To distract himself from the itchy rash which etched itself on his upper body, Daryl scribbled random words on a paper napkin with a number two pencil.
Detectives are pricks.
He erased the "pr" of pricks and was about to replace it with another consonant when one of the detectives came back into the dining room, holding a pen and notepad. Daryl had been sitting in the hard oak chair for hours while cops went over the Winton mansion, trying to amuse himself while praying to the gods they didn't find anything.
The several ambulances and fire department paramedics had left an hour earlier, after managing to load all the victims in the trucks; some openly wondered if they would have to make two trips. One boy wasn't quite dead, or so the medical examiner said, though he sure could have fooled Daryl. The CareFlight helicopter came and left with the one survivor, the fifteen-year-old kid named Colm. Everyone alive, or dead, was en route to the morgue or the trauma ward at Parkland.
Except, of course, Daryl. The police had many things they wanted to ask him.
From the kitchen he heard a cop retching his guts out, perhaps in the sink. Daryl frowned, annoyed.
They never seen dead bodies before? What gives? He yawned, and tried to get comfortable in the heavy dining room chair. No easy task, particularly when dealing with the early stages of a class-A hangover.
The detective calmly took a seat next to him, turning the chair out to face him. The man feigned patience, but Daryl saw the mask for what it was. For some reason the air-conditioning had quit working in the house around six that afternoon, and everyone inside had started to melt. Odors Daryl had never smelled before greeted his nostrils, antagonizing his already unhappy stomach. The detective wore a pinstripe business suit, but had shed the coat and vest soon after arriving, having apparently seen it would be a long ordeal. In his crossdraw shoulder harness Daryl saw an angry looking .45 automatic. Huge wet stains appeared under his arms, and while he could have been no older than thirty-five, he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Daryl's father.
And his father had no patience, and would have resorted to knocking the crap out of him long ago to obtain the answers this detective now seemed to want.
The detective looked up, wearily, with perspiration pouring off his forehead. He glanced once at the paper napkin, wadded it up, and with no expression whatsoever, bounced it off Daryl's forehead.
The casual gesture frightened Daryl more than it should have. Is this guy getting ready to beat me up after all? he wondered. Or is he just trying to psych me out?
With a neutral, bored tone, the detective asked, "So tell me, Daryl, where's all the cocaine all you bad boys and girls were smoking and snorting last night?"
Daryl shrugged. "Beats me. We just had some wine coolers. I got drunk and passed out in the backyard. When I woke up, I came in here and found everyone dead."
The phone, which had been ringing off the hook since the cops arrived, rang again. Daryl knew they were trying to locate the parents of the dead kids, but were having little luck. They all seemed to be . . . unavailable.
Maybe this was one of them finally returning a call. . . .
The cop eyed him uncomfortably for a long, long time. Daryl was impressed with himself at how long he was able to stare the man down without blinking.
"How do you know they're dead, Daryl?" The cop smirked.
"Guessed," he said. Through a bay window he watched a fire truck pull away. "Maybe it had something to do with the way they weren't moving very much."
The detective shook his head. "Godammit," he said. "Don't you feel anything? They were your friends!"
Daryl's gaze remained fixed on the fire truck as it trundled down the long, long driveway to the automatic gate. "Not anymore," he said, with a yawn.
The cop stared at him. "You really don't feel anything, do you?" His face flushed red. "This isn't an act."
"I told you what happened. . . ." Daryl replied, getting irritated. He's giving me a taste of the lecture I'm gonna get when I get home. Great. That stuff all over again.
A uniformed officer stuck his head in the dining room. "Roach. Phone call. It's the boy's father."
Daryl snickered. "Roach. Pretty cool name for a cop, if you ask me."
"I'm not asking," Roach said. The cop got to his feet slowly. "The drugs have eaten your soul, lad. They really have. And you're only seventeen."
"Eighteen," Daryl corrected. "Yesterday."
"Oh, well excuse me. Eighteen. All grown up and knowing everything. No more juvenile detention. When you go down, you go down in the big boys' jail." Then, apparently as an amusing afterthought, he added, "And they're gonna love you." He left the room to take the call.
