He laughed, a breathy, disgusted sound. "My captain came down on me hard yesterday about NOPD dress code. They won't let me wear jeans now that I'm not undercover, so I had to buy some stuff. The tie's revenge. He hates it." He plucked the pants and jacket. "You know how long it's been since I wore clothes like this? Catholic school, grades one through six. I had to go shopping." He looked pained. "But no one specified what had to be on the tie. Yanks their chains, you know?" He flashed me a grin, revealing the little crooked tooth at his lower lip. He was just too dang pretty. "I have another one with pigs on it."
The casual business look suited him. But then, I had a feeling that Rick LaFleur would look good in anything. Or nothing. "You gonna yank their chains until you hang yourself? Pardon the mixed metaphor."
"Something like that. Entering the real world sucks when it comes to wardrobe. But there's good things about it. My mom is overjoyed to discover that her degenerate son isn't a reprobate after all. When she's not being pissed that I didn't tell her."
My brows rose. "Your mom didn't know you were a cop?"
He lifted a shoulder in a what can I say gesture. "Mom can't keep a secret."
I nodded, though I had no idea what it would be like to have a mother. "So. You gonna let me in or keep me out here with the cons and the reprobates you've left behind?"
"I'm guessing you want to see the woo-woo files again. Come on in. You're not armed, are you?"
"No guns, no blades." I handed off my fanny pack to him, which wasn't heavy enough to contain a gun. He didn't bother to search it or me; I passed through the metal detector without a beep.
Beads clicking softly, I followed him. In the bowels of NOPD in room 666, he tossed the file cabinet keys onto the table, lifted one finger in good-bye, and locked me in the tiny cell. Before I could call out, he was gone, and there still wasn't a phone to call for my release. I thought about the possibility of being trapped down here if a fire broke out, or if Rick forgot about me and I was left overnight without food or water. The door wasn't steel or barred, and its hinges were within easy reach. If I could find a sturdy piece of wood or metal, I could beat or pry the pins out and use some of Beast's strength to rip the door off that way. But the next time I was down here, I was going to bring a picnic lunch.
Now familiar with the filing system, I found the key marked 666-0V, opened the vamp cabinet, and started looking for history, specifically for info on the devoveo.
Instead I spotted the bio of a certain near-rogue named Bethany. There wasn't much to go on--Bethany hadn't exactly hogged the limelight in the City of Jazz.
There were no photos of her, but someone had compiled a breakdown of vamp-clan hierarchy back in the seventies, and at the bottom, Bethany and Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, the priestess of the vamps, were listed as "out-clan." That word again. Interesting. I'd have to ask a couple people what it meant, as I couldn't trust the vocabulary of just one person, not about vamp stuff.
I'd seen both Sabina and Bethany in action, and they were vastly different. Bethany was slightly unhinged, African, and full of that icy shaman magic I'd never encountered before. Sabina was Mediterranean, nunnish, and sane. The only thing they had in common was power. A lot of it.
I took photos of the file to download later, and settled a folding chair close to the file cabinet. I went through it methodically, and quickly found something I hadn't seen before, a red file folder marked Legends. It consisted of unverified reports about vamps, all gathered through unnamed sources, paid informants, and by debriefing blood-junkies who had gone through rehab and tried to keep straight. The folder had been compiled by the same cigarette smoker, and handled by Jodi.
There was a lot of wacky stuff in it, things I discounted or knew had been disproved at one time or another, but there was a snippet about the Sons of Darkness, the term Bethany had used for the vamps who had turned her. The Sons were supposed to be the first vamps in their own recorded history. The very first. And according to blood-junkie scuttlebutt, they had been feral for a few days, not ten years. Somehow, they'd been able to skip the curing process. At least one of them was purported to be still alive, sane, and had visited in this country in the last decade, as guest of Clan Pellissier. It might not be true, but Bruiser had blanched at the mention of the Sons. I had no idea if any of this had anything to do with the vamp I was hunting, but he'd been raising young rouges for a long time. And almost anything could be evidence pointing to him.
I pulled my pad from my fanny pack and took notes from the Legends file, things that might help me find the rogue maker, things that caught my fancy, and things that might lead me in a new research direction. I found a mention of feeding frenzies, which had been on my mind since last night, but it was from a source the cop in question doubted. The blood-junkie had told him that "Clan Desmarais went nutso crazy and killed half their servants and all their slaves. I barely got out alive." No bodies had ever turned up, and the report had been buried. Like so many of the reports in this room.