That piece of information drew several incredulous ‘What?’ responses from various detectives. I overheard one say, ‘She must have powerful friends. Nobody rousts the chief out before the crack of dawn to start a search for a missing person, much less persuades him to postpone an interrogation and override all the proper procedures.’
Powerful friends? I was sure they had me confused with someone else, but that didn’t matter. As long as this ordeal was over and I was being taken home, I’d claim to know the Queen of England. Hell, I’d claim to be the Queen of England.
In addition to everything else this situation was, it was humbling.
The pleasure of driving me home once again fell to the policewoman who’d brought me to the station, no doubt because the backseat of her unit was already tainted. I half-expected her to put down newspaper for me to sit on and, frankly, that wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
‘You’re Dr Knight, right? I’m Officer Colletta. I saw your advertisement in the paper. The one they were talking about on TV this morning. The one that says you’re the Vampire Psychologist.’ She examined me in her rearview mirror.
‘Yes. I’m Kismet Knight. I’m afraid to know what they were saying about me on TV, so I’m not even going to ask.’
She didn’t volunteer the information. Instead she said, ‘That must be an interesting job, being the Vampire Psychologist. I mean, what do you do, exactly? Are there really people who think they’re vampires?’ She lowered her voice and gave me serious eyes in the mirror. ‘Are there really vampires?’
I shrugged and shook my head. ‘If you’d asked me that question a week ago, I’d have said there are people who are disturbed enough to believe they’re vampires, and that it’s all mental illness and acting out. Now, after the things I’ve seen, all bets are off.’
‘We’ve had murders lately.’ She appeared almost magically able to keep the car on the road and watch me in the mirror at the same time. ‘Murders where the victims were drained of blood. Do you know about those?’
‘I heard something about that.’
‘Maybe the murderer is one of your clients?’
One of my clients? Well, thank you for raising a horrible possibility I hadn’t considered. ‘I sincerely hope not.’
She made a wrong turn so I gave her directions and we rode in silence the rest of the way to my house. As we pulled up in front, Officer Colletta said, ‘I’m surprised the cameras aren’t here yet. The media’s got your therapy office surrounded, as well as an apartment building listed as your home address. Maybe they don’t know about this place yet.’
‘I just moved recently.’ I thought about my old neighbours and felt bad that they were being subjected to the paparazzi, but happy for my own brief reprieve. Apparently, not everyone had seduced an APA employee – yet.
‘Yeah, well I don’t think that’s going to save you for long. Reporters are pretty resourceful. You’d better prepare yourself for a media blitz. You probably won’t have much privacy for a while.’
‘I’m afraid you’re right.’ I sighed. ‘Thanks for everything.’ She met my eyes again and saluted, touching two fingers to the visor of her hat. I hauled myself out of the cruiser and she pulled away.
I’d just stumbled up to my front door when I heard the screech of tyres and the slam of a car door. I assumed the news vans had caught up with me and was surprised to hear a familiar voice.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Alan demanded, bounding towards me. His face was red, deep frown lines etched the skin between his eyes, and the veins in his forehead bulged. ‘I’ve been out all night searching for you. I told you to wait in front of the club. Where did you go? You look terrible. What’s that stuff all over you? And what’s that gross smell?’
He lurched away from me as if he’d received an electric shock.
As he yelled at me, the psychic numbness that had kept me from feeling the depth of the hideous experience receded, and I stood there trembling. The inner dam broke. Tears raced down my cheeks. I slumped onto the porch, tumbled over on my side, and started sobbing loudly.
Alan cursed under his breath.
‘Geez, don’t cry.’ He knelt down next to me. ‘I’m sorry, Kismet. I didn’t mean to be a jerk. I was just so worried. I heard on the police scanner that they’d found you, and then something about dead bodies. I guess I added up the numbers wrong and overreacted. I felt responsible for taking you to that club and for whatever happened to you. And now you stroll up to your front door, obviously in one piece, and I’m so relieved to see you and so pissed off at myself for putting you in danger.’
‘You didn’t put me in danger,’ I mumbled.
He sniffed the air. ‘We need to get you into the house and out of those clothes, because I never thought I’d say this to you, but you stink worse than anything I’ve ever smelled. Plus the media vultures will be here any minute.’
The professional part of me knew that I was sobbing because it was a natural physical reaction to the kind of trauma I’d experienced, but the little girl part was simply crying because it had been a terrible night and she wanted to be held on someone’s lap and rocked to sleep. She wanted to feel safe again. To feel normal again.
‘Let’s take these boots off out here, okay?’ He slid them off my feet and tossed them next to the porch. Then he pulled me up, put his arm around me, asked for my alarm code and opened the door.
I still couldn’t stop crying long enough to speak in full sentences, so I was grateful he was intent on helping me. Now that reality had melted through the defences I’d created to weather the nightmare, I was hanging by very thin threads and was happy to have someone running underneath me with a net. Hopefully the net wasn’t accompanied by men in white coats.
Still holding on to me, he helped me up the stairs to the bathroom and propped me against the sink while he turned on the water for my shower.
‘I’m going to leave the door open, if that’s all right with you, because after you’ve undressed and stepped into the shower, I’m going to take these clothes and bag them up for the forensics team. They’ll want to analyse all the various . . . substances.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe the chief made them let you wear the clothes home.’
He really did look like he’d been up all night, and I was touched by the concern in his eyes.
‘Sure.’ I gave a limp shrug. ‘Leave the door open. That’s fine.’ I sniffled as I started to peel off my clothes without waiting for him to leave the room.
‘Uh, er, uh, yeah, go ahead and get undressed. I’m gonna go find that bag. I’ll be right back.’ He flew down the stairs.
Sometimes life gets very simple. Standing under that stream of hot water was the best thing I’d ever experienced. At that moment, not even chocolate or orgasms could top it on the list of wonderful things.
I washed my hair several times and used every good-smelling soap product I owned. I scrubbed my nails and finally just stretched out in the tub and let the water beat down on me. Bliss.
‘Kismet? Are you okay?’ Alan yanked back the shower curtain.
I stared up at him, unable to move even one muscle in response.
‘I’m sorry.’ He shifted his eyes to the side for a moment. ‘I didn’t mean to burst in on you like that. I couldn’t see you in the shower and I thought you might have fallen down or something.’
I didn’t seem to have any opinions about him opening the shower curtain or seeing me lying naked in the tub. Nothing was more important than continuing to enjoy feeling like a warm, limp noodle. I couldn’t get worked up about my nudity or anything else. I was so happy to be home – to be safe, clean. It would have taken an earthquake to jar me out of my Zen tranquillity.
Now that I smelled better, I realised I’d shared my aromatic carry-out with Alan, and he was less than springtime-fresh himself. Whatever had been on my clothes was now on his.