Chapter 28

That night in Santa Barbara, I was just a little more afraid of the dark than I had ever been. I sat in my hotel room and read a touching¹ novel called Waiting by Ha Jin. I was waiting as well. I called home twice that night. I wasn’t sure if I was lonely, or still feeling guilty about missing Damon’s concert.
Or maybe Peter Westin had frightened me with his vampire² stories and books, and the haunted look in his dark eyes. At any rate, I was taking vampires³ more seriously now that I had met him. Westin was a strange, eerie⁴, unforgettable man. I had the feeling that I would meet, or at least talk to him again.
My inner fears didn’t go away that night, and not even with the first light of morning shining brightly over the Santa Ynez Mountains. Something strange and quite awful was happening. It involved twisted individuals, or maybe an underground cult⁵. It probably had something to do with the vampire subculture.  But maybe it didn’t, and that was even more disturbing to think about. It would mean we were in a totally gray area with the investigation⁶.
By seven-thirty in the morning, my rented sedan was easing into soupy gray fog, and then the morning traffic clog⁷. I was singing a little Muddy Waters blues⁸, which nicely matched my mood.  I left Santa Barbara and headed toward Fresno. I had another ‘expert’ to meet.
I drove for a couple of hours. I got on 166 at Santa Maria and continued east through the Sierra Madres until I reached Route 99.1 took it north. I was seeing California for the first time and liking⁹ most of what I saw. The topography was different to back East, and so were the colors.
I fell into a comfortable driving rhythm. I listened to a Jill Scott CD. For long stretches of the road trip I thought about the way my life had been going over the past couple of years. I knew that some of my friends were starting to worry about me, even my best friend, John Sampson, and I wouldn’t exactly classify him as a worrier. Sampson had told me more than once that I was putting myself in harm’s way. He even suggested that maybe it was time for a career change. I knew I could go with the FBI, but that didn’t seem like much of a sea change. I could also go back into psychiatry¹⁰ full time - either see patients, or possibly teach, maybe at Johns Hopkins, where I’d gotten my degree and still had pretty good connections.
Then there was Nana Mama’s favorite tune¹¹: I needed to find someone and settle down again; I needed somebody to love.  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried. My wife, Maria, had been killed in a drive-by shooting in DC that had never been solved. That had happened when Damon and Jannie were little, and I guess I’d never really gotten over it. Maybe I never would. Even now, if I let myself, I could get torn up thinking about Maria and what had happened to her, to us, and how goddamn senseless it had been. What a terrible waste of a human life. It had left Damon and Jannie without their mother.
I had tried hard to find someone, but maybe I just wasn’t meant to be lucky twice in my lifetime. There had been Jezzie Flanagan, but that couldn’t have turned out worse. And then Christine Johnson, little Alex’s mother. She was a teacher and now lived out here on the West Coast. She was doing well, loved Seattle, and had ‘found someone’. I still had terribly mixed feelings about Christine.
She’d been hurt because of me. My fault, not hers. She had made it clear she couldn’t live with a homicide detective. And then, not too long ago, I had started to become involved with an FBI agent
named Betsey Cavalierre. Now Betsey was dead. Her murder case remained unsolved. I was afraid to even have drinks with Jamilla Hughes. The past was starting to haunt me.
‘Some detective/I muttered as I spotted¹² the overhead sign: Fresno.
I had come here to see a man about some teeth.
Fangs¹³, actually.

1 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

2 vampire   

n.吸血鬼

参考例句：

• It wasn't a wife waiting there for him but a blood sucking vampire!家里的不是个老婆，而是个吸人血的妖精！
• Children were afraid to go to sleep at night because of the many legends of vampire.由于听过许多有关吸血鬼的传说，孩子们晚上不敢去睡觉。

3 vampires   

n.吸血鬼( vampire的名词复数 )；吸血蝠；高利贷者；（舞台上的）活板门

参考例句：

• The most effective weapon against the vampires is avampire itself. 对付吸血鬼最有效的武器就是吸血鬼自己。 来自电影对白
• If vampires existed, don`t you think we would`ve found them by now? 如果真有吸血鬼，那我们怎么还没有找到他们呢？ 来自电影对白

4 eerie   

adj.怪诞的；奇异的；可怕的；胆怯的

参考例句：

• It's eerie to walk through a dark wood at night.夜晚在漆黑的森林中行走很是恐怖。
• I walked down the eerie dark path.我走在那条漆黑恐怖的小路上。

5 cult   

n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜

参考例句：

• Her books aren't bestsellers,but they have a certain cult following.她的书算不上畅销书，但有一定的崇拜者。
• The cult of sun worship is probably the most primitive one.太阳崇拜仪式或许是最为原始的一种。

6 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

7 clog   

vt.塞满，阻塞；n.[常pl.]木屐

参考例句：

• In cotton and wool processing,short length fibers may clog sewers.在棉毛生产中，短纤维可能堵塞下水管道。
• These streets often clog during the rush hour.这几条大街在交通高峰时间常常发生交通堵塞。

8 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

9 liking   

n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢

参考例句：

• The word palate also means taste or liking.Palate这个词也有“口味”或“嗜好”的意思。
• I must admit I have no liking for exaggeration.我必须承认我不喜欢夸大其词。

10 psychiatry   

n.精神病学，精神病疗法

参考例句：

• The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
• A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。

11 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

12 spotted   

adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的

参考例句：

• The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
• Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。

13 fangs   

n.（尤指狗和狼的）长而尖的牙( fang的名词复数 )；（蛇的）毒牙；罐座

参考例句：

• The dog fleshed his fangs in the deer's leg. 狗用尖牙咬住了鹿腿。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Dogs came lunging forward with their fangs bared. 狗龇牙咧嘴地扑过来。 来自《简明英汉词典》