Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

  “He’s named in some civil cases. That’s not surprising; you can’t do business in this city without it happening, but here’s the rub: something always happens. Plaintiff doesn’t show, backs off, dies in an accident, whatever. Or the case gets settled out of court. Or the judge throws it out. Always something. And his name also comes up in police files about unsolved criminal cases. Same kind of thing: no evidence, evidence misplaced, witnesses recanted or disappeared or died. You name it.”

  “What type of cases?” My breath felt short, as if I’d been running.

  “Murder, assault, blackmail, bribery, money laundering, prostitution…” She stopped abruptly; her eyes flicked up at me, and down again. “Rape.”

  My gut tightened again.

  She went on. “There’s more the further back I looked. It slowed down. Last couple of years—nothing.”

  “He’s not doing it anymore?” Yelena clearly didn’t believe it.

  Elizabetta shook her head. “He’s just gotten smarter. At least that’s what Jefferson’s messages with Captain Simpson suggest.”

  There was a silence at the table.

  Forsythe wasn’t just a sadistic rapist. According to the LAPD, he was a criminal boss.

  What did that mean for me?

  I could find something on all those cover-ups and unravel some of the old cases. That’d put him away for life, by the sound of it.

  Or I could kill him. That option hadn’t gone away.

  “I found a case,” Elizabetta said. “Last one where Forsythe was accused of rape. The victim’s still around. It’s on the drive in the file called TJ. Maybe…”

  “Maybe we could get something from her the police couldn’t.”

  Elizabetta looked at me. “Maybe you could…or Yelena, or Bian.” She flinched as she said it.

  No.

  I felt ill. “I’m not going to compel someone who’s been through that,” I said. That would feel like I was as bad as Forsythe.

  Yelena shook her head too.

  She nodded, relieved, and dropped her head.

  “We should go,” Yelena said.

  Elizabetta looked at her watch. “Jefferson isn’t due for another fifteen. Please stay. Just a couple more minutes.”

  “Of course.” I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “And thank you for doing this for us. I know this must be a bad time for you.”

  That sounded so lame, considering what she was going through.

  “It’s worse for Tom,” she said, but she wasn’t convincing me.

  The restaurant’s front door swung open and she looked up.

  In one instant, she changed.

  “Jefferson,” she called, and waved. Her back was straight, her face transformed with a big smile. It was like a different woman stood up to greet her boyfriend.

  Except for the eyes—they didn’t change.

  “Shit,” Yelena muttered.

  As for LAPD Lieutenant Jefferson Reed…well, it was strange, I felt I almost knew him.

  He was a tall, well-built and handsome African American man in his thirties. As he walked smoothly over to our table, he folded away his obligatory shades to reveal eyes that were quick and shrewd. His pale gray suit hung just so, looking both cool and professional at the same time.

  I thought the reason he felt so familiar was, minor differences aside, this guy was José Morales’ double from a couple of years ago. The same cool, tailored look that would look good on the news, the same sense of controlled, burning ambition, the same sense of a really smart man going places.

  José had made it from lieutenant to captain in Denver’s Major Crimes Division. Jefferson was on the exact same ladder. And as with José, this was a man who could either be immensely beneficial to us, or would whip the rug from under our feet.

  We, meaning the Athanate, needed to treat him like smoking nitroglycerine.

  And we, meaning Yelena and I, needed to be out of here like yesterday’s news.

  “Liz,” he murmured as they embraced, but his eyes were on Yelena and me.

  “My friends visiting from Denver, Yelena and Amber,” Elizabetta introduced us. “My boyfriend, Jefferson.”

  “Ladies,” he said guardedly, all old-world formal.

  This was really bad. Just for openers, we had no idea what stories she’d told him about why she left and why she was back in LA. Exactly the sort of thing that might come up in casual get-to-know-you conversation.

  I got up as Jefferson registered Elizabetta’s red eyes and commented.

  “Oh, it’s silly,” Elizabetta explained. “We were just partying way too late last night.”

