Allegation of an Honorable Man
Larry Correia
The letters stenciled on the frosted glass read Peter Micale, Private Investigator. It was well after midnight, so the halls of the run-down building were empty, but the lights in the detective’s office were still on. I could smell hot coffee, cigarette smoke, and nervous energy. He was awake. Alert. Hyper-focused on something. Not surprising. I’d dealt with his kind before. The driven types often suffered from insomnia.
I knocked and waited.
There was a delay as he processed the unexpected arrival. There was a rasp of leather as a weapon was freed from a holster, followed by the metallic noise as the slide on an automatic was slightly retracted to make sure a round of ammunition was chambered. I had no idea who he had angered recently to require that response, or maybe he was always expecting trouble.
“Who is it?”
“A potential client,” I answered.
“What’s a dame doing here this time of night?” He had muttered that under his breath, intended for his own ears alone, but I still heard him perfectly well. The pistol went back in its holster. I could hear papers being returned to a folder, and then placed in a drawer which was slid closed. A chair creaked. It was unnecessary for him to raise his voice for me, but he didn’t know that. “Just a second.”
The detective was probably looking in the mirror to make sure he was presentable. Judging by the state of the building and the neighborhood it was located in, he needed the money. He couldn’t afford to turn away any business, even if it showed up in the middle of the night.
A moment later he unlocked the door and opened it a crack. He even hid his reaction to my appearance far better than most men. Despite wearing an outfit designed to accentuate my current form, there was no lecherous drooling or slack-jawed leering. A gentleman notices, but he does not stare. He gave me a polite nod of greeting. “Ma’am.” At most, he would later describe me to his friends as stunning or jaw dropping…If he lived long enough to ever see them again. I’d not decided yet.
“Peter Micale?”
“Yes.” He was a hard-looking man nearing forty, of normal height but lean in build, unshaven, unkempt, with an undone tie, and dark circles beneath his eyes. “How can I help you, miss?”
“Drusilla.”
He scowled, probably because the name seemed too old to hang on someone who looked so young. Rather than open the door the rest of the way, he kept it mostly closed, studying me carefully through the gap. Something about me must have made him wary. The detective had good instincts. Despite my best efforts, sometimes certain people still recognize that I’m not what I appear to be. Or maybe his line of work had simply given him earthly enemies who might send a beautiful woman to lure him into a trap?
I gave him my most disarming smile. The expression usually caused men to melt into puddles of easily manipulated goo. “May I come in?”
But rather than step aside, he said, “Maybe you should come back during regular daylight office hours.”
“Except time is of the essence, Mr. Micale. We must speak now or not at all. May I come in?”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you require permission?”
“I’m merely trying to be polite.” I had a very charming laugh. I’d practiced it. “I’m afraid you’re thinking of vampires, with the whole not being able to cross the threshold thing.”
“Yeah…That’s just silliness from the movies.” Except he still didn’t let me in. “So who are you?”
It was clear that he wouldn’t believe me if I told him that I was just a regular American woman in the city of Los Angeles in the year a.d. 1949 who just happened to look like an amalgamation of all the best features of current movie stars. Some humans were easier to manipulate than others. Some required a more direct approach.
“I am someone who can answer some of the questions that keep you up at night.”
“Which questions are those?”
“I know about your map…The one with all the missing people on it.”
That clearly rattled him. “A fella needs a hobby.”
“Some men collect stamps or butterflies. You search for the vanished. I might have information about a case you worked back when you were a policeman. Help me and I will help you.”
He was quiet for a long time. “My mother used to say I was too dumb to know when to quit.” Then he stepped aside and opened the door. However, he did not specifically give me permission to enter, and since he usually slept on a cot in the back room, thus by the rules vampires had to obey, this counted as his home. He was still testing me.
I walked through the doorway, and nothing happened. Thus destroying his foolish delusions about Nosferatu. He seemed relieved. Silly man. Didn’t he realize there were far worse things lurking out there than mere bloodsuckers?
He closed the door. “May I take your coat?”
I slid out of my furs. Fashion critics had described this bare-shouldered dress as scandalous in the magazines, which was why I had purchased one. He took the coat and hung it from a rack, next to his suit jacket and fedora.
