The Elvis Enigma

1 Po-Po and the Pokey Why were the police parked in front of my house? Alex and I had just finished up a case, and neither of us was in a state of mind to be questioned. My best guess as I pulled into my driveway and parked was that Detective Ruiz was back with more questions about my murdered neighbor, Mrs. A. He’d been by a few days ago to ask several seemingly innocuous, you’re-only-a-witness-type questions. So far as the police knew, she’d died under suspicious circumstances. And as a part of the investigation into her death, Detective Ruiz had interviewed the condo residents who’d known her—including me. Little did Detective Ruiz know exactly how suspicious Mrs. A’s death had been. The person responsible for killing Mrs. A was a vampire. A very dead, very executed vampire. Except I couldn’t tell Detective Ruiz that, because vamps and wizards and all the other enhanced beings running around Austin weren’t “out.” But at least my progenitor—the serial-killer bad guy who’d offed Mrs. A and turned me all vampy—had been caught. While the Society for the Study of Occult and Paranormal Phenomena had a less-than-modern justice system, it was the lone governing body for enhanced beings. And the sentence for the willy-nilly turning of humans into vamps and—this was the important bit—letting them roam free with no training or preparation was hanging. My progenitor hadn’t intended to turn me or the one other survivor. No, Gladys and I had been accidents. Neither of us had a natural immunity to the vampire virus, so—oops—baby vampires. The rest of his victims had died. It turned out that most humans were immune to the virus in small doses but had an allergic response to it in large quantities. Not that killing several humans had been a crime in the eyes of the Society—just the carelessness with which it was done. Ugh, my head was starting to hurt. “Hey, you okay?” Alex asked. I picked my head up off the steering wheel. I didn’t even remember resting my forehead on it. “I really am too tired to deal with the dishy Detective Ruiz.” “Give the guy a break; he’s not a s*x object.” I tipped my head to examine Alex—speaking of s*x objects. “Yeah. So, are you going to put a shirt on, or what?” Alex cursed. He was usually careful not to allow anyone to see the tattoos covering his torso. Probably because they were all about dark magic, bad spirit things, and represented what I’d come to realize were shameful choices from his past. But that’s how tired he was: he’d forgotten about losing his shirt earlier in our showdown with a big, bad killer. Sleuthing was rough stuff. “I’ll go around back and come in through Wembley’s room, grab a shirt, and meet you in the kitchen.” I rubbed my temple. “Sold.” I started to get out of the car then stopped and said, “Not the Hawaiian shirt.” My vamp roomie Wembley loved that shirt. Alex gave me a disdainful look. “Please.” “Yeah, not sure what I was thinking.” But I was talking to myself, because Alex had already left. I took a breath to calm my nerves and then got out of the car. The dishy detective awaited. But Detective Ruiz wasn’t the only one waiting for me when I walked in the house. Two uniformed police officers accompanied him, and Wembley was hovering. My roomie was an ex-Viking berserker—many years removed and now very retired from pillaging and violence in general—but he still wasn’t the type to hover. I had a moment of panic, because finding the police in my house was scary. But there was no reason to panic; I was a law-abiding citizen. Then I realized that wasn’t exactly true. I might have murdered someone. Definitely killed—but only maybe murdered. Murder implied a dead human person, and the person I’d killed hadn’t been entirely of the human persuasion. I knew I was covered under the Society’s laws, because it had been a just execution—or maybe self-defense? I was a little fuzzy on the details if not the outcome. The police, on the other hand, were another story. I tried to do a casual examination of my clothing, because I’d smelled a faint odor of blood in the car as I’d driven home. My brief inspection didn’t reveal anything that jumped out and said, “blood spatter!” So whatever stink had assaulted my nose in the car, the source shouldn’t be noticeable to the three mundane cops in the room. I smiled at the detective. He looked back with a blank expression. “Mallory Andrews, I have a warrant for your arrest.” My smile faded. No way they’d found that dead body—technically two dead bodies—and gotten a warrant so quickly. My brain flitted over possibilities: illegal vampirism? I had never even bitten anyone…and that was also insane. So I sucked it up and asked, “I’m sorry—what for?” And as I asked the question, several much more realistic possibilities skittered through my brain. If not the two dead bodies from today, then maybe the dead guy that had been in Gladys’s herb garden. Although that corpse had been dug up and disposed of. Then maybe Celia, a recently murdered djinni. But I’d never even been near Celia, and I was certain her remains were equally in the wind. I could feel panic swelling. How were there so many dead bodies in my recent past? Maybe I was wrong and it wasn’t too soon for the two casualties from today to be found. Was I getting picked up for the execution I’d committed less than an hour or two ago? The Society should have handled the corpses…but I couldn’t be sure. Finally, Detective Ruiz said, “On suspicion of murder.” Forget that the rat detective had been watching my reaction as I’d agonized over why I was being arrested. I had bigger problems than Detective Ruiz’s invasive scrutiny. Reality crashed in on me. Murder? I was in serious trouble. I wet my lips then said, “What?” I tried to rein in the panic but failed, and it seeped into my voice. Panic, confusion, dismay; it was splashing around in my head. I’d gone through the list of recently dead people. Not only did I not murder any of them—minus the evil lady who would have been hung by the Society, so she didn’t count—but the cops shouldn’t know any of them were dead. “Who?” Alex asked in a calm voice. I did a double take. I hadn’t even seen him join us in the hallway. No Hawaiian shirt, so that was a bonus. I stifled a hysterical giggle at the inappropriate thought. Then I noticed that the navy T-shirt he’d donned covered all of his tattoos. Of course it did. “Elizabeth Ann Smith.” Detective Ruiz’s voice startled me, and I turned back to see he held a pair of cuffs in his hands. I could only stare. Liz? My coworker. My very human coworker. The police thought I had killed a woman who’d been another of my progenitor’s victims. I almost did laugh then. But I cut the sound short after only a small gasp escaped. Still, I couldn’t believe… “Liz? You think I killed Liz?” I looked from the stern features of Detective Ruiz to Alex and Wembley. “Not a word.” Alex didn’t move a muscle. He looked relaxed and calm, not even a little worried about me being carted off by the police. For murder. Or he wasn’t calm—just that tired. The guy had been possessed a few hours ago. That thought grounded me and erased all remnants of hysteria. I turned to Ruiz, narrowed my eyes, and said with the clearest enunciation I could manage, “You have lost your mind.” Detective Ruiz’s left eye twitched. I filed that away for future reference, because something about this situation disturbed the detective deeply. It was all there in the eye twitch. I might not know what, but it was a good sign something hinky was afoot. I held my hands out in front of me and waited for the detective to slip his cuffs on my wrists. As I walked to his cruiser, he read me my rights. And that was when laughter burbled again in my throat. This time, it wasn’t hysteria, simply displaced and completely inappropriate amusement. Because I was a vampire, and I was pretty darn sure there was a solid legal argument that Miranda didn’t apply to me. Not human, not a person; that about summed it up. I was so screwed. “Not a word, Mallory,” Alex said again as he followed us outside. “We’ll send your attorney to meet you at the station.” As I climbed into the back of the cruiser, I couldn’t help thinking: I have an attorney? Who could that possibly be?