The Scene (26 page)

“You don’t understand
, and I’m not obligated to explain it to you.” I wouldn’t look at him. My eyes looked at my hands and stayed there.

             
“Who’s Tatum bangin’ now? And why do you care? What the fuck is a Primus?” He changed the subject intentionally. Mike was well aware I’d leave if he kept riding my ass.

             
“Malcolm. I walked in on them at Embrace. She acted like she was doing nothing wrong. Then I find out this wasn’t the first time. She’s known a lot more about these vampire people than I ever knew she did. I don’t even really know what a Primus is exactly. I asked and received very vague answers. Oh and she tried to kill us on the way home today. Road rage, don’t worry I survived.” Eyes still trained on my folded hands.

             
“What dialect were you threatened in today?” He wasn’t being smart; this was not the first time I was threatened in a foreign tongue.

             
“Hungarian,” I said with a shrug.

             
“Ooh, that’s a good one. Rare. Not your typical Spanish or Hmong. Or even French, remember that one?” He literally laughed out loud. It was contagious. Soon enough, we were both laughing remembering the time some French broad chewed me out on Hollywood Boulevard for calling her sir. “I miss you,” he said suddenly.

             
Dammit.
“Mike, this isn’t the time. Seriously.” I looked back down at my hands.             

             
“Sorry. It’s the truth though. I do.” I didn’t respond.

             
We sat in silence for a long stretch of moments. I flipped through the file once again. Avoiding the photos, I scanned the report. It read almost identically as the others. Nude, young, Caucasian, dead; they were always dead. This one, however, was brunette, not blonde. Overweight, not tweeker skinny. Also, she had three separate bite radiuses located at each artery. Unlike most of the others who obtained incisions or puncture wounds. A deep bite gauging two inches in width, was located at the bend of the elbow; brachial. A smaller impression, measuring 1.78 inches width, found near the groin; femoral. Lastly, torn beyond exact measurement, a possible bite just above the collarbone; carotid.

Yeah, that’ll kill yah alright.

The other obvious difference was the abundance of information included in this file. The others, especially the first few, were only a page or two. There was an actual investigation here for one of two reasons. These idiot detectives have finally realized they have a serious problem on their hands, or his girl meant something to someone. I trust Mike to do his job, he’s an excellent detective, but if there hadn’t been a rash of these murders already plastered on the news when the first two hit his town, he probably would have done the same thing: nothing.

             
“Has the ME found any DNA?” I asked breaking the long standing silence.

             
“Not to speak of. Saliva was discovered but it was too contaminated or otherwise deteriorated to come up with anything concrete. She has roughly theorized that the suspects we are looking for are male, there are probably more than two of them, and they’re likely to have some knowledge of medicine. Also, there’s a possibility they have a female accomplice. “

             
“How can she know that? Maxi-pads found at the scene?” I half chuckled to myself.

             
“No dumb-ass. She found a long strand of hair on the Pico and Norton vic.”

             
“And she couldn’t get some kind of DNA off that?”

             
“That’s the thing, it wasn’t human. Wig hair or extensions she thinks. High quality, but the strangest thing, it was purple. It could have belonged to our vic. It did match her nail polish.” I sat in astonishment.

             
“I doubt it was hers,” I said shaking my head.

             
“Oh yeah and why is that, Watson?”

             
“Number one, I’m not Watson. If anything, you are Watson. Number two, it wasn’t our girls because I have a pretty damn good idea whose it is.”

             
“Someone from one of these clubs?” He sat forward eagerly.

             
“Yeah, just spoke with her this evening. She was acting all fucked up. Got pissed when I brought up her old friends from Fresno, especially an old fling of hers. Then she got into it with Cyrus and left. She was supposed to be working but she never came back. She has purple hair; nappy too, could be a wig. It’s a deep kind of eggplant color, hits just below the shoulders at its longest point.”

             
“From Fresno? Why didn’t you tell me this before? That, dear Watson, is a link. Do you know where she may be now?”

             
“No, we checked at Embrace, where I ran into Tatum. Another employee at Macabre called me to ask if I’d seen her around ten or so. We aren’t exactly best friends here. I really couldn’t tell you where she is. You’re the detective, go detect. And I am not Watson!”

             
“Why when I have you to do my dirty work?”

             
“Not anymore. You’re on your own. I got you this far, you can handle it from here. I’m going to just sit here on your couch in my pj’s and wait for the big bad coppa’ to bring in the bad guys.” There was no way any of that was going to happen. I was tired, yes, but I wasn’t giving up that easily. Nor was I going to sit at Mike’s house any longer than necessary.

             
“Here? On my couch? Hmm, I might have to drag my feet a bit on this one.”

             
“Oh and risk more lives? No one on your couch is worth that. It isn’t even funny to joke about.” I flashed to my doppelganger dead on the asphalt.

             
“Well, when you put it that way, you take all the fun out of it.” I rolled my eyes dramatically at his ridiculous comment.

             
“Why are you so relaxed? When I talked to you this afternoon, you were on the verge of a meltdown. Scared out of your mind that I was going to die or some crazy shit like that.”

