For the second time in as many days, she fled down the hall, trying to put as much distance between her, Wes Callahan, and everything that had happened. But she knew there was no way in hell she’d be able to forget. He had a hold on her, and it terrified her.
Chapter Seven
Mike was at his desk when Serena got back to the precinct. Her hands were cold; her new gloves had already gone missing. And her feet were bitterly cold, rubbing painfully against the inside of her boots. She poured coffee and sat down at her desk.
“Nowinski stopping by?” She blew on the coffee before taking an experimental sip.
“You just missed him. I told him what I could, said you were working the case. He seemed satisfied, for now.” Mike looked up at Serena. “You got anything from your…lead?”
She winced at Mike’s tone. “I was doing some research on shifters.” The irony of that statement was not lost on Serena.
“Oh? Learn anything that might help the case?”
Serena took another sip of coffee. Things Wes had said came back to her. She shrugged. “The main difference between werewolves and shifters, as it applies to our case…werewolves are compelled to kill. Shifters kill like humans kill, for the same reasons.” She felt silly, parroting Wes’s words, but there was nothing else she could think to say. It all sounded weak, evasive, and she took another sip of scalding coffee.
“So you’re thinking this wasn’t just a…crime of passion? Something uncontrollable? That Goudy was possibly targeted, stalked, and then murdered?”
Serena nodded. “Yeah, something like that. I think Goudy fit the killer’s requirements: alone, drunk, and easily subdued.”
“So you think this is guy’s a serial killer? Like any human serial killer?”
“Yeah. Decker said the victims in Wausau and Point were all male, either drunk or otherwise impaired. They could have just as easily fallen prey to any killer. But our guy apparently likes taking this one step further and changes into a wolf to do the killing.”
“You think that’s part of the reason he kills? Or he uses that to hide that he’s human?”
Serena shrugged. “I have no idea. It could be a way to try to hide his identity. Although a two hundred pound wolf-man shouldn’t be all that easy to hide.”
Mike shook his head. “This case is really turning foul. And it’s not doing you any good either.”
Serena’s head shot up. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I know you. This is Mary-Claire all over again. You’re not sleeping, I bet, or eating. You’re distant, secretive…and this is only day two.” Mike’s voice was gentle but his words cut through Serena like a knife. Her anger was instant and hot, words pouring out of her mouth before she could call them back.
“Look, Sparks, you don’t like how I’m handling this and you want off the case, just ask Nowinski.” She stood up, pitching her coffee into the garbage. “I got work to do. If you’re interested in the case, I suggest you do the same.”
She grabbed her jacket and left the office, banging through the stairwell door. At the first landing she stopped, sliding down to sit on the bottom step. Mike was right, but it wasn’t the case that was consuming her. Right now it was Wes Callahan.
Someone opened a door above her and Serena rose, hurrying down to the lobby. What she wanted now was a shower and a change of clothes. She could smell Wes on her skin and in her hair. And she wanted desperately to do her job and find Goudy’s killer. She wanted to make things as right as she could.
A gust of cold air took her breath away as she pushed through the doors. The temperature had dropped since that morning, the sky above a crisp blue, the kind of blue that only came in winter in the north. Serena looked up, watching a trio of crows fly overhead toward the lake. They made her think of Goudy, alone on the ice, with just the crows. She shivered, jammed her cold hands in her pockets, and headed toward her car.
The ride home in the early afternoon was far less congested than it would be later. She took the turn off for Shadow Falls, passing by snow-covered Mill Lane. She wanted to see Brody again, feel his arms around her. But the tingle on her skin and the overwhelming images that still crowded her mind – it was all Wes. It made it impossible to even think about Brody without Wes’s face appearing, his growls and cries echoing in her mind. It was too soon, too soon to seek out Brody.
Serena shook her head, focusing on the case. Just because Wes liked Brody for the crime didn’t make him the killer. If he really was responsible, questioning him for no reason would spook him, make him nervous. He might run.
But it was becoming harder for Serena to separate her point of view from Wes’s. He was persuasive in more ways than one. In some ways, she felt totally on top of the case, with a solid suspect and mounting evidence, certain that the one missing piece that would tie the whole thing to Brody was going to be found with Goudy’s clothes. But it was Wes’s voice she heard, reciting all that in her head.
Her own voice was far less confident. It doubted everything, including this wild attraction she had for Wes. Here, in Shadow Falls, driving slowly down the street she lived on, her own voice came back to her, questioning everything she knew about the case, looking at every fact and theory with cold objectivity. She could almost do the same with Wes, could almost – almost – remember being with him and not feel the overwhelming physical sensations he’d aroused in her. Almost, but not quite.
She pulled into her driveway, collected the mail from the box, and unlocked the back door. Her house was chilly so she turned up the heat. The refrigerator briefly caught her attention, but she detoured past it and headed up the stairs. A shower and clean clothes held more appeal that eating.
The warm water relaxed her and the scent of her shampoo made Serena feel safe. She thought that was an odd emotion for shampoo to elicit, but she didn’t want to think about shampoo or how she felt. She wanted to think about the case and in the Falls, in her home, that meant thinking about Brody.
