412 Ocean Avenue was a squat, cookie-cutter house, complete with stucco and vinyl siding, that wouldn't have looked out of place in any suburb. Alyssa killed the engine of their jeep, sighing contentedly as she looked the place over.
"I'd kill for a house like that."
"Wait three days, you might not have to."
"Hmmm," Alyssa grinned, tapping her fingers against her flat abdomen. "We might take you up on that."
Abby regarded her a long moment, and said, lowly, "You're quitting when you have the baby, right?"
Alyssa didn't answer, but she didn't have to. Alyssa was ten years older than her, Caulder older still, and they were going to be parents shortly. Their work wasn't compatible with that lifestyle, Sommer and Zoe notwithstanding. They deserved a chance at normality.
"Let's go," Alyssa said, resolutely opening and slamming her door. Abby chucked the strap of the black camera bag around her shoulders and followed. The camera weighed next to nothing compared to the .357 magnums she'd stuck in beside it. It didn't ameliorate her nagging sense of impropriety about going in so lightly armed, even if she wasn't expecting a fight. This work was all about anticipating and being prepared for trouble regardless of circumstance.
Alyssa swept her hair back over one shoulder, tossing her head with a wave to settle her sun-kissed, marigold locks. Abby hadn't seen her so composed in any of the weeks past since they'd begun working together, and professional envy preyed upon this admiration. Investigatory methods that employed killing with kindness, role-playing, and improvisation were as foreign to her as the sunny avenues and suburbs they traversed now.
Slate steps cut a path across emerald blades of grass, a distance of about twenty feet between the front door and the curb. She counted off their paces as they approached, fifteen for her, twenty-three Alyssa in her pumps. If they were attacked, Alyssa would regret that sacrifice of function for fashion. She had to admit that the other woman dressed the part of reporter pretty well, wardrobe deficiencies aside.
Ditzy, sleazy smile firmly in place, back straight to push out her breasts farther than the Wonderbra alone could manage, Alyssa pressed an immaculately manicured fingernail to the buzzer. "Ode to Joy" chimed through the space on the opposite side of the door.
"Lovely," Alyssa muttered without losing her grin, primping her hair needlessly. The effect was astonishing; the more Alyssa wanted to appear a bimbo, the more it was all Abby could see.
"You do this a lot?"
Alyssa arched a thin eyebrow. "I used to work in a salon. You get all types, but the repeats tend to be," she hesitated, tapping a fingernail to her lips, selecting for a more democratic word. That was more like the woman Abby knew. "Let's just say the clientele don't always challenge your brain so much as your patience."
Alyssa rung again and started to hum along to the doorbell chimes, continuing the hymn when the novelty buzzer faded away. She waited out two minutes, precisely by Abby's count, and rang once more to the same effect. No answer.
Automatically, Abby clicked into combat mode, spine stiffening. She catalogued the yard in front of them at a glance: cars, two of them in the driveway; a basketball hoop above the garage door; a bike left by the bushes on its side; a swing hanging from a tree. No signs of violence, only of interruption, of family life on pause. They'd chosen this time expecting to catch only Leung's wife and children at home. The house appeared to still be waiting for them, its toys expectant of the boys, the cars ready to take the family out again. But the Leungs should have been there by now.
Curtains in the bay window were drawn against the sunlight, and a shifting queasiness wormed through her soul. The weather was temperate and mild, the day gorgeous and airy, and 412 was the only house on the block with nary a window keen to enjoy nature's good mood.
"Stay here," Abby mumbled, edging closer to Alyssa. Nodding, Alyssa slipped her hand into the camera bag and removed a black canister of vampire mace - essence of garlic, EDTA, and silver nitrate, an especially nasty cocktail - and shoved it into her handbag.
"If someone answers, I'll stall till you get back."
"If it's not them, ask for the Smiths. They'll redirect you, and you leave."
Alyssa nodded, tossing her hair, unfazed. "I'll wait two blocks east and one south, by the gas mart we passed."
Abby closed her hand over the butt of one of the pistols as she vaulted over the railing lining the stairs leading up to the door. "Keep ringing the bell every two minutes so I know you're okay," she called over her shoulder.
Glancing up and down the street, Abby marked the potential witnesses. Five houses down, on the next block, a man in a suit picked up a child who'd come flying out the door to greet him. In the other direction, a car honked at a mother helping her daughter navigate their way to the park on a tricycle. All around her were people living ordinary lives. Behind her was a house possibly hiding an extraordinary and most likely gruesome secret.
