“It was—it was very sweet, I thought. I was showing her how we log in each piece of evidence. I was boring her, I thought. Then I turned around and she planted one right on me. Stood up on her tiptoes, threw her arms around my neck. The whole thing. I said—I don’t know what I said. I was so surprised I might have said anything. I probably said I was too old for her and she told me the kiss was just a thank-you. For taking care of her.”
Caxton knew Glauer well enough to understand how he must have reacted to that. The big cop lived for rescuing civilians from danger. It was why he’d become a cop in the first place. Had Raleigh seen through him that easily? Drug abusers could be devilishly cunning when it came to getting their next fix.
“I turned around and walked out of the room, unable to say anything at that point. I took my eyes off of her for maybe a couple seconds, that’s all.”
“Plenty of time.”
“Sure. She could have palmed her works and a bag of heroin and I wouldn’t have noticed.” Glauer stared down at his feet. “This is terrible.”
“Yep,” Caxton said. She was seeing stars, she was so angry. She thought about firing Glauer. When she wrote up her report on this incident, he would at the very least go before an administrative hearing. Even if she spoke up on his behalf—and she wasn’t sure she would—he would be suspended without pay for a long time. He might get fired without her lifting a finger. “I asked you to watch over her. I saved her from her father and all I wanted you to do was keep her alive.”
“Hey,” Glauer said. “There’s no need to get personal about this.”
“No?”
“No! This was a terrible accident, but—”
Caxton’s eyes went wide. “Are you so sure? Are you sure it was an accident? What if it was suicide?”
“No,” Glauer said, denying the possibility.
Caxton couldn’t afford to do the same. You had to commit suicide to become a vampire. It was one of the rules—true accidents didn’t count. “Her father could have given her his curse.”
“No,” Glauer said again.
“He could have. Tonight, in just a couple of hours, she could open her eyes, and they could be red. She could open her mouth, and it could be full of those teeth. Look at her. She’s already lost all her color.”
“That’s not—you’re making a mistake. This was just a dumb accident. She misjudged the dosage. That’s all!”
Caxton shook her head. “We have to cremate her body, before dark. I’ve made this mistake before.
And it cost me everything.”
Chapter 45.
Caxton had been worried about Simon. She had worried that Jameson would approach Simon, and make his offer, and that Simon would say yes. She had barely even considered the notion it would be Raleigh, poor timid little Raleigh, so fragile that Jameson had to rescue her and stick her somewhere quiet so very far from the real world.
She grabbed the yellow pages and started dialing. She needed an emergency cremation—before four-thirty. That was a little over two hours away. The first three places she tried didn’t even do cremation. It wasn’t listed as a category in the directory—she was just dialing funeral homes at random.
The fourth number connected her to a very polite, very understanding man who assured her that it was quite impossible.
“I’d need the approval of the next of kin.”
“I’m a U.S. Marshal,” she said. “Can I order a cremation even without permission?”
“Not unless you’re also a health official. Otherwise, you need family approval.”
“Her brother’s the only one left. I’ll make him say yes.”
“Make him? There are regulations that apply to this industry,” he said. “Even if he says yes, we would also need a death certificate.”
“I promise you, this body is dead.”
The polite man coughed, a sound she could have interpreted as a laugh if she liked. Apparently in the mortuary industry you learned how to be diplomatic. But Caxton knew she was already beaten. Without a death certificate there was no chance, and to get one she would have to wait for a coroner to come and pronounce the body. If she waited for that, then took the time to drive to the funeral home—it could already be too late.
Glauer and Simon took turns attempting to talk her out of the cremation altogether. The big cop said it wasn’t necessary, that Raleigh’s death had been an accident. He said that Jameson had never had a chance to pass on his curse. “You were there, the whole time,” he said. “You heard what they said to each other.”
“You can pass the curse on with a look. That’s all it takes,” she insisted.
“But don’t you remember, the curse has to be passed on in silence? Justinia Malvern even called it ‘The Silent Rite.’ If they were talking, they couldn’t do it.”
Caxton considered that a good point, but largely immaterial. “He could have passed her the curse any time. Long before I got there. I was going on her word that she hadn’t had contact with him in six months, but what if she was lying?”
It was Simon’s turn. “She would never do such a thing,” he told her. “She was terrified of the sight of blood. Whenever she would scrape a knee, back when we were kids, she would go run and hide under the sofa.”
“She didn’t seem to mind needles. And where there are needles, there’s blood,” Caxton told him. “She got over it.”
No one could convince her. She couldn’t afford to let anyone convince her. She stormed out of the room and down the hall, into a wardroom where a number of troopers were gathered around some snack machines. “You four, come with me,” she said, and headed out through the main doors of the building. It was cold out in the parking lot and snow was falling—not the blizzardlike torrent she’d seen at Syracuse, just a few scattered flakes, but it made her turn up her collar. “Come on,” she said, and led them behind the building. There were domes back there to hold road salt, and a long low shed that held emergency road barriers. She opened up the wide doors of the shed and ushered in her four draftees. Inside stood hundreds of wooden sawhorses painted in reflective white and yellow. She told each of the men to grab one, and picked one up herself. It was heavy. She didn’t care.
In the parking lot she had the men dump the sawhorses in an untidy heap. She piled her own on top. It didn’t look like enough. “More,” she said, and they went back. One of the troopers asked her what they were doing. She told him to shut up and grab a sawhorse, and he did. They brought their loads back to the parking lot and dropped them on top of the pile with a clattering, clonking noise. The legs of the sawhorses kept them from piling up the way she might like. While she sent the men back for one more round she climbed on top of the pile, then jumped up and down on it, coming down hard on the legs with her boots. Some of them snapped off. The men brought more sawhorses—and she had them dump them and go back again.
Glauer and Simon stood by the doors, watching her. She figured they understood what she was doing, but she wasn’t particularly concerned. They weren’t actively trying to stop her. When the troopers came, grumbling among themselves, with one more load of wood, she nodded in acceptance and rearranged some of the timber to make the pile more symmetrical.
“Now,” she said, “you. Go down to the motor pool and get the biggest jerry can of gasoline they can give you. You two—go inside, into the barracks. There’s a body on one of the beds. Wrap it up in a sheet and bring it out here.”
If the crematorium wouldn’t do it, she’d burn up Raleigh’s remains herself. She climbed on top of the pile and started kicking at the legs again, trying to make a more solid heap of fuel.
“Caxton,” Glauer finally said. He was standing right behind her. “Caxton, this is insane.”
“Is it? There’s a girl in there who could very well wake up at four-thirty as a vampire, thirsty for blood.
You’ve seen what they can do, and you know as well as I do that they’re never stronger than the moment they rise.”
“You’re assuming—”
“I’m assuming nothing,” she demanded. “I’m preparing for an eventuality. Given the risks involved, it would
