31.

It was early afternoon, and I felt like crap, and I would continue to feel like crap until the sun disappeared in a few hours. We were at Hero's again, where very few people knew our names, but at least the bartender remembered our drinks.

"A glass of chardonnay and a martini?" he asked, giving us a warm smile. He had cute dimples around his mouth. Thick lips, too. Thick, juicy lips.

"You bet," Mary Lou said, beaming. He winked and moved down the bar to pour our drinks, and Mary Lou continued smiling at his back, or perhaps at his backside. "Isn't he just amazing? What a memory!"

"Down girl. It's his job to remember," I said. "He does well to remember."

He returned with our drinks. Mary Lou handed him her credit card, although she probably would have preferred to slip it inside the waistband of his Jockey shorts. She sipped carefully from her glass and finally looked over at me. "So what's the latest news with your case?"

"Are you done undressing our bartender with your eyes?"

"Not yet. Wait. Okay, now I am."

"You're a married woman, with kids," I said.

"I know. Your point?"

"Married women shouldn't be undressing bartenders with their eyes."

"Show me that in the rule book."

"There is no rule book."

She looked at me. "Exactly. Now tell me about your case."

I gave her an update, and to her credit she forgot about the bartender and his buns and focused on me.

"Well, Horton's obviously your guy. What a fucking creep." She shuddered slightly.

"Do you talk this way around your kids?"

"No, just you. I let it all out around you."

"Lucky me," I said.

"And you were next on his list?" she asked.

"You know, to silence the pesky private eye."

"You are kind of pesky, aren't you?"

"The peskier the better."

"So what're you going to do?" she asked.

I sipped some wine. I tasted nothing, literally, but at least I didn't double over with stomach cramps. Sipping from the wine glass gave me some semblance of normalcy. "I'm going to have a talk with Detective Sherbet this evening."

"But what can he do?" asked my sister. "He can't just barge in there and arrest the guy without probable cause."

"You've been watching too much TV, but you're right. Not without a search warrant. And one needs evidence to obtain a search warrant."

"So breaking into this guy's house and finding evidence hidden under his bed won't fly with a judge, right?"

"Right," I said.

"So what will you do?" she asked.

"The detective and I will figure something out."

"Will you tell this detective about your break-in?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Will he like it?"

"Probably not."

We were silent, and I decided now was the time to tell her about the attempted rape and the death of the gang banger�Dand about the sucking of blood. So I did. The story took a few minutes, during which Mary Lou said nothing although I noted she had quickly finished her drink.

"That was very reckless of you," she said when I was done.

"I know."

"And you really drank his blood?"

"Yes."

She was silent. I was silent. The noises of the bar came floating to my ears, the chink of glasses being washed in the sink, the sound of laughter behind me, the snapping opening of the cash register drawer.

"What if this somehow causes you to lose control, Samantha?"

"I love my kids too much to lose control."

"Then you took a foolish chance by drinking that man's blood."

"Yes, I did. But the situation had gotten quickly out of control. Before I knew it, I was holding a corpse."

"You should not be jogging so late."

I drank my wine. Sometimes Mary Lou was impossible to talk to.

"When is there a better time? I'm a goddamn vampire."

"The early evening."

"In the early evening I have the kids and work."

"Then why do you need to jog at all?"

"Because it helps me stay sane."

We were alone at this end of the counter. As we spoke, my eyes constantly scanned the crowd, making sure we had no eavesdroppers. "I walk a fine line, Mary Lou. Everything around me is threatening to crumble away. Something like exercise is within my control. I need control right now."

"Maybe you need help."

We had gone through this before. "There's no one to help me."

"Maybe you need to speak to a therapist, someone, anyone."

"You think this is in my head?"

"No. It's real. I know that."

"The moment I tell a therapist that I'm a vampire, they'll lock me up and take away my kids. Is that what you want?"

She didn't answer immediately.

"Is that what you want, Mary Lou?"

"No, it's not what I want, but I also think your kids are not living a very healthy and normal life." She sighed and reached out and held my hand. "You are a good mother, I know that. I know your kids mean everything to you, but I think they are in an unhealthy environment."

"I see it as a different environment," I said, then studied her concerned face. "Wait. Do you worry for their safety?"

She said nothing.

"Do you worry that I will have a craving and drink from my own children?"

Nothing.

"You do, don't you?"

She sucked in some air. "No, of course not. But if you keep behaving recklessly you might, you know, someday lose sight of who you are. Sam, you've fought for so long to keep things together. I don't want to see your life crumble around you just because you found the taste of one man's blood particular good."

