Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Joseph waited motionless until the sound of David’s car had faded completely into the background noise of the city before he moved a muscle. He went to the door and cleared away as much of the debris as he could and pushed it closed. The bent deadbolt prevented it from shutting completely and it remained slightly ajar. Better than nothing. Joseph moved a three-legged hallway table, which had previously been home to a rather expensive vase, in front of the door so it would make noise if someone tried to push it open. The vase it had held, a blue-and-white Chinese piece from the Ming Dynasty, lay in a hundred shards on the floor. Dealing with that would have to wait, however.

The homeless woman sat cold in her death chair, covered in her own blood and that of anonymous donors. Joseph gazed over the scene, contemplating various options. The body must be disposed of. The room needed cleaning. This whole floor of the house needed to be scrubbed top to bottom. A plan was coalescing in his head, and his first instinct was to call Rafi, but Rafi was gone, his death caused by the same people who created this horror show. Joseph felt anger rising up his spine but pushed it down. Now was not the time for impotent rage.

He needed a vehicle. For the first time in years, a Lyft or Uber would not do. Privacy and discretion were the words of the day. Joseph surmised that renting a car in his name in order to move a corpse was also probably not the best idea. Then a possibility came to mind. He took out a phone and rang the head of corporate security, Hayes Burton. Rafaél was the only person Joseph trusted with sensitive personal matters, but whenever Rafi had needed assistance, he had turned to Burton. A former Marine officer in the Special Operations Command with several classified jobs on his resume, he was a get-things-done-and-don’t-ask-questions type of guy. Which was exactly what Joseph needed right now.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Walter, what can I do for you?” Burton answered the phone.

Joseph could swear he heard him standing up stiffly at attention, even over the phone. He had learned that Hayes Burton preferred a no-nonsense approach. No chitchat, no personal talk. “What’s the status?” He didn’t particularly feel the need to know about what was happening surrounding the explosion. In fact, he felt it was probably best if he didn’t. But it might seem odd if he called and didn’t ask, especially when he was about to make another odd request.

Burton gave a recap of the body count (four dead and six wounded, a surprisingly low number considering over two hundred people had worked in the building), estimated damages ($1.3 billion including the high-tech lab equipment and computers, not including the incalculable loss of experimental data and intellectual property), and cause of the explosion (homemade bomb using ammonium nitrate).

Joseph was about to ask for a company car when he suddenly remembered that Rafaél had brought him his blood shipments in a delivery van. “Burton, do you know where Rafaél’s truck is that he used to transport sensitive cargo?”

“Yessir, I believe it was in the lot and is intact,” the former military man said in his no-nonsense gruff.

“I need it, please. Be sure the LoJack and GPS tracking is deactivated. I’ll order a car to pick me up and be down in…” Joseph looked at his watch and made a quick calculation that every LA native became adept at: estimating traffic. “Ninety minutes.”

“Copy that, sir. I’ll make sure it’s ready.” Joseph wondered if the combat vet had saluted. “I won’t be able to meet you, but I’ll have Elmer waiting with the keys.” Elmer Fox was one of his lieutenants within the company.

“Thank you. Good night, Burton, and good work.”

“Sir?” his voice cut in before Joseph ended the call.

“Yeah?”

Burton’s voice assumed an uncharacteristic degree of empathy. “Sir… I’m sorry, sir.” Joseph pondered the words for a moment. No one knew Rafaél’s true relation to him, but perhaps knowing they were close was enough. Or maybe the old Marine was referring to the building and the damage done to the thing that Joseph had built. He couldn’t possibly know the true value of the food supply the building contained…

“Thank you, Burton.” Joseph ended the call.

Usually, he got a bit of enjoyment out of calling the man by his last name. It had been a request Burton made the first time they’d met when Joseph had congenially called him Hayes. The last name thing was a military holdover, and it took Joseph back to his own days of having comrades-in-arms. Tonight, it felt grim and joyless.

Eighty-six minutes later, the Lyft dropped him off at what was left of the Tetractys offices and lab building. It was in a newly developed area of town called Playa Vista, and the building itself was a converted airplane hangar which had been used to manufacture aircraft during World War II. Joseph had bought a lot of property in the area and leased some to tech companies like Google and Adobe. He had gutted the massive structure and installed state-of-the-art facilities for biomedical research and blood processing and storage. It was almost totally destroyed. Half the building was rubble, and the rest was heavily damaged. Joseph had been informed that it was a complete loss.

