4

The Records section clerk regarded Garreth with some surprise. "Well, good evening, Inspector. I heard you gave up your badge."

The grapevine worked as efficiently as ever, he noticed. "I did, but I have a few reports to finish before it's official. Would you have time to find this for me?" He handed her the case and serial numbers on Madelaine Bieber's assault charge.

"I think so. How is Sergeant Takananda?"

"He's doing fine."

Except for insisting on blaming himself for the O'Hare screwup. "I'm senior partner," he had repeated several times during Garreth's visit, his voice thin and weak but emphatic. "I let us go hot-dogging in there."

"Don't worry about it now," Lien had said, just as quietly and emphatically. "Neither of you died."

Garreth's and Harry's eyes met, mutually agreeing not to discuss the differences between her scale of priorities and that the shooting board would apply.

"What's this Lien tells me about you turning in your badge?" Harry asked. "You didn't have to do that. You just need more time to recuperate before you come back to work."

Lien's eyes begged Garreth not to discuss the issue. He gave her the barest nod in reply. Anything that might stress Harry should be avoided at all cost, and Garreth read serious anxiety in Harry over the resignation. "I see that now."

"Go ask for it back."

"I will," Garreth lied.

Harry relaxed. A moment later, a nurse appeared and chased them out of the room.

In the corridor, Lien had looked up at him and read the truth somewhere in his face. "Thank you for giving him peace. What will you do now?"

"I have some things to finish first. Then"—he shrugged—"maybe I'll go back to school and finish my degree."

The lies went on and on, he thought, leaning on the counter in Records. Did he think the web of them would help him bridge the gulf around him? Or were they building a protective fence to keep others from discovering that gulf and falling into it?

"I'm sorry, Inspector," the clerk said, returning. "That file is out."

Garreth sighed. Who else would want it after all these years? Unless . . . "Did Sergeant Takananda check it out?"

"No. Lieutenant Serruto."

Thanking her, he went back to Homicide. He found the squad room nearly empty. The few detectives there crowded around him as he came in, asking about Harry. He repeated what he had told the clerk in Records.

Beyond the windows of his office, Serruto slumped tiredly at his desk, looking as though he had not slept in days. He glanced up and, seeing Garreth, beckoned to him.

"How do you feel?" he asked when Garreth reached the open door.

"Fine. I'll get started on the reports." He lingered in the doorway. "I wanted to check out this Madelaine Bieber whose prints were all over Barber's apartment. R and I says you have the file on her assault arrest."

"Yes." Serruto eyed him. "Why do you want to know about her?"

Garreth put on a faint smile. "Curiosity, I guess."

Serruto reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a badge case Garreth recognized. He laid it on top of the desk. "Mikaelian, if you want to play detective, you pick this up again; otherwise, forget about Madelaine Bieber and Lane Barber until you're called to testify at Barber's trial. They're police business." He yawned hugely and added almost as an afterthought, "I nail vigilante hides to the wall."

Garreth retreated to his typewriter.

Now what? he wondered, feeding a report form into the typewriter. He could wait out Serruto. He could sit here working all night until Serruto and the others left, then search for the file. His sharpened hearing could detect someone coming in time to avoid being caught burglarizing his lieutenant's office.

Is this how you uphold the law, an inner voice asked contemptuously, breaking it for your own private ends?

He bit his lip, suddenly ashamed. What was he thinking about? It might take a vampire to catch a vampire, but if he let himself become like her in the process, what right did he have to hunt her? All right, no shortcuts, he promised his conscience. Somehow, even without a badge, I'll stay legal. He rubbed aching temples.

"Why don't you forget that and go back home to bed?" Serruto asked from the doorway of his office. "On second thought, let's make that an order. Go home. You're on limited duty: desk duty only, daytime only."

"Yes, sir," Garreth replied, and obediently left.

Riding down in the elevator, however, he considered the problem of legally seeing the contents of the file. Could he ask Cohen or Kolb to look at it and pass on the information? They might expect him to say why he wanted to know. Worse, they might tell Serruto who asked them to look at it. Was there anywhere outside the file that he could find the same information?

He found the answer to that about the time he stepped out of the elevator onto the ground floor. Then he had to run for his car to reach the library before it closed.

"I need the October 1941 editions of the Chronicle," he told the librarian on duty in the microfilm section. He wished he remembered the exact date of that assault. It meant searching the entire month's newspapers.

He spun the film through the viewer as fast as he could and still read it. He felt closing time coming and sped up the viewer a bit more.

By concentrating so hard on small items, though, he almost missed what he wanted. Lane had earned herself two columns and a picture on the front page. There was no mistaking her, towering tall between the four police officers hauling her back from a woman who crouched with blood leaking through the fingers of the hand held over her left ear. "The Barbary Coast Still Lives," the headline proclaimed.

Garreth thanked Lady Luck for the lurid reporting of that day and pressed the button for a printed copy of the page. Maybe he had something here. This Madelaine with her face contorted in fury was a far cry indeed from the Lane Barber who stood him up against a wall years later and coolly proceeded to drink his lifeblood, then go back to work.

He read the story in the dome light of his car, writing down all names and addresses in his notebook. He smiled as he read, amused at both the gossipy style of the story, laden with adjectives, and what he saw between the lines, knowing Lane to be what she was.

A woman named Claudia Darling, described as "a pert, petite, blue-eyed brunette," was accosted in the Red Onion on the evening of Friday, October 17, by "a Junoesque" red-haired singer named Mala Babra—Lane could fill a phone book with her aliases—employed by the club. An argument ensued over a naval officer both had met in the same club the evening before, Miss Babra claiming that Miss Darling had caused the serviceman to break a date made previously with Miss Babra.

Garreth smiled. He could just imagine Lane's frustration . . . supper all picked out and some other lady walking off with it.

When Miss Darling denied the allegation, the story went on, Miss Babra attacked. They had to be separated by police hastily summoned to the scene. Four officers were needed to subdue and hold Miss Babra. Miss Darling suffered severe bite wounds to one ear and scratches on the face, but "the popular habitue of the nightclub scene is reported to be in satisfactory condition at County General Hospital. "

Garreth eyed the last sentence, ticking his tongue against his teeth. He sensed a sly innuendo, something readers of the time had been meant to infer, but which he, a generation later, failed to understand. He studied the photograph: the four officers straining to hold Lane, obviously surprised by her strength; Lane ablaze with fury; and the Darling woman, showing what the photographer must have considered a highly satisfactory amount of leg as she crouched dazed and bleeding on the floor. The bare leg caught Garreth's attention, but the rest of the woman held it. Even with the differences in hairstyle and fashions, he recognized what she wore as just a bit flashier, shorter, and tighter than the dresses on the women in the background. Now he understood the innuendo and chuckled. Even a generation removed, she clearly signaled her profession to him: hooker.

That was a break. If she was in the life, she had probably been busted a time or two, and that meant a record of her: names, addresses, companions. Tomorrow he would run her through R and I.

Humming, he switched off the dome light and started the car, heading out of the parking lot towrd home to pick up his thermos before hunting supper.