Boy's father. Wonder if that's Winton. Then, a disturbing thought. Maybe it's my father. His stomach turned again at the possibility.
A few moments later, Roach returned, smiling. This made Daryl nervous. "Now I know who you are," the cop announced cheerfully. "I thought your name was a little too familiar."
Inside, Daryl groaned. He'd debated whether or not to reveal the fact that his lawyer was also his father, and a high-priced one at that. But the police departments of Northeast Texas didn't like Paul Bendis, as he had so successfully defended an army of drug dealers in the past ten years, effectively keeping them on the street. So Daryl had decided to stay mute on the subject and leave the scene as soon as they let him.
As long as they don't find anything, they can't keep me. I at least know that much.
"Yeah, well, who am I?"
Roach looked around, and raised his voice when he said, "You're Paul Bendis' son. The lawyer. The crooked lawyer."
Three heads in the hallway looked up. "Say what?" one of them said.
"You all heard me. The Paul Bendis. This is his boy."
Paul suddenly felt like a black man at a KKK rally.
Another suit came over, one who had spent most of his time upstairs. This alone made him nervous, since Daryl hadn't gone over Steve's room very thoroughly, and this cop probably had. The detective was older, heavier, and louder than Detective Roach. He puffed on a long, obnoxious cigar that looked like a turd.
"Well, well," the detective said. "I was rather hoping to catch Bendis in the act, but I think his son will do for now."
"You haven't caught me at anything," Daryl said. "I know my rights. And my father knows them better than I do."
"Sure, sure," he said. "Looks like someone really went over this house with a comb. Say, I found glass shards in the commode upstairs. That wouldn't have been a pipe, would it?"
Daryl shrugged. "Don't know. You're the cops, you tell me."
Roach said, "Now that we know who Daryl is, I think we should go over the place just one more time. No telling what we might find."
"Yeah. No telling." They both started laughing.
Through the bay window Daryl noticed a charcoal-gray Chevy Caprice, the cop car of choice, pull in beside nine identical Caprices, five of them black and whites, in front of the Winton mansion. With the cars already out there from last night's party, cops were having to park on the lawn. It was getting a little full out there. Daryl squirmed, noting the time of day, feeling a little anxious. He'd started to come down big-time an hour ago, and he didn't like it one bit.
This one pulled in where the fire truck had pulled out. A well-dressed lady cop got out, a cop Daryl had known for years.
Sammi McDaris. Adam's mother. Daryl wanted to hide.
I smell the death already. Sammi grimaced as she pulled in front of the Wintons' mansion, finding the one parking space that wasn't taken by either a cop or a recently deceased teenager.
She had heard the report of nineteen overdoses, probable DOA's, over the radio. At least one of the kids survived and called the cops that afternoon. Several TV crews had set up shop in front of the gate, where a cop stood guard, letting only official people onto the grounds. "Not enough parking," he explained. The satellite city spread down half a block, an instant community of vans, trucks, satellite dishes, and well-dressed men talking into vidcams. Clearly, Sammi wasn't the only one listening to the cop frequencies that afternoon.
Sammi worked homicide, and even though this didn't sound like a murder, she called her commander and convinced him to let her check it out.
"I know some of the kids involved," she'd said. "I might be able to help. Sir."
What she couldn't say was, "and my son was at that party last night, and might have died along with them. I want to know what the hell happened. Sir."
Last night Sammi quizzed Adam on the "party," knowing it would be less than wholesome. Adam had replied that it was supposed to be drug-free, and she'd shrugged, and let it go at that. Her willingness to let him go had much to do with specialized spells she renewed on a weekly basis, which would alert her if he ingested any drugs, including alcohol. If the "alarm" went off, there were other things available to her, allowing her to spy or protect, should the need arise.
Adam returned unusually early from the party and told her the whole story, that drugs appeared and he just left, "bored with the whole thing," but she saw genuine disgust in Adam. Either disgust, or disappointment in Daryl.