The parking lot across the street was untouched, except for some detritus from the explosion. It was now home to a small village of emergency vehicles and a portable terrorist response lab. On the far side of the lot, Joseph spotted Rafi’s delivery truck, and he pointed the Lyft driver there.

Elmer was waiting next to the van as promised, and he made sure Joseph was situated, treating him with a respectful deference of a boss who rarely interacted with his employees and thus held a sort of mythical eminence. Joseph tried to be kind and put the young man at ease. He offered to give him a ride home with the Lyft, but Elmer declined, pointing out his car a few spots away.

Joseph drove the truck to a nearby home supply store and grabbed large plastic bags, several containers of heavy-duty cleaning solution, and other cleaning supplies, and was about to drive home when Burton called.

“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you,” the former Marine said gruffly, his voice indicating he wasn’t so much sorry as being polite, “but I just received a call from the FBI lead investigator. They requested to be able to ask you some questions about the explosion.”

“Requested?” Joseph repeated wryly.

“Insisted, sir.” Burton read his meaning without it needing to be spelled out. It was one of the things Joseph really liked about the man. “But it does seem more of a formality and shouldn’t be too much of a concern. Are you still close?”

Joseph tapped a finger absently on the steering wheel. Talking to the FBI about one crime while driving a truck filled with materials he intended to use to cover up another crime didn’t exactly seem like the best idea, but Joseph suspected he knew the types of questions they wanted to ask him. They would ask him the same questions they would have to ask most of the people who worked at Tetractys, but speaking with the owner of the privately held company was surely essential to any investigation. He wouldn’t be able to avoid speaking with them. It might as well be now, after sunset, than try to arrange a time tomorrow or the next day.

“Yeah, I’m still in the area. I’ll swing back. Who am I looking for?” Joseph replied.

“Agent Kane from the Joint Terrorism Task Force,” Burton replied curtly. “I’ll meet you. I can be there in ten.”

“Perfect.” Joseph ended the call and took an extra-deep breath. It wouldn’t do any good to get frustrated. Just go and answer their questions and be done with it, he thought.

Joseph stopped at a Starbucks drive-thru to equip himself with the prop of a green tea, which served two purposes: to eat up some time to allow his security chief to arrive first, and to make Joseph appear so at ease that he was just sipping his green tea, no big deal, I don’t know nuthin’ about no terrorist attack, Officer.

He arrived back at the small tent city a few minutes later and recognized Burton’s giant Range Rover immediately. It was just the sort of car an ex-Marine would have. Bulky, overpowered, and much too large for a city. Parked next to it was a Tesla Model X with a vanity license place reading LAWGRRL, which Joseph recognized as belonging to the Tetractys general counsel. Sure enough, when he got out of the van he was met by Burton and Pamela Alwin, a woman of about sixty years of age who could best be described as fierce. But as Ru Paul would say it. With a few finger snaps.

Joseph had fallen professionally head over heels for Pamela when Rafaél had brought her on. She was like a lawyer version of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Supremely competent, confident, and could surely strap a couple of M41A Pulse Rifles together when she had to venture into a courtroom setting. She also had a sense of humor, as evidenced by her vanity plate, but woe to the man who got on her bad side.

“Pamela,” Joseph greeted her (Pamela, never Pam, he reminded himself, as he did every time he met her), extending his hand.

“Hello, sir, it’s been too long. You look good, all things considered,” she said, grasping his hand firmly, her perfectly manicured nails pushing lightly into the skin on the back of Joseph’s hand.

“You, too,” he returned the compliment. It was true. Pamela didn’t look a day over forty-five and was dressed smartly yet alluringly in a charcoal grey Armani pantsuit with a light purple shirt that showed just the slightest hint of cleavage. Rafaél had told Joseph that she had worked as a Playboy Bunny to put herself through law school, a fact which Joseph absolutely loved. “Thank you for coming.”

“It seemed prudent, given the circumstances,” the lawyer said, adopting a caring, almost motherly demeanor. She added her other hand and held Joseph’s, looking into his eyes sympathetically. “I’m so, so sorry for Rafaél. He was a good man.”

Joseph felt a lump appear suddenly in his throat, and he swallowed it down. “He was, thank you.” Then he looked to Burton to include him in the conversation. “Shall we get this over with?”

