Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [15]
“Mrs. Howard, we’re not here to violate your parole. I need to talk to you about Bryan.”
“Then stop calling me Mrs. Howard,” she sniffed. “He’s my brother.”
“Can we get this over with, please?” Shelby hissed at me.
“Excuse me,” I said to Not-Mrs.-Howard, turning on my unwanted partner. “What the Hex is the matter with you?”
“I can’t be here!” she said frantically. “This is blood witch territory and she is a blood donor!” Whatever that meant.
“I don’t have room in my job for your bullshit,” I murmured to Shelby, pitching my voice low and dangerous so she got the message. “Either you can handle Homicide or you can’t. And if this bothers you that much, you can go wait in the car.”
She stiffened at that, and crossed her arms defiantly. “Just hurry it up, Detective.”
“I’ll do the best I can, Detective,” I told her with a wide fake smile. Flighty wench. As soon as I got the notification over with, Shelby O’Halloran and I were due for serious words.
“What happened to Bryan?” said the Howard woman from the door. “He get picked up again?”
“I’m afraid…” I started, but a man’s voice bellowed from inside the rotting house.
“Stella! Close the fuckin’ door, it’s freezing!”
“Cops are here, Dusty!” she screeched back. Dusty appeared a few seconds later, a lanky wastoid with a ponytail and yellowed skin that looked like moldy paper.
“What the Hex are you doing here?” he demanded. He saw Shelby and I were both of the female persuasion and curled his lip. “I forget to pay a parking ticket? This the meter-maid patrol?”
I focused back on Stella Howard. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to inform you that your brother Bryan was found dead last night.”
Stella folded at the knees, sinking down onto the linoleum floor with a wail. Dusty stepped back as if she might contaminate him.
“Not Bry!” Stella howled. “Oh, Bry…” She crumpled in a ball, shoulders heaving. I opened the screen door and reached out to touch her.
“Hey!” Dusty exclaimed. “You can’t come on private property! Get the fuck out! Stella, shut up!”
I pointed a finger at him. “One more word and I will put my foot where your few remaining teeth currently reside.”
“I warned him,” Stella sobbed. “I told him that junk would kill him.” She raised her face to me as I rubbed her back. She was bony and cold through her thin shirt.
Shelby stepped up to Dusty and asked, “Are you also aware that Mr. Howard died of a heroin overdose, sir?”
Stella looked at me with a glassy gaze. “That true?”
“It appears so,” I murmured. “He was dead on the scene.” I left out the part about the unidentified drug and the petichial hemorrhages.
“Figures,” Dusty muttered. “I told him that stuff would bring his dumb ass to bad ends.”
“Stop talking about him like that!” Stella screamed. “It wasn’t his fault!”
“Woman, I am gonna smack your mouth if you don’t shut it!” Dusty shouted.
“Shelby, get him out of here,” I snapped. “And if he slips and falls I’ll be inclined to look the other way.”
She put a hand on Dusty’s elbow and escorted him into the next room with an iron grip.
“Do you need somewhere to stay the night?” I asked Stella gently. She shook her head.
“I gotta go to the free clinic tomorrow … have to be there by six A.M. to stand in line.”
“Methadone?” I said. She blinked rapidly and shook her head so hard her greasy hair flew.
“I never touched that crap!” she said fiercely. “Not after what it did to Bryan.”
I pointed at the circular track marks on her arms. “Stella, I’m not going to bust you. If you need help, better tell me now.” I didn’t know where this alternate-reality kindhearted me had come from, but I think it had something to do with the desperate, trapped-animal look in Stella Howard’s eyes. She reminded me of something in myself, at a younger, more terrified age. A million roads spread out before you, all of them bad, and no map to navigate.
“I’m anemic,” said Stella. “Not on smack.” She pulled a pill bottle bearing the logo of the public health service out of her pocket and handed it to me. Sure enough, it contained large white pills and was