She wanted to seize the opportunity to drive home the message that Daryl was slipping beyond their reach, and he would be doing himself a favor by cutting loose from him completely. But to do so might have alienated Adam. That was not a chance she wanted to take just at the moment.
Admitting her son's involvement in the Winton party at the household the night before would simply not enhance her image of being a good single parent. But what she really couldn't say was, "My son Adam is actually an elf, an elf prince, and I am his sister, also an elf. . . ."
As she got out of the car, she sensed not only death, but a hideous, dark magic at work here, a darkness that went beyond the evil capable of humans. She paused, fighting a wave of nausea.
The Unseleighe were here, she thought. They must have been. And recently, too. Last night?
When she entered the house, the feeling of Unseleighe power grew. Adam should never have been here. Had they known who he was, they would have killed him.
"What happened to the air-conditioning?" she said to the first officer she saw, who looked rather pale. She sniffed, and realized why.
"There were four bodies in that bedroom. Looks like some kind of orgy gone terribly bad," he said, gesturing across a broad marble hallway to what looked like a master bedroom.
"I'll say," she said, trying to hide her horror. Adam was here last night. Gods, we've got to be more careful.
The cop handed her a set of Polaroids. The detectives usually took these in addition to the official crime scene photos, to show officers like herself who came in late. She stared, morbidly fascinated by the looks of terror on their faces, as if they had all seen the same dreadful apparition.
That's not a typical phenomenon of drug OD's, she thought, flipping through the photos. Each bad trip is a little different, and they've never included "mass hallucinations." These kids died with their eyes open, looking in the same direction, in the same way. Very strange and disturbing, indeed.
"Where is the young man who called this in?" she asked. "Where's Daryl Bendis?"
"Over there, in the dining room," the cop said, and shuffled off, leaving the photos with Sammi, who tucked them away in her purse.
Daryl didn't look up when she entered the dining room, an opulent setting with lots of crystal and silver, a traditional buffet, a lead crystal chandelier: all of the trappings of wealth.
The boy sat at the head of the table, shirtless with a blotchy sunburn, looking like he'd just wakened. He was also pasty pale, but this was a pallor he'd been working on for some time and not unique to this afternoon. Sammi suspected the boy's increased party schedule had something to do with it.
"So what goes, Daryl?" Sammi said sternly. "You're the one who called this in?"
Daryl looked up, sneering. "You already know, or you wouldn't be here," he said.
This human's insolence will soon kill him, she thought. This human child. Who happens to be one of Adam's best "friends." She shook her head.
Her voice lowered. "What the hell happened, Daryl?"
He looked down, visibly fighting annoyance. "Look, it happened like this. Steve threw this party for me, see, and I got a little drunk, went out to the backyard, and passed out." He pointed at his hairless chest, at the bars of pink flesh. "In the gazebo. The sun coming through gave me this burn. When I woke up, I came into the house and found everyone, well, dead."
Sammi nodded, figuring part of what he'd said was true. Over the years they'd had similar conversations over less serious issues; Daryl was an expert at telling the truth, and even better at leaving out important details.
"How did they die, Daryl?" She was trying not to sound confrontational.
"I don't know, ask them," he said, pointing toward the cops in the kitchen. "I'm already on their bad guy list because my dad's a lawyer," he added.
"Was it cocaine? Crack?" she asked, knowing this was probably the case. When Daryl didn't reply, she said, "Did you sell it to them, Daryl?"
"Nope," he said, looking out the bay window. "And that's all you're gonna get out of me, Mrs. McDaris. You're a cop, and your buddies have been giving me a pretty hard time. Leave me alone."
Samantha seethed, but held her temper. I need to know. "You don't know what a hard time is, Daryl. You will when you go to prison."
Daryl looked up. "Huh?"
"If they find so much as a trace of drugs around here, and we suspect you're not cooperating, you're going down. You're not a juvenile anymore. As of today, you're legally an adult. Am I right?"
Reluctantly, Daryl nodded.
"And if you take big boy chances, you can pay big boy prices."
The boy squirmed, and a bead of perspiration dripped off his forehead. "Well . . ." he said.
