Blacke and Blue

by Fiona Blackthorne

  “I work with fishing supplies over in Elkville,” Perk said hurriedly. “But, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Someone has been breaking into my stand, well, it’s kind of a shed, really. It’s not really anything much, just kind of flimsy and wood and all that. But, it’s not something that’s done. You don’t mess with a man’s livelihood around here. So, the other night, I decided to watch my stand in secret, you know, hiding from the bushes and all.”

  “Cold,” Trisha remarked quietly.

  “Oh no,” Perk dismissed her concern. “Not cold at all. Erm, um, I mean, yes, it was really cold, but you, uh, get used to it.”

  Huh. Why would he get so flustered over this little thing?

  “Anyway,” he continued. “I remembered that you had arrived, and we had heard you were staying in Elkville. Well, Nguyen’s motel is really the only thing open this time of year, so I thought I might…um…come ask you about this, about what kind of person would try to sabotage my stand. I was just coming into the parking lot of the motel when I saw Ger there.”

  Perk glanced furtively across the room at Ger, who Trisha saw was still glowering at them both, and then back to Trisha.

  “He seemed really upset to find me there,” Perk whispered. “He told me to leave, kind of threatened me. Like he suspected me of something, or, um, of maybe knowing something. And, then the next morning, he found me at the store—you were there—and he told me again to stay away from you if I knew what was good for me. I told him I was just trying to get some answers about who was messing with my stand, and he told me to talk to Ian if I was having local law problems. I saw you today, and I thought this might be my only chance to talk to you, though I don’t know what’s going to happen to me later, especially after you’re gone.”

  Trisha made sure she kept the most sympathetic and rapt expression on her face as Perk rambled on. Behind her serious, attentive look, easily accomplished by a slight flaring of the nostrils, eyebrows raised and slightly drawn together, her mind was doing a series of triple Axels and double Salchows trying to sort through what was real and what was clearly made up.

  “Is it just Ger that you are afraid of?” she whispered back at Perk, leaning her head in slightly, trying to signal to Perk that she, too, might feel this way and that he should be free to tell her everything.

  Perk looked uncomfortable, glancing down and to the left while scratching a grimy fingernail against the start of a run in his worn-out jeans.

  “Well, you know his brother is the sheriff,” he muttered. “They live together. There’s not much a man and a brother can hide from one another being that close. It would be almost impossible. In fact, I don’t think it could be done.”

  Something like a game show ding went off in Trisha’s head, but she wasn’t sure if it was what Perk was saying about Ian or Ger, or if it was what he was saying, period.

  “Well, tell me your problem with the stand,” she said. “Maybe there’s something I can do to help, you know, at a higher level than what the…local folks can do.”

  An angry gleam crept into Perk’s watery eyes, making them paler and more gray than blue. She noticed a slight bubble of spittle at the corner of his mouth.

  “Someone has been breaking into my shed,” he fairly hissed. “He’s been messing with my bait.”

  “You know it’s a he?”

  “Ma’am, what kind of woman is going to break into a man’s shed just to mess with fishing gear?”

  Trisha allowed a small, nearly genuine laugh and said, “So, he has been stealing your, what’s it called…tackle?”

  “No,” Perk said heatedly. “He’s been stealing, and well, putting back things. And, bringing things in and such.”

  “Bringing things in? I don’t understand.”

  “I sell lots of stuff and gear, and I have a small side thing with bait and chum,” Perk explained. “Just taking the scraps from the guys at the end of the day and then putting them to ‘marinate’ as I like to call it overnight. Add enough of this and that in, give it a few days, and you got yourself some good stuff that no fish is gonna say no to.”

  “So?” Trisha prompted, equally nauseated and puzzled.

  “Well, sometimes there has been more chum in the bucket than when I left it the night before. And, my tools. Just basic stuff we all have for gutting and cleaning and the like. They been used. They’re cleaner than when I left ’em.”

