Bears Behaving Badly Page 8

  “—but what the hell is going on?” Annette cried. “Can’t we go a single hour without something mysterious or puzzling or senseless happening and disrupting everything again? It’s starting to feel like David and I have been working this for months!”

  “Ouch,” Nadia said, shooting David a sympathetic glance.

  “I don’t even work for your agency,” David said. “I’m an independent contractor.”

  “Yes, yes,” Nadia said impatiently. “It’s why you will insist on refusing to come to the holiday party.”

  “No, I wouldn’t go to those even if I did work there. I don’t…but I’ve got your boss telling me to bolt.”

  They looked at each other, and Annette reread her text in case it had somehow changed in the last five seconds. Then she cleared her throat. “I’m not advocating that we should break any laws—”

  “I am,” David said. “This is bullshit.” He ran a hand through his mop and looked as baffled as Annette felt. “Somebody doesn’t want us to find out a goddamned thing about Lund or Caro, and I can’t tell you how much that pisses me off.”

  “Have they never watched an American crime show?” Nadia wondered. “This is the exact tactic that makes the hero and/or heroine, heretofore a stickler for regulations, decide to disobey orders and go rogue and search for the truth no matter what.”

  “I wouldn’t try this door,” Annette said, rapping it with a knuckle. “Breaking it down—”

  “Will ruin my manicure. Unlikely.”

  “—is messy and immediately noticeable, and we’d end up leaving a crime scene that is technically under active investigation vulnerable to anyone who wanted to walk in. Not to mention, if the door was relatively whole and still on its hinges when we were done, we’d have to put down new tape or, again, leave it vulnerable. Assuming we could get our hands on new tape.”

  “I literally have a trunk full of crime-scene tape,” David announced.

  “You’re lying! It’s full of red Jolly Ranchers.”

  “And tape,” he insisted.

  “Oh. Guess I didn’t notice what with the waterfall of candy that cascaded all over my feet.”

  Nadia was gaping and making no effort to hide it. “What have you two been doing?”

  “However,” Annette continued, “I’ll bet the sliding door to his balcony is a viable option.”

  Nadia saw they were both looking at her and beamed. “I won’t lie, darlings. I’m flattered to be asked.”

  Chapter 12

  Four minutes later, an elegant red kite landed on the railing of Lund’s fourth-story balcony. The raptor, a sleek and efficient hunter, had a six-foot wingspan, a dark, reddish-brown body, and black feathers with white wing tips.

  This particular predator fed on rabbits, shrews, and Restaurant Alma’s roast duck special, had a grip equal to 400 psi, and a talon strike speed of 50 miles per hour.

  “This isn’t the first time having an extrovert for a partner has come in handy,” Annette commented as a naked Nadia opened Lund’s front door and gestured them inside with a bouncy flourish.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “You were quite right, Annette,” she announced as they followed her pert backside into Lund’s living room. “Locked, but you can unlock it from either side. And I heartily doubt a Stable will scale a four-story building. Not a sensible one, at least.”

  David snorted. “Are there any sensible ones?”

  “Of course there are. There must be. The law of averages and all that.” Annette tried to give Nadia her clothes back, only to be rebuffed.

  “I’ll just have to disrobe again when I let you out the front, darling.”

  “Yes, but it’s chilly in here,” Annette explained. “Surely you’ve noticed. Your boobs certainly have.”

  “It’s even chillier riding a downdraft from ninety feet up.”

  “Point.”

  “You guys realize we’re going to get in a lot of trouble, right?” From David, who had pulled on gloves (where had he been hiding gloves?) and was now examining the bookshelves in the living room. Annette gave him points for not drooling all over Nadia’s sleek curves. Nudity, like preferences about when and where and how often to shift, was defined by individual taste. Annette wasn’t ashamed of her body, but she would have gotten dressed for the search. David, she’d noticed last night (and there was a lot to, um, notice), was matter-of-fact about his nudity but didn’t flaunt it.

