“She did. With chasma on a triple word score. I challenged, because I’d never heard of it before, but it turns out it’s a medical term for excessive yawning. After that I gave her the grand tour of the place—the PCO room, the computer crimes unit, the evidence room, the garage…”
“Did you let her wear your Smokey Bear hat?”
Glauer blushed again, but didn’t comment on whether he had or not. They went up the stairs to the barracks wing of the headquarters, where off-?duty troopers often slept between shifts. There were several semiprivate bedrooms there. “I kept her up kind of late—I didn’t sleep at all myself, of course, because I was on watch. She’s still sleeping, I think, or at least she hasn’t come out of there yet.” He indicated a particular door and raised his knuckles as if to knock on it. “I don’t know, maybe we should just let her sleep.”
“It’s almost one o’clock,” Caxton said. “If she sleeps any later she’ll never sleep tonight. Go on.”
Glauer knocked once, tentatively, and waited a second. When there was no answer he knocked again with more determination. By the time Caxton started frowning he had knocked three times and gotten no response at all.
“Open it,” she said.
He turned the knob and pushed the door open. The shades were drawn over the windows of the room beyond, so it was lit by the glow of a television with the sound turned off. It gave a bluish cast to everything, but instantly Caxton realized that it couldn’t explain why Raleigh’s lips were so purple, or why her face was so pale. She rushed inside and cupped her hand over the girl’s mouth and nose.
“She’s not breathing,” she said, looking up at the big cop in the doorway, who could only stare back with nothing on his face but surprise.
Vampire Zero
Chapter 44.
Caxton pulled the sheet off Raleigh’s body. She was naked underneath, but there was no time for modesty. She grabbed the girl’s wrists and rubbed them violently. Her skin was ice cold.
“No,” she moaned, then looked up at Glauer again. “Get in here and help me. Call 911, tell them we have an emergency.” She put her hands together over Raleigh’s sternum and pushed down rapidly. Glauer put his mouth over Raleigh’s and blew air down into her lungs. They’d both had CPR training—in fact, the state police required them to get checked out on emergency first aid every year. They both also knew it was pointless. The girl was dead. She probably had been for hours. Still they kept up chest compressions and mouth-?to-?mouth. Caxton kept at it until her arms grew sore and her own breath grew ragged. Eventually the paramedics came. One of them grabbed the girl’s wrist and asked how long she’d been unresponsive. Caxton didn’t know, and told him as much, while still pushing down on Raleigh’s chest. The paramedics tried giving her a shot of adrenaline, but it was just for form’s sake. Eventually they told Caxton to stop.
She stepped back, her own pulse thundering in her ears. She sagged into a chair and stared at the corpse. “How?” she asked. “How did this happen?”
Glauer only shook his head. He wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything, just staring into space. It was one of the paramedics who answered.
“It would take an autopsy and a tox screen to say for sure. But this is what I’m guessing.” He picked up the girl’s arm and turned it outward to show Caxton. She saw a puckered little wound on the inside of Raleigh’s elbow. There were other marks there, long snaky furrows under her skin. Much older, mostly healed.
Caxton looked around the room, then dropped to her knees and looked under the bed. An empty syringe had fallen down there, and she thought she saw grains of brown powder. Caxton had been trained to recognize heroin when she saw it.
“Most likely she took a massive dose last night before going to bed,” the paramedic said. “She probably passed out and stopped breathing shortly thereafter. If it’s any consolation, she didn’t feel any pain. In fact, she probably felt pretty good before she lost consciousness.”
“That’s no consolation at all,” Caxton said. “Now get out.”
“We can take her away for you, but we’ll need you both to move back so we can get a gurney in here. You’ll have to sign a receipt for the body and we’ll need to talk to the next of kin.”
“I told you to get out. You’re done here,” Caxton repeated.
“Hold on, I know this is a lot to take in right now, but there are rules about this sort of thing. There are laws—”
“You may not have noticed,” she said, “but I’m a cop. I’m the law here, and what I say goes. And what I say is you and your partner need to get the hell out of here.”
The paramedic frowned, but he did what he was told. That left her alone in the room with Glauer and the body.
“I don’t know how this happened,” Glauer said. Half of his mustache was in his mouth and he was sucking on it. “Special Deputy, I promise, I don’t—”
“You gave her the grand tour. You showed her the PCO room. And the computer crimes area. That’s what you said. You showed her the evidence room.”