Page 16 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
And six hundred was old, even for a vampire.
“Any chance your mother was over here this morning?” Cain asked, and that gave me a moment’s pause. First of all because clearly, he was thinking of my mother as a suspect in the murder.
But...well, was there any chance of that? No, if Mother had killed Charles, she’d have done it both more and less publicly. The entire vampire population of Los Angeles would have known, but the human authorities would never have been summoned. Also, she certainly wouldn’t have asked me to investigate.
“Probably not,” I said, shaking my head, but still considering the logistics of the thing. “Her house is almost an hour drive from here, and I’m sure she was home at six this morning. When did it happen?”
The detective made a face at that, which was odd. Weren’t they supposed to be able to pinpoint things like that to the minute these days? “The doctor was a little...well, she said given the temperature, more than twelve hours.”
“But?”
He winced and looked away, then back at me. “Rigor mortis. It usually sets in after a few hours, and there’s no sign of it.”
“I don’t know how that works,” I admitted.
He shook his head, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s just...well, the maid says she saw him last night at six, and there’s no sign of...no sign it’s been longer than that, or else I’d think maybe he had been dead more than a day.”
“Because . . .”
“Because rigor goes away after a while. Can be as fast as half a day, so if it had been over a day since the murder, this would all make sense.”
“But the crying maid saw him alive eighteen hours ago,” I concluded.
And I was officially interfering with a police investigation, because while I was no scientist, and I’d never studied the effects of vampirism on human bodies, I would have bet actual money that was why his body wasn’t acting how they expected. After all, he had been dead for hundreds of years. Why would his body act anything like one that had died just today?
“Okay.” I nodded and took a deep breath. “With that kind of window, I don’t think anyone in the city has a real alibi. I know I don’t. I was asleep at my place for most of it. Not that I think I had any reason to kill him either. Charles was mostly just an old guy my mother knew.”
“Plus if you were here to talk about him buying something from you, it would have been a poor business plan to kill him before you got the money.” It was kind of him to point it out and give me a plausible reason not to have done the deed.
On the other hand, I suspected that after this, with Mother spreading the word that I was setting up security systems, I was about to be inundated with business from every other vampire in LA, so...the excuse didn’t really hold up. Still, no reason to try to convince the cops I was a killer.
“Honestly, I can’t think of a reason for anyone to kill Charles,” I admitted to Cain. “He was mostly a harmless old guy. Didn’t have shady ties, wasn’t some kind of mafioso in his pre-retirement life. He wasn’t even rude to servers.”
Naturally, Cain asked the obvious question. “What did he do for a living?”
I winced, but I wasn’t going to lie about it. “Nothing. I mean, he was born rich, and then he stayed that way. If you want to be nice, he was, like, an investor or whatever. But I don’t think Charles worked a day in his whole life.” That would sound like a lot of idle time to Detective Cain, seventy-some years without doing a job, but in reality, it was somehow both more and less impressive, living six hundred years and never having worked.
Come to think of it, it was a little odd he had an office in his house. Maybe he did more than I thought with his investments...
“That would explain the lack of papers and computer in the room, then. If it was just for show, he might not have had one.” Cain leaned back on his haunches and nodded to himself.
It was true; I didn’t remember having ever seen Charles with a computer. That wasn’t especially surprising, as older vampires often eschewed the newest technology, particularly if they were going to be required to learn how to use it. It was somethingolder humans did too, so I had a hard time holding it against people hundreds of years older than the oldest humans.
That was probably why Charles also hadn’t had a security system.
“He did have a cell phone,” I said, remembering him pulling one out of a pocket at a party once. He’d pretended to answer an important call in order to leave a conversation, even though everyone in the room could hear that there was no one on the line. I never understood why so many people did that. “But yeah, he wasn’t much of a computer person.”
“We have the phone,” Cain agreed, but he wasn’t pleased. “Someone smashed it out here in the hall, and stole the SIM card.”
Now that? That was suspicious.
He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, his eyes scanning, as though going over information sitting in front of him. The position looked uncomfortable, and he’d been there for a while, so I turned to where I’d put Twist, only to find that she’d torn open the bag and eaten...everything. Fourteen chicken breasts. Also, my sandwich and fries. She had a dollop of mayo on her nose that she was trying to lick off, but not having much luck.
I blinked, staring for a moment.
How was I going to afford to feed her?
“The white sauce was very good, Father,” she informed me. “I want more of it.”