“Please, have a seat.” He pulled out a chair for me. I sat down as he went around to the other side of his desk. Beyond the tobacco and lack of sleep, I could still smell the wariness on him. Despite my best efforts to blend in, sometimes people could still sense that I was dangerous enough to set them on edge. It often made my life difficult. He didn’t stink of fear, though. He was too confident for that. He’d been through war and a multitude of lesser battles. His knuckles were scarred from many fights. I could sense the old cuts and healed broken bones on him. It would take more than a general feeling of unease to make him afraid of a female half his mass, who clearly wasn’t hiding a gun beneath a dress this formfitting.
“How do you know about my fascination with missing-persons cases, Ms. Drusilla?”
It was easier to lie. He would not react well to the truth. “You were recommended by someone you used to work with. He said you were a man of single-minded determination on the subject.”
“Who said that?”
“He asked not to be named.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t claim to know me either. But if you’ve got information on an open case, you really need to share it with the police, not hang it out there like bait.”
“It won’t make any difference for them now. They’ve been gone too long. I suspect the only person who cares about finding out what really happened to them anymore is you.”
“Did you have something to do with this particular disappearance?”
I laughed. “Of course not. This was years ago. It was just something I’ve been told about, but which I absolutely know to be true. I also have a great deal of money. If you do this job for me, I’ll pay your regular fee, and double it if you resolve the matter quickly. Let’s say forty-eight hours, starting now. Consider being able to put one of your old cases to rest an added bonus.”
“How about you tell me about that first?”
“But then my needs would be delayed while you go and search for bones.” I pouted. The look didn’t seem to work on him, but I hadn’t practiced that particular expression much with this face. He was a hard sell.
The detective picked up his coffee as he thought it over, and I noted that he’d not bothered to offer me anything to drink. How impolite. It was then that I realized something else. He had not taken the most efficient way back to his desk after taking my coat. He had gone the long way around the room, and there was a small mirror on the opposite wall.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“You walked around that way in order to see if I cast a reflection.” Which clearly I did, because how else could I have gotten this red lipstick applied so perfectly? “Do you actually believe in vampires, Mr. Micale?”
He sipped his coffee. “Only crazy people believe in vampires, Ms. Drusilla.”
Belief in such superstitions were frowned upon in these modern, scientific times. Perhaps the detective was more experienced with the dark forces that lurked beneath the mortal world than I had expected. That could either help or hinder my mission. I had picked this one for his reputation for being intelligent and relentlessly dedicated in his search, and because I required a man of honor to set things right. It would behoove me to do a bit more research into him…but I could do that later. I’d not been lying when I had said that time was of the essence.
“As to the purpose of my visit, something extremely valuable has been stolen from me. I would like you to find the perpetrators and retrieve this item. The utmost discretion is required.”
“Alright, I’ll need details and I’ll need you to start from the beginning.”
Even though part of him sensed this might be a trap, he would proceed. Curious humans were predictable like that. Regardless of the era, whether they were investigators, inquisitors, paladins, or monster hunters, there was nothing more dangerous than someone who was compelled to find the truth, regardless of the danger or cost. They simply couldn’t help themselves.
“I value my privacy, so I will give you the minimum details necessary to complete the assignment. Nothing more.”
“That’s going to make my job more difficult.”
“So be it.”
“You’ve got a peculiar manner of speaking, Ms. Drusilla. Are you from around here?”
“No.” And I left it at that, because if I elaborated about where I really came from, I’d have no choice but to kill him afterwards to ensure his silence. “The stolen item is a family heirloom. It is very valuable.”
“Monetarily or personally?”
“Personally. Though I would assume it would also fetch a hefty price in certain dark markets. I will give you access to my property where it was taken from so you may inspect the scene. I will allow my staff to speak with you, as long as your questions pertain only to this case.”
“Alright…” Despite his better judgment, his curiosity had hooked him. “What’s the nature of the stolen merchandise?”
“It is a shrunken head.”
“Like the little guys from South American headhunters?”
“Yes.”
He blinked a few times. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Head-shrinking was a practice among certain tribes of the Amazon. Once westerners had discovered the existence of such things, they had become a morbid sort of collectible. There had probably been more people murdered to sell their shrunken heads to collectors and tourists over the last fifty years than there had ever been for the original ritual purposes. Of course, the relic that had been taken from me was no mere knickknack, but the good detective didn’t need to know that.
