Hope and Vengeance: Saa Thalarr, book 1 Read online

  "I'm Adam Chessman," I introduced myself after the waitress returned to the counter and resumed her conversation with the human patron.

  "Jeff Garner," Jeff held out his hand. I took it out of necessity. Jeff was five-eight with a round face, brown hair, blue eyes and a deferential demeanor. Kyle Williams, slightly taller than Jeff and rail thin with black hair, was more reticent and didn't introduce himself. I'd given him my name over the phone when I called, and he hadn't failed to see my reaction to Jeff's gesture.

  "What's this about?" Kyle asked instead, going straight to the purpose of our meeting.

  "This." I'd brought the file of photographs with me—the ones depicting the bodies and their bite marks. "The local Pack suspects this is a vampire's work. Know anything about that?"

  "Are these the ones on the news—those three who went fishing and didn't come back?" Jeff examined the top photograph carefully before replacing it in the folder.

  "Yes."

  "The punctures are too far apart." Jeff's blue eyes studied my face, silently asking if I hadn't recognized the same thing.

  "I think so, too," I agreed. "Upon what do you base your opinion?"

  "A medical one," he replied. "I have two medical degrees, and I've worked in the field for the past seventy years."

  "So this is an expert opinion, then," I stared at Jeff, forcing him to lower his eyes. "Why doesn't the Council have this information on you?" I'd read his file. No data on medical training was in any part of it.

  "Because the Council scares the bejeezus out of him, and all the other vampire physicians are forced to work for the Council." Kyle's words made me turn swiftly in his direction. He was right—there were only seventeen vampire physicians and they labored under the Council's thumb. Many of them were research biologists who also held medical degrees.

  "If you cooperate with me while I'm here, I'll keep that information to myself," I offered.

  "We'll cooperate," Jeff promised quickly, his voice and his eyes begging me to keep my word.

  "We didn't have anything to do with those murders," Kyle said. "If that's what you're asking. We have alibis. Jeff was working his job at the hospital and I was in San Antonio. My hotel receipt." Kyle drew a slip of paper from a pocket and slid it across the table.

  "A lover?" I queried, lifting the receipt and reading it.

  "While I might consider that less than your business on a normal day, today, my answer is yes. He is also vampire, but I will only give his name if it becomes necessary."

  "It won't be necessary." I'd gotten a good look at Kyle and Jeff's teeth. There wasn't any way their fangs were spaced far enough apart to inflict the wounds found on the bodies.

  "Are we done?" Jeff's gaze was hopeful.

  "You're done." I nodded.

  "We, ah, won't leave town, as usual, and will be at your beck and call, should there be need." Kyle rose swiftly and followed Jeff from the café.

  * * *

  Madden Investigations was located on Mustang Island, two miles south of Port Aransas. I was surprised when the GPS on my rental took me to a condominium located on the barrier island—I expected something closer to town and farther from the beach. Miss Madden had the best of both worlds—her business doubled as her residence, and she had an unhindered view of the gulf.

  Riding the elevator to the third floor where the condo was located, I pressed the doorbell and waited for her to answer. Her assistant, Rita, came to the door.

  "Buenas noches, Mr. Chessman," Rita stood aside and invited me in.

  "Rita, go home, your children are waiting," Anna stood inside the reception area as Rita led me inside the condo. Two desks occupied the space beyond, with plate-glass windows beside the second desk. A lovely view of the gulf lay outside those windows.

  "Are you sure, Anna?" Rita asked. She was concerned about leaving her employer alone with me, I could tell. Rita was in her early thirties and quite pretty, with dark hair, a slightly round face and beautiful, full lips.

  "Rita, we'll be fine," Anna assured her. Tonight, Anna was dressed in dark denim jeans and a blue silk blouse. Her hair was pulled back in a French braid, but a few tendrils had escaped and framed her face attractively. My fingers itched to brush it back. I wondered at my sudden desire to touch her, before quelling it.

  "If you are sure," Rita said hesitantly.

  "I'm sure."

  "Call if you need something," Rita said, gathering her purse from a desk drawer.

  "I will. Give your babies a hug from me."

