I looked up at the broken window pane where the shots had come from. Other panes were busted out from where Eli had fired back. I looked down at myself. I was covered in sticky, drying blood. I opened and closed my hands; the blood was tacky and cold in the warm air.
I had blood on my hands. Again. Maybe this time I should have felt good about it, good because I’d maybe saved an officer’s life. But I had a feeling that Swelling would be uninjured and going about her life just fine had I not lived across the street from the house.
I might be War Woman, but my past was still alive and well inside me. My old enemy guilt rose up and wrapped cold, slimy arms around me, a death stench rising from inside me.
Around us all, a breeze gusted, cooler than the midday air. Overhead, clouds were moving in. Rain on the wind and the threat of lightning in the ozone scent.
I felt a tap and looked down at Jodi, my friend on NOPD. The vamps’ best friend at cop central. “He fired from up there,” I said, nodding to the busted window. “Did the unknown person who offered me cover while I pulled Swelling to safety hit him?”
“Blood at the scene,” Jodi said. “No one there. Trail out the back door, across the alley and the garden behind the house, through the next alley to the street; then it stops. Shooter got into a vehicle and disappeared.”
“The old lady?” The name came to me. “Margery Thibodaux? Is she okay?”
“Dead. Single GSW to the head. Maybe two days ago. Before the bomb incident.” Her voice lowered. “What are you mixed up in, Jane?”
My ears hadn’t returned to normal. There was a hum of damaged eardrums that made her voice sound tinny. And then I realized that her voice also sounded odd because of the dead cop. There was horror and anger on the faces all around me. Explosive anger, needing only a spark to set them all off.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know. Except there’s this vamp, looking for trouble, and an old friend sent him to me.”
“Friend?” The word was skeptical. “This friend have a name?”
“Yeah. Reach. That’s all I know him by. The vamp tortured him to get to me. Supposedly. And no, I don’t have an address; our only contact was through e-mail and cell.” I gave her both his e-mail addy and his cell number. “But don’t expect to find him. He’s gone to ground.”
She grunted, unimpressed, taking down the info on her tablet. “You’re part of a crime scene. I need your clothes and a statement.” Jodi pointed me at an unmarked cop car. “Sit there and wait until Crime Scene can get to you. Don’t touch anything. Preserve the trace evidence.”
That meant sitting in drying blood, no shower, no breakfast, no water, probably all day. I didn’t complain. Not with a dead cop at my feet.
? ? ?
It started to rain an hour later and I ended up back at cop central, in a small room where a female crime scene tech removed trace evidence from me, took samples of the cracked and dried blood all over me, did a trace-gunshot residue test, which came back negative, clearing me of being the person who fired the shots back at the shooter. She took my clothes but let me wash up and put on fresh clothing delivered by Alex, who had nothing to add, saying that he had been playing video games when the shooting started. He hadn’t seen anyone fire back. Neither had I. All truth. I didn’t volunteer that the person who returned fire was my partner, Eli Younger, nor that he had gone after the suspect. I hadn’t seen him do any of that.
I finally got to head home before sunset, a cloudy, rainy afternoon leading into a cooler, wet evening, taking a cab back to the house. I was so tired I was swaying on my feet, standing on my front porch as I watched the cab roll away. I remembered only then that I had a cabdriver friend of sorts, and I hadn’t called Rinaldo recently. So many things I needed to do, including sleeping and eating and maybe drinking water. I’d taken nothing in me all day. But I stood at the side gate in a puddle of rain and stared out at the world.
The front door across from my house was sealed by crime scene tape. I could get in, if I was willing to cut the tape or go around back for a little B&E. I needed to sniff the shooter’s blood to see whether I recognized it. But I just couldn’t make myself.
The street between our houses had been scrubbed free of blood, any final traces washed away by rain. I swiveled and looked at my house. The wood was pocked in several places, holes that had been enlarged by CSI retrieving evidence.