“Not what I expected…So how do the natives get them so small anyways?”
“Once the subject is beheaded, careful incisions are made to remove the flesh from the skull. It is wrapped around a wooden ball and carefully dried in order to keep the form and retain the proper features. The particular one which was taken from me, the lips, eyelids, and nostrils have been sewn shut, and it has been coated in charcoal ash.”
“Why?”
“To keep the vengeful spirit trapped inside. Or so their legends claim.”
“Huh.” It took him a moment to process that. “Have you reported this to the police?”
“I do not wish to involve the authorities.”
“Understandable. People who come to me say that a lot. Any idea who might have stolen it from you?”
Of course I had a few suspects, but I couldn’t just come out and say it. To make such accusations without proof would violate the treaty and threaten the peace. Which was why I required an honorable third party to make the allegation…Only then could I act freely.
“No. I do not consort with thieves or ruffians.”
“Of course. Were you there when the item was stolen?”
“No. I was…out.”
“And this…head, is so important to you, why?”
“The reasons for my attachment are irrelevant to your quest.”
“You say that, but you don’t actually know what you don’t know. Sometimes it’s the little things you don’t think matter which break a case wide open. The more you tell me, the better the odds that I can recover your property.”
His curiosity would certainly be the death of him. Whatever human had declared what they don’t know can’t hurt them, was an idiot who I hoped had died horrifically.
“If you are stymied in your search, we can return to the topic. Otherwise, you may visit the property and question the staff tomorrow.” I stood up, took a pencil from his desk, and wrote my address on the edge of the newspaper that was sitting there. “Now I must be going, Mr. Micale.”
“You can just call me Pete. Do you need a ride home?”
“My driver is waiting for me downstairs.” I walked to the door.
“Hold your horses.” He didn’t bother to get up to see me out. “I never said if I’d take the job or not.”
I paused, hand on the doorknob. “The missing-persons case I can help you close are John and Kelli Kochan. You remember them?”
Of course he did. A man like this never let go of a case. “Married couple. He was from Texas. She was from Montana. They moved out here to work in the airplane business. In 1939 they went hiking in the Hollywood Hills and were never seen again. We searched the area for weeks. No clues. No witnesses.”
I didn’t bother to look back as I walked out. “I’ll be in touch, Detective.”
* * *
Sure enough, Detective Micale came to the mansion the next morning. I let my staff deal with him. They were loyal and well trained. They would not speak of things they shouldn’t. None of them would risk drawing my wrath.
Regardless, he struck me as a tricky one, so I observed from the shadows as he was given the tour of the estate. He questioned the butler, the maids, my chef, my driver, and the groundskeeper. Each time he started by asking about the night of the burglary, but inevitably he steered the questions back toward me. What was I like? How did I afford such a nice place? What’s your boss do for fun? Their answers remained consistent. I was a kind but exacting employer. My wealth had been inherited from my family who had been very successful in the shipping industry in New England. I was an active socialite, and I threw many parties at the estate.
He seemed rather impressed by the opulence of the mansion, and the quality of the artifacts in my collection. Perhaps now that he saw how many interesting items from around the world I possessed, he wouldn’t think a single shrunken head from Amazonia would be such an odd thing to own. On more than one occasion he remarked that my home would make a good museum. I took that as a compliment.
His search was very thorough, checking all of the doors and windows for forced entry. I knew a thing or two about sneaking into places myself, and sure enough, he found the same scuff marks and scratches that I had. It had rained recently, so he had tracked the footprints on the soft ground to the same corner of the fence as I had, where an automobile must have been waiting on the other side.
Then he asked all the neighbors questions. Unfortunately, I could not follow him there without being seen. Sadly, I knew their answers about me would not be as charitable. They saw me as aloof. Distant. And my parties were obviously well attended based upon the traffic, but the guests were secretive, and their identities unknown.
I disliked having nosy neighbors. I looked forward to the day when all of them would have unfortunate, accidental deaths. However, this property suited my needs, being close and convenient to many of the rich, powerful, and beautiful people of this glittering city.
One danger to living a very long time is becoming jaded to the world around you. It is easy to assume that you’ve seen it all and become complacent. This is a trap. For good or ill, this is mankind’s world, and humans will surprise you. See the recent unpleasantness in Europe and the Pacific for example. Several of my kind had been slightly inconvenienced by that.
