by Celeste Raye
Jack nodded, and they got into the car then headed toward the morgue, Gina drove in her usual way—her eyes on the road and her hands firmly on the wheel as she dashed through the streets, sirens screaming and her foot firmly on the gas.
They reached the morgue twenty minutes later. Gina’s mind was hooked in the past, but not firmly on Craig. Instead, she was thinking of what he had said the year before. That the Gripper was somehow making a mistake. That there was something there, something that they should be seeing and weren’t.
Like the Orcs, hiding in the mud below the cliffs. There and in plain sight but so cleverly concealed by their preferred habitat that they were virtually unseen.
Her senses all tingled. She was onto something with that thought, but whatever it was, it would not come to her, would not fully form and make itself known.
What was she missing? It was something obvious. Something right there in plain sight. All she had to do was figure it out, and she would be fine.
She took a long breath as they descended into the part of the morgue where bodies lay on cold steel tables. The sight of such indifferent death always did something to her; it always clawed at her sense of what was right and what was wrong.
This was wrong. This was horrible. Nobody should die and have to lie on those tables with the harsh lights overhead, no softening of the facts, no nod to even decency other than the sheets that covered them from chest to ankles.
The coroner, a large man with a dour face and an even more sour attitude, looked up from a chart he held and said, “What’s up, Detectives?”
Jack took the lead. He was the senior, so she let him. Jack gave the coroner a wide smile. “Hey, Robert. We need to have this vic fast-tracked.”
Robert gave him a wary look. “Give me a good reason. I have vics who have a chance at having their deaths solved here. You want that one done early, I need some proof to make that happen.”
Gina groaned inwardly. “I know we have yet to really find this guy but waiting for an autopsy won’t help us find him any faster. We have less than forty-eight hours before he kills again.”
Robert’s eyes rolled in the sockets. “You say that like I don’t know. I have been here for twenty plus years. I have done every single Gripper vic autopsy. So, I know he is going to kill again, same as you. I also know I’ve got a few in here who have been waiting nearly a week and they also have grieving families who want the body. So, there’s that.”
Shit. She was getting nowhere fast. Gina sent Jack a look, hoping he would intercede. He sighed heavily. “We can’t put the dead ahead of the living. I need this fast-tracked, and now.”
Robert snorted. “I’ve already got two on the cutting slab. I have to finish or risk losing evidence, so as soon as I get them done and up, I will start on yours, but I’m already twelve hours in on my day, and I don’t guarantee I won’t go home and sleep after these two, because they will take me at least another six and I am dead on my feet. The county and city gutted my finding. It’s just me and my assistant, and as you can see, we are overworked like crazy right now.”
Gina wanted to bang her head into the nearest hard surface, but since the nearest hard surface had a body on it, she refrained. She sucked in a breath and said, “Listen, do it as fast as you can, please?’
Robert slapped a hand down on the back of his neck. “I will.”
That was the best they could hope for. Gina added, “Can we see the CSI reports, please? Oh, and the body?”
Robert pointed to a stack of files, and she went to them and dug around for the one she knew would belong to the vic. It read Jane Doe, Gripper. She winced inwardly. It was not fair for that woman in one of the drawers behind her to have herself tied to the person who had killed her, but that was just what she would be: tied down by him even after death—and maybe into eternity if they could not discover his identity.
Jack went to the drawer and pulled it open. The sound of it opening made her fingers clench into fists. This had gone on too long. There were too many dead. This had to stop. What was it that she was overlooking? Where was the Orc hidden in the mud and shrubbery?
Jack spoke, “Yeah, it’s him.”
She clutched the file as she went to the drawer and looked inside it. The vic was a young woman with a face that showed signs of drug addiction: bad skin pocked with small red spots and scars, sunken cheeks. Her lips had chapping and burn marks.
She bent in to look at the woman’s jaw. There were the bruises. The Gripper had beaten and choked her before finally killing her with the knife he was so fond of using. The knife that he had always used. The knife they could not find and had no ability to match because it was just a common blade, one that was sold by the hundreds of thousands every year.
She finished making a few notes and reading the file while Jack did the same. They compared notes and then trudged back out of the morgue. In the car, Gina asked, “Should we go to the scene anyway? I know it won’t matter since the rain is washing away everything and the CSI collected what they could, but maybe there’s something.”
Jack said, “I doubt it, but we can.”
She doubted it too. Still, she had to do something. The Gripper—this was his sixteenth year, and she felt a hollow pit open up in her stomach. What would she be doing on his twentieth year? His twenty-fifth?
Still trying to catch him? Still trying to find a single clue? Trying to convince people that the serial killer with the once a year appetite was not really a ghost? Trying to get the FBI to finally come back and do something? Even the larger agencies had written off ever trying to find the guy.
She said, “Wait—was there anything in the mail? Any writing?”
Jack toyed with the notes he made. “No. That is weird, isn’t it? Usually he does or writes something.”
“Yeah, it’s usually a two or something to let us know he’s got more to go and we are dumbasses who can’t do a single thing about it.”
