Read Online Once Bitten by Stephen Leather - Free Book Online Page A

would just about clear me out. “Tell her it's OK. She can have it.” I'd have to sell the car.
    And a few other things. Like the house.
    “We could fight this, Jamie. There's no need to give up. I had no idea it was going to get this nasty. I should've expected it when she hired Laidlaw. She's a bloodsucker of the first order, a real vampire, she sucks and sucks until there's nothing left. But we can fight.”
    I held up my hands. “Just leave it, Chuck. Just pay what we have to pay so that I can get on with my life.”
    He looked pained. “I'll tell you what I'll do, Jamie, I'll offer fifty thousand and see what happens. Maybe I can get her down, get her to accept less.” He didn't sound convinced. Maybe I was the one who should have hired Laidlaw.
    I stood up and held out my hand to say goodbye. “Whatever you want, Chuck. Just do what you think is best.” He shook my hand and I went back to the car. I was going to miss it. I sat for a while, gripping the steering so tightly that my knuckles whitened, my head full of thoughts of the daughter I nearly had. I missed her so much.
    Eventually I started the car and drove home, my mood swing wildly between sorrow and bitter,
    bitter anger. I was so busy seething that I nearly tailgated a Mercedes convertible and I had to practically stand on the brake before I screeched to a halt. A horn honked as the red pick-up behind me stopped suddenly and I waved an apology and tried to clear the bad thoughts from my head.
    My heart was pounding in my ears again and there was a dull pain in my chest like I'd pulled a muscle there.
    When I arrived home I pressed the remote control device in my car that automatically opened the garage door but I didn't drive in, suddenly I couldn't face the house or the memories it contained so I reversed back into the road and drove to the precinct instead. It was early evening and I figured I might as well wait out the full moon where the action was.
    I checked out Homicide before I went to my office but both Filbin and De'Ath were out. A couple of the detectives nodded hello and when I walked past one of them howled like a wolf and the other laughed and I heard the words “vampire hunter.” As usual De'Ath's desk was hidden under a sprawl of papers and phone books and torn-open envelopes. I dropped into his chair and picked up the phone, pressing numbers at random while I scanned his desk. What was I looking for? I wasn't sure. There were half a dozen active files on his desk and some mugshots of men who looked as if they'd be prepared to kill for a handful of change and under a large envelope I found a half-eaten ham on wholewheat with mustard. Whatever number I had dialled turned out to be engaged so I cut the line and dialled my home. I flicked the envelope open and slid out some black and white photographs of Terry Ferriman. They weren't the front and side views with numbers underneath like they take when they're processing a perp, they were more casual, she was wearing the leather motorcycle jacket and her hair was neatly combed. I reckoned De'Ath had arranged for them to be taken so that he could use them to show witnesses and the like without making it obvious that the girl was in police custody. I took one of the photographs and put it in my briefcase as my voice droned in my ear that I should leave my name and number so that I could get back to me. I replaced the receiver and went upstairs to my office. It was half past six and starting to get dark outside.
    The first call came at just before nine o'clock. Two officers had picked up a guy roaming through downtown LA stark naked, bent double and occasionally stopping to howl at the moon. To be honest that sort of behaviour isn't all that unusual in La-La Land, but according to the arresting officers he'd attacked two girls. Tried to bite their tits off, they said. They'd asked him for his name and he hadn't replied, just grunted and growled. He wouldn't, or couldn't, answer my questions