They traversed the sixty or so feet to a large trailer serving as a command center for the FBI task force. Pamela and Burton briefly prepped Joseph on the way. Agent Kane, a tall, slightly overweight man of Midwest origins and closely cropped hair, breezed through introductions before moving on to the questions at hand. Joseph took a strategically timed sip of his green tea while Agent Kane spoke.

“Sorry to have to bother you with this, but of course we have to try and figure out what motives the terrorists might have had to attack your company specifically,” Agent Kane explained.

“Of course, whatever I can do to help. My counsel and chief of corporate security have filled me in so far.” Joseph held his cup with both hands and leaned in slightly, taking on a concerned look.

Agent Kane held up an audio recorder. “Do you mind if I record this for reference?”

Joseph didn’t care a bit, but dutifully looked to Pamela, who nodded. “No, it’s fine,” he told the agent.

Kane pushed the record button. “I only have a couple questions. You are the current owner of Tetractys, correct?”

“Yes,” Joseph confirmed, though didn’t elaborate on the company’s history of being passed down from grandfather to father to son, all of whom were the same person.

“Do you have any enemies that you can think of who might want to attack your company?” Agent Kane asked bluntly. Without needing to take notes, his attention was focused on Joseph.

Joseph returned his gaze and allowed his will to spill into the agent, just a bit. “No, as far as I know I don’t have any enemies,” he lied. “I try to be a positive influence in the community, and the work we do helps people.”

“I see,” the agent said, his speech slowing somewhat, like he was thinking through a fog. “What about corporate enemies? Competition from overseas that might go so far as industrial espionage?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but surely Mr. Burton would be a better person to ask about such things. My involvement in day-to-day operations is … minimal,” Joseph replied assuredly, maintaining eye contact with the agent. His goal was to instill a sense of trust, so that the questions would be kept to a minimum, without need for follow-ups.

“Sure, sure,” Kane replied, pursing his lips. The next question was a tad delicate. “Rafaél Loya was the Managing Director of Tetractys, and also—” he checked his notes on a smartphone app “—your brother, by adoption, correct?”

Next to him, Joseph felt Pamela stiffen somewhat at the mention of Rafi’s name, and he heard her heartbeat quicken noticeably. Interesting, he thought. Was this a professional reaction to the inclusion of her only other boss into the conversation, or was there something more? As far as Joseph knew, the stately head counsel was not married herself. Rafi had always seemed too busy with work for personal connections, but perhaps he had managed to combine the two. Joseph’s mind flitted briefly to their recent conversation where Rafaél confidently revealed his asexuality, and he wondered briefly whether his son had any physical interactions at all.

He returned his attention to the FBI agent. “That’s correct, yes.” Joseph had adopted Rafi when he was living under his previous name. Legally speaking, when he was his own father, making Rafaél his brother.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Kane said with a hint of genuine sympathy. “Did he have any enemies that you were aware of?”

Burton let out a subtle humph, which Joseph also found interesting. It seemed to indicate that the very idea of Rafaél having anyone in his life that could come close to being called an enemy was preposterous.

“I would be shocked if he did,” Joseph said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Burton nod almost imperceptibly.

“I see,” the agent said. “That’s all I need for now, but if you think of anything that might help, let me know.”

“I’ve got your number, Agent Kane,” Burton said, being very clear that the conversation had ended. Kane nodded and turned on his heel, returning to the command trailer. Another military man, Joseph observed. Intelligence, though, not special forces. Joseph had known countless military types in his life. They generally fit neatly into a certain personality type, and when they entered the service, they usually wound up sliding into a slot that fit them.

Joseph apologized to Burton and Pamela for needing to leave, and they apologized for making him come in the first place. He put them at ease, blaming the FBI for needing his answers personally. He drove the delivery truck laden with cleaning supplies back to the house via Venice and La Cienega Boulevards rather than getting on the 405 freeway. The highways weren’t always faster in LA, and Joseph wanted to stay on surface streets to give himself time to think. It had been a long time since he’d had to dispose of a body, and he only just realized that he didn’t know exactly how he was going to do it.

