Vampire Sun

Detective Sharp shrugged. “Three weeks ago.”

I made sympathetic sounds that I didn’t really feel. Truth was, these days, I found death a lot less…heartbreaking. I found death. more…interesting. Exciting, even.

No, she found death exciting.

Deep breaths, Sam.

“Can you tell me any more than that?” I asked.

He studied me, then nodded. “Broadsided over on Grand Street and Main.”

“Broadsided by who?” I asked. And just as the word escaped me, I silently cursed myself, certain it should have been “by whom.” Sigh. I might be undead, but that didn’t make me a grammarian.

“We don’t know.”

“Hit and run?”

“Yeah.”

“You knew him well?”

“Well enough.”

“Any leads?”

“We got some.”

“But nothing you’re willing to pass along?”

He studied me some more, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not until I know you better.”

“I could help.”

“We got enough help.”

“Fine,” I said. “What do we know about Lucy Gleason?”

“The broad who went missing from Starbucks?”

“Yeah.”

“We know she’s still missing.”

“What else?”

He studied me some more. He wasn’t sure if he liked me, which was hard to believe. He already felt like he’d said too much, which wasn’t much at all. I knew all of this because I was following his thoughts. He was just about to turn me away, claiming he was busy—he was, but not that busy—when I gave him a gentle telepathic nudge, planting the words directly into his mind:

Tell her everything. And get her a glass of water.

He blinked, nodded, and then said, “Follow me. And would you like some water?”

“Why, how kind of you, Detective,” I said and followed him out, hiding a grin. I should have felt bad that I was controlling another human being, forcing him to do something against his will.

I should have…but I didn’t.

In fact, I liked it a lot. Perhaps too much.

Lord, help me.

Chapter Twelve

I was waiting in another room when Detective Sharp returned with a glass of water and handed it to me.

He stared down at me for a moment, frowning. I peeked into his thoughts and watched him, trying to remember why he had agreed to help me further. He couldn’t remember why, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and so he ran with it.

“Ready to roll,” said Detective Sharp, perhaps a little too excitedly. I might have encouraged him to help me a bit too much. “Come to my side of the desk. Bring your chair. This could take a while.”

I did as I was told, although I could probably stand all day, or all week. My legs didn’t ache, nor did my muscles grow tired. I think, in fact, that my muscles regenerated and refreshed in the microseconds during use.

Such a freak.

No, came the voice from down deep. Not a freak.

When I sat, Detective Sharp said, “Shall we get on with it?”

“On with what?”

“The Starbucks surveillance tape.”

* * *

These days, all surveillance tape can be downloaded as a movie file. I watched Jason rather expertly click through various screens and files until he found the one in question. It read: “Sbucks-MP-Feed1-Open” followed by the date and time.

“Have you gone over the tape?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

“When did you get the case?”

“Last week, when Renaldo’s case files got redistributed. Been meaning to look it over.”

“What were Detective Renaldo’s findings?”

“According to his notes—”

“Which you just read.”

“Yes, but I’d spoken with him previously regarding the case, too. We all had. We were all confused by her disappearance. We all offered theories. Nothing panned out. Anyway, according to Renaldo, there was nothing on the tapes that seemed to indicate that she had ever left the Starbucks.”

“So, she just disappeared,” I said. “Poof. Off the face of the earth.”

“Seems like it. Trust me, it fucked with Renaldo’s head. He took the case to heart, worked on it night and day, up until the day he died.”

“You mean the day he was killed.”

“Right.”

“So, what is on the tape?”

“I think it’s time to find out.”

He clicked on the file, and a window opened. He pressed play and I think we both sat forward.

“Too bad we don’t have popcorn,” he said.

“I wish I could eat popcorn.”

“You can’t eat popcorn?”

“Long story,” I said.

He shrugged, and we both watched the screen.

Chapter Thirteen

The wide-lens camera had been strategically placed.

Positioned in the parking lot at the side of the building, it provided both a wide shot of the front entrance of Starbucks and a side shot of the back door, too. One camera, both front and back doors. Nice.

A few days ago, Henry Gleason had emailed me the “missing person kit” that I always required for such cases: five recent photos, social security number, cell phone number, driver’s license number, contact information for family and friends, and anything else that he thought might prove helpful.

Although I had committed Lucy Gleason’s face to memory, I had seen the tape a dozen or more times at this point. Most people in the area had. Corona Police Department had released the tape to the public, asking for leads. According to Detective Renaldo’s notes, nothing had panned out. The case had gone cold with his untimely death.

So, what leads they had gathered from those anonymous calls, I didn’t know. But I would, soon. I recognized her immediately when she appeared from the bottom of the frame. There she was, moving right to left, toward the Starbucks. Had I possessed a normal pulse, it probably would have quickened right about now, thumping steadily just inside my temple. Instead, there was no physical reaction to seeing her, other than my own excitement level increased.

There she is, I thought, Lucy Gleason, “The Disappearing Wife,” as the press had dubbed her.

Of course, I had studied the video a dozen more times after taking the case, too. But the video available to me online had been only a fragment of what I was seeing now, which was the complete feed.

We’ll call this, I thought, the extended cut.

Lucy was a thin woman. She was dressed in tight black yoga pants and pink Converse sneakers. The sneakers glittered. Her age was tough to determine, although I knew she was thirty-eight, which was getting close to my own age, although you would never know it.