35. Stranger Things
Chapter 35
Stranger Things
Ehukai Beach, Oahu—Moments later
C erissa shook her head—she’d hold off speculation until she made a positive identification. Rising from her chair by the firepit, she stretched, walked to the parking lot and dumped the broken glass into the trash can, then went into the private RV. She ejected her contact lenses, hating the slight shock to her eyeballs as each lens released the connection to her optic nerve, and dropped them into the compartment on the back of her phone. The Lux edict to always wear them except during sex came in handy.
Once the videos finished uploading, she descended the RV’s steps and phoned Ari outside so she wouldn’t disturb Karen. “You’ll never guess what happened to me.”
“Henry took my advice to try the silver handcuffs?”
“Ari! No. Just no. Quit making suggestions about my love life.”
“Then what else could be interesting enough for you to call at this time of night?”
“I just spoke with a vampire who might be the one turned by the Lux prototype, or only a generation removed.” Cerissa gave him a rundown of the conversation. “And get this. She’s tracking some other type of paranormal creature. She started to talk about them, and then got all closed-lipped when I asked a question.”
“Knock, knock.”
“Ari, I’m not in the mood for games.”
“Just play along. Knock, knock.”
She let out a long-suffering sigh. “Who’s there?”
“Another.”
“Another who?”
“Another type of paranormal creature.”
Cerissa stiffened. “You think she’s tracking us?”
“Maybe. But if you talk with her again, try to get more information, but without making her suspicious.”
“Yeah, sure. Like that worked so well the first time. She’s already suspicious.”
Ari laughed. “You’ll get better at being devious. Give it another shot.”
“Well, I don’t know if another chance will arise. She just walked off, though she did leave her answering service number.”
“How very old-fashioned. Maybe she doesn’t use cell phones yet.”
“She had one. Look, I want a conference call with you, me, and Tig. I want her to listen to the video, so she’s fully briefed on Inanna’s silver stakes.”
“All right, Ciss. Hold the line.”
Town council chambers—Ten minutes earlier
I t was after two in the morning California time, but the town council meeting threatened to drag on until dawn. Tig sat at the back of the council chambers, her stomach churning over what Liza reported from the dais. The interview with the Mordida Gazette had gone sideways. The reporter seemed uninterested in correcting his last article, even after speaking with Liza during the daytime, because they wanted an interview with Rolf. They had the dirt on him, not Liza.
Instead of pausing, the Gazette plowed straight ahead, reporting on their next topic: the donor blood disposal company that operated from Sierra Escondida’s business district. Olivia Pacquin used to own it, and Cerissa took over after the Hill executed Olivia for murdering the mayor. The operation collected expired donor blood from hospitals and blood banks, as well as operating storefronts that paid donors. Those attracted people who were ineligible to donate at the Red Cross.
How in the name of the ancestors did the person who compiled the dossiers obtain the information? Public records? And if that was the source, how did they put all the facts together for an ongoing exposé?
So far, the Gazette hadn’t twigged to the fact that donor blood fed the Hill. Nor had they figured out the connection between Blood Waste Disposal Services and the storefront operations that directly paid people for fresh donations. But the newspaper had stirred enough shit that the county health department demanded to inspect the disposal site.
“‘County inspectors will find no on-site steam sterilization, incineration, or microwave technology to sterilize the medical waste,’” Liza read from a paper she held.
Tig followed along on her copy of the staff report. Liza didn’t have to add, because the blood was delivered to the Hill instead . Everyone knew the reason.
“Of course, BWDS transfers the empty bags to a biomedical waste disposal firm for proper disposal.”
Tig groaned to herself. Olivia had never bothered buying the equipment to sterilize and dispose of the bags. She was too fucking lazy to do it herself. Now they were going to pay the price.
Liza droned on, reading the report. The article was going to point out that BWDS was only interested in bagged blood—the business didn’t dispose of other medical waste—and the damn reporter had dug further, interviewing local hospitals. He’d discovered that BWDS paid for expired blood, rather than the other way around. Usually, hospitals paid disposal companies to collect and properly treat their hazardous medical waste.
This was so not good, in too many ways to count. Where the hell did that dossier come from?
Rolf couldn’t get home soon enough to satisfy Tig. Liza did all right as vice mayor, but she was still kind of green at the job. This problem needed Rolf’s special touch. But no one wanted to disturb his vacation, and Liza was trying to prove her fitness for the mayor’s role by dealing with the reporter herself. That decision might backfire on her.
The double door at the rear of the chambers cracked open. Ari stuck his head in. “Hey, chief—”
“Now isn’t a good time,” Tig whispered.
“Uh, you’re gonna want to hear this.” He waved his phone at her. “I’ve got Cerissa on the line. There’s been a development.”
Dammit, she didn’t want to leave right then, but she would circle back with Liza later. The bigger question—tell Cerissa about this article problem now, interrupt her honeymoon with it, or let Luis, Cerissa’s managing supervisor, handle the matter?
Ehukai Beach, Oahu—Minutes later
C erissa waited patiently while Ari tracked down Tig.
“What do you need?” Tig asked curtly when she answered.
“Ari has a video for you to watch. I spoke with Inanna tonight.”