  "I will," Rita said. I watched Anna, who watched as Rita pulled her purse strap over a shoulder and walked toward the door. With my enhanced hearing, I could hear her footsteps echo long after she closed the condo door behind her.

  "I worry about her," Anna murmured, walking toward her desk and lifting a thin stack of papers off it. "Here's the information on the disappearances," she said, handing the papers to me. "You're welcome to sit here and go over it, or you can come into the kitchen. I was about to mix a protein drink."

  "A protein drink?" That puzzled me.

  "According to a friend, I'm not getting enough protein," she said. "I'm vegetarian, so that can be a problem if I don't take time to eat properly."

  "I'll come to the kitchen with you," I said. I was curious to see the rest of the condo, anyway.

  I was led through a connecting door, which separated the business from the residence, and I found the second portion adequate. The kitchen was clean and quite neat, with very little cluttering the countertops. I watched in fascination as Anna dumped a scoop of pale powder into a blender before adding a handful of blueberries, half a banana and two cups of soymilk. The blender did its work quickly and I was thankful for that—it emitted a high-pitched whine, which I found annoying.

  Anna went to the plate-glass window opposite the kitchen and stared through it at the gulf beyond while drinking her concoction. I went through the information she'd given me. The seventeen undocumented employees disappeared over a two-month period, the first occurring in late June, the most recent only five days earlier. Someone had listed the names on an original document, but I held a copy and those names had been carefully marked out.

  "How am I supposed to help locate these, if I only have dates of disappearances?" I went to stand next to Anna.

  "You're not here to investigate their disappearances," Anna said softly. "That's my job. Do you see those lights out there?" She tapped the window in front of us.

  I did see them—lights from several offshore drilling rigs winked in the deeper waters of the gulf. I estimated they were perhaps two miles from shore. "Yes," I said. "Why?"

  "Two of them are owned by Hartshorne Oil," Anna explained. "And I heard from someone that the crews on both platforms were fired today. All of them came ashore. None of them were happy. Replacement crews were sent out immediately."

  "You think the replacements were undocumented?" I stared at Anna, who was still looking at the Gulf, her eyes locked on the two oil platforms.

  "Or worse," she shrugged. I had no idea what she meant. "Come on, we should leave now if we're going to see Bill Gordon's wife tonight."

  * * *

  "Do you have Mrs. Gordon's address?" I asked as we climbed into my SUV.

  "Yes. It's on Herring Lane—just go over the causeway toward Corpus and turn left behind the Fishing Shack. Her house is actually in the Flour Bluff area." The seat belt clicked as she buckled herself in. She'd done it quickly, before I had time to do it for her—and I'd been thinking about it. I had no way to explain it—this desire to keep her as safe as I could.

  Instead, I started the engine and put the SUV in gear. Anna and I didn't talk on the drive toward Corpus Christi. She kept staring through the passenger-side window, although there wasn't much to see. On the west side of the two-lane highway was marshland covered in tall grasses, eventually ending in the ship channel.

  The ship channel is a waterway separating the island from the mainland. Maintained by the Port of Corpus Ch
risti, it services the naval ships from the local base and the commercial freighters coming into the free-trade zone. Not surprisingly, most of the trade is in petroleum products.

  I didn't feel uncomfortable with Anna's silence; in fact, it helped tremendously that she wasn't a chatterbox. She wore no perfume and the scent of her body wash was muted and pleasant to my nose. I found myself glancing in her direction often, instead of keeping my eyes on the road. Eventually, I pulled my gaze away from her and concentrated on my driving.

  "Is this where we turn?" I asked.

  She brought her attention back to me. "Yes. Left—here," she directed. "Now, go down about four blocks, you'll see Herring Lane. Her house is third on the left."

  "You've been here before?"

  "Yes. I drove past yesterday, just to check things out."

  I pulled into the driveway she indicated and shut off the engine.

  The house was small; a white frame in desperate need of paint. The metal screen on the screen door was rusty and pulling away from its frame in the top corners. Anna knocked on the door, causing a dog in a neighbor's yard to bark.

