Violets Are Blue

hurt you pretty bad.”
    Dos Santos snorted. “Pretty bad? They broke two ribs, broke my arm. They knocked me down ’bout six times. Fortunately, they knocked me right down a goddamn hill — side of a mountain, actually. I started rolling. Got up. Ran my ass off.”
    “The initial report said that you didn’t see either of them very well. Then you claimed that they were in their forties or fifties.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was foggy. That’s an impression I had. Earlier that night, I went to the Fang Club on West Pico. It’s the only place where you can meet real vampires and live to tell about it. So they say. I was going to a lot of Goth clubs back then — Stigmata, Coven Thirteen, Vampiricus over in Long Beach. I worked at Necromane.
What’s Necromane
?” she asked, as if it were a question we would want answered. She was right. “Necromane is a boutique for people who are really into the dead. You can buy real human skulls there. Fingers, toes. A full human skeleton if that’s your thing.”
    “It’s not,” Jamilla said. “But I’ve been to a shop like that in San Francisco. It’s called the Coroner.”
    The girl looked at her contemptuously. “So I’m fucking impressed? You must be very cool. You must live right on the edge.”
    I spoke again. “We’re trying to help you. We—”
    She cut me off. “Bullshit. You’re trying to help yourselves. You’ve got another big case. Those kinky murders in San Francisco, right? I can
read
, man. You could care less about Gloria Dos Santos and her problems. I got lots of them. More than you know. Who gives a shit, right?”
    “Two people were killed in Golden Gate Park. It was a massacre. Did you read that? We think it might be the same men who attacked you,” I told her.
    “Yeah, well, let me tell you something you better get straight. The two men who attacked me were
vampires
! Got that? I know this is impossible for you to wrap your little minds around, but there are vampires. They set themselves apart from the human world. That means they aren’t like you!
    “Two of them almost killed me. They were hunting in Beverly Hills. They kill people
every fucking day
in L.A.! They drink their blood. They call it feeding. They chew on their bones like it’s KFP — that’s Kentucky Fried People, chumps. I can see you don’t believe me. Well,
believe me
.”
    The door to the interview room opened quietly. A uniformed patrolman popped in and whispered something to Detective Kim.
    Kim frowned and looked at us, then at Dos Santos. “There was a killing on Sunset Boulevard a short time ago. Someone was bitten and then hanged at one of the better hotels.”
    Gloria Dos Santos’s face twisted horribly. Her eyes grew small and very angry. She flew into a rage, started to scream at the top of her voice. “They followed you here, you assholes! Don’t you get it? They followed you! Oh, my God, they know I talked to you. Oh, Jesus Christ, they’ll get me. You just got me killed!”

Part Two

BLOOD LUST

Chapter 22

    I ALWAYS liked working tough murder cases with Kyle Craig, so I was glad that he would be joining Jamilla Hughes and me in Los Angeles later that day. I was surprised, however, when I saw Kyle already at the murder scene in Beverly Hills when we arrived. The body had been found at the Chateau Marmont, the hotel where John Belushi had overdosed and died.
    The hotel looked like a French castle and rose seven stories over the Sunset Strip. As I entered the lobby, I noticed that everything looked to be authentic 1920s, but dated rather than antique. Supposedly a studio boss once told the actor William Holden, “If you have to get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.”
    Kyle met us at the door of the hotel room. His dark hair was slicked back, and it looked as if he’d gotten a little sun. Unusual for Kyle. I almost didn’t recognize him.
    “This is Kyle Craig, FBI,” I told Jamilla. “Before I met you, he was the best homicide investigator I ever worked with.”
    Kyle and Jamilla shook hands. Then we followed him into the hotel room. Actually, it was a hillside bungalow: two bedrooms, a living room with a working fireplace. It had its own private street entrance.
    The crime scene was as depressingly bad as the others. I recalled something typically pessimistic that a philosopher had written. I’d once had this same thought at a grisly crime scene in North Carolina: “Human existence must be a kind of error. It is