Raw Deal (Bite Back) (3 page)

“Sit, sit. I will answer all your questions. I have nothing to hide.” He came out from behind his bench, chuckling and holding his beefy hands up in surrender.

I sat and he put his head through the door to the back.

“Klara. Some coffee please, for this young woman. Are there still cookies?”

I closed my eyes. “Coffee and cookies. If Klara’s not your wife, then I’ll marry you as soon as I’m off duty.”

He laughed, put his glasses aside and sat opposite me.

“I’m Officer Farrell.” I smiled. “Amber. Remember, you’ll need that for the marriage certificate. And you are?”

“My name is Werner Schumacher. While we talk, I must do this. Please. Your foot, without the shoe.”

Bemused, and a little hesitantly, I pulled my right shoe off, rolled up the pant leg and let him guide my foot into a machine sitting on the floor between us. I was pretty sure there was some police regulation against this, but if it got him to talk freely…

“Do you live in this building?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we live upstairs, the three of us. Hold still.” He pressed a button and peered down at the machine, which whirred and clicked.

“Were any of you awake between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. last night?”

He looked up and blinked. “Last night, after dinner, I worked. Here, behind the bench. Until, oh, eleven.”

Klara came in. She was a tiny, energetic woman. The important thing was she was carrying coffee. Real coffee.

“Werner!” she said. “This woman is busy and you are testing your toy on her.”

I smiled and waved off her concern, and her offers of creamer and sugar. I let her leave the cookies, though.

“This is important, Mr. Schumacher. Did you see anyone suspicious on the road outside at any time between 10 p.m. and the time you stopped? Any suspicious activity?”

The shop was at the far end of the block from the alley. If the murderer had brought the victim here by car he wouldn’t have seen anything, and I was reasonably sure the corpse hadn’t been dragged along the sidewalk. In LA maybe, but, hey, this was Denver.

“The other foot, please.”  He hummed a bit. “Yes. I saw some people that I did not like.”

I swapped feet.

“People you know?”

He shook his head and looked down at the machine. I took a sip of Mrs. Schumacher’s coffee and got a glorious jolt of pure caffeine.

“Could you describe them?”

“It was dark. I just finish and turn off the lights. Maybe five minutes before eleven.” He waggled his hand uncertainly. “ I look across the road. One very tall, six foot six inches, perhaps, fair hair. Two shorter men, your height, darker, maybe Mexican. One with a mustache. All with coats to here.” He chopped his hand against his thigh. “All collars up.” He flicked the collar of his shirt.

I snuck another cookie. “And what was it about them you didn’t like?”

He stole one of my cookies and sat back in his seat, thinking and chewing.

“Moving,” he said. “The way they are moving. Down the street in the city, but looking like hunters, yes? Looking for someone. Or following someone. Not looking to the side. Not talking. Not pleasant people.” He shook his head.

I jotted it down and put my shoes back on. It would just finish my day to have Buchanan walk in here now and see me in my stocking feet. I didn’t think this information was relevant, but at least there was someone who had been looking outside at the right time. Maybe he’d seen something else that he would remember later.

“It could also be, I have seen too much of your TV.” He shrugged, and spun the little screen on the machine around to show me. “Now look, your feet, here.”

The machine had scanned my feet in, and was now displaying them as 3D models, slowly turning around.

“When I make you your boots, I have exact measurements. The fit will be perfect.”

“I’m a policewoman, Mr. Schumacher, and I can hardly afford store boots, let alone handmade.”

“Store boots!” He snorted. “Rubbish. A waste of money. My boots,” he leaned forward, “my boots are an investment.”

I laughed. “I need to invest in my car first, but I’m tempted, really I am.”

Note to self, go buy a lottery ticket.

“You said there’s three of you,” I went on. “Who’s the third?”

“Our daughter, Emily.”

Something in his voice made me glance up from my notes. This had nothing to do with my job here, but the shop was the last one on the block and I needed an excuse to sip some more coffee and nibble the last sweet ginger cookie. “Problem?”

“No, no. Not really.” He smiled a little. “Every year, you look back and think the problems from last year weren’t so bad, not so?”