  That had an element of truth to it.

  “Yeah. Please, don’t break it up. Look, Liz, I can’t stay,” he said, glancing at his wristwatch. “My meeting just got moved forward an hour. I came in to apologize and promise to take you out this evening. If you’re not too tired.”

  Lucky break for us.

  I laughed. “We all need to get some sleep. We’ll leave the pair of you for the moment and get a cab,” I said. “See you outside, Liz.”

  Yelena stood.

  “Nice to meet you.” I offered a hand to Jefferson.

  “Likewise.” He shook. “Looking forward to something more relaxed next time. Maybe we can do dinner. You can tell me all about Denver.”

  “Sounds excellent,” I lied.

  Yelena and I gave him big smiles and beat a retreat.

  “Shit, that was bad luck,” Yelena said outside.

  “He came early,” I said, but Yelena was right. We should never have risked meeting her ‘boyfriend’ without a thorough preparation and a good reason. Yelena had lived as a spy in Basilikos. I’d been undercover for Ops 4-10. Neither of us would have been here if we’d made these sort of mistakes back then.

  The thought that worried me was that Elizabetta didn’t have the training we’d had.

  Yelena had a cab company on speed dial, and the guy drove up just as Jefferson and Elizabetta came out of the restaurant. Jefferson gave us a wave and headed north to the police headquarters building. Elizabetta joined us.

  “We’ll take the Kawasaki,” I said. “Cab’s for you.”

  “Hold on,” she said. “You’re going to check out this case of Forsythe’s, aren’t you? Can I come with you?”

  “But you’re exhausted, Liz.”

  “What, I should go back to Tom’s apartment?” she said. “They’ll all be packing to go join him in Albuquerque.”

  “Okay,” I said, and bit my lip. “Come along. And what about you come stay with us afterwards. We’ve got lots of room.”

  She looked pleased at the invitation, and so, instead of heading off home, we went visiting.

  Chapter 30

  Tove Johansen. Twenty-two years old. Born on the family farm outside Clearbrook, up in the Red River basin of Minnesota. Fresh off the flight from Minneapolis four years ago, eager to show LA she had what it took to be an actress.

  Year of auditions and waiting tables; empty promises and leaking hopes.

  Three years ago made a claim to police that Forsythe had raped her.

  Case thrown out.

  Working name Celeste.

  Five convictions for prostitution and drugs.

  Currently living in a squat yellow apartment building just off Sepulveda in Van Nuys, walking distance from rooms by the hour along the boulevard. Despair drifting up from the hot streets like an invisible, poisonous gas.

  She hadn’t been expecting visitors.

  Once Elizabetta persuaded her to let us in, Tove made some faint effort to clear a place for us to sit. Unappetizing, half-eaten meals went in the sink. Clothes were thrown on the bed. Glittery, eye-catching, tight. Desperate. She threw a coat over them.

  Her movements were sluggish, her blue eyes too bright. Her pale hair was matted and dull; her hands fluttered like butterflies.

  She was just focused enough to take some cash off Elizabetta.

  When she became aware of me looki
ng at the state of the veins in her arms, she put on a shabby sweater and hugged herself.

  “Don’t know why you want to talk about it,” she said and shrugged. “Your money, your time. You’ll never get it in print.”

  “We aren’t journalists,” Elizabetta said.

  “Police?” Her eyes came up to glare at us, genuine anger breaking through to animate her face.

  I shook my head.

  It was too much effort for her to keep the anger going. She sank down on the bed and waved a hand.

  “Ask away.”

  Elizabetta glanced at me. She’d told me the basics in the cab as we’d been driven from downtown, with Yelena following on the Kawasaki. I nodded at her to continue. Yelena and I were going to try and see if Tove was telling the truth. I hoped her drug-induced daze wasn’t going to make that impossible.

  “Tove,” Yelena began, “you’ve had convictions for drugs, including drugs that might affect your memory. How can we be sure what you claimed is true?”

