"Yeah, purple's good."
"Honey, are you sure you're all right? You sound odd."
"Just...allergies," she said, and wiped her leaking eyes. "You take care, Daddy. I'll see you soon, okay?"
"Okay," he said, doubtfully. "Call tomorrow. Your mother will hate me if she doesn't get her turn."
"I will. Bye."
Eve had turned away, watching the dorm, but she'd been paying attention. As Claire finished her call, she said, "Feel better?"
"Yeah," Claire said. She did. Still shaky, but steadier inside, where it counted.
"I wish I could do that," Eve said. "Call my mom. But no. Whiny, self-absorbed bitching from her probably wouldn't have the same effect, although it definitelywould make me forget about Doug for a second."
Michael held out his hand, and Eve took it, and their eyes met for a second before Eve looked away. "Yeah," she said. "Life sucks, we die, or not. Mom is the least of my problems, right?"
"Right at the moment? Yeah," Michael said. "And now I want to callmy parents."
Claire thought he might be joking, but with Michael, you never could tell. His parents were cool; she'd met them once, but they didn't live in Morganville anymore, and they weren't even nearby. Like Claire's parents, they'd been given permission to move because of medical problems. Michael didn't say much about them, but then, Michael was the quiet type.
In any case, he didn't have time to do anything, because a police car, siren blasting and lights flaring, pulled up in front of the dorm in the parking lot, where a crowd of students was gathering. Almost all the students promptly pulled their cell phones out and began busily clicking pictures and taking videos of the police presence. Next stop: the Internet. "Worst inventionever ," Claire muttered. Myrnin was already talking about how to disable the features on all cell phones inside of Morganville. At times such as this, she kind of saw his point.
Hannah Moses was second to arrive on the scene, looking crisp and starched in her police uniform; she'd tucked her corn-rowed hair up under her cap, and apart from the gold bar on the lapel of her blue shirt, she looked exactly like the other police, who got busy cordoning off the scene. Two other men got out of a plain gray car that pulled up behind hers. Claire recognized the men with a little start, because she hadn't seen them in a while.
"Hey," said Detective Travis Lowe, nodding to her. He'd lost weight, she thought, and he looked a little bit grayer than before. Detective Joe Hess hadn't changed at all, except that his smile was more guarded as he nodded, too. "I heard you found yourself a genuine dead person."
"Travis," Hannah said, frowning at him. "Go easy on the kid."
"Her? Listen, I know her. She's tough. She can take it. Right, Claire?"
She nodded, because what else did you do when someone said something like that? But she didn't feel tough. Not right at this moment. As if he sensed that, Detective Hess cut in front of his partner and came to talk to her. He had a soothing sort of manner, and the gentle tone of voice he used made her feel a little less...lost.
"Someone you knew, right?" Hess said. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"I--" Claire suddenly realized that she had a decision to make: tell about the whole reason she and Eve and Michael had come over, or lie and pretend like it was just another of those wacky Morganville coincidences. She didn't feel like lying, though. Not to Detective Hess. "It's Doug--Doug Legrande. He was my lab partner in Professor Larkin's class. He took something he shouldn't have, and I came to ask him to give it back."
Detective Hess was a hell of a lot sharper than most people in Morganville, and he gave her a sideways look as he said very casually, "Would that thing be something that some people in town wouldn't want to get out?"
"Blood," she said, keeping her voice in a whisper. "You know what kind of blood."
"I do. So, tell me what happened when you got here." And he slowly walked her through it, step by step, from the beginning. He'd also walked her off a little from her friends, and Claire saw that Detective Lowe was talking to Eve, while Michael had Hannah as a conversational partner. Double-checking facts, Claire guessed. The low-key way it was done made her feel a lot less nervous. By the time she was finished, Detective Lowe had finished up with Eve and was sitting on the back bumper of the gray car, making notes with a pad and pen as he talked to Chief Moses. Hannah had notes, too.
"Did we do anything wrong?" Claire finally asked, as Hess jotted down something, as well. "I mean, we tried to do the right thing. For Doug."
"You probably would have been better off reporting it immediately," Hess said. That was one thing she liked a lot about him: he was kind about it, but he told her the truth, no matter how difficult it was to hear it. "I can't say this wouldn't have still happened, because we can't jump to the conclusion that his theft had anything to do with his murder, but you need to understand that if it did, Doug didn't have to die. He might have been in jail, but he would have been safer. Understand?"
She did, and she felt miserable...but, oddly, also more centered. It was what she'd been thinking, anyway. Hearing him say it didn't make her feel any worse; it made it real enough that she could move on, accept it as a mistake, and plan to never let it happen again.
"I'm sorry," she said. She wasn't sure if Hess understood, but she thought he probably did.
"You're learning," he said. "Sometimes those lessons come harder than others. I'm glad you're all right."
"Thank you." She cleared her throat. "Um, how have you been? I haven't seen you since, you know..." She didn't know how to put it. They all avoided talking about Mr. Bishop, definitely the coldest vampire she'd ever met; he'd been cruel, calculating, and way too powerful. The fact that they'd survived his attempt to take over Morganville had been amazing...but nobody wanted to risk going through that again.
"Yeah, since that," Hess said. "We've been working. Travis took a vacation for six months, out of town. Other than that, the usual. This is the first outright murder we've had in a while, though."
He didn't sound either bothered or excited about it. Just businesslike. Claire didn't know what to say to that, but it didn't seem to matter. He walked her back over to the police cars and went to consult with Hannah and his partner.