The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  The City of God could have its Eden just a few miles from here and no one would know.

  Donovan must have been thinking the same thing; her phone chirped at her. “Do we drive around tomorrow?”

  Yes, they had to. “Come over?”

  It sounded like more of an invitation than it was. They were in each other’s pockets for the duration. While she’d hoarded herself in her room to get away and be alone for a while, it wasn’t going to happen.

  Soda in hand, Donovan was at her door when she opened it. There was a connecting door between the rooms, as they had requested they be side by side, but that was more than she was ready for. She’d known this man for less than a week. Still she wasn’t surprised by the soda. He ate rare steaks, thought potatoes were a vegetable, and consumed quantities of food that made all her physiology coursework invalid.

  Eleri ignored the informality of it all. For a girl raised with more rules than breaths, having a man in her hotel room, both of them in jeans was nearly a declaration of war on her upbringing. Not that she was above petty rebellions. She’d done plenty of those. “We have to triangulate the area. There’s too much area, too many dirt roads. We could easily drive by and miss it.”

  He nodded and closed the door behind them before either said a name, uttered anything that could be overheard. “Baxter could be anywhere. But given the dead girl probably didn’t get too far, we should use her as an epicenter.”

  Donovan looked on the map of the state she’d pulled up on her screen. Pulling the laptop over and not asking permission, he quickly typed in coordinates for where the girl was found, making a red dot appear on the screen. Zooming in, he showed Eleri that it hovered over a road banked by old-growth trees.

  “Are you sure you have the numbers all correct?” A minor error could cause a huge problem.

  He pulled a post-it note out of his pocket and while he double-checked, her brain churned. Old trees meant undisturbed growth. The road was nearly covered by the trees, another indicator of a place that was far from modernized. Scanning the area on the satellite image, she saw no other evidence of human life for miles.

  It was hard to tell from the images they captured, so she pointed. “Let’s run a line of equidistance between her position and the hospital, see if there’s anything in between our Jane Doe and our Ruth.”

  Focusing the image more, there was no evidence of activity in between. But dense growth could disguise old homes, particularly if there was an effort made to not disturb the foliage. Most new construction leveled the trees, then the builders ironically named the streets after them. But if you were careful you could build under existing trees and keep the shade and avoid exposure to both the sun and passing satellites. This could also happen if the builders were hand building, using only smaller equipment, like, say, a church group.

  She sighed. Nothing was easy. Nothing had been since the year she was ten. So at least she never expected easy. “Use the girl. Do a forty-mile radius from the coordinates. See what that nets us.”

  Eleri had given up thinking about getting her laptop back from him. He’d simply taken over. His inky eyes looked up at her sharply. “Forty’s a lot for an injured person.”

  Eleri shook her head. “I don’t want to go too small and miss it. Besides, she was strong. Her bones indicate that she’d carried muscle mass for years, she was used to being strong. She would keep going. She was injured and fighting for her life. She could do forty if she had to.”

  Donovan conceded, but clearly he thought she was overshooting.

  Eleri didn’t.

  This was his first FBI case. He was an ME. He only saw the dead. Only saw them after they gave up, after they lost. She had seen the survivors. And survivors accomplished inhuman feats. All for the goal of staying human.

  DONOVAN DROVE THE RENTAL CAR. He went for miles in near silence with Eames looking out the window, sometimes with binoculars, sometimes with the laptop open and the sat-map scrolling.

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  They’d stopped for lunch after passing a sign welcoming them to the “Town of Mullin, Texas.” Donovan thought Mullin was overstating its case a bit by calling themselves a “town,” but they did have a diner where grease was the main ingredient in everything and he loved every bite.

  As they ate, Eleri laughed more than usual. She chatted with him about everyday things, asked after his house outside Columbia—how did he like living on the edge of a national forest?

  At ease with her, letting the conversation lift the pressure of the investigation, he spoke more freely than he usually did. If they worked out, they’d stay partners for . . . forever. Donovan wasn’t sure how long he could handle that, but he had to gain her trust.

  Over hot apple pie and cold ice cream, she asked him about his strangest cases and didn’t seem to mind the talk of guts and gore while she ate gooey, chunky food. Then she chatted up the waitress, and he realized she wasn’t being nice to him at all.

  The conversation had nothing to do with him, with her wanting to get to know him better. She was working the waitress, establishing the two of them as a friendly couple, maybe just friends, but here to just enjoy lunch. So it wasn’t threatening when she asked if anyone had heard of the “City of God.”

  Her strawberry blonde ponytail bounced and twisted as she put a hand at the edge of the table, displaying manicured nails and leaning forward for a confidence. “I mean is it a place you can visit? It sounds so pretty.”

  As though it were a tourist destination.

  The server apologized for not knowing but had no apprehension about answering the next question.

  “Is there somewhere around here I could go ask? Someone who knows the surrounding area well? I’d love to say I came to Texas and saw the ‘City of God.’”

