Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

The kitchen was my favorite room in the cottage, although I'd never admit to knowing what to do in it other than make tasty grilled cheese sandwiches and the occasional batch of brownies. Bundles of herbs hung from the exposed rafters, casting a musty-sweet smell over the whole room. A row of glass crystals dangled from the windows over the old porcelain sink. The floors were weathered wood and covered with rag rugs.

  Just like lamenting over my lack of culinary skills didn't mean I had to starve, angsting about my status in the were community didn't make me the unpopular girl with no prom date.

  I was a little beyond the prom stage of being a were, anyway. I slapped my sandwich on a plate and carried it to my office.

  This was my territory. The desk was real black ebony, bought as a scarred thing with no legs from a flea market. I had a top-of-the-line laptop, flat-panel monitor, and cable modem connection. Useful for case work, but also because I was impatient and prone to hitting machines when they were too slow. I kept a black leather club chair in the corner with a strong reading light. The wall-to-wall bookshelves held the Death Investigator's Handbook, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV, my criminal justice textbooks from the Cedar Hill Community College, and Sunny's and my senior yearbooks from San Romita High.

  My one concession to girliness was the rug—a fake-fur thing at least two inches thick that I loved to walk barefoot on. I shuffled across it and sank into my chair, waiting for the computer to boot up.

  I had taken the first bite of my breakfast when the tinny strains of "Hungry Like the Wolf" startled me into dropping it.

  I rooted around the desk and found my cell buried under a stack of rap sheets for suspects in a rape/homicide. Caller ID said it was the medical examiner's office. I flipped the phone open.

  "Detective Wilder."

  "Luna, it's Dr. Kronen. Tighter than a were pack in a butcher's over here, but I managed to squeeze your Jane Doe in for nine tonight."

  That meant I'd have to come on shift three hours early. But then again, the next available autopsy slot would probably be a month from now. Jane Doe had no family clamoring for the body. No one wanted a quick funeral and a chance to cry over her.

  "Sounds good, Doc. I'll meet you at the morgue at nine sharp."

  "You sound grumpy," he said. "I wake you?"

  "I wish," I muttered before I hung up.

  Three

  Most cities hide their morgues. It makes good sense to keep them out of sight and not remind the general population of where they're headed when they die.

  Nocturne City took no such precautions. The morgue was a sterile granite edifice, nearly as large as the courthouse. Its upper floors housed the NCPD's central crime labs and the medical examiner's administrative offices.

  Tonight, though, I was headed for what the detectives only half jokingly called Limbo.

  Night shift at the crime labs runs a skeleton crew, and there was no one in the lobby except a bored uniform standing by the metal detector, staring off into space. I dropped my gun, phone, badge, and keys into the plastic basket and walked through.

  The basement morgue storage and autopsy bays are cut off from the world of the living by the earth, and require you to take a special elevator down. The car groaned ominously at me as I stepped in, and I vowed to take the stairs next time rather than risk ending up a permanent resident of the building.

  The stink hit me as soon as I stepped out—formaldehyde, old blood, dead flesh. If you think a morgue smells bad normally, try having a nose as sensitive as mine and get back to me. I gagged once, swallowed, and held my hand over my face until I got to Kronen's autopsy bay.

  He was just starting to wash up and shouted hello at me over the running water. Through the glass I could see Jane Doe's body neatly covered with a paper sheet. Only the rivulets of blood running down the slotted sides of the steel table and draining through the floor grate gave any indication of what had gone on.

  Kronen shut off the sink and grabbed a wad of paper towels. "Shall we?"

  I followed him through the swinging doors, grabbing a surgical mask as I went and clapping it over my face. The stench in here, much fresher than the rest of the floor, almost knocked me over. Kronen looked concerned as my eyes watered, and handed me some VapoRub.

  "Forgot you were the one with the sensitive sniffer," he said. I slathered the ointment under my nose, which brought the smell down from Vomit Inducing to Pretty Terrible. "So, Detective Wilder, what we have here, as I said last night, is your basic sexually motivated homicide."

  He yanked back the sheet, sending a fresh scent wave into the air. I saw the raw Y-incision on Jane Doe's chest, the old bruises on her torso, teeth marks on her breasts.

