“Sir, you really need to be going, don’t you?” Rick said.
“This isn’t any of your business,” the drunk said.
“If the lady wants to be left alone, you should leave her alone.” He caught the man’s gaze and twisted, just a bit. Put the warning in his voice, used a certain subtle tone, so that there was power in the words. If the man’s gaze clouded over, most onlookers would attribute it to the liquor.
The man pointed and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Rick put a little more focus in his gaze and the drunk blinked, confused.
“Go on, now,” Rick said.
The man nodded weakly, crushed his hat on his head, and stumbled to the door.
The woman watched him go, then turned back to Rick, her smile wondering. “That was amazing. How’d you do that?”
“You work behind the bar long enough, you develop a way with people.”
“You’ve been bartending a long time, then.”
Rick just smiled.
“Thanks for looking out for me,” she said.
“Not a problem.”
“I really didn’t come here looking for a date. I really did just want the drink.”
“I know.”
“But I wouldn’t say no. To a date. Just dinner or a picture or something. If the right guy asked.”
So, Rick asked. Her name was Helen.
RICK ANSWERED THE RESPONDING OFFICER’S QUESTIONS, THEN SAT IN THE armchair in the living room to wait for the detective to arrive. It took about forty-five minutes. In the meantime, officers and investigators passed in and out of the house, which seemed less and less Helen’s by the moment.
When the detective walked in, Rick stood to greet her. The woman was average height and build, and busy, always looking, taking in the scene. Her dark hair was tied in a short ponytail; she wore a dark suit and white shirt, nondescript. She dressed to blend in, but her air of authority made her stand out.
She saw him and frowned. “Oh hell. It’s you.”
“Detective Hardin,” he answered, amused at how unhappy she was to see him.
Jessi Hardin pointed at him. “Wait here.”
He sat back down and watched her continue on to the kitchen.
Half an hour later, coroners brought in a gurney, and Hardin returned to the living room. She pulled over a high-backed chair and set it across from him.
“I expected to see bite marks on her neck.”
“I wouldn’t have called it in if I’d done it,” he said.
“But you discovered the body?”
“Yes.”
“And what were you doing here?” She pulled a small notebook and pen from her coat pocket, just like on TV.
“Helen and I were old friends.”
The pen paused over the page. “What’s that even mean?”
He’d been thinking it would be a nice change, not having to avoid the issue, not having to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he knew what he knew, dancing around the truth that he’d known Helen almost her entire life, even though he looked only thirty years old. Hardin knew what he was. But those half-truths he’d always used to explain himself were harder to abandon than he expected.
With any other detective, he’d have said that Helen was a friend of his grandfather’s whom he checked in on from time to time and helped with repairs around the house. But Detective Hardin wouldn’t believe that.
“We met in 1947 and stayed friends.”
Hardin narrowed a thoughtful gaze. “Just so that I’m clear on this, in 1947 she was what, twenty? Twenty- five? And you were—exactly as you are now?”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed friends with her all this time.”
“You say it like you think that’s strange.”
“It’s just not what I expect from the stories.”
She was no doubt building a picture in her mind: Rick and a twenty-five-year-old Helen would have made a striking couple. But Rick and the ninety-year-old Helen?
“Maybe you should stick to the standard questions,” Rick said.
“All right. Tell me what you found when you got here. About what time was it?”
He told her, explaining how the lights were out and the place seemed abandoned. How he’d known right away that something was wrong, and so wasn’t surprised to find her in the kitchen.
“She called me earlier today. I wasn’t available but she left a message. She sounded worried but wouldn’t say why. I came over as soon as I could.”
“She knew something was wrong, then. She expected something to happen.”
“I think so.”
“Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill an old woman like this?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
ONE NIGHT SHE CAME INTO THE BAR LATE DURING HIS SHIFT. THEY HADN’T set up a date so he was surprised, and then he was worried. Gasping for breath, her eyes pink, she ran up to him, crashing into the bar, hanging on to it as if she might fall over without the support. She’d been crying.
He took up her hands and squeezed. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Rick! I’m in so much trouble. He’s going to kill me, I’m dead, I’m—”
“Helen! Calm down. Take a breath—what’s the matter?”
She gulped down a couple of breaths, steadying herself. Straightening, squeezing Rick’s hands in return, she was able to speak. “I need someplace to hide. I need to get out of sight for a little while.”
She could have been in any kind of trouble. Some small-town relative come to track her down and bring home the runaway. Or she could have been something far different from the fresh-faced city girl she presented herself as. He’d known from the moment he met her that she was hiding something—she never talked about her past.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you everything, just please help me hide.”
He came around the bar, put his arm around her, and guided her into the back room. There was a storage closet filled with wooden crates, some empty and waiting to be carried out, some filled with bottles of beer and liquor. Only Rick and Murray came back here when the place was open. He found a sturdy, empty crate, tipped it upside down, dusted it off, and guided her to sit on it.
“I can close up in half an hour, then you can tell me what’s wrong. All right?”
Nodding, she rubbed at her nose with a handkerchief.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Bottle of soda? Shot of whiskey?”
“No, no. I’m fine, for now. Thank you.”
Back out front, he let his senses expand, touching on every little noise, every scent, every source of light and the way it played around every shadow. Every heartbeat, a dozen of them, rattled in his awareness, a cacophony, like rocks tumbling in a tin can. It woke a hunger in him—a lurking knowledge that he could destroy everyone here, feed on them, sate himself on their blood before they knew what had happened.
He’d already fed this evening—he always fed before coming to work, it was the only way he could get by. It made the heartbeats that composed the background static of the world irrelevant.
No one here was anxious, worried, searching, behaving in any other manner than he would expect from people sitting in a bar half an hour before closing. Most were smiling, some were drunk, all were calm.
That changed ten minutes later when a heavyset man wearing a nondescript suit and weathered fedora came through the door and searched every face. Rick ignored him and waited. Sure enough, he came up to the bar. His heart beat fast, and sweat dampened his armpits and hairline.
