by Mark Henwick
The kitchen looked well used. Everything had been washed and put away. In the fridge, half-wilted lettuce lay next to a carton of milk with an expiration date over the weekend.
I turned back to the living area and noticed a couple of framed photographs, both of Jennifer Kingslund—one with Troy outside the Golden Harvest, and one of her alone.
A local newspaper lay on the table, open to a picture of Troy receiving an award for winning a bike race. I checked the date—last week. He wore a distinctive shirt and shorts with a large yellow and black diamond pattern. It was so distinctive, it made me go back to the second bedroom and check out the bike gear. The clothes weren’t there.
I walked back. The whole living area smelled clean. Not clean in a nice way; a sterile, bleached way. I got down on my hands and knees, cursing the aches and bruises, and sniffed the carpet. Next to the coffee table, someone had washed it with bleach. It was a shade lighter and the smell was very strong.
Moving the stuff off the top, I lifted the coffee table. On the underside of the foot was what looked like dried blood, as if a little had seeped underneath before the carpet had been washed.
That did it for me. I eased myself back up and got my cell. She answered right away.
“Jen, it’s Amber, can you talk?”
“One moment, please.” I could hear some background noises as she finished a conversation, then she came back on. She was back in clipped businesswoman mode, despite the late hour.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“I’m at Troy’s apartment. Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Go ahead.”
“You said he wasn’t at work over the weekend. When was the last time you or your staff saw him?”
“He finished work on Friday at about 11:30 p.m. I checked with the staff at the restaurant. That’s the last I know.”
“Do you know if he has a cleaning service come in?”
“It’s a company apartment, Amber. We pay for a cleaning service to go in on Fridays.” Ahh. That’s why she had the keys. That crossed one question off the list, but I was still going to have to ask her some personal questions.
“Do you know him well enough to say whether he’s a tidy person?”
“Troy? No. We met at his place occasionally. It wasn’t dirty or anything, but it wasn’t neat. Typical bachelor.”
“Jen, you may find this intrusive, but I have to ask. Is there anything between you and Troy on a personal level?”
“You mean lovers? No. Not my type and anyway, not a good idea these days.”
“Okay, Jen, this is my reading, worst case. He was dressed for biking, about to go out or just come back. Some of his biking clothes are missing but the bike’s here. Either someone that he knew came over, or someone very good broke in without damaging the door, and waited for him to come back. There was a struggle, some blood was spilled. Someone washed the carpet with bleach. He was carried out, wrapped up in his comforter or bedspread.”
I waited, but Jennifer didn’t say anything, although I’d heard her breath hiss in while I’d been speaking. I went on. “But I can read this a completely different way. He doesn’t like covers on the bed. He spilled some red wine and cleaned it up. He went out for a jog instead of a bike ride. He got hit by a car and he’s in a hospital somewhere.”
“No. I’ve had my assistant check every hospital already,” Jennifer said. “Nothing.”
“That’s good work. Jen, if this is a crime scene, the longer we leave it, the less likely it is that the police will be able to do anything. For instance, there’s a security camera in the lobby. It’ll take the police to get hold of the footage in a hurry. Neighbors need to be questioned, and they’ll be a lot more cooperative with the police. I don’t know that there’s been a crime here, but I’m advising you to call them tonight.”
“Will they take it seriously, Amber? Will they do something quickly enough?”
“A request from you to the police is going to carry some weight, but I’ll be honest, it’s hard for them to spend time on a missing person when they have rapes and murders to deal with.” I thought quickly. “There’s not enough of me to do everything, but what about I bring in another PI agency just to do a missing person check on Troy? I can brief them and keep it very separate from everything else, so there should be no problem with any confidentiality issues. They might find him, or find some clues as to what happened that might get the police to concentrate more on it.”
She gave it some thought. I could imagine her sitting in her executive chair in her fancy office, and I wondered which cogs were turning in her mind—how much this was going to cost or how quickly Troy could be found.
“Okay, Amber,” she said. “I’ll go with it. What do I have to do?”
“Come down here. Make the call from the apartment, make the police come to you.”
“On my way.” She hung up.
I flipped through my contacts and dialed. The Georgia voice that answered was beautifully deep and gravelly, like smooth river rocks grinding together. We had worked with each other before and I would keep him on my list just to get that Dixie molasses poured in my ear from time to time.
“Victor! How goes it, Mr. G?”
“Well ’nuff, Amber. Whatcha doing calling me while I’m off work and restin’ at home?”
I laughed. “You’re never off work. And you know that little button on the top of your cell? It’s called an off switch.”
“Uppity like always. Whatcha need, girl?”
Victor Gayle ran the biggest small PI firm in town. His specialty was more along the lines of security and bodyguards, but I rated his team as good investigators as well.
“I need a missing persons investigation, Vic.”
“Oh, you want me to find why you got no clients?”
“Ha ha, so funny, big man.” I grinned anyway. “No. I’m working a related investigation and I can’t quite cover this as well. The police are going to be involved but I don’t think they’ll treat it seriously enough unless some more evidence turns up. Or alternatively, we find the guy and we can close this part of the case.”
