Luxuria part five
Disclaimers in part one.
Coreen found Deb and together they raced to a neighbor's house, Mr. Leary's, to phone the police. Mr. Leary served them hot tea, but then left them in his living room so he could join the curious bystanders shivering in the cold out on the sidewalk. Deb couldn't stop crying but Coreen couldn't get past the shock enough to cry. She stood at the window watching as police and an ambulance arrived. She tried to think. There were things she should be doing-people she should call. Her roommates, they were in class, they didn't know. Oh, God, Renee. The police, she should talk to them, tell them, give a description. Oh, God, Renee's parents! Someone would have to tell them. Their landlord. He should be told. It all seemed overwhelming. She looked at Deb, sobbing on Mr. Leary's loveseat. She should say something, go to her. She needed comforting. But Coreen was frozen. All she could do was drink the tea.
She couldn't even dispel the feeling of numbness when she saw the ambulance team trundle a body covered in a sheet out to the back of the ambulance.
"Deb," she forced herself to say. "It'll be all right. It's all right. I'm sure he's long gone now."
"I let him in!" Deb wailed. "I don't know why! I just let him in!"
"It's okay. You couldn't know. He . . ." Coreen gave up. Her words were stupid and meaningless.
And it was strange. A little of the numbness began to wear off like fog getting thinner and Coreen started to think again. Why did Deb let him in? And did he have a gun or not? Hadn't she seen a beam of light shoot out of his hand? But it was a gun, of course it was a gun. And she . . . why was she holding that poker?
Three uniformed police officers came out of their townhouse, and with them was the guy! The murderer, the kid in the leather jacket! He was handcuffed, with his hands behind his back, and with an officer holding each arm. He walked with his head down, hair hanging in strings.
"Deb!" Coreen gasped out. "They have the guy, look! He didn't run!"
Deb joined her at the window. Whatever she said, Coreen didn't hear it, she was still involved with her own thoughts, her own memories. She had been furious with Renee, more angry than she could ever remember being, and she had taken that poker . . .
Why on earth hadn't she thought to call Vicki? She ran to Mr. Leary's phone. Or Mike? Mike-homicide detective, duh! Damn, she didn't know Mike's number. She started to dial Vicki at work but froze with her hand hovering over the phone's buttons. What was the number? How could she forget that, she had it memorized. Okay, still in a little shock. It was in her speed dial . . . but her cell phone and purse were still in the house.
Defeated, she turned back toward the living room, just as the door to the house opened. In came Mr. Leary and two policemen, one in plain clothes. They stomped in Mr. Leary's mudroom, shaking the slush and ice from their shoes.
"Hello there," said Mr. Leary gently, "The police need to talk to you girls."
Coreen nodded and moved to the plainclothes guy. "Please, can I talk to Mike Celluci?"
###
Henry had only just risen and dressed when there was a knock at the door. Since he'd been on his way out to feed, he hadn't been controlling his hunger and he only just got it leashed before he reached the door. Vicki was there holding a stack of folders. The hunger strained and struggled against the tether.
He wasn't sure what he said to invite her in, but he found himself hanging her coat and returning to her side. He had to tell her this was a bad time. He had to.
She set her folders down on a small table and Henry was there, at her shoulder, admiring the lines of her shape. She wore her hair in her all-business ponytail and he longed to take it down. Involuntarily, he reached out and brushed it off her neck.
"I need to show you something," she said, faltering a little when he touched her. Her heart, already beating fast, sped up.
He murmured something polite and took her forearms. They'd had a day of healing since his ministrations, but he still heard her catch her breath at his touch.
The hunger swelled, pressing against his walls. He swelled in response.
"I shouldn't have come so soon," Vicki said. "I'm sorry. Henry, please stop that."
He heard the warning, the danger, in those words. Not danger from her; from the consequences of being too obvious, of standing out in the crowd, of losing control. The sharp spike of ancient fear brought him to himself and he released her arms.
At least she didn't flee, not even in her Vicki-has-important-business-to-attend-to way. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. When she looked up at him, he saw startlement in her eyes and she hastily replaced her glasses. All his senses told him she was physically receptive to him. So what was the problem?