  Tove snorted. “You can’t. That’s the whole fucking problem, isn’t it?”

  “Were you on drugs the night he raped you?”

  “Only the ones he gave me,” Tove snapped at her. “Before and after.”

  She might as well have punched me in the stomach.

  Yelena looked at me, worried by my reaction.

  I settled it down. It served no purpose to react like that. I had to keep it under control; otherwise I’d distract Yelena. But Tove Johansen hadn’t lied.

  “Rohypnol?” Elizabetta asked.

  “No. Roofies screw with your head, make it difficult to remember. I knew exactly what he was doing. Him and his friends.”

  “You felt weak, barely able to stand, but still aware?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

  Tove nodded.

  Elizabetta kept pressing. “The convictions you have—”

  “I never touched the stuff,” Tove said angrily, and then slumped back. “Not then. Those first convictions afterwards, the ones when I went to the cops about him. I was set up.” She sighed and rubbed her face tiredly. “I don’t expect you to believe me.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  She laughed. A harsh, bitter sound. “Good cop, bad cop? Spare me. Yeah, I have convictions. I have a habit. I do what I do to feed it. Since that’s what the DA told me I was, what other choice did I have?”

  “You could go home.”

  “Fuck home. You think they don’t know? You think that fucking lawyer of his doesn’t make sure the Clearbrook Gazette knows all the juicy details every time I get busted?”

  She turned to grab a cigarette and made herself busy lighting it.

  “No jobs. No one wanted me for auditions. Even the fucking restaurants wouldn’t take me.” She gave that laugh again, paused to wipe an eye. “It’s like being famous, except it’s the exact opposite effect.”

  I’d had the army. I’d had choices. I’d had friends.

  She’d had nothing and no one.

  I went over and knelt in front of her.

  She looked at me, suspicious and red-eyed and angry.

  “Tove, I believe you.”

  For a moment, I thought she was going to cry, but no.

  “Fucking hooray,” she said, twisting her face so the pretty girl from the plains was hidden.

  Without meaning to, I reached with eukori.

  There was a painful, suffocating pressure on me. For a moment, I thought it was my eukori failing again, but it wasn’t. It was what Tove lived with because of what Forsythe had done to her.

  Lungs laboring, I struggled back to my feet. I’d had enough.

  “We’ll…” I stopped.

  Do what? Make it right? Get her justice? Give her back the last three years?

  She grunted as if I’d proved something, and looked away.

  I pressed my PI card into her hand. It was all I could think to do.

  “I’ll help if I can.”

  She refused to look at me.

  We got up and went to the door.

  “Farrell,” she said.

  I turned back. She was squinting at the card, cigarette smoke twisting around her head.

  She was silent for so long, I was about to leave.

  “You know that bastard is producing a new show?” she said. “Airing in the spring. Just started shooting.”

  “Is that right?” I said.

  How would she know? I hadn’t seen anything online.

  She could see the doubt on my face. “I hear things,” she said defensively. “I still got contacts in the business.”

  Johns, more likely.

  But she was owed a shred of dignity.

  “What kind of show?” I asked.

  Forsythe did glitz and glamour. Contests and reality. LA life.

  “The same crap, only with a new twist,” she said.

  I stifled my impatience. “What twist?”

  “Some shit about ‘Tomorrow’s Faces’.” When I didn’t respond, she looked me in the eyes for the first time. “Young models. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.”

  I felt the bile rise in my throat. I thought about an ad I’d seen on one of his websites.

  What would you do to be a model?

  Oh, God. No. No.

  I swallowed hard. “Call me if you hear anything else.”

  She shrugged and turned away.

  Outside, we stopped, Elizabetta looking sick. Yelena looked angry.

  “That bastard,” I said, my breath still coming hard. I’d avoided thinking about what Forsythe might have been doing since I last saw him. Nothing to do with Diana’s compulsions. I didn’t want to face what I might have been responsible for.