  And then there was Nadia. “I daresay the aerial yoga is paying off.”

  “Is that something you do when you have wings,” Annette asked, “or are you talking about the kind where you suspend yourself in a sheet and wriggle around for half an hour?”

  “The latter. And it’s a controlled wriggle. And it’s a thirty-foot ribbon hung from the ceiling, not a sheet.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  “As for getting into trouble for our little B&E, file that under ‘duh,’” Nadia said, not unkindly. “Let us hope we find something here that will mitigate the damage to our careers.”

  “Or we could just not get caught,” David suggested.

  “Both sound ideas.”

  The walls and much of the decor in Lund’s loft were pure white, doubtless considered chic and understated by people who weren’t Annette, who likened it to living inside a marshmallow. It was an open plan, with the living room, dining room, and kitchen in the same area, and the spotless gray floor shone, making the space feel chilly and unwelcoming. The large sectional sofa was also gray, and so were the armchairs flanking it. There was gray brick outlining the fireplace, which was spotless, and the matches set neatly to the side hadn’t been opened. Lund was either a hell of a chimney sweep or he never used it.

  All space, no life. Literally. The only items breaking the monotony were the books on the shelves and the detritus of the investigators: fingerprint dust, amido black, titanium dioxide, and the like.

  “This guy’s officially a psycho,” David announced, examining a white bookshelf that held about a dozen books. “He’s got these arranged by book spine color.”

  “Truly a monstrous individual,” Annette agreed, and she was only half-kidding.

  Stairs they were in no hurry to climb led to still more white walls and presumably the upstairs bedrooms and baths. The unvaried color was broken only by an occasional dark piece of furniture or framed landscape photograph.

  “No personal photos,” David mused. “No junk drawer. Nothing on the bulletin board, not even menus. Nothing on the fridge or counters. And nothing in the fridge or cupboards. Not so much as a box of crackers.”

  “No snacks? What kind of a monster lives like this? And for…how long has he lived here?”

  “Ten months.” David closed the door of the spotless, empty fridge, then stepped to his left and opened a drawer. “One set of clean cutlery.” He closed it and shook his head. “Place looks like a movie set, not a home.”

  Upstairs there was a small alcove for a washer-dryer combo so new it still had the Best Buy stickers on it. But no detergent. No fabric softener. No lint.

  The first bedroom, also blinding white, held a perfectly made bed with a white-and-gray-striped comforter, a white chest of drawers, and a white end table. Nothing on the end table, not even a box of Kleenex.

  “It’s clear that Lund didn’t live here,” Nadia ventured. “So, then, why spend a near-fortune on an apartment you rarely use but keep so sterile it could be an operating room?”

  Annette could guess. “Something he didn’t want anyone to find out about. Something so awful he was killed for it.”

  The bathrooms each had a white washcloth on a towel rack and a single toothbrush beside the spotless sink, but no toothpaste. No floss. The toilets shone. The gleaming showers were dry.

  The last room. She knew it was coming, but Annette still winced when she saw the blood she�
�d been smelling for five minutes. The contrast after the sterile rooms was shocking. It was set up exactly as the other bedroom, except with a large circular mirror over the dresser.

  And the bloodstains, of course. “Did the techs have a cause of death?” Annette asked. “Or a best guess?”

  “Shot,” David replied. “Probably in this room—no drag marks. Somebody walked him up here, or followed him up here, produced a gun from somewhere, emptied it into him. Then did whatever else they needed to do and left. Crime-scene guys figure he bled out in under two minutes. We’ll know more once we get the ME’s report. Assuming they haven’t kicked us off the case by then.”

  “Shooting,” Nadia observed, “would preclude a teenage werewolf who likes to bite.”

  “Likes to bite Lund,” Annette corrected. “We don’t know a single thing about her life before Tuesday. Leaping to conclusions and tossing around assumptions—”

  “You make it sound like an aerobic workout.”

  “—lead to errors.”