I studied her and she looked away. I suddenly had an insight. "You've been talking to Danny, haven't you?"

She reddened. "Yes. He called me the other night to apologize for not picking up the kids. He's worried about the kids."

"Oh, really? And he shows this by coming home at midnight?"

She shrugged. "He worries that you will have a negative influence on their lives. I told him that was ridiculous. No mother loves her kids more than you."

We were silent. It was just before dusk, and I was irritable and cranky and tired. I wanted to sleep.

"He's screwing someone else," I said.

"You know for sure?"

"No. But I'm going to find out."

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"So am I. But it was bound to happen, right? Who wants to be married to a freak?"

"You're not a freak," she said, and then cracked a smile. "Well, okay, maybe a little freaky."

I laughed. She reached out and took my hand. I reveled in the warmth.

She said, "So what are you going to do, Sam?"

"Follow him," I said. "I am, after all, an ace detective."

32.

The sun had just set, and I was in Detective Sherbet's office. I felt good. Most important, I felt cognizant and lucid.

I sat in the visitor's chair in front of his desk and noticed for the first time that Sherbet was a handsome man. His arms were heavily muscled and tan, with dark hair circling his forearms. I didn't usually go for arm hair on men, but on Sherbet it seemed fitting and a little exciting. He seemed like a man's man, powerful and virile. No wonder it galled him to think his kid might be gay.

"So how did the basketball game go the other day?" I asked.

There was a greasy bag of donuts sitting on top of a very full trash can. The scent of donut oil was foul, and slightly upsetting to my stomach. I fought through it.

"Kid was horrible. He actually took a shot at the wrong basket. Hell, he almost even made it. I nearly cheered. The coach benched him after that."

"Did your boy have fun?"

"No. He was miserable."

"Did you have fun?"

"No. I was embarrassed."
"So what are you going to do? Keep forcing him to play?"

"You sound like my wife."

"Your wife sounds like she might be the only reasonable parent in your household."

"I don't know what I'm going to do with that kid."

"Just love him."

"I do."

Our section of the police station was empty and quiet. The detective had his hands clasped over his rotund belly. Although his stomach could have been flatter, the roundness sort of added to his manhood, pronouncing him as a real man who wasn't afraid to eat.

"You're looking at my fat belly," he said.

"I would call it rotund," I said.

"Rotund? Are you trying to get on my good side?"

"Maybe."

He rubbed a hand over the curving sweep of his belly, then played with one of the clear plastic buttons. His face turned somber. "Samantha, I know you were assaulted six years ago, here in Fullerton. It's in your record. You were found in Hillcrest Park, half-dead. Your throat torn open. Although there was little blood at the scene, you had almost bled to death. At first it was believed that you might have been attacked by an animal, a dog or coyote. But later you told investigators that it had been a man. He was never found."

"Detective, I don't want to talk about�D"

"Now, I understand you might not want to talk about it, but there's something strange going on here in my town, my backyard, so to speak. My beat. I would appreciate if maybe someday you could help me understand."

"Someday," I said. "Just not today."

"Okay, fine. On to item number two. What do you have on the Fulcrum case?"

Relieved to be talking about anything else, I told him everything I knew about Horton. When I got to the part about breaking and entering Horton's home, I said, "Are you going to arrest me?"

"Not yet. Keep going."

"Horton had files on Hewitt Jackson and Kingsley Fulcrum, not to mention a new file on me. In these files are detailed information on Jackson's and Fulcrum's movements. A date and time was circled on Jackson. In fact, it was the exact date and time he was murdered."

Detective Sherbet's eyes widened a little. For Sherbet, this was the next best thing to him jumping up and down and yelling yippee! "Then he's our man."

"Yes, I think so."

"You think so? Hell, he had everything but the smoking gun. And he might still have that, as well, once we serve a search warrant."

"He just doesn't feel right."

"Is that your gut talking?"

"Yes."

"Well, my gut says he's our man."

"How are you going to convince a judge to issue a warrant?"

He sat back, laced his fingers behind his thick head of salt and pepper hair. "Good question. Any ideas?"

"You're the homicide detective."

He thought about that. "How about a trash run?"

"As in dig through his trash?" I said.

"Sure. It's public domain. We find something incriminating we can convince a judge to issue a warrant."

I blinked. "We?"

"Yes, I'm not going to dig through his trash alone."

"The trash went out last night," I said. "I saw the barrels."

"It's settled then. Next Thursday we go out to Horton's place and dig through his trash."

"Sounds like a date."

"Let's just hope we find something."

"Oh, I'm sure we'll find something," I said. "Let's just hope we find the right something."