Domestic Dispute

I knew who was at the door even before he went to knock, but asking people to enter before they even got a chance to announce their presence normally freaked them out. It was Eddie, one of the lower ranking officers that worked a desk downstairs and a source of some mild amusement. Though it was normally Eddie that came to my door since everyone else tended to avoid me and the chief normally called first.

“The answer’s 42, Eddie.”

Eddie fit here less than I did and that’s saying a lot. He should be out there curing all the world’s diseases, but instead he decided to be a cop like his father and his father before him. The guy had three degrees that I know of in biology, biochemistry, and chemistry before he was old enough to drink. Eddie is truly a genius, but like most people in his league he is all book smarts and not much commonsense. He is also one of the nicest guys you will ever meet and that’s kind of what got him riding a desk. While off duty, he stopped to help a guy on the side of the rode with a flat tire. Turns out the guy had just robbed a gas station before blowing the tire. When Eddie got out of the car, the guy panicked and opened fire on Eddie before driving off, flat tire and all. They caught the guy shortly after that and his is rotten in prison for a very long time. Eddie took a bullet to the shoulder for his troubles and had been less than eager to get back on that horse. I just hope rumors about him leaving the force aren’t true, I like having him around.

I could hear him fumble to get something from his back pocket before I saw the door open. Standing in the doorway was Eddie. In his hand a note card with the number 42 written on it. That was our game. Anytime he had to stop by my office he would scribble something on a note card whether it word, number, or doodle. He was bound and determined to stump me, but that really hasn’t happened yet. I think the score is a hundred plus for me and one for him. He got that win because he brought his two year old and a doodle she made for him. I said cow and she said kitty. What can I say? Can’t argue with a two year old.

“You know Detective, one of these days I am going to win… without my daughter’s help.”

“Well, you keep trying and who knows, stranger things have happened. But I know our little game isn’t the reason you stopped by this pleasant morning.”

“Pleasant depends on who you talk to. We got a call in for a domestic dispute so some one isn’t having a good morning. Neighbor called it in. Beat showed and asked for you. I have the initial reports here for you to look at on your way to the scene.”

“Thanks Eddie.”.

From the look of it, this was going to be a simple open and shut case, but appearances are often deceiving especially when it was this kind of case. The neighbor that called it in stated that he heard a lot of noises coming the house. The usual domestic violence type noises; dishes breaking, things being thrown around, all that stuff. He didn’t decide to call the cops until he heard someone from inside cry out for help. I guess he is your typical desensitized American. Too much violence in the world and all that so he just wanted to ignore it at first.

Beat got to the scene about seven minutes after the call and that was around 8:45 A.M. Not a bad response time. But then again, there’s a donut show down the road. The officers had to force their way into the premises to find a man about to stake a woman in the heart with a broken chair leg. They were able to stop him and subdue him with little effort. A man trying to stake his girl was more unusual than normal, but that’s not what got me called to the scene. Turns out the woman was a vampire and he had intended to kill her in self defense stating that she succumbed to blood lust and had tried to kill him. That is why I was called.

I am not your normal detective, but you have already figured that out. I specialize in cases that deal with non-humans. Typically it is your common vampire, were-creature, Frankenstein’s Monster like beings, and other times it is things much worse. Things that give me the willies, but those are other stories for other times.

As soon as I stepped out of my car, I could hear their whispered conversations. Another of my gifts, if you could call them that, and one I don’t let many know about. I was hoping to hear talk about the case for a change when I got to a scene, but like most occasions, the conversations quickly centered around “The Freak Detective” as they like to refer to me. Despite looking like any other person with few exceptions, ninety-nine percent of the time that is, everyone on the force knows who I am and that I am not human. There are few exceptions, Eddie being the biggest one, of people on the force taking a liking to me or at least tolerating me.

“Suspects are inside, Detective. Both are restrained and cooperative,” one of the Beat stated.

I quickly looked around the area before addressing him with my orders. Good, the press hadn’t caught wind of this yet and with some luck they never will.

“Tell your boys to exit the premises and wait for me to complete my investigation.”

“Whatever you want; you’re the Frea… boss.”

I just ignored his slip up and didn’t even show that I caught it. Maybe one of these days they will accept me, but then again maybe pigs could fly.

By the time I reached the front door, the place was empty of people with the exception of the two suspects. Something caught me as odd as soon as I entered though. There was something in the air that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Blood smell was heavy in the house, but no one mentioned any injuries. There was something in the blood that stood out though that stood out. Ok, more than stood out, it was an over powering stench that was akin to rot.

Other than the smell, the scene was what you would expect from any normal domestic violence crime scene. Furniture was over turned and thrown all over the place. Table and chairs knocked over and broken dishes in the kitchen. A shattered bottle of what my nose was telling me was the odd smelling blood was in one corner of the room. Maybe he threw it at her because no respectful vampire would waste blood, especially in a blood lust.