"Tell me what happened last night and I might be able to cut you some slack," she lied. This had nothing to do with homicide yet, and she doubted she could be very persuasive. There was a great deal of territory and turf-fighting within the department, even among the different municipalities. One of the detectives working this particular scene, Roach, was not one she got along with too well, and therefore couldn't influence, except maybe with reverse psychology . . . and a little elven magic, if it were worth the trouble. She hadn't seen Roach yet, but heard him, shooting the breeze with someone else in the kitchen. She had the feeling he was intentionally ignoring her, which was just as well, as she wanted to talk to Daryl privately.
"Before I went into the backyard . . ." Daryl began, lowering his voice. He apparently didn't want anyone else to hear. "There were these weird dudes who showed up at the place. Steve didn't know how they got past the gate, because no one we knew had opened it. You have to do it from a button at the front door, or in the kitchen. There's a speaker for an intercom there, too. Anyway, they were in leather and chains, which really isn't our style, and looked scary. Steve tried to throw them out. They had this little bag of something, some drugs, and they spread it all around. Steve decided to let them stay."
"What was this stuff?" Sammi said.
"Well, I didn't get a good look at it. I didn't even touch it. But it was this little black-stoppered vial. Never seen black stoppers before."
She knew what he was talking about. Black Dream. Were those Unseleighe elves who crashed the party last night?
"Okay, Daryl, you're not in any trouble. But I need to know about these guys. I think they're passing bad drugs. How many were there?"
The boy looked around the corner, toward the kitchen. "Bad drugs? Never thought of that. Well, there were four, I think. One of them was big and blond, with chains connected to his wrist and waist. He had a pierced nose. Diamond stud in it. Something like that."
"You said four. Any names?"
Daryl seemed to really consider this. "Don't think so. I mean, I didn't hear any. I got pissed off or something right around then, that's when I went into the backyard." He looked up at her and said with conviction when their eyes met, "Honest, Mrs. McDaris. I didn't tell those other cops because they've been so shitty to me."
She saw, for a moment, the boy she once knew. The old Daryl stumbled through the druggy murk just long enough for some sincerity to leak through. And she believed him.
"Well, you'd better start being a little more cooperative," she said. "I know you have the right to remain silent, but if you start turning in some names right about now, it could go easier on you."
"Don't ask me to do that," Daryl said resolutely. "I won't do that."
"Yeah, I know," she said, standing. "They'll kill you if you do. Great friends you have there, Daryl."
Daryl squirmed so much she thought he would fall out of the chair. "Let me think about it. I might tell you, but not those guys. Think you could go see what they have on me?"
Looking out for his own hide, she thought angrily. After nineteen of his friends just died. She studied him for a long time, trying to figure out if he was being honest or had gotten much better at lying. She might have touched his mind with elven magic to get to the truth immediately, but to do so might alert any Unseleighe in the area. With no other choice, she assumed that for the time being he was on the level.
"I'll go see what they have," she said. "But if they haven't found anything by now, they probably won't. But this isn't your house, Daryl. How do you know you cleaned out everything?"
Daryl turned paler than pale.
Sammi went into the kitchen to talk with the others. Daryl heard her make a wry comment about the vomit in the sink and accused Roach of having a weak stomach.
Meanwhile, bugs started to crawl up Daryl's legs. He squirmed and scratched, and lifted his pants leg up to see if there really were bugs, but it was only the hangover. If he didn't go party somewhere soon, it would get much worse.
After the brief chat in the kitchen, Sammi left without confirming whether or not they found anything to charge him with.
A moment later, Roach came into the dining room and dropped a baggie of white powder on the table in front of him.
"Got any idea what that is, kiddo?"
Daryl eyed the baggie like a starving man would a steak.
That looks really good. Wonder if they'll let me do any of it?
The other, logical part of him started to get frightened. Oh, no. I'm going to jail after all. Where the hell did his parents stash that?
"Well, I'll give you a little hint. It goes with donuts."
Daryl eyed the baggie closer, caught a whiff of sweetness. Powdered sugar.