  Puzzlement and nausea doubled.

  “And the place smells like bleach sometimes,” Perk added, waggling his eyebrows as if trying to give her a significant hint.

  Trisha pulled back slightly and gave him a look of wise comprehension, nodding to give him the secret signal that she got exactly what he was trying to tell her in clumsy code.

  “Thank you, Perk,” she said in her most professional, capable voice. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I’ll certainly think about what you’ve told me. Here’s my card. Call me if you can think of anything else.”

  She narrowed her eyes a fraction for just a second to reinforce the unspoken message of having a secret line of communication. Perk’s eyes widened, and he nodded, struggling to keep a straight face.

  She stood up and walked for the exit, zipping up her coat. She’d come back inside, but damn, she needed a cigarette. Badly.

  * * * *

  He watched her walk out the door. How could she be so gullible? She was supposed to be so smart, to have the experience to know the difference between a liar and an innocent. Yet, she had soaked in everything that had been said with a kind of gloating superiority that would be all the sweeter when it came crashing down around her.

  God, there was nothing sweeter than raising someone to a pinnacle, only to tear them down from there with his own hands.

  Piece by delicious piece.

  * * * *

  Ger found Trisha outside, leaning against the building and staring off into space, a cigarette burning down between her fingers.

  “What did Perk have to say for himself?” he asked, wincing a little internally as he heard the anger seeping through into his voice.

  “What do you think he had to say?” Trisha asked with a bleak smile, not looking at him.

  Something about her inner distance and the bitter crinkling at the corner of her eyes worried him. Something had happened. Perk had said something that had worried her. Really worried her, despite her sarcastic words.

  Trisha took a long drag of her cigarette and continued looking blankly at the dark line of evergreens that had been pushed back just enough to give the town hall a yard in the back big enough to host barbecues and picnics in the summer and holiday celebrations in the winter. Still, the trees seemed to press in, to loom forward, encroaching back on land that was rightfully theirs.

  “What are you going to do now?” Ger asked, trying a different tack and making sure his voice was smooth and calm.

  “I’m going to think,” Trisha said slowly. “And take some notes. Maybe pace. Smoke half a pack of cigarettes. Get pissy with Ian for some trivial thing. Drink bad instant coffee at the station. Hopefully out of all of that, I’ll come up with something more like a next step.”

  Ger couldn’t help but smile at her dry humor. It was just one of the things he loved about her. While her pigheadedness, as Ian called it, set his brother off, it seemed to Ger to be just a charming piece of armor that the right hands could easily strip away, and oh, how he itched to strip it and everything else she wore, inside and out, away until all that was left was just Trisha. His Trisha. Their Trisha.

  “Are you that stumped?” he asked, leaning against the wall next to her, nudging her with his shoulder.

  “Yes and no.”

  “Okay, so, yes or no?”

  She sighed and lightly knocked the back of her head against the building.

  “Yes.”

  The word almost sounded genuine on her lips, but there was something there, something in the timbre and vibration that only his wolf-strengthen
ed senses could detect. Behind the smoke, too, there was an ugly hint of iron and stress in her scent.

  “I know catching this guy means a lot to you professionally,” Ger said, taking her free hand in his and raising it to his lips, then covering it with his own to keep her from getting too cold. “But, I hate to see you struggle like this.”

  “Ger, we haven’t known each other long enough for you to know when I’m really struggling,” she replied, and there was a wash of grief behind her cool tone.

  His instant retort that he didn’t have to know her, that he could smell her, died on his lips. Right, he couldn’t tell her that. Not yet. Soon, though. Soon, he’d make sure she knew.

  “It doesn’t take a genius to see that you are beat,” he said instead. “You probably haven’t been sleeping much, even before this case, am I right?”

  Her expression grew pinched and dark, and she gave no answer. She took a final draw on the cigarette then threw it away from her into the snowbank and turned to go inside.

  She was pulling away from him for some reason.

  She didn’t trust him.

