Blood Visions

Chapter 1

Chapter 1Fresno, California

Being called into a police station at seven in the morning when he haven’t worked there for five years would worry some people, but not Ronan Bayne. When he was twenty-six, he became an ex-police detective, turned private detective. But he knows when his old boss, Police Chief Wilkinson, sends him a message to see him that his services are needed.

So Ronan arrives at the Fresno police station bright and early with a to-go cup of coffee from home, because he’d known he wouldn’t be on time for his early meeting if he stopped on the way. But Ronan needs to feed his caffeine addiction in the morning or he’s useless.

He plans to just rush through and go straight to Chief Wilkinson’s office once he’s let in, but he is stopped by a detective he used to work with. Scott.

“Hey, man.” Scott shakes his hand.

It’s not that Ronan doesn’t like Scott, it’s just he’s curious about what the chief wants, so he’s in a rush, and Scott can be a talker.

“Been undercover or did your wife kick you out again?” Ronan asks; he’s not rude enough to blow Scott off right away. He’ll have a quick chat, even though curiosity is killing him.

“What do you mean?” Scott asks.

“The way you look?” Ronan raises his eyebrows.

“What do you mean?” Scott says, playing dumb.

“You look like a hobo,” Ronan says bluntly.

And Scott does. His clothes are old and ratty, his beard is long and unkempt, and he looks like he hasn’t washed in a while either.

“Compared to you I always did, but yeah, I’ve been undercover.”

“What do you mean ‘compared to me’?’” Ronan asks.

“You’re always so perfect.” Scott says “perfect” like it’s a bad word.

“Nothing wrong with the way I look.” Ronan is taller than Scott, at just over six feet, with short blond hair that he keeps neatly cut. He has stormy gray eyes and a muscular body he works on in the gym when he can. He’s clean shaven, freshly showered, and wearing smart shoes, black slacks, a dark blue shirt, and a black leather jacket. When he was a police detective, he would have worn a suit and a tie. He dresses more casually now, still putting in effort though; he hates looking like a slob. Maybe he’s a little straitlaced, but who cares?

“You just need to let loose sometimes. I know you gay guys like to dress well, but that doesn’t mean you can’t wear sweats every now and then,” Scott says it casually and without bite; Ronan knows that Scott doesn’t even mean to be offensive.

Scott is the type who isn’t really homophobic, but he’s not the most enlightened guy either. He believes in all the stereotypes, and he’ll say stuff that shows his ignorance. He doesn’t mean to offend, but he does.

“I wear sweats to the gym. I’d better go now, Scott. I don’t want to keep Chief Wilkinson waiting, you know how he is.” Ronan isn’t lying. Wilkinson doesn’t like to be kept waiting normally, but Ronan is here as a favor, so Wilkinson won’t get mad at him if he’s a few minutes late. But he knows Scott will believe the lie.

“Oh yeah, you’d better go. I should be heading out anyway; I’m in the middle of a case. It’s good to see you, man.” Scott smiles and gives Ronan a wave as Ronan heads for the chief’s office.

Ronan knocks on the office door and hears the chief call out.

“Who is it?” the chief yells.

“It’s Ronan.”

“Come in,” Wilkinson responds.

Ronan opens the door and heads in, shutting it behind him.

Chief Chris Wilkinson is twenty years older than Ronan, and he looks every year of it, with gray hair and a bit more weight than he should be carrying. He’s sitting at his desk in a leather chair, and he gestures for Ronan to take the seat on the other side of the desk, which Ronan does, taking a sip of his coffee before putting it down on the desk. “Ronan, hello, take a seat.”

“Hello, Chris. What did you want?” Ronan asks.

“Straight to the point as always,” Chris says, and laughs.

Ronan shrugs. “Well, when you call me at ten at night I know something is going on. You know how I am: I hate not knowing things.”

“We have a case. I have a feeling it might be your sort of thing,” Chris says with emphasis on “thing”.

Ronan’s sort of “thing” is usually a complex one. Ronan’s sort of “thing” means a supernatural case, one that Chris can’t properly look into himself because the people in charge have his hands tied.

The government still won’t accept anything deviating from the natural order as real. The police won’t even investigate cases as paranormal. They ignore any supernatural elements to a case, which can make it almost impossible to solve. Ronan had never liked this when he was with the police. He’d gotten in trouble for working on those kinds of cases. He’d decided that he would set up his own private detective agency, and work as a PI specializing in unnatural events.

But Ronan always had a knack for it, had done his research, and seen lots of things that many people would never believe in.

“Might be?” Ronan asks.

“Well, it’s not clear what is going on. We’ve been working with the FBI because the case crosses state lines. Women have been going missing here in California, but also in Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon,” Chris explains.

