An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3), Fred Saberhagen [best large ereader .txt] 📗

   A faint line of puzzlement creased Kate’s otherwise flawless forehead. He got the impression that she knew nothing of her brother’s fate.

   “All will be well now, Kate. Rest, sleep, until I come for you. Answer no call but mine. No call but mine. We will have much to talk of, later. But for now, rest.”

   And yet her lungs continued laboring to breathe, to get out one more word. He bent lower, intent on hearing.

   “—Joe—”

* * * * * * *

   For six minutes Joe Keogh had been back in the driver’s seat, with engine and heater running, keeping a sharp eye out for the old man and wondering when he should really begin to be alarmed. Now Joe started, with almost the sensation of electric shock repeated. His companion was standing once more beside the car, where he seemed to have reappeared while in the very act of reaching for the door handle. What good would you be in a stakeout? a part of Joe’s mind demanded angrily of himself. And another part answered: I was watching. He just—just—

   “I told you you wouldn’t be able to get in,” he said aloud, with irritation, meanwhile reaching across the front seat to flip the doorlatch up.

   “You were quite right,” replied Corday in a soothing, almost contrite voice, as he slid in and closed the door. “The attendants were not at all inclined to be helpful. One of them was sleeping at the desk. A most ill-run establishment. Were I in charge, things would be different there.”

   Joe sighed, trying to remember if you could see anyone’s desk from outside the front door of the morgue. “I’ll take you back to your motel.”

   “If that is out of your way I can easily take a cab.”

   Joe shifted into drive and moved out, north on State, then swinging east to get back to the Outer Drive. “No problem, I’m headed back to the north side anyway.” He hadn’t really been headed that far north, but what the hell. Anyway there was something about the old man, in spite of all his oddities—or maybe because of them—that made Joe reluctant to let go of him. An air of hope; maybe that was it. A feeling of purpose, which was more than Joe had been able to get from anyone else around him since Kate’s death. Looking at the ugly situation logically, of course, there wasn’t much to be hopeful or purposeful about—except the chance of recovering Johnny still alive, and to Joe that chance looked smaller and smaller as the hours passed.

   His companion’s voice, breaking in upon his thoughts, was welcome. “Tell me one more thing, Joe, if you know it. What are the plans for Kate’s burial?”

   “As far as I know, no time’s been set. Waiting on the autopsy, which is supposed to be tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll be buried up in Lockwood Cemetery, in the family mausoleum. It’s one of those the really wealthy Chicago families liked to put up around the turn of the century: all marble and as big as a middle-sized house. One of those famous architects designed it, I forget his name.”

   “Thank you, Joe. You have been very helpful to me tonight.” It was said so sincerely that it sounded a little odd.

   Joe glanced at the once-more shadowed face. “You’ll be coming to the funeral, then.”

   “At my age,” the old man said calmly, “it is difficult to know which funerals one will be able to attend.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

   When the closet door was closed Johnny never tried to open it, not after that first time, even though sometimes the house grew so silent that he could imagine himself alone in it.

   On his first night in the closet all had been silent, for what seemed like an endless time, and at last he had eased the door open with his good hand, thinking maybe they had somehow left him unguarded. The huge man had been right there in the dark empty bedroom, standing right there as if he had been waiting hours for Johnny to do just that. That was when the huge man, without saying a word, had torn off the little finger on Johnny’s right hand.

   The little finger on his left hand had gone even sooner, while he was still in the kidnap-car and trying to struggle. He had fainted, and when he came out of the faint—he couldn’t tell how much later—he found himself already here, shut up naked in the closet.

   In the car, the huge man had ridden in the back seat, and the black-bearded man had done the driving. Black-beard was the one who had first beckoned Johnny over to the car as if to ask directions of him. When you were the fourth best high school wrestler in the state at a hundred and sixty pounds, you didn’t fear any more that some maniac could just grab you like a baby and throw you into the back seat of a car.

   It had turned out, though, that someone could.

   Then there was the man with the thick glasses, a short and muscular and sometimes nervous young man. He had not been in the car at all, but he stayed with Johnny in the house, escorted him from closet to bathroom and back again, and put food and water in the dishes on the closet floor.

   Also there was the woman. Johnny was not quite sure, in his state of pain, fever, shock, fear, and confusion, whether he was dreaming her or not. He heard her sometimes; he never saw her clearly. She had not been in the car either. Once she came to the closet door and opened it, in darkness so thick that even his now fully adjusted eyes could see nothing but the vague outline of her body. Then she had