Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

by Patricia Briggs

  “I was just thinking that I have a few people to question as well,” I told her. “How ’bout I go out with you and then take you with me? We can have a cooperative investigation.”

  “Cooperative investigation,” she said. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Let me pick you up,” I told her. “If I leave my truck here another day, it’s liable to be towed or have all the tires slashed.”

  Nadia laughed because she thought I was kidding, and we made arrangements to meet the next morning.

  • • •

  Nadia’s house was an F house in a sea of alphabet houses in Richland. The government had done Richland a favor with all the World War II–era carbon-copy houses: kept it from looking like all the other well-heeled towns I’ve seen. A stranger to the Tri-Cities would be justified in thinking that it was the poorest of the cities rather than arguably the wealthiest, at least in absolute house values. The F houses were small, two-story, Federal-style houses that looked somewhat regrettably like the houses in a Monopoly game.

  I wondered if Nadia chose her house because it disappeared into the woodwork the same way she did. I drove up her narrow, bumpy driveway and she ran out the door.

  “Aunt Elizaveta is not happy,” she informed me a little breathlessly as she fastened herself in. “I hope we find something today.” She was lying about the last part, which puzzled me a little.

  “What’s wrong with your great-aunt?” I asked, pulling out into traffic.

  “She couldn’t find any magic signature on the body or the clothes the zombie was dressed in, except for mine and hers. That means there’s a witch or priest out and about who is skilled enough to hide from my aunt.”

  There was just a hint of a smile on her face; I reckon it wouldn’t be easy to be at Elizaveta’s beck and call. Might be fun to see her stymied once in a while. That would explain the earlier lie.

  “Where are we meeting Toni McFetters’s husband?” I asked.

  “At his house. He’s on compassionate leave.” She gave me the address. “The children are at his in-laws’ house. He told me that when I called him yesterday and told him we’re investigating his wife’s disappearance. Our questioning should just blend in with that of the police if I can manage it right. It helps that he’ll be the only one to work on.”

  Toni’s husband’s house was only a couple of blocks from Nadia’s, in a newer neighborhood—no alphabet houses at all. It was a big house, not as upscale as Kyle’s house, but not an inexpensive property, either.

  I pulled up in front and turned off the truck. “We can keep this short. All we need is to find out if he killed her or knows who did. And if he’s noticed anything suspicious.”

  “Why don’t you do the talking?” she said. “I’ll work better if all I have to do is the magic.”

  I didn’t like it, this business of messing with someone’s mind, any more than I had liked lying to Kyle before he knew that I was a werewolf. But I’d lost my innocence a long time ago.

  The man who let us in smelled of desperation. He matched his wife in good looks—or would have with a few more hours of sleep—but showed none of the signs of vanity that a lot of good-looking men display, men like Kyle for instance. McFetters’s haircut was basic; his clothes were off the rack and fit indifferently.

  Before I asked a single question, I knew that he had had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance.

  “Mr. McFetters, thank you for speaking to us,” I told him, refusing his offer to come in and sit down. “This won’t take long.”

  “Call me Marc,” he said. “Has anyone found out anything?”

  “No,” I said. It was a lie, but in a good cause. “Did anything happen in the past few weeks—before your wife disappeared—that caught your attention? Strangers in the neighborhood, someone your wife noticed when she was out jogging?”

  He rubbed his hands over his head as if to jar his memory. “No,” he said, sounding lost. “No. Nothing. I usually jog with her, but I got a late start that morning; we’d . . . Anyway she has an extra hour before she has to be at work. She says she can’t think without her morning run.”

  “What was she wearing?” I asked, and listened to a detailed rundown that proved that whoever said that straight men don’t pay attention to clothes was wrong.

  “She was wearing a pink jogging suit we’d picked up in Vegas—it was her favorite, even though the right knee had a hole from where she fell a few weeks ago. She had size-eight Nikes—silver with purple trim. She likes her green running shoes better, but they clash with the pink. She wore the topaz studs I got her for our anniversary in her ears, and her wedding ring . . . white gold with a quarter-carat Yogo sapphire I dug up when I was eighteen and on a family vacation.” There was a sort of desperate eagerness in his voice as he went on without prompting to describe their usual running route; as if he believed that somehow, if he could only manage to give enough details, it would help him find his wife.

  He ran down, eventually, and, almost at random, his gaze focused on Nadia. He frowned. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I? What was your name again?”

  “Nadia,” she said.

  “Did you go to Richland High?” He rubbed his hair again and tried to find the proper social protocol.

  “Along with half of Richland,” she said in a gentle voice. “It’s not important right now, Marc.”

  “Did you have anything to do with your wife’s disappearance?” I asked as gently as I could, pulling him back to important things. He hadn’t. I’d have bet my life on it, but for Elizaveta, I’d get absolute proof.