             
“I can relax a little bit because I don’t have to worry about you when you’re right here. Besides, I’m a little rum-dummy from overexertion, lack of sleep, and having to look at that many naked dead chicks. Takes its toll.” He smiled sleepily. I smiled back and shook my head. I understood what he meant about not feeling right in the head. I’d been feeling the same way for days.

             
“I’m gonna go throw on my pj’s.” I swigged the last of my drink and deposited the glass in the sink before retiring to the bathroom for a bit.

             
His bathroom had never changed as long as I’d known him. The only difference now was none of my stuff was in it. No perfume or girlie deodorant. No lotions and tampons. Only a few manly magazines and an air freshener. Yeah, he’s one of those guys. Thirty minute trip to the John post food consumption. It never bothered me though. Bodily functions don’t really gross me out. My breath at that moment did. I did my business freshening-up and threw my comfy jammies on. I considered taking off the bra, my usual home routine, but decided against it. Probably not the best idea under the circumstances. Besides, I got too much going on in that region for it to be at all attractive.

             
I padded out of the bathroom on bare feet to find the couch empty.

Not again dammit
.

I called out for Mike and checked around the immediate area. Just as I was beginning to panic, I caught a glimpse of him out the back window.

              “I thought you quit?” I said through the sliding glass door.

             
“I did. Three times now. I’ve always been a better starter than a finisher.” He laughed like it was funny. I didn’t. The memory he was digging up stung deep in my core. It was a low blow intended just for me, and it had nothing to do with smoking.

             
“Gimme one,” I demanded.

             
“Didn’t bring your own?”

             
“They’re in my bag. Smokes, let’s go.” He followed my order well.

             
“You wanna go over some of the case files and see where we are?” he asked.

             
“I’m not a cop. How would I know?”

             
“You know more about this case than any one of these uniforms do. Probably more than me in some aspects.” I smiled around my smoke at his praise.

             
“I’m taking that as I compliment. Fine, but I’m seriously hungry. Food first.”

             
“Deal. Chinese delivery?”

             
“Sounds amazing,” I said.

             
He ordered, we ate, and then we moved on to some light reading. Every vic the same. Some differences due to location and timing, but otherwise the same. Mike and I agreed on nearly everything, from the fact it seems to be a pack of some kind, probably three maybe more suspects. To the fact that Malcolm and his merry men are in on it somehow. We disagreed on one thing. Cyrus.

             
“Dylan, I know you’ve some kind of sick infatuation with this guy, but he’s fucked. Call it a hunch. Call it jealousy. Call it whatever you want. It’s reality.”             

             
“Sure, but he didn’t kill anyone.” I was almost positive.

             
“How do you know this? Because he told you? People tell me they didn’t do it almost daily and you know what? They usually did. I might be totally wrong, but if I’m not, he’s dangerous. And for whatever reason, he has a thing for you. If I can clear him when this is all over, then, well…do what you want I guess. But until then, stay here, away from your place and away from those people. Please.” It was the please that caught my attention.

             
“Fine. But when, and I say when, because I know you’re going to do it, you talk to him and the rest of them, I want to be there. Please.”

             
“We’ll see.”

             
“Fine. These people scare me too. I’m not being completely blind and reckless, I swear. You haven’t seen them, been there at Embrace. It’s not your regular trendy Goth club. It’s…scary. The people there believe so much that they’re…well…vampires that they put on these big dramatic shows about everything. Arguing with each other about secrecy and pulling rank on one another. They have all these tricks they do with the mirrors and the lighting that makes you really believe too. It all feels like a bad horror flick.” I shook my head at the ridiculousness.

             
“But these vampires aren’t warded off by crucifixes and garlic. A bullet should do the trick though. The wondrous thing about reality is there’s no monsters, just people. And people can die.” He was speaking of bad people dying. My mind was stuck on the good; they can die just as easily.

             
“Just because man obtained the use of light doesn’t mean the darkness is not waiting for them in the shadows.” I nearly whispered this.

             
“What? Where did that come from?”

             
“Nothing. Something Cyrus said popped in my head. Something about creatures waiting for man in the dark.”

             
“He really is a space monkey. Dylan, there are no creatures of the night, no Dracula, no five-hundred year old bloodsuckers roaming the earth for centuries. Vampires do not exist.”

             
“Yes they do. They exist here.” I pointed to the photos lying on the table. “Maybe they don’t live forever or puff into dust if you stake them, but they’re not fictional characters. They are flesh and blood and residing right here in Hollywood. I know. I’ve seen them.”

             
“You feeling okay? Where’s my cynical, sarcastic, skeptic Dylan?” His hand ran over the top of mine.

             
“Here. With more knowledge and experience to know that just because the mass media makes it fantasy, doesn’t mean it isn’t real in some form. In fact, because of this, it is real. And it’s here to stay. And kill.” My words were threatening.

             
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”

             
“Or me,” I said toughly.

             
I was very tired by this point, tired of this conversation, tired of feeling left in the dark, just fucking tired. Mike and I had been talking for hours and it was quickly approaching four a.m. He and I looked over a few more photos and compared ideas, all of which were in concurrence with each other. As my eyes burned with sleep, I laid my head back on the couch. I could hear Mike breathing softly next to me; comforting. His mild cologne wafted into my nostrils making me grin. I listened to the sound of his even breaths as I drifted into sleep trying not to think about the many photos I had just fondled. And prayed.