I got up from the ground carefully, my goal was still not to slide on my ass in the mud. High-heeled boots were not the best thing to wear to guarantee that. So I was careful. “The Sapphire has security people walking their lot. At least one security guy at any given time.
It’s the weekend, there should have been two. Did they see or hear anything?”
“One of them saw the girl come out with her coat on. She was headed home, done for the night. He saw her go toward her car”-he riffled back through his notebook-“then, she wasn’t there.”
I looked at him. “What did you say?”
“He said, she was walking toward her car, he waved at her, then something attracted his attention to the other side of the lot. He’s a little vague on what attracted his attention, but he swears he only glanced away, then when he looked back, she was gone.”
“Gone.”
“Yeah, why do you have that look on your face, like that means something?”
“Did he check her car right away?”
He nodded. “Yes, and when he didn’t find her at the car, he went back into the club to see if she’d gone back inside. When he couldn’t find her inside, he got the other security guy, and they started searching the area. They found her.”
“How long does he think he looked away for?”
“He says a few seconds.”
“Has anyone checked with anyone else inside, who might have seen her leave? I’d like to know what time she left the building, and how long he was really staring off in the other direction.”
“Let’s just get out of the hole and find someone who saw her leave and actually looked at a clock.”
He was riffling through his notebook again. The lights that they had directed down into the pit illuminated everything, in fact made it all a little stark, and pitiless, as if she needed to be covered up and not stared at anymore. Maudlin, I was getting positively maudlin.
“Actually, one of the ladies inside, a customer, had liked the blonde a lot, she and her husband. So she noticed the time when she left.”
“And how does it tally with the security guy’s statement?”
He checked the times back and forth. “Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes is an awfully long time to stare at something he isn’t even sure he saw.”
“You think he lied?”
I shook my head. “No, I think he told what he thinks is the truth.”
“I’m lost. What are you getting at?” Zerbrowski asked.
I smiled at him, but not like I was happy. “One of the vamps has to be a master, we figured that, but they also have to be able to cloud men’s minds enough to pull something like this off.”
“I thought all vamps could cloud men’s minds.”
I shook my head. “They can mesmerize one person with their gaze, and if they bite them, then they can blank their memory. If they’re powerful enough, they can mesmerize with the eyes and blank most of the memory. But the vic will usually have this vague memory of eyes, or sometimes an animal with blazing eyes, or car headlights that were very bright. The mind tries to make mundane sense of what’s happened.”
“Okay, so one of the vamps zapped him with its gaze.”
“No, Zerbrowski, I’m betting it wasn’t eyes. I’m betting it was from a distance with no direct gaze. I’ll talk to him, see what he remembers, but if he’s bite-free and doesn’t have some weird memory, then it was done from a nice safe distance, with no direct contact.”
“So what?” he asked, and he sounded irritated and tired.
I didn’t take it personally. “It means that one of the vamps is old, Zerbrowski. Old, and a master vampire. We’re talking fairly major talent here. It’s a limited list.”
“Names?”
I shook my head. “Let’s talk to the security guy and get him to strip down for us.”
He looked at me over the rims of his glasses, before he pushed them back up his nose. “Did you just say what I think you just said?”
“We’ve got to check him for vamp bites. If he’s clean, then we’re looking for a major player, vampirically speaking. If he’s got a bite, then not so major. Trust me, it’ll make a difference in who we talk to.”
“Is this Jean-Claude’s people?” Zerbrowski asked.
“No,” I said.
“How can you be sure?” he asked.
How could I be sure? I was tired enough that I let that be a question in my head, let me wonder what Jean-Claude would say. Would he guarantee that this couldn’t have been his people? The thought was enough, he was suddenly in my head. Shit.
He was seeing what I was seeing, not good at a murder investigation when the vic had been done in by vamps. I started to shield, to kick him out, but I suddenly knew the answer to my question. “My blood oath will hold them from this, because it is against my express orders to bring us to the negative attention of the human police.”
I thought, Liv broke your oath once, and he heard me. “I was notle sourdre de sang then. My oath is not so lightly shaken off now, ma petite. ”
I’d been quiet too long. Zerbrowski said, “You okay?”
“Just thinking,” I said. I’d known about blood oaths, but I hadn’t actually understood how important they were, or what they were supposed to mean. “Because all of Jean-Claude’s people have to take a blood oath. It binds them mystically to the Master of the City. He’s forbidden his vampires to do shit like this.”
“You’re saying the blood oath makes this impossible?”
“Not impossible, but harder. It depends on how strong the master is that they make the oath to.”
“How strong is Jean-Claude?”
I thought about a way to explain it and finally settled for, “Strong enough that I’d bet good money this wasn’t his people.”
“But you wouldn’t guarantee it.”
“Guarantees are for major appliances, not for murder.”
He grinned. “That’s cute, I may just have to use that one sometime.”
“Knock yourself out.”
The grin faded round the edges. “I still don’t really understand this whole blood oath thing. Maybe I’m just too tired for metaphysics, explain it to me again later.”
“Let me simplify it.”
“That’d be nice,” he said.
“I just learned tonight from the vamps I questioned that Malcolm has abolished the blood oath for the church. It’s too barbaric.”
Jean-Claude was still in my head and heard what I said. I got a rush of fear from him, fear bordering on panic.
“Okay, and that means what exactly?” Zerbrowski asked.
I had to take a deep breath to talk around Jean-Claude’s fear. His voice in my head said, “Are you certain of this, ma petite? ”
I let my out loud voice for Zerbrowski answer Jean-Claude’s question, too. “It means, Zerbrowski, that you have hundreds of vampires in this area that have nothing to keep them from doing shit like this, except their own consciences, and a morals clause they all sign.”
Jean-Claude was cursing in my head in French, and though I caught a word here and there, most of it was too fast for me.
Zerbrowski smiled, and the smile broadened until it was a grin.
“You’re saying that the church trusts its members to be good little citizens, and your boyfriend isn’t that trusting.”
“I’ll look at the new masters that have come to town at Jean-Claude’s invitation, but my money is on the Church of Eternal Life.”
“Dolph would say it’s because you don’t want it to be Jean-Claude’s people.”
“Yeah, he would, but I’ll tell you this, Zerbrowski, the thought that all these new little vampires have only their human morals to make them be good, makes me almost agree with Dolph.”
“Agree on what?”
“Kill them all.”
Jean-Claude said, “Do not say this out loud to the police, ma petite. It may come to that, and you do not wish your friend to remember this conversation.” He was right.
“Shit, Anita, some of your best friends are bloodsuckers.”
“Yeah, but there are rules to being a vampire, and Malcolm is trying to treat them like they’re just people with fangs. They aren’t, Zerbrowski, they really aren’t. Even if this turns out to be a bunch of rogues that somehow slipped through everyone’s radar. Mine, Jean-Claude’s, and Malcolm’s, we are so going to have to talk to him about his new policy.”