  “No.” He blinked at me, as if the thought were too strange to contemplate. He wasn’t angry or offended, just bewildered. “No. I love Toni. I need to find her but I don’t know where to look.” Bewildered and terrified. “Where should I look?”

  • • •

  I shut the door behind us and waited while Nadia muttered a little under her breath and dropped a few herbs she had in a baggie on the steps.

  “Well?” she asked after climbing in beside me.

  I drove away from Toni McFetters’s house before I answered her. Churning in my gut was the understanding that if I hadn’t been with Kyle last night when the zombie came, I’d be in much the same state as Marc McFetters.

  “We need to find who did this. That man doesn’t deserve the police jumping down his throat.”

  “He didn’t kill her,” she said, but it was more of a question than a statement. I couldn’t believe that she’d been in the same room I had and hadn’t recognized the man’s innocence. Witches don’t have a wolf’s nose, I suppose.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Good,” she said. “He was right, we did go to high school together. A geeky kid, but a real sweetie.” She shifted nervously in her seat as if she felt uncomfortable. “So that leaves us where?” Her question was a little fast. Maybe she’d liked Marc McFetters more than she was comfortable with me knowing. He seemed like a good man.

  “We’re going to have some conversations with a few people who are very unhappy with Kyle.”

  • • •

  There were four people I wanted to check out. It might surprise people who knew him that the list wasn’t longer: Kyle did not make friends of the opposition in the courtroom. He was, however, fair and honest—which meant that most of the opposing lawyers got over their anger pretty fast.

  I’d decided somewhere along the way that the zombie animator had been hired to assassinate Kyle. Gut instincts were always important to the detectives in the movies, but they were more so to werewolves. Mostly, gut instincts were just little bits of information floating around that resolved themselves into the most likely scenario.

  That meant that we were looking for two different people. The one who did the hiring, and the one who was hired. Motive. My license might be new, but I was old. I’d survived because I u
nderstood what moved people, why they acted and why they did not. Old werewolves aren’t that common; most of us who survive the Change die in fights with other werewolves shortly thereafter, because most werewolves don’t understand body language. They also don’t think. They trust their fangs and claws—even though other wolves have fangs and claws, too. I watched and learned.

  Motive was easier to find than an assassin for hire. I’d find the man who wanted Kyle dead, and then I’d find the killer. That was why my list wasn’t longer. Today we’d try the people who hated Kyle and could still afford to hire an assassin after Kyle got through with them in court. If I didn’t find a likely suspect, tomorrow I’d leave Nadia at home, call in the pack, and go hunting for someone who’d hate me enough to kill the man I loved.

  I’d called Sean Nyelund’s office and made an appointment to see him under the name of my pack Alpha—Adam Hauptman—before I picked up Nadia that morning.

  Nyelund worked in a newer office building in Kennewick, making money with other people’s savings. He was good at it. Very good.

  What he had not been good at was taking care of his own. He got the possession down fine, but not the concern for their welfare that should have gone along with it. His wife had sneaked out of his house in her underwear and hid in a neighbor’s garage for three hours before they’d found her. It was the first time she’d been out of the house in two years. Now she lived in Tennessee with her family, a good chunk of the money her husband had made in his life, and a new husband who was good with his guns.

  Nyelund hated Kyle, and he certainly had the money to hire an assassin. The only question was—had he?

  Sean’s receptionist was a pretty young thing not long out of high school. She had a bright smile to match the bright voice I’d talked to on the phone. Her eyes were frightened.

  “Just a moment, let me announce you,” she told me. Then she picked up her phone. “Mr. Hauptman to see you, sir.”

  A human wouldn’t have heard the quiet “Send him in.”

  He had his back to us when we entered his office, typing rapidly on a keyboard. It was a power play that worked against him because I shut the door and used a little pack magic to keep the noise confined to this room. We wolves don’t have much magic other than the shifting itself, but what we do have is good for keeping our business private.

  He turned around, “Mr. Haupt—” and then he saw who I was. He stiffened subtly, his hand hidden by the desk—and then he noticed Nadia. His hands were suddenly both clearly visible on the top of his desk. “Ah, I see. Mr. Smith, using pseudonyms now? I wasn’t aware you had enough money to invest. Perhaps the lady?”

  Nyelund looked like a slightly overweight soft-bodied, soft-minded kind of guy, the kind who should be out saving puppies on the street corner. He had dimples and good manners. It was his eyes that gave him away, cold and assessing. If he hadn’t been smart, he’d already have been in jail.

  “I thought it would save some time,” I said. “Did you order a hit on Kyle Brooks?”

  “Would I do such a thing?” he asked, spreading his hands out. Just a good ol’ boy, that was Sean Nyelund. “I don’t know where you came up with that idea.”

