9.

Work filled up most of the rest of the day—paperwork, the kind she hated the most. She had to fill out a full report on what had happened the night before in Mechanicsburg. Then she had to sit through an interminable conference call with the district attorney and the Mechanicsburg police chief, going over evidence, presenting a clear case why Rexroth should be prosecuted. It should have been obvious, she thought. He had murdered and mutilated two people. The wheels of justice grind slowly, though, and by the time she signed out and got back on the road it was already four o’clock and the sun was setting. She needed to interview Angus and try to make contact with Arkeley’s wife again before she could call it a day.

The latter errand was easier said than done. She called the number Raleigh had given her and let the phone ring ten times before she hung up. She hadn’t actually expected an answer. She was going to have to meet the woman, and the sooner the better—most likely, Astarte was the last member of Arkeley’s family to see him before he accepted the curse. For the time being, however, she would have to settle for Angus, who had already told her he hadn’t seen his brother in twenty years.

Angus was staying at a very seedy motel on the road to Hershey, a single-story building with rooms that let out onto a shared porch, the whole construction stuck haphazardly in the middle of a black asphalt parking lot. The vacancy sign buzzed furiously out at Route 322—only two of the rooms had lights on. Across the street lay an undeveloped field of dry, dead weeds streaked with snow that glowed eerily in the last purple-and-orange light. Caxton pulled into a parking space near the motel’s office and stepped out into the chill. The temperature had fallen considerably since the morning’s memorial service and she reached into the backseat of her car for her jacket. As she leaned over, out of the corner of her eye she saw an orange light glow and sputter in the shadows out front of one of the rooms. Just the ember at the tip of a cigar. Angus smiled at her out of the darkness and waved her over. He had dragged two chairs from his room and put them in front of his door. He had a bottle of Malibu rum and a two-liter bottle of Coke to mix it with. He handed her a motel glass as she sat down. “Figgered we could talk out here, if you’re amenable, and if you ain’t, that’s too bad,” he told her with a smile. “They won’t let me smoke in the room here.”

“That’s fine,” she said, drawing a digital audio recorder out of one pocket. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

“Naw,” he said.

She started the recorder and tried to clear her head. Tried to think of what to ask first. Glauer had always told her she should start with a joke, to ease the tension inherent in a police interview, but she didn’t know any jokes. She knew a little bit about small talk. “Angus and Jameson,” she said, to break the ice. “Are those old family names?”

Angus chuckled. “You want to know about our family? Well, the only fancy thing we ever could afford was those names. I suppose when you’re poorer than dirt, you take the best you can get, and names are for free. Our father named us both. Now, he was a character. Longlegs Arkeley, they used to call my pop, ’cause he always ran away the police got too close. He was what you call a man who enjoyed life to the full. Which means he was a man who enjoyed his whiskey, fine cigars, and young women. Had us when he was in his seventies, and lived to be a hundred and one, and his last girlfriend came to the funeral. Now, our mother, Fae, she was from old North Carolina hill women for seven generations, what they call down there a witchbilly. She could curdle milk in the pan, if she wanted, and she had an evil eye that could take paint off the side of a Cadillac, but she died young. Most like from trying to keep up with Longlegs Arkeley’s two sons.”

“Your father didn’t like the police. Interesting. Was he a bootlegger?” Caxton asked. She thought Jameson might have mentioned that once.

Angus nodded. “Yes’m. For a while it looked like young Jameson was goin’ that way too, toward a life on the wrong side of the law. He and I were real hellions in our prime. Got up to some pretty creative mischief ’cause there was a solid lack of aught else to do where we were brought up.”

“Where was that?”

Angus shook his head. “Didn’t have a proper name. A length of North Carolina that didn’t get electricity till the sixties, if that tells you something. We called it Bald Hill, but you won’t find that on any map.”

Caxton smiled. “It’s funny. I never thought of him as a country boy.”

Angus scratched his chin. “That’s understandable, since he weren’t. He got out quick as he could. Tried learning his daddy’s trade, but then one time when the law did catch old Longlegs—it weren’t the first time, or the last—Jameson came to his ma and told her he wanted to move away. Said he had saw the light and he wanted to go be a copper himself, ’cause they always won in the end. Old Fae she just grinned ear to ear, and gave him forty dollars she kept in an old pomade tin, and sent him off to police school in Raleigh-Durham. Far as I know he never went back to Bald Hill again. He was a patrol cop in town for a while, but that didn’t suit him either, so he studied up for some big examination and got himself a job with the federales.”

