There were various incisions in the torso. All were perfectly made, allowing the skin to be peeled back and the organs removed. Such a careful procedure required skilled precision and sterile conditions. Neither of which were found on a flooded riverbank.
I slid the switchblade from my back pocket. Using the blade, I lifted the largest flap of skin. The ribcage underneath was too thick and long to be human. I turned the torso and inspected the back. The spine was missing. “That’s… new.”
Chowing down on an arm or leg was one thing. But a spine?
I pushed my empathy out, but there was no trauma, no sense of death to indicate anyone had died here. Blood splatter might have helped, but it wasn’t always necessary to kick my retro-cognition into gear. I’d gotten visions from corpses that were little more than bone. Today, though: nothing.
On the plus side, not publicly spiraling into a death-glimpse filled with suffering, in front of the entire forensics team and a dozen cops, was probably for the best. I didn’t need to escalate Creed’s scrutiny by passing out in front of him. Again.
He returned to hover at my shoulder, and I motioned at the neck. “Ventral and dorsal bite and claw marks, possibly canine. They had a good hold, too. The tearing is substantial.”
“If you’re going to tell me this was wild dogs—”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Detective. Wild dogs would have damaged more than one area of the body. This was a controlled feed.”
He stared a moment, brow tight, as if the phrase made him uncomfortable. “And the rest? Those look like surgical incisions.”
“They are.” I lifted the flap again.
Creed bent, taking a closer look. “He’s missing a few things.”
“He’s missing everything.” I let the skin drop. “Being subject to the elements makes it hard to tell, but I think this was recently done, in the last day or two. Somewhere with a worktable and professional tools. The remains were brought here after and buried.”
“It’s been raining for a week. What idiot buries his dismembered victims in shallow graves near an overflowing river?”
“Unless they didn’t hear the forecast.”
“Impossible. The media hasn’t shut up about this damn rain all week. Instead of a psychotic surgeon who’s deaf and blind, maybe whoever did this missed the forecast because they couldn’t understand the language—because they aren’t human.”
I stared at the body, considering my next move.
So far, I’d played it low key with Creed. Attempting to quench his thirst for answers and keep him safe, I revealed only what was necessary to solve whatever strange homicide crossed his desk. And it was effective. We’d closed five cases since Mayor Anderson greenlighted the UCU. The per-diem nature of the officers assigned to the task force made it (slightly) easier to keep them on the peripheral. Creed was more of a challenge. Somehow, I’d managed to shield him from any physical altercations with the monsters. Though, he was resisting more each time.
In short: he didn’t like when I insisted it was too dangerous, or when I leveraged my knowledge against his inexperience. I didn’t like the tension it created. But revealing the whole, gritty truth of joined worlds, lurking monsters, and nosey dragons—and my colored past—would change things between us in ways I didn’t want.
Yet, I had to give him something. “This isn’t human,” I said. “And, while the evidence is inconsistent, I’m not sure our killer is, either.”
Relief filled his gaze. I wasn’t sure the emotion existed long enough for his brain to register. But I saw it. I knew. Every suspicion I confirmed, made the man feel less crazy about his own, fateful brush with the unexplained.
“What are the odds this is a one and done?” he said.
“You mean, the creature wreaked havoc, littered evidence all over the riverbank, and skipped town? Could be. Or we’re just getting started.”
Creed ran a distressed hand over the blonde-tips of his hair. “What a goddamn shit-storm this one’s going to be.”
“Oh, please. Like your blood isn’t pumping.”
Creed shot me a glare, but he didn’t deny it. He couldn’t. Everyone at the station knew the man fed off shit-storms. It wasn’t a bad thing. His laser focus and dogged search for answers were endearing in a special, frustrating, Creed sort of way. I admired his commitment, his courage and passion. It was the man’s misdirected anger I had to watch out for.
I stared up the bank. “There’s another torso.”
“Where?” His gaze followed mine. “All I see is timber.”
“Maybe you need new glasses.”
He pushed the black rimmed frames up with purpose. “Maybe, you’re bullshitting me.”
“Alex,” I gasped. “When have I ever done that?”
“Every goddamn day.”
“You could get a real partner.”
“I could. But I'd like that even less than your bullshit.”
I got a glimpse of his grin as he turned away.
We walked farther up the beach toward the shoreline. No more than an inch of sand separated a lonely, severed arm and the waves lapping at its doorstep. Tendons and the uneven edges of bone were visible. There was no animal damage this time. The swollen, bluish-gray sheath of skin appeared human.
So did Ella Chandler.
Ella and her family were among the victims in my first case with the SCPD. Posing as an arson consultant was meant to be a temporary job to help solve and conceal the bizarre, brutal murders of a seemingly ordinary family. This case wasn’t even pretending to be ordinary.
Creed motioned at the river walk. “We’ll be lucky if we get any security footage. The power’s been out in the park for two days. There aren’t any traffic cams on the access road, either. We’ll have to go wider.”