  The smell was too much—more than just death. Strong, charred, filling my mouth and nostrils so I couldn't breathe. My vision spun as the smell closed in, so dense and powerful and terrible that I feared it would send me to the floor.

  I dropped the mask, crashed through the swinging doors, dropped my head over the steel sink, and vomited until there was nothing left.

  Kronen hurried after me, holding my hair out of the way as I retched pathetically. "Oh, dear," he murmured. "Oh, dear. It's all right."

  "Damn it," I gasped as I straightened up and wiped my mouth with my hand. My whole body quaked and my stomach felt hollow, the acid burning all the way up to my tongue.

  "Are you finished?" Kronen asked. I tried to ignore the flare of shame his shocked expression prompted. I had never pulled a Linda Blair in an autopsy, not even at my very first homicide, when a hit-and-run had nearly split a woman in half.

  "I… think so," I said, leaning against the wall and breathing. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Don't faint. Don't faint. Don't you dare faint, Luna.

  "I could fax you my findings …" Kronen started.

  "No." I straightened up and pushed my sweaty hair out of my face. "I'm fine. Finish."

  "Your reaction…"

  "I ate something bad at dinner, obviously," I snapped. Kronen looked hurt, but led me back into the bay.

  I felt like crap for my nasty response to his sympathy. Unfortunately, it was survival. I liked Dr. Kronen a lot, but I couldn't let him think I was weak, because it would get out that Detective Wilder, the little woman, had bailed on an autopsy after puking her guts out while the ME held her head. Then I'd have more like Bryson to worry about, no matter where I went on the force.

  I got a fresh mask. Pinched my nose hard enough to hurt. Followed Kronen through the swinging doors.

  The smell was still there, pungent, almost sulfuric, but it was bearable. I had the sick, disorienting feeling that I had smelled it before, in different circumstances. It wasn't the scent of were. The sweetish musk was there, faded by death, but this was like rotted flesh raked over hot coals. My eyes watered as I stood opposite Kronen, watching him over Jane Doe's chest.

  "Go ahead."

  "Your wish is my command," he said, gesturing at the body. "Now, as you can see, there was mutilation to the breasts as well as the throat. No more vaginal trauma than you'd expect to find on a street prostitute, but that doesn't really mean anything."

  "It's not the sex that gets them off," I agreed.

  "Whoever it was did this, she fought hard," Kronen said. "She sustained multiple fractures to both hands and a broken tibia on her right arm. If she'd survived, I doubt she could ever make a fist again. Surprising for such a frail-looking young woman."

  "Cause of death was the throat being torn out?" I asked. The gash had been cleaned and now gaped up at me, black.

  "No," said Kronen, surprising the hell out of me.

  "What do you mean, no?"

  "I mean, of course I thought it was the blood loss and mutilation at first. But when I was doing the rape kit, I noticed this." He slid his hands under Jane Doe's back. "Give me a hand, will you?"

  Pick the last thing in the universe I wanted to do right that second, and touching the dead girl was second only to swallowing a handful of silver dollars w
ith a wolfsbane chaser.

  I grabbed Jane Doe's waist, feeling her ribs through the thin pale skin, and pulled. She flopped over on her stomach with a muffled, wet thud. My stomach was empty, but the jolt of nausea still passed through.

  "This," said Kronen, pointing to a tiny red mark in the fold of Jane Doe's buttock, "is your cause of death."

  I leaned close. "What the hell is that?"

  Kronen got a clipboard and flipped a few pages. "According to the tox screen, high-dosage Percodan with a diazepam chaser."

  I stared at him. "Someone drugged her?"

  "Willingly or unwillingly, is the question," Kronen replied. He covered Jane Doe back up. "Percodan is easy enough to come by, but diazepam is highly controlled."

  "Is it a sedative?" I asked, feeling like an idiot and knowing that I'd have to revise my report when I went upstairs. Then McAllister would want to know why I jumped the gun. Again.

  "You might call it that," said Kronen. "If you were a Rottweiler or a house cat."

  "Come again?"

  "It's an animal tranquilizer, Detective."

