Retribution

MADDIE COLEMAN LIVES ON EMERALD HEIGHTS Road. I've never heard of it and it takes my trusty GPS to get me there. It turns out to be a winding street off the end of Magnolia Avenue. It's a surprisingly nice neighborhood above an old and run-down area with views that stretch out over the El Cajon Valley. Maddie's is a low-slung ranch house with a tile roof and high chain-link fence that appears to circle a good-sized piece of property. When I stop in front of it, it becomes clear the reason for the fence. The biggest damned German shepherd I've ever seen appears out of nowhere and charges the fence before I get the car door open.

I stay put.

I can see the driveway and partway into the backyard. There's a swing set and slide. The garage door is closed. Except for the incessant barking of that damned dog, it's quiet.

What to do?

Dogs don't like me. It has nothing to do with being a vampire. I know this because dogs didn't like me before I became vampire. I have no doubt I could break the neck of the snarling beast, but that means getting close, and getting close means putting myself in range of those teeth. I may be a kick-ass vampire, but I still have an aversion to pain.

I hunker down. Surely, somebody will come to the door to see why the beast is raising such a racket. While I wait, I take another look at Maddie. In her before photo, she's standing beside a tall, pimply -faced teenager in a cap and gown. She looks midfifties, plump, mousey. She's dressed in a flower-print cotton skirt and pale blazer with a handbag on the arm that isn't clutching the graduate. Her shoes look like the kind nurses stereotypically wear-square-toed, functional, ugly.

The transformation in her after photo is more remarkable than Valerie's. Again, it's a glamour shot. Maddie is almost wearing a black, tight, low-cut cocktail dress. It's slit up the side to reveal long legs and four-inch stilettos. She has a Veronica Lake haircut, long, shiny dark hair that falls over one eye. She's smiling at the camera with what can only be described as a "come fuck me" expression.

She looks about twenty-six.

Whew.

The dog is still going crazy in the yard. Maybe I should shoot it. Do the neighbors a favor. Except I haven't seen a neighbor peek out to see what's going on, either. Where in the hell is everybody?

Just when I decide I'm going to have to tackle the dog after all, a long black limousine whispers up to the gate. The driver honks the horn and the front door opens. A man appears in the doorway, calls the dog inside, disappears for a minute, then returns without the beast.

So, that's the trick? All I had to do was honk the horn? The man walks down to the gate. He's dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He walks with shoulders slumped. The lines of his face droop. When he opens the gate, he does it slowly, as if this simple task requires all his energy. When the limo pulls past him, his gaze falls on me. His expression doesn 't change. It reflects neither curiosity nor concern.

The only thing those eyes reflect is pain.

He turns without acknowledging my presence and walks back to the house with the same slow, shuffling tread.

The scene is sickeningly familiar.

I know what he's feeling. See it in a face drawn in lines of sorrow. Sense it in the heaviness of his spirit. Recognize the unbearable sadness that weighs him down and makes the pain of loss the only sensation he's capable of experiencing.

I know it because I've been through it all myself. When my brother died.

I don't wait to see anything else. I don't have to. Maddie is dead and this is the beginning of her funeral procession.

What the hell is Burke doing?

This time I put a call into Williams.

He picks up on the second ring.

"What'd you find out from the receptionist?" he asks in way of greeting.

"Haven't been there yet," I reply. I tell him what I did find. Then I say, "Wouldn't three dead bodies elevate this in a judge's eye from coincidence to probable cause?"

"You don't know yet if Storm or Coleman are dead."

"Come on. What are the odds they aren't?"

There's a moment of silence. "I'll do some checking. In the meantime, maybe you'd better track that receptionist down."

We ring off and I put the Jag in drive and head back for the freeway-just in time for Tuesday morning commuter traffic.

Shit.

I'm stuck in stop-and-go traffic and I can't get the picture of that man as he came down the driveway out of my head.

Rage burns like acid. Burke is behind this. Why? And what 's the connection between what she's doing to these women and that miraculous antiaging cream she's about to launch on the world?

Launch on the world.

Jesus.

I want to bang my forehead against the steering wheel. What an idiot I am.

There is one other person I can go to for answers. I don't want to do it. But I have to.

Gloria. Spokesmodel for Eternal Youth. She's certainly one person I know I can shake information out of.

Only idly do I wonder-has she used the stuff?