Both suspects were in the living room, handcuffed to separate dining room chairs, maybe the only two not in pieces. I was glad the vampire was willing to be cooperative because she could get out of her restraints if she wanted too and things could get messy and I just bought this suit.

I figured I would start with the vampire first since she would be the harder one to work with. Humans are easy. I can sense them when they are around me. I can hear and feel their heart beat so I know if they are lying or not. If I push hard enough, I can even influence them a little, but I try to avoid that because I would hate to mess someone up permanently.

I did a quick glance over of the guy from the opposite side of the room before uncuffing the girl and moving her into the kitchen so we could talk. He was staring at me like he knew me and I got the impression that I should have known who he was. He looked very familiar and at the same time he didn’t. Maybe I knew him from my past life, before I was a cop. I got the impression that he had just gotten up from bed shortly before the attack. He was dressed in light blue, silk pajama top and pants that were obviously worn more than they were washed from the wrinkles, creases, and occasional stain I could see. His hair was a mess, the poster child for bed head, and you could tell he hadn’t shaved in a couple days. The thing that made me chuckle to myself was the pink bunny slippers he was wearing on his feet.

After righting the kitchen table and a couple of chairs, I sat her down before sitting opposite of her. Now this lady just did not seem to fit with that guy, but maybe he cleans up as nicely as she looked. She had her long, fire red hair down, the paler complexion common for vampires, and the body of a goddess. She had either just gotten off work or was getting ready for work at a hospital when the attack occurred because she was dressed in scrubs displaying the name of the local hospital. Well, hello nurse.

“Hello ma’am. I’m Detective Drake Stone, the detective investigating what happened here this morning and I would like to hear your side of the story, but how about some background info first?”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’m not really sure what is going on. Last thing I remember before Bill coming at me is coming home from work.”

“Before we get into this morning, I need to get a little more on you and where you work. I take it from the uniform that you work at the hospital?”

“Yes, I do. I am the head nurse in the children’s ward on nights”

“That requires a Class A registration with a lot of monitoring involved. There are a dozen, maybe two dozen, Class A’s in the city. For a Class A vampire working either around blood and/or children, you would be required to ingest blood before you start work and on regular intervals during your shift. You would also be subject to random checks to make sure levels were good. Being that there are only three registered Class A’s in health care and two are male, that would make you Diana Bears.”

“That is correct. I assume, since you are the only cop in the house and you don’t smell it, you’re not human either. I am not sure what you are though. You barely have any scent at all.”

“I am one hundred percent other. Your usual abandoned as an infant, adopted, grew up on too much sugar and video games, and drafted or, as I like to put it, volun-told to join the military during the war story, but that’s my life and I am here about you.”

“You fought on the side of the human’s during the war?”

Crap. I hated these discussions. During the war I wasn’t trusted by humans, with the exception of my unit, and after I wasn’t liked by the non-humans that found out what side I fought on. To be truthful, I was almost killed by a gang of Weres that were not very happy when they found out I sided with the humans. But I already knew that Diana was a field medic for the humans during the war.

“Even if the humans hadn’t drafted me, I would have ended up on the side of the humans. Besides the desire to protect my adoptive family, the other side was just too hell bent on enslaving humans or, if that failed, genocide. In the end, I feel that the human’s winning worked out for the best. At least now both sides tolerate coexistence for the most part. But we are digressing and as much as I would like discuss the state of the world with you (amongst other more physical things), I do have this little matter to investigate. The guy that said you attacked him, is he your boyfriend?”

“His name is Bill Stratton and we have been seeing each other for about four months. We are actually old friends. We originally met during the war. He was in the hospital for a long time after having most of his face and upper body torn apart by a Were, I think maybe it was a were-tiger. You would have to ask him if you want to know more. He was lucky to be alive and even luckier that somehow his unit got him some kind of treatment that suppressed the Were mutation. But anyways, I was the nurse that looked after him for those months he was in the hospital. The weirdest part was that he recovered completely without the need for reconstructive surgeries. It was so odd and they ended up keeping him a long time for tests. After the war, we stayed friends. A couple months ago, he got a hold of me and told me he was going through a rough patch and admitted to having trouble adjusting since the war. He asked for my help so I let him move in here and helped him find a job. I had only planned on just being friends, but he is a really sweat guy and things led elsewhere.”

Now that explained everything. Bill looked at me like he knew me because he did. Bill “Tracker” Stratton was in my unit during the war and he and I had been really close. I just thought he was dead. Like she said, he was tore up bad.

Tracker’s primary function in the unit was just that, tracking the enemy; and when he wasn’t doing that he was scouting for us. That is what he was doing the day he got ambushed by a were-tiger. The bastard decided to take his time and play with him; slowly killing him in the process. That was its second mistake, the first being attacking Tracker.

