It was very educational. Her smile slipped, however, when I pulled out my badge and asked to speak with the owner. He showed up very quickly after she called him on an intercom.
“How can I help you, officer?” he asked. Thin, with short blond hair and very pale complexion, he didn’t strike me as very attractive, but I was rarely attracted to vampires. He also had a picture in their book of partners that I could hire to help me with my fantasies. To each their own.
I showed him a picture of Sarah. “I’m interested in a list of dates and times this girl was here, and who she was with.”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen her. Besides, we have a confidentiality pledge to our customers. I can’t tell you anything about them.”
I smiled and batted my eyes. “I’ll have a search warrant and a team of forensic accountants here tomorrow. This girl is underage, and I have a witness who will swear he was here with her. Now, shall we start over? I want a list of dates and times this girl was here, and who she was with. I’ll also take any CCTV footage you have of her.” There was a camera in the lobby, and I was betting there were cameras in the action rooms as well, although probably better hidden.
His eyes narrowed. “What did you say your name is?”
“I didn’t. But since you asked, I’m Sergeant Danica James with the Arcane Division.”
Maybe I was infamous, as Jeri said. The vamp’s face froze, and he stared at me. I met his stare even as I felt him try to exert influence on me.
I smiled. “Coercion carries a ten-year sentence, you know? And it’s a particular hot button for me. Don’t you think it would be easier to cooperate? Or was she killed here? I can understand that covering up a murder would be important enough to risk pissing me off.”
“Killed here?”
“She’s missing. I would like to think I’m simply looking for a runaway teenager, but a murder case would be far more interesting. And more sensational. Career building, you know?”
He continued to stare at me for another minute, then broke off. “Come on back.”
We went through the employees’ door into a narrow hallway, then up a narrow set of stairs to the second floor. Passing a room with a lot of monitors, he led me into an office. The vamp sat down behind the desk and started tapping on his computer keyboard while I settled into one of the chairs in front of the desk.
His office had a few monitors, including one for the camera in the lobby and one each for the men’s and women’s changing rooms.
After about five minutes, his printer started spitting out paper. He pulled a memory card from the computer and handed it to me.
“I didn’t know she was underage,” he said.
“You didn’t ask.”
He gave me a half-hearted shrug. “She walked in of her own free will, and there was never a sign she was drugged or spelled. You humans have a lot of strange rules, especially when it comes to your young.”
“Our young are ill-equipped to defend themselves. We have societal norms to help them survive to adulthood.”
He snorted. “That one is well able to protect herself. I could smell the magik in her blood from across the room.”
I stood. “I would suggest you be a little more diligent in checking the age of your customers. I’ll drop a word to Vice that you’ve been lax in that department.”
“Oh, you can be assured I’ll mention you and my new diligence to the Vice detective I deal with,” he answered with a smirk.
I couldn’t believe he was that stupid and smirked right back. “I would suggest you check out my background a little more thoroughly.”
His expression froze, and I could tell he was unsure about what I meant.
More than thirty ex-cops, including a police captain, were serving prison sentences because of me. The fool had just cut his own throat, and that of at least one cop in the Vice Division.
No matter what other issues Whittaker and I might have between us, we were on the same page about corruption. Hard to corrupt a cop who was a multi-multi-millionaire before he joined the force, and Whittaker was among the Hundred. He also was ambitious. He joined the force because he had some of the same weird ideas about law and order that I did, and he thought he would make a great police commissioner. I had always been aware that helping his career wouldn’t hurt mine.
When I reached my bike, I stuffed the memory card and the list of Sarah’s visits in my saddle bag and drove home to view the card on my computer.
Plugging it in confirmed my suspicions as to cameras in the action rooms. And considering the quality of the video, I wondered if the vamp was selling the vids. Sarah was quite enthusiastic in her interactions with Crofton and the other man the vamp had recorded her with. Those two men were the only ones shown on the list of her visits. So, assuming the vamp had been straight with me, I only had one man I needed to identify.
A search on the names Crofton had given me turned up pictures of Jordan Walker that matched Sarah’s other partner. That didn’t mean she hadn’t been involved with the other men Crofton told me about, only that they hadn’t used the vamp’s hospitality.
Walker was another professor at Hopkins and lived two doors down from Crofton. It made