“You what?” A door slamming shut followed the sounds of movement on Tig’s end of the phone. “Okay, I can talk privately now.”
“Inanna found me here in Hawaii. Short version—she sent the stakes to her children, along with the folks who stopped Jonathan, as a gift, so they could protect themselves.”
“Dammit, I was right.”
“Huh?”
“Once I read the translations of the cuneiform inscriptions, my working hypothesis was that they were gifts.”
Cerissa wished she’d had those translations when she spoke with Inanna. The ancient vampire might have been able to identify which child received the stake used on Petar. “She also says she’s three thousand years old.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Her fingernails have more ridges than I’ve ever seen on a vampire. And she seemed sincere, but I don’t know what to believe. She confirmed she attacked Henry over a misunderstanding. I have Henry’s clothing from the fight.” Cerissa had sent a brief email to Tig earlier in the week reporting the attack. “I’ll test every bit of blood I can to determine if any of the V-DNA is hers. That will provide additional facts to go on.”
Tig harrumphed . “Let me know when you have the results.”
“She also claimed to have an alibi. The video will give the details, but you can call the New York mortuary. Even though we know the curly white-blond hair wasn’t hers, she might have had a cohort.”
A pause on Tig’s end. “If not tonight, I’ll phone them tomorrow. With the time zone differences, the mortuary may be closed right now.”
“Oh, got it. They’re six hours ahead of Hawaii. I keep forgetting.”
“What about the curly white-blond hairs we shipped you four days ago? The ones from Callistus’s couch? Have you tested them?”
“The courier arrived after we left for the beach party. The hotel texted me today. I’ll test them tomorrow when I return.”
Tig scoffed. “Jayden sent that overnight. I have the shipping receipt. You should have received the envelope before this.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I asked the hotel to watch for the delivery.”
“All right. It is what it is. I’m sorry we’ve had to interrupt your honeymoon so many times.”
“I understand why. And I want to help you find who did this to Petar. I’ll run the tests and talk with you tomorrow night.”
“Have you made any progress lifting V-DNA from fingerprints? I feel guilty asking, but we have Callistus’s fingerprints—”
“Not yet.” After Tig phoned three nights ago and told her about Callistus’s involvement with a theft from Petar’s casino, Cerissa had tried a few techniques using Henry’s fingerprints on a blank paper. None of them worked. “Forensics scientists are getting better at extracting and amplifying human DNA from fingerprints, but so far, the techniques I’ve tried haven’t succeeded with V-DNA. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We appreciate what you have done, and besides, you’re on your honeymoon. Uh,” Tig said, pausing. “I hate to dump this on you, but Liza just reported to the council about a newspaper investigation—”
“I’m already on it. Luis called me today. Ari is creating a manifest to show that all the donor blood collected by Blood Waste Disposal Services was delivered to Biologics Research Lab for study. We’ll fake a year’s worth of logs to cover the time since I took over Olivia’s business. Luis is also ordering whatever equipment and cleanup chemicals the county health inspector would expect to find. There’s no excuse why Olivia didn’t have them on hand before. If a donor bag spilled, she probably lapped the blood off the floor.”
Even though Cerissa hated speaking ill of the dead, she made an exception for Olivia. To say the former owner of BWDS was one of her least favorite people was an understatement.
Still, she partially blamed herself. When the town council thrust the business operations onto her already overloaded plate, she should have examined the operation more closely, but supervising the construction of the Biologics Research Lab had overwhelmed her. So she crossed her fingers and left Luis in charge—it wasn’t his job to bring the company up to code. Nothing to do about the problem now but play catch-up. “Anything else?”
Tig shook her head. “That’s quite enough, I think. Go back to your honeymoon.”
Cerissa ended the call, then returned to her chair by the bonfire. Henry came racing across the sand, carrying his surfboard, salt water dripping enticingly down his exposed skin, and she didn’t know which to admire first—his long, lean legs, his broad, bare chest, or the pleasure trail dipping into his trunks. “Did you have fun?”
He stuck the surfboard into the sand, then dropped onto the beach chair next to her, the one Inanna had sat on. “The waves are magnificent. We should do this more often.” He ran his hands over his head, squeezing the water from his hair. “I hope you haven’t been sitting here bored.”
She laughed. “Oh, I’ve been far from bored. I just solved the mystery of who attacked you on the cruise ship.”
His eyes widened slightly. “Do tell, mi amor .”
So Cerissa did. She answered all of his many questions about Inanna—at least, all she could answer.
Once the vampires bedded down, the RV chauffeur drove them back to the hotel. They arrived around seven thirty in the morning. The driver stayed with the bus while the guys slept. Cerissa took Karen and their overnight bags back to the lobby, stopping at the front desk to sign for the special delivery envelope. Then they went up to the penthouse, where Karen disappeared into her room immediately, saying she wanted to sleep a bit more.
Cerissa flashed to her lab carrying the envelope from Jayden containing the hair evidence. She was eager to run a V-DNA profile on the curly white-blond couch hairs as quickly as she could and test Henry’s shirt for Inanna’s blood. With any luck, she might have a break in the case before Tig woke later today.