Elrod, P N - Jack Fleming - The Vampire Files 03 - Bloodcircle.txt

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Bloodcircle by P.N. Elrod
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Chapter 1
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"… THEN THE DOOR opened and there was this crazy-looking blond guy
with a shotgun just standing there, grinning at us. Before we could do
anything he swung it up and fired right at Braxton."

"How close were you?"

"To… ?"

"To Braxton."

"Pretty close; arm's length, I guess. He knocked against me when he
fell. There wasn't much room."

"And to the shotgun?"

"About the same."

"Goon."

"I fell back when he hit against me and cracked my head on a sink--sort
of snapped it like this--and that's when things got fuzzy." I paused,
expecting him to encourage me again in spite of my faulty memory, but
nothing came out. Lieutenant Blair of Homicide, Chicago P.O., had the
occupational necessity of a poker face, but I could tell he wasn't
swallowing what I was dishing out. He waited and the uniformed cop
hunched next to him at the foot of the desk stopped scribbling on his
notepad.

I covered the awkward pause by rubbing my face. "Maybe I was dazed or
something, but I ran after the blond guy, chased him downstairs and out
the building. He was moving too fast and I was all shaky. I lost him. I
went back and told the lobby doorman to call an ambulance. I returned to
the studio, saw the crowd in the hall, and began looking for Bobbi--Miss
Smythe. When I couldn't find her, I drove to her hotel, but she wasn't
there, so I spent the rest of the night looking."

"You spoke to no one at the hotel?"

"Just Phil, their house detective. He had an envelope for me and I took
it."

"What was it? Who sent it?"

"I don't know, I never bothered to open it I was so busy. I don't know
where it is now."

The cop wrote it all down, trying to keep a straight face.

"I went up to Miss Smythe's rooms. Her friend Marza was there, Marza
Chevreaux."

"Chevreaux," Blair repeated, and spelled it out for his man, referring
from his own notes.

"She didn't know where Bobbi had gone, either," I continued. "At least
that's what she told me."

"You think she was lying?"

I shrugged. "Bobbi and I had a fight earlier and Marza took her side.
She doesn't like me much and wouldn't tell me anything. I got fed up
with her and left."

"Where did you go after you left the hotel?"

I talked on, telling him of a lengthy search until I found Bobbi in a
diner we'd once gone to and how we went out to my car and talked the
rest of the night away. When Blair asked the name of the diner, I said I
couldn't remember. The cop scribbled it all down until I ran out of
things to say, but Blair hadn't run out of questions to ask. We were in
his office, which was better than an interrogation room, but at the end
of my story he looked ready to change my status from witness to suspect.

"When did you next see the blond man?"

"I didn't," I lied.

"Why did he shoot Braxton?"

"I don't know."

"Why was Braxton after you?"

"I don't know."

"You told the hotel detective, Phil Patterson, something else. You told
him Braxton was a con man. Why?"

"Mostly so Phil would be sure to keep a watch out for him and keep him
from bothering Miss Smythe. I thought that if Phil thought the guy was a
troublemaker he'd be extra careful." At least that was the truth, and
Blair seemed to know it. "Braxton was crazy, too. Who knows why he was
after me? I never got the chance to find out."

He paused with his questions and I wondered if I'd tipped things too
far. He looked at the cop and with a subtle head-and-eyebrow movement
told him to leave, then settled in to stare at me. I stared back,
attempting a poker face and failing. I'm a lousy liar.

Blair was a handsome man, a little past forty, with gray temples
trimming his dark wavy hair, and full, dark brows setting off his olive
skin. Too well dressed to be a cop, he was either on the take or had
some income other than his salary. His upper lip tightened. He was
smiling, but not quite ready to show his teeth yet.

"Okay," he said easily and with vast confidence. My back hairs went up.
"This is off the record. You can talk, now."

I looked baffled, it wasn't hard.

"All I want is the truth," he said reasonably.

"I've been telling--"

"Bits and pieces of it, Mr. Fleming, but I want to hear it all. For
instance, tell me why you waited so long to come in."

"I came when I saw the story in the papers."

"Where had Miss Smythe gone?"

"To some diner, I forget--"

"Why did she leave the studio?"

"She wanted to avoid trouble."

"What trouble?"

"This kind of trouble. She used to sing at the Nightcrawler Club, got a
bellyful of the gang there, and quit to do radio work."

