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

either, which sort of made my job impossible. He refused to sit in the plastic chair and instead crouched on all fours in a corner of the room. The first time I got too close he snapped and spat at me and two officers wearing anti-AIDS gear bundled him into a strait jacket and held him in the chair.
    “What do you think, Doc?” asked one of the men, his voice muffled by the respirator and white hood.
    “I think he's on something,” I said. “Angel Dust, or one of the designer drugs coming out of Cal-Tech. Best bet would be to leave him for a few hours, see if he comes down. And get the medics to run a blood test on him. Once he's seen a lawyer, that is.”
    The two masks nodded in unison, and I wondered if they were taking the piss because it wasn't my job to examine every screwball junkie they pulled in off the streets. I was supposed to concentrate on the serious cases. I left them to it and went back to the officers. Rivron was there,
    his feet on his desk, reading a magazine.
    “Evening, Jamie,” he said, without looking up. “You're late.”
    “I had an appointment with a Wolfman,” I replied. “A complete waste of my time. I sometimes think the cops take a perverse pleasure in messing us around.”
    “Don't let them get to you,” he said. I was Rivron's boss but he was five years older than I was and it often seemed that our roles were reversed. He'd offer me advice and more often than not I'd take it because he was a good, solid psychologist and spent a lot more time going over the literature than I ever did. Rivron was one of those guys who faded from the memory seconds after he left the room. He had the perfect face for an extra in the movies, if you get my drift, it wouldn't matter how many times he popped up in the background, you'd never remember him. Pretty much everything about him was average. He'd have made a great criminal, you could just imagine the cops doing the rounds and collecting descriptions at the crime scene - average height, average build, brown eyes, brown hair, no distinguishing features. “Do you think you'd recognise the man again, mam?”
    A pause. A cough. An embarrassed look. “Well, not really officer, no.”
    His choice in clothing also bordered on the nondescript - sports jacket, neatly-pressed flannels,
    light checked shirt, loafers, quiet socks. He had his own practice as a psychoanalyst, working out of an expensive office in Beverly Hills. His day job, he called it. Working for the LAPD was his pro bono, you know? Something to talk about at dinner parties with the stars. If I sound bitter,
    ignore me, I'm just jealous because I don't get to tell Farrah Fawcett-Majors about my tangles with LA low life. Since Deborah walked out, I don't get to talk to anybody about my work.
    The phone warbled and Rivron picked it up, took down a few notes and replaced the receiver.
    “Toss you for a vampire?” he asked. “Downstairs in room D. Bit a couple of down and outs.”
    “Killed them?”
    He shook his head. “More likely he'll be going down with alcohol poisoning. Or worse.”
    The phone rang and I reached for it this time. “You have it, I'll take this one,” I said to Rivron and he sighed and picked up his briefcase. Inside was his laptop computer and a copy of the Beaverbrook program. He waved as he went through the door and I waved back.
    “Beaverbrook,” I said. It was a sergeant on the desk. They had a possession case for me. I started taking notes until it became obvious that he was talking about a teenager caught driving a stolen Rolls Royce.
    “You cannot be serious,” I said.
    “Hey, Doc, possession is nine tenths of the law,” laughed the sergeant, and hung up. Everyone's a comedian.
    So you reckon this whole full moon stuff is a crock of shit, do you? That there's no way a satellite whizzing around the earth can possibly affect the actions of the billions of tiny people going about their business far below? Most scientists will laugh in your face when you