“What’s this year’s problem?”

“Oh, such a little thing really,” Klara said, coming back in with the pot. “She and her friends, they dress in black and do the makeup.” She indicated around her eyes. “You know, the dark eyes. They call it Goth or Emo. They listen to the ugly music.”

She’d brought over a photograph from behind the counter, a young girl with black hair and wide eyes. She had an innocent look I never quite managed at that age, no matter how hard I’d practiced in the mirror.

Back then, I thought I’d get away with things if I looked like that. Now, it just made me wonder what she’d been up to.

“Kids experiment with styles,” I said, handing the photo back.

“Did you?” Klara asked.

Actually, I hadn’t. When I was not much older than Emily, my dad got sick and died. The insurance company wouldn’t pay. Bad things happened. I dropped out of school to help support the family. I joined the army and got expert in ways of killing people.

“No, I was kinda too busy.”

I left the Schumachers’ shop a short while later, with an invitation to stop in when I was passing and an assurance that there was always coffee and sometimes there were cookies too. I did
not
look at the boots as I went out. I have a will of iron.

And I needed it, to keep from biting Buchanan’s idiot head off when we reported back. He took it as an affront that all we’d collected between us was one shoemaker who might have seen three people heading down the street, looking mean.

I tuned him out as he vented, using the time to scan the activity in the alley. The body was long gone—bagged, tagged and on its way to the morgue. I really wished I’d gotten a better look at it.  

I was seeing Colonel Laine today—my liaison with the army. The man who I was supposed to report to if I found any credible sign of vampire presence or activity here in Denver. Operative word—credible. I’d seen an unusual pattern of neck wounds and a suspicious lack of blood at the scene, but so far that was inconclusive. I needed solid proof before making any reports; the only thing worse than being the only known person who could identify vampires would be turning into a person who saw vampires when they weren’t there.

I’d already managed to piss off my partner, and made an ass of myself in front of the other uniforms here. On top of that, I’d probably persuaded the CSI team I was a morbid lunatic. Buchanan had clearly written me off already. If I brought the army in now and it turned out I was wrong, the whole house of cards would come down.

Strictly speaking, I should have been back at the base right now, under close observation. I’m sure that’s what the scientists had recommended. Their version of close observation included restraints and a soundproof cell with no windows.

I’d spent time in that cell. My vocal cords ached with memories; my wrists itched with phantom burns.

I still couldn’t quite believe that I’d been let out, even though it had been a year now. Not just let out—I’d been set up with a job. Two, in fact, since I’d blown the first job. Working in the police was my second chance, and common sense said it was also my last chance.

None of it’s my goddamn fault!

I stomped on that. I couldn’t waste time bitching. This was my reality. Just to keeping standing still, I had to succeed at my police job and I had to meet my obligations to the army. The problem was when they overlapped like this, I could screw up both of them with one false move. And the minute I was no more use to the army out here, I would end up back in that cell. Sweat chilled my forehead. Anything but that.

Knight was herding me back to our patrol car. I wanted to check out the alley and the dumpster again, sniff around for a hint of vampires, but there were still techs crawling around, making notes and bagging garbage. As far as Knight was concerned, I was just rubbernecking, and I’d caused enough problems with him for one day. I drove us back to the station and we clocked out.

I thought about trying to get into the morgue and have a look at that body, but figured I’d already rocked the boat enough for the moment. I could check the reports once the coroner had determined cause of death. Then, if further investigation was warranted, I could make a decision about what to do.

There were more mundane problems as well. I needed to leave some extra time in case I had trouble with my car, and I really needed to get some rest before my meeting with the colonel. These meetings weren’t ever easy, and this time I had to hide today’s suspicious murder from him until I confirmed it one way or the other.

I had plenty of time to regret those decisions over the next few days.

Chapter 3

I’d set my alarm for an hour’s sleep, and it jerked me awake, sending another nightmare slithering back into the pit of my subconscious.

I didn’t linger over it. I took a shower, tied my hair back and got dressed. Breakfast was coffee and some fruit to go. I glanced around out of habit to see if there was anything I’d forgotten. Laundry was bagged and ready for a spare moment. My spare police uniform was hanging, ready for my next shift. My handguns were in the safe underneath the bed.