As nonchalantly as she could, Abby sidled along the front, casually peering at the curtains to no effect; the opaque material denied any view of the interior. She reached the edge of the house and rounded the corner, pulling the magnum's handle out one side of the camera bag. Keeping one eye on the kitchen window of the neighbor's house - which, this being a suburb of San Francisco, was too close to Leung's house for Abby's liking - she ducked between the buildings for the back door.
A paved space, suitable for a grill party and not much else, predominated the small backyard. Flush with the back wall, she peered up at the window overlooking the yard, leaning far enough out to check for anyone standing just inside. Seeing no one, she extracted her magnum fully, cautiously covering it from prying eyes by tucking it between her and the bag, and crept up the stairs to the backdoor.
The screen opened with a shuddering, metallic yawn from the rusty hinge, and Abby paused, sandwiched between it and the wooden door, magnum in her left hand. She moved to put an ear to the door when it fell inwards with the gentlest push of her fingertips.
Not good. The silence reassured her, as did the strains of "Ode to Joy" coming from across the house: no one had heard her at the door and Alyssa was safe. It was time to proceed. She eased herself inside sideways, bringing up her sidearm with both hands to steady it.
The kitchen displayed the same average style as the house itself, nothing too flashy or posh but nothing gaudy or mismatched either. An ovular chestnut breakfast table in one corner had chairs pulled out at random. Remnants of an after-school snack of fruit roll-ups and soda were haphazardly strewn on and around the table in a manner indicative of forgetful children in a hurry to be somewhere else.
And a middle-aged woman lay crumpled atop the form of a small child in the middle of the country-blue, flower-tiled floor. Abby lowered her weapon, dropping to a crouch as she drew nearer to them. She smelled blood; the bodies were still. She pressed two fingers to the woman's wrist. No pulse, though the corpse was considerably warmer than the air around her - she hadn't been dead too long.
In midst of death, "Ode to Joy" cheerily played.
Abby backed away from the bodies, rage balling up in her throat. She performed a perfunctory sweep of the first floor - unoccupied save for the deceased - and went to the front door to let Alyssa in.
"Hi! I'm-" She stopped when she saw Abby and wordlessly stepped into the front hall, closing the door behind her. "Nobody home?"
"Nobody breathing."
Alyssa brushed by her, headed for the bodies as if by instinct before Abby could warn her. To her credit, the other woman made no sound when she discovered what the vampires had left behind. Abby walked back to the kitchen to find her seated next to their heads, brushing a bit of hair out of the woman's face.
"This is his wife. I recognize her from the pictures Fox had." The hair that she moved aside revealed a ragged bite mark over the carotids on her neck. The skin was sallow and gray, no blood left to pool under the skin and form a bruise after death.
"I figured as much."
"And her son," Alyssa covered her mouth with her hand. The floozy reporter act had evaporated. She reached for the boy, but Abby brought her up short with a hissed command.
"Don't. Don't move them. This could be a setup." Or if not, they could easily blunder into one. No one yet knew there was anything amiss at the Leung household, but they would eventually. Any alterations they made to the crime scene might point the finger at them for the murders.
"He's only a boy," Alyssa hiccupped, angrily swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. A testament to her skill and savvy, her makeup remained immaculate.
"This is the younger boy?" Abby prompted her, keeping her focused.
"Yes. Matthew." Alyssa blinked up at her. "What about the other boy?"
"I'll check upstairs. Stay here." As an afterthought, she tossed Alyssa the other gun and dropped the camera bag. Better to be unencumbered as she snooped around.
She moved through the house on tiptoe, tensing at every natural creak in the floorboards and scratch of tree branches on windowpanes. She didn't stop to investigate the first floor more thoroughly. It was sparsely furnished and impeccably neat; they had to make this quick, so anything not hiding in plain sight, she didn't stop for.
On the second floor, she scanned family photos, noting that there was only one in which three children were present, the most Leung had ever managed to keep alive at once. The master bedroom and its adjoining bath were spotless displays of deranged perfection, evidence of a person driven to occupy her body in order to quiet her mind.
