Bite Back Box Set 2

by Mark Henwick

  “Be careful, Amber,” Mom whispered. “I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

  I slipped out into the night, the cold air squeezing tears from my eyes.

  Chapter 43

  Forsythe had a house here in Denver that he visited frequently. It was near Crestmoor Park, the upscale side of Hilltop, and about four miles east of downtown.

  It went without saying, getting caught breaking into his house would be a disaster. Even leaving traces of a break-in might be a problem.

  Why is it worth the risk?

  My head and my gut were still struggling over what to do about Forsythe, what would be resolution for me. It didn’t matter what friends he had in high places and how impregnable he was in court, I knew I could get to him and finish it all with a bullet. That didn’t feel wrong exactly, but somehow, it didn’t feel like it was enough. I was starting to think about first tearing down everything he was involved in, letting the light shine on every dark secret in his life.

  Was he really a serial rapist? Had he been all this time? How could he get away with it?

  I absolutely believed that Tove believed what she’d told me—that Denver was where he brought women—girls—and if she was right, there had to be some clues here.

  What about the criminal activity?

  Maybe there’d be clues to that. Something that would provide a way to crack open the criminal group Elizabetta thought he was part of. Something we could pass to Lieutenant Reed.

  We coasted past the luxury homes of Forsythe’s neighbors. They were all set back in quarter-acre plots with tended yards running right down to the edge of the road. Ornamental maple trees and sculptured hedges partially obscured warmly-lit living room windows, porches and doors with glowing Christmas decorations, Colonial stoops and New Orleans style French balconies. I caught glimpses of multi-car garages with motion sensing courtesy lights facing down the drives.

  And all that was niggling me. I could see too much of the houses. The neighborhood was open, full of well-kept houses in sight of each other and the road. Good for the folks who lived here.

  Not so good for folks like me wanting to break in.

  And not where I expected Forsythe to spend his weekends. Too…wholesome.

  Even the growl of the Hill Bitch’s engine seemed loud and out of place on this street.

  At least the Hill Bitch wasn’t looking bad. Drake had done an amazing job on her. All the dents were gone, and he’d resprayed her in a gorgeous green so dark it was almost black. Officially, the truck belonged to Altau, but they were going to have to fight me for her.

  We didn’t want to attract attention here, so we cruised past Forsythe’s house without stopping. It was unlit—a pleasant, two-story house with flint-clad front, elegant arched windows and steeply-pitched gables under a slate roof. His garage sprawled to the left: long and low, big enough for three cars. At either end of the garage, there were lamps shaped like old coach lanterns, which would light up the drive and front door.

  And on the right side of the house, just under the eaves, a large yellow alarm box with a blinking red light advertised his security system.

  I snorted. It had been too much to hope for that his house would be hidden from sight behind a wall, and not protected by an alarm. Might as well hope that he’d left his keys in the front door.

  I slowed and took a couple of rights, so we could see the house that backed onto Forsythe’s.

  Many of the houses on both sides were dark. Maybe families gone away for Christmas, or absent owners like Forsythe. All with alarm systems silently blinking their warning into the night.

  Yelena was grinning. “Lots of alarms, yes?”

  “And only one police force.” I knew where she was heading. “No, Yelena. I’m not going to set off a dozen alarms to create a diversion while we break into his house.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t fazed by me ruling out her fun. “I use your laptop?”

  “Sure.”

  I drove down every street in the neighborhood until we arrived at the park which gave the area its name.

  Yelena was looking at the manufacturer’s website for Forsythe’s alarm.

  “It’s a cell system,” she said. “I can get us in. Maybe rig the system to keep the alarm off.”

  “How likely to set off the alarm?”

  She pursed her lips. “Ten percent chance.”

  I chewed on that. Somewhere he came so regularly was important.

  House security systems going off were almost always false alarms. The police wouldn’t respond unless it was a really slow night. A security company guard would come past, and that would probably take fifteen minutes. If he saw something suspicious, he’d call the police. Even then, when they arrived would depend on their workload.

  Lots of time for us to be elsewhere, if nothing went wrong.

  Worth the risk.

  “We’ll do it,” I said.

  An hour later, we’d left the Hill Bitch by a church on the other side of the park, and we were crouched down in darkness at the back of Forsythe’s house.

  I’d felt embarrassed in New Mexico when Tullah had demonstrated her ability to pick locks, since I couldn’t do it myself, so during my down time in LA I’d learned the art. I was ready and waiting for Yelena’s go-ahead, wearing the latex gloves I’d keep on inside the house.

  Yelena had the radio frequency scanner I’d borrowed from Matt ages ago and left in the truck. She’d rewired the controls and was patiently stepping through channels and watching the display reading.

  “His alarm uses only one channel for talking to the security company and one for communicating with the detection devices,” she murmured. “As long as I don’t block them for more than five minutes, it doesn’t do anything about loss of signal.”

  “So once the lock is open, we have five minutes to switch the system off?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay.”

  I worked on the lock. After a couple of minutes I felt the last subtle click that told me the tumblers were all caught at the right height and ready to turn.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  Yelena pressed a button on the scanner and watched the display. “Go,” she said.

