“Rachel?”
“Ummpf.”
She’d gone home around 8.30, pleading exhaustion. I could hardly have blamed her. But this call was absolutely necessary.
“It’s Stan. Stan Markowski.”
“Whaa? Stan who?”
“Rachel, Karl’s dead.”
There was silence on the line for three or four seconds, and when Rachel’s voice came back there was no sleepiness in it at all.
“You don’t mean undead, but dead for real?” she asked.
“That’s the problem – I don’t fuckin’ know.”
“What happened?”
I ran it down for her, starting with the arrival of the Patriot Party crowd and ending with Karl’s swan dive to the floor of the media room.
“Karl handled a crucifix?” Her voice was as dubious as mine would have been, if I hadn’t seen it for myself.
“Bet your ass he did,” I said.
“Without any burns on his hand, or any other ill effects?”
“Nope, none at all – unless you count what happened there at the end.”
“Handling holy objects,” she said, as if to herself. Then, a little louder: “There’s nothing in the spell that should have given him that kind of power. Although, I grant you, it’s still experimental, so who knows?”
“I don’t think it was the spell that did it.” I briefly explained the sessions that Karl had been having with Doc Watson to see if his aversion to holy objects was only psychological.
“That’s fascinating,” Rachel said when I’d finished.
“Yeah, fascinating,” I said. “But it doesn’t do anything about the fact that right now, my partner’s doing a pretty good imitation of something that you’d pull out of a drawer at the county morgue.”
More silence from the other end. “Rachel? You still there?” I shouldn’t have raised my voice to her like that – but it had been kind of a stressful morning. I decided to start acting like a grown-up. Better late than never.
“Shut up – I’m thinking. Or trying to.”
After a few seconds, she said, “Where’s Karl now?”
“In the trunk of my car, zipped up in a plastic body bag.”
“What’re you going to do with him?”
“I was kinda hoping to get some advice from you on that question.”
I heard her breath go out in a long sigh. “My Goddess, Stan, we’re dealing with stuff here that nobody else has ever had to think about, as far as I know.”
“Well, then, I guess it’s time somebody started,” I said. “I nominate you for the honor.”
“My cup runneth under,” she said. “Alright, let’s try to think this through. There’s nothing unusual about a vampire appearing to be a corpse during daylight hours, because he is a corpse – until sunset.”
“When were you planning to tell me something that I don’t already know?”
“Stan,” she said tiredly, “stop. I know you’re worried about Karl, and so am I. But please, just… stop.”
I made myself take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah, alright. Sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“But what happened, Rachel? This was the day that Karl wasn’t supposed to be a corpse, remember? He was supposed to be alive and kicking, all day long. What went wrong?”
“Any answer I might give to that is pure speculation at this point. Maybe the spell doesn’t affect every vampire the same way. The one that Annabelle worked with was conscious and functioning the whole day, she said – but it’s always a mistake to generalize from a sample of one. That’s true in both science and magic.”
I’d been about to say, “If you didn’t know whether it was safe, then why did you do it?” when the truth stood up and hit me right in the mouth. She did it because you and Karl asked her to, smart guy. Asked her – shit, you both practically begged her.
So, instead of making a complete ass out of myself, I just said, “Uh-huh.”
“Or maybe having to deal with that jerk holding the cross caused more stress than Karl’s system could handle, considering the strain he was already under.”
“Yeah, the cross was something none of us had counted on,” I said. “But, Rachel, you should have seen him – taking hold of that goon’s wrist, then catching the cross when it fell. I was so proud of him…”
“Yes,” she said, “as well you should be.”
I had to swallow a couple of times before I went on. Keeping most of what I was feeling out of my voice, I said, “It’d be nice if I get the chance to tell him that sometime. You think I will?”
“The simplest answer to that is also the most difficult,” she said, “because it involves waiting. Make sure you’re with Karl at sunset. Not to be blunt about it, but either he’ll rise or he won’t. Then we’ll know.”
“That’s it?” I said. “That’s the best you’ve got?” The promise I’d made myself to remain calm hadn’t lasted very long.
“Well, there is one other method,” she said, sounding like someone whose patience had just been used up. “The advantage of this one is you can do it right now, as soon as you get out to your car. But it does have something of a downside, as well.”
“What?” I practically yelled. “What is it?”
“If Karl is still among the undead, then he still possesses all of a vampire’s vulnerabilities. The sun’s shining nice and strong today – from my window, I can hardly see a cloud in the sky.”
I thought I could see where this was going, and I didn’t like it.
“So what you do,” Rachel said, “is open the trunk, unzip that body bag, and take hold of Karl’s arm. Pull it out of the bag until the sun is shining on it. If it bursts into flame, you’ll know that Karl’s OK – apart from his arm, of course. I imagine it’ll heal, eventually. Are you willing to do that to your partner, Stan? To your friend?”
“The fuck I am,” I said.
“No, I didn’t think so.” We were both quiet for a bit, being pissed off at each other, but when Rachel finally spoke, the anger had drained out of her voice. “I knew you couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t do it, either. So, I guess that means we wait, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said dully. “Shit.”
“And if you think the hours between now and sunset are going to be one tiny bit easier on me than they’ll be for you, Stan…”
“I know, Rachel. I know.”
“You’ll be with Karl then. Come sundown.”
“Fuckin’ A right I will be.”
“Then when you, uh, know for sure, call me, OK? No matter… no matter what.”
“Count on it.”
I sat in McGuire’s office, sipping from a cup of his excellent coffee and telling him what Rachel’d said about Karl. The coffee’s rich taste aside, I was just grateful for the caffeine. I felt more tired than I had in a long time, and only part of it came from being short on sleep.
“Fine,” he said when I was done, slapping a palm on his desk. “Just great. One of my detectives may or may not be deceased, and I won’t even know until” – he glanced at his watch – “something like five fucking hours from now.”
“We won’t know,” I said. I might’ve said that with a little more emphasis than I usually use with the boss, but like I said, I was tired.
McGuire stared at me for a second, as if he was wondering how I’d look with a shiny new asshole, but then blew out a breath between his lips and slowly sat back in his chair. “Yeah, alright. I know. It’s not all about me.”