5: Cause Of Death
“How’s your work handling things?” Terry asked Hubert as he handed her a cup of tea.
He shrugged. “It’s only been one day.” He’d gone in to identify Penelope’s body that morning. Called in because she hadn’t had any local family to identify it, because her sister had long passed and her children had moved out of the city into the countryside with their families years ago. He wondered if the ever felt alone, coming back into Lakeview on that train and heading home to an apartment as empty as Hubert’s own but without visiting family to look forward to. Probably not, though; Penelope had always been a workaholic, and her moods and attitudes had been the same when she had family in town as they had after they’d moved.
“I imagine things’ll get busy for a while now,” Terry said. “Make sure you don’t overwork yourself, gramps.”
“Me? Work hard? Never.”
“You work way too hard.”
“And you don’t? I’ve seen how much time you put into the militia. On top of good grades.”
“Most grandparents think that’s a good thing.”
“It is a good thing. I’m just sayin’, I don’t work harder than you do.” But she was right, of course; Penelope had been running the department for a long time, and Hubert wasn’t sure that anyone else understood the details of how everything fit together. It was going to be chaos for awhile. They’d almost certainly try to give him her job, and he was far too old to be moving up the corporate ladder any more.
“They’re saying that she was looking into some new water purification technique on her trip.” Terry said, sipping her tea. “If that turns out to be true, you guys are going to be swamped.”
Hubert snorted. “There’s always rumours about that kind of thing. Every year some random town thinks they’ve invented a blackwater filter or a new chemical separator or a precise enough distillation process. It’s always a hoax. I wouldn’t worry about it, kiddo.”
“It’d be nice if it was real, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, sure, it’d be wonderful if we found some way to clean the world faster and decontaminate every settlement and have everyone live long healthy lives the world over. That’s why people always want to believe the rumours.”
“It’d be bad news for the vampires, though right?”
“Politically contentious, definitely. The whole system works ‘cause we need them to filter blackwater and they need us for our blood. Find a way to filter blackwater without them, or to engineer blood that they find nutritious outside our bodies, and the whole system falls apart. But that’s gonna happen nce the world is free of blackwater anyway, and since the sunlight doesn’t hurt ‘em once the blackwater’s gone anyway, it’d be better for both sides for that to happen now than in six or seven generations’ time when there’s ten times more vampires. Since when are you interested in blackwater filterin’, kiddo? And where are you hearing these rumours?”
She shrugged. “It’s just interesting to think about. If the rumours are right this time.”
“They’re not. They never are. They’ll figure out how to grow blood for vampires in a lab before they figure out how to filter blackwater.”
“I bet the biologists are saying the exact opposite about their blood growing rumours.”
“Ha, maybe. Seriously, though, why the sudden interest? You’re getting old enough to apprentice. Are you thinking about apprenticing into blackwater monitoring?”
“Nice try, Granpa.”
There was something odd about her sudden interest, though. Maybe Penelope’s death had made the rumours about a new decontamination method in the places she’d just checked seem more credible. She’d had her throat cut in a trains tation bathroom; that was a pretty dramatic way to be killed, and people would probably be looking for a reason, any reason, to say that she could’ve been anything other than a random target. One of their own killing random people in a train station was terrifying.
“Is this about Penelope’s murder?” Hubert asked, intending to comfort his granddaughter, but the expression that lanced across her face was unexpected. Guilt? Not quite. But she certainly looked cornered, somehow.
Huh.
“What’s going on, Terry?”
“I was just wond – ”
“This is about Penelope, somehow?” But not the water filtration; Terry didn’t care about that kind of thing. Not fear over a random killer; that was inconsistent with her reaction. Terry was brave, and sensible, and meticulous, and tended to be drawn to mysteries; perhaps… “Kiddo, are you investigating this murder? You’ve apprenticed with the cops, haven’t you?”
“Not with the cops! I’m not becoming a cop, Granpa, I swear.”
“Then what’s happening?”
“I’m consulting with them right now because – ”
“You’re a teenager consulting with them without apprenticing as a cop? Somehow I find that – ”
“I’m going into vampire psychology! I’m apprenticing with the vampire diplomacy and control unit.”
