Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood by Alex Archer Page A

visit at my home here in Munich. Pajamas optional.”
    Right
.
    “Dinner in Paris at Roux’s, with Henshaw as chaperone.”
    Garin sputtered indignantly. “Roux’s? Henshaw? Are you mad, woman? I’ve already spent more years than I care to count under that senile old man’s thumb, and his
manservant
—” Garin said the word the way someone else might say
the plague
or
hemorrhagic fever
“—is even worse than he is.”
    Annja had him and she knew it.
    “Fine. Last offer, take it or leave it. Dinner in New York at a restaurant of my choosing.”
    “And a nightcap at that charming little flat of yours in Brooklyn?”
    “Dinner. That’s it,” she said.
    “Fine.”
    Garin’s tone was one of annoyance, but Annja had learned to detect the subtleties in his voice, and she thought he was secretly pleased.
    She had to admit she was, too. A little. At least she’d get a first-class meal out of it.
    “The woman died of blood loss.”
    “I already know that! What do the notes beneath the cause of death say?”
    Garin was silent for a few moments as he puzzled it out. “Whoever wrote this has the handwriting of a child,” he said at last.
    And you’ve got the disposition of one, Annja thought.
    “A few of the words are hard to make out, but for the most part the notes appear to deal with the excessive blood loss the victim had undergone prior to dying.”
    “Excessive?”
    “That’s what it says. Apparently he didn’t have to drain the fluid from the body before beginning the autopsy. He found two large puncture wounds in the thigh close to the femoral artery and surmises that the blood loss was a result of these injuries.”
    Annja knew the human animal was tenacious, that it would fight for its life with tooth and nail if necessary, and that sometimes—not often, but sometimes—people could cling to this world by the narrowest of margins, refusing to give in to that creeping darkness that waited to swallow them whole. But to remain alive with only the barest amount of blood left in the body? That went beyond tenaciousness, verging instead on the miraculous.
    So says the woman carrying the mystical sword of a long-dead saint, Annja thought with a wry shake of her head.
    One thing was clear: this had been no accident.
    “Is that it?” she asked.
    “Yes. So where shall we dine? I’m thinking perhaps...”
    “Thanks, Garin, you’ve been really helpful. I’ll call you about dinner. Bye for now.”
    She hung up the phone before he could say anything more. Annja knew he wouldn’t call her back; his pride wouldn’t let him. She would have to deal with him sooner or later, but for now, later was just fine.
    She stood there, pondering what she’d just learned. It seemed clear that the woman had been the victim of a vicious attack. Maybe the killer was trying to tie his activities to the legend of the Blood Countess to earn greater notoriety. All hell was going to break loose when the press learned that the victim had been drained of most of her blood. If Annja was going to find justice for this woman, she needed to stay ahead of all that.
    The first priority was finding out just who the victim was. Hopefully the woman’s identity would lead to the killer.
    The police hadn’t been able to identify the victim through fingerprints or dental records, so she must not have been in trouble with the law. Nor had she applied for work with any government agency or any major corporate firm. Given that Nové Mesto was one of the larger communities in the area, it seemed likely that the woman had not come from the city but from one of the smaller, rural towns nearby.
    Like Čachtice.
    Best to start there, Annja thought as she headed for her car.

10
    Annja had learned that crimes were not usually solved by brilliant deductions or leaps of logic in the style of Sherlock Holmes but by the slow and steady accumulation of information. Like archaeologists at a dig site, sifting through layers of dirt to get to the artifacts