  It took Mrs. Gordon a few moments to answer the door. She wore a faded blue tank top and cutoff jeans, frayed around the bottoms. She was tall, thin and thirty-ish with a narrow face. Her hair was dyed an unnatural shade of red and smoke curled from the cigarette she held in one red-nailed hand as she opened the screen door with the other.

  Anna introduced herself, then gave my name as a fellow investigator. Mrs. Gordon invited us inside, asking us to call her Kirby Lee. She had a southern accent and informed us that she and her husband were originally from Georgia, but Bill had moved them around often, looking for work. Prior to arriving in Corpus Christi, they'd lived in Oklahoma, where Bill had been employed as an oil rig hand.

  Kirby Lee's living room was small and untidy. I had no desire to see her kitchen, and when she offered us a beer or soft drinks, we declined. She got a beer for herself and sat drinking and smoking while she answered our questions.

  "When did you first know your husband was missing?" I asked her as gently as I could. If I'd been alone, compulsion would be placed and answers gotten quickly, but I had no desire to show that to Anna. I'd be forced to place compulsion on her as well.

  "When he didn't bring his sorry ass home the next morning," Kirby Lee answered, taking a drag from her cigarette. This was the second she'd lit since we'd been there. She didn't seem upset that her husband was gone—and to her knowledge, quite possibly dead.

  "Did you notify the police then?" Anna joined in.

  "Yeah. They said he'd have to be gone more'n twenty-four hours before they started lookin', though." She sipped her beer. "I called 'em again the next day. They finally started to take me serious."

  "Did you notify Hartshorne that he wouldn't be in to work?" Anna continued.

  "Nope. Never called 'em. And they never called me. The police called and talked to somebody there, though. Then the news channels got ahold of it. I reckon the families of Bill's fishin' buddies talked to 'em."

  "The families of Ray Wilson and Sam Greene?" I interjected.

  "Yeah. Don't know 'em personally. Bill worked with 'em. Went fishin' with 'em. That's all I know." She finished the beer and rose to shuffle into the kitchen for another, the flip-flops she wore slapping against her heels as she walked.

  Anna and I glanced quickly at one another; her eyebrows arched slightly before she turned away. Kirby Lee came back and sat across from us again.

  "So, you say they called in sick to go fishing on the ship channel the night they disappeared?" I continued my questioning.

  "Well, Bill said they did. They hitched the boat up to Bill's truck and drove off. That's the last I saw of any of 'em." She lit a third cigarette.

  "Was Bill doing anything out of the ordinary before he disappeared?" Anna asked.

  "Not that I noticed, 'course I didn't see much of him—he was either workin', fishin' or sleepin'."

  "Are you employed, Kirby Lee?" I asked her.

  "Not for the past six months," she replied. "Worked for a while at the grocery store over by the Fishing Shack. I could walk to work since Bill had the truck. Got into an argument with a nasty customer—got fired for it. Haven't looked for a job since then." She took another swallow of beer.

  "So, how are you?" I was unable to finish the question because Anna laid her hand over mine. I'd been about to ask Kirby Lee how she was supporting herself, but Anna's touch stopped me.

  "May we take a look at the garage where the boat was kept?" Anna asked instead. I barely managed to cover the confusion I felt at this odd turn.

  Kirby Lee sat for a few seconds as if thinking it over, before nodding. "Sure." She led us through the kitchen, which I'd known I didn't want to see, and it was everything I'd imagined it would be—and worse. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink and strewn across every flat surface, and it reeked. I held my breath as we walked through it.

  A door led from the kitchen into the attached garage. Kirby Lee flipped the light switch and we stepped down into what surely must have been the cleanest part of the house. Clearly, this was Bill Gordon's domain. Tools hung in neat rows on pegboards fastened to the walls, along with four life jackets and a shop broom. The floor was clean—what I could see of it. A new, red Honda sedan covered most of it.

  "Wow. Nice car," Anna admired the automobile.

  The compliment loosened Kirby Lee up. She'd tensed noticeably when Anna asked to see the garage. I'd felt a bit of fear from her as she guided us into the garage and wondered at her reaction.

  "Yeah. I needed something to get around in."

  "Well, you have wonderful taste. Bet it gets great mileage," Anna observed.