He was the only suspect at the moment, with no evidence tying him to Goudy’s murder. Serena stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel, padding down the hall to her bedroom. She found her cell phone and dialed CSU, Renee’s direct extension.
“Vitori.”
“Renee, it’s Serena.” She sat on the edge of the bed, more than tempted to settle back and pull the afghan over her while she talked. But this was business so she pushed the thought of sleep out of her head.
“You’re looking for information on Goudy? You talk with Mike?”
“Yeah, he said you found hair on the clothes. Just wondering if you had any…”
“If I had any preliminary results? I know you. You’re worse than a pit bull sometimes. Let me see…” There was a prolonged rustling of papers. Serena could hear voices in the background.
“Here. We found a lot of hair. From what I saw while we were bagging it, there are samples from at least four different individuals, probably more. We have a sample of Goudy’s for comparison and on visual, I’m pretty confident some of it belongs to him.”
“That makes sense. They were his clothes.” Something tugged at Serena’s thoughts, something that wasn’t quite adding up. But Renee went on and she lost the thought.
“You said he’d been at a party, right?
“Yeah. On campus.”
“Okay. We found a few individual hairs, one Asian, probably female, judging by length and the fact that it’s been chemically processed. If you can get samples from the kids at the party, I can compare them.”
Serena sighed. She’d ask Mike in the morning…if Mike was still talking to her.
“Then we have a bigger sample, Caucasian, black hair. Probably male judging by length and condition; it’s untreated. But that’s only a guess. There’s another sample, also human, Caucasian, dark brown. Possibly male, again, only a guess by the length and lack of chemical processing.” Renee paused. “But this is odd. I didn’t notice this before. There are lots of those, actua
lly more than Goudy’s.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You’d expect to find a lot of Goudy’s hair on his clothes, right? People typically shed up to a hundred hairs every day during the telogen phase when the hair is dormant. But here, there’s more hair from the fourth sample and many of them are in the growth phase with the follicles still attached.”
“That means they were pulled out of someone’s head, not just normally shed hairs?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I hesitate to say this, but yeah, I think they were planted.”
“Shit. I don’t need any more weird with this case.”
Renee laughed. “Then I hope you’re sitting down. We found what you asked us to look for: animal hair.”
“Wolf? Or dog?”
“Hard to say. It’s canine, but it could be a wolf-dog hybrid. It’s definitely not a typical dog or wolf hair. Could be Goudy pet someone’s dog at the party. Or a dog walked through the crime scene; transfer could have happened then. Unless I had a sample for comparison…you know the drill.”
“Thanks, Renee. When are you running the DNA on the samples?”
“Well, we started that today. Nowinski was pretty clear this case takes priority. So we started with the human hair from the samples that were most numerous.”
“Okay. Should I ask if there was anything else?”
“You should ask what there wasn’t. No blood. Not a drop.”
“You’re kidding? How the hell does someone get torn open and his clothes not have blood on them?”
“The ME report said he had traumatic cerebral hemorrhaging, right? I’d say he was shaken hard enough to scramble his brains, his clothes were removed, and then he was taken somewhere else and murdered. Also, by the way the clothes were arranged, I’m pretty confident this was staged. Which fits with the theory the hair was planted. It was all a little too perfect.”
Serena leaned back on the bed and massaged her forehead with her free hand. “This is great, Renee. Really.”
“You want the DNA as soon as we get it, right?”
“Yeah. And Renee? Do one more thing.”
“Anything for you, Serena.”
“Run DNA on the wolf hair.”
There was silence on the line. “DNA on canine hair?” Renee’s surprise was evident in her voice.
“Yeah. And when you do that, compare it to the human hair.”
“Okay. Which sample?”
“Both. The Caucasian samples, the ones you think are male.”
“Will do.” Renee hesitated. “Is there something I should know that might help me here? You keep calling it wolf hair…we don’t know what it is.”
Serena sighed. Fatigue made her mind fuzzy. She sat up abruptly, the room spinning slightly. She closed her eyes.
“Just a far-fetched theory, Renee. Nothing that would help you right now. And if Nowinski asks about the DNA, tell him I asked for it.”
“Don’t worry. I will.” Renee paused. “Serena, are you okay? I know you hate when I ask that, but you sound a little stressed. I know it’s been a while since we had a chance to talk, but you…”
Serena drew a deep breath and opened her eyes. The room held still. “No, I’m fine. It’s this case…you know, it’s just so fucking weird.”
“Yeah, I know. But Serena…take care of yourself, okay?”
“Thanks, Renee. I will…I am.” Serena flipped her phone shut. She eyed the afghan longingly. It would be so easy to just pull it over her, to let sleep come, to put all this out of her mind, even for just a little while.
Abruptly she pushed herself up from the bed, the towel falling to the floor. She had a job to do and feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to catch Goudy’s killer. There were so many things that didn’t add up. Where was Goudy killed? How did he get onto the lake without the killer leaving any tracks? She was missing something and it bothered her.