  That made my eyebrows go up an inch or three. I trust my instincts, and trusted them enough then to know Jane Doe was more than a trick gone bad. But this—this was beyond anything I had prepared myself for.

  "Odd method," Kronen said. "If you are going to mutilate someone."

  "No," I said, and felt a tremor start in my hands, radiating inward to my uneasy stomach. Gods damn it, I knew why he'd drugged the girl. "No, he wanted to take his time. He showed her the knife, Bart."

  "Her finger was clipped pre- or perimortem," he agreed quietly.

  "He made her watch." My blood beat against my head, and the were always lurking in my subconscious howled in rage. "The drugs were there to make sure she stayed docile enough for him to take his time, and didn't scream. But he miscalculated somehow, and she fought him, and he killed her. Gods." I wanted this bastard, now, wanted his blood.

  "I have a feeling that They are not at play here," said Kronen. "But perhaps They are, because I also found you DNA." He covered Jane Doe back up with the sheet.

  The way this day was shaping up, the only logical thing to say was, "Any idea who contributed?"

  "I sent it to be analyzed and they'll run a sample through CODIS to see if it matches any offenders."

  In other words, let the wheels grind through the two hundred other DNA samples that came in before mine that day, and then maybe, if I was lucky, I'd get a bit from among the minuscule number of felons whose genetic fingerprint had been entered into the CODIS system.

  Plus, Jane Doe was a prostitute. How many DNA "samples" would she have on her, anyway?

  "Tell me you at least fixed a time of death," I pleaded with Kronen. He ushered me out of the autopsy bay, and I finally got relief from the pungent stink.

  "That, Detective, is far from an exact science, but this might be useful—the rain last night had stopped when she was murdered in the alley. Her body was dry and the blood evidence was intact."

  Finally something solid. I could pick up the phone, verify it, and add it to the lines of the case file, slowly painting a picture of Jane Doe's last hours. Did she go somewhere to escape the rain and end up far worse off? Was she a victim of wrong place, wrong time, or was she chosen and stalked by a sadist?

  "I have three more identifications tonight," said Kronen. He had shed the paper robe and slippers he wore in the bay and reverted to his usual khakis and crooked tie. This one had a ketchup stain. At least, I hoped it was ketchup. "Call me if you need any more information, Detective Wilder."

  The door whispered as he left for the public part of the morgue, where relatives viewed bodies and claimed their own. I looked at Jane Doe once more, leaning my forehead against the glass. The vomit I'd shed because of her still lingered on the air.

  Did she gag as the drugs overtook her system, or was it peaceful, like a warm bath? Junkies described the former, suicides usually talked about the worst pain they'd ever experienced, as the body attempted to expel death before time ran out.

  I breathed in, out. Why did she smell so strange? Why had she been drugged and mutilated?

  Why was the question, and I had that cold. The answer eluded me.

  "I'll find out," I promised Jane Doe. "I will." A hollow promise to a dead woman. Nothing I couldn't handle.

  * * * *

  Shift change was in full swing at the Twenty-fourth when I got there. Day uniforms and the full complement of detectives that the second shift commanded were walking out in pairs and alone. Rick was conferring with Shelley, the day desk clerk. A few civilians, most of whom I judged to be lawyers by the proliferation of somber ties and expensive suits, were still in the lobby. I went through the metal detector and escaped to my desk. The squad room was quiet, one second-shift detective hunched over his keyboard, pecking miserably.

  No sign of Bryson. No ominous pink While You Were Out slips on my desk. No e-mails flashing in my inbox. I let my breath out slowly.

  "Expecting bad news?"

  I jumped about a foot in the air. "Crap!"

  Lieutenant McAllister took in my reaction with the same placid look that his bony face bestowed on everything from the bodies of ravaged murder victims to an Internal Affairs review board. "Nice to see you're feeling alert tonight, Detective. A word?"

  "Crap," I said again.

  McAllister nodded in agreement. "Dave Bryson was waiting by my door when I got here this evening. At first I thought the oversize horse's behind was stalking me, but it seems he has a problem with you, Luna."

