6: Time of Night
Lissa was pretty sure that the cop interrogating her was a Zero. There was something about their body language, all naturally wary and flinching in the same way that Abbies were naturally self-possessed and confident, that marked them out; the mark of somebody living their life at the bottom of the food chain. It was easier to see when they were out on the street casually; in uniform, this man was in charge and had no reason to flinch, so she might be wrong. But it was the impression that she was getting. And Zeroes with power could be dangerous; they had it rarely, except over other Zeroes, and giving power to someone unused to it was never a good idea. Lissa made sure to be careful.
“One more time, ma’am. What happened at the train station last night?”
“Nothing happened. We walked past it on our way home. Benny went in for a couple of minutes, I think, and then we went to the gate.”
“You think? So you abandoned your charge on his first night out?”
“Aband – I lost sight of him for a couple of minutes! He was fine!”
“You’re certain it was only a couple of minutes? Someone irresponsible enough to lose track of a charge might very well lose track of time.”
Lissa narrowed her eyes. “Am I under arrest, sir?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll be going.” She stood up.
“Things really would move more quickly if you’d answer – ”
“That sounds like your problem. I don’t see what my or Benny’s activities last night, train station or no, have to do with you.”
“A human woman was murdered by a vampire in that train station last night.”
Lissa sat back down. “So I’m a suspect.”
“No. Benny is.”
“What? Benny? He wouldn’t hurt – ”
“The victim was his sister.”
Lissa found herself suddenly unable to speak. Benny had a human sister? That… wasn’t impossible. A lot of vampires left human relatives behind; it was one of the main reasons behind the fifty year travel ban, to help new vampires distance themselves from their old lives and transition into their new ones. If they left behind children or grandchildren who were young enough, it was possible for them to still be alive when the vampire got out again. Lissa had never heard of a vampire leaving the city who had a living human sibling, but Benny had been so very, very young when he’d been turned. It was possible that such a woman could exist – or had until last night, anyway.
“Benny’s never mentioned a sister,” Lissa said. “Not in the forty years I’ve known him. There’s no way he’d seek her out, especially not to kill her. If he’d had a fifty year grudge against some old human lady, I definitely would’ve heard about it. He’s not the type of guy who keeps his thoughts to himself.”
“So you think it’s coincidence that his sister died, in a location where he was known to be, on the very first night he was allowed out of the city?”
“It’d be a much bigger coincidence for him to just happen to run into her in a train station on his first night out.”
“Perhaps he had an illegal courier contact her in advance to arrange – ”
“To meet at a train station? Instead one of the many clubs we visited that night? And then he hoped he could slip away from me for a couple of minutes at the right location? This is a joke.” Lissa stood up again. This was an attack not only on Benny, but on her judgement and competence as an escort. There was no way that Benny had killed that woman at all, and absolutely no way that he’d done it on her watch. “I want to talk to whoever’s in charge of this case. I want to know what happened.”
“It’s a Lakeview case. The humans are handling it.”
“Let me talk to them, then.”
“You got it. I’ll load your clearance into the system right away. You can be the vampire liaison on this one.”
“I – what?”
“It’s not a hard job. They’ll decide what they want to decide, you just need to stand around and look useful.”
“I’m not a cop! I can’t – ”
“Yeah, well, now you’re a consultant. I’d get to work, if I were you.”
“Hang on. Why?”
“You don’t want to prove your friend’s innocence?”
“Of course I do. But this is too easy. What do you get out of this? Are you even allowed to do this? I don’t understand.”
The officer casually flicked a switch to turn off the recorder built into the desk. “The truth is, ma’am, we’re all in a bit of a tizzy over this one. There was a bit of a scandal when Madame picked that kid up fifty years ago, and if he’s running around murdering old relatives on his first night out? It’s a bad look for Madame, you know. Doesn’t reflect well on her judgement. And she’s such a prominent elder, and with all the politics right now… we all want that kid to be as innocent as you do. On paper, at least. You catch my meaning? And his guilt reflects badly on you, too, as his escort. So. I’ll put your clearance through, get you in as the vampire consultant on this. Go nuts.” He shrugged.
Ah. That was the game. Benny being guilty was inconvenient for Madame’s reputation as well as Lissa’s, and Madame was very important, unlike Lissa. They were convinced he was guilty, so if Lissa, unconnected to the police force, could make that go away, that was good for everyone. If she succeeded, mission accomplished, and some poor scapegoat would be convicted instead. If she got caught, well, that was just one random vampire who’d made a bad choice escorting the wrong kid and had conned her way into the investigation as a consultant to interfere with the case and salvage her own reputation; no connection tot he police and, critically, no connection to Madame, who of course would never interfere with police work. Her failure would cost them nothing and her success would make this Benny problem go away, so there was no harm in letting her try to cover it up, right?
Well, the joke was on them. She had no intention of covering anything up. She was going to prove that Benny was innocent, because Benny was innocent. She’d been at that crowded train station, and there was simply no way that Benny had had the time, space or resources to slip away, commit a secret murder, and then return to her unseen and without a speck of blood on him or a line of distress in this expression.
