nasty clunk that sounded like plastic breaking. He put the battery and the phone down on a desk next to him.
“You can be a real jerk sometimes, do you know that?” he asked her. “I didn’t call him in. I didn’t need to.”
She stared at the phone. “He was monitoring my calls,” she said. She had known that much. “You aren’t suggesting—”
“He said he’s going to get me one of these phones, too. He told me he could hear everything you said when you had it on you, and most of what was going on around you. There’s a microphone built into the mouthpiece that’s active even when you’re not making a call. He could hear you whenever he wanted to.”
“He was listening to me all the time?” Caxton asked, horrified. “You mean the federal government was spying on me?”
Glauer shrugged. “It’s what they’re good at.”
“Jesus. So much for his hands-off management style.”
“He’s making me the lead on the investigation,” Glauer told her. “But I’m not ready.”
She did something then that was very unlike her. She lurched forward and hugged him, hard. He was so big that her arms barely fit around him. “Just be careful,” she said. “Don’t take chances the way I did. If you think you’re in danger at any time, just run away.” That wasn’t what Jameson had taught her. It was no way to catch a vampire, either. It might keep him from getting killed, though. “I’m sorry I said those things before. About you and Raleigh. I know you did your best—nobody would have thought, looking at her, that she had a sneaky bone in her body.”
“No, you were right. I screwed up. And now I’ve gotten promoted for it.” He hugged her back, hard enough to make her feel like her eyeballs were bugging out, then they both let go. “Listen. The Commissioner isn’t going to like any of this. He’ll probably bust you back down to highway patrol. If there’s anything you need around here, get it now, and put it somewhere safe.”
She nodded her thanks and bent over the remains of the phone. Opening another compartment, she slipped out the SIM card. Before she headed out of the briefing room she took one last look at the whiteboards. Dylan Carboy, Jameson Arkeley, and Justinia Malvern looked back at her. “Good luck,”
she said to Glauer, and then headed for her office.
There she copied all of her email to her home account and took down the few personal effects she’d used to ornament the walls—a picture of Clara at the annual auto show, a picture of Wilbur, one of the dogs she’d rescued, her certificates from the Academy. She shoved them in a manila envelope and tucked it under her arm. From her desk drawer she took her old phone and put the SIM card back in, then tucked the phone in her pocket. She had no doubt Fetlock would know what she’d done, but she didn’t care.
Leaving the office, she started toward the Coke machine. All this humiliation and public chastisement was making her thirsty, but she stopped before she could get there. Suzie Jesu-roga, the captain of the area response team, was standing in the hall in front of her. Captain Suzie, as Caxton knew her, was wearing a full suit of riot armor, including helmet, and carrying a patrol rifle, a big semiautomatic assault rifle.
“Hi,” Caxton said. She knew Captain Suzie relatively well, had worked with her on occasion. She had no idea what the other woman was doing there. “Something I can help you with?”
“Vice versa, it sounds like,” the Captain said. “Come on, this Fetlock guy said I should come and fetch you.”
“Jesus, what time is it?” Caxton asked. She looked down at her own watch—it was four-fifteen. She whirled around to look out the windows and saw the sun was just a smear of orange on the horizon. It was going to set in a matter of minutes.
Chapter 47.
They’d chosen a room with a west-facing window, so they could see the sun. It washed Fetlock’s face with a dull red glow and made his eyes gleam. He stood stock-still before a wide wooden desk where they’d laid Raleigh’s body, still wrapped and taped up in a sheet.
Behind Fetlock, their backs up against the wall, the members of Captain Suzie’s ART stood at attention, their patrol rifles at low ready. Caxton required no explanation. If Raleigh did rise when the sun went down, they would open fire instantly.
It was more than she’d hoped for. More than she’d expected. Maybe it would be enough. She stepped up to the doorway and ran one hand along the jamb. Fetlock heard her come and turned his head a fraction of an inch. He nodded at her, and she nodded back. No matter what had happened between them, or what was to happen to Caxton now, they were together on this one thing. Raleigh would not be allowed to come back.
The sun widened on the horizon and lost its shape. The snow on the ground outside glowed almost bloodred, and the clouds in the sky were streaked with purple and orange. It was 4:29, and sunset that day would take place at exactly 4:31.
Caxton kept track of such things. She had to know every day when the night began.
The room filled with fumes from the gasoline that soaked Raleigh’s sheet. The liquid rolled across the top of the desk and dripped to the floor. Caxton found she was holding her breath and she let it go, then breathed in the sharp tang of the gas.
The sun fluttered in the hills. Caxton drew her weapon, her old 92, and held it tight against her thigh.
Ready to shoot at the first sign. What would it be? she wondered. A twitch of the sheet, down near its middle where Raleigh’s hands must be? Would Raleigh open her mouth, surprised by her brand-new teeth, and would the sheet deform over her face in response? Maybe she would sit up slowly, deliberately. Or maybe she would scream to find herself trapped inside the stinking shroud.
Fetlock’s digital watch beeped once, and everyone in the room shifted or jumped a little. The beep meant only that it was 4:30 exactly: it was only signaling the half hour. One of the ART members laughed, a dry chuckle that didn’t go anywhere and didn’t catch on.
It had been all Caxton could do to not lift her weapon, to not start firing blindly into the sheet-covered corpse. She tried to force herself to relax, to at least ease her fierce grip on the gun. She tried to breathe calmly, deeply. Outside the sun was just a fragment of its former self. She could look right at it without pain.
Fetlock gestured with one hand. Caxton wasn’t sure what it meant. Had he seen something? Was he telling her to stand down? She started to take a step closer to the body, but just then Captain Suzie turned and moved toward her. Caxton studied the other woman’s face. It was calm. Emotionless. With a steady hand Captain Suzie reached across Caxton’s body—and switched on the room’s lights.
The sudden change in illumination sent shadows flickering across the sheet, and it almost looked as if it had moved. But no. It hadn’t shifted at all—even the pattern of wrinkles in the sheet was the same.
The sun was gone, leaving a greenish twilight blurred across the sky.
It was 4:31 in the afternoon.
The body hadn’t moved.
“There,” Fetlock said. “Are you—”
“Hold on,” Caxton said. She realized she’d never seen a vampire rise before and that meant she had no idea if they were active during the dusk. “There’s still some light left.” She had no idea what mechanism of timing pertained to vampires. Did they need total darkness to rise, or was it enough that the sun was below the horizon? In mountainous places the sun would set earlier than on the plains. Heavy cloud cover could alter the time of true dark—there were so many variables. “We’ve waited this long, another few minutes won’t hurt us.”
One of the ART members—the one who had laughed before, perhaps—sighed. She scowled and ignored him.
“This is important,” she insisted. “This is life or death.”
Fetlock shrugged, but he didn’t say anything more. Caxton moved closer to the corpse, her weapon low but ready. She brought her free hand up and stretched it toward the sheet, looking for the telltale cold feeling that radiated from a vampire’s body. That was enough to make Fetlock react—he came up behind her and pulled her gently away.
“I’ll talk to Simon Arkeley and see if he’ll allow a cremation anyway,” Fetlock said. “But really, Trooper
