Bite Back: Raw Deal Part 14

"So she knows you're a policewoman?"

"Not from me. Not at that time." I glanced to the side. "But perhaps Buchanan's said something to her."

"Maybe she doesn't know your job, but she must know you to ask you to do that."

"Never met her before that night."

"That's some leap of faith she took."

It wasn't a question, so I just stared at him. He was right, but he had no clue why, and I doubted Domine was about to tell him why she trusted me.

"You weren't there moonlighting as a bodyguard, and you weren't trying to prove you could carry out your own investigation?"

"No and no."

"And today." He flicked my report. "Acting on a call that came to you from the owner, you visited Ms. Hawks' apartment. You became suspicious because of the damage to the main entry door and the smell. You forced entry and called us immediately after you found her?"

"Basically correct. As I said in the report, the owner had been calling me repeatedly while I was on patrol and my personal cell phone was off. I checked it l when I finished patrol and I immediately called her back."

Morales looked at Nunez. He wasn't happy, but he nodded, picked up his folder and left. IA had lost interest.

Buchanan was halfway to standing. "You can't be-"

Morales' hand slammed the table like a pistol shot. "Get out, Buchanan."

Buchanan stared at me like he wanted to strangle me right there, but he'd been given a direct order. We were not going to be friends ever, me and Detective Buchanan. Such a shame.

It was silent when they'd left.

Morales flipped open my personnel file. He picked up the first page, which was my training scores, and put that in the middle of the table. A couple of pages down, he pulled out my previous employment history and that joined the scores. From his case file, he pulled a single sheet which looked like a page full of dates and numbers. He placed that next to the others and closed the files. His cell phone joined the rest of the parade he'd set up. Then he leaned back in his chair.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on, Farrell?"

"I don't understand the question, sir."

His hand came down on my employment history. "Sergeant in the military, ten year service in special operations," he said. "No negative reports. All other details cla.s.sified." He jabbed at the bottom of the sheet. "That's a h.e.l.l of an aura to be carrying around."

He rested his finger on the scores. "Outstanding firearms theory and practical. Lethal in hand-to-hand. Just what you'd expect from the cream of the cream in the military."

"I still don't see-"

"Because it's not what you expect from a lateral intake to the Denver PD. What the h.e.l.l is a top flight soldier with a cla.s.sified record doing in my patrol department?"

"Looking to be a top flight policewoman, sir." I had to a.s.sume that aspiration was history now.

"That sounded good. You should practice that, Farrell."

Okay, we could both do sarcastic.

My eyes edged towards the third page.

Morales leaned forward. "And this unbelievable rookie, she has an unbelievable random connection to an unbelievable case." He paused and tapped the third page. "What that a-" he stopped what he was going to say and tried again. "What Detective Buchanan hasn't noticed, but will eventually, is that this log of the week's security camera backups from Club Agonia happens to be missing one."

c.r.a.p.

Domine had done what I'd asked and removed the footage I'd given the colonel. I could see why Morales was going to make that Captain spot.

I said nothing. Delaying tactics were reaching their end more quickly than I'd have liked, but Morales wasn't Buchanan. I couldn't divert him.

"What Buchanan won't know is almost exactly at the time I spotted that, I received a 9-Red-Mil notification." He pressed his cell and the calendar came up with a red bar on the afternoon. I frowned. I'd never heard of any such notification. Mil meant military, obviously.

"I had to go look it up," Morales continued. "It's a priority 'request' from the military through the Department of Defense to make myself available for a meeting."

He leaned back again and repeated himself. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

I'd run out of delaying tactics.

"I've been operating under orders, sir, and I'll have to leave explanations to the colonel you'll be meeting shortly."

We sat looking at each other for a minute.

Morales gathered his papers and shuffled his files into a neat pile. The cell went back in his pocket and he rested his elbows on the table, clasping his hands together.

"Farrell, as of now, you are suspended pending further explanation."

Chapter 18.

I drove out of the station parking lot feeling dazed. I was still in my uniform, but with no badge. Morales had had the contents of my locker delivered to me in a plastic shopping bag. I wasn't even allowed to change on the premises.

The colonel would be here in a couple more hours, so I didn't have time to sleep. Not that I would have been able to: I was too wired.

I'd get into even more trouble if I went to Club Agonia. Without thinking about it, I found the car heading back down to the site of the first murder.

The three vampires were still out here somewhere. If whatever craziness that had infected them was progressive, who knows what they could do next. I couldn't match whatever Buchanan's team were doing on searching through traffic camera videos, or hunting credit card slips or whatever. I had one line that they probably weren't pursuing.

The vampires had walked to the apartment where their first victim died. At the time, they hadn't been acting crazy. It was a fair a.s.sumption that there was a rational decision about walking. They didn't want a car linked to them to be seen at the apartment. But they wouldn't have walked for miles. They left the car somewhere where it was out of sight, or somewhere people were used to seeing it, or somewhere it wouldn't be seen.

That somewhere was in a grid of streets, no more than six by six.

But it would have been a lot for one woman to cover at the best of times.

I was driving in traffic along Speer Boulevard and visualizing the street map when a fleeting face on the sidewalk caught my eye.

Emily.

Dammit. Not only was she playing truant from school, she was all made up again. I doubted Klara had allowed her to get her hands on her cosmetics, but Emily was with a friend. I thought I recognized one of the group from the other night, mainly by her bright red hair.