  “I wasn’t a one-off,” I said. “My gut tells me he’s been doing this for years. And now he’s starting in with kids.”

  “There’s nothing on him here in LA, beyond a couple of these dropped cases,” Elizabetta said. “But maybe he wasn’t so careful back in Denver.”

  “That’s a long time ago,” I said. “Statute of limitations.”

  “Maybe not,” Elizabetta said. “Jefferson’s files show Forsythe goes back to Denver regularly, a couple of times a month. He keeps a house there. If he’s been taking girls there…”

  Then there might be some evidence he’d left behind.

  “In the meantime,” Elizabetta said, “I’ll get some details on the new show.”

  “You can do that from home,” I said. “Come on.”

  We split up again. I persuaded Yelena to go with Elizabetta in the cab. I wanted some time to myself on the motorcycle.

  At the house, I found Alex had come in, showered and gone straight back out on patrol with Altau security. He’d be back for the concert tonight. Jen was still in New York. Vera was waiting up for us in the living room—that is to say, she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, though she woke quickly enough when we came in. Dominé and Dante came in from the club right behind us.

  I should have taken the USB drive with Jefferson’s files on Forsythe up into the study and gone through it alone. Instead, I sat down with my laptop in the living room and worked my way through it, struggling against sleep.

  Dominé, Dante and Vera made breakfast for themselves.

  Yelena got Elizabetta into a bed and told me she was sleeping when she came back.

  I skimmed on through the files. Through a growing sense of nausea, I was vaguely aware of the others gathering around, reading over my shoulder.

  Tanner Forsythe was even worse than I ever imagined.

  And it was my fault that he was free to do it. My fault.

  Eventually, Yelena slipped onto the sofa beside me. I could feel her eukori slipping under my defenses.

  “Stop,” she said. “This is not something you could have prevented.”

  “If I’d—”

  “What? Gone to the police?” Vera said. “Taken him to court? The word of one drunk young woman against all of them? He’s part of a rich and well-known family who’d have h
ired the best lawyers. They’d have had private investigators turning your life upside down and proving that you were desperate for money. You wouldn’t have had a chance.”

  Of course everyone in my House knew all about it. Even Dominé and Dante, now.

  “Fay—” I started.

  “Two drunk girls. One of them with a reputation. No better.” Vera took my laptop away.

  Yelena pulled me into an embrace, tucking my face against her neck. She was dosing me with pacifics, and I felt so tired.

  “You have a chance now. Not just for you. For every one of those girls,” Yelena said. “But it won’t be easy.”

  “And you need to rest now,” Vera said. “You’re still recovering.”

  “Spent a month recovering,” I mumbled, struggling against sleep.

  “No. You spent a month in treatment.”

  I tried to argue, but I couldn’t form sentences.

  Yelena carried me upstairs to bed like a child, where she and Vera held me between them as I drifted, desperate for sleep and scared of what might be waiting there.

  However cold it had been last night, the Santa Ana winds had returned this morning. I could feel the house get warmer. The air was drier, charged with a strange electricity.

  But it all felt distant, as if it was happening to someone else.

  I reached inside to the unnerving emptiness. No twin sister. No spirit guide. In the way that thoughts blend and twist together near sleep, I wondered whether losing Tara and Hana was a long-delayed punishment for my failure to confront Forsythe. Would I get them back if I made up for it? If I found Fay and helped her, whatever she’d been through, whatever she’d become, would that stand in lieu of all the other girls I hadn’t helped? Girls like Tove?

  No. Not my fault. Not my fault.

  Weaving between my thoughts, Yelena and Vera held a murmured conversation about things like faith and redemption, the gaps of silence lengthening, until each sentence was like a pebble dropped into a deep, still lake.

  “God is good, good is God,” Vera said.

  I finally fell asleep trying to untangle that.

  I slept the whole day, without dreams.

  Chapter 31

  They’d built a concert stage inside the inner courtyard of the former hospital, turning it into an open air amphitheater.