McGuire and I both turned to stare at him.
"Seems to me that Stan here has an appointment with a certain young lady, in about..." Karl looked out the window, at the setting sun. "...ten minutes or so. She said something just before dawn today, gave us the impression she might know where Sligo's daytime crib is."
McGuire looked at me with raised eyebrows. "You've got a snitch – somebody who'll give up Sligo?"
"Not exactly," I said. "But sort of."
"Who do you–" McGuire started, then I saw the light dawn. "Oh. You mean..." He flipped a glance toward Karl.
"It's all right," I said. "He's met Christine." There are some secrets you shouldn't hide from your boss, and Christine was one I hadn't kept from McGuire. I'd trusted him to keep his mouth shut about her, and he always had.
"We were talking to Christine this morning, and it occurred to me to ask her about Sligo. It seemed like she knew something, but then she had to leave, pretty quickly." I made a head gesture toward the window, where a sliver of sun could still be seen.
"You know," Karl said, "it occurs to me that even if she can give us Sligo's resting place, the motherfucker'll be gone by the time anybody could get there, and we can't wait until he comes back for beddy-bye at dawn. It'll all be over by then, one way or another."
"But if we know where he's been, maybe we can figure out where he went, if we move fast," I said.
McGuire nodded. "Then you'd better get your ass downstairs," he said. "Don't you think?"
Karl and I stood quietly near the fence in the gathering dark, listening to the crickets and trying not to think about the ugly death of Benjamin Prescott, PhD. I don't know about Karl, but my efforts weren't exactly a howling success – more like a screaming failure.
"So," I said after a while, "how 'bout those Mets, huh?"
Karl doesn't follow baseball, and neither do I. He likes hockey, and I've been a Knicks fan since I was a kid and got to watch the team hold their pre-season training camp at the U.
That thing about the Mets is just something I say to fill awkward silences, and Karl knew it. He came back with his standard response: "Get a couple of good trades, and they could go all the way this year."
We waited some more, not talking to ntil Karl said, "I'd say it's full dark, Stan."
"Yeah."
"Probably has been, the last ten minutes or so."
"Yeah."
We listened to the crickets for a while longer.
Karl said, "Could be she's not coming, Stan."
"Yeah."
More crickets.
"Maybe we oughta go back inside, tell McGuire."
"Okay." I still didn't move.
"Could be lotsa reasons she didn't show," Karl said. "Doesn't have to mean she's in trouble."
I whirled to face him, and my voice was ugly when I said, "Jesus, what do you think, Karl? That maybe she found herself a nice boyfriend? That she couldn't make it because tonight's the junior fucking prom?"
Karl didn't tell me to go fuck myself. He didn't even turn and walk away. He just stood there, looking at me. It was too dark to see his expression, but his posture didn't look like somebody who's pissed off and ready to fight.
I stood there and listened to myself breathe for a while, a sound I used to be pretty fond of.
"I'm sorry, man," I said quietly. "I got no right to talk to you like that. I guess I'm just …"
"I know," Karl said. "Forget it." He gave me a few more seconds, then said, "You feel like going inside now?"
"Yeah, might as well," I said. "She isn't coming."
We went back to the squad and found that we had a visitor.
It was Vollman.
I turned to Louise the Tease. My voice rising, I said, "I thought I told you–"
Vollman held up a hand, palm toward me. "Please, Sergeant, do not chastise this beautiful young woman. I have literally arrived within the last minute."
I looked back at Louise, who nodded quickly. "I was just looking up your cell number," she said. "Honest."
"Okay. Sorry, Louise," I said.
I politely asked Vollman to accompany us back to our part of the squad room. I was going to be very courteous to the old vampire/wizard – right up to the moment when I found an excuse to pound a two-foot stake deep into his aged, undead heart.
I was in kind of a bad mood.
As we approached our desks, McGuire came to his office door and looked our way. I shook my head, but then used it to gesture in Vollman's direction. McGuire nodded and went back to his desk. He'd understood what I meant: we'd missed one source of information, but just gained another one. Maybe.
Everybody sat down, Karl and me facing Vollman from maybe ten feet apart. He looked pretty much the same as last time, although the shirt was different – a pale green number with little roses all over it that had probably been the height of fashion just after the war. The Civil War, I mean.
"Been a while, Mr Vollman," I said. "We were beginning to think you didn't like us anymore."
The old face grew a tiny little smile. "Two charming young gentlemen such as yourselves? The very idea is absurd."
Never try sarcasm on a five hundred year-old vampire.
"We haven't got time to fuck around," I said, "so I'm going to take a risk and be totally honest with you about the situation we're facing here – as much as we know of it. I say it's a risk, because I'm pretty damn sure you haven't been honest with us, so far."
Vollman's bushy eyebrows made a slow climb toward his hairline.
"I'm not saying you atively lied to us, but you've withheld information, for reasons of your own. I'm pretty sure if we knew everything you could have told us a week ago, we would have closed this case already, and a pretty good man would have been spared a really ugly death."
"Indeed?" Vollman said softly. "I am sorry to hear of that."
"Maybe you are, maybe you're not. For all I know, you think of humans as nothing more than blood bags with legs. Some vamps do, I know."
Vollman frowned at that, but kept quiet.