When the detective returned to the mansion, he spoke again with my butler. I watched from the shadows.
“Is Ms. Drusilla back yet?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Do you have any messages you would like for me to convey to her?”
“Sure. She should get a couple of guard dogs. Then your thief wouldn’t have been able to sneak in without them barking.”
“I’m afraid the mistress doesn’t care for dogs.”
“Who doesn’t like dogs? Everybody likes dogs.”
Dogs growled when I was near. Cats would arch their backs and hiss. But the butler simply said, “She does not care for the hair. It makes a mess on her things.”
“She should get one of those poodle dogs then. They don’t shed. You have to give them haircuts. Tell her I’ve got a few things to check on and some people to talk to, and I’ll get back to her as soon as I learn anything.”
I did not like being surprised. So after Peter Micale left the mansion, I followed him.
* * *
The detective truly was a determined sort. He made several more stops, driving to various gas stations and garages near my property and questioning the workers there. I was able to get close enough to listen in to a couple of them. Apparently my neighbors had seen a green Oldsmobile, which Micale had discovered had a bad coolant leak, because of a discolored patch of mud.
Sure enough, on the night of the theft, a man had stopped at the last station Micale checked in order to top off his radiator. A dollar had gotten a description out of the night attendant. The driver was a small man, short but wiry, blond but going bald fast and trying to hide it with a comb. And he’d had an accent like he was from Europe. Where in Europe? The attendant didn’t know. The closest he’d ever been to overseas was fishing off the pier.
Then Micale drove to the university, where he spoke with a professor of anthropology. From the warm greeting, the two of them had worked together before. They went to the library, where I hid between the stacks while they talked about who would want to steal shrunken heads, and the conversation had turned to esoteric cults…I was impressed. My detective worked fast.
After using a pay phone, he drove to the local police precinct, but he didn’t go in. Rather he met with two uniformed officers at a sandwich shop across the street. I found a shadowy spot in the back corner of the storage room where I could listen to them through the walls. They made small talk about the good old days and joked about a police captain none of them liked. The captain was fat, corrupt, and his wife cheated on him, and the men found that amusing. Then the conversation turned to local hoodlums, lock-picking burglars in particular, as Micale asked them about a small, balding, European who might be driving an Oldsmobile with a leaky radiator, and they told him of different criminals they thought met his criteria.
Lucky for him, Micale did not tell any of his sources who his employer was. If he brought scandal to this name I’d have to kill him and find a new investigator. I had a good thing going in Los Angeles. I’d hate to have to start over elsewhere. But this was a risk that I had to take.
That was the downside with using humans. You want them clever, but not too clever.
Then he went by the telegram office and sent a few messages. I was unable to get close enough to overhear him dictating those, but I was beginning to worry. I wanted Mr. Micale to learn about my missing treasure, not about me. I hoped he wasn’t inquiring too deeply into the fake life history that had been provided to him.
Night fell, and Micale kept working. My original suspicion that he didn’t sleep much had proven correct. Armed with a name from the policemen—Marcos Lakatos—Micale had driven to various bars and night clubs around the city. These were all seedy, dirty establishments. Far beneath the dignity of Ms. Drusilla, but perfectly fitting for whatever face I decided to wear into each place in order to keep up with my detective. I will admit. I was enjoying myself. This was not my sort of hunt, but there was still a certain thrill to it.
At one bar, a drunk had taken exception to Micale’s tone and taken a swing at him. The detective proved to be as quick with a sap as he was with his mouth, and he left the drunk a crumpled wreck. There was no cruelty to it. Just efficiency. The next club, he found a pretty waitress who’d gone out with Lakatos once. A little small talk and a bit of friendly flirting had gotten Micale the approximate location of Lakatos’ last home, and though she didn’t recall the house number, she remembered the color—blue—and the intersection closest to it.
The detective slowly drove past the only blue house in the area a couple of times, and then parked down the street to approach the place quietly. I landed on a roof across the street to watch. Both of us avoided the streetlights.
It was a low-class neighborhood. The houses were tiny and close to each other. This was gang territory, but I wasn’t the least bit worried about human predators. Life had become much easier for my kind after iron weapons had fallen out of fashion.