When Tracker was a couple minutes late, I went ahead to look for him. Normally a minute or two late for a rendezvous is normal, but not for him. This was the first time in a hundred that he wasn’t five minutes early and I had a bad feeling. When I found him, the Were was still torturing him and I lost it. That is never a good thing. When I came back to my senses, there wasn’t enough of the Were to identify what it was; like I said I look like anybody else ninety-nine percent of the time.

Tracker was good as dead, or so I thought. I knew that if left to be the mutation would take effect and heal him, but would change him into the enemy. I knew that was the last thing he would want, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish him off either. One thing that the military had learned about me, when trying to figure out what I was, is that my blood works like a super, antibody when introduced into someone else’s body. It can’t reverse a mutation, but it can prevent one from taking hold. So I took a syringe from my medic kit, filled it with my blood, and injected it into Tracker. He must not have remembered or chose not to talk about it, because I never heard anything. I had figured that with his wounds and no mutation to heal him that he was going to die. I had thought he was dead because I never heard from him or of him until now. Maybe my blood aided in his healing and recovery as well. Now that I think about it, it’s a good thing no one found out or who knows what the military would have done to me.

Now here I was investigating if my war buddy was a victim or an attempted murderer.

“So what happened after you got off work this morning?”
I came right home like I normally do to see Bill before he had to go to work. I got him some temporary work at the hospital filling in for a janitor that has been ill. We have opposite schedules, but he had talked about moving to a night shift so we have more time together. When I got home he had a glass of blood poured for me on the kitchen table. He is always doing things like that for me. He is such a sweet guy. I heard the shower running so I quickly drank down my drink so I could join Bill in the shower.”

“What happened after that?”

“I don’t know. That is the last thing I remember before Bill coming at me.”

“You said you drank the blood, even though it was off?”

“What do you mean? There wasn’t anything wrong with it. It tasted great, some of the best designer I’ve had. I think this one was a mix of human, kangaroo, and some kind of snake. I can still smell it in the air. It’s pretty sweet smelling.”

“Sweet? I would say it smells more like decay. There is something wrong with that blood and it is odd that a vampire can’t smell it. The other thing that strikes me as odd is that you went into a blood lust even though you haven’t been deprived of blood. I am starting to think you are the victim here. I don’t have any other question for you right now. If I can get you to wait in the other room, I need to talk with Bill now.”

“Ok.”

I walked her out of the kitchen and uncuffed Bill to bring him into the kitchen. I sat him down in the chair at the table without saying a word before I walked over to the corner to get a better look at the blood and broken bottle.

The closer I got, the worse it smelled. Whatever was in the blood was put there with vampires in mind. Vampires can normally tell a lot about a person just by the smell of the blood. If you smoke, drink, do drugs, or have cancer a vampire can tell you. I guess that really does make them helpful in health care. Now I had something here that appeared to send vampires into blood lust and they can’t smell it. And to top it off, my suspect is a long lost friend. What a morning.

I needed to be sure about the blood first and did one of the dumber things I’ve ever done. Maybe not dumber, but it was dumb and sits on a long list of stupid things I have done. I dipped my pinky into the blood and touched it to my tongue like the cops on TV do with drugs. They don’t really do that shit and I shouldn’t have done that.

The instant it touched the inside of my mouth, my body tried to reject and reject it painfully. I felt my body starting to change and all I could think about was I just bought this suit. My skin started to turn ash gray in color and my vision kept shifting between visible light and infrared. I could feel my already sharp and pointed nails hardening and growing. Not that that stuff didn’t bother me, it was the fact that against my will, my wings were growing and were going to rip the back of my suit open. That just pissed me off. But it stopped as suddenly as it started and I returned to a “normal human” appearance.

“That looked like it hurt, Ghost.”

That remark put aside any doubt that this Bill Stratton was the one I knew from the war. Like his handle of Tracker, mine was Ghost and not because I was pale like one or anything like that. They gave that handle to me because they said I moved like one and when I was sent on a mission ghosts were all that was left of the enemy. He knew my handle which meant he knew me.

I took my seat across from Bill and I wasn’t looking forward to this. You never want to have to question a friend, even if you thought they were dead, about things like this. It’s just not right.

“I guess this doesn’t mean I have to introduce myself now. How long has it been Bill?”

“It’s been awhile. Last time I saw you, they were MEDEVACing me out of the war zone and working on pronouncing me dead.”

“I had thought you were dead, but I guess that’s my fault for not looking more into it. You look good though. Different, but good.”

