His eyes never wavered. "Look it up, man. Three years ago. Echo Park."
"Fine. Where is she now?"
He looked down. Always a sign of deception.
"Tell me, motherfucker."
"Look. I don't know, okay? All I know was that she wasn't...successful down here, and so she's up north."
"What the unholy fuck does that mean?"
Ron looked truly agonized. I knew this because his unibrow was arched halfway up his forehead. "Look. She's meeting with someone."
I didn't like his answer, mostly because I knew it was bullshit. I hit Roy hard with the back of my hand. It's amazing how much kinetic energy you can generate with a simple backhand swing. Roy felt it. He stumbled backward and yelped.
"Jesus, what the fuck was that for?"
"What's she doing up north?"
"Look, I don't - "
I didn't like the beginning of that answer, either, and my other hand shot out, low. It caught him in the gut and he doubled over. I grabbed the back of his hair and pulled him up to face me. His nose was trickling blood. He was gasping hard as if he had just run a marathon and it took all my willpower not to slap him again just because I hated his stupid eyebrow.
"Talk. No lies. Or this starts going very badly for you."
He gasped, sucking wind. I could feel his heartbeat reverberating up through his hair.
"Look, she's...she's searching for the thing that killed her parents." Suck, gasp. "He's somewhere up north."
"Who is he? What's his name?"
"I don't know. She never tells us anything. She only drops, you know, clues. Says it's better that we don't know anything."
His words jived with Nicole's. They also had the ring of truth. I always listen for the ring of truth. It's there, if you know how to find it. I let him go, and he collapsed in a big velvet chair. He looked defeated and fucked up. Good.
"And how did you meet Veronica?" I asked.
He smiled weakly. "Anyone looking for vampires eventually ends up here," he said, spreading his arms.
"Do you have any clue how fucking lame that sounds?"
"Do you have any clue what you're talking about?" he countered, and wiped his bleeding mouth and stared down at the blood on his hand. The word longingly came to mind.
"And what do people do in here?" I asked, motioning to this back room.
Roy licked his hand.
"Anything they want, man."
I stood, sickened.
"You'll be seeing me," I said, and left.
I was sitting in a Starbucks a few streets away.
Adrenalin was still pumping through me. I still felt a strong desire to kick someone's ass. The name Roy popped into my mind. Maybe later.
I had no clue what was going on, and that was the frustrating part. I've been frustrated on cases before, trust me, but this one was taking the cake.
Seriously, what the fuck was going on?
Sipping on a latte of some sort and eating a scone of some sort, I waited while my laptop fired up. Starbucks was mostly empty. No surprise there since it was coming on to midnight. My hands were still shaking a little. Adrenalin does that to you. Sometimes it takes me a little while to come down from my ass-kicking high.
Finally online, I did a quick Google search and came up with nothing. I sensed a very thorough beating in Roy's immediate future. If that weird, blood-sucking asshole lied to me....
A few tries later, after trying different keywords, I came upon the article I wanted. For now, Roy was spared.
The article was in the L.A. Times. There had, indeed, been a car fire in Echo Park, one that had burned nearly half the hillside. Two charred bodies had been found inside a Cadillac. No indication of foul play, and no mention of the daughter who had witnessed the attack. The article gave the couple's names: Jeremy and Tonya Fortune.
I quickly accessed my various data mining websites, proprietary sites available only to licensed private investigators, and found them soon enough. Jeremy and Tonya Fortune out of Reseda, California. The valley. About an hour north of Los Angeles. It had to be them because all their personal information abruptly stopped three years ago. I even verified the Cadillac.
I dug deeper.
Jeremy and Tonya Fortune had one daughter. Valerie Fortune.
Valerie? Veronica?
It was her, I knew it. Why she had changed her name, I didn't know. Just as I didn't know why she had not come forward to report her parents' murder.
Maybe she feared no one would believe her.
Believe what? That a vampire killed her parents? If so, then she was right. No one would have believed her.
I checked her date of birth, then did the math. Valerie - or Veronica - was indeed seventeen. Which put her at fourteen at the time of her parents' death.
So what did I have here?
Two dead bodies, and a girl who witnessed something. What she witnessed, exactly, I didn't know. But a car with her parents inside didn't just go up in flames on its own.
I sat back and drummed my fingers on the table. Veronica's story was credible. But it was hearsay. I needed to talk to the source.
I needed to find Veronica. Or Valerie.
I packed up my laptop, polished off the latte thingy, and decided to start fresh in the morning.
After all, I had had enough of vampires for one night.
Hell, for a lifetime.
Chapter Six
We were in bed together.
Roxi had wanted to make love, and I had just wanted to talk. I know, lame. Of course, all it took were a few seconds of persuasion and I soon saw her side of things.
Now, panting and sweating and feeling as if I might very well have a heart attack, I turned on my side and looked at her. Roxi was lying on her back, panting a little herself. Her skin glowed softly from the ambient light coming in through the partially open blinds.
I said, "There's something screwy going on here."
"There was a lot of screwy going on here, babe."
"Of the investigative kind."
She told me to tell her about it and I did. I had never felt that sense of shyness with Roxi. Ever. It's one of the reasons why I thought we might just have a chance of making it. I caught Roxi up to date on the case. As always, she had listened with complete attentiveness. Another reason I was falling in love with her. That, and she always called my big stomach a "donut". You gotta love that.
When I was finished, Roxi said, "Lots of people are talking about vampires here, but no one's talking about a girl who is no doubt seriously delusional."
"Or perhaps somehow suffering from the traumatic and horrific events of the night her parents were killed."
"Perhaps Veronica had been hurt, too. Didn't Gladys tell you she showed up at her door bloodied and bruised?"