“I assume there is a reason you suspect all the cases are linked?” Ronan asks.

“Yes, that’s the weird part. We have ten women missing so far, no obvious connections, ages between eighteen and thirty, different races, different backgrounds. But at the sites of abduction, that’s where it gets strange.”

“Kidnapper leaves a calling card?” Ronan guesses.

“That they have. At each site we’ve found blood.”

“That isn’t really unusual. They were injured during the kidnappings, it happens,” Ronan suggests.

“Let me finish. The blood at each scene does belong to another woman who was taken, but it’s fresh, like the victim was still alive and bleeding,” Chris says, raising his eyebrow at Ronan.

“That is strange. Is there anything else you can tell me about the blood?” Ronan pulls a notebook and a pen out of his pocket, and starts making notes.

“It doesn’t have any preservatives in it, but it did have spinal fluid, and definitely fresh, which ruined the theory that the blood was being drawn and stored and brought to each scene in vials.” Chris shakes his head.

“This could be my kind of case.” Ronan is trying to think what kind of supernatural creature could be doing something like that, but nothing comes to mind. Vampires are his go-to with blood, but they don’t smear it around the place, they tend not to waste a drop. All the vampires Ronan has encountered killed their victims at the scene, leaving drained bodies. They never stored their food or messed with spinal fluid. Ronan hasn’t had a case like this.

“Do you think you have the time to look into it? I’d appreciate it if you could. I’ve been working all the angles I can, and I’m coming up empty. Ten women in two months, Ronan, and Christ knows when this thing will stop. The FBI are just as lost as we are, they have no leads at all really.” Chris looks almost desperate, and Ronan knows how he feels. As a police chief, Chris has his hands tied by the law, and it’s frustrating as hell for him. Just like it was for Ronan when he was a cop.

It’s why Ronan left the force. The police had too many rules stopping them from getting justice when it came to the supernatural. He’d had a case where people were being killed only on the full moon and everyone insisted it was a serial killer despite the animal fur found at the scenes and the teeth marks on the victims. They insisted a human had to be involved as locks had been picked every time. Looking into the case he’d been out one full moon and seen by chance a man breaking into a home, but when he went inside it was not a man ripping out the home owner’s throat beside a glass of milk. Ronan had shot the beast five times and it had fled. The victim hadn’t made it. Ronan was warned to keep quiet or lose his job, but he couldn’t ignore what he had seen so he left.

“I can make time for ten missing people.” Ronan isn’t about to sit here and do nothing. These ten women might already be dead, but if they’re not, well, Ronan wants to get moving to find them.

“Thank you. I knew I could count on you. I’ve already asked if I can put you on this case as a consultant, like we have before, and the governor has approved the request. You know the drill: do your thing, send in reports, we’ll send you information, and save the receipts for your expenses,” Chris rattles off; he looks a little relieved.

“Not my first rodeo,” Ronan points out.

“I know. Here’s the file of what we have so far, details on the missing women and girls—where they were taken from, and everything else.” Chris hands Ronan a thick police file, but then, it contains the lives of ten women in black-and-white facts, which strikes Ronan as sad, but he shakes it off.

It’s not his job to be sad for these people. It’s his job to find them, and if they’re already dead, then it’s his duty to find the thing that killed them.

“I’m going to start at the Oregon crime scene, where Ann Beth went missing,” Ronan says, flicking the file open to find the list of names, to make sure he got it right.

“It’s a long drive, when do you think you’ll get started?” Chris asks.

“Gotta pack first, but I’ll be there by this evening.” Ronan stands up.

“I knew you’d want to get started right away.” Chris grins.

“I’ll be in touch.” Ronan takes the file, waves good-bye, and heads out. This time he manages to avoid being stopped by anyone.

Ronan drives home to his apartment, and the first thing he does is take his travel case out of the hall closet. He’s going to be hitting three states after Ann Beth’s site, all a good distance from each other, but manageable. So he’ll be traveling for a while. And multiple women have gone missing from each state, in different areas. It’ll take a while for him to visit all the sites where the women went missing and the blood was found. Those sites are not the only places he’ll look at either; he’ll investigate the victims’ lives, and look for places they could be held, or what they were taken for.

Ronan packs clothes first, mainly shirts and slacks. A suit jacket and tie go in the bag just in case he needs to visit someplace with a dress code. Some warmer clothes—sweaters, jeans, thick socks, as well as normal socks. Underwear is also important. Ronan forgot about underwear once, and had felt like an i***t.

He packs spare ammo for his Glock, the gun he had registered when he’d had to give up his firearm as a policeman, but he has a conceal and carry permit as a private detective, even though a gun is often useless against supernatural creatures like the werewolf he’d faced.