"You assholes," Daryl said without emotion. But the powdered sugar reminded him that he had an appointment Tuesday at one of his dealer's safe houses to pick up some real coke, lots of it. But that was a day away. What am I going to do until then?
Roach said, "You bet we're assholes. Professional assholes, you might say." The cops laughed uproariously. "Looks like the house is clean, sonny. This time, you managed to get everything. Truly remarkable."
Daryl got to his feet, a bold move, since he hadn't given him permission yet. "Can I leave now?"
"I suppose so," Roach said, acting as if he'd been deprived of some entertainment. "Looks like your dad's not going to show up."
No, I doubt it. Daryl thought. Especially if he's coked up, too. Gets real paranoid around cops.
"We know where you live. Since there are no witnesses to speak of, I'd say you're in the clear. But we have your number, Daryl. We'll be watching you. And we're going to get you."
Daryl found the rest of his clothes, which had turned up during the drug search, and got into his '94 Corvette. Since everybody else was driving on the lawn, as evidenced by several tire tracks in the grass, he no longer considered himself blocked in by the Mustang. He drove over the grass, a flower bed, and urged his beast onto the driveway. As he neared the gate, he gave the ghouls there the finger and sped on, ignoring the gaggle of reporters and vidcams.
He didn't want to go home. He wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, and get good and fucked up. After all, this had been a crappy day, and he deserved it. But if he did that, Dad would certainly beat the tar out of him. At this point, if he went directly home and convinced Dad he wasn't in trouble, he stood a fifty-fifty chance of avoiding injury.
His father's new BMW was parked in the driveway when he pulled in, and he considered driving on, but decided to go ahead and get it over with. He pulled up next to the Beamer and tried to make himself more presentable in his rearview mirror; he looked, and felt, like hell.
Depressed and shaky, he entered the house. In many ways it was much like the Wintons' mansion, except smaller. He made a beeline for the stairwell, which led to his bedroom upstairs. Before he reached the second step, his father's voice boomed from the living room.
"Daryl. Get in here."
Damn, he thought. His knees turned into marshmallows. The chances of making it to his room had been, to say the least, slim. But it had been worth a shot.
Paul Bendis sat on the sofa with a tumbler of scotch in one hand, a lit cigarette in another. Daryl came in and sat on a love seat across from him, and tried to look less hung over than he was.
He didn't fool anyone. "Son, you look like hell," Paul said, taking a large sip from the scotch. "What happened over at the Wintons' last night?"
Daryl got as comfortable as possible, resigned to his fate. How much does he already know? he wondered, searching his father's face for clues. Paul looked tired, but somewhat mellowed, due in no small part to the scotch. An empty bottle of Chivas Regal lay at his feet. A paper of coke sat on the mirror-topped coffee table. Traces of white powder remained, shadows of the lines now embedded somewhere in Paul's nasal passages.
Daryl's nostrils itched; his mouth watered. The bugs returned with a vengeance, crawling up one leg, then both.
"Did you hear me?" his father said, his voice rising. "What happened over there?"
Daryl shook himself from the trance the coke held him in. "Uhn, sorry. At the Wintons'. It was just a party. Wine coolers, beer."
"Any coke?"
"No, but I think there was Pepsi. . . ."
An ashtray whizzed over his head and smashed against the wall behind him. The object cleared his head by maybe an inch; he felt its breeze when it passed.
"Don't get cute," Paul said, now looking for someplace to put out his cigarette. He gave up and snuffed it into the glass top, as Daryl had seen him do many times when he was drunk. "I thought you said you were going over to Adam's last night. To study."
Oh, yeah, he thought. Forgot about that. "Well, we did," he added, hoping that this enhancement to the lie would dig his grave no deeper. "Then we went to the party." He became frantic as he tried to remember what happened before he went out, what he'd said, when he'd left. It was all a blank up until just before he went out to the Wintons' backyard and zonked out. And, of course, he remembered waking up and finding the bodies. But none of that really mattered now.
He remembered very little, and that made him nervous. These lapses in memory had recently become more frequent, but since his friends had them, too, he didn't really see anything alarming about it. Unless you're trying to con your way out of a situation . . .