  David touched the bottom corners of the mirror and found out the thing slid sideways, revealing a small rectangle about eighteen inches by twelve. He took the mirror down and carefully set it aside, then lightly pressed the rectangle. There was a click, and the door swung open as though it were a medicine cabinet. “Ta-da!”

  She and Nadia bumped shoulders when they leaned in for a look.

  “Empty.”

  “And shame on us for thinking it’d be that easy.” Nadia sighed.

  “That little hidey-hole isn’t just empty,” Annette said, thinking aloud. “It’s been cleaned out very carefully. There’s absolutely no indication of what might have been in there.”

  David felt around the immaculate hiding place. “Meaning you don’t think the techs emptied it and bagged the contents for evidence.”

  “Correct. I do not think that.”

  David straightened and slid the mirror back into place. “So the killer got Lund to show him his stash, shot him, grabbed his shit, and vamoosed?”

  “Or Lund had enough time to move whatever-it-was from this hidey-hole before he let his killer in.” Please let it be the latter.

  Annette went back to the washer-dryer combo and opened the front-loading door. Spotless, empty, and dry.

  “Hunch?”

  “You said it yourself, David, this isn’t a home, it’s a set. Everything’s a prop.” She tapped the washing machine. “This is newer than anything else in here—see? It’s still got the price tags. So he’s been using this place for almost a year—but not really—and then a few days ago he goes to the trouble of buying a big appliance he knows he won’t use?”

  “Oh-ho.” From Nadia. “Tricky-tricky.”

  Annette, who’d borrowed a pair of gloves from David—his jacket pocket bulged with them for some reason—pulled the machine toward her, out of the hidden recess that was barely noticeable until you were standing in front of it. And behind the machine

  “Nice.”

  was another little hidey-hole, and inside this one there were stacks of files and photos.

  Christ, the photos.

  “Lund,” David murmured, staring at a picture of a young, battered werewolf half snarling, half crouching at the camera, showing bloody flanks. “You piece of shit, I hope it hurt.”

  Chapter 13

  The other pictures were just as bad. Wolves, bear cubs, at least two foxes, and even a weretiger, a subspecies Annette had never seen before. All juveniles. All brutalized. And several had names scrawled across their pictures: Scout. Lambchop. Ruby. Baxter.

  And then…

  Jackpot.

  “Caro Daniels is from Canada,” David announced, holding up a battered driver’s license, which Annette all but snatched out of his hands to study.

  It wasn’t a license; it was a learner’s permit issued two years ago by the Alberta Ministry of Transportation, which Annette assumed was their version of Minnesota’s Division of Driver and Vehicle Services. Caro was only fourteen in the photo—Alberta was the only Canadian province that let juveniles get a permit at that age—and her small smile and shy expression made Annette’s eyes sting in a way that the worst of the abusive photos had not.

  Nadia peeked over David’s shoulder for a look. “That explains why the poor thing wasn’t in our system. It’s not international.”

  “Exactly. But this is a huge help. We’ve got something to go on. When we find her, we have to show her this.” Annette tapped the Hell Folder full of hell. “When she sees what we found, she’ll understand that we’re on her side. Maybe she’ll feel safe enough to talk.”

  The dozen or so Hell Folders indicated that the people behind Lund’s (richly deserved) murder had been preying on vulnerable juveniles for years, snatching up homeless teens, addicts, abuse victims, and runaways. Or luring them, then keeping them. In other words, they targeted the same at-risk kids IPA was sworn to protect.

  “Or it’s the opposite,” David pointed out. “Someone found out what Lund was up to and killed him for it. Not to protect themselves, but because they knew he was nothing but a sentient bag of guts that should be dropped off a roof.”

  “Urgh,” Annette said, visualizing.

  “Right—to avenge the children.” Nadia gingerly poked through the photos with one long, perfectly manicured fingernail. By her expression, even that minimal amount of contact was repellent. “A parent? Sibling?”