Her spirits kept rising and falling with each breath. Dammit, she had to figure this out. For one thing, she had to keep her mind off Craig; for another, there were two people in this city who were going to be on that slab back in the morgue if she did not figure it all out. She had thought the same thing the year before, and she had failed to find the guy.
But this year she was not distracted by Craig—at least she was not distracted by his physical presence anyway— and she was not busy chasing down two missing women who were in no danger.
Well, they were in danger. They had Orcs to contend with but…
The Orcs.
That image just kept coming back to her mind, and she could not shake it nor could she figure out what her subconscious mind was trying to tell her, but it was clearly trying to tell her something. The Orcs, hiding in plain sight. The way they had found them…
Jack interrupted her thoughts. “You’re going to have to turn right. Traffic always sucks this way.”
“Oh yeah.” She made the turn and forced herself to concentrate on the road. She asked, “You’re right. It is weird. No taunt, and he left the body in a place he had before. There’s something off about this whole thing.”
“Copycat maybe?”
“No, it’s him. Definitely, right down to the details of the body but…” But yeah, something was wrong. Her senses tingled again. Something was wrong, and it was not because this was the act of a copycat killer. The Gripper was losing his grip, or he was evolving. Either way, he had to be stopped. If he was losing his grip on whatever made him do those things, then he might start killing more often. All the city needed was a serial killer who was willing to kill constantly.
They reached the scene and got out of the car. The poncho quickly proved to be no match for the weather, and she was soaked before they ever stepped to the curb that the vic had been found against.
She stared at it, hopelessness setting in. The weather was definitely screwing everything up, but the scene was no help anyway. The whole world was being drowned, or so it felt. Her bod
y went taut and stiff as the cold seeped into it. She looked away and cupped her elbows with her fingers. She kept going back to that feeling, that she was missing the most obvious thing here and had been for a long time. She just did not know what it could be.
Chapter Twelve
Craig stared at the Fae seated at the table. Their leader, a woman with long red hair and eyes of silver, leaned back and sipped at the honeyed wine that had been prepared specially for the Fae. She said, softly, “I understand we have not always been friends or even allies, but we have a problem in our world and in the other.”
Craig asked, “What is it?”
Cloe said, “The portals need to be opened again. We have people there we need to be able to reach and who want to reach us. Closing the portal was the only thing you could do to keep the Orcs from getting into that world, and I know that, we all do. But you are also the only ones who can open it again, and as I said, we have Fae there, Fae who are trapped there.”
He looked down at his fingers, splayed around a cup. “Some are, I am sure, but your kind has always managed to live in both worlds, so why now?’
Cloe said, “We are not siding with the Orcs or denying you’re right or even the reasoning behind you having closed it. It has been a year in that world…”
His heart sank like a stone. A year? That meant…he stood, his chair sliding back. He said, “I have to go back. Now. Right now.”
Max asked, “What?”
Craig said, “I swear I will come back as soon as possible but it’s been a year, and Gina is there—and so is a killer who has been killing people every single year, for decades. It’s his time. I have to get there.”
Max said, “Craig…this is something we have to discuss…”
“There’s no time to discuss it.”
Cloe said, “I agree. We have Fae who are losing their ability to blend in. It is really difficult to continue to pretend to be human, no matter how good at it they are. When the portal closed, it took part of the magic from that world. You and I both know that their lives, my people’s lives, depend on magic being present.”
Craig heard that last bit, but he was wrapped up in his own thoughts. The Gripper. The killer would be killing right now. He had no time. He had to get back. Gina: had she forgotten all about him and just moved on?
Probably, and yet he might still have a chance with her if he could only get back. He said “It’s been closed too long and while we had good reason to close it we did not consider how it would affect the species, not our own or Orc, and, like I said, I must return. Even if we only open one gate and allow the Fae to use it and to let that little bit of magic bloom over there, then we could close it again. But I have to go. Now.”
Cloe said, unkindly, “So this is all about you?”
He bared his teeth at her. “No, but as what I need benefits your people; perhaps you could just say thank you for my going to bat to get it open, how about that?”
Jarvis, her mate, snorted, “He has a point. We did not expect kindness, and we do know, we do, that the Orcs are a problem here. They are a problem in our world as well, only we have a larger problem with the trolls. They just keep growing in number all the time, and we need our people back because, in all honesty, those of us who are in our world are weary from the constant fighting. They are getting cleverer, the lowly creatures, and bolder all the time.”
Max said, “Perhaps we should band together to try to fight them back.”
Cloe shot out, “In whose world? This first and ours last? So we can die by the dozens and all while you only promise to assist us?”
An argument broke out. Craig heard the words but he was busy; he was thinking through all the cases and the dead and wondering if Gina was still his, if her heart had given up on him and if she had forgotten that he loved her and that she had ever loved him. If she thought that he had broken his promise to her and had simply decided not to return to her.
