Miscue

  And waited until the time to act.

  Chapter 13

  Sunday, 1:45 a.m.

  With the lights in the house turned off, Forte – dressed completely in black – was virtually invisible from where he sat in the corner of the den. He had moved one of the heavy wooden dining room chairs to that particular corner because it was the one spot where he could see three sides of the house. To his left was a wide hallway that led to a sunroom off the kitchen with a bank of windows overlooking the back yard. To his right were the ceiling-high windows that looked out into the front yard. In front of him was a picture window that faced the side yard leading all the way along the driveway to the security gate. Anyone coming into the house would have less than three seconds to adjust his eyes from the blinding glare of the outside security lights to the darkness of the house.

  About two-and-a-half seconds too long, Forte mused. His main weapon rested lightly across his knees: a Remington 870 shotgun with a black matte finish, a black molded plastic pump grip, a pistol grip, and an 18-and-a-half inch barrel. The first of the seven 12-gauge shells in the magazine was filled with hard rubber balls intended at best to stun an assailant and, at worst, to break ribs or other bones. The other six shotgun shells were loaded with lead pellets. These were designed for close-up combat: only someone in the immediate vicinity would die from the shotgun blast. None of the pellets would travel through walls far enough to escape the house and accidentally kill a neighbor a quarter mile away as a rifle bullet would do.

  All lights in the house had been doused and the music silenced more than two hours earlier. Like all of the renovated mansions in the Garden District, the Lamberth house emitted its share of creaks and groans. Forte watched the limbs of the giant oak tree in the back sway slightly in the wind that had kicked up since the afternoon. The clouds had paraded in front of a one-quarter moon for the past hour. Now they formed a bank of blackness, making the leaves of the oak a solid swatch of gray-green instead of the individual reflectors of green-silver light from the moon that they had been just an hour earlier. The edges of the single leaves were barely discernable now even to his night-ready eyes.

  Forte had developed his own regimen for these types of all-night watches. He would conduct walk-throughs in the house at irregular intervals each hour: at 13, 27, and 44 after the hour in the first hour of the watch, then 14, 28, and 45 the next, then back to the first intervals and so forth through the night. With the expensive security system that the Lamberths had in place, he knew his watchfulness was almost certainly overkill. But it was his way of doing things. And besides, his regimen would keep him occupied and alert during the long hours of darkness.

  During his times at rest in the chair, he let his mind roam over the house and the yard, imagining that it was free from his body and could see everywhere. The biggest challenge of this type of assignment was the monotony. Even if you did not succumb to sleepiness, you could easily let your mind wander along some mental trail that put you in the kind of conscious-dream zone that would rob you of alertness. A split second’s loss in response time could kill him. Which would bring death to everyone in the house.

  Forte shifted in his chair and adjusted the Velcro strap that held his bullet-proof vest close to his ribs. He checked his watch, then stood and stretched, holding the shotgun over his head as though he were about to wade through a slimy pond in Central America. He pulled a small flashlight out of a zippered pocket on the leg of his pants and clicked it on, then walked around the perimeter of the den, pausing to look out the windows at the yard. The wind made the shrubs shimmy in the corner of the front yard. The taller trees were less affected by the gusts but now even they bobbed their thick limbs like a portly woman doing water calisthenics. Forte watched the trees carefully. Nothing seemed out of place.

  He continued his tour of the downstairs, moving through the hallway to the garden room overlooking the flowers. Except for the darkness, the garden room looked the same as it had earlier in the day, the architecture and fashion magazines fanned out perfectly on the coffee table. He went into the downstairs study where Tyson Lamberth’s computer still hummed. The desk around the computer was neat but not arranged with a decorative eye. A brochure on some Caribbean island stuck out of a stack of papers at an angle. He went into each of the downstairs bathrooms, checking in the closets and shower stalls. He doubled back to the stairway and moved up to the second floor, listening to his dampened steps on the carpeted runners. The renovation crew must have done a fantastic job tightening the stairs, he thought. He could hear very few creaks as he walked, and the ones he heard sounded no louder than the regular creaks caused by the wind rushing against the old mansion.