"But why?" he asked, unable to help himself. Unable to keep the loneliness and hurt from his tone. If she asked for an explanation of what he meant, he'd have to leave. His needs were too serious and his heart was too vulnerable.
She didn't. "I like to make these decisions with my head, not with other parts of me," she said.
He forced himself to consider that. It was true, he had seldom courted a woman in any way other than by appealing to her carnal desires. Even in ages when chastity was a prized and protected virtue, lust had always been his most successful path to what he wanted from a woman. But from Vicki he wanted trust and understanding. "I have better luck with the other parts," he admitted, sounding hoarse to his own ears.
"I can see you do," she said wryly. "Mine included. Don't you see how that makes it kind of manipulative? I don't care to be a conquest for you."
A conquest. Again he forced himself to try to see from her point of view. They'd never had a discussion quite this honest and he guessed this might be his only chance with her. He breathed more heavily than usual, scenting her mood, her arousal, her toughness, her power. Even the hunger paused in its writhing to let him think. He had to get this right. She believed . . . she believed his interest in her was only because she refused him. And what, he thought with despair, had he done to make her think differently? Somehow he'd assumed she knew. Or that it wouldn't matter if only he could take her to bed. He'd let his habits trap him. Damn, he was a fool.
He swallowed. "Do you think," he asked tentatively, "that I don't know the difference between sex and love?"
She took his question seriously, he sensed that. She seemed to think it over while empires rose and fell. He so needed to feed. He was not in good shape to be having this conversation.
"Well, I do think you have issues about sex and food," she said, turning it into a joke after all. Did she have to say food?
"That's what sustains me, sustains my life." The words poured out of him, unchecked. He had to resist a sudden archaic impulse to drop to one knee and take her hand. "Love is so much rarer and so infinitely more precious. For me, particularly, because it involves trusting someone with my life." He paused, in order to concentrate on brutally shoving the hunger away. Vicki was not weak-minded enough to yield to his suggestions, but like all humans she was affected by his need, and she knew enough to recognize the sensation. He didn't want her feeling it while he asked this. "Whatever you need my help with tonight, it has to wait. I have to feed. Now. Soon. Or else I die." All right, that was a little bit of melodrama, but so, what? "I’m asking your head and your heart, but no other part of you, am I dining out or in?"
###
Dave came up to Mike at his desk. "Mike, Jim says you can talk to the girl now." He nodded to the opposite side of the room where Coreen sat on the other side of Jim's empty desk. Mike scooped up his box of donuts and took them to Jim's desk where he perched on the edge. Coreen clutched her purse on her lap, and looked glad to see him.
"How are you doing?" He held out the box.
Coreen took a donut. "I kind of hate myself."
"Why's that?"
"Renee is dead. She's my friend and she's dead. Part of me wants to start today all over again and have her still alive, but there's a part of me that's kind of enjoying all this."
"Yeah, you're a terrible person. It'll hit you hard when you go home. You called Vicki?"
Mike had been pulled in to Jim MacReady's case because he knew one of the witnesses and she'd asked to talk to him. He'd been allowed to talk to her, to reassure her and advise her, all in the hearing of his colleagues. But the simple fact that he knew her was potentially a legal liability and protocol said Mike couldn't be on the case. He could only speak to her alone after the investigators had her statement six ways from Sunday.
Coreen wrinkled her nose at him and took another donut. "I can't reach her. I've left messages. Mike, I've got to tell you something about that guy. And about me. It was freaky. Something I couldn't tell . . . them."
"You can't withhold information in your statement. What were you thinking?"
"I'm telling you, aren't I? You're the police. You're the expert. You decide if anyone else needs to know."
Well that made a kind of sense. "What is it?"
###
Vicki knew what her answer would be, she just had to justify it to herself, and quickly, so she didn't leave Henry hurting.
Oh, hell, she'd figure out why later.
"Stay," she said, holding out her arms.
Henry really had a beautiful smile, she thought. He embraced her with a kind of sagging relief that made her feel oddly protective. She hadn't known him five minutes before she stopped thinking of him as young, but under the circumstances his appearance of youth gave her some conflicting signals.