“All these low-lying areas have been dealing with flooding for days. Only city workers and emergency vehicles had a reason to be down here. Anything else should stand out.” I took the phone from my pocket. “I’ll text Evans and have him look for any cameras on the surrounding blocks.”
“Tell him to go back three or four days. And start with the overnight feed. This wasn’t a daytime job.” As I started typing the message, a sense of hesitation overcame him. Creed stepped away. He came back. Then stepped away again. I hit “send’ and looked up. “Something on your mind?”
“It can wait.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
He wandered closer. “This really isn’t the place.”
“You’re worried about decorum? Have you looked around? I’m pretty sure, where we’re standing right now, anything goes.”
Creed shook his head with a weary chuckle. He liked my irreverent humor, even when he pretended not to. “It’s the mayor,” he relented. “Anderson’s hosting some charity function on Halloween. He wants me there, to thank me in person for what the task force has done to protect the city. Or so he says.”
“You think he’s lying?”
“I think, he wants to make sure I know who’s really in charge of the UCU—and the cost of screwing up. And that’s a lion’s den I am not going into alone.”
“Then bring a date.”
“A date?” he scoffed. “I need backup.”
“It’s a charity dinner, Alex. Not a stakeout.”
“Either way, you’re going. The mayor’s anxious to meet you.”
Sliding my phone away, I froze. “What? Why?”
Creed scratched his chin, attempting to hide his guilty smile. “I might have mentioned how much you love Halloween. And parties.”
“I never said that. And I hate parties.”
“At least I won’t be the only one who’s miserable.”
“I’m—” going to kill you, I thought, faking a smile, “flattered. Really. It was nice of him to include me. But why don’t we file that under things neither of us are looking forward to and get back to the body fragments sprinkled over the ground?”
Banishing the invitation to the back of my mind, I walked o
ver to the young forensic tech crouched in the sludge. She paused her work and looked up with a chipper, “Morning.” Her eager stare shifted to Creed as he approached. She offered him a smile as blinding as the orange, Pumpkin Spice Is My Blood Type, t-shirt peeking out of her jacket. “Detective. Nice to see you.”
“Harper,” he replied, far less enthusiastic. “Having fun?”
Her smile wavered.
I rescued her with a curious, “What do you have there?”
Harper cleared her throat and presented the arm in her hand. “This belonged to a white male, late twenties, early thirties. It was severed with a single, swift blow. Most likely with a large knife or cleaver. And before you ask,” she added quickly. “There’s no sign of a weapon. No clothing, jewelry, and no IDs. If there were fibers or hairs, the water washed them away. And you can forget fingerprints. They were burned off.”
“Burned?” Creed tossed me a glare, like I'd done the deed myself.
“Yep,” Harper sighed. “All this evidence, and we’ve got a big, fat zero. Unless we find a DNA match in the system, identifying who the pieces belong to is going to be a real bitch.”
“That torso up there,” I tilted my head back the way we came, “shows signs of an animal attack.”
“We’ve got some here, too.” Harper flipped over the arm, displaying a long swipe of claws on the underside. “We pulled a broken tooth from one of the legs. We’ve got ligature marks. Some broken fingers. Decomposition is farther along on some, but I’d say most of the amputations were recent.”
“Do you have a total count yet?” Creed asked her.
“So far…” Thinking, Harper urged her glasses up with the back of her gloved hand. “Seventeen—no eighteen, amputated limbs and appendages, two torsos, and a head. Based on the different genders, skin pigments and size… To be honest, Detective, I don’t think we have a single, complete body in the bunch.”
“Son of a bitch,” he breathed.
“We should check missing persons,” I said, and Creed’s stare jumped to mine. His brow pinched. His jaw tightened in accusation. He thinks I know what did this. But I didn’t. Those who came here to indiscriminately feed understood they were breaking laws established centuries ago by the dragons of Drimera. The offending creatures might get cocky and discard a body or two where they shouldn’t. That was usually where I came in. But this was a goddamn feast.
“I’ve never worked a body dump anything like this.” Harper swept a wistful gaze over the muddy bank. “I wish Dr. Winters was here. She was always so—” Gaping at Creed, Harper fumbled for an apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I wish she was here, too.”
His stare drifted, and Harper shot me a pained wince. Having been in her position a few times, I knew how she felt. But it was an innocent mistake. Months had passed since the death of Dr. Samantha Winters, the city’s Chief Medical Examiner. The loss wasn’t fresh. Except to Creed. Sam broke off their engagement years ago, but I’d seen the remnant of a spark between them. Someday, it might have grown to be more, if she hadn’t swerved to miss a deer and plummeted down a ravine.
At least, so the report said.
Hiding Sam’s brutal death from my partner, lying to him when he flinched at every mention of her name, was hard as hell. Not because I killed her. Because I didn’t save her.
I brought us back on track with a loud, “Anything else?”
“Nothing you’ll like,” she said. “Mutilation isn’t our killer’s only hobby. He’s also been skinning things.”
Creed pounced on that. “What kind of things?”