Serena dressed in clean jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, adding a sweater. Her instincts told her to start in Shadow Falls. If Brody was the killer – and she desperately hoped that wasn’t – then maybe he’d killed Goudy here, taken him up through the chain of lakes, and left the body, leaving one set of tracks in and back. There were holes in her theory, but right now the case was more holes than anything solid. She was here, Brody was here, and that was good enough for the moment.
The sky had clouded over again and the light was diffused, the shadows disappearing, mixing with the grays and whites of the landscape. She walked down her street, turned left, and headed toward Mill Lane. She took deep breaths, the cold air filling her lungs, clearing her mind.
Mill Lane was unplowed, her tracks from yesterday the only ones in or out. The country trucks apparently had no reason to plow the road and unless Zillman had told them about Brody, they probably assumed the mill house was vacant. Serena stepped off the main road, walking in the tread marks she’d left the night before.
She stopped right where the drive curved toward the house. The house was dark, the windows curtained. If Brody was home, the house gave no signs. She hesitated, the sudden desire to see him flaring inside her.
Instead, she turned left and walked off the road and down the shallow incline to the edge of the lake. She stopped, looking out across the frozen expanse, trying to gauge where the channel to the next lake was. There seemed to be a gap in the trees, but from here it was too hard to tell. She had no intention of walking all the way to Lake Monona, and so she turned back, scanning the shoreline.
The brush was too thick to see much of anything and she stepped out on the ice. The snow was deep and undisturbed. Even through her boots, her feet felt the chill. There were no signs of wolf tracks or any tracks for that matter. If there had been a wolf here the other night, all signs had been obliterated.
She walked out about thirty feet, far enough distance to see past the trees up the hill and down the rest of the shoreline.
From here, she could see the mill house rising up through the bare trees. The windows on this side were dark as well. There was no movement above her and she kept walking, her eyes on the house. The garage in the back came into view, painfully new compared to the original structure. She couldn’t see a car, but she was looking at the back of the building. Discarded construction debris was piled up against the garage. There were old paint cans and stacked lumber. She also noticed the drywall scraps, which were soggy and disintegrating.
Her feet crunched through the snow, breaking through the thin crust that had formed on the top. The only other sound was the chirp of a bird somewhere close by. Chickadee, by the sound of it.
The shore continued to curve and she found herself on a small bay, not far from the falls. She heard the hushed sound of falling water and tried to imagine where the old mill would have stood. She stepped further out onto the lake and then turned, looking back at the mill house. It had never been apparent to her before that the house sat on a blunt point of land, extending out into the lake. The views from the house must be amazing, with a panoramic view of the lake.
She thought she saw movement at one of the windows, the flick of a curtain. With her back to the lake, she circled the house, the side of the garage coming into view, the upper story of the house now obscured by gray tree branches.
There was another movement in a different window, almost as if someone was watching her watch the house. The thought flickered through her mind that it might be Mr. Zillman. If it was Brody, she thought by now he’d have come out or called to her.
Serena suddenly froze, her heart stopping at the first shattering crack of ice, the sound like a gunshot in the frigid air. Something shifted beneath her feet and she felt herself drop. She flung her arms out for balance and then she was up to her chest in the frigid water, ice pressing against her body. The cold sucked the breath out of her and she tried to hold still, a remote part of her mind trying to remember what the hell she was supposed to do
.
Another chunk broke free and she plunged beneath the surface, the cold water covering her face, filling her mouth. She struggled, kicking upward toward the surface, her clothes suddenly as heavy as chain mail. She kicked again and her head broke free of the water. Gasping, she flung herself across the ice at the edge of the hole, her arms spread wide. She tried wiggling onto the edge, but another section broke off and she scrabbled her fingers against the snow-covered ice. She couldn’t gain any purchase and she started sliding back into the icy water.
The scream on her lips died as the water covered her face again. Everything was going numb, her clothes dragging her down. She closed her eyes and felt herself go weightless. It would be so easy to just let go, just float away.
Her feet touched the bottom of the lake and her eyes flew open. It was dark but she could see diffused light from the hole above. She bent her knees, pushed off as hard as she could against the bottom, and tried to use her arms to propel herself upward.
When she broke through the surface again, she heard someone yelling, felt something hard beneath her groping hands. The water cleared from her eyes and she saw Brody, lying across the ice at the edge of the lake, pushing an extension ladder toward her. With the last of her strength, she grabbed a rung, one hand slipping from the cold aluminum. She panicked, scrambling madly before finally managing to get both hands onto the ladder. She pulled as hard as she could, lunging across the ice. More chunks broke free.
“Serena, just hang on! I’m going to pull you in!” The ladder started moving away from her and she panicked again, but he was pulling her out of the water now. Another section of ice broke free and she almost lost her grip. But the ice was getting thicker beneath her, and she felt herself being pulled up onto it. She had enough strength to wrap her arm around a rung, pulling herself further onto the frame.
Inch by inch Brody pulled the ladder toward him, dragging Serena out of the water and across the ice. Her hands were numb and when she tried to adjust her grip on the ladder, she realized her hand had frozen on to the rung, her movements pulling away the skin on the palm of her hand. Everything was moving in slow motion and she struggled to regain her grip.
All American Wolf Page 11