If the burglar was here, I was curious to see how Micale would resolve this situation. If the thief was working for who I suspected he was, I had to remain an observer, not a participant. Until an honorable mortal gave name to the one who had wronged me, I was bound by covenant not to act. I would obey the covenant because it had prevented many bloodbaths over the centuries, and breaking it would be bad for my business.
The lights were on inside. I could hear a record player. Micale may have been honorable, but he wasn’t stupid. Rather than knock on the door to announce himself, he snuck around the back to peer in the windows first. There was a green Oldsmobile parked behind the house with a puddle beneath. Looking satisfied that he’d gotten the right house, he returned to the front, and knocked on the door.
Lakatos opened it a minute later. From the smell of him, I immediately knew this was the thief who had broken into my home. I had to quell the reflexive urge to bite a chunk out of him.
“I’m looking for Marcos Lakatos,” Micale said.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Pete.”
“You a cop?”
“Nope. Private investigator.”
“Well that’s worth spit, isn’t it?” The accent that the gas station attendant had only been able to identify as “European” turned out to be Hungarian. I recognized it because I’d thrown lavish parties for the Hapsburgs back in the day. “Take a hike, dick.”
“I do have a couple of questions for you if you’ve got a minute.”
“How ’bout you take your questions and stick them where the sun don’t shine?”
“A wise guy, huh?” The detective cracked a smile, which was probably why Lakatos didn’t see the sucker punch coming. He planted his fist into the thief’s gut, hard enough to double him over, and then Micale quickly shoved him inside and closed the door behind him before any of the neighbors could see. The takedown was quick. Not bad for a human.
I flew across the street, landed silently on Lakatos’s lawn, and then crept up to the window so I could watch the show.
Lakatos had gotten hit so hard he was having a hard time breathing, but that didn’t stop him from pulling a switchblade from one pocket. Micale grabbed that arm to immobilize it and slammed the much smaller thief into the wall a few times. Once he lost the knife, the detective hurled Lakatos into the tiny living room. A little table broke beneath him. His dinner—a cold can of beans—got knocked on the floor.
“Stay down, dummy. I just want to talk.”
Except the thief grabbed the fork he’d been eating with, got up, and tried to stab Micale with that. The annoyed detective stepped aside, kidney-punched the thief twice, and then swung him by the collar into the wall. His nose left a blood smear on the wood as he slid down.
“You done?”
“I’m done,” Lakatos said from his position on the floor.
“Alright then. Where’s the shrunken head?”
“What shrunken—”
Micale kicked him in the ribs.
The thief coughed for a bit, then gasped, “Oh yeah, that one.”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I already delivered it to who hired me.”
“Well I figured somebody was paying you to do it. You’re an immigrant locksmith with a B&E record and a rep for being one hell of a second-story man. You don’t really strike me as the sort who runs in Ms. Drusilla’s social circles.” The detective looked down at the fork that was stuck in the floor near his shoe. “But if I’d just got paid to rob a mansion, I’d be eating a steak dinner, not a can of beans.”
“They didn’t pay me in money. I owed them a favor. I was trying to go straight, but they got my family out of Europe when things got bad. They do favors; you never know when they’re gonna ask that favor returned. It was steal that little head for them or else.”
Micale pulled up a stool and sat on it. “Who did you owe?”
“You don’t want to mess with these. They aren’t normal. They been around forever. They got no mercy and lots of reach. I talk, they’ll skin me alive. And that’s not exaggerating. That’s how they take care of snitches. They hang them from a hook and peel their skin off slow.”
The thief’s description of the preferred method of execution told me exactly who had stolen my artifact. However, according to the covenant, justice required I be given a name.
“Look, pal, I get it. I saw what happened to Europe. If I had family there I’d have made a deal with the devil himself to get them out too. So I’m not judging.” Micale took out a pack of cigarettes, took one out, and lit it. “But I need to get that head back to its rightful owner. So this is how it’s gonna shake out. Either you tell me who has it, and then I keep your name out of it. I never mention you to them, the cops, or my employer. Or, I have you arrested for stealing. Then if the men who hired you got as much reach as you say, you’ll be a sitting duck in jail until they send somebody to shut you up permanently.”
“That’s a death sentence!”
“It wouldn’t be much of a threat otherwise.” He took a long drag off the cigarette. “Your call, Mr. Lakatos. Talk, or I get my old pals from the precinct to pick you up.”