“Reptiles. Canines. Marine Animals. Something with a blue pigment I can’t identify. People,” she added with a reluctant glance between us. “Some of the animals are scalp to tail. We’ve got a few sleeves. A chest. A man’s face. A few were badly decomposed, and there’s more we haven’t classified yet. But get this… The skin was preserved.”
“Like taxidermy?” I said.
“I’ve only seen two of the pieces, but I’m thinking a wet tan. My dad’s a hunter,” she added, as we both squinted at her. “Instead of dehydrating the skin, it’s treated and frozen until use. Crazy, huh?” she said, struggling not to sound fascinated. “I wonder how he decides what to keep, what to dump, and what to tan?”
“Can you go back to the reptiles?” I said. “I assume you mean snakes?”
“Maybe. Could be. Probably. But it’s way too big to come from anything around here. Which is fine by me. Something that big and scaly belongs in a jungle far, far away from me.”
I smiled, trying not to take offense. “And the marine animal?”
“It’s not my expertise, but my guess is it came from a seal.”
Close, I thought. Selkie shed their aquatic skin when they shift into human. But they didn’t leave it lying around. “If our killer has a thing for tanning illegally imported animals, it might give us a place to start.” More likely, it was a dead end. But if it gave the team a focus that was safer than the truth, even temporarily, I’d take it.
As Creed peppered Harper with more questions, I turned to watch the river and tried to make sense of the pieces.
Most creatures hunted with a specific dietary pattern, not a random menu. Some had methods for preserving their prey, but they didn’t remove organs with surgical skill or tan their victim’s skin—and then throw it away. Those felt far more like the actions of a human serial killer. As did our suspect’s decision to bury the remains close to the surface. It was an act that implied desperation, arrogance, or just plain ignorance. Put a creature in the mix, and those reasons became a whole lot muddier.
The whole damn thing is muddy.
We had victims from multiple species. Evidence eroded by the weather. An animal attack with claw marks in line with those I’d seen on the banshee last night. Wounds from various sources, and no hint of a motive. Food was the standard drive for a creature, but I wasn’t convinced hunger had prompted the kills. The surgical dismemberments felt more like a want instead of a need. They felt methodical. Exacting. Yet, somehow sloppy. They felt like…
I let out a quiet sigh. I have no fucking idea.
Three
It was late morning by the time we left the river. Exactly nine minutes and twenty seconds later, we turned around and headed three blocks back, for our second call of the day. Dispatch was more cryptic than informative this time, sending us to the edge of the old industrial district, and describing the scene as “one for the record books”. I wasn’t sure what could possibly top the garland of body parts strewn across the riverbank. But it was only Monday. The week was young.
We arrive to a sloped street blocked off by two firetrucks, three SUVs, a van with the water department logo on the side, and three squad cars. At the bottom of the grade, suit-clad city officials were conversing with a crew of maintenance workers in rubber waders. The firefighters nearby were packing up to leave. Every now and then, someone gestured unhappily at the water gurgling and spraying from the overflowing sewer drains to flood the street.
It was, at most, five inches deep. The wet uniform pants of the officers directing traffic implied the water level had been much higher when they arrived.
As we got out, Creed set the parking brake. I didn’t tease him. He had a habit of trashing cars, and we were near the top of an incline. Though Sentinel City was built mostly on flat ground, the slopes here formed a near-perfect ring around the old neighborhood below.
I imagined it was picturesque once, before the city was founded. A grassy basin surrounded by forested hills on three sides and flatland leading to the river on the fourth. Then people moved in and crammed it full of factories. Years later, when the factories were accused of re-routing sewer passages to hide their waste and dump it in the river, the neighborhood slowly became a ghost town—and the source of several local legends. Years of court battles left many owners bankrupted. Few had the money required for cleaning up their own mess. Thos
e who did still maintained businesses in the area, but most of the structures at the center of the EPA nightmare, stood as sad, empty, concrete reminders of another era.
Maybe the legends were wrong, and there was never toxic waste in the sewer. But there were bodies. Pieces of them, anyway, I thought, as the severed appendages bobbed up out of the bubbling drain to float in the street. At twenty-feet away, the water-logged remains appeared human. But after the scene at the river, I was guessing the bloated, sallow parade of parts was a mixed bag.
“Why don’t you take a look?” Creed said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
We separated. I went to check out the flood, and he headed to where a robust man in a pinstripe suit, and an older woman with a clipboard, were shouting at each other. Occasionally, they stopped to shout at one of the city workers, who didn’t hesitate to come back with a heated reply. Preoccupied with assigning blame, no one was doing the one thing they should have been doing: going into the sewer to see what the fuck was going on.
At least someone here has a brain, I thought, watching Evans squat beside an open manhole on one of the sloped cross streets. He clicked on a flashlight and peered inside. Curious, I hurried over and crouched beside him. Sunlight illuminated the ladder down into the sewer and the small circle of water covering the concrete at the bottom.
“Find anything good?” I said.
With a pronounced wag of his eyebrows, he whispered, “Piranhas.”
I leaned back. “What?”
“You know the legend, about the steel worker and his blind son?”
Smoke & Mirrors Page 3