I hit the brakes and got a horn blast from behind.

By the time I'd pulled over, Emily was nowhere in sight. She and her friend had to have turned down a side road, and it was one way.

I took off again, turning right, hoping to loop around and catch her, but there was no sign and fifteen minutes later, I gave up.

And if I couldn't even find one girl walking along the street, what hope did I have of finding three vampires who were hiding?

I called Werner's cell and left a voicemail.

Then I turned and headed for home. At least I could shower and change before the colonel arrived.

Chapter 19.

At my apartment, I emptied the car. My police radio was in the footwell, and I'd need to remember to hand that in when they finally threw me out. I took all of it inside and tossed it on the bed with the mail while I took my shower.

I wanted to lie down and sleep. Or scream. I wasn't sure which.

I sighed.

Suck it up, Sergeant.

I switched the radio on as I dressed. It was kind of soothing. It stopped me from thinking about what was going to happen when the colonel turned up and found I was out of a job and had no lead on the vampires who were killing people in Denver.

I went through the mail. The only entertainment I got from it was scoring trash can baskets. As I crumpled and tossed, I listened with half an ear to the radio. Calls went out-domestic dispute, peeping Tom, kid with his head stuck through the bars of a fire escape. Glad I hadn't caught that one. I heard one of the rookies from my draft, Hunter, responding to a call for a second car on a traffic stop. Speer Boulevard, southbound lane near 13th. An SUV. That caught my attention-same neighborhood as the murders. And a request for a second patrol car either meant suspicious activity in the vehicle, or suspicion that the occupants might be armed. Or both.

I stopped crumpling junk mail and listened to Hunter's updates. Hunter and his partner arrived at the scene; the original patrol officers and Hunter's partner approached the vehicle.

Then all h.e.l.l broke loose.

"Jesus, they're shooting out the back! Officer down! Officer down! Oh my G.o.d! They got Baker-I think he's dead-" The transmission broke off. I listened, heart in my throat.

Dispatch was saying, "All units, 13th and Speer. Shots fired. Officer down." Responses began to come in, cars giving their locations.

I grabbed my uniform and then stopped.

This didn't include me anymore. Without the badge, I was holding an ordinary dark blue s.h.i.+rt, not a uniform.

Still nothing from Hunter. Dispatch called out Hunter's car number. "Please respond."

I waited with everyone else, holding my breath.

Finally, Hunter came on, barely keeping it together. "Suspect vehicle heading south on Speer. Three males, one tall Caucasian, two Latino, all armed-" He took a ragged breath. "Not in pursuit. Three officers down, requesting ambulances." His voice was shaking. "It's bad."

"Ambulances en route," the dispatcher said, and then, breaking protocol, "Hang in there, Hunter."

There was another long, shaky pause. Then, "Request additional ambulance. I've got a girl, twelve years old, broke out of the back of the SUV during the firefight. Possible abduction..." There was a faint, high-pitched voice in the background, and then Hunter said, "Oh my G.o.d. They've got another one still in there." He took a deep breath, trying his d.a.m.nedest to be professional. "Proceed with caution. SUV may contain a kidnap victim. Female, Caucasian, twelve years old, dark hair, Goth makeup."

Emily. Had to be. Oh, G.o.d, Emily.

I reached for my gun. It was my personal firearm and I was licensed, so it hadn't been taken with the badge. It was a Walther 9mm, a good little gun, but not what I wanted now. From under my bed, I pulled out the heavy safe and opened it. Inside was my handgun from my days in Ops 4-10. It was a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 SOCOM. If I wanted targets to stay hit, the .45 rounds from this were the ones to do the job.

I took the radio too and left at a run, past my startled landlady. I leaped into my car and thanked my lucky stars that I'd fixed the engine.

As I drove past Gerritsen, I saw the cruisers outside the Schumachers' and heard more details coming in on the radio. The SUV had disappeared. That wouldn't last. In a city like Denver, you can't disappear for long. The press had been listening too, and there were vans all over. They might get in the way, but at least they were extra eyes on the streets.

To everyone else, it was 'just' an abduction. Negotiators would be sitting down in situation rooms. Buchanan's team might be linking it to the murders and puzzling over the significance.

I was the only person in the city who knew the three men were vampires, and that something had sent them over the edge. I was the only one who knew Emily wouldn't last long enough for the negotiators to save her.

I left the car at the south end of Bannock and started trotting a search pattern. I was gambling with Emily's life, relying on my instinct that somewhere in the triangular grid of streets between Speer, 13th and Bannock, there was a place where an SUV had parked off the road and out of sight.

And Valerie gave it to me.

"...pretty as a picture, he'd hang me on his wall. The next one said I should be in a gallery..."

I could hear her voice telling me that Rodrigo had stopped the other two. But not because he didn't want them teasing her. Because he didn't want them talking about the gallery. Not a gallery, the gallery.

Galera del Sur was closed down for refurbishment.

It lay at the south end of Cheyenne: a narrow, tall building, set back from the road between two offices. And it had a bas.e.m.e.nt parking garage with a steel door on it.

There was nothing to see through the lobby doors; they had been boarded over, but lights gleamed inside the building through the cracks between boards.

I tried the garage door. It was solid. But not solid enough to stop a faint, bra.s.sy smell of vampire from drifting out.

Chapter 20.