Only the smaller bedrooms, one decorated in falling down Yu-Gi-Oh posters and the other with punk rock paraphernalia, looked lived in, the way boys' rooms often do. She flipped through the debris in the younger boy's room, swallowing against a sob upon seeing the abandoned and now ownerless toys. It reminded her uncomfortably of disposing of Hedges' collectibles at the Honeycomb.
The older boy's room yielded more interesting results. A CPU-less monitor lay end-up on the floor, shards from the screen littered around the unkempt desk. The accompanying components of the missing computer lay forgotten or thrown aside. Nothing for them to salvage here; whatever might have been on boy's computer was gone.
Paper crinkled beneath her foot as she backed out. She dropped her gaze to the floor and snatched at the thin band she had stepped on.
"Patrick Leung." There were numbers and letters in a jumble that Fox and Gidge might be able to decipher, but the Biomedica logo she recognized all on her own. A hospital bracelet bearing the boy's name and the corporate seal of the vampires was no coincidence. She pocketed it.
The rest of the second floor yielded nothing of interest save an empty docking station for a laptop in the den, and a folded ceiling ladder to the attic that she had no time to explore. The bracelet was enough.
Rejoining Alyssa in the kitchen, she found the other woman reading mail from a metal bin on the marble countertop.
"Bills, mostly," Alyssa said, absently, flicking through the pile with her fingernail. "Nothing from Biomedica."
"Not nothing."
Alyssa looked up. "You found something?"
She nodded. "You?"
"I guess the clean-up crew missed this one." Alyssa held up a flimsy piece of ripped paper; behind her, a thumbtack held down the rest of the note. She plucked it from Alyssa's fingers, exchanging the bracelet in return for Alyssa to examine. The note read: Chris - Isaac will pick up the packages for Thursday, call him. There was a number jotted beneath.
"Isaac?" Abby turned the note over. Nothing else was written on the other side. "Packages?"
"You got me." Alyssa shrugged, rubbing the bracelet between her fingers, her expression thoughtful. "This is the older boy. Patrick." She swallowed heavily once. "Did you find him, too?"
Abby shook her head. "No sign. But they took his computer and the laptop from the study upstairs."
"Then let's get out of here." Alyssa said, shortly, "Nothing much else to see." Her face was blank, her tone flat, and her posture slack with defeat. Despite her words, she remained rooted to the spot, staring mournfully at the bodies on the floor. "If only we'd gotten here sooner…"
"They'd probably still be dead."
"But why? Why do this? Why stop killing only to start again?"
"Maybe they thought we might abscond with their guest of honor." No, vampires weren't that altruistic. Leung had to have leverage or to have rendered a service they deemed irreplaceable for them to protect him.
"Maybe Leung graduated up and didn't want anything left of his old life." Alyssa's shrewd coldness surprised her; while not a comforting rationalization, it was probably true. Familiars weren't known for their attachment to family and friends or their compassion for the human race; they wouldn't try to become vampires if they liked people.
Neither had an answer that appealed, so they made their exit. Alyssa went out the front, her charming giggle and bubbly walk reasserting themselves as she thanked an empty house for its time. Abby joined her by the circuitous route around the back, relieved to catch the strains of a rowdy conversation of the neighbor's; they hadn't been spotted entering or leaving.
She reached the car to find Alyssa on the phone. Abby held her tongue while Alyssa listened then brought the phone away from her ear to bring her up to speed.
"Gidge called. He said something about Fox, but I couldn't make it out. He gets so incoherent when he's tired." She sighed and put the mobile back to her ear and listened again. "Jesus, he's left like five messages." Alyssa frowned mightily, trying to piece together the words. "Fox is out?"
"Shit," Abby pinched the bridge of her nose. She'd told her. She'd told her to take it easy. When they left, Fox had been helping Caulder with Daystar. Why had she assumed Fox would listen to her and stay put?
"And," Alyssa continued, chewing her lip, "they know she's here?" Abby nodded, confirming this. "And…" Alyssa trailed off, hitting a button to skip to her next message. She nearly threw the phone away from her ear when it started; the voice on the other end was screaming so loud Abby could hear it. Alyssa lowered the volume and tried again. Abby held her breath and, after a beat, Alyssa did the same.
"What? What?" Alyssa's shell-shocked expression set her stomach to roiling. Too many doomsday scenarios flashed through her imagination: Fox discovered, the base compromised, King exposed, Zoe… "What?"
Alyssa's lower lip trembled as she turned her head to face Abby.
"You have a visitor."