It felt so good to hold him. She breathed in his scent-soap again, and maleness. He seemed to wear no other scents, perhaps they were offensive to his own nose. There were still so many things she didn't know about him and, and how he was. She was about to learn. She shivered once, and he tightened his arms around her. The hard length pressing against her from within his loose trousers was normal enough, and she smiled at feeling it. It was his teeth she was nervous about. His head was already buried against her neck. She started to say something, but was engulfed abruptly by a powerful sense of his need. She responded by going weak at the knees.
With disturbingly little effort, he swept her up into his arms. Startled, she clutched her hands around his neck, though in actual fact she wasn't the least bit off-balance. Not physically, anyway. His grip was strong and sure, but she felt foolish, nonetheless. She checked that her glasses were safely in place; she didn't care to see Henry as the pulsing red blur she had seen without them before. "You, romantic, you," she said. His beautiful smile beamed at her. Still no fangs, but . . . "I, um, should ask, how does this work?"
"I'll show you," he said, his smile broadening, and he carried her to his bedroom.
###
Mike got permission to talk to the boy when everyone else was done with him and before they hauled him off to Holding. MacReady briefed him. He'd had no ID on him and had refused to give them a name. He'd been cooperative otherwise, admitting to killing the girl, though he gave no motive. He'd apparently stayed in Coreen's townhouse after the single murder, his gun dropped on the rug. Officers had found him there and taken him in with no struggle.
"Is he a nutcase?"
"Probably. He'd barely talk to the shrink, but she did get enough to call him delusional. It's early days yet."
Mike nodded. The business of diagnosing insanity in suspects was always blurred at first by ordinary shock, fear and self-interested deception. Even in the sane and innocent.
"One thing, though," Jim said with a shrug, "every now and then he'll look at someone and say, 'You aren't the one.'"
Mike had nothing to say to that. "You guys give him anything?"
"A confessed murderer? Nah. He hasn't had anything since he got here, not even a bathroom break. You want to play good cop, go ahead. There are two uniforms outside the room. Look, you can't be on the case, so we won't record you or observe, but let me know if he tells you anything interesting, okay? He's pretty tight-lipped."
Mike installed Coreen behind the two-way mirror and prepared to enter the room. Interviewing a suspect in the interrogation room-an ordinary part of his day, but Mike was apprehensive about what he would find in there. He wished absurdly for a cross or some kind of arcane protection. He squared his shoulders, nodded to the officer at the door, and went in.
The room felt normal enough. The boy sat at the table slightly slumped in his chair, his hands still cuffed behind his back. Straight black hair hung down, draping his face. He looked up at Mike with blue eyes that held no fear, and raised his head. Mike took the interrogator's seat.
"Who are you?" Mike asked.
"You are the one," the boy said. "But I can't answer that."
"I am the one what?"
"The one I've been waiting for. Ask me your questions."
Well, Mike had just asked one question and got nowhere with it. "Did you kill Renee Chien?"
"Yes."
"But did you shoot her? Not everyone saw it that way."
The boy cocked his head, curiously. "Let those who have eyes to see, see. I killed her. It's enough."
"Why did you kill her?"
"So I could get your attention."
"My attention? Because I'm the one?"
"Yes." The boy looked down at the table.
Mike grew angry. "You couldn't just give me a phone call, write me a note? You had to kill a young girl. You took her life! What kind of monster are you?" He hoped no one had joined Coreen in the observation room. "Are you a demon?"
The boy looked up at Mike with a deep sadness in his pinched face. "She was already chosen as a sacrifice. I couldn't prevent her death. But I could be the cause of it and deliver my message through you. You would have dismissed a phone call."
Mike's thoughts whirled. Insane. He could simply be insane. His calmness in his circumstances, his disinterested speech-it was Mansonlike, it was sociopathic. Even the sadness. But, while Coreen could have imagined the beam of light-people saw strange things under stress-he found her frightened confession of how close she had come to killing Renee Chien herself, convincing. Coreen would neither imagine nor invent that.
"What message?" It was the first of many questions he had to ask.
The boy fixed him with an urgent stare. "You must tell her, 'Have faith in your vision.'" Then he leaned forward and put his head on the table.