Part of me was disappointed. I had hoped the detective would have tortured the name from the thief. Broken fingers and pulled teeth. But his way was not my way. Besides, from the look on the thief’s face, he was about to break. I leaned closer to the glass, eager to hear it.
“Alright. Swear you won’t tell them about me. You found out who they is some other way.”
“Agreed,” Micale answered. “I’d offer to shake on it, but you might have another fork stashed on you.”
“They’re a church. But not like a regular church. I don’t mean a building. I mean like an old religion, that does weird stuff, and meets in secret.”
“A cult?”
“That’s right. Only the things they worship aren’t like anything normal. They look like the animal that washes up dead on the beach. With all the arms.”
“A squid?”
“Yes. A squid. They pray to a squid god. Only it’s big as an ocean liner. And older than the world.”
I watched Micale’s reaction carefully through the window. He was incredulous at first, but the thief was so earnestly frightened that he didn’t scoff at the idea. “I can’t tell the operator to put me through to the first church of the giant squid. Give me a name or you’re going to jail.”
“Their boss here, their big priest, the one I gave the head to, is named Skinner. Matthias Skinner.”
And to think, I had invited Matthias to my parties. He had been a guest in my home, eaten my food, and enjoyed the entertainments I had provided. I hissed in anger.
Micale jumped and looked toward the window, hand moving to his holstered pistol.
“What was that?” Lakatos cried.
The detective stared at the glass for a long time, but as long as I remained perfectly still, he wouldn’t be able to see me. He scowled. “Must have been the wind.” He turned his attention back to the thief. “From what you were saying they do to snitches, is Skinner a name or his title?”
“I don’t know, but he uses it like it’s his real name here. He’s got an office on Colfax. He’s a big-time lawyer for movie studios.”
“Of course he is, because my life’s not complicated enough already. Alright. You’ve convinced me. Nobody’s that good an actor. Now you’re gonna want to skip town for a while. It sounds like this Skinner fellow is the real crook.”
That pronouncement would do. I leapt into the air and flew into the night. The time for retribution had come.
* * *
The next day the front page of all the evening edition newspapers were about the ghastly murder of a prominent Los Angeles attorney. There were a great many leaks in the LAPD, so the lurid details were quickly made known to the press. The body of Matthias Skinner had been found in his Beverly Hills home, after he had been impaled upon the antlers of a taxidermized deer—still alive apparently—while all of his appendages had been torn off, one by one. Oddly enough, the poor attorney seemed to have survived having all his limbs forcibly removed because the coroner eventually ruled his ultimate cause of death to be asphyxiation, from choking while being force-fed his own entrails.
It was also discovered that Mr. Skinner had a rather elaborate occult workshop in his basement, with all the usual predictable trappings such as goat masks and black robes to shock the public. Apparently the respectable citizen was not so respectable after all. The LAPD had no leads at this time, but the press was speculating the murder was the work of other devil-worshipping anarchists.
What was not in the papers, was that the murder had been called in by an anonymous tip. Pete Micale had actually been the first one to stumble onto the crime scene that morning. He’d tracked down where Skinner lived and let himself in when nobody had answered. The sight of the carnage had been enough to unnerve even the jaded investigator, but he had been smart enough to immediately flee the scene so as to not be implicated.
I had watched Micale’s reaction, amused, while hanging from the rafters.
* * *
My treasure had been recovered and justice had been served. All that remained was to take care of any loose ends.
I was waiting in the dark when Peter Micale returned to his office. When he turned the lights on and saw me sitting in his chair behind his desk, he didn’t seem too surprised. He closed the door behind him.
“Ms. Drusilla.” He tipped his hat to me, before taking it off and hanging it on the rack.
“Mr. Micale. Forgive my intrusion, but do you have an update about my case?”
He gave me a bitter laugh. “Oh, I think we’re way past playing games now, lady. If you are a lady at all.”
“I’m whatever I need to be at the time.” I leaned back in the chair and placed one perfect leg on his desk to be admired. “If we are past games, then we should both speak truthfully. It’ll save time.”
“I’m always in favor of honesty.”
“Good.” Now it was my turn to smile, only this time I showed him jackal teeth. “Then tell me what you know, so I can decide if you should live or die.”
Rather than run screaming from the room like most humans would, he sat in the chair I’d occupied last time I’d been here, got out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth. He offered me one. I raised one clawed hand politely in the negative.