"Yes. She quit right after someone put a lead slug into her boss. It's
interesting to me how death seems to follow that young woman around."

"You think she was involved with that mess?" It was meant to rattle me,
but I was on to that one.

He just smiled.

"Then think something else," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Her boss
gets scragged and she quits, there's no surprise to that. A couple of
the other girls did the same thing. You can check."

"I have. She was Morelli's girl as well as his employee… And now she's
your girl."

It wasn't a question, so it didn't need an answer.

"Did you tell her to leave the studio?" he asked.

"No, I-"

"Why were you at the studio? You said you'd had a fight with her."

"It wasn't much of a fight. I went there to make up with her."

"And Braxton followed you…"

We walked through the whole thing again and I told the truth about what
happened, but left out the motivations. Blair didn't like it. but he
wasn't quite ready to get tough yet. He kept shifting around with his
questions, trying to trip me somewhere.

"And then you went looking for her instead of--"

It was time to show a little anger. "Yeah, so I didn't stay put-- I
wasn't thinking straight. I see a man cut in two practically under my
nose, maybe come that close to it myself, and I'm supposed to hang
around to make a statement?"

"No, but you did go chasing after an armed man and disappeared for two
days."

"Stop dancing and tell me what you're getting at."

He continued as though I hadn't spoken. "In the mean-time, the man turns
up in his car near his home, peppered with wooden pellets--"

"Huh?"

"--as though from a shotgun wound. Instead of rock salt or lead, someone
loaded the cartridge with small wooden beads. Can you explain that?"

I shook my head.

"The man was half-dead from numerous other injuries and in a mental
state one might charitably describe as shock. How did he get that way?"

"I don't know. Ask him, why don't you?" I was on firm ground here. That
blond bastard would never put together two coherent words ever again.
I'd made very sure of it.

Blair shifted the subject again. "Who was the woman in his house?"

"What woman?"

He pulled out a photo and tossed it to me. A sincere pang of nausea
flashed through me as I looked at the starkly lit image on the paper.
The harsh blacks and whites had their full-color match in my memory of
the scene. I tossed it back onto the desk. "God, what happened to her?"

"Someone took her head off--with a shotgun; maybe the same weapon that
killed Braxton."

"The blond guy must have done it."

Then who did it for the blond guy? his expression seemed to ask me. "Why
was this woman wearing Miss Smythe's red dress?" he asked aloud.

"What?"

"Miss Smythe wore a bright red dress to the broadcast; many people
remember it. Somehow it ends up on this corpse. Why?"

"There must be a mix-up. Bobbi still had that dress when I found her. It
must have come from the same store."

His eyes were ice cold, like chips of polished onyx. "Come along with
me." He got to his feet and walked smoothly around the desk.

"Where?"

He didn't answer but opened his door and motioned for me to go out
first. We walked down a green-painted hall and went into another,
smaller room. It had a scarred table, three utilitarian chairs, and one
bright overhead light, its bulb protected by a metal grille. On the
table was a sawed-off shotgun, tagged and still bearing traces of
fingerprint dust.

"Recognize it?"

"Looks like it could be the one the crazy used on Braxton, except when I
saw it the barrels seemed about that big." I held my hands a foot apart
to indicate the size.

"And what about this?" From the back of a chair he picked up a dark
bundle that unrolled into the shape of a coat. The front lapels were
ragged and an uneven hole the size of my fist decorated the middle of
its back where the blast had exited. The edges were stiff with crusted
blood.

"Looks like mine," I admitted, not liking this turn of evidence.

"We found it at Miss Smythe's hotel."

"I keep some clothes there so she can have them cleaned for me; she
insists on it. I changed to another coat--I couldn't hunt for her
looking like a scarecrow."

"Are you sure it's yours? Put it on."

I shot him a disgusted look, but decided to go through the farce.

"It fits you."

"All right, so it's mine."

He was busy examining the hole in the back. "Looks like the shot must
have gone right through you."

"I had the coat draped over my arm at the time. Maybe it got between
Braxton and the gun at just the right moment."

He shook his head. "The physical evidence we have doesn't support that,
Fleming."

"What does it matter? You have the killer."

"Take that off and have a seat. We're going to discuss how it matters."

"You charging me with anything?"

"That depends on your willingness to cooperate…"

He'd moved to one side so I could get to a chair, and stopped dead, his
dark eyes flicking from something behind me to my face and back again,
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