###
Continue to part six
Coreen found Deb and together they raced to a neighbor's house, Mr. Leary's, to phone the police. Mr. Leary served them hot tea, but then left them in his living room so he could join the curious bystanders shivering in the cold out on the sidewalk. Deb couldn't stop crying but Coreen couldn't get past the shock enough to cry. She stood at the window watching as police and an ambulance arrived. She tried to think. There were things she should be doing-people she should call. Her roommates, they were in class, they didn't know. Oh, God, Renee. The police, she should talk to them, tell them, give a description. Oh, God, Renee's parents! Someone would have to tell them. Their landlord. He should be told. It all seemed overwhelming. She looked at Deb, sobbing on Mr. Leary's loveseat. She should say something, go to her. She needed comforting. But Coreen was frozen. All she could do was drink the tea.
She couldn't even dispel the feeling of numbness when she saw the ambulance team trundle a body covered in a sheet out to the back of the ambulance.
"Deb," she forced herself to say. "It'll be all right. It's all right. I'm sure he's long gone now."
"I let him in!" Deb wailed. "I don't know why! I just let him in!"
"It's okay. You couldn't know. He . . ." Coreen gave up. Her words were stupid and meaningless.
And it was strange. A little of the numbness began to wear off like fog getting thinner and Coreen started to think again. Why did Deb let him in? And did he have a gun or not? Hadn't she seen a beam of light shoot out of his hand? But it was a gun, of course it was a gun. And she . . . why was she holding that poker?
Three uniformed police officers came out of their townhouse, and with them was the guy! The murderer, the kid in the leather jacket! He was handcuffed, with his hands behind his back, and with an officer holding each arm. He walked with his head down, hair hanging in strings.
"Deb!" Coreen gasped out. "They have the guy, look! He didn't run!"
Deb joined her at the window. Whatever she said, Coreen didn't hear it, she was still involved with her own thoughts, her own memories. She had been furious with Renee, more angry than she could ever remember being, and she had taken that poker . . .
Why on earth hadn't she thought to call Vicki? She ran to Mr. Leary's phone. Or Mike? Mike-homicide detective, duh! Damn, she didn't know Mike's number. She started to dial Vicki at work but froze with her hand hovering over the phone's buttons. What was the number? How could she forget that, she had it memorized. Okay, still in a little shock. It was in her speed dial . . . but her cell phone and purse were still in the house.
Defeated, she turned back toward the living room, just as the door to the house opened. In came Mr. Leary and two policemen, one in plain clothes. They stomped in Mr. Leary's mudroom, shaking the slush and ice from their shoes.
"Hello there," said Mr. Leary gently, "The police need to talk to you girls."
Coreen nodded and moved to the plainclothes guy. "Please, can I talk to Mike Celluci?"
###
Henry had only just risen and dressed when there was a knock at the door. Since he'd been on his way out to feed, he hadn't been controlling his hunger and he only just got it leashed before he reached the door. Vicki was there holding a stack of folders. The hunger strained and struggled against the tether.
He wasn't sure what he said to invite her in, but he found himself hanging her coat and returning to her side. He had to tell her this was a bad time. He had to.
She set her folders down on a small table and Henry was there, at her shoulder, admiring the lines of her shape. She wore her hair in her all-business ponytail and he longed to take it down. Involuntarily, he reached out and brushed it off her neck.
"I need to show you something," she said, faltering a little when he touched her. Her heart, already beating fast, sped up.
He murmured something polite and took her forearms. They'd had a day of healing since his ministrations, but he still heard her catch her breath at his touch.
The hunger swelled, pressing against his walls. He swelled in response.
"I shouldn't have come so soon," Vicki said. "I'm sorry. Henry, please stop that."
He heard the warning, the danger, in those words. Not danger from her; from the consequences of being too obvious, of standing out in the crowd, of losing control. The sharp spike of ancient fear brought him to himself and he released her arms.
At least she didn't flee, not even in her Vicki-has-important-business-to-attend-to way. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. When she looked up at him, he saw startlement in her eyes and she hastily replaced her glasses. All his senses told him she was physically receptive to him. So what was the problem?