"There were deaths over there," Paul said. "Lots of deaths. You'd better start remembering quick. I've had a bad day and I'm not in the mood for your childish crap."
You've had a bad day? Geeeez. Tell me about it!
"Okay, okay," Daryl said, thinking as fast as he could under the circumstances. "I think they got ahold of some bad dope."
Paul nodded, as if he'd suspected it all along. "And?"
"And it looks like it did them in. I wasn't doing any of it. If I had, I'd be dead, too."
Which was true. He'd passed out drunk before he could do any of it.
Paul rubbed his face with his hands. "Good God, Daryl. Do you have any idea how much trouble you've caused me? Your mother called me in hysterics, said something about murders, then it turns out your friends just did some bad stuff. Really bad stuff. What did the cops say?"
"They looked everywhere," Daryl said, but something about his father's attitude was depressing him. No, not his attitude. What he wasn't saying. Nineteen people just died, and I'm the only one from the party to walk away alive. And he didn't even ask me if I was okay.
"Did they find anything?"
"Nope. Guess, well, I'll tell you what I did."
"I think you had better."
"I got rid of it all. Flushed it down the toilet. Went through the entire house."
Paul's eyes rolled upward, in apparent relief. "That's the first smart thing you've done all year. Evidently they didn't charge you with anything."
"They didn't find anything."
Paul shook his head, annoyed. "That only means they're going to be watching your young butt, son. What the hell are you doing with drugs anyway? You're too young to be doing that crap. If you ever went down for something, I'm the one responsible, not you, not until you turn eighteen! Where are your brains?"
Eighteen? he thought. Doesn't he know my birthday was yesterday?
"Dad, I turned eighteen yesterday," Daryl said, getting a little angry. Dad had completely forgot.
Paul glanced at his watch. "You did? I thought . . ." Then he shook his head. Now, he was smiling. "So you're not my problem after all. You're an adult now. If you screw up, you get to pay for it."
"That's right," Daryl said. "I pay for it. Why are you getting so uptight about it?"
"Don't talk back to me, Daryl," Paul said, his voice even and low, menacing. "You're still living under my roof, eating my food, with my rules, and if you keep this crap up, my hours!"
"Okay, Dad, you're right." Daryl looked down at his feet, feigning humility. Don't you dare lay a curfew on me!
"I know I'm right! I'm always right, and don't you forget it. I don't care what you do, but stay out of trouble with the cops, and stay out of jail! It's getting harder to defend drug cases these days."
You would know. "I'm sorry. It was just, well, my birthday party, that's why I went."
"Yeah, I know. But you were stupid to go anyway! The Wintons' house? You might as well have waved a banner!"
Daryl didn't know what he meant by that, but didn't ask.
Yanni, his mother, came in to the living room. She wore a pair of tight jeans and a halter top, and held a large bottle of Valium.
"Let's just have some meds and calm down, boys," Yanni said, yawning. "You don't have to get all upset over nothing, do you?"
"Honey, we're having a talk. Do you mind?" Paul said, waving her away. Right now, a few of those Valiums looked pretty good to Daryl, but he was a little nervous about asking in front of his dad. He was just so damned unpredictable. He had no idea what his reaction would be.
"Whatever you say, dear," Yanni said, shuffling out of the living room.
When Yanni was gone, Paul said, "If you get thrown in jail, don't bother calling me. I won't come get you." He finished his drink and left the room. Moments later, Daryl heard the BMW start up.
Great. I hope he wrecks it, Daryl thought, getting up to look for the bottle of Valium. He found it next to his parents' bed, where his mother was sound asleep. She'd spilled some of the yellow pills on the table, and at first glance it looked like a suicide attempt. But he knew it wasn't; this happened all the time.
He scooped up three or so of the little pills, knowing it would take at least that many to kill this particular hangover. Normally he would have taken two, but today was a special occasion. Besides, he had a good reason to get good and loaded. Half his friends had just died. He grabbed a 7UP from the fridge, washed the five or so Valiums down, and started for the bathroom to get cleaned up.
Halfway up the carpeted stairs, the universe dropped out from under him.