I stared after him, wondering what that meant. Then I was jarred from my thoughts by a hand on my back. I turned to see Quinton, his brows drawn down and a small orange light outlining his form as he peered at me in the waning light of the fire.
“Did he say something?”
A rattle of wings from the darkness made me cover a shiver with a shrug.
“Something about death and fools. I think he’s unimpressed.”
“Grass and Jenny and I have made a list of who’s missing.”
I’d lost a few minutes in my reverie. I glanced at Tall Grass and Jenny, who both appeared a lot more trashed than before. I shot a questioning look at Quinton. He pointed at the empty bottle on the ground.
Jenny tittered. “Good stuff, Maynard.”
“Jet fuel is what it is,” Quinton corrected.
“S’good though,” she replied, and broke into half-swallowed guffaws that sounded like whale hiccups.
Tall Grass wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into his chest, kissing drunkenly at her head and mostly getting the hat under his lips. He growled and jerked it off, revealing messy, butched-out brown locks. He managed to snare her short hair in his fist and yank her head back, exposing her thin face to his slobbering assault. They tumbled sideways into the ice-coated wall, groping and pawing at each other.
I rolled my eyes and pushed to my feet, banishing the complaints of my knee to a back compartment of my attention. I hoped those two wouldn’t get frostbite or set fire to anything, but that was about as far as my concern for Jenny and Grass went. “How do we get out of here?” I asked Quinton.
“Out’s easier than in.” He grabbed my hand and we went the same direction Jay had taken, away from Occidental, around the Second Avenue corner, and down the short stretch of tunnellike sidewalk to a recently installed metal door with a push bar on it. The door led into a tiny space with two more doors. The one on our right opened on a modern fire stair, and we went up it to exit on Second between the Cadillac Hotel and its neighbor.
We peered out of the doorway like frightened animals and found the cold street empty of all but ice and the unearthly chill of Grey mist. Quinton nodded. “OK. Let’s move. It’s too cold to stand here.”
We walked away toward my office. I felt a little disoriented, as if I’d missed something, so I kicked the conversation back into gear as we went. “All right. Who’s on the list?” I asked.
“The first of the strange dead bodies was a guy named Hafiz. No one was sorry to see him go. The Women in Black didn’t organize a vigil but just stuck him on the leaflets for the next time—that’s how much people didn’t like him.”
“Hafiz. Was he Muslim?”
“Not that I heard and certainly not that anyone cared. Being a mean-spirited ass seems to have universal application. Then Chaim Jankowski and now Go-cart. There’ve been a couple of other deaths, but they were from things like heart attack and drug overdose, so I’m not counting those. Just the weird ones.”
“Go on. Who else?”
“John Bear and Little Jolene, Tandy, Pranker Jheri—no idea what his parents were thinking with that name—and Felix.” He pronounced it the Spanish way:
Feh-LEEHKS. “There may be others, but that’s for sure. None of them would just take off or had anyplace else to go, and if they moved up, they’d have told someone. The Enhancement League tries to keep track of who makes it into housing, and there’s usually talk if someone’s been seen in another part of town. None of that’s true with those five.”
“So you’re thinking all of them are victims of vampires or whatever it was that killed Go-cart.”
“I’m leaning that way.”
We’d come to my parking garage and I stopped by the gate. “Sandy’s talk about the lack of blood gives me pause, but I’m still reserving judgment on the vampires. There is something going on, creating a pattern, and that’s disturbing. Even crazy ladies and homeless criminals are picking up on it—though I’m not putting too much store by any one set of remarks.”
“Smart. I live with these guys and I understand them, but most of them are at least a little nuts.”
“Crazy sounds like self-defense, here.”
“Yeah.” He looked at me for a moment in silence before continuing, his expression hidden by the shadow of his hat brim. “Better go home. Its too cold to stay out here.”
“Yeah. I’ll try to get some info from the medical examiner about Go-cart—Robert Cristus, right? — and look into cause of death on the others to see if there’s a real pattern or just an appearance. I’ll let you know what I find and see if that moves us anywhere.”
“All right. Then I’ll be seeing you.”
“Yeah.”
We stood and stared at each other for a moment. I felt exhausted and uncertain of a lot of things and Quinton seemed hesitant himself, but for a wavering second it seemed he might do or say something. But he didn’t and I wondered if my disappointment with Will was making me think all men were on the verge of untoward actions.
At last Quinton turned away a little and started to walk back toward First, lifting a hand to wave. “OK. Good night, Harper.”
“Good night,” I echoed and lingered a few frowning seconds before going to my truck and heading home to West Seattle.
It felt much later than it was and I was tired, cold, and distracted. I let Chaos out of her cage to romp around the living room while I took a shower and warmed up some soup for my dinner. The ferret followed me into the bathroom but had abandoned her post beside the tub by the time I got out.
I found her in the living room, curled up around a squeaky toy that was shaped like a small eggplant sporting Richard Nixon’s face. I scooped her up and put her in my lap while I ate dinner, but she didn’t want to stay there either and slithered down the chair leg to the floor to wander off and throw herself down on the living room carpet with a sigh, doing the flat ferret thing and staring at me as if I’d let her down by spending time outside her company. I just wasn’t measuring up to anyone’s expectations and I found myself irritated by it. I wanted to yell at someone and tell them off about what they could or couldn’t have from me. Chaos wasn’t the one who deserved it, but I wasn’t quite sure who did.
CHAPTER 7
“Harper, you’d better get back down here.”
It was five in the morning, so I was kind of groggy, but I recognized Quinton’s voice. “What’s happened?” I mumbled—the automatic response to such a statement as his. “Someone else has found a body. Near the park.” I sat up in bed, blinking. “Which park?” “Between Oxy and Waterfall. There’s already police securing the area, so I haven’t been able to find out who it is or what’s going on.”
“You think its another one like Thursday’s?”
“I’d bet on it.”
I groaned. “Great. I’ll be right there.”
No time for more than a splash of water on my face before I pulled on several layers of sweaters and a wool coat over my jeans and boots. Light snow had fallen overnight, and the air seemed no warmer although the radio report claimed the temperature had risen a whopping twenty degrees. My condo was in one of the coldest parts of the city. I figured they must have been reporting from Boeing Field, where the acres of tarmac on the windless plain of the airport always makes it hotter.
I negotiated the ice-crusted streets of West Seattle and crossed the bridge to downtown, where there was no sign it had ever snowed at all. The air coming off Puget Sound was warmer but still nowhere near the usual temp for January.
There were some cop cars, an aid car, a couple of city vans, and a small ant farm’s worth of busy people in official-looking clothes around Occidental Park when I arrived at my office building. I parked the Rover in my lot and walked back down the block toward the park.