"But why?" he asked, unable to help himself. Unable to keep the loneliness and hurt from his tone. If she asked for an explanation of what he meant, he'd have to leave. His needs were too serious and his heart was too vulnerable.
She didn't. "I like to make these decisions with my head, not with other parts of me," she said.
He forced himself to consider that. It was true, he had seldom courted a woman in any way other than by appealing to her carnal desires. Even in ages when chastity was a prized and protected virtue, lust had always been his most successful path to what he wanted from a woman. But from Vicki he wanted trust and understanding. "I have better luck with the other parts," he admitted, sounding hoarse to his own ears.
"I can see you do," she said wryly. "Mine included. Don't you see how that makes it kind of manipulative? I don't care to be a conquest for you."
A conquest. Again he forced himself to try to see from her point of view. They'd never had a discussion quite this honest and he guessed this might be his only chance with her. He breathed more heavily than usual, scenting her mood, her arousal, her toughness, her power. Even the hunger paused in its writhing to let him think. He had to get this right. She believed . . . she believed his interest in her was only because she refused him. And what, he thought with despair, had he done to make her think differently? Somehow he'd assumed she knew. Or that it wouldn't matter if only he could take her to bed. He'd let his habits trap him. Damn, he was a fool.
He swallowed. "Do you think," he asked tentatively, "that I don't know the difference between sex and love?"
She took his question seriously, he sensed that. She seemed to think it over while empires rose and fell. He so needed to feed. He was not in good shape to be having this conversation.
"Well, I do think you have issues about sex and food," she said, turning it into a joke after all. Did she have to say food?
"That's what sustains me, sustains my life." The words poured out of him, unchecked. He had to resist a sudden archaic impulse to drop to one knee and take her hand. "Love is so much rarer and so infinitely more precious. For me, particularly, because it involves trusting someone with my life." He paused, in order to concentrate on brutally shoving the hunger away. Vicki was not weak-minded enough to yield to his suggestions, but like all humans she was affected by his need, and she knew enough to recognize the sensation. He didn't want her feeling it while he asked this. "Whatever you need my help with tonight, it has to wait. I have to feed. Now. Soon. Or else I die." All right, that was a little bit of melodrama, but so, what? "I’m asking your head and your heart, but no other part of you, am I dining out or in?"
###
Dave came up to Mike at his desk. "Mike, Jim says you can talk to the girl now." He nodded to the opposite side of the room where Coreen sat on the other side of Jim's empty desk. Mike scooped up his box of donuts and took them to Jim's desk where he perched on the edge. Coreen clutched her purse on her lap, and looked glad to see him.
"How are you doing?" He held out the box.
Coreen took a donut. "I kind of hate myself."
"Why's that?"
"Renee is dead. She's my friend and she's dead. Part of me wants to start today all over again and have her still alive, but there's a part of me that's kind of enjoying all this."
"Yeah, you're a terrible person. It'll hit you hard when you go home. You called Vicki?"
Mike had been pulled in to Jim MacReady's case because he knew one of the witnesses and she'd asked to talk to him. He'd been allowed to talk to her, to reassure her and advise her, all in the hearing of his colleagues. But the simple fact that he knew her was potentially a legal liability and protocol said Mike couldn't be on the case. He could only speak to her alone after the investigators had her statement six ways from Sunday.
Coreen wrinkled her nose at him and took another donut. "I can't reach her. I've left messages. Mike, I've got to tell you something about that guy. And about me. It was freaky. Something I couldn't tell . . . them."
"You can't withhold information in your statement. What were you thinking?"
"I'm telling you, aren't I? You're the police. You're the expert. You decide if anyone else needs to know."
Well that made a kind of sense. "What is it?"
###
Vicki knew what her answer would be, she just had to justify it to herself, and quickly, so she didn't leave Henry hurting.
Oh, hell, she'd figure out why later.
"Stay," she said, holding out her arms.
Henry really had a beautiful smile, she thought. He embraced her with a kind of sagging relief that made her feel oddly protective. She hadn't known him five minutes before she stopped thinking of him as young, but under the circumstances his appearance of youth gave her some conflicting signals.