  Forte walked along the second story landing, a polished mahogany rail to his left overlooking the den below. He approached the door of the guest bedroom and opened it, his shotgun held at an angle to the floor. He beamed his light under the bed, in the closet, in the attached bathroom. Nothing.

  He walked back out of the room and listened. The wind seemed to be blowing harder now, hinting at a storm. He walked to Hallee’s door and pushed it open.

  A flash of movement across the room. Forte silently whirled and dropped to one knee, the shotgun level now. His flashlight was at arm’s length from his body, to lure gunfire away from the center of his body.

  The curtain over the center window billowed out and receded. The girl had left the window open.

  In the bed, the girl slept, her breathing deep and steady.

  Forte let the beam of the flashlight travel along the wall as he remained on one knee. Satisfied that it was just the wind, he rose and walked over the window. He could see the first drops of rain from the incoming storm hitting the shingles of the garage as the roof slanted down from Hallee’s room. He latched the window and pulled the curtain closed again.

  The girl shifted in the bed but did not wake up. Forte went out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  He stood on the second floor landing for a moment and listened to the sounds of rushing wind and drumming rain as the storm continued to build outside.

  He went up the stairs to the third floor landing. The master bedroom with an attached reading room, walk-in closets and a Jacuzzi bathroom occupied the entire third floor of the house. Forte walked past the bedroom door and listened without going inside. No sounds came from the bedroom. He walked back down the stairs, through the dining room and into the kitchen.

  He moved the shotgun so it would hang from its strap around his neck and lie along his back. He opened the refrigerator, took out a pitcher of orange juice and set it on the countertop where he and the city cop had stood talking about 14 hours earlier. To Forte, it seemed like much more time had passed since then. He took a tumbler out of one of the grass-front cabinets above the countertop and poured it full of orange juice.

  The fluttering curtain in Hallee’s room had spooked him just enough to release some adrenaline into his system. He still felt it. The event did not annoy him. On the contrary, after he saw that the girl was safe, he had felt a tiny bit of satisfaction at his response. It was exactly right, just as he had first been trained years ago. And just as his yearly training retreats had been designed to produce. He did not want his alertness to wane when the adrenaline went way. The orange juice would help.

  He sipped the juice and watched the rain drum against the kitchen window. Without any light to shine through its transparence, the rivulets of raindrops ran like mercury on the panes of glass. Lightning flashed and the water sparkled in the blue streak of light. The darkness dropped again even more heavily now. Forte counted. One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three… The thunder crashed. The storm was close.

  Twenty-four hours, Forte thought. Sometimes they filled a day that seemed the same as the day before that and the day before that and the days of weeks and months and years before that. Then again, sometimes there came a stretch of 24 hours that completely changed your life. For good or bad. The trouble w
as you never had any clue whether the upcoming day would be the same-old-same-old kind or the kind that tore your life apart as quickly and effortlessly as a lightning bolt splits a Sequoia.

  Twenty-four hours earlier he had been standing in the gallery after the meeting, listening to his sponsor Manning Laird tell a tale of alcoholic mishap from his days as a merchant marine. “When I woke up, a pair of Hong Kong hookers were standing in the alley fighting over my pants. They thought I was dead. I sat up and yelled, ‘Hey, is this Oahu?' It scared them so bad they dropped the pants and took off. I didn’t catch up with my boat until it had docked back in San Francisco.” The small cluster of people around him burst into that special kind of laughter reserved for those who had, at one time or another, drunk from that common cup of hopelessness.

  In the 24 hours since, a man had died, a baby saved. A husband gone, a father’s life extinguished. He stood in the dead man’s kitchen, filling a role for the simple reason that he could do it. And somewhere, people still slept peacefully or made love or danced the night away.