He had to get back there, he had to get back to her, to the woman he loved to see if there was any chance at all that they might still have something between them and what was more—he had to help make sure that this year the Gripper did not kill.
The portal pulsed and shone. Max said, “We need you, Craig.”
“I know, and I will be back. I swear I will. Especially if you agree to help the Fae in their fight and vice versa, but right now I have to go, I have to be there because…”
Max gave him a smile. “I know. Love. It makes all of us do what we must. Go. I will be watching for you to return.”
Craig let his wings take him upward and into the sky. The air currents raced toward his body and were beaten back by the powerful thrust and fluster of his wings. He kept going, his body moving even more swiftly as he shot into the portal, its colors swirling around him and its power ripping from one world and into another.
Time was strange in the portal. It could yank a being into a time that had somehow sped up or slowed down, at least in the world that he was headed for that was true. He landed in the alley hard, his body transformed into human shape and hitting a series of trash cans.
A groan of pain came from his lips. He rolled sideways, his eyes scanning his surroundings through the heavy veils of rain and mist. Damn. It just figured. He had landed on a day when the weather was absolutely awful. Well, at least it had helped to mask his arrival. Grunting and wincing, he pulled himself to his feet and dusted off his clothes. He let his head roll on his shoulders to ease the ache in his neck. He stepped into the street, trying to squint through the rain to figure out exactly what part of the city he had dropped into.
Great. He was about ten blocks from the police station: a plus. He headed that way, his shoulders going up toward his ears to try to fend off the wetness running across his head and down his neck and then down below his shirt to soak his skin.
His stride went longer and faster. He skirted around a few homeless men sitting stoic and silent on the sidewalk. He would have given them something, had he been sure he had anything to give. Coming in and out was a pain in the ass, literally. He never knew what day it was or when and he never knew if things would be like he left them.
He had the luxury of having a superior high in the ranks who was a changeling, half weredragon, mostly human. His apartment was owned by the dragon clan, and so he was always in possession of it, but whether he had come back with his wallet was a question he could not yet answer.
He hurried into the station to find it humming with activity. He raised a hand and exchanged a few greetings as he moved along, fast, to the desk Gina would have sat at. Only she was not there. Her name tag was present on the desk though, which made him feel much better.
He asked someone if they had seen her and was told bad news. The Gripper had struck an hour before, and she was out on the street, trying to get any info at all that would give her a lead.
He made a quick side trip to the IA office to let his superior and the changeling know he had returned. He got a fast few words out beyond that, and then he was handed over a badge and gun that the changeling had kept to a side for him.
Craig offered a fast thanks and snatched a poncho from a closet then headed out again. He knew exactly where Gina would have started. At the morgue.
He raced into the morgue, his breath short from running through the streets to find Robert munching at a tuna fish sandwich at his desk. Robert looked up, “Hello there, stranger; haven’t seen you in a while.”
Craig slicked his wet hair off his forehead. “Have you seen Gina and Jack?”
Robert nodded. “They were here about,” he goggled at the clock on the wall, “Oh, an hour ago. I think she said she was going to the scene.”
Craig sighed. That scene could be anywhere. “Where was the body?”
“By the docks.”
His eyes widened. “That is not possible. The docks? No way. It can’t be a Gripper vic. He never repeats his dump sites.”
Robert said, “Yeah, I know. There’s something else.
I was…well, I was too irritated when they were here; as you can see, I have plenty of bodies, and they were demanding a fast track. Anyway, I got her out so I didn’t get tempted to go home and do it tomorrow.” He tucked the last bite of the stinky sandwich into his mouth, dusted his hands off and led the way to a body. Craig followed and leaned in when Robert said, “See that? The wounds? Gripper all the way, right down to the details we never released.”
Craig did a quick survey. “I’d say so.”
Robert said, “But something happened here. Look, it’s like the usual wounds were…the Gripper’s strong. We know that. But it looks, honestly, like our boy ran out of steam. He had to kill this one and then do the rest.”
Craig sucked in a breath. “What? What are you saying? That maybe he’s older than the profilers assumed?”
Robert said, “He has been doing this for sixteen years that we know of. So yeah, they might have gotten it wrong. For all we know he’s a senior with dementia who just happens to wake up from a coma or something once a year. Or whatever.”
“Zombie killer with dementia. Is that what you are putting in your report?” The words held sarcasm, but Craig didn’t really mean it. He was worried now. He had known that the profilers from the FBI had to have gotten the profile wrong, otherwise, they would have found the guy by now. He ran that profile through his head. They thought he was somewhere between thirty and forty and that had been ten years ago. But what if he was a great deal older? Say in his late sixties or even older? That would help to explain why they had not been able to find him; they had been looking for someone much younger than the man actually committing the crimes.
Robert said, “I’m exhausted. Budget cuts are killing me. I will get this done as soon as I get back into the office. But if I don’t get some sleep, I will be on that slab next.”
“Got it. Thanks.” He turned away and then back. A frown came up between his eyes. “Where’s the file?”
“They took it.” Robert yawned at knuckled at his eyes with his fists.