  The realization hit him like a sledgehammer and threw him into a black, boiling place somewhere between anger and panic. He took her by the shoulders and turned her back to him.

  “Trisha,” he said, feeling hoarse and far too exposed. “You have to talk to me. You have to tell me what is going on. With you. With us. Why are you suddenly like this?”

  She looked away from him but made no move to break from his arms. He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her gently. He tasted the smoke and cold and cinnamon of her, and it made him ravenous for more, needy in every cell of his body for more of her.

  He deepened the kiss, inviting her tongue to tangle with his, and she responded. Halfheartedly. With difficulty. He couldn’t tell if she was having trouble holding back or trouble participating. Feeling like his heart was cracking in two from pain, he gathered her close to him, all the while trying to coax a statement of trust through her kisses that she refused in words.

  When her hands came up to rest on his upper arms, he felt a moment of profound relief, only to be chased away by the demons of rejection as she gently pressed against him and pushed herself out of his embrace.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said coldly, holding his gaze steadily with her own eyes of ice blue flames. “I told you from the beginning that this couldn’t work, that I was bad at this sort of thing. There’s a reason I’ve steered clear of relationships, and now, you know it.”

  She turned on her heel and walked back toward the door, then paused and looked back, an expression of bitterness, anger, and misery etched deeply in new lines on her face.

  “And, I’m sorry for that,” she said simply, then turned and went inside.

  Chapter 16

  Ian was only half listening to Father Eamon Edlow and Grace Murray discuss whether there was a possible supernatural cause to this rash of violence. His eyes were riveted on the entrance to the community room.

  Trisha had walked out of it seven minutes ago, with Ger quickly following. Something about their body language had been odd, but Ian had been too distracted with other people talking to him to get enough of an impression to understand what was going on.

  He hadn’t missed, either, that Perk had pulled Trisha aside and talked to her intensely for several minutes. Now, that was something he was very interested in finding out about. He knew that Trisha had a bee in her bonnet about Perk, and he was curious to find out what she thought of him now.

  “I think what we are dealing with is someone who is sick in the head,” Father Edlow said. “As terrible as this all is, I just don’t see any supernatural forces at work here. I mean, we’re all pretty sure that the culprit is from Elkville or somewhere else like Bangor or Orono, yes?”

  “I’m not convinced,” Grace said, chewing her bottom lip.

  Distracted as he was, Ian couldn’t possibly miss the way Father Edlow’s gaze was riveted to Grace’s lips. He absently wondered when these two would finally stop dancing around their feelings and finally get together.

  “I am worried,” Grace continued. “I just keep feeling something awful and black and oily creeping into the air in Blue Moon again. It’s just a small thread of darkness, but it’s here, and it’s strong. I feel like it’s reaching out and searching, or maybe it’s connected to someone. I’m not so sure the killer isn’t from Blue Moon.”

  “We would know if he was,” Father Edlow countered.

  “You’re assuming he’d be a wolf,” Grace said.

  “Would you feel it more strongly if he was?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never encountered this sort of purposeful, searching…tendril before. Every time I try to follow it in my mind, I get lost and blurry and disoriented. This is not the work of a beginner, I’ll tell you that.”

  “And you’re sure that whatever ‘thread’ you’re sensing has to do with the killer?” Ian asked, frowning and lowering his voice as he observed Trisha come back into the room, looking like she had just reluctantly kicked a puppy.

  “I’m not sure,” Grace conceded. “But the timing of when I started to sense it and when the killings began is close enough that I’m not willing to rule anything out.”

  Trisha came up to the group, and Ian caught a whiff of cold and smoke coming off her.

  “Hey there,” he said, reaching out and rubbing her back slightly as he drew her into the circle. “Trisha, this is Father Eamon Edlow and our local librarian Grace Murray. I use them as sounding boards a lot, especially when dealing with complicated cases.”

