I returned from the dream, strong, complete, hungry.
Why wasn’t this memory depicted?
The delirium melted away. Clear-eyed and wary, I stared at Phaedra. “Why are you doing this?”
Her eyes were tiny yellow slits in the candlelight. “I’ve told you. So you can make me a vampire.”
“That will never happen.”
“It has to.” She jabbed at the drawings. Her fingernails gouged the paper. They left dark shiny smears.
Blood?
She waved her stained fingertips. I smelled the blood. Was this a trick? Had she cut herself on the sly?
The revulsion was too much and I recoiled from her.
Phaedra’s hand curled and her bloody index finger clawed at me. “And I selected you.”
“Where’s my say in this?”
She shook the drawings. “You know what it’s like to live with this pain. This humiliation.”
I swatted the drawings from her hand. They fluttered to the floor. “Don’t talk to me about humiliation. Not after you’ve been digging around in my head.”
“I had to do it.” She grasped my wrist. “So you can save me.”
I held her at arm’s length. “You used the Iraqi girl to manipulate me. I owe you nothing.”
Her eyes probed mine, her expression pleading. “Nothing?”
“Not after what you’ve done.”
That pleading expression turned injured. She let go of my hand and lowered her head.
The echo started, faintly. I got ready for a hard blast to my brain. But the echo never rose above a murmur and faded.
Was this the last of Phaedra’s psychic tricks? She kept her face down and appeared embarrassed, broken.
She knelt and quietly collected the drawings.
The realization that I had better memories of the Iraqi girl reassured me. The guilt was still there but softened by her forgiveness.
Phaedra had trouble with the zipper on the portfolio. I reached to help her but she brushed my arm aside with her shoulder. After she’d closed the portfolio, she sat with her back to me.
She gave tiny sobs and wiped her face.
I didn’t have a solution. Didn’t help that she had been dishonest with me from the start. Maybe another vampire would turn her. If he didn’t kill her.
I read my watch: 3:11 P.M. We’d been here a while.
The constant anxiety caught up with me. I was tired and wanted to rest. I stared longingly at the open bench. It would be a squeeze to get in but was almost like a crypt in a chapel. This wasn’t a polished mahogany casket with a padded silk lining but it had a rustic appeal. A nap now would be too callous, even for me, so I offered an olive branch.
“Don’t your relatives worry about you?”
“Fat chance. My aunt dreams of the day she sees my face on a flyer at the police station.”
“And Uncle Sal?”
Phaedra pulled the parka’s hood over her head. “Like he cares about anything but money.”
My eyelids were heavy. I wish I had turned down this assignment. Phaedra was more than I wanted to handle. Now that she had shut up, perhaps I could get some sleep.
Her cell phone chimed. She stood and dug into her jeans. In the glow of the tiny red screen, she squinted with annoyed recognition at the number flashing. She put the phone to her ear. A woman’s voice chattered like an angry squirrel.
“Yeah, Aunt Lorena, I’m okay. Yes, I’m sure. Calm down. Why do you ask?” Phaedra’s complexion faded. She repeated, “Oh my God.” She snapped the phone closed and dropped it into her parka. “We have to go.”
I blew the lamp candle out. “What’s happened?”
“Uncle Sal’s men were attacked.”
My kundalini noir tensed. “Where? Who?”
“By the river. Cleto is missing.”
“How?” I asked.
“Just like Gino.”
The zombies were back.
The afternoon sun retreated and cold, dark shadows claimed the forest. Phaedra ran down the slope to my 4Runner. I stayed behind her, in position to catch her in case she slipped on the uneven rocks. When we made it back to the highway, we were again in bright sunlight.
She got on the phone and, after quick frantic conversations, pieced enough together to relate a few details. Cleto was arranging a sale. Of drugs I was sure. Cavagnolo and Vinny had arrived later and found a gruesome mess.
Phaedra opened one of her prescription bottles and shook out two pills. She gulped the pills, chased them with a slug from her water bottle, and leaned against the door. She closed her eyes and grimaced.
I asked, “You okay enough to answer some questions?”
She raised her right hand and made a go-ahead motion.
“When was the last time your uncle spoke with Cleto?”
“A couple of hours ago.” She kept her eyes closed. “Why?”
“I’m trying to establish a timeline.”
The zombies had attacked recently, in daylight. Why had they become so brazen?
There was another possibility. Maybe Cavagnolo was using the mysterious killings as cover to get rid of Cleto. Maybe Cleto suspected that Cavagnolo was an informant. I couldn’t overlook the most obvious of motives.
Phaedra cracked her eyelids and peeked at the highway. She sat up and directed me to a dirt road. We wound through willows and cottonwoods on a course that took us close to the Rio Grande.
Phaedra waved to slow down and pointed to the right, through a trampled opening in the tall weeds. She explained that there were lots of secluded hangouts along the river, and she knew where the meeting had been.
My ears started to buzz. A second buzz began at my fingertips, rushed up my arms, and caused a shiver across my shoulders.
The first vehicle that came into view was Cleto’s black Chevy pickup. The second was a white Cadillac Escalade that I hadn’t seen before. The vehicles were within a clearing, surrounded by a bowl of dense trees and shrubs. The doors were open on both vehicles. Spatters of blood the size of dinner plates stained the windows and the upholstery.
On the other side of the clearing, Cavagnolo and Vinny stood beside their red pickup. They stared slack-faced at the carnage. Cavagnolo’s thumb played nervously over the hammer of his pistol. Vinny remained farther back, looking ready to run away.
Dozens of empty cartridges were strewn across the dirt. The back hatch of the Cadillac yawned wide. Plastic liter jars spilled white crystals across the ground. Judging by the cat piss smell, it was meth.
Three men lay in heaps so bloody I thought they’d been mulched to death instead of shot. One looked familiar but was so mutilated I couldn’t be sure.
Phaedra stepped behind me in slow movements as if worried that at any second the mayhem and bloodletting would begin again.
Cavagnolo saw us and in one quick wipe, his expression went from horror to anger. He scowled, and when he spoke, spit sprayed from his mouth. “Goddammit, why the hell did you bring her here?”
Phaedra brushed beside me. “I had to show Felix how to find this place.”
Cavagnolo aimed his pistol at the corpses, not to shoot, but like it was a talisman to ward off evil. The skulls had been pried open and emptied. “What’s with taking the brains? Is this some voodoo horseshit?”
More like an afternoon snack for zombies.
I asked, “These your guys?”
Cavagnolo gave a rueful nod.
“Everyone accounted for?”
“Except Cleto.” Cavagnolo pawed at the spent cartridges. “He put up a hell of fight.” Cavagnolo hesitated. “I can’t figure it. We’ve got no trouble with anybody. So what is this about?”
I said, “Maybe someone’s trying to send you a message.”
“Who? Why?” Cavagnolo squared his shoulders and leaned toward me.
I didn’t give ground. “Back off, Sal. Don’t crowd me.”
“Then why did you say it?” He tightened his grip on his pistol and gave a look that at any second he was going to drill me through the forehead. “First you arrive. Then we lose Gino.”