  Not that Lund had obligingly left much beyond some coded notes: a page of account numbers, the kids’ names, where they’d been “found,” and a series of dates that could have meant anything. Birthdays? Days they’d been kidnapped? Days they were

  (please not)

  killed and dumped?

  “Jesus Christ,” David managed, dropping a pic of a bloodied werefox cringing away from the camera. He rubbed his gloved hands together as if the latex barrier wasn’t nearly thick enough. “Every time I think I’ve seen the lowest level of fuckery… What’s that sound?”

  Nadia was that sound; she was gnashing her teeth in a slow, lateral grind. Annette had heard that sound fewer than half-a-dozen times in three years; it usually presaged felony-level acts of protective violence. “Nadia, do you need a min—”

  “We’re supposed to be better than them!” she cried, beating her small fists on the stack of folders. “Stables are the ones who foul their own nests and kill when they aren’t hungry. But this, look, and look at these, all these—they’re monstrous!” She shook a sheaf of photos at them. “And Lund did that to his own kind! No bloody wonder she went for him! I wish she’d severed his fingers and his cock!”

  “Agreed.” Well. Not entirely. Annette didn’t think Shifters were better than Stables—both species were horrible and wonderful in their own way—but this wasn’t the time to have that argument. But about the cock thing, yes. They were in absolute agreement.

  She looked at the photo again. Caro’s wolf was a brown so dark her fur looked black, her furiously bared teeth almost blinding white by comparison. Annette now understood the girl’s watchful calm in custody: she’d survived worse. Violent captivity hadn’t broken her; she likely believed the system couldn’t, either.

  Had Caro escaped that night with Lund on her trail? Or had she escaped two years ago, or any time in between, and just happened to run into him this week? A werewolf could pick up a scent trail from three miles away; had she gotten a whiff, then launched? It would explain why she had been docile ever since: mission accomplished. It also explained why someone would have let her out. Not out of sympathy for her plight. And not to give her freedom.

  To get her out from IPA’s protection, then pick her off.

  Nadia’s right. We’re supposed to be better than this. And it’s so fucking bleak when we aren’t.

  David was still shaking his head over the horrid photos. “Sure explains why Lund didn’t wan
t us sniffing around. But now what?”

  “Now we find them and set them on fire and rip their heads off and beat them bloody and pull out their hearts and punch them in their horrid faces so much.”

  “Those are all solid ideas,” Annette began. “But I think David meant what do we do with all this documented horror? Do we leave it? Take it? Hand it over to our superiors? Take it home and cry and cry and cry?”

  Nadia was already shaking her head. “We mustn’t hand it over. Our superiors essentially ordered us, ordered, not to investigate. They do not care about getting to the bottom of any of this, only closing it out. And you both know why.”

  Silence. Because they did know why.

  “They’re already edgy because there are Stables poking around. If we bring this to them, I’d wager it will all be ‘lost’ within the hour. Then we’re suspended or fired and we won’t have a bloody thing to show for it.”

  “Nadia, that sounds insane and impractical. Do you think it’s that bad?” Annette asked quietly. I know the department’s top priority is to keep hidden, but surely in a case like this…

  “Yep.” From David. “Or they’ll use it as an excuse to pin everything on Lund and officially close it out. They’re desperate to close this. It’s why they pulled the forensics guys and sealed the crime scene. They’ll slap a small bandage on a large spurting wound and call it good. We’ve gotta keep this shit, but first we need to make copies. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a numbers guy try to do something with the account numbers.”

  “Okay.” Removing (then concealing) evidence from a crime scene. Lying by omission to the authorities. Possible obstruction of justice. She couldn’t help listing the charges in her head, not that it changed a thing. “So let’s go find a UPS Store or something.”

  “Perhaps it’s not as sinister as we think,” Nadia mused. “There might well be a parallel investigation, one we’re not privy to, which our supervisor can’t share with us. Or…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Annette said. “We have to act like we think there’s a superduper sinister plot—”