I hit the record button, ignored the fact that my hands were still shaking, and propped the phone in position.
“The victim’s name is Hank Surrey,” I said, moving around to the other side of his body so I wouldn’t obstruct the recording. “One shot was fired to the middle of his forehead, resulting in a clean kill.”
I didn’t bother adding that I’d fired in self-defense. It wasn’t really relevant in this case, and Jack didn’t care anyway.
I reached into Surrey’s pockets and began pulling items out. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be me doing this but Cole. But given that Surrey wasn’t actually responsible for the killing, we needed to find some answers fast.
Or rather, I needed to find the answers fast.
“Handkerchief and three-fifty in coins found in left front pocket of jeans.” I dumped those back, then moved to the right side. “Wallet found in right side pocket.”
It contained about forty dollars in cash, several credit and key cards, and several bits of folded-up newspaper. I repeated this for the phone’s benefit, then drew out the paper and unfolded them. Both were newspaper clippings, and both were relatively small but explosive in their own way.
The first was a short article that had obviously been in his wallet for many years. The ink was all but faded and the paper so thin it was coming apart along the well-worn crease lines. It spoke about the brutal murder of a woman and her child in a park playground in Eltham, and it was little more than a couple of lines long. But that was enough to hint at the brutality of the event.
Surrey’s wife and adopted child, obviously.
No wonder the air had been thick with the scent of vengeance. Surrey had been holding on to his anger for a very long time indeed.
The other bit of paper was the ad he’d spoken about, and it simply said all personal problems solved, and gave a contact number. It was a land line rather than a cell phone, and in this day and age that was unusual.
I repeated it for the benefit of the recording, then continued searching, but there was little else of interest. Moving the search to the van produced the same result. I stopped the recording, then sent it to the Directorate and rang Jack.
“Riley,” he said. “We’ve just installed a scrambler program onto your cell phone, so hopefully that’ll stop the scanners from picking up any information until we get a new number. What’s happened?”
“I cornered Surrey and he wasn’t happy,”
“Meaning he’s dead.” It wasn’t a question, and in so many different ways that was disturbing. The worst being the fact that Jack had no doubt that I would shoot to kill, and that certainty was the one thing I’d wanted to avoid.
I desperately wanted him to have doubts. Needed him to have doubts, for my own peace of mind if nothing else.
“Surrey’s soul rose and I questioned him. It appears he hired a hit man through an ad in the local paper. The clipping was in his wallet—”
“You recorded your search?” he interrupted. “Cole’s very particular about that.”
And I’d been told off enough times by him to do it automatically nowadays. “It’s already on its way to you, though you might want to warn him he’ll also find my prints in the van. I now need to trace the phone number I found.” I reached for the ad and read out the number. “I might as well go investigate it if we can pin down a location.”
“Hang on.” He plonked the phone down, then murmured something to whoever was in the main office with him. Papers shuffled, then he came back online. “The labs just came back with the latest test results.”
My stomach twisted, then sank. The tests had become such a regular part of my life of late that I barely even thought or asked about them. But if he was mentioning it, it could only mean the genetic markers had moved. I licked suddenly dry lips and said, “And?”
“And it appears your DNA is shifting toward vampire.”
I frowned. “That really isn’t unexpected.”
Especially given Rhoan was already more vampire in his genetic makeup. It was always a possibility that eventually I’d head down that path, even without the DNA-altering drugs that Talon had given me.
“To some extent, it’s not,” Jack agreed. “But they’re not the changes we were, to some extent, expecting.”
Why was I not surprised? I rubbed a hand wearily across my eyes and said, “So what’s happening?”
“We’re not exactly sure.” For a minute, he sounded almost as weary as I did. But then, me becoming more vampire-like seriously cocked up his plans for a day division. “We’ve compared your results to Rhoan’s. His have been stable for years—and yours are not comparing favorably.”
“Meaning whatever is happening, it’s not making me like Rhoan?” Which in some ways was a good thing, because Rhoan had to drink blood during the full moon, and that was something I was desperate to avoid. I hated the taste of blood, even when it came after the thrill of chasing and catching rabbits.
If Jack was right, it seemed I was going to avoid the whole blood-taking thing—but at what cost?
What exactly was that damn drug turning me into?
“Given our success rate at predicting where these changes will go, I think it’ll be safer if we upped the monitoring.”
And wasn’t that what I wanted to hear. The tests might not bother me as much as they used to, but there were some months where I could sympathize with pin cushions. “Are we talking weekly?”
“At least.”
Crap. “It’s not going to alter anything, Jack. It’s not going to help.”
“It’s better that we track the changes rather than find out the hard way, Riley.”
I guess so.
“Okay,” he added, “we have the address. We’ll send it through to your onboard.”
Which I was nowhere near. And suddenly part of me didn’t want to go anywhere near it. I drew in a shaky breath and blew it out slowly. It didn’t help calm the nerves or the aching desire to just flee. “I’ll head there now, then go for lunch.”
“Keep the com-link on, Riley.”
He hung up. I shoved the phone into my pocket, then pushed to my feet. The smell of blood stung the air, metallic and cloying. I briefly wondered if that smell would ever call to me. Just because my DNA seemed to be veering away from that aspect of vampirism didn’t mean it couldn’t veer back.
I turned resolutely on my heel and walked away. I couldn’t change what was happening to me, and I wasn’t about to spend time dwelling on it. I had enough troubles on my plate; I didn’t need anything extra. I t didn’t take me long to fly back to my car, but three shape-shifts into seagull form in as many hours had totally shredded my top. I grabbed a T-shirt out of the trunk and dragged that on before jumping into the car and driving over to the address Jack had sent me.
It turned out to be a less-than-impressive-looking concrete apartment building in the back streets of St. Kilda. I found a parking spot several buildings down, then climbed out of my car and strolled back slowly. The apartment that was linked to the phone was situated on the fourth floor, which in this case was the top floor. I studied the windows but couldn’t pick which one was our target. They all had the same limp-hanging curtains, the only difference being the color. Some were blue, some were pink. All were sun-faded and somewhat grimy looking.
The building didn’t appear to have any sort of security system installed up front—which, given the somewhat rundown appearance of the place, wasn’t really surprising. The door was painted a gay red, but the paint was peeling and the wood pockmarked with holes. The air coming out of the place was a rich mix of sweaty humanity, cheap perfume, and sex.
Which suggested it was probably a brothel. And while brothels had been legal for more than a few years, I wasn’t sure they were supposed to be situated in this section of St. Kilda. As a general rule, they had to be away from main living areas, but it wasn’t unknown for councilors to be bribed to look the other way.