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slight slipup could set into motion a chain of events that will lead to my death, disrepute, and ruin—but I’ll restrain myself. I can’t really complain about it, since that obsessive instinct has kept me alive and fed for all these years.
    It’s all my father’s fault, anyway. Isn’t that how it goes? We get to blame the things we don’t like on our parents?
    My dad’s been dead now for longer than he was alive, but he taught me how successful being crazy can make you. He was a detective, see. He worked with the Pinkerton agency in California, back when I was a kid, and he was one of the best damn detectives you ever heard of. They still talk about him out there, and there are still pictures of him on the walls, in the boardrooms, and in the offices. I’ve always had it in the back of my head someplace that Dash Hammett based Sam Spade on my dad, Larry Pendle, but that’s probably wishful thinking on my part.
    I met Dash once or twice when I was little. He was a thin, handsome guy who was probably too smart for the room, but he didn’t try to lord it over anybody. I don’t remember much about him, except for him telling me once that my daddy was a great gumshoe, and I didn’t know what a gumshoe was. I wound up with a weird and deeply incorrect idea of what my father did for a living.
    Anyway, I liked Dash. And when I sneak myself one of his books, every now and again, before bedtime at sunrise, I hear my father’s voice when I read along to Spade.
    If it sounds like I’m digressing, that’s probably fair; but it’s not a pure digression, I assure you. I’m wending my way around to thefact that it was more than plain old money that made me take Ian’s case.
    It was the mystery.
    He’d told me that he needed to know the
how
, and that was fine. But I wanted to know the
why
. I wanted an answer at least as badly as Ian did, and I wasn’t even the victim of anything. It could be that’s half of what motivated me: the thought that if I didn’t understand it, I could fall prey to it, too.
    But the other half of my motivation came from farther back in my brain, in the curious part that I inherited. It came from the spot in my skull that feels the burning need to unravel puzzles, finish crosswords, indulge in Internet games, and read all the mystery books I can get my grubby little paws on.
    Like it or not, need it or not, and want it or not, I can’t leave a good mystery alone.
    And Ian’s case was a mighty good mystery. There were so many questions lurking under the crust of that pie. How did Uncle Sam find out about us? What did the military want with Ian? Now that the army knows we’re a fact, what do they intend to do about us?
    I had other questions, too, but they had the kinds of answers I could probably pry out of Ian if I really felt the need. Among other things, I wondered how he’d gotten caught in the first place, and how he’d escaped. The longer I thought about it, the more I felt like I’d let him out of the wine bar too full of unshared information.
    It might be useful to me, knowing how he was captured and what happened to him while he was in custody. Then again, it might not.
    I stuffed the envelope into my bag and began the walk back home.
    All of it was uphill, but that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. And it was cold, but it wasn’t wet outside. I was feeling pretty spry about the whole thing. I had an interesting case—
    Well, no I didn’t. Not really. I’m not in the business of solving mysteries. I’m in the business of
making
mysteries. But something must be hard-coded into my genes because I really loved the idea of solving
this
one. Or maybe I loved the idea of solving Ian Stott.
    It’d been a long time since I’d hung around any vampires (by my own choice), and I didn’t miss them much. Even so, once in a while it’s nice to sit down for a beverage with someone who doesn’t require any explanations. I could’ve said things like, “Christ, the other night I