“Yeah, my parents had trouble recognizing me even, but looking different is better than the alternative. The docs had thought my face was too torn up to even make me look reasonably human no matter how many surgeries they could perform. Turns out they didn’t need to do any. I healed so quickly that they tested kept testing me to see if the Were had infected me. It got me several extra months in the hospital while they ran test after test on me. In the end, they decided it was a freak act of nature or something like that. I never did tell that I believe it was because of you injecting me with your blood. Didn’t want you involved or pulled from the field were I knew you were giving the enemy hell to pay.”

“Glad I could help and I really wish we could take the time to catch up and reminisce…”

“But you have a crime to investigate and I’m a suspect.”

“I am just not sure what is going on here, but I am going to find out. From what Diana has told me, you two met during the war and became friends. You recently contacted her asking for the help of a friend, but you two ended up falling for each other and started dating. Is that correct?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Tell me what happened this morning.”

“I normally have a glass of blood waiting for her when she gets home, but this time I wanted to surprise her with something different. I got up early to get a glass of this stuff I picked up in Eden last night after Diana went in to work. I wanted to pick up something special for her. I must say it’s always an adventure being human in the part of the city especially at night, but I can handle myself. I had been saving a lot of the money I had been making and wanted to buy her one of those really expensive designer blends. I ended buying the most expensive one I could afford and hoped that she would enjoy it. When I got home, I poured her a glass and then went to hit the shower. I heard her come home as I got the shower going. But before I got in, I got this bad feeling so I turned off the water to try and figure out what was bothering me. It was too quiet. Normally I can hear her moving through out the house doing whatever little housework she can before I finished getting ready for work. This time, I didn’t hear anything. I got dressed and walked into the kitchen to see her sitting at the table; staring off into space. But as soon as she took notice of me, she went nuts and attacked me. First she threw the bottle of blood at me and I thought maybe she didn’t like it. OK, that wasn’t very funny. We wrestled around and broke some things; she even threw me across the room like she did that bottle. I didn’t want to hurt her, but it was getting harder and harder to keep myself alive and not bring any harm to her. She seemed so determined to kill me, not just drink my blood, but end me as well. That’s when I grabbed the broken chair leg, but thankfully before I could attack her with it, some over weight cop tackled me. That about covers it.”

The whole time he recapped what had happened, I couldn’t pick up any indication that he was lying to me, but I hadn’t really asked any questions either. I just got the feeling that he was misfortunate enough to bring home a bottled of tampered with blood. Plus, after all these years, I could tell that Bill hadn’t changed from when we used to watch each others backs in the war. I also knew that if Bill had wanted to kill her, he could have done it a thousand different ways and leave no evidence of him ever being there. Tracker may have been a scout, but he was a trained killing machine who specialized in dispatching non-humans as easily as it was to zip his fly.

“Do you remember where you bought the blood?”

“I don’t remember the name of the place, I might have the receipt somewhere, but I know how to get there and can take you.”

“You always did have a way with the ladies.”

“Me? I happen to remember this one goth girl you were hard up on.”

“Shut up before I find some excuse to arrest you. And if I remember right you were mad because she shot you down in the first place…”

I was just starting to relax and enjoy the conversation when my cell phone rank. From the ring tone I knew it was Eddie, which meant it was not good news.

“What’s going on Eddie? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

“Sorry Detective, but we had another report of blood lust, this one is not pretty; we’ve lost three men. It was at a blood ball and over a dozen went into lust. When our guys showed up, they were attack. SWAT had to come and things went ugly. I am still waiting to hear if any of the vampires are alive.”

Damn it. Blood balls are kind of like the vampire version of a kegger, but have a more high society feel to them. There shouldn’t be blood lust at a blood ball. Blood lust is from being deprived of blood, not too much blood. As Eddie had said, things were ugly. I was so lost in thought; I almost missed what he said next.

“Detective, did you hear me? The chief said because of this new issue, you have been authorized your team; whatever that means.”

“It means, move you stuff upstairs because you work under me now. But first get over here, you have some blood evidence to collect and broken bottle to put back together so I can figure out what is going on. Tell the chief, my new partner is a civilian contract until we can get him officially employed in the department and we are heading to the new scene as soon as he can change out of his bunny slippers.”

I heard “What?” in stereo from Eddie and Bill at the same time.

“Eddie, stop wasting time and get moving. We got a case to solve.”

I hung up on him and brought my attention back to Bill. The look of puzzlement was priceless.

“Bill, I have a job offer for you if you want it. I just got authorized staff and I need a partner since I was just informed of a mass blood lust that cost the lives of three cops and who knows how many vampires. I could use your help if you can clean yourself up in the next ten minutes so we can go.”

I didn’t even get a response. I swear he disappeared into the bathroom before I got what I had to say out of my mouth.

The day was just starting and it was going to be a long one, but on the bright side Eddie works for me now, I got a partner and an old friend back. Guess I can’t complain too much.