  Trisha looked up at him, her blue eyes registering some kind of surprise at the introduction, but he couldn’t figure out why she’d be surprised he’d want her to meet people who could help. Well, they could help her and they could help him by putting her off the scent if she got too close to Blue Moon’s deadly secret of the wolves.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Trisha replied, shaking hands with both Father Edlow and Grace.

  Grace’s eyes widened when she touched Trisha’s hand, and she withdrew it quickly after shaking hands.

  “You’re very sharp,” Grace said. “I’ve rarely met anyone as razor-sharp as you.”

  Trisha looked confused then suspicious.

  “You’ll have to forgive Grace, Agent Blacke,” Father Edlow said, patting Grace on the shoulder like a confused kitten. “She has an odd talent for reading personalities. We will most likely donate her brain to science someday.”

  Trisha responded with a shaky smile, her eyes flicking to Ian as if for guidance.

  “So, McDade,” she said, seeming to rally her usual acerbic manner for him. “I’d like to go back to the station and review the suspect files that you have so far. I think we’ll probably be ready to announce the profile tomorrow if I find what I’m looking for today.”

  “You’ll announce the profile publicly?” Father Edlow asked. “Another town meeting here?”

  Trisha nodded, and Ian felt dread drop deep into his guts.

  “What about Elkville?” Father Edlow continued. “Will you do one there?”

  “Hmm, I doubt it,” Trisha said. “I am ninety-nine percent sure the killer is from Blue Moon. This means that if I’m right, it won’t take long to catch him. He has made one mistake already, and I’m pretty sure he’s starting to unravel. He’s going to make another mistake, soon. It’s going to be a big one, and it’s going to lead us right to his door.”

  There was a loud clanging and scraping sound behind them, and Ian spun around, only to find that it was just Perk who had tripped over the folding chairs on his way to the door. He sighed. He’d forgotten Perk was there, but he wasn’t really too worried. They had been talking quietly, though with Perk being a wolf, his hearing probably would have picked up everything. Still, nothing radical had been revealed.

  Ian noticed that Trisha, however, had turned and was staring after Perk’s back with a deeply puzzled and troubled expression o
n her face. She turned back to him, avoiding his gaze, however.

  “Would you mind driving me to the motel so I can get my rental car?” she asked flatly. “I forgot all about it last night.”

  “Sure,” Ian replied.

  “I’m going to head to the station and do some work there,” she said, then nodded at Grace and Father Edlow. “Nice to have met you.”

  They murmured the same back, and Ian felt chills run up his spine at Trisha’s suddenly cold demeanor. It wasn’t that she was being snarky like before. This was like running into a wall of ice.

  He followed her out to the SUV, frowning and feeling like shaking her and kissing her, possibly at the same time to see if he could get some sense into her and get some answers from her. He saw how she kept her eyes on the ground as she went straight to the vehicle, and then he saw why.

  Ger was leaning against the side of the building, his golden eyes dimmed to a dull amber by a grief that was too plainly written on his face. Pangs of worry for his brother and waves of anger at Trisha hit him with equal force. That was, until he noticed her own look of misery as she wedged herself up and onto the seat.

  Ian was so caught up in studying Trisha and Ger that he almost missed seeing Perk sitting in his ancient beige Toyota, staring at them through the salt-stained windshield.

  Suddenly, Ian wondered if he was missing something big because he was wrapped up in Ger and Trisha. Ugly thoughts and nasty worries began to take root in his heart as he silently climbed into the driver’s side and drove them away.

  * * * *

  “Have you heard anything back from forensics about my motel room?” Trisha asked, breaking the hard silence between her and Ian as they drove toward Elkville.

  “So far?” Ian replied tonelessly. “No prints. The meat was spoiled chicken. Shit tons of hair and fiber, which is to be expected from a motel. That’ll take weeks to analyze and rule out people, checking against the guest register and tracking them down. The blood was animal blood. They’re still working on the exact animal, but I don’t think that matters.”