Netherworld: Drop Dead Sexy(49)

“Tristan Keith has no power here. He’s overreached himself, as you’ll soon find out for yourself.” Her smile went from shark to T. Rex. My skin crawled.

She raised her arms in a ‘v’ over her head. Her right hand clenched in a fist. “Praehendo mortuus anima,” she intoned.

The thugs moved around her to come at us, their big paws reaching. Dan and I backed up fast as the three pursued, Erica muttering incomprehensibly as she chased us. I looked around for help. As above so below, as Dan had said. There’s never a cop around when you need one.

Erica swung her clenched fist towards us, her hand opening wide to fling what looked like green sand. Dan grabbed me, swinging me aside to keep the substance from making contact.

“The library!” he shouted. The world shifted around me in a dark smear, Erica’s angry yelp following me into the frozen in-between of transport. I felt a harsh tug, and I screamed as I was torn from Dan’s grasp.

I emerged from the darkness of Fulton Fall’s netherworld into the sun and fluorescent-drenched lobby of the police station. As wrong turns went, it wasn’t so bad. At least I’d escaped Erica and her goons.

A few people in various stages of irritation sat on hard plastic and metal chairs. The muted din of ringing phones and conversation came from an open door behind the bullet-proof glassed-in desk. A teen boy stood there, giving an emotionless uniform his impassioned complaint.

“I know it was that jerk Sam Torkelson who took my iPod. Stuff is always disappearing around him.”

I’d been in here before, the victim of a purse snatch. I’d had a brief instant of remembering that when I’d thought about cops never being where you need them. The stray thought had brought me here rather than taking me to the library with Dan.





I had to go to the library. Dan must be frantic wondering if Erica had gotten me, I thought.

Before I had the main room locked in my unruly head, Agents Heany and Neuhaus walked in from outside. I froze as Heany said to his long, tall companion, “This case gets weirder all the time. Hopefully forensics will prove that’s Ms. Payson’s jacket and shoes we found at the Spaulding house.”

He waved to the desk officer, who buzzed them behind the desk. My interest sparked by the conversation, I followed them to the next room, where banks of desks were manned by about a dozen uniformed and plainclothes officers. Dan would have to worry and wait.

The agents wove through the maze of desks towards the back of the room. Neuhaus said, “It sure as hell looks like a suicide, but that anonymous call—”

Heany nodded. “The vampire could’ve glamoured Spaulding into hanging himself.”

Thrilled the detectives had arrived at the same conclusion Tristan, Dan and I had, I followed them through a door marked ‘Homicide’.

The homicide division was a smaller version of the room we’d just left. Desks, chairs, computers, telephones. A map with red pushpins hanging on a wall. Next to it, a dry-erase board with lots of notes scribbled on it and pictures of young women taped on top. Including mine. I recognized it as the shot the escort service I’d worked for used, with perfect lighting, flawless makeup and not a hair out of place. I was the prettiest corpse on the board, as most of the other girls had not so glamorous mug shots hanging up. I felt sorry that they hadn’t been photographed nicer. Every girl should get to look pretty.

I looked for Stacy Wilkerson’s picture since she was the one that had been lost in the city below. Hers was a mug shot too, the glaring light not kind to what had probably been an attractive face. Limp brown hair hung down. Her eyes got my attention the most. I don’t think I’d ever seen such vacant eyes before, as blue and remote as the sky. Almost as if she’d been dead before the Ripper had found her. I shuddered.

Heany and Neuhaus unknowingly joined me at the board. They focused on my picture, where I smiled and sparkled like a pageant contestant.

Neuhaus rubbed his chin. “This whole thing’s got me wondering if Brandilynn Payson’s killer was our serial perp after all.”

Heany sighed and stepped back to take in the scribbled notes. He planted his hands on his hips. “Let’s go over the differences and similarities. Difference one: Brandilynn was an escort catering to wealthy men, not a street prostitute.”

Neuhaus scribbled the note at the bottom of the column beneath my picture. He kept writing. “Difference two: there’s no evidence she was into blood sharing with the Long Toothed.”

“Neither were three of the other girls.”





Neuhaus huffed and erased the notation. “True. Okay scratch that one. Brandilynn must have been stalked for the unsub to have snagged her at Spaulding’s house. We’ve assumed the other girls were just grabbed off the streets and consumed.”