  The kitchen lit up again as the lightning flashed. One-thousand-one, one-thou…Boom came the thunder. The storm was almost on top of them.

  Forte tilted the tumbler back and drained it, then stepped to the sink and rinsed it.

  A scream came from upstairs.

  Before the scream had spent itself Forte was at the foot of the stairs. He clicked the safety to the off position as he swung the shotgun around to face forward and bolted up the stairs three at a time.

  He went through Hallee’s door low and rolled to the left. He came up and swung the barrel across the room. Nothing moved.

  Hallee rolled over in her bed and mumbled something. She immediately went back to sleep.

  Forte slowly came up from his crouch. He shined the flashlight across the room, in the closet and the bathroom again. Nothing.

  Crash. The sound came from upstairs.

  He ran up to the third floor and paused just as another scream came from the master bedroom.

  He kicked open the door and went in low again.

  A lamp from the nightstand had been swept onto the floor, where it rolled lazily on the carpet. Forte trained the shotgun on the movement of the lamp. He swept the room with the light.

  Freida Lamberth lay thrashing across the bed diagonally, the sheet and covers half off of her. A low moan of terror came from her throat. Then another scream, the hoarse kind of scream that sounded like it would hurt your throat for days afterward.

  Forte quickly darted past the bed. He crouched and flung open the doors of the reading room, the bathroom, the closets. Nothing. He looked out the window. The rain was pounding the house now but the security lights in the yard below were still off.

  He walked back to the bed. The woman’s silk nightgown had ridden high on her thigh. Forte bent over to pull the sheet back over her. Lightning flashed just as the woman twisted in the bed again. He could see a tiny butterfly high on her hip. The tattoo’s bright red, yellow and blue was surreal, like a dream itself. Then the room was dark once more.

  He clicked the safety on and bent and put the shotgun on the floor. He pulled the sheets over her bare legs. The thunder crashed. She screamed again and bolted upright in the bed.

  “You killed him!” she screamed, flailing with her fists.

  One punch caught him on the cheek before he could catch her wrists and hold her still. “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s a nightmare. You were dreaming.”

  Freida struggled and made a guttural sound like an animal in pain. Then Forte felt the fight go out of her. She was strong but now she seemed to shrink in his arms. She held onto him sobbing. He could feel hot tears trickling down his neck to his shirt collar as she pressed against him.

  He made a small attempt to release her but she clung to him. Her crying was mixed with a racking moan he had heard before. From his own mouth.

  He held her. A few moments passed and the sobbing died away. He could feel her breath steady against his neck. She made no noise now.

  He became aware of the heat of her body against him. The thin silk of her nightgown slid beneath his hands as she moved. He could feel her lips against his neck. Her breathing was faster now.

  Her teeth grazed his chin. His arms still surrounded her. “Freida,” he said, his voice hoarse. He pulled his head back slightly to see her face.

  She kissed him, frantic and deep, the breath from her nostrils hot on his face. He tensed. He kissed her back.

  He could hear a low moan as they pressed together. The straps of her gown were off her shoulders. The press of their embrace pushed it lower.

  He kissed her neck. His skin was burning now. So long. It had been so long.

  Suddenly he froze.

  “No,” he said. “Not…”

  She lunged toward him, grabbing his head in her hands, trying to kiss him. “Please,” she said, her voice trembling.

  He gently took her wrists in his hands and held them.

  The lightning flashed again. One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, one-thou… The thunder followed. The storm was moving past now.

  She struggled against him now. In the light from the flash, her face was a mask of pain.

  She leaned away from him. He could hear the rustling of fabric as she pulled the strap of her nightgown back up to her shoulders. In the darkness, he imagined that she faced away from him as she reached down and pulled the bedcovers up to her chin.

  Forte stepped over to a loveseat and sat on the edge of it. “You are a beautiful woman…”

  “Hush,” she said. Her voice was soft but insistent. “My fault.”

  Outside the wind howled and the rain pummeled the windows.