I ran through a quick account of Troy’s details, and what I had found or not found at the apartment. I could tell Victor was curious as to how this linked with my case, but he didn’t pry. He said he would email me a reminder of his terms and promised to get someone on it in the morning.
Shortly after I’d hung up, the lobby door buzzer sounded. I checked the image—Jennifer and her driver—and let them in the building. It would be worth checking if the video intercom system stored images as well. I unlocked the door to the apartment.
“Amber!” Jennifer came through the door and looked at me, appalled. I hadn’t forgotten the fight, but I had forgotten that I would be showing signs of it. The bruises hadn’t matured yet, but my chin was raw and scraped and my lip was split.
“Ah, yes.” I rubbed my face gently. “I took a short cut through an alley on the way here and a couple of guys attacked me. It’s nothing.”
She stared at me. “Hardly nothing.”
I shrugged it off and, after warning them not to touch anything, I led her around and showed her the details I had seen and the conclusions I had drawn. I handed her back the keys along with Victor’s contact information.
“Time to call the police, Jen. And time for me to go. The police may see me on the security footage and if they ask you about it, you’ll have to say I’m investigating. Until then, play it that you just came here and were concerned by the things I’ve pointed out.”
An odd little smile flickered over her face as she got her cell out.
Her call connected and she said brightly, “José, hello! It’s Jen.”
I did a double take. Surely, she wasn’t calling Captain Morales?
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you at this hour, I know how hard you work, but I just don’t know who else to turn to. You’ve already helped me and I was hoping you could help me some more. I’m
so worried.”
It was difficult not to laugh. I happened to know Captain Morales was happily married, but that wasn’t a defense against this kind of attack from Jennifer. And it showed good thinking on her part. If she could persuade Morales to send a squad car here, they would treat it more seriously than if the desk sergeant did.
Another time, I would have to find out how she knew Morales. I waved and let myself out.
Chapter 8
Back at the parking garage, I approached my car cautiously, but there was no one waiting for me. I headed back home to Aurora through the late night traffic.
Even cheap is expensive for me. Aurora is part of Denver and yet is its own whole city, with good parts and bad. I lived in a room on the side of a house in the cheaper part of Aurora. It suited me fine. There was a half kitchen, a tiny bathroom, a bed and a place to keep some of my stuff. The rest was in a storage unit.
The only drawback was that the door to my room was off the porch, and Mrs. Desiarto was reliably found on it at night. She was an old-style Italian mamma transplanted into the suburbs of Denver. In an Italian village, she would have had many people to talk to. Now that her children had fled the nest, she had me. I suspected the rent reflected this and I did try to sit and talk some nights.
However late I came home, she always seemed to be there, sitting in her cane rocking chair. She claimed she was unable to sleep due to the pain in her hips.
As I stepped up, I gave thanks it was dark and she couldn’t see my face.
“Amber, you been working late again.”
“Maybe I’ve been out with a boyfriend, this time,” I replied, leaning against a post.
She laughed, which was a bit unfair. It wasn’t that unlikely, surely. “You have no boyfriends, Amber. You scare them off. Look at you. I couldn’t pinch so much as a tweezer of skin from you. It’s not natural.”
“It is for me, Mrs. Desiarto.” I sighed. “But you’re right, I’ve been working and I’ve still got to finish up.”
“A man would think he was lying on a bed of stones with you. You need to eat decent food, take it easy. Find yourself a man. You need to think about starting a family, you know.”
I made a move to my door. Once she was off on this, I would get her history of how she had met her husband and the clever way she had snared him. Unless I went now, I would be here a long time.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Desiarto, maybe another time. Good night.”
I escaped and slipped into the dark warmth of my room. I stood in the darkness for a few moments before switching on the light, and only then did I take my hand out of the backpack where I had been holding the gun.
I threw everything on the bed, sat down and wrote up the day’s report on the laptop. I emailed Jennifer a brief review about my visit to Troy’s apartment along with my suspicions and recommendations, even though we’d spoken.
I glanced at the clock and winced—another late night. I didn’t care for the idea of looking at accounts at this hour, so instead I did a search through the USB drive for the security footage from Silver Hills.
It was a black and white closed-circuit camera time-lapse movie. The camera and lights had probably been linked to a motion sensor and timer. It started with a couple of frames showing an area with bulldozers and storage containers, in natural light with long shadows. Nothing was happening. The clock timer at the bottom showed early evening. Then there were a couple of frames where the timer had triggered and the lights came on briefly to record that nothing was still happening. The timer showed 9:30.
What showed next made me sit up in a hurry.
Between the directional security lighting and the limitations of a black and white security camera, this wasn’t going to win awards for detail, but the motion sensor triggered and the camera went to full video, capturing what looked like a pack of wolves swarming over the site. I froze the playback, backed up a couple of frames and looked at it for a long time. It was blurred, but I wasn’t looking to see detail.