  I twisted the lock and the door opened.

  Yelena slipped around me like a cat.

  She paused for a second to look briefly at the detector above the door, then she ran to the hallway. As agreed, I stood by the door, heart in my mouth and ready for a quick exit.

  It took less than a minute. “We’re clear,” she said, walking back in.

  “You sound almost disappointed.”

  I could tell she was smiling in the dark. “It’s a basic system. This man can afford something spectacular. Motion sensors, ultrasonics, laser beams. But there’s nothing.”

  She went to a window and looked it over carefully before shrugging. “Don’t break a window. Don’t open a window. Don’t open an external door.”

  “What about when we leave?”

  “I do another reset. We have twenty seconds to get out. Easy.”

  “Great.”

  I looked around. We’d come in through a family room with wide bay windows.

  It was a quiet neighborhood. I could make out the occasional passing car, but everything else seemed muted. The house itself was absolutely silent.

  I covered my flashlight with my hand, letting only the thinnest beam out. My night vision was good enough to fill in the details.

  There were easy chairs and a sofa—big, rounded, leather-covered furniture. It looked wrong. A closer inspection showed no signs of wear, no stains on the rug in front of the unused fireplace, no clutter in the corners. It might as well have been a model home.

  I moved into the main hallway, treading lightly on hickory wooden floors. Again, no clutter. No coats on the coat rack by the front door. Nothing. I got down on my knees. The polished floor showed no dents, scratches or marks that I could see in this light.

  I got up.

  A curv
ed staircase with metal bannisters rose up to the bedrooms, and matching steps went down into the basement. A door to one side of the hall revealed a show-kitchen with glossy, granite slab surfaces, walk-in pantry and every cooking utensil and ingredient hidden away in alder wood cabinets. Only the breakfast bar looked as if it had ever been used. The fridge and freezer were empty; switched off and doors propped ajar. The pantry stocked only a few canned items and sealed plastic boxes of cereals and dried pastas. The washing machine was empty and the work surfaces polished.

  I started to think this was a waste of time.

  The yard lights went on.

  Shit.

  Beams flooded through the sidelight windows on either side of the front door.

  We pressed ourselves into a shadow pool just inside the kitchen.

  “Are you sure about that alarm?” I said.

  She nodded.

  If this wasn’t the police responding to an alarm, what was it?

  I’d shielded the flashlight; no way someone could see that. But had we been seen breaking in at the back?

  A dog barked.

  “Busted,” Yelena said.

  “Maybe.”

  I slithered back into the hall. No one was peering through the windows yet. I ran to the front door and listened.

  “What’s up, fella? What’s that?”

  More excited barking. Not the police. A dog walker. And a dog who smelled something he wasn’t expecting to smell here.

  We didn’t need this. We wanted to be in and out of this place.

  Well…what had worked in Albuquerque might work here.

  I imagined Cameron on the other side of the door. Her prickly, powerful dominance swelling up, pushing at me through the door. My own reaction to it.

  The barking stopped, cut off abruptly.

  I could imagine the dog saying oh, shit.

  “What’s up, fella?” The guy’s voice was puzzled now.

  A whine. A scratching sound. And the feeling of the poor dog slinking away.

  I felt rotten.

  “That was fun.” Yelena took a quick peek through the windows. “They’re gone.”

  “Let’s do the study,” I said.

  It was decorated in old Colonial style. A heavy wooden desk with an inlaid green leather top stood facing a library of expensively bound reference books.

  I started on the books, checking if there was anything hidden behind them.

  It was all clean and dust free. That didn’t tell me Forsythe was an avid reader. More likely he fired any cleaner who didn’t have the house spotless for his visits.

  His visits. No way this house was used a couple of times a month.

  Yelena worked through the desk.

  “It doesn’t feel used at all,” I said. “This is all for show.”

  She nodded. “Nothing in the drawers but stationery supplies,” she said. “Not even locked. No secret compartments.”

  I let her get on with it, running my latex-covered fingers over the ornaments placed on one of the library’s unused shelves. There was an antique spinning globe of the earth, a bronze Tibetan prayer bowl, some African soapstone carvings, a smooth jade Buddha.

  “Ah. There’s a laptop,” Yelena said.

  My fingers slipped inside the Tibetan bowl. Something moved at the bottom and I lifted it out. I let the thin beam of the flashlight play on it. A casino chip. Bellagio was printed on the outside arc, and $25,000 in the middle.

  Yelena came to my shoulder and peered at it. “Big chip to leave lying around.”

  I shrugged. He was rich enough, it might mean nothing to him.

  “What can you do with the laptop?”

  “Nothing here, but give me fifteen minutes,” Yelena said. “I could take the drive out and clone it. We can look at what’s on it later.”

  “Do it,” I said. “I’ll finish the rest of the house.”

  I went upstairs. It was a simple layout, with three bedrooms and a main bathroom. I might as well have stepped into a hotel suite. Closets were empty except for hangers and air fresheners. The beds were made, and even had hotel-style bed covers. There were disconnected clock radios on bedside tables. The bathroom was well stocked with unused toiletries in high-end branded boxes.