“Suit yourself,” he said as he lit his smoke. Such composure was refreshing. I had fully expected to have to chase him down the hall and tear his throat out. “So how does this work, you ask me questions, and if you think I know too much, or come away thinking I’m going to crimp your lifestyle, you do to me what you did to Skinner?”
“Of course not. That was personal. The high priest of the Dread Overlord insulted my hospitality and stole from me. If I decide to kill you, it will be self-defense. I have to protect my identity from those who would do me harm. Do you know what I truly am?”
“I’ve got no earthly idea.”
“Good.” That was a point in his favor. My kind were few and far between, and there were always dangerous humans who would never leave us alone. I despised hunters. “I’ve looked into your background a bit more, Mr. Micale.”
“Oh?” He sounded mildly curious.
“You know more about the supernatural than I expected. When we met, you thought I might be a vampire for a reason.”
“I don’t get too many unearthly beauties showing up in the middle of the night,” he said. “It’s just noonday average beauties around here.”
“Your reaction was based upon personal experience. You were in the Army Air Forces, and because you had been a policeman before the war you were made an officer in a security battalion, and guarded bases. I seem to recall hearing about an airfield in France being terrorized by a nest of vampires. It was several horrible weeks as many soldiers were lured to their deaths.”
“Once I figured out what was going on, we handled them.”
“I bet you did.”
“It’s amazing what a few scared men can accomplish with an M2 flamethrower and a crate of grenades. Only the secret government types made sure that what happened at Saint-Pierre-du-Mont never went in the official reports or showed up in any papers. If we talked about it while in uniform we’d get court-martialed, and if we talked about it after we’d end up in the ground. So how do you know about it?”
“One of the survivors told me about the events.”
Micale studied me as he took a long drag off his cigarette. “I’m guessing you don’t mean one of the human survivors…” He reached into his suit and pulled out a large revolver. I did not know much about human weapons, but this one appeared to be an antique.
“I hope you realize that will do absolutely nothing to harm me. But I am rather fond of this dress and would prefer not to have any holes put in it.”
“I know you’re some kind of something, so I don’t expect lead bullets to do much. They sure don’t to vampires. But it makes me feel better to have it in hand.”
“Whatever helps you find comfort, Detective.”
He leaned forward and let the gun dangle over his knee. “So, did you find your shrunken head at the lawyer’s house?”
“Yes. It was in the basement, being prepared for a ritual.”
“On the summer solstice,” Micale said, surprising me once again. “I figured the date couldn’t be a coincidence based upon your arbitrary forty-eight-hour deadline.”
“Dates of celestial significance lend power to summoning spells. I did your species a favor, Mr. Micale. Mankind would not want this particular witch doctor to return to the land of the living. He was a bastard the first few times he was alive. I assume several hundred years of being imprisoned as a piece of jerky will not have improved his disposition.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that one. So I know Skinner was one of your party guests. You entertain a lot of movie stars and big wigs. And I know he was secretly some kind of maniac cult leader. So I’d already assumed he stole the haunted head for some nefarious purpose, but what I don’t get is why you ever needed me?”
“You realize that the more you know, the more likely I am to have to kill you, right?”
The detective shrugged. “You ask me questions. I get to ask you questions. Fair is fair.”
“So be it. There are secret factions out there, Mr. Micale, powerful beyond your understanding. Sometimes they are at war, others they are at peace. I am a neutral party. I am an entertainer. A facilitator. I provide for the peculiar appetites of beings you can’t even imagine. Yet there are rules. Skinner—a priest of the Old Ones—broke those rules, only I could not take my retribution against a representative of a faction without the testimony of impartial mortals.”
“You were following me the whole time.”
“Yes.”
“I figured. I spotted you a couple times.”
“Impossible.” Surely he was lying. “I am a perfectly evolved predator.”
“You don’t blink enough,” he said.
“What?”
“You forget to blink. It’s like you have to force yourself to remember to do it. Regular people just blink all the time without thinking about it. So even though you changed into a different body every time, I spotted you a few times because you were the one too interested in spying on me to remember to blink. That unblinking stare…It’s uncanny.”
“Hmmm. Interesting. Thank you for the tip. I will try to remember that in the future.”
“You’re welcome. But I’ve got two other lines of questioning if you don’t mind.”
