Stake by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304257
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN

Murder victims generated a lot of paperwork. Detective Carrow sat at his desk in the downtown CSPD station, hiding behind the flimsy cubicle walls that did not keep out the sounds of conversations, ringing phones, whirring printers, and general background chatter.

Pinned to the cubicle wall was a photo of his two daughters smiling and posing with their new puppy. Another photo showed them at their dance lessons. He made a note to himself that he would see them soon, call them sooner. Maybe the Green Chiles and Frijoles Festival wasn’t such an awful idea after all. He’d even kept a picture of LeAnn for a while, before he realized that it was just too depressing. The rest of his office décor consisted of sticky notes, a dry-erase board, a computer, a file cabinet, two chains of paperclips linked together, printouts, calendar reminders, and a distressingly pink mug that showed kittens doing ballet with the caption ‘You’re Tutu Sweet’. The girls gave it to him last Christmas to remind him of them. When the handle broke after only a few weeks, he couldn’t bring himself to part with the mug, so it now served as a pencil holder on his desk.

And paperwork.

He looked back down at the case files. He still had to fill in a lot of details about the Douglas Eldridge murder, though the autopsy wouldn’t be complete for a while. He also had the files on Mark Stallings and Patric Ryan, which cried out for connecting tissue that would help him solve the case. Maybe some detail from the Eldridge crime scene would make the pieces fall into place.

Maybe all three of them were really vampires. He snorted to himself.

So far the salacious Eldridge details had not leaked, but he didn’t know how long the firefighters would remain quiet. Once the news broke about another stake victim, Public Affairs wouldn’t be able to deflect all the publicity. His days would become a circus. He almost looked forward to a good old jealous husband with a gun. At least those murders didn’t make his head spin.

‘Hey Detective, I’ve got a report for you.’

He looked up to see a tall plainclothes officer standing behind the cubicle wall, tapping his fingers on the metal rim. Lieutenant Nathan Dodge was an older officer within a dart’s throw of retirement age. Dodge was soft-spoken, pleasant to everyone, and somehow had not become jaded even after decades of working as a cop.

Carrow closed his half-finished report on Eldridge. ‘Sure, what is it, Nathan? Buy you a beer if you get me out of doing more paperwork.’

Dodge smiled. ‘You asked us to keep an eye on that young woman, Alexis Tarada.’

Carrow perked up. ‘Anything interesting? She scare a vampire out into the sunlight?’ When he saw the blank look on Dodge’s face, he waved his hand. ‘Never mind. What did you find?’

‘She did meet a man for coffee downtown earlier today. Furtive demeanor, bulky jacket and a baseball cap pulled low. He sat next to Tarada and they talked for a while.

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