The work crew had used shipping containers to store equipment during off-hours, a common alternative to securing the whole site. A shipping container is relatively inexpensive and fits on a truck. It’s robust and secure, and it’s about eight feet tall. A wolf stands about three feet at the shoulder. Either the wolf I was looking at standing next to the shipping container was over four feet tall or there was some trick of perspective I couldn’t figure out. The others were as big.
Eventually, I let it play again. It lasted only a few seconds more before the screen went black and the clip ended. The timer was at 9:53.
I went back to just before the end and froze it. There was a hint of something like a stone heading for the camera lens. Neat trick for a wolf, throwing stones.
I went back frame by frame and came to the second startling image. For two frames, in the top right-hand corner, what looked like bare human legs passed at the limit of the illumination of the security lights. It was as if someone had run across the site thinking they were outside of the reach of the camera. Naked. In amongst a pack of huge wolves.
I turned it off. No wonder Jennifer had been having trouble talking about this.
There was no way that was a pack of ordinary wolves with one handy person along to throw stones. Since being bitten by a vampire, the thought of other weird things being out there had seemed a lot more likely. This raised the hair on my neck.
I would have to visit the scene. I needed to talk to Jennifer about it, but it was way too late tonight. I sent her another email saying I wanted to see the site as soon as possible.
Thinking through what else was going on, with the threat from crime bosses and vampires, I realized I would have to avoid sleeping here at Mrs. Desiarto’s. I wouldn’t want any collateral damage if I was attacked. Maybe I could sleep at the office or in my car, but not tonight. I was sore all over and I had been up late last night as well.
I packed away my gear, took another shower and went to bed, making sure the HK was within reach beside me.
The gun wasn’t much use that night.
This one I’d had before.
I’m floating on water, staring up at a bright blue sky. I’m getting heavier, sinking. The water closes over me. The sky ripples, distorted. I’m breathing water, not choking, but not getting oxygen. It’s too late to struggle. I’ve run out of options. I just have to give up and I’ll be at peace. So easy. A couple of minutes and I can rest in the cool dark. No more striving. No more fear. Better this way.
I jerked upright in bed, lungs laboring, drenched in sweat.
Just another night in the Amber zone.
WEDNESDAY
Chapter 9
I woke early to greet the dawn, because someday there might be a morning I can’t. It was especially worth it today to remind myself what I stood to lose. That army isolation cell had no windows. I had to finesse the colonel this afternoon.
I did a quick check in the mirror, and yesterday’s bruises were hiding some of the previous day’s. My lips were a bit fatter on the one side, but half a set of bee-stung lips isn’t quite the same. I sighed.
At least the strains and sprains had healed. Sure, the body looked a little battered at the moment, but it was strong and healthy. All the exercise gave me a lean runner’s build. My Arapaho great-grandmother’s genes showed up in the bronze cast to my skin and a sharper nose than would be considered attractive. The Celtic side came out in the auburn hair and the green eyes. There wasn’t much on the rack, but as Mrs. Desiarto noted in our last conversation, there wasn’t anyone but me to appreciate the view at the moment.
But underneath? I leaned closer to the mirror, staring at the face that looked out at me.
Is this what a vampire looks like?
I pulled on my jeans and chose a man’s shirt for a change. The tall collar would hide some of the neck bruising. I filled a couple of bags with clothes to keep in the back of the car and cleared out the last of the fruit to eat on the way.
At the office,
I pulled the Crate & Freight file and noted Windler’s address. According to the news, he hadn’t been arrested yet. I wanted to see if there were any clues as to who the drug boss was and Windler’s house was as good a place to start as any. Exactly how I was going to square this with Morales, I put on hold.
Then I started to go through Jen’s financial files, starting at the top level and checking that everything added up and cross referenced, making notes to come back to.
I heard Tullah come in at nine and she put her head around the door at once.
“Knock, knock.” She was grinning.
“Come in, Tullah.”
She slid a takeout coffee across the table at me. “Wake up and smell the—oh my God! What happened, Amber?” she said.
“Oh no. Did my mascara run?”
“Amber! It’s not funny, you’ve been hit again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I took a short cut through an alley and got attacked. They regret it more than I do.”
“You got attacked in an alley last evening? Wow, after a few of those, you might start to think that alleys are dangerous places that you should avoid after sunset.”
I snorted. The young rely on sarcasm far too much.
“Anyway,” she reached into a pocket, “a bit late for last night, but Ma said to give you this.”
She dropped a bracelet into my hand. It was beautiful, made with lines of little stone beads of different types and colors and sealed with a gold clasp.
“It’s lovely! Thank you. Or thank your mother. What’s it for?” I looked back up at Tullah.
“It’s a protection charm.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know, it’s not as if you need protecting.”
I smiled. “Not what I meant, Tullah. I meant, why is she giving me something so lovely? It’s not my birthday or anything. But okay, let’s talk about the bracelet first. It’s going to protect me from evil or something?”
Tullah answered more seriously than I expected. “Actually, magic isn’t quite like that. It’s kind of difficult to define good and evil in a spell, but it will warn you if someone close by intends you harm. It’ll tingle.”