“As always,” Dahlia said absently. “And that’s a vampire we need to talk to, because somehow this human got left behind, or he hid himself. Obviously, the shepherd should have noticed.”
“A werewolf came through here, probably after the death. Perhaps more than one werewolf,” Katamori continued. He was crouched near the floor, and he looked up at Dahlia, his dark eyes intent. His black braid fell forward as he bent back to examine the floor, and he tossed it back over his shoulder.
“I don’t disagree,” Dahlia said, making an effort to sound neutral. Any trouble that involved the werewolves would involve Taffy. “I think we should tell Joaquin that the shepherd needs to come here now, or as soon as he’s returned.”
Katamori said “Yes,” but in an absent way. Dahlia went to the swinging door. As she’d expected, one of Joaquin’s friends, a wispy brunette named Rachel, was waiting in the hall. Dahlia explained what she needed, and Rachel raced off. Cedric had forbidden the use of cell phones in the mansion, and Joaquin had not rescinded that rule yet, though Dahlia had heard that he would.
In two minutes Gerhard, the shepherd of the evening, came striding down the hall to join Dahlia. She could tell by the way he walked that he was angry, though he was smiling. That perpetual smile shone as hard as Gerhard’s short corn-blond hair, which gleamed under the lights like polished silk. He’d lived in Rhodes for fifty years, but he and Dahlia had never become friends.
Dahlia didn’t have many friends. She was quite all right with that.
“What would you like to know?” Gerhard asked. His German accent was pronounced despite his long years in the United States.
“Tell me about taking the humans out of here,” Dahlia said. “How did you come to leave this one behind?”
Gerhard stiffened. “Are you saying I was derelict in my duties?”
“I’m trying to find out what happened,” Dahlia said, not too patiently. “Your execution of your duties is not my concern, but Joaquin’s. The man is here. He isn’t supposed to be. How did that come about?”
Gerhard was obliged to reply. “I gathered the humans together to leave. We came to the kitchen. I followed procedure by showing them the food and drink provided. After ten minutes, I told them it was time to go. I counted as we left, and the number was correct.”
“But here he is,” Katamori said, straightening from his crouched position by the body. “So either your count was incorrect, you are lying, or an extra human took his place. What is your explanation?”
“I have none,” Gerhard said, in a voice so stiff it might have been starched.
“Go to Joaquin and tell him that,” Dahlia said, without an ounce of sympathy.
“Well, then.” Gerhard became even more defensive. “This man and I had come to an arrangement. I left him here because upon my return we were to spend time together.”
“Though he had already donated this evening,” Dahlia said.
“His name was Arthur Allthorp. I have been with him before,” Gerhard said. “He could take a lot of . . . donation. He loved it.”
“A fangbanger,” Katamori said. Fangbangers, extreme vampire groupies, were notorious for ignoring limits.
Gerhard gave an abrupt nod.
Neither Dahlia nor Katamori remarked on the fact that Gerhard had initially lied to them. They knew, as did Gerhard, that he would pay for that.
“He was my weakness,” Gerhard said violently. “I am glad he is dead.”
This sudden burst of passion startled Dahlia and disgusted Katamori, who let Gerhard read that in his face. Gerhard whirled around to leave the kitchen, but Dahlia said, “What time did you leave with the humans? Was anyone in here with the man Arthur when you took the others away?”
Gerhard thought for a second. “I bade them get into the vans at ten o’clock, since that was the time appointed by the agency that sent them. There was no one in here. But I could hear people coming down the hall as I waited for the other donors to exit. I’m sure one of them was Taffy.”
Dahlia would have said something unpleasant if she’d been by herself. As it was, she was aware of Katamori’s quick sideways glance. Everyone in the nest knew that Dahlia and Taffy were friends, despite Taffy’s unfortunate marriage. Dahlia’s own brief marriage to a werewolf had been forgiven, since it had lasted such a short time. But Taffy showed every sign of continuing her relationship with Don, and even of being happy in it, to the bafflement of the other vampires of Rhodes. “We’ll have to find Taffy and Don and ask them some questions,” she said. “Gerhard, would you request this of Joaquin?”
Gerhard gave a jerky nod and barged out the door, shoving it with such force that it was left to swing to and fro in an annoying way.
Dahlia turned her attention back to the spray of blood on the fixtures and the blood pooled on the floor, still wet. “In my experience,” she said to Katamori, “it takes over an hour for blood to begin to dry. Given its tacky quality and the low temperature of this room, I believe the body has lain here for at least thirty minutes, give or take.”
Katamori nodded. They were both experts on blood. They looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It read ten forty-five.
“If Gerhard did leave with the humans at ten o’clock . . . say it took him five minutes to encourage them to put their dishes by the sink, and to get them out the door . . . then this Arthur was left by himself at ten oh five or ten ten. I talked to Cedric, and then I danced with Melponeus.” Dahlia was trying to figure out when the scream had brought the party to a halt.
“We heard Diantha at ten thirty,” Katamori said. With some surprise, Dahlia saw that he was wearing a watch, an unusual accessory for a vampire.
“And we were in here within a minute and a half of that. We’ve been investigating for perhaps twenty minutes. So someone entered the kitchen between ten minutes after ten and twenty-five minutes after ten, by the narrowest reckoning.”
“And this Arthur died of his throat being ripped out,” Katamori said.
“Yes. Though he may have been choked before that. Without the excised material it’s hard to say.”
“It’s over here.” Katamori pointed to a grisly little mound of skin and bone half-hidden under a chair.
Dahlia squatted to peer at the discarded handful. “This is so mangled, I still can’t say whether he was choked. This tissue was tossed aside, not consumed.”
Katamori made a moue of distaste.
Dahlia said, “I was thinking of the trace of werewolf, and all that that implies.” Werewolves would eat human flesh, at least when they were in their wolf forms.
“Do you think we’ve seen everything there is to see, smelled everything there is to smell?” Katamori asked, tactfully bypassing the werewolf issue.
“Let’s go through the human’s pockets,” Dahlia suggested, and Katamori squatted on the other side of the body. Dahlia had quick, light fingers, and she was thorough. Folded and stuck in a pocket on her side of the corpse, she found a sheet from the donor bureau containing a rendezvous point and a scheduled donation time for tonight. Just as Gerhard had said, the donors were to be picked up at eight, then returned to the pickup point at ten.
Dahlia wondered if Gerhard had told Arthur to make sure he was included on the donor list. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Gerhard’s favorite banger had been included in the donor party. In the last four years it had become a regular practice for the hosts of parties to which vampires had been invited to hire donors from a registered donor bureau, so they could be sure that all the human snacks on offer had been examined for blood-borne diseases and psychoses. There was a disease vampires could catch from humans (Sino-AIDS), and donors had been checked for hidden agendas ever since a donor in Memphis brought a gun and opened fire on the assembled partygoers.
Dahlia opened Arthur Allthorp’s wallet to get his donation card, which was perforated with seven holes. The card was punched every time the agency sent him out. After Dahlia had turned over the body to go through the other pants pocket, Katamori patted down Arthur’s legs. To their surprise, he found a knife in an ankle sheath. Very careless. Gerhard’s inefficiency was now a mountain rather than a molehill.