Ozburn pulled out his wallet and took out five hundreds and dropped them on the table. He picked up Father Joe's cowboy hat and slapped it back onto the priest's head. "I'll still need your help on Monday."
"You shall have it. You're a good man, Sean Ozburn. I wish you would believe it, as I so strongly believe."
Ozburn pulled the duffel from under the table and slung it over one big shoulder. Snapping his fingers for Daisy, he strode across the dining room and into the entryway. He stumbled on his unfeeling feet and nearly knocked over a woman who had just entered the building. She was dark-haired and singularly pretty and wore a red dress with white polka dots that looked to be from another era. She had a black coat folded over one arm.
"Madam," Ozburn managed, dizzied by her scent.
"Excuse me," she answered without slowing down.
The Amigos manager stood behind the counter at the cash register with a look of indignation on his face.
"I left five hundred to cover the dinner and the damage," said Ozburn.
"I hope that covers it. Do not come back here."
"I'm sorry for the spectacle. I didn't want it to happen."
"This is a family restaurant."
Ozburn leaned over the counter and he saw, even in his green vision, a blush of fear on the man's face. Ozburn bared his teeth at him.
He swung open the door and looked back across the dining room at Leftwich, who was holding the black coat belonging to the pretty woman as she waited for the busboy to ready the booth. They looked like a pair from central casting: the dude ranch cowboy and a forties femme fatale. The woman was speaking to Joe, sharply it looked, and the small cowboy-priest had the coat over his arm and a hapless expression on his face.
In the parking lot Ozburn hit the Ram key fob and swung open the truck door. Daisy sprang into the driver's seat, then hopped over the center console to the passenger side. Ozburn threw open the half door and climbed into the rear part of the cab and set the duffel out across the bench.
"Back here, girl," he said. Daisy obeyed, curling into the floor space between the seats.
From his duffel Ozburn took both of his Love 32s, loaded with full magazines, and set them on the front passenger seat. He took two extra full magazines and set them up front next to the weapons. He tossed a windbreaker over them all. He zipped and yanked the duffel back down to the floor, which gave Daisy plenty of room to stretch out on the rear bench. She did so, thumping her tail.
"Just in case, sweetie. You never know who you'll run into on the road."
At the sound of his voice Daisy's tail thumped harder and faster. Ozburn shut the rear door and climbed up front and started the engine. He roared out of the parking lot for Interstate 8, his foot with little feeling in it and heavy on the accelerator.
32
Hood sat in his dining room with the American League division series muted on TV, reading online stories about bats, rabies and the Milwaukee Protocol. An October wind bent the white sagebrush outside and rattled the paloverde and his windows. He was tired from the day but very much looking forward to a visit from Beth Petty, who was coming over after her four-to-midnight ER shift. He hadn't seen her since the Buenavista safe house massacre twelve days ago. He had bought good wine and a light dinner to prepare.
Hood was fascinated to learn that the vampire legends originating in eighteenth-century Eastern Europe followed a major rabies outbreak there in 1720. The author, Spanish neurologist Juan Gomez-Alonso, pointed out that rabies victims have symptoms very similar to the traits often attributed to vampires. He wrote that because the virus attacks the limbic system, which is a part of the brain that influences aggression and sexual behavior, rabies victims-like vampires-are prone to biting and to hypersexuality. And because rabies also affects the hypothalamus, which controls sleep, people with rabies suffer-as do vampires-from insomnia and become energized and agitated late at night. The doctor pointed out that rabies causes hypersensitivy to strong stimuli such as light, bright reflection and strong odors-including garlic-all of which appeared early in the vampire legends. He pointed out that rabies victims commonly vomit blood, and of course, an over-full vampire could be expected to do the same. Most obviously, Gomez-Alonso pointed out, both rabies and vampirism are most commonly spread by biting.
Hood took a sip of beer and checked his watch. A gust of wind rose outside, and in the island of light cast by his security floods he saw the desert sand stand up and take a human shape and travel a few feet toward the house before collapsing. As a child, he had been more frightened by vampire movies than by other horror movies. They had seemed more possible, and a vampire could appear to be normal-a threat that could walk unrecognized among us.
Tapping at his keyboard now, Hood brought up the picture that he had e-mailed to Sean just minutes after Seliah had gone into the coma. In the picture she looked fresh and lovely and relaxed but Hood knew she'd been blasted into unconsciousness by drugs. He'd hoped that the picture might help persuade Sean to surrender himself. He'd promised Ozburn that if he did surrender, their first stop would be UCI Medical Center. Hood had also told Ozburn that Seliah had given him some things she wanted Sean to have. Again, a lure. But there was only silence from Ozburn. Hood wondered if Oz might be shamed or infuriated by the picture and by Hood's proximity to her. Who could know?
He called the nurses' station at the ICU and got Marliss. She told him there was no change; Seliah's vitals were all good.
"The doctor will let you know when she'll be brought out of it," she said. "It will be days, Mr. Hood. They will taper her off of the sedatives when the rabies is over. And she will come back. Very slowly."
He asked if she could hear what was going on around her, down in a sleep that deep.
"No," said Marliss. "She's not aware of anything at all. Nothing. Are you in law enforcement?"
"Yes."
"Her husband called a few minutes ago. He sounded very agitated and angry. He said if she dies, terrible things will happen. We reported it to hospital security as we were told."
"Is the marshal still there?"
"Oh, yes. There is supposed to be a marshal twenty-four/seven. He looks bored to tears."
Hood called Soriana at home and told him about Ozburn's threat and asked him to put another U.S. Marshal outside Seliah's room. Soriana was quiet for a beat, then said he would. Back on his computer Hood looked at a pictorial of vampire bats in the wild. A camera crew had gotten video and stills of a cave filled with them. The scientists all looked happy to be there but the local guides looked spooked and guilty. One of them held out a vampire bat by its wingtips while the animal bared its teeth and hissed. One ran along the bottom of the cave floor upright on its feet, wings half-out for balance, its tiny chest strangely human, its face piggish. Vampire bats almost always approach their prey on the ground, Hood read. They are nimble runners.
Hood pictured the priest leaning forward over Sean's feet and Seliah at the window screen with the moths and beetles and flies seething around her. He pictured the priest standing when he became aware of her, and Hood saw the small dark thing drop from his hands as he turned to open the door for her. He pictured Sean asleep through all of this, ignorant that the seeds of his and Seliah's destruction had just been introduced to his innocent blood. Again, Hood heard the voice of skepticism commenting on these images and this story. A priest with a vampire bat in his hands? Come on, Charlie, could this have happened? Isn't there a simpler explanation for what had fallen to the floor and what had happened to Sean and Seliah? How truthful was superstitious, heavy-drinking Itixa?