  Kirby Lee relaxed further. "Sure does. After all this is over, I'm headin' back to Georgia. I figure after this amount of time, Bill's not gonna come back." She didn't sound upset at all.

  "What do you think happened to him?" Anna asked the big question.

  Kirby Lee stared at her for a few moments before she answered. "Don't know," she said coldly. "Accident, maybe. Could be the body just hasn't washed up yet." She was clearly through with us, and began to herd us into the house. We left shortly afterward. I thanked her for her assistance and let her know that we'd notify her if we found anything. She was opening another beer on the front porch as she watched us drive away.

  "I don't think those boys went fishin'," Anna said in a Kirby Lee imitation. She sighed and blinked concerned hazel eyes at me.

  I met her gaze briefly, then turned my attention back to the road. I didn't think they had, either, and I told her so. A man who was as fastidious about his boat and tools as Bill Gordon appeared to be wouldn't leave life jackets hanging on a peg in his garage. I also knew that Kirby Lee was correct on at least one point—Bill Gordon wouldn't be coming back. I didn't tell Anna that. There was time enough later for that information.

  "I'm going to talk to some of her neighbors—I don't think Bill and Kirby Lee were fond of each other," Anna interrupted my thoughts. "I'll try to do that soon. Where are we going now?" she asked, changing the subject abruptly when I turned west on South Padre Island Drive instead of going east toward her condo.

  "To meet a friend."

  "Oh."

  We drove westward until we reached the exit for the airport, turning off onto a side road before reaching the terminal.

  "This is where the private jets are parked," Anna informed me, leaning forward to gaze out her window. She was curious but determined not to push.

  "Yes, it is," I confirmed. I almost smiled. Almost.

  I pulled to a stop near the hangar where the Council's private jet had landed, and climbed from the truck. Anna hesitated a moment, then exited the SUV as well. I saw Joey in the distance, talking with an airport employee. Probably setting up a date.

  Joey was shorter than I, around five-seven, with reddish-blond hair that curled slightly. He kept it short. Nearly everyone found him quite attractive, and he
was never without a date unless he wished to be. He turned and saw me, waved in his usual grand manner and then loped toward us. He spread his arms wide and gave me an exuberant hug.

  "AAAdam!" he shouted with delight. Joey always greeted me this way. I'd learned long ago to stand still and accept the affection with stoicism.

  After Joey completed his usual five-second hug, he turned to Anna. "Well, aren't you the cutest thing!" he gushed.

  Anna cut her eyes toward me, then turned back to Joey. I introduced him. "Anna, this is Joey Showalter. Joey, this is Anna Madden." I completed the obligatory.

  "Joseph David, it's a pleasure to meet you," Anna held out her hand. I went cold at her words. I hadn't given her Joey's middle name. She knew it anyway. Joey thought nothing of it—I'm sure he imagined I'd given her the information already. Schooling my face into the vampire mask, I resolved not to cringe as I realized this information would be passed to Xavier—against my will.

  * * *

  "You're vegetarian?" Joey was very curious as we watched Anna consume a salad with walnuts and tiny mandarin oranges later. Joey was the one to ask Anna if she'd eaten—it hadn't crossed my mind. I watched covertly as Joey and Anna talked as if they were old friends. Joey has an easy way with people, and Anna opened up to him quickly.

  "Yes. For a long time," Anna speared a tiny orange wedge and ate it with a smile.

  "What made you decide to become vegetarian?" Joey asked.

  "It was a necessity—I can feel the animal's death if I consume meat," Anna sighed as she lifted a forkful of greens to her mouth.

  "Really? Bizarre," Joey breathed, fascinated. "Were you always a psychic?" No doubt, Xavier had briefed Joey before sending him away from London.

  "I'm not psychic," Anna set down her fork. Joey's question upset her, and her answer upset me.

  "So the ad—all of it is a lie?" Joey sat back in the booth we'd been given at the restaurant. He was disappointed, I could tell, and I wanted to ask why the pretense, when she repeated what she'd said to me the first night we met.

  "I'm good with possibilities and absolutes," she said. "Some people might interpret that as psychic. What I have isn't psychic ability. Being psychic isn't an exact science," she added, dropping her gaze to her lap.