He had fleetingly considered hiring a service to take care of the homeless woman’s corpse and the mess. There were such resources available to the super wealthy, but he had never availed himself of them. The fact was, Joseph considered the cleanup to be penance for falling off the wagon of abstaining from feeding on humans. It would be gruesome and messy work, the smell of old blood and death already permeated the kitchen, but Joseph ultimately decided to handle it by himself. If Rafi were still alive, he’d have said the old vampire was wallowing. Forcing himself to live in anguish and self-pity. That was never quite right.

Joseph felt a small but constant and gnawing guilt in the depths of his soul. He felt, whatever vampires were and however they came to exist on the Earth, they could be better than the myths and legends they failed to live up to. They were superior to humans in many ways. Stronger, faster, heightened senses, impossibly long life. Nature had balanced these strengths with some limitations like extreme sensitivity to sunlight, allergies to garlic, and the difficulty in propagating that they named Decimus, but for all the gifts evolution had given them, what did they do with them? Less than nothing.

On top of it all, vampires were in a sense the worst predators on the planet. In nature, predators weeded out the sick and the old from the prey populations, but vampires, oh no, they fed on the young, the strong, and the most virile of humans. Joseph knew they could be better. Could give something back to the planet which had brought about their existence. The early centuries of killing and living by his basest desires had happened, and they will always have happened. So, Joseph atoned.

Tonight, that meant sawing through the flesh, muscle, and bone of an innocent woman, praying forgiveness from her and any other spirits that may be watching as he did so.

In the moment when he asked Burton for the truck, Joseph had assumed that he’d have to drive the body somewhere remote and bury pieces all over the Southern California desert. It wasn’t until he held a grimy severed foot in his hand that he realized he might have the solution right in his very house.

The house was equipped with a Volkan medical grade butane incinerator system, installed precisely for disposing of blood bags and any other materials related to Joseph’s nocturnal proclivities. There were chutes that led from the kitchen and the garage, though they weren’t big enough to accommodate a whole body. Even a foot or a hand might get stuck, Joseph suspected (perhaps the best thing about being old was that he was able to foresee accidents before they happened, unlike his younger human self, who constantly had to clean up messes as a result of foolish pride).

The incinerator was located in the subbasement of the house, and it had a direct access panel measuring twelve by twenty-four inches. With a bit of sickening disassembly, Joseph was able to fit all of the body parts into the burn receptacle and reduced the woman who died in his kitchen to soft grey ash.

The cleaning of the kitchen took longer. Even with his enhanced strength, Joseph’s arms ached from scrubbing sticky, drying blood from the marble floor tiles. They were stain-treated, and the blood left no trace after a little elbow grease was employed. He also had to scrub the refrigerator inside and out, removing all the shelving to be sure he left no trace. Seeing the empty spot where his bags of donated blood usually sat reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours. He checked his watch to make sure, but sunrise was coming, which meant it had been a whole day since he succumbed to the urge to feed on a human being.

He wasn’t hungry. Joseph knew he should be, given how long ago his last meal was and how taxing the last day had been, both physically and emotionally. He suspected he was in a bit of shock and running on adrenaline as he cleaned. Perhaps he was depressed. He certainly felt hollowed out, and that small, gnawing feeling of guilt he usually had was now large and festering right in the middle of his chest.

He finished the cleaning process by burning the chair to which the homeless woman had been tied. Joseph was reasonably certain no one would come to his house in search of her, but he did another pass on every surface in the kitchen just to be safe, then the floor from the kitchen to the entryway. There, he swept up the debris from the broken front door, and, seeing that the sun was up, called the company that had installed the door and agreed to pay the expediting fee for them to come to fix it that day. He told them it had been broken in by firefighters responding to a faulty alarm. The receptionist on the other end of the call said he hoped they were paying for the replacement, and Joseph faked a laugh and said he hoped so, too.

All that taken care of, Joseph was faced with an age-old dilemma. Too tired to eat, too hungry to sleep. The problem was solved for him when he realized there was no way for him to get food. Rafi was dead and was the only one he could have called. Anyway, Tetractys’ blood lab was destroyed, and that was where Rafi would have gotten his supply. So Joseph put the table in front of the front door again as a makeshift alarm and descended to the bedroom. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep; his mind was swimming with guilt and sadness and worry and what felt like a thousand decisions that needed to be made, but he put his phone ringer on as loud as it could go just in case and set it in the charger on the bedside table. He laid down on the bed and passed out from exhaustion as soon as his head hit the soft pillow.