  Donovan offered his own supportive smile, but the server wasn’t paying attention to him. Thank God, because he was fighting the urge to roll his eyes at Eames. In the end, they paid the bill and thanked the server for her help, then walked out with instructions to head toward the courthouse-slash-post office and ask for Bill.

  Eleri wanted to drive when they could have walked the four blocks, but he didn’t protest. She didn’t seem to bear the heat as easily as he did. She wilted a little on the way in but stopped dead and looked around. She whispered, “Where are the security guards? The metal detectors?”

  Small towns, he thought. They knew everyone, trusted more. It was harder to get away with anything when everyone knew who you were. It was a lesson he and his father had learned the year his dad took a job in a small town. They didn’t last long there; it was a lesson Donovan had taken to heart.

  It turned out Bill had not heard of the City of God in any capacity, though Eleri gave him a smile that would have made most men make something up. Eleri feigned resigned disappointment and they got back into the small car that still made Donovan’s nose twitch with the smell of cat.

  They crossed the back roads, both of them looking out the window. He stayed behind the wheel. Eleri’s eyes were possibly better than his in daylight. But he didn’t say anything about it, and they continued gridding the area as best they could even as evening set.

  As they stopped at a small, one-off gas station, Eleri’s shoulders visibly slumped as she scanned the surrounding emptiness. Aside from the house behind the station, where the owners clearly lived and ran their tiny, run-down oasis, there was nothing around.

  Eleri was reaching for the passenger side door when he stopped her. “Want to drive?” He was tossing the keys to her and trading places before she fully agreed.

  Using the excuse that he’d driven all day, he took advantage of not having to pay attention to the road. His eyes were better in the dark, his night vision excellent. Though the day was still warm, he rolled down the window a bit, even though his senior partner frowned at him. “Put all the air on your side if you need.”

  When she wanted to retrace their steps, he insisted on a roundabout route. She
might not be able to do much in the dark, but he was far from out. “Turn here.” Though she looked at him sideways, and though she took the turn slowly because of the combination of fading light and poor quality of road, she did it.

  It was slow going and full dark a half hour later.

  Donovan breathed deep.

  “I smell it.”

  7

  Donovan had to get rid of Eames, but he didn’t know how.

  She was his senior partner. They shared one rental car. So how did he get sole use of it? He couldn’t take her with him—not for this.

  On his own, he could get close, maybe even get into the compound with no one the wiser. If Eleri came along, he would never be able to explain. She already had more clues than anyone ever had.

  Donovan lived his whole life with his cards close to the chest, rarely telling people even about his sense of smell. Every once in a while, someone would catch him sniffing an organ or getting his face close to a body. Mostly they commented that he didn’t gag.

  Last night, they’d driven into the oil smell from the shirt. There were more scents overlaid with that, helping him to be more certain they were driving close to where the dead girl had spent her time when she was alive—at least her T-shirt had been there.

  There were oil wells all over Texas burning off leaking natural gas, so there was nothing truly unique about that. But the dirt of an area, the plants, often contributed to the local scent. Each place had its own fragrance. Most people recognized it subconsciously, but he was a special creature. Or maybe just an odd one. It depended how you categorized it.

  He and his father were genetic mutations. He’d studied himself extensively. It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d gone to med school; Donovan needed to know how he worked. He never intended to become a doctor in the traditional sense. He didn’t have the people skills. Luckily there were other professions for people with MDs, and he found a good fit in the medical examiner’s office. He found a great fit in Columbia. And he found a house that backed onto a national forest where he could run.

  Why had he gotten bored when he had it so good?

  Eames had them up and working early the next morning. Just to get out of the room, they went to a chain store with Internet and hooked into the FBI database. Immediately she opened with the news. “The DNA results are back. The bones don’t belong to Jennifer Cohn.”

  It was good and bad news, and Donovan took a moment to absorb it. They had DNA samples from both parents on file, so they didn’t have to ask each time. He still thought of the girl with both the first and last name. It helped to keep her at a distance.

  Eleri apparently didn’t need his time to think about the news.

  “I think we should use drones to get closer. The satellite imaging isn’t showing much out there.” Eames hadn’t dismissed him the way he expected her to. Maybe her own admitted bad sense of smell left her open to the possibility that he was just that good. Though he was, he couldn’t tell her why.

  “Does each place smell different enough to make it worth spending the funds on this?” There was no doubt in her expression, just the question itself.

  He shrugged. “The short answer is yes. Places smell different enough from each other that each one smells different to me. The long answer is no.” He didn’t want to tell her this, but it was safe. There was nothing in this kernel that opened the whole story. Still Donovan remained wary about handing pieces to a person who was great at putting them together. Eames was not only an FBI agent, but she’d been part of an elite profiling team before moving to NightShade and taking on a junior partner. He hoped this bit of information wasn’t too much. “My dad and I moved around a lot. Each place smelled different, each building—home, school, after school care. Each town. Different parts of town.”

  Her frown spoke before her words. “So why the doubt?”

  “Well, I’ve never used it to really find a place before. I’ve never asked anyone else to invest money in it and I’ve never been into this part of Texas. So I have no idea how much of the state smells like this, maybe exactly like this. Or even how big the area is.”