Getting into the Lakeview City morgue after sundown was easy; they cross-referenced her name against what her police had told them and sent her down with a human police officer, Officer Greg Landon. There was a human child there, too.
The body was… unsettling. Lissa didn’t think she’d ever seen a human body before. It wasn’t easy to be sure, after living so long – there’s a point where it becomes hard to distinguish things that happened in your own past from things you was on a screen, or heard about. But she certainly hadn’t seen one recently enough to remember clearly.
She had seen vampire bodies, though. Zeroes who didn’t learn their manners fast enough and got in people’s way. High-profile clubbers whose activities were costing other people a little bit too much money and influence. Victims of territory scraps where tempers had risen just a little too high. And that made looking at the woman lying on the cold slab before her quite complicated, because Lissa knew, intellectually, that what she was looking at was a very old woman who had been nearing the end of her life. She knew that. But the thing about vampires was that they tended to start life pretty late – somebody being turned young, like Benny, was an anomally. And over time, as the Progenitor’s gift worked its way through a new body, they grew stronger, grew to look younger, grew to match whatever their subconscious ideal was at the time of turning. Adult vampires almost never looked this old.
Lissa had seen people walking about her own city who looked like this woman. Fresh, helpless little babies, in need of care and protection. And now here one is, in front of her, dead and bloodless with a wound on her neck.
“She died last night?” Lissa asked Officer Landon.
“Yes. Shortly after sundown.”
“Shortly after sundown?”
The child said something. Lissa inspected the wound. Yep, those were teeth marks, clear as floodlights; the scrapes against the skin and flesh were obvious, and badly hidden by being messed up with a blade after the fact. Nobody over a century or two old could be fooled by such a half-arsed cover-up.
“That’s what we thought,” Officer Landon said. “What do you think, Miss Lissa?”
“Huh?” Lissa looked up. Officer Landon was looking at the child, who said something.
“We thought it looked like a vampire bite,” Officer Landon repeated. “But they didn’t drink the blood.”
“Unusual, certainly.” The body had certainly been drained of blood long before Lissa got there, and stank of disinfectant. There was only the faintest smell of blood around the injury itself, where they clearly didn’t want to clean too thoroughly and inadvertently erase evidence.
There are scant few reasons to kill a human, if not out of hunger for blood. Even fewer reasons not to drink anyway. “No blood was missing? You’re sure?”
“It’s a little difficult to be certain that no blood was taken,” Officer Landon said, “but certainly they didn’t drink enough to be noticeable. The killer wouldn’t have been around long enough to drink much, either; the throat was cut almost immediately after biting, and she was found while still bleeding out.”
“Early in the night?”
“Yes.”
Benny was innocent, then. Which she knew, but now she could prove it. Lissa didn’t lose sight of Benny at the train station until nearly sunrise; he would’ve been with her at the time of the murder. They might not have even left the Scarlet City yet, although she’ll have to confirm the times to be certain.
The killing must be political or personal, though, even if it wasn’t Benny. “Was the victim consorting with any vampires? Seeking conversion, maybe?”
“No.”
The child said something else. Lissa looked closely at the wound again, but there was nothing else to see there. The killer couldn’t resist attacking with a bite (understandable), but did manage to resist wasting a lot of time drinking, which can only mean…
“What was her blood group? The victim.”
“A negative.”
Hmm. Type A, huh.
There was nothing else to learn from the body; or at least, nothing that Lissa could learn from it, or cared to. The child and Officer Landon had a discussion about some kind of new water purification technique or something; Lissa wasn’t listening. She went home.
And was waylaid at the gates of the Scarlet City by the Zero cop who’d interrogated her earlier.
“How’d everything go, ma’am?” he asked her, keeping pace with her down the street no matter how persistently she tried to subtly shake him.
“Fine. I can tell you that Benny’s definitely innocent. The time of death doesn’t match up at all.”
“Is that so. Well, that’s real convenient, isn’t it?”
She shrugged.
“Since he definitely was at the scene of two more human murders tonight.”
Lissa stopped dead in the street and stared at him. The Zero cop leered at her under the neon lights without a flicker of fear in his eyes, confident that the flimsy fabric of his stupid uniform would protect him from her claiming her natural right to his blood. She was tempted to prove him wrong, but with her sister putting herself in political danger, this was hardly the time to start a fight with the police. What was he up to? He wanted Benny to be innocent, didn’t he? To protect Madame’s reputation?
“He was out with a couple of Madame’s other kids and they lost sight of him at exactly the time of the murders. Same MO. The only vampire known to be at the scene of both crimes.”
“He wasn’t at the scene of the first one,” Lissa said firmly. “He was with me. We were nowhere near the train station until hours later.”
“Interesting. Can you prove it?”
What? Were they framing Benny now? Why?
The cop’s grin widened. “I’m sorry to say it, ma’am. It looks like your friend’s a serial killer. And it’s our job to bring him to justice.”
Derin Edala 