“Nothing in my life story would illuminate these crimes, Ms. Warshawski, but I will ask Gabe Eycks to arrange a guard for the girls; he’ll call you for the details.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Thank you, sir. Perhaps you might worry a bit about Sophy Durango’s daughter, too.”
There was a pause on the other end, then an energetic agreement. Nia would enjoy a trip to Israel, to help Arielle with her recovery; he should have thought of that himself.
39.
CHASING SHADOWS
“I’M GOING TO HAVE TO START BILLING YOU, VIC, IF YOU COME around here all the time.”
That was Dick’s idea of a joke. I smiled and got to my feet. “That’s okay. I’ll just bill you for my waiting time.”
I’d called Crawford, Mead as soon as I finished talking to Chaim Salanter, but Dick couldn’t see me until the end of the day. He hadn’t wanted to meet with me at all, but after I said I was investigating what his law firm was doing at a murder victim’s home, he—or, really, his secretary, who was crisply relaying messages between us—said he’d fit me in at six-thirty, before dinner with clients. It was nearly seven before he stepped into the waiting area, a vision in pale gray summer suiting.
Since I’d had the afternoon free, I’d been able to go home and wait for Gabe Eycks to turn up with a bodyguard for the Dudek girls. Mr. Contreras was worn out, as my cousin had said, and was glad to turn the energetic sisters over to me. While they danced under the jet from the backyard sprinkler, I changed out of my wrinkled T-shirt into a tailored knit top in my favorite gold, with a light rayon jacket to cover my shoulder holster.
I joined them in the yard. As we threw tennis balls for the dogs, I casually asked Kira what she’d seen at the cemetery the night of the shape-shifting ritual.
She stiffened instantly and looked at the back door, as if ready to run to Mr. Contreras for shelter. “Just rain.”
“Kira. You know why you’re here with me and Mr. Contreras, right? And why we’re getting a bodyguard to look after you and Lucy?”
“To keep us from getting hurt by the person who hurted Arielle,” Lucy piped up.
“Do you know why he might want to hurt you?” I asked.
Lucy said, “Because he’s a big mean stranger danger,” but Kira turned her head away, glowering.
“It’s not about you being illegal, or whether the Vina Fields girls act snobby to the Malina girls. It’s about what you saw. You girls were all taking pictures with your cell phones, but you dropped yours. I think whoever picked it up saw that you’d gotten a perfect shot of the person who was hiding near your group.”
“The vampire!” Lucy danced in her excitement. “You took a picture of a vampire, Kira. If you find your phone, we can sell the picture, we’ll be rich, we can buy a horse!”
Kira turned to her sister and ordered her in Polish to shut up. Lucy fired back some insult of her own and marched off in a huff with Mitch to a far corner of the garden.
“There wasn’t a vampire in the cemetery. It was a—a person.” I bit off the word “murderer.” Kira probably guessed that was who’d been near the Carmilla ritual, but putting it into words would make it seem real and terrifying.
“I need to know who or what you saw. The sooner I know, the sooner I can see that your life returns to normal.”
“Tyler screamed that there was a vampire,” Kira whispered after a minute. “I turned around and took a picture, and then, when I lost my phone, I thought it was the vampire’s power that took it from me.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know, it all happened so fast, and it was rainy. He had a black shiny hood over his head, and his face was white, I thought he was Death, that’s what Death looks like in Lucy’s and my picture Bible. When Arielle almost got dead I thought he cursed her, for seeing him, and now he’ll curse me, too.”
“You’re sure it was a man? Could it have been a woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have a sense of how tall he was?”
Kira was starting to cry. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
I pulled her to me. She stood stiffly in the circle of my arm, tears running down her face. When Lucy saw her sister was crying she rushed back over, her own sense of injury forgotten. She grabbed Kira’s hand and tried to pull her from me, shrieking at us to say what was wrong, what had happened.
“Oh, just go away,” Kira sobbed. “I want to go home, I want my mom, I want my tata, I want life to be like before he left us.”
The dogs began twining around her, licking her legs. Their mewling made her relax inside my embrace. She leaned against my breast, her chest heaving with her sobs. Lucy clung to my other arm, frightened at seeing her big sister so vulnerable.