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Veronica?
    It was her, I knew it. Why she had changed her name, I didn’t know. Just as I didn’t know why she had not come forward to report her parents’ murder.
    Maybe she feared no one would believe her.
    Believe what? That a vampire killed her parents? If so, then she was right. No one would have believed her.
    I checked her date of birth, then did the math. Valerie—or Veronica—was indeed seventeen. Which put her at fourteen at the time of her parents’ death.
    So what did I have here?
    Two dead bodies, and a girl who witnessed something. What she witnessed, exactly, I didn’t know. But a car with her parents inside didn’t just go up in flames on its own.
    I sat back and drummed my fingers on the table. Veronica’s story was credible. But it was hearsay. I needed to talk to the source.
    I needed to find Veronica. Or Valerie.
    I packed up my laptop, polished off the latte thingy, and decided to start fresh in the morning.
    After all, I had had enough of vampires for one night.
    Hell, for a lifetime.
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
    We were in bed together.
    Roxi had wanted to make love, and I had just wanted to talk. I know, lame. Of course, all it took were a few seconds of persuasion and I soon saw her side of things.
    Now, panting and sweating and feeling as if I might very well have a heart attack, I turned on my side and looked at her. Roxi was lying on her back, panting a little herself. Her skin glowed softly from the ambient light coming in through the partially open blinds.
    I said, “There’s something screwy going on here.”
    “There was a lot of screwy going on here, babe.”
    “ Of the investigative kind.”
    She told me to tell her about it and I did. I had never felt that sense of shyness with Roxi. Ever. It’s one of the reasons why I thought we might just have a chance of making it. I caught Roxi up to date on the case. As always, she had listened with complete attentiveness. Another reason I was falling in love with her. That, and she always called my big stomach a “donut”. You gotta love that.
    When I was finished, Roxi said, “Lots of people are talking about vampires here, but no one’s talking about a girl who is no doubt seriously delusional.”
    “ Or perhaps somehow suffering from the traumatic and horrific events of the night her parents were killed.”
    “ Perhaps Veronica had been hurt, too. Didn’t Gladys tell you she showed up at her door bloodied and bruised?”
    I said, “But the cuts and bruises could have just as easily been from running through the wooded park at night.”
    “Fine. So let’s say she witnessed something horrific happen to her parents,” said Roxi. She crossed her hands behind her head and stared up. “Why is she going around telling people it had been a vampire attack?”
    “ Maybe what happened to her parents was too horrible to deal with, especially for a fourteen-year-old girl,” I said. “And to make sense of it she replaced the reality with something fantastical.”
    Roxi nodded, somehow following my logic. “With something that did make sense to a fourteen-year-old girl.”
    “But vampires?” I asked.
    “ Who knows. They’re everywhere these days. Not to mention we don’t know the depth of her psychosis.”
    We were quiet for a few minutes. Outside her apartment I heard a lot of street noise. But the noise was steady, soothing. I felt my eyes growing heavy.
    I said after a while, “So now she’s hunting vampires.”
    “ Or what she thinks are vampires.”
    “ And somehow convinces a few fanatics that she’s a vampire slayer.”
    “ Wish fulfillment,” said Roxi. “These are vampire lovers, and now they have a girl in their midst who claims to not only have seen one kill her parents, but to hunt them as well. She’s practically their hero.”
    “ Much like I’m your hero?”
    She rubbed my donut. “Something like that.”
    “So, if we can agree that there’s no real vampires, then what the hell is she