The little apartment was bright and somehow sad. Maybe I needed to get some pictures on the walls. The only things I had out were on my bedside table. Some photos and, of course, Tara’s plaque: my twin sister’s memorial. It was plain, a glossy stone rectangle the size of a desk photograph, jet black, with cursive gold lettering at the bottom, saying simply
Tara Farrell
. I brushed it with my fingers.

I was delaying. The run-up to every appointment with the colonel was like this: a sick dread that built and built. If I failed any of his tests, answered a question wrong—if he even thought I’d begun to turn—he’d have me hauled back to base without even a chance to say goodbye. He could have a squad waiting right now.

But putting it off wasn’t going to help, and being late was unthinkable. That wasn’t just my military training; I didn’t want to give them any reason to feel they had to come hunting for me. I slipped out, locking the door behind me.

Twenty minutes later I was downtown where the colonel had told me to meet him, in front of the Denver Art Museum.

He was right on time, appearing suddenly around a corner and moving with that deceptively quick stride of his. He was wearing dark pants and shirt, with a pale summer blazer.

“Colonel.” We weren’t in uniform—I wasn’t even in the army now—and I still wanted to salute, damn it.

“Sergeant.” His eyes flickered at my twitchy arm. He was calling me by my old rank. It was a compromise; either Amber or Farrell would have sounded odd. Or maybe it was a subtle reminder of our relationship; I wasn’t in the army, but I sure as hell still worked for him.

To my surprise, he bought tickets and headed inside. I followed him into the museum’s galleries. At that time of the day, there was little chance of being overheard if we kept it down, so maybe it was as good as any other public place.

I’d left school early and joined the army. It wasn’t an impulsive decision, more that a whole bunch of circumstances had pushed me that way. I’d vaguely hoped to get into something exciting, but I hadn’t even heard of the unit that offered to transfer me from my basic training to a special program. That intrigued me. When I got there, the instructors told me they’d watch me walk out within a month, if they hadn’t kicked me out before then. That motivated me.

I loved it. I spent ten years in Ops 4-10, the unit that almost no one, not even the regular army, knew about. We did the high-risk tasks where the US couldn’t be seen to be involved, where other channels had failed. Where there was no hope remaining. We acquired strategic information, extracted people and destroyed organizations in areas where, if we were caught, the US would deny all knowledge of us and leave us to our fate.

There was plausible deniability all right; we didn’t officially exist.

The colonel had been the commanding officer. He was damned good at that. I’d been damned good at my job, too, until one night I wasn’t. I’d lost my entire team, and nearly lost my life. In a way, I
had
lost my life, and was left with this—a tightrope walk between hunting down creatures people didn’t believe existed, and being locked up as one.

“How have you been feeling?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

Lie.

I couldn’t say anything else. Anything other than ‘fine,’ and the scientists would start to cover their asses, telling the colonel that I could go crazy and rampage through malls killing children. The colonel must have stuck his neck out to get me out of the cell in the first place, but he would have no choice but to put me back if the scientists got nervous. And once back, they’d never let me out again.

I handed him an envelope of expenses and written reports as a distraction. He slipped it in his folder and passed me back an envelope which would contain a check for my last expenses.

I knew he wouldn’t be happy with my answer. He tried the long silence way of getting me to talk, but I’d been there, done that. I’d walk silently through the whole museum and look at every exhibit until his time was up, if necessary.

“It’s been a year,” he said eventually. “And only a few months since the last job blew up on us. I’m not sure ‘fine’ quite covers it.”

A year. I knew that. I knew it in my bones, in the itch of my throat when I looked at it in the mirror, or in the panic of my nightmares. A year ago, I’d lost my squad, one by one, in the dark jungles of South America. I’d survived. They’d actually bagged me as a corpse—no one could have survived those injuries. Half my throat had been torn out. It must have looked as if there was more blood soaking the dirt around me than remaining in me. But I wasn’t dead, and five days later you could hardly see the scars. I was raving and screaming, but I was alive and physically healed.