah, jeez. It reminded me of one of those Advent calendars. The skin pulled back square, and the ribs broken to get the heart out.”

Maybe he didn’t like me seeing him queasy, maybe he just regretted telling me as much as he did, but Weems’s face hardened. “Get lost, Steuben. I find you nosing around, you’ll be sorry.”

“Merry Christmas to you, too, Weems.” I left.

“They found a body,” I said, after I let myself into Claudia’s condo.

Claudia was excited. “Yeah, I know, I just heard it on the news.”

It was her day off and while Claud was waiting to hear something solid back from the family—who were going crazy over the news—she was trying to work out a profile for Smith. Maybe she was doing rote work for the same reason I was: to keep from thinking about our world being turned inside out. I still felt like I had the pins knocked out from under me and I hated that uncertainty.

“Down the Willows?” I said, surprised. That was quick.

“No, pulled from the harbor.” She frowned. “The woman had been in there about a week. They said ‘mutilated,’ which usually means something worse.”

“So was mine.” I told her what I’d just learned from Weems. “They know who she was?”

“A local prostitute, was all they said.”

“There’s a chance it’s not the same guy, not our guy—” I said.

“I’m not willing to bet on that.”

“Me, neither.”

“He’s selecting people on the periphery of society,” she said. “Going for those who live under the radar.”

I considered where the trail had led me: the abandoned drug den, the dry spell in the emergency room, and—oh, Hell. Three missing cats in one neighborhood was just too much coincidence. I told Claudia. “I guess he’s been doing this for a while.”

She nodded. “And is escalating. He’s refining his ritual, getting bolder, going for less vulnerable, more public targets. It’s typical that he started with animals.” The look on her face didn’t bode well for Smith when we caught him. “Gerry, it’s only going to get worse from here. I’m guessing that he’s attributing some special significance to the date—the full moon, Christmas . . .”

Suddenly, I knew. “It is Christmas,” I said. I told her Weems’s description of the corpse, what he’d said about Advent calendars. “Doesn’t that sound like what you’re talking about? Little, uh, treats leading up to the big day?”

She nodded. “Right. Christmas. Good eyes on Weems.”

I snorted. “He’s my hero.” But Christmas was just two days away. “My question is, Why did Smith have to call a cab?”

“He didn’t have a car,” she answered promptly. “Weems brought him in, right?”

I made a face at her. “But if Smith is responsible for the murders, he must have a car.”

“He can’t afford to let it go out in public. Too many people could see . . . what?”

“Bloodstains? Cracked window?”

“Too recognizable,” she said. “A truck with a business logo on it, contractors, deliveries—”

“Right, it’s got to blend in, but not the sort of thing you’d drive for private stuff.” I thought a minute, then an idea hit me. “Like a police car. Maybe it isn’t Smith! Maybe it’s Weems!”

“Gerry. Get real. Weems is your bête noir, and he’s a dickhead, but he’s not our guy.”

“He was at the hospital.” I ticked off my reasons on my fingers, loving that Smith might just be a garden-variety psycho, his trail confused by Weems. “He was at the donut shop. He’s been dogging my tracks all day, and every time I saw him, I felt the call to Change.”

“All places you’d expect to see a cop investigating the same case as we are. Have you ever wanted to Change because of Weems before now?” She put her hand on mine; it was warm as toast. “I know you don’t like him, but you’re getting distracted by this. You’ve always been so damned sure about everything—”

That was the problem: I couldn’t be sure about anything anymore if Smith was Fangborn.

I pulled away. “I don’t think so. I think you were picking up on his vibes, the same time you were dealing with some ordinary, run-of-the-mill loony, and that’s why you thought it was Smith.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “Weems has nothing to do with this. I think you want it to be Weems so you don’t have to consider that there might be an evil out there we haven’t seen before. I get it, Ger: you want things to be cut-and-dried. But now we know . . . it can’t be like that.”

“Whatever.” I turned away.

“Don’t dismiss me, Gerry.”

You know about that traditional conflict between werewolves and vampires? It’s really just a sibling thing.

“Claudia, just because—”

“Sssh!” Claudia was pointing to the TV.

The news was on. A school bus, its driver, and six kids were missing from their daycare center.

“Okay,” I said, “we’ve got the fake address at the Point, a murder at the Willows, a body in the harbor. Throw in the missing pets, and we have someone with a familiarity with the waterfront. That’s a couple of big neighborhoods to cover.”

“He needs space, and he needs a place where people won’t hear . . . screams.” Claudia was looking at the map spread out in front of us. “He’s sticking with what’s familiar to him, which is good for us, but he’s also an organized psychopath, which is bad.”

“The houses are too close together, here and here,” I said, pointing out two neighborhoods. “That leaves the warehouses in the industrial park down at the Point and the coal plant down here.” I pointed to a neighborhood that was near, by water, but on the other side of town, by land.

“A school bus is going to stick out in either place,” Claudia said. “Is he going to take them out to sea?”

“If he is, we’re pretty well screwed,” I said. “Protective coloring—where can you take six crying kids and a school bus where no one will notice?”