It felt so good to hold him. She breathed in his scent-soap again, and maleness. He seemed to wear no other scents, perhaps they were offensive to his own nose. There were still so many things she didn't know about him and, and how he was. She was about to learn. She shivered once, and he tightened his arms around her. The hard length pressing against her from within his loose trousers was normal enough, and she smiled at feeling it. It was his teeth she was nervous about. His head was already buried against her neck. She started to say something, but was engulfed abruptly by a powerful sense of his need. She responded by going weak at the knees.
With disturbingly little effort, he swept her up into his arms. Startled, she clutched her hands around his neck, though in actual fact she wasn't the least bit off-balance. Not physically, anyway. His grip was strong and sure, but she felt foolish, nonetheless. She checked that her glasses were safely in place; she didn't care to see Henry as the pulsing red blur she had seen without them before. "You, romantic, you," she said. His beautiful smile beamed at her. Still no fangs, but . . . "I, um, should ask, how does this work?"
"I'll show you," he said, his smile broadening, and he carried her to his bedroom.
###
Mike got permission to talk to the boy when everyone else was done with him and before they hauled him off to Holding. MacReady briefed him. He'd had no ID on him and had refused to give them a name. He'd been cooperative otherwise, admitting to killing the girl, though he gave no motive. He'd apparently stayed in Coreen's townhouse after the single murder, his gun dropped on the rug. Officers had found him there and taken him in with no struggle.
"Is he a nutcase?"
"Probably. He'd barely talk to the shrink, but she did get enough to call him delusional. It's early days yet."
Mike nodded. The business of diagnosing insanity in suspects was always blurred at first by ordinary shock, fear and self-interested deception. Even in the sane and innocent.
"One thing, though," Jim said with a shrug, "every now and then he'll look at someone and say, 'You aren't the one.'"
Mike had nothing to say to that. "You guys give him anything?"
"A confessed murderer? Nah. He hasn't had anything since he got here, not even a bathroom break. You want to play good cop, go ahead. There are two uniforms outside the room. Look, you can't be on the case, so we won't record you or observe, but let me know if he tells you anything interesting, okay? He's pretty tight-lipped."
Mike installed Coreen behind the two-way mirror and prepared to enter the room. Interviewing a suspect in the interrogation room-an ordinary part of his day, but Mike was apprehensive about what he would find in there. He wished absurdly for a cross or some kind of arcane protection. He squared his shoulders, nodded to the officer at the door, and went in.
The room felt normal enough. The boy sat at the table slightly slumped in his chair, his hands still cuffed behind his back. Straight black hair hung down, draping his face. He looked up at Mike with blue eyes that held no fear, and raised his head. Mike took the interrogator's seat.
"Who are you?" Mike asked.
"You are the one," the boy said. "But I can't answer that."
"I am the one what?"
"The one I've been waiting for. Ask me your questions."
Well, Mike had just asked one question and got nowhere with it. "Did you kill Renee Chien?"
"Yes."
"But did you shoot her? Not everyone saw it that way."
The boy cocked his head, curiously. "Let those who have eyes to see, see. I killed her. It's enough."
"Why did you kill her?"
"So I could get your attention."
"My attention? Because I'm the one?"
"Yes." The boy looked down at the table.
Mike grew angry. "You couldn't just give me a phone call, write me a note? You had to kill a young girl. You took her life! What kind of monster are you?" He hoped no one had joined Coreen in the observation room. "Are you a demon?"
The boy looked up at Mike with a deep sadness in his pinched face. "She was already chosen as a sacrifice. I couldn't prevent her death. But I could be the cause of it and deliver my message through you. You would have dismissed a phone call."
Mike's thoughts whirled. Insane. He could simply be insane. His calmness in his circumstances, his disinterested speech-it was Mansonlike, it was sociopathic. Even the sadness. But, while Coreen could have imagined the beam of light-people saw strange things under stress-he found her frightened confession of how close she had come to killing Renee Chien herself, convincing. Coreen would neither imagine nor invent that.
"What message?" It was the first of many questions he had to ask.
The boy fixed him with an urgent stare. "You must tell her, 'Have faith in your vision.'" Then he leaned forward and put his head on the table.
###
Continue to part six