  She nodded slowly, her gaze clinging to the distance for a minute before it came back to him. “But when we drove around yesterday, you didn’t smell it all the time. Just that one section. That says to me that all of middle Texas does not smell the same and maybe we get a drone and take a look.”

  They didn’t need a drone; he’d rather go out himself, but he didn’t know how to say so. “How do we do that? How long does it take?”

  “I’ll talk to SAC Westerfield and see if we can even get one. We might have authorization by this afternoon. We’re split distance between the Dallas and San Antonio offices, so if either of them has a machine, we might get to use it, unless someone else needs it.” She threw her hands up. “Basically, I have no idea at all.”

  Laughing at her exasperation, Donovan nodded and pushed ahead. “Can I get a second rental car or just take the car out by myself tonight?” It was an odd request and he knew it. If she pushed back, that would be the end of it.

  “Got a hot date?”

  He knew he should say yes. That would make it easy—might even explain him having the car out until close to sunrise. But the thought of flat out lying right to her face churned his stomach. “No, I wanted to do some recon.”

  There was a protest forming on her face. In the name of steering the situation so he didn’t have to lie, Donovan jumped in. “I’m a hiker and a runner. I can go farther on my own. I also have excellent night vision and I’m the one who can smell the area.”

  “You’re also the one who’s untrained.”

  “I’m trained.” He was something else, too. “They’ll never see me. Never know I was there. I promise.”

  Her pause gave him hope.

  And the opening gave him rope. So he grabbed it, knowing full well the thing about rope was just how often it got used to hang you. But he took it anyway. If he was going to do this—be an agent—he was going to do his best. Even if his senior agent didn’t know how that was going to happen. “This isn’t cockiness over my Academy training. I was a young kid in bad neighborhoods. Always on my own. I live on a property next to bears and cougars and I run with them all the time.”

  Her hand went up. “Bears and cougars are far kinder and more logical than some people. And we have reason to believe that the people you might find are exactly the ones that make the wildlife look friendly.”

  Donovan was out of ideas. Maybe he could just rent the spare car himself. She wouldn’t know anything, maybe not even know that he went out, and he’d come back in the morning with solid intel.

  His chest ratcheted down on his heart and he realized for the first time why he left the ME’s office, why he joined the FBI readily when Agent Westerfield had shown up and asked: he was tired of being alone. He needed a partner, someone to force him into communication with the living rather than the dead. Someone—a boss, an agent in charge—to be responsible to.

  For the first time in a long time he wasn’t the one who knew his job best. In the morgue he answered to administrators, doctors, investigators, but none of them would look at him and tell him how to improve an autopsy. Most of them didn’t even understand it well enough to ask him the right questions.

  His father had isolated him as a child and he’d isolated himself as an adult. Only now, sitting in this mid-scale food store, did he even realize what he’d done. He’d put himself into a chain—below Westerfield and Eames. And he wanted that chain to work. So he asked her about the car, rather than just taking off on his own.

  She was staring at him through his epiphany, her expression thoughtful. Donovan was forced to ask himself if she was profiling him. If so, what did she see? Should he be worried?

  Her words came as a shock. “You’ll have to stay in constant communication with me.”

  Damn. “I can’t.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why not? You want me to send a new agent out into u
nknown territory on his own and cut communications? I don’t think so.”

  “Any noise is problematic. Any light can be seen far away. How would it work?”

  “You’re right.” She conceded and he breathed a sigh of relief, but it barely formed before it froze at her smile.

  “We’ll GPS you!”

  How in hell was he going to take a GPS with him? Unless he could swallow it, the result of which would be just too disturbing to think about.

  Eleri shook her head, exasperated at the obvious turn of his thoughts. “No lights. You’ll carry it in your pocket.” She was proud of herself. “They vibrate, so I can signal you if need be. No light, no noise.”

  He had no idea, but he’d make it work. He would figure it out. “I’ll be out, I won’t be able to come right back, but I’ll pay attention and you can track me.”

  It was the best he could do. Still he held his breath waiting to be struck down. Thoughts of his childhood came rushing back with sudden clarity. Asking his father about sleepovers, if he could ride the bus to a friend’s house . . . and always being denied. He was a kid, so he learned slowly that letting go of the hope was easier. For years it tormented him; each time he asked, thinking this time he’d get what he wanted. Later he realized it was better not to ask.

  Eleri was nodding to herself. “Am I off base here?” She didn’t let him answer, which was good, because he didn’t understand. “When I was a new agent, I wanted to do what I did best. Which was not what my senior partner did best, and thus not what he understood. If you add to his issues that I was young and female, he didn’t let me do much.”

  Yes, she was on base.

  She kept going, showing just how on target she was. He bet she’d been a great profiler. “You’re older than me. You aced defense and maneuvers at the Academy and you have a ton of skills I don’t. But I’m responsible for you. So I’m between a rock and a hard place here. If you really think you can come back safe, then let’s do it.”