He has a bag of toiletries ready to take in his bathroom cabinet, and he takes that and puts it in his bag. He puts the police file in the bag too, and his laptop in its case. Ronan looks around his apartment, trying to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything he needs to pack. Ronan doesn’t have any pets to feed, plants to water, and no boyfriend to tell he’ll be out of town.

He does text the other members of his agency—Alan, Rick, Alice, Lisa, and Harry—to let them know he has taken a case. Alan, Rick, and Alice all work for the Lost Cause Agency under his lead and out in the field solo like Ronan does. Lisa works in the office as a receptionist, but she also keeps them organized and finds them cases. Harry stays in the office; he does research for all the private detectives. He’s a wiz with a computer, and he always digs up information for them.

Once that is done, Ronan packs his phone charger, sets his alarm system, and locks up his apartment. Taking the bag down to his blue Ford Taurus, Ronan puts the bag in the trunk, and gets in the driver’s seat. He takes his GPS out of the glove box and plugs it in, tapping in the address of the victim in Oregon. He doesn’t plan to go straight to where she was abducted, but he wants to get a motel close by, and this seems like a good way of going about it.

It’s a long drive, but Ronan is used to long drives. He stops for coffee and a piss break twice, and once for lunch, and another coffee, and to read the police file. The caffeine is enough to wake him up without making him feel jittery. He’d checked the time when he left his apartment, and it had been about ten a.m. He crosses the state line into Oregon just after four p.m.

It’s still light when he finds a motel. Ronan checks in and takes his things to his room. He unpacks a little, hanging up a few bits of clothing, putting his toiletries in the bathroom. Ronan sets up the desk with his laptop and the file on the case, with some folders and notebooks to make his own file on the case.

Ronan opens the file that Chris had given him that morning. Ann Beth Green went missing three days ago from her room, in the middle of the night. Ronan writes down the address of the college and her sorority house on a scrap of paper torn out of a notebook, and then he’s on the move again. The drive was long and tiring, but Ronan can’t bring himself to take a nap before he gets started.

He gets back in his car and drives to the Reed University campus. The main building is large and there are a few buildings that seem to be different ages, their architecture different. It reminds Ronan a little of his own college days though his school had been a little more shabby, but it does make him feel nostalgia. Ronan parks in the visitors’ parking lot, and then gets out of his car. He’s aware that he doesn’t really blend in—at thirty-two, dressed like he is, he doesn’t look like a student. Maybe he could pass for a teacher, though.

Ronan wants to start by checking out the building Ann Beth was taken from. The police file noted there were drag marks in the mud behind the sorority house, so Ronan decides he’ll look to see if the marks are still there, and if he can tell anything from them, like what might have taken this girl. Did she leave under her own power or not? Did it threaten her or force her out the building. Was she awake?

He finds the right building without having to ask for directions, which he’s thankful for, because asking for directions would out him as a visitor. Ronan makes his way to the back of the building. Ann Beth’s bedroom was at the back of the dorm building on the second floor, and the markings had been in the dirt on the ground. Ronan knows from experience that the area behind the building is still taped off, so any missed evidence should be untouched.

When Ronan rounds the side of the building, he sees someone over the tape line.

He’s not a cop, Ronan can tell from this distance because of the long curly mop of bright purple hair. Ronan stops where he is, trying to see if the guy has flowers, if he could be making a memorial to the missing girl.

But the short man doesn’t have flowers, and as Ronan watches, he squats down and looks like he’s examining the ground. Ronan moves forward slowly, one hand on the gun in the holster at his hip. This man could have come back to cover his tracks, if he’s a man at all. He sees a glint of silver and police training kicks in.

Ronan draws his Glock, and holds it at his side, ready.

“Stand up slowly,” Ronan orders.

The man freezes, but he doesn’t stand up.

“Hands above your head and stand up slowly,” Ronan repeats.

The man raises his hands above his head—they look human enough, but he could be a shape-shifter. He has long, delicate-looking fingers, broad palms, short fingernails painted black. The polish is chipped. He has traces of dirt on his fingers. He begins to stand up slowly. He’s wearing a silver ring and isn’t holding a blade Ronan can see.

Ronan keeps his gun pointed at the ground, his heart beating at the possibility that he’s stumbled onto the bad guy so soon into his investigation. Ronan doesn’t want to be forced to shoot—if this man is the kidnapper, then Ronan wants to question him to find out where the missing women are.

“Turn around, and don’t make any sudden movements. I have a gun, and I will use it,” Ronan warns.

And slowly, like he’s been told, the man turns.