Blood Pact

deep shadow. While it wouldn't be unusual for a passerby to be drawn by the screams, anonymity when possible ensured a greater degree of survival for his kind. With less noise than the wind made brushing up against the limestone walls, he began to move away. The girl was safe and although he would have intervened had he been in time, he had no interest in the myriad ways that mortals killed mortals.

    "Like the guy looked like he was dead! Like all rotten and dead! I am not hysterical! Like I've seen movies, you know!" The last word trailed off into a rising wail.

    The guy looked like he was dead.

    And a corpse gone missing.

    Henry stopped and turned back. There was probably no connection. He moved silently forward, around the edge of a building, and almost choked. The scent of the death he'd touched at the funeral home lay so thick on the grass that he had to back away. Skirting the edges, and that was closer than he wanted to go, he traced it to a pothole shattered access road and lost it again.

    At the sound of approaching sirens, he pulled the night around him once more and made his way back to the parking lot. He would watch and listen until the drama played itself out. The girl could very well be hysterical, terror painting a yet more terrifying face on murder. The police would surely think so. Henry didn't.

    If Henry comes up empty at the morgue, I'll have him start riding the buses. A young Asian male sitting just in front of the back door eating candy shouldn't be too hard to spot. Celluci can do the day shift. Vicki circled the Brock Street transfer point on her bus map. It wasn't much of a lead, but it was the only one they had and she knew it was one the police would have neither time nor manpower to follow. If Tom Chen, or whatever his name was, was still in Kingston, and still riding the buses, they'd find him eventually.

    Eventually. She sat back on the couch and rubbed her eyes under her glasses. That is, if he's still in Kingston, and if he's still riding the buses.

    And if he wasn't?

    What if he'd thrown her mother's body into a car and driven away? He might not only have left the area but the country as well.
    The Ivy Lea Bridge over The Thousand Islands to the States wasn't far and with the amount of traffic that crossed daily, the odds of his car being searched by Customs were negligible. He could be anywhere.

    But he knew her mother. There was no other reason for him to pass over the other bodies that had come through the funeral home and then run off with hers. Specifically hers. So the odds were good he had his base in the area.

    That took care of who and where. Or, at least, that assembled as much information as they had.

    Vicki dug her fingers into the back of her neck, trying to ease the knots of tension that tied her shoulders into solid blocks, then bent over the coffee table again, ignoring the knowledge that she'd be more comfortable in the kitchen. Stacking her notes on Tom Chen neatly to one side, she spread the contents of Dr. Friedman's file over the table. Who and where and when and even how ; she had notes on all of these, a sheet of paper for each with the heading written in black marker at the top of the page. Only why remained blank. Why steal a body? Why steal her mother's body?

    Why didn't she tell me she was so sick?

    Why didn't I answer the phone ?

    Why didn't I call her?

    Why wasn't I there when she needed me?

    The pencil snapped between her fingers and the sound drove Vicki back against the sofa cushions, heart pounding. Those questions weren't part of the investigation. Those questions were for later, for after she'd got her mother back. Left hand pressed against the bridge of her glasses, Vicki fought for control. Her mother needed her to be strong.

    All at once, the lingering smell of her mother's perfume, cosmetics, and bath soap coated nose and throat with a patina of the past.
    Her right fist dug into her stomach, denying the sudden nausea. The ambient noise of the apartment moved to the foreground. The refrigerator motor gained the volume of a helicopter taking off and a dripping tap in the bathroom echoed against the porcelain. An occasional car sped by on the street outside and something moved in the gravel parking lot.

    Gradually, the other sounds faded back into the distance, but the footsteps dragging across the loose stones continued. Vicki frowned, grateful for the distraction.

    It could be Celluci returning from the fish and chip store