  The master bedroom was similar. Made bed, bathroom with toiletries and generic medicine—painkillers and cough syrups. The closets had a man’s expensive clothes and shoes, socks, shirts and underwear still in the packaging, a white bathrobe, puffy towels.

  I checked the drawers, half-expecting to find Gideon’s Bible.

  Nothing. Not even dust underneath the bed.

  Assuming the information about Forsythe leaving LA every couple of weeks was right, where was he going to? Not Denver—or at least, not this place.

  Everything about it felt slightly wrong. It didn’t fit in with his image. It wasn’t a house, so much as a permanent private hotel room that he needed from time to time. Maybe a place he’d used before, until something better came along.

  I went back to the ground floor.

  Yelena was still working. She’d gone into the pantry so that the light from the screen couldn’t be seen outside.

  One place left for me to search. The basement.

  I stood in the hall and listened. Nothing, even to my wolf ears, except the near-soundless hum of my laptop.

  Why the apprehension?

  There was a short curve of stairs down to a mini-landing and a plain door. I took the steps and stopped again.

  The little stairwell was the sort of place that a family’s clutter would accumulate in a house that was lived in. Coats, scarves, ski hats, kid’s sled, outdoor shoes. Even a bachelor staying here infrequently would use it. Maybe keep a bicycle here. Sports gear. Something.

  It was empty and it smelled of air freshener.

  The door was locked. An internal door down to a basement with no other access. Locked.

  Why? What’s inside?

  I checked the edges of the door for any obvious wires that might show other security alarms, but if there were any, I couldn’t see them. The lock wasn’t anything advanced—a standard lever lock.

  Easy.

  Five clicks and a twist. The bolt slid back with a quiet snick.

  I pocketed my picks and gripped the handle.

  Basement. Forsythe.

  Not that basement. Not that girl. I’m in control.

  The uneasiness just seemed to swell as I pushed the door open, my wolf senses reaching.

  Silent. Air stale. Dust. Old scents. Hints of beer and takeout food. Sweat. Excitement?

  There were no external windows to the basement, so even with wolf sight, I was faced with a depthless dark.

  I let a sliver leak from my flashlight.

  Gasped.

  Figures in cloaks stood around the room.

  “Amber?” Hissed from the kitchen.

  “Spooked myself, sorry. It’s nothing,” I lied. “Nothing.”

  I sat down heavily on the last step.

  Not a secret meeting of the Klan.

  The humor felt flat.

  I didn’t need the light, didn’t need to explore, and I was still sitting there, hugging my legs, when Yelena came down.

  “Got it copied. There’s something you should…” She stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  “Close the door and turn the light on,” I said.

  It was a big basement, nearly as broad and long as the house above it. That much I’d sensed sitting in the dark, listening to my heartbeat.

  The light came on and Yelena gave a wordless grunt of surprise.

  I got up and lifted one of the dust sheets that’d given me a shock.

  “Gimballed disco lights on tripods,” I said. “Double up as photo studio lights.”

  I turned and pointed toward the back, where there was a broad table shape hidden under more dust sheets. “DJ station. Probably a computer system these days instead of turntables. Speakers. Video cameras.”

  A worktable ran the length of
the back wall. “For the beer and pizzas.”

  Yelena walked to the side wall and parted the drapes there.

  “Wall of plasma screens.”

  And at the front, the only difference from the basement at his parents’ house all those years ago—a huge sofa. The kind that folded out into a bed.

  “This is sick,” she said. “Completely sick.” She’d been there at my sessions. She’d seen, through my eyes, seen this basement.

  “He doesn’t use this house often,” I said.

  My voice was level, but my whole body felt cold.

  “He’s fixated.” I waved at the layout. “This isn’t an accident. This is what he does, how he does it. A party with his friends. Then he drugs a woman and rapes her. He does this over and over. Maybe after all this time, he can’t do it any other way.”

  I was guessing, but it felt like picking a lock in my mind. You twisted and probed, unable to see what was happening, and then suddenly there was a point where you could feel the tumblers lining up and you knew the lock was open.

  “And if he’s not doing it here, he’s doing it somewhere else,” I said. “A place that has a basement just like this one.”

  Wherever it was he went on all those trips when people thought he was coming here.

  “You should see this.” Yelena sat down on the floor and opened the laptop. “I haven’t had time to look through all of it, though I’m guessing he wouldn’t leave anything really incriminating in this house. But there’s this…the drafts of publicity announcements for that new show Tove told us about.”

  Tomorrow’s Faces. Just as Tove had said.

  It was an expensive-looking press pack on the screen. The kind of images and text that the TV industry would blitz newspapers and magazines with to promote a show before its premiere.

  It was a talent show, specifically targeted at teenage girls from low-income backgrounds or depressed economic areas. Young girls, thirteen to fifteen. Promising fame and fortune for a special few—a Cinderella-type rags-to-riches story.

  Girls in poverty. Desperate to get out. Girls maybe without strong family support. Or access to lawyers if things went bad. Maybe even girls no one would miss if they disappeared.