The Church of Eternal Life didn’t promise much more than most churches promised, but you could join the Lutherans, and if you didn’t like it, you could quit. Joining the Church of Eternal Life as a full member meant never being able to do anything about regrets you might have.
Zerbrowski got us back on track. “You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot who could confirm when you left the Sapphire?”
He shook his head.
“Did you smell anything?”
Those washed out eyes flicked up to me. He frowned. “What?”
“You didn’t see anything, or anyone, but sight isn’t the only sensory input you’ve got.”
He frowned harder.
I bent down so I could meet him eye-to-eye. I would have knelt, but I didn’t want to touch the carpet with anything but my shoes.
“You’re a vampire, Benchely, a bloodsucker, a predator. If you were human I’d just say what did you see, or hear, but you’re not human. If you didn’t see or hear anything, what did you smell? What did you sense?”
He was looking positively perplexed. “What do you mean?”
I shook my head. “What did they do, make you a vampire, then not teach you anything about what you are?”
“We’re the eternal children of God,” he said.
“Bullshit, bull-fucking-shit! You don’t know what you are, or what you could be.” I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. He was five years dead. I didn’t think he was involved, but he’d walked through that parking lot damn close to the time of the killing. If he hadn’t been such a pitiful excuse for the undead, he might have been able to help us catch the bad guys.
“I don’t understand,” he said, and I believed him.
I shook my head. “I need air.” I went for the door, leaving Zerbrowski to mutter, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Benchely, and if you think of anything, call us. I was on the cement walkway, breathing in all the night air I could, when Zerbrowski came to find me.
“What the hell was that?” he asked. “You just decide we stop questioning a suspect?”
“He didn’t do it, Zerbrowski. He’s too damn pitiful to have done it.”
“Anita, listen to yourself. That doesn’t even make sense. You know as well I do that murderers can make you feel sorry for them. Some of them specialize in pity.”
“I don’t mean I felt pity for him, I mean he’s too damn pitiful a vampire to have pulled it off.”
Zerbrowski frowned at me. “You’ve lost me.”
I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but I tried. “It’s bad enough that they let him believe that becoming a vampire would fix everything that was wrong with his miserable life, but then they killed him. They took his mortal life, but they’ve done everything they can to cripple him as a vampire.”
“Cripple him, how?”
“Any vampire that I know would have noticed things, Zerbrowski.
They’re like this hyperfocus predator. Predators notice things.
Benchely may have fangs, but he still thinks like he’s a sheep, not a wolf.”
“Would you really want every member of the church to be a good predator?”
I leaned my back against the railing. “It’s not that. It’s that they took his life and didn’t give him another one. He’s not better off than he was before.”
“He’s not getting arrested for drunk and disorderlies anymore.”
“And how long will it be before he can’t take it anymore and he uses his gaze on somebody, drinks their blood, and blows it? They wake up and decide they were abused. He’s not a good enough vampire for them not to wake up and regret it.”
“What do you mean he’s not a good enough vampire? Anita, you’re not making sense.”
“I don’t know if it’ll make sense to you, Zerbrowski, but I’ve seen the real deal. They’re terrible, or can be, but they’re like watching a tiger at the zoo. They’re dangerous, but they have a beauty to them, even the ones that aren’t from a bloodline that makes them prettier after death, even those have a sort of power to them. A certain mystique, or an aura of confidence, or something. They have something that every member of the church that we’ve talked to since last night lacks.”
“I say, again, would we want them to be powerful and mysterious? Wouldn’t that be bad?”
“For stopping crime and keeping the peace, yes, but Zerbrowski, the church talked these people into letting themselves be killed. Killed for what? I’ve tried to talk people out of joining the church for years, but I’ve not really talked to many of the members once I can’t save them.”
He was looking at me funny. I guess I couldn’t blame him. “You still think that vamps are dead. You’re dating one, and you still think they’re dead.”
“Jean-Claude hasn’t made a new vampire since he became Master of the City, Zerbrowski.”
“Why not? I mean, it’s considered legal now, not murder.”
“I think he agrees with me, Zerbrowski.”
He frowned harder at me, took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, put them back on, and shook his head. “I am just a simple cop, and you are making my head hurt.”
“Simple my ass. Katie told me you double majored in law enforcement and philosophy. What kind of cop has a degree in philosophy?”
He looked at me kind of sideways. “If you tell anyone else I’ll deny it, say sleeping with the undead has made you hallucinate.”
“Trust me, Zerbrowski, if I hallucinated, it wouldn’t be about you.”
“That is a low blow, Blake, I wasn’t even picking on you.” His cell phone rang. He flipped it open, still smiling about my low blow.
“Zerbrow-” He never even got to finish his name, before his smile vanished. “Say again, Arnet, slower. Shit. We’re on our way. Holy items out. They’ll glow if the vamp is close.” He started to run, as he flipped the phone closed. I ran with him.
“What happened?” I asked.
We clattered onto the stairs before he answered. “Woman dead at the scene. Vamp missing. Apartment appears empty.”
“Appears?” I said.
“Vampires are tricky bastards,” he said.
I would have argued, if I could have. But since I couldn’t, I saved my breath for running and beat Zerbrowski to his car. If we hadn’t both been afraid of what we’d find when we got to the scene, I would have teased him about it.
62
The apartment was so much nicer than the one we’d just come from.
It was clean and neat enough to have pleased even my stepmother, Judith. Well, except for the dead woman on the carpet and the blood trail leading back to the bedroom. Other than that, the apartment looked freshly scrubbed.
I know by now that murder happens in the best of neighborhoods. I know for a fact that economics, or neatness, or niceness are not barriers to violence. I know that, because I’ve seen dead bodies in some of the nicest houses. Everyone wants to believe that violence only happens in horrible places, where even the rats fear to go, but it isn’t true. I didn’t think I had any illusions left about murder and murderers, but I was wrong. Because the first thing I thought when I saw that neat-as-a-pin, well-decorated apartment with the dead woman on the carpet was, the body would have fit in Jack Benchely’s apartment better. Hell, you could have hidden her body in the coffee table debris.
The body lay so close to the door that they’d had to move her arm just to open the door enough to let Arnet and Abrahams inside.
Abrahams had transferred over from sex crimes. I glanced at him across the room, standing near the neat, sparkly kitchen. He was tall and thin with dark hair and an olive complexion. Brown seemed to be his favorite color, because I’d never seen him when he wasn’t wearing it.
He was talking to Zerbrowski, who was taking notes.
So far I hadn’t learned enough to need to take notes. Maybe it was because the body was right at our feet. Arnet’s and mine. Dead bodies can be a real conversation stopper. The body was on its stomach, legs slightly spread, one hand reaching out toward the door, the other arm folded back where Arnet had moved it when she opened the door.