Dead Spots

Janine Malaka was a Hawaiian woman in her mid-forties, pretty and chunky, wearing a long bright-blue-and-yellow muumuu. She greeted Jesse with the wary respect that is often borne of a long history with the police department. When he explained that he was asking about Freedner, she shrugged and took the chain off the door, ushering him inside.

“I haven’t seen Tom in years,” she said, leading him to a worn fabric sofa that had been carefully patched and restuffed. “We was working together at the Stop and Go over on Franklin Street, you know? Just before he got caught dealing that last time? We was just friendly. Used to buy a little pot from him, now and again. What’d he do now?”

“Nothing at all, as far as we know,” Jesse assured her. “We just want to ask him some questions about a case. Have you heard from Tom since he was released from prison?”

“Naw. Him and me was never friendly after he went in.” She shrugged. “Was more of a work friendship, you know? Never slept with him or nothin’. He was into guys. But I happened to be hangin’ with him when the cops came for him the last time, so they took down my name.”

“Do you know about his...other activities?”

“You mean the vampire stuff?” She laughed again. “Yeah, he told me once. We was high as kites and I didn’t believe him, but then he showed me the scars. I figured him and his friends like to run around and play vampire.” She shrugged. “Never bothered me none. All kinds in this town.”

Jesse was getting frustrated. He checked his watch—only a few minutes until he had to go meet Scarlett. “Do you have any ideas about where Tom might go if he was in trouble?”

She made a show of thinking it over. “You try his friend who plays the vampire? Abe something?”

“Yes, ma’am” Jesse lied. “He wasn’t helpful.”

Malaka shrugged again. “The thing you need to know about Tom,” she said with a new fierceness, as though she’d only just realized she was in the conversation, “is that the vampire stuff was what he lived for. It’s all he talked about, like he was in love with vampires the way that some are in love with people.”

Jesse frowned. “What do you think would happen if it were taken away? If he couldn’t...play vampires anymore?”

Her face lost its dopey relaxation, and the look she gave Jesse was serious and a little scared. “Then I think that boy would flat-out lose his mind.”

Chapter 25

Despite my deadline, I was really, really looking forward to getting a few hours of sleep back at Molly’s. After forty minutes of traffic, I finally hung my bag and my canvas jacket on the hook that Molly had put up inside the door for me and headed for the kitchen, planning to grab some crackers and a shower and go to bed. Before I’d taken a full step into the room, though, I stumbled and almost went down, grabbing the doorframe for support. There was a bouquet in a vase on Molly’s kitchen table: two dozen purple mums. A little white card was folded open on the table, leaning against the vase. Hugging the wall, I moved close enough to see the generic cursive writing: Just Because.

Florists don’t open until daylight, and Molly hadn’t been “awake” all morning.

Someone had been in the house.

I edged around the table as if it might be booby-trapped and picked up a butcher knife from the block next to the fridge. We don’t use the knife set much—Molly rarely cooks, for obvious reasons, and I do more assembling than actual cooking—so it was plenty sharp. Keeping my back to a wall, I edged through the house to the staircase, ran up the stairs two at a time, and burst into Molly’s room, feeling a vampire presence enter my radius and praying that it was Molly. She had boarded over the windows in her room years ago, so I flipped the light on, holding my breath, and saw her lying on the bed, looking peaceful. I closed and locked the door behind me and went over to shake her shoulder. “Molls? Molly? Are you okay?”

Her eyelids fluttered, and I sighed with relief. She took one look at my face. “Yeah. What’s with the knife?” Her voice was perfectly calm. When you’re two hundred–odd years old, you’ve probably been through an emergency or two.

“Someone’s been in the house.”

We searched the house room by room, me with the butcher knife and Molly wearing her Sailor Moon nightie, and found nothing besides the flowers and a busted knob on the back door. When we were positive that nobody else was there, Molly put on her bathrobe—I waited at the bottom of the stairs to stay in range—and then I returned the knife to the kitchen and started the coffeemaker. There was no way I’d be going to sleep anytime soon.

Molly perched on one of the stools, looking livid, while I filled her in on my suspicion that the La Brea Park murders were somehow connected to me.

“I cannot believe,” she spat out when I had finished, “that some asshole was in my house while I was...sleeping.” I realized that the Welsh accent had crept back into her voice. Jesus. I’d never seen her this upset. She was still human, of course, but I could see the predator beneath the cheerful exterior. “When I find that fucker, I will rip his goddamned heart out, and I mean that literally.”

I said nothing, just huddled around my coffee, waiting for her to wind down. After a few minutes, she looked over at me. “What? What are you thinking?”

“I’m really sorry.”

She sputtered a little mid-sip, then put her cup down. “What for?”