“Do you have a death wish, Detective?”
“Humor me, Ms. Drusilla. First, you know that I’ve been looking for missing people. Now that I know you’re something special I won’t bother asking you how you know or why I came to your attention. I just want to know, could you really have helped me find those people? Or was that all just a trick to get me to play along?”
This time when I smiled, I used human teeth, and even remembered to blink. “How many pins do you have in that map of yours now? A hundred? Two hundred? Each one representing a life, vanished around this city without a trace. The missing haunt you, Mr. Micale. You stare at their faces in the photographs. You read the same reports, over and over again, looking for patterns. Their families weep, wondering where their loved ones have gone, but you have no comfort to offer them. Your constant questions upset important men, and your endless labors made their lack of effort look bad, so they fired you from being a policeman. And even without your badge, you simply could not let it go.”
“That tip you gave me…”
“The Kochans put up a remarkable fight, but they were consumed by a Gug. I can tell you exactly where to find their gnawed-on bones.”
“I assume this…gug…was one of your party guests?”
“Oh no, silly. Gugs are fifteen-foot-tall, fanged, nightmare beasts from Unknown Kadath. This Gug was a pet of one of my guests, who decided while he was in town that he wanted to hunt humans for sport.”
For the very first time, Peter Micale’s calm facade slipped, and I could see the righteous anger on the other side. “How many others like them are there?”
“My party guests love to talk, and they are a diverse and rambunctious lot. They mingle with the beautiful, stupid, unwitting humans, and sometimes they are overcome by their desires. In the few years I’ve been in this city, I would have to guess that my guests could probably explain thirty or forty of your pins. But they are not all killed and eaten. Oh no. Some are enslaved. Some are turned. A few are even taken to other realms where they will dwell for eternity.”
The detective took a deep breath, needing to compose himself before asking the most important question. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“The first? The one who started you on your hopeless quest?” I shook my head. “Alas, no. I truly wish I could tell you what happened to her, but sometimes humans just…go away.”
He nodded slowly, faint hopes of finding his lost love dashed once again. “Any chance you’ll tell me about all those other people your party guests took?”
“My clientele values my discretion.” I had only told him of that one incident because the Gug had shit on my carpet, so its owner had been banned anyway. “I will not speak of any others.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. One last line of questioning then.”
He knew far too much for me to let him live now. “It’s your funeral, Detective.”
“When you were following me, did you see what was on those telegrams and who I sent them to?”
“I did not. That room was too well lit, too open to get close, and there was no crowd to blend with.”
“Good. And I know you weren’t there when I got the responses this morning, so I’ll fill you in then. The first was to an old war buddy who is in the Massachusetts State Police, confirming my suspicions that you’ve been moving around, changing identities. You left there when there were too many questions and too many bodies.”
That had been unfortunate. I had rather enjoyed New England. The weather was more to my temperament than this place’s near constant sunshine. The sun reminded me of home, and I’d been banished from Arabia for two thousand years.
“The other telegram was to a company in Alabama.”
“I’ve never been there. I know nothing about that place.”
“But they knew something about you. Or your kind at least. They’re called Monster Hunter International, and they’re not the kind of company you find in the phone book. They made me a job offer once, after what happened in France, but I told them I couldn’t. I had too much work to do here.” He lifted the big revolver and pointed it at me. “See, I’d already started my map before the war. I couldn’t leave all those people hanging.”
I scoffed at the gun. “You can’t harm me.”
“Mack Shackleford told me that was a possibility. He said from the description I gave you’re probably some kind of djinn, something called a jiniri.”
I hissed and leapt atop the desk. He knew!
“Sounds like Mack guessed right, and he told me what he knew about your kind. Even if you kill me, MHI is already on their way, and they’re going to burn your little party house to the ground. No matter what, you’re done here, Drusilla.”
I showed him my true form, letting my wings stretch to the corners of the office. Let him see my terrible wrath and know fear. “I was going to make your death quick. Now, you will envy the Old One’s priest.”
Despite seeing me for what I really was, Peter Micale remained calm, as he carefully aimed the revolver at my eyes.
“Fool. I’m invulnerable to mere lead.”
He cocked the hammer with his thumb. “Which is why I spent my afternoon making some bullets out of iron.”
That was the problem with humans. Sometimes they were too clever.