  She reached over to the bedside and turned on the radio. A slow-dance tune from Duke Ellington filled the room. She reached into the drawer under the table and pulled out cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one without offering one to him. In the light of the flame, he could see her tear-streaked cheeks. “Tyson wouldn’t let me smoke in here,” she said.

  He did not respond. In the darkness of the room, he could smell the smoke before he saw it. It held no comfort for him.

  “You were dreaming,” he said.

  She inhaled and held it. He could tell from the cigarette’s glow that her face was still pointed away from him. “I don’t remember.”

  “You screamed.”

  The red tip of the cigarette pointed at him. “I did?”

  “Yes. It’s why I came in here.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  He stood up. His head felt light. “The pain comes out in different ways sometimes.” He moved toward the door.

  She said nothing at first. When she spoke, her voice was so soft he could barely hear her now. “I’m sorry.”

  He paused, his hand on the door. “Yeah, me too.”

  He closed the door behind him and walked to the rail overlooking the den. He stood with his hands on the rail looking at the darkness below for a moment. Then he turned and walked to the landing and down the stairs.

  On the second floor landing he glanced at Hallee’s closed door as he started down the stairs.

  He stopped.

  Hallee’s door was closed.

  Closed? Hadn’t he left it open earlier?

  He raced toward Hallee’s room and crashed open the door.

  The bed was empty.

  Chapter 14

  Sunday, 3 a.m.

  Three eight-foot yellow ladders straddled the furniture in the den, FBI technicians perched atop them. They busily plucked screwdrivers from their tool belts as they dismantled the sconce light fixtures on the wall and the battery-operated fire alarm. Another technician stood in front of the security system box by the kitchen door, peering into the tangle of wires inside the defaced unit. The white carpet in the den was waffled with muddy footprints.

  Forte sat in an easy chair near the corner where he had set up his watch post, watching the army of people rushing in and out o
f the house. On the dining room table rested his shotgun, its shells pocketed by the first cop on the scene. Forte had been running through the Garden District away from the house when two New Orleans police cars caught up with him, took away his weapon and made him lie on the street face-down. He could still feel bits of street grit on the front of his black tee-shirt. When Rosalind Dent had shown up a quarter hour later, he was uncuffed, interviewed briefly by one of her assistants, and told to remain at the house but stay out of the way.

  If anyone in the house happened to look in his direction, they saw a disheveled man with a comatose expression on his face. Underneath, Forte seethed. But he forced himself into a state of numbness. He would let the strong emotions come to him later. For the moment, however, he listened, straining to pick up every bit of information he could.

  A man in a suit with a clipboard spoke quietly to the technician at the alarm panel. “A remote device?”

  The technician illuminated the inside of the alarm box with a small flashlight. “Yep. Look. Here’s where the override unit was clipped into the system. It was really small and hidden behind the wires. You wouldn’t have noticed it at first even if you were looking for something hinky in here. When he wanted to shut off the system, he just hit a button on his remote. When he wanted to turn the alarms back on, he hit another button.”

  Another tech with a beard joined them, holding up a small electronic component in his rubber-gloved hand. “Found six of these miniature cameras so far. The newest and best. These little babies can capture high-resolution video images in low-light and beam them a mile away. Sweet.”

  The man in the suit jotted notes on the clipboard, glanced at Forte then motioned to the others to move to another room.

  Rosalind Dent came through the front door wearing an FBI raincoat with the hood laid back on her shoulders. Her short-cropped black hair was spiked with moisture. She walked past Forte without looking at him. Another agent in a suit waited for her at the bottom of the stairs while he scraped mud off his shoes with the edge of a clipboard.

  “No blood in the girl’s bedroom. No signs of struggle,” he said, his voice low. “The lab needs to confirm, but looks like he drugged her, took her out the window, lowered her down from the garage roof, took her over the wall and through the neighbor’s yard. Neighbor’s dog was found knocked out.” He looked up from the notebook in his hand. “The guy is strong and knows what the hell he’s doing.”