  I sighed, massaging the point between my eyes. "Has Bryson ever not had a problem with me, Mac?"

  McAllister's mouth pursed regretfully. "Nothing I couldn't ignore." He gestured for me to sit at my desk, and when I didn't took the chair himself. "Bryson insisted I take a report, which you know I'm obligated to pass to the captain."

  "Hey, then I have until about eleven AM tomorrow," I quipped. Roenberg was not known for punctuality.

  "Not exactly," Mac said. "Roenberg is waiting for you and me in his office."

  Well, hell. Bryson must have raised one heck of a stink if Roenberg had stuck around until close to midnight. Nothing like ego to spur a guy on.

  "I don't have time for this," I snapped, deciding to go to the defensive. "I have eight open cases, one of them a rape/murder that could be serial."

  "Don't get pissy with me, Luna. I'm not the one who almost snapped off Bryson's ringer." McAllister's blue eyes went slaty. His body is long and thin, and he wears a hound dog expression, until the anger rises and you see the depth of the man hiding in the gangly body with bags under the eyes and gray hair.

  "Come on, Lieutenant. You and I both know that Bryson deserved a lot more."

  "That's immaterial. I can't have my squad running around playing Serpico with each other."

  I kicked the linoleum. "Sorry, Mac," I muttered.

  "I have no problem with you, Luna," he said. "Not with your gender, or the fact that you're a were. I like you and I think you're a damn good detective. But if you can't control yourself, then I can't have you in my precinct. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of this city thinks you're a dangerous animal. If you act out on the job, you'll prove them right."

  "That is a load of bullshit!" I hissed. I trusted Mac to keep my bite status on the DL, and I resented him holding the secret over me.

  "You know it's not, Luna," Mac said. "Now cut the crap before we get to Roenberg's office or I'll suspend you." He unfolded himself from my chair and marched away, looking back over his shoulder once to make sure I was following.

  His words shook me, went down my throat and formed a cold, hard mass just below my ribs. I couldn't get suspended—I had been a detective for two years and a uniformed officer for five before that, and I'd never had so much as a written warning.

  What really stung was that the words had come from Mac. Mac, who had always accepted my being a were as a personal fact, like hair or eye color
. I felt like a scolded little girl, and I didn't like it.

  And now because of Bryson's macho bullshit I was looking at lost pay, humiliation, and confirmation for all those whispers. Wilder can't hack it. Too emotional. What do you expect from a woman?

  McAllister rapped on the wavy glass door with Roenberg's name on it. Roenberg's supercilious voice told us, "Enter."

  "Captain," said McAllister, sticking his head in. "We're here."

  "Troy," Roenberg nodded in return. "And Detective Wilder. Shut the door."

  McAllister had already taken a seat, so the duty fell to me. I shut it gently and stood behind the empty green vinyl chair facing the captain's desk. If he thought I'd sit and be reprimanded like a reticent schoolgirl, he had another thought coming.

  Roenberg waved an interoffice memo at me. "Do you have any idea what this is, Detective?"

  Already on the offensive. Didn't bode well.

  "It's a complaint, sir," I said, knowing what was coming next.

  Roenberg turned on Mac. "Is it your habit, Troy, to allow your people to treat my precinct house like some sort of gladiatorial arena?"

  Gladiatorial? Oh, he was good. McAllister's neck muscles tensed, but his voice stayed perfectly even. "Luna's informed me that the circumstances were somewhat extenuating."

  "I don't give a damn what Detective Wilder has to say," Roenberg informed him while staring at me. His eyes were a watery brown, and the bloodshot irises gave the impression that he was about to cry. Somehow I thought that if anyone cried in the course of this discussion, it wouldn't be the captain.

  "Dave Bryson has a history of friction with his partners and other detectives, no matter what precinct he's been assigned to," McAllister was saying, "as well as two excessive force complaints from civilians."

  Roenberg rolled his eyes, picking up an oval silver object from his desk and tossing it from one hand to the other. "Please, Troy. I know all that. What's on the table here is a serious accusation. Detective Bryson had to go to the emergency room with a broken index." The way Roenberg said broken index like most people say massive head trauma only made me want to slap Bryson harder next time.