“Oh.” A natural career move, for someone who put so much into the Children’s Militia. When she could no longer be in the militia, why not move into the department that dealt with the Scarlet City as adults? It was better than the police, at any rate. “What does vampire psychology have to do with anything?”
Terry stared down at her half-full cup of tea. “We think a vampire killed Penelope,” she said.
Hubert choked on his own tea. “What?”
“A vampire. A vampire killed her in the train station bathroom, and we’re trying to figure out why.”
“No, they didn’t. Her throat was cut, kiddo. If you’re going into vampire psychology then you have to know – ”
“That they don’t fight like that, I know. They go with their teeth. Out in the countryside, rogue vampires won’t use guns, and won’t do anything more than desperate defensive flailing with knives, unless it’s impossible for them to bite. No matter how smart they are. It’s one of those weird psychological blocks of theirs. But that’s the thing; the forensics people looked at her throat and she was bitten, then the throat cut and a huge mess made of the bite. Maybe to hide it.”
“A vampire would’ve bitten her and drained her of blood.”
“That’s why they’re sure. If someone was trying to fake a vampire attack, they would’ve taken the blood. But it’s looking like a vampire bit her, left the blood, and cut her throat to cover the bite, meaning a vampire killed her for reasons that have nothing to do with food and tried to make it look like a human did it. So the question is, why? Why would anyone do that? And the only reason we can see to target her is – ”
“Is if she learned something out investigating. If they have discovered a new blackwater filtration technique out there…”
“Then that’d be dangerous to the Scarlet City, right? They’ll want to hush it up. Meaning that the discoverers out there are also in danger.”
“That’s a big stretch. A really big stretch.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to ask you if it was a possibility. But if there’s any chance at all that they have found something, or even if the vampires think that they might have, then we need to warn the town.”
“I assume your new department has already done that?”
“Yes. I just wanted to know from you how likely it was.”
“Pretty unlikely, I’d say. It must be random. Or for some other reason. Or maybe forensics is wrong about it being a vampire bite.”
“Maybe. The Scarlet City will be doing its own investigation, so if it’s some random individual instead of a government assassination or something then they’ll probably find the perpetrator. And we’ll know their motivations then.” She glanced out the window. “Shoot, I need to get going or I’ll be late for my militia shift. Have a safe night, Grandpa.”
“I always do.” Hubert bid goodnight to his granddaughter and washed the teacups in clean, uncontaminated water, water that the city had courtesy of the Scarlet City below. Blackwater was a mysterious substance, beyond their understanding despite so many, many decades of research. Making water toxic to humans and light toxic to vampires, it was the single greatest pressure on the development and interrelationships of both species. And their history, too – the Outsiders would never have left, if it weren’t for the blackwater. And the blackwater never would have come, if it weren’t for the Outsiders. How different would the world have been then? If the Exterminators hadn’t chased the Outsiders to Earth, there would certainly be a lot more humans in the world, but their relationship with the vampires would be very different. And if the Outsiders had never come at all… well, then, there would be no vampires. And Hubert’s life would be… the same as that of his ancestors, probably.
Impossible to fathom.
Hubert put the cups on the draining board and stared at the sinkful of water. He knew a lot about blackwater, but he didn’t know very much about vampires; at least, no more than any resident of Lakeview did. He didn’t understand their politics or their city or their government, and he certainly had no idea why a vampire would kill his boss. If the forensics people were right, then it had to be a random attack, or the water filtration thing. If it were personal, well, he had no idea what sort of personal issues a vampire could have with a seventy two year old workaholic who had neither the time to party with their kind nor the energy to stay out after sundown. There was no non-political opportunity for vampires to ever meet Penelope.
Well. There was one vampire that he knew had known her. A long time ago.
But it had been fifty years since Benny was turned and headed into the Scarlet City. That was a long, long time for someone to hold a grudge. Sure, he’d been murderously angry at both Hubert and Penelope when he’d left, but there was no way he was still angry after such a long time. He almost definitely didn’t even remember who Hubert and Penelope were any more. He wouldn’t…
But they were allowed out after fifty years, weren’t they?
It had to be coincidence. It had to be. Nobody held a grudge for that long.
“Oh, Benny,” Hubert muttered to the sink. “You haven’t done anything stupid this time, have you?”
Derin Edala 