“Done something you feel guilty about?” Caxton asked. “Need to clean up your aura?”
“I came here because it was a refuge away from prying eyes.”
“Those eyes were watching out for you,” Caxton said. “I’m only here to protect you. I’m not sure why you’re fighting me so hard. You must know what your father’s been up to. He killed your uncle, then your mother—”
“Yes, of course,” Simon said, smiling, though his voice had lost some of its ethereal quality.
Caxton thought of Dylan Carboy and the facial tic that had given him away when she mentioned his notebooks. It looked like Simon had a chink in his armor as well. “He tried to kill your sister.”
“I didn’t know that.” Simon cleared his throat. “You saved her, right?”
“He did kill one of her friends. Nice girl, a mute. Raleigh’s roommate, actually. He drank a little of her blood, but mostly she was just in the way.”
“Stop.”
“Tore her to pieces, so we had to get a leak-proof body bag—”
“Stop it!” Simon shouted, jumping to his feet.
Caxton just shook her head. “Getting a little sick to your stomach?” she asked. “I know the feeling, all too well. Help me, Simon. Help me stop him before he kills anybody else. Before he tries to kill you. Or is that the plan? Have you been in contact with him recently? Has he offered to make you a vampire like him? Did you say yes?”
Simon’s face twisted and darkened with rage. He opened his mouth to speak, but then a violent shudder wracked him from head to foot. It left him swaying slightly, but the blood had gone out of his cheeks. “I think,” he said, finally, “that I don’t want to talk to you any longer unless my lawyer is present.”
Caxton’s heart sagged in her chest. “That’s your right,” she said. She couldn’t resist adding, “Does that mean he has contacted you or—”
“Enough, Special Deputy,” the boy said. “I’m going home. I’m tired.”
“Okay,” she said. “Who’s your lawyer?”
The boy reached into his pocket and took out a nylon wallet on a chain. He opened it up and fished out a business card, which he handed to Caxton. Interesting, she thought. Not a lot of twenty-year-old college students have lawyers on retainer. She decided he must have gone to the lawyer recently, after finding out he was under surveillance. If he’d gone to that much trouble, she wondered what he had to hide. She went to the doorway and called Lu up to meet her there. She handed the card to the Fed without even looking at it. “Call this guy,” she said. “Tell him to meet us at Simon’s apartment, tonight. If he complains or says it’s after hours, tell him his client is being hounded by the police.”
Lu stepped out into the hall to comply.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Caxton said, “and wait for your lawyer there, alright?”
The boy lowered his head. She turned to Lu, who was on hold. “You stay here and keep an eye on this place. If we could find it this easily, a vampire probably can too. If Jameson shows up, you know what to do.”
Lu nodded. “Sure. Run like hell.” He stepped aside to let Caxton and Simon out of the room. They headed down the stairs together and outside into the cold of the parking lot. She half expected him to refuse her ride, but when she opened the door of the Mazda he climbed in without complaint. They drove back to his apartment in silence. At his front door he said, “I don’t want you to come in. You can’t come in unless I invite you in, not legally.”
“That’s an interesting legal question, since I’ve already been inside,” Caxton said. “Let’s ask your lawyer when he comes.”
Simon scowled at her but didn’t slam the door in her face when she came in, and at the top of the stairs he actually held his door open for her. Inside he shed his winter coat and sat down hard on the cot. Its springs squealed noisily. “Are you going to watch me undress?” he asked.
Caxton waved one hand at him. “Keep your clothes on. In fact, why don’t we pack a bag?” She went to his closet and took down a small black suitcase from the shelf at its top.
“Why, am I going somewhere?”
“Pennsylvania. Harrisburg, I think,” she said. “That way I can keep an eye on you and your sister at the same time.”
“I don’t think so.”
She shrugged and started packing, folding up shirts neatly and then laying them in the suitcase. She had very little time left, she knew. As soon as the lawyer showed up there would be no way on earth to compel Simon to come back to Pennsylvania with her. She needed to get him riled up again. Get him scared. She looked around inside the closet for pairs of pants.
“Leave my stuff alone,” Simon said, testily.
She shrugged again and sorted through the clothes he had on hangers. There wasn’t much, just a few nice shirts and a powder blue suit. The same suit he’d worn to Jameson’s mock funeral. It was probably the only suit he owned, she thought. She picked up one sleeve and let the linen material run through her fingers. That suit—
No. It couldn’t be the same. That was too—her brain flip-flopped in her skull. If she was right, if that suit matched the other one, the one in the picture, it made things a lot more complicated. But maybe it made one thing dead easy.
She turned around and looked at him, really studied his face for the first time. Then she walked toward him, reaching toward her belt.
“Are you going to shoot me?” he asked. His tone was trying for sarcasm, but it hit fear on the way there.
“Unh-uh,” Caxton said. Yeah. She was sure, she decided. That suit was the same color, the same light blue. She opened a pouch at her belt and took out her handcuffs. “I’m putting you under arrest.”
Chapter 41.
“What is this about?” Simon demanded, a few hours later. “What are you charging me with?”
He looked scared. She had hauled him down to the local police station and then handed him over to the officers there to be booked and processed. He’d been photographed, fingerprinted, strip-searched, and shoved in a cell with a bunch of drug offenders and petty thieves, then left there to stew for a while. He looked very scared.
This was the first she’d seen of him since they’d arrived. She’d spent the intervening time discussing her investigation with the local police chief and checking her email. She had to be sure.
When she was ready—or maybe, to be honest, a little while after she was fully ready—she had him brought up from cells and put in an interrogation room. As they went, it wasn’t the nicest interrogation room Caxton had ever seen. There was one table topped with Formica, brown and black with generations of cigarette burns and coffee stains. There were two chairs, which sat side by side—the room wasn’t big enough to allow the subject and the interviewer to sit across from each other. There was a reinforced staple in the wall, to which Simon had been attached by a pair of handcuffs. It was high up on the wall so that the video camera in the corner of the ceiling could see where Simon’s hands were at all times.
Caxton leaned back in her chair. She had a manila envelope containing a few pieces of paper. She drew one out and read:
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at interrogation time and at court. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”
She looked up at him expectantly.
“Fuck you,” he howled. “Tell me what’s going on. I don’t have to take this. I can walk out of here right now if you don’t charge me.”
Caxton shook her head no, with a sad little smile. “Charges? Alright. Let’s pick one. How about trespassing in a government building? Or maybe the theft of evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation.
Then there’s impersonating a police officer. Shall I go on?”
“You don’t—you don’t have any evidence,” he said. His eyes were shiny with fear.
