Blood Debt

the detective was gone. But the detective's friends were proven unwilling to go to the police and so, apparently, was the detective, or the police would be at the scene already.
    "Dr. Mui? Are you still there?"
    Rolling her eyes, she wondered where he thought she might have gone. "I suggest, Mr. Swanson, that we cut our losses."
    "You suggest we what?" He was beginning to sound as though he were reaching the end of his resources. That was good; a man with no resources was much easier to manipulate. "But the police…"
    "If you'd intended to call the police, you'd have already called them.
    As you called me, I suggest you take my advice. Go back to the body and bury it."
    "And what?"
    "Bury it. Sullivan had neither family nor friends. If he disappears, no one will notice but the staff at the clinic and I can handle them."
    "I can't just bury him!"
    "Neither can you bring him back to life. Since he's dead and we don't want the police or the public discovering what we've been doing, I suggest you find a shovel."
    "I can't bury him here! Not here."
    She counted to three before replying. "Then put him in your car and take him out into the mountains. People disappear in the mountains all the time."
    "Where in the mountains?" He was almost whimpering on the other end of the line. "You've got to come here. You've got to help me."
    "Mr. Swanson, Richard Sullivan was over six feet tall. I'm barely five foot two. I don't see how I can be much help."
    "But I can't…"
    "Then call the police."
    There was a long pause. "I can't."
    Dr. Mui leaned back against her pillows. She'd known that, or she'd never have suggested it. "Then listen carefully and I'll give you what help I can." The more dependent Ronald Swanson was on her, the better. "There's an old logging road just inside Mt. Seymour Park…"

    They'd moved out into the living room. With only one exit from the bedroom and Henry standing in it, Vicki had begun to grow agitated.
    "So what you're saying is, Ronald Swanson is about to go bury Richard Sullivan out where Mike thinks the rest of the bodies are buried."

    Henry nodded. "That's what I'm saying."
    "Then let's go." Vicki began to stand, but Celluci pulled her back down beside him on the couch. "What?" she demanded, turning to glare at him.
    "Look at the time," he said wearily.
    "Mike, we've got over an hour."
    "To do what?"
    She stared at him for a long moment, then threw herself back against the sofa cushions. "I know, don't tell me, you want Henry to go find a patrol car and make up another story."
    "No. With the amount of rain they have around here, it'd take a damned good forensics team to get all the evidence they need out of that clearing. I want this whole thing blown wide open with no chance of putting the genie back in the bottle."
    "You want?" Vicki exchanged a listen-to-him glance with Henry; the haunting had begun as his problem and her case, but they'd both lost control. Any other time, Vicki would've stomped all over that, but with Mike safely back beside her, just exactly who was in charge didn't seem to matter—although honesty forced her to admit that was unlikely to be a permanent state of mind. "And how do you intend to accomplish what you want?"
    Wincing as abused muscles protested the movement, Celluci reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Out of the wallet, he pulled a business card. "I'm going to wake up Patricia Chou.
    After all, I promised her the story."
    "And what makes you think she's going to believe you when you tell her to climb a mountain at three in the morning in search of tabloid enlightenment?"
    He shrugged and regretted it. "She really wants Swanson."
    "Yeah? And how much of a part in her story is she going to expect you to play?"
    "None."
    "None?" Vicki repeated, lip curling. "Yeah. Right."
    "Apparently, she's been willing to risk jail in the past to protect a source."
    Vicki snarled softly but passed him the phone. "Well, you'd better hope she's apparently willing to risk it this time, too."

    His hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel, Swanson turned onto the logging road. In spite of the hour, there'd been lights behind him all along Mt. Seymour Drive and he'd very nearly panicked as they followed him into the park. If they followed him again…

    But they didn't.
    He was watching the mirror so closely, he almost lost control of the car in the deep ruts. Trying to ignore the sound of the rear shocks compacting under a bouncing weight, he fought the