“Maybe you should stick to the standard questions,” Rick said.
“All right. Tell me what you found when you got here. About what time was it?”
He told her, explaining how the lights were out and the place seemed abandoned. How he’d known right away that something was wrong, and so wasn’t surprised to find her in the kitchen.
“She called me earlier today. I wasn’t available but she left a message. She sounded worried but wouldn’t say why. I came over as soon as I could.”
“She knew something was wrong, then. She expected something to happen.”
“I think so.”
“Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill an old woman like this?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
One night she came into the bar late during his shift. They hadn’t set up a date so he was surprised, and then he was worried. Gasping for breath, her eyes pink, she ran up to him, crashing into the bar, hanging on to it as if she might fall over without the support. She’d been crying.
He took up her hands and squeezed. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Rick! I’m in so much trouble. He’s going to kill me, I’m dead, I’m—”
“Helen! Calm down. Take a breath—what’s the matter?”
She gulped down a couple of breaths, steadying herself. Straightening, squeezing Rick’s hands in return, she was able to speak. “I need someplace to hide. I need to get out of sight for a little while.”
She could have been in any kind of trouble. Some small-town relative come to track her down and bring home the runaway. Or she could have been something far different from the fresh-faced city girl she presented herself as. He’d known from the moment he met her that she was hiding something—she never talked about her past.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you everything, just please help me hide.”
He came out from behind the bar, put his arm around her, and guided her into the back room. There was a storage closet filled with wooden crates, some empty and waiting to be carried out, some filled with bottles of beer and liquor. Only Rick and Murray came back here when the place was open. He found a sturdy, empty crate, tipped it upside down, dusted it off, and guided her to sit on it.
“I can close up in half an hour, then you can tell me what’s wrong. All right?”
Nodding, she rubbed at her nose with a handkerchief.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Bottle of soda? Shot of whiskey?”
“No, no. I’m fine, for now. Thank you.”
Back out front, he let his senses expand, touching on every little noise, every scent, every source of light and the way it played around every shadow. Every heartbeat, a dozen of them, rattled in his awareness, a cacophony, like rocks tumbling in a tin can. It woke a hunger in him—a lurking knowledge that he could destroy everyone here, feed on them, sate himself on their blood before they knew what had happened.
He’d already fed this evening—he always fed before coming to work, it was the only way he could get by. It made the heartbeats that composed the background static of the world irrelevant.
No one here was anxious, worried, searching, behaving in any other manner than he would expect from people sitting in a bar half an hour before closing. Most were smiling, some were drunk, all were calm.
That changed ten minutes later when a heavyset man wearing a nondescript suit and weathered fedora came through the door and searched every face. Rick ignored him and waited. Sure enough, the man came up to the bar. His heart beat fast, and sweat dampened his armpits and hairline.
“What can I get for you?” Rick asked.
“You see a girl come in here, about this tall, brown hair, wearing a blue dress?” the man said. He was carrying a pistol in a holster under his suit jacket.
Some of the patrons had turned to watch. Rick was sure they’d all seen Helen enter. They were waiting to see how he’d answer.
“No,” he said. “Haven’t seen her. She the kind of girl who’d come into a place like this by herself?”
“Yeah. I think she is.”