Dolph saw me coming toward him. He didn't smile, or say hi, because one, it was Dolph, and two, he wasn't completely happy with me. He wasn't happy with the monsters lately, which rubbed off on me because I was way too intimate with the monsters.
Still, convincing his son not to become a vampire had earned me brownie points. The fact that Dolph had just gotten off of a leave without pay, with an informal warning that if he didn't shape up, he'd be suspended, had also mellowed him out. Frankly, I'd take whatever I could get. Dolph and I were friends, or I'd thought we were. We were both a little unsure where we stood right now.
"I need to move the Dumpsters to look at the body. I also need to move the body around to look for more bite marks, or whatever. Can I do that without screwing the crime scene up?"
He looked at me, and there was something in his face that said, clearly, he was not happy to have me here. He started to say something, glanced around at the other detectives, the uniforms, the crime-scene techs, and beyond that to the waiting ambulance, shook his head, and motioned me off to one side. I could feel people's gazes follow us as we moved away. All of the detectives there knew that Dolph had dragged me up a flight of stairs at a crime scene. When I said manhandled, I wasn't exaggerating. God knows what the stories said now, probably that he'd hit me, which he hadn't, but what he'd done had been bad enough. Bad enough I could have pressed charges and won.
He leaned over and spoke low. "I don't like you being here."
"You called me," I said. God, I did not want to fight with him tonight.
He nodded. "I called, but I need to know that you don't have a conflict of interest here."
I frowned up at him. "What do you mean? What conflict of interest?"
"If it's a vamp kill, then it was someone that belongs to your boyfriend."
"It's nice that you said if it's a vamp kill, but if you mean Jean-Claude, then it might not be his people at all."
"Oh, that's right, you got two vampire boyfriends now." His voice was ugly.
"You want to fight each other, or fight crime? Your choice," I said.
He made a visible effort to control himself. Hands in fists at his sides, eyes closed, deep breaths. He'd been forced to go through anger management training. I watched him use his newfound skills. Then he opened his eyes--cold cop eyes--and said, "You're defending the vamps already."
"I'm not saying it's not a vamp kill. All I said was that it might not be Jean-Claude's people. That's all."
"But you're defending your boyfriend and his people already. You haven't even looked at the vic completely, and already you say it can't be your lover boy."
I felt my eyes grow cold and said, "I'm not saying it couldn't have been Jean-Claude's vampires. I'm saying it's unlikely. Thanks to the Church of Eternal Life, St. Louis has a lot of bloodsuckers that don't owe allegiance to the Master of the City."
"The church's members are more straitlaced than right-wing Christians," he said.
I shrugged. "They do come off as sanctimonious, I'll grant you that. Most true believers do, but that's not why I say it was them, or strangers, instead of the vampires I know best."
"Why, then?" he asked.
My only excuse for telling the absolute truth is that I was pissed and tired of Dolph being mad at me. "Because if any of Jean-Claude's people did this, they're dead. Either he'll turn them in to the law himself, or have me do it, or they'll just be killed."
"You're admitting that your boyfriend is a murderer?"
I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. "You know, Dolph, this is getting old. Yeah, I'm f**king a vampire or two, get over it."
He looked away. "I don't know how."
"Then learn," I said. "But stop letting your personal shit rain all over the crime scene. We've wasted time arguing, when I could have been looking at the body. I want these people caught."
"People, plural?" he asked.
"I've only seen two bite marks, but they both have a slightly different pattern to them. The one on the chest is smaller, less space between the fangs. So, yeah, at least two, but I'm betting more."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because they bled her out. There's almost no blood anywhere. Two vamps couldn't drain an adult human being without leaving a mess. They'd need more mouths to hold that much blood."
"Maybe she was killed somewhere else."
I frowned at him. "It's October, she's outside wearing five-inch plastic stilettos, an inexpensive wool coat, and not much else." I motioned at the building behind us. "We're in the parking lot of a strip club. Hmm, let me see, five-inch plastic stilettos, na**d woman... could this be a clue that she worked here, stepped out for a smoke, or something?"