“The U.S. Marshals,” Caxton said.

Angus nodded. “Longlegs didn’t care for that, not one bit. Disowned him and everything. Best thing Jameson could have done for himself, though, I always thought. I always wished I had the same idea. Instead I spent another forty years knocking around the hills, working one angle or another. Old Fae taught me a mite of what she knew about magic, though not enough to get me in real trouble. I told fortunes for a while, telling people what they wanted to hear. In the eighties I had a good thing going selling voodoo supplies and the like to farmworkers, but that all fell through with the scare about Satanists stealing babies left and right. Turned out that was all a hoax, but I was ruined. After that I switched to religious articles—statues of Saint Joseph to bury in your front yard when you want to sell your house, scented prayer candles for getting money or love. You know.”

Caxton frowned. “After he joined the Marshals—after he came to Pennsylvania—did you see much of Jameson?”

“Like I told you, there ain’t much to tell. Jameson and I had a visit in 1984, when I saw him married. Before that it must have been sometime in the seventies, ’cause I remember my hair was still black.”

Caxton’s heart slumped in her chest. This whole trip had been a waste of time, she thought. “That was the last time you saw him? Did you ever talk to him on the phone, or via email, or anything since then?”

“At Christmas, most years.”

“I see.”

“Of course, often as not he’d ask how I was doing, and I’d say fine, and I’d ask how he was doing, and he’d say he was busy, and then he’d pass the telephone over to Astarte or one of the kids.”

“Okay.”

Angus stubbed out his cigar on the plastic arm of his chair until it bubbled and hissed. “You’re clutching at straws, aren’t you, girl? You got no better lead to follow up than something he might have said to me at his wedding.” He was looking right at her, searching her face. “That must mean you don’t even know where to start looking for him.”

Caxton’s face burned, even in the cold. “I’m on his trail. I’ll find him. But if you must know, no, I don’t have a lot of leads.”

Angus shrugged expansively and drank from his frosty glass. “Well, if you don’t mind a little advice, especially since it’s free, I’ll tell you you’re barking up the wrong tree. Don’t go talking to his family.”

“I need to interview everyone who knew him, just in case.”

Angus shook his head. “You do what you need to. All I’m saying is this is one man who cared less about his loved ones than he did about what he was going to have for breakfast. You seen those kids of his? They barely know him, and what they do know is hate. They hate him for not being there most of their lives because he was too busy off chasing vampires, and when he was there they hated him for not loving them enough. They’re rotten little brats, both of them, but maybe they got a reason to be. Jameson was my brother once, my little brother, and still I looked up to him. But since he worked that first vampire case, just before his wedding, he’s not been the same man I knew. He’s not been any kind of man at all.”

Caxton’s immediate reaction to Angus’ words shocked her. She felt her heart grow cold and heavy in her chest. She almost stood up out of her chair. She was, she realized, offended.

He was a great man, she thought. He was a hero.

But she guessed that was behind him, too.

“Ah, hell,” Angus said, suddenly. “What the hell’s he doing here? He ain’t supposed to arrive yet, not for hours.”

Caxton was still too busy being angry to get what he meant. Then she turned and saw that a late-model maroon sedan had pulled into the motel’s asphalt lot. Its headlights dazzled her eyes for a second and then cut out as it rolled to an uneasy stop. Maybe it had stalled out, or maybe the driver was drunk, she thought. Immediately her eyes went to the license plate and memorized the number, just in case.

“You’re meeting someone?” Caxton asked. “I have some more questions, but they can wait.” She turned back to face Angus, but he was still staring at the car.

Grumbling, swearing a couple of times, he levered himself up out of his chair. She could only stare in disbelief as he pulled a massive buck knife out of his pocket and snapped open the blade.

She turned around again then, and looked as the car’s door popped open and something sagged out onto the dark pavement. It was a body, a man’s body, and at first she thought the driver must be so drunk he couldn’t even stand up properly. Then she saw it was just a boy, a teenager in a hooded sweatshirt. He turned to face the two of them and she saw his face was torn and bloody, with pale strips of skin hanging from his cheeks and chin.

“Half-dead,” she breathed, and grabbed for her weapon. Angus was already halfway to the car, his knife out and low by his side.