I was feeling partially relieved, better anyway. The murder case seemed to be solved at least. Peter Westin was in jail. We’d done everything we could about his cult. The pressure had been eliminated.  We’d stopped the bleeding.
Jamilla had left the previous night; we promised to keep in touch and I knew we would. I was headed out to the airport that morning to catch a flight to San Francisco, and then another to DC. I was going home and that felt good.
The details were still coming in, but I feared we would never know everything about the strange, murderous cult that had sprung up in California. It was usually that way in Homicide. You never knew as much as you wanted to. That’s the basic truth about being a detective, and you never see it on TV or in the movies. I guess the endings wouldn’t be as satisfying if they were closer to reality.  Peter Westin had met Daniel and Charles when they had played in Los Angeles. Westin already had his own followers in Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara, but he feigned allegiance until he felt he was strong enough to be the Sire. Then he dispatched William and Michael Alexander to do his dirty work. Supposedly there were followers in nearly a hundred cities, especially now that the Internet had brought us all so close together.
Something was still bothering me. I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but it troubled me all the way to San Francisco. It was eating me from the inside out. Fear and dread. But about what?
There was a forty-five-minute layover, and I got off the plane. A jumble of bad thoughts played through my brain. I felt wired, itchy.
The original San Francisco vampire murders were still on my mind.
And the fucking Mastermind.
Jamilla was here in San Francisco. But that was a whole other subject.
What was bothering me?
Then I thought I knew what it was. Maybe I’d known all along. I called Jam at her office in the Hall of Justice. I was informed that she had the day off.
I called her apartment, but there wa............