  I questioned him for twenty minutes or so and couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. It could mean that he’d done it. It could mean that he was thinking about doing it—or that he enjoyed the hell out of frustrating me. Hard to tell.

  Finally, he said, “Go away, Mr. Smith. You bore me. Come back if you have money to invest.”

  “You take care, now,” I said, tipping an imaginary hat. “I’d hate to see anything happen to you.”

  He grunted and turned back to his computer.

  Nadia worked her magic under the cover of my opening the door, and then we strolled out past the receptionist.

  “He pulled a gun on you,” Nadia said, belting in.

  “I saw it,” I told her. “You saved me, darlin’ girl.”

  She laughed. “Or reassured him that you weren’t about to attack.”

  “Could be,” I acknowledged, but thought that Nyelund would happily have shot me if he could have gotten away with it. Something to keep in mind.

  “What did you learn?” she asked. “I couldn’t tell anything about him.”

  “The jury is out on Nyelund,” I told her. “He makes such a point of not answering questions, he might as well be fae.”

  “Does he know that you’re a werewolf?” she asked. “And that werewolves can smell lies?”

  I shook my head, relatively certain of my answer. The public might know about werewolves—but I wasn’t taking out advertising. Kyle knew, but he was pretty much the only human who did. Using Adam’s name might make Nyelund suspicious—Adam had become a celebrity once the word got out that he was the local pack Alpha. If I were Nyelund, though, I’d bet that the celebrity part was why I’d used Adam’s name, not the Alpha-werewolf part. And should he think I was a werewolf anyway, he couldn’t prove anything and it just might make Kyle a mite safer.

  If Nyelund was smart and subtle, Phillip Dean, the next man on my list, was a different kettle of fish. He’d done some time after Kyle worked his magic in court—but only because he was stupid and talked his way into jail by threatening the judge. Dean was a nasty brute who’d inherited his father’s money a couple of years ago. The money wasn’t really enough to hire anyone—but he had the contacts, and it was only a matter of time before he killed someone. He’d almost managed to make it his ex-wife and wouldn’t mind at all making Kyle Brooks his first kill.

  He also, as it turned out after I made a few phone calls, was vacationing in Florida—Disney World.

  “Doesn’t mean it isn’t him,” I told Nadia. “But he’s kinda a long shot anyway. Doesn’t think ahead very well, though he’s cunning enough when cornered.”

  “So? Where to now?”

  “Ms. Makenzie Covington.”

  “A woman?”

  I smiled at her. “Most of Kyle’s clients are women, but he takes on cases for men, too. Ms. Covington is a real piece of work; tried to pose as the abused wife so that she could take her ex to the cleaners—she was not happy when Kyle proved that she inflicted her bruises herself. Her ex-husband’s bruises were also her doing. She lost visitation rights—not that she cared about the kids, but it humiliated her in front of her friends. Two years from now, she’ll be off tormenting her third or fourth husband, and wouldn’t make my list. Six weeks after her divorce, though, her ire is still focused pretty hard on Kyle.”

  “Why not on her ex?”

  I smiled a bit grimly. “By the time she got through with him, all he could say was ‘Yes, dear’ and look at the ground. Kyle was the one who humiliated her and protected her victim.”

  Makenzie Covington worked at home—which was currently a condo in South Richland. She was striking rather than beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, and strong features, she looked like a passionate woman who lived life to its fullest. Which was sort of true. She didn’t recognize me when she answered her doorbell.

  I introduced myself and Nadia.

  “I’ve never met a private detective before,” she cooed at me. “Won’t you come in?”

  It didn’t take long to figure out that it wasn’t her. If she’d ordered a hit on someone, she wouldn’t have welcomed a pair of private investigators into her home and gotten all hot and bothered about it. Sometimes being a werewolf gives you interesting insights into people.

  Still.

  “Ma’am, you haven’t ordered a hit on Kyle Brooks, have you?”

  “No,” she said immediately and truthfully. “But if you find someone who will, tell him I’ll pay half.” That was the truth, too.

  “I’ll do that,” I told her. Then it took me about twenty minutes to extract us from her condo, by the end of which even Nadia caught on to what Ms. Covington wanted from us.

 
; “I am really glad I brought you with me for that,” I told Nadia.

  Nadia giggled. She hadn’t even bothered doing any magic. No need for it. “I don’t think I was much help. She’d have taken both of us to bed, wouldn’t she?”

  “You, me, and the stray dog outside, yes, ma’am.” I pulled out into traffic. Maybe I was driving a little faster than normal.

  “I’ve never seen you disconcerted before,” she said. “Usually you just talk slower and use lots of ain’ts and ma’ams.”

  “Now I know how those sixty-year-old wives feel when their husband of forty years comes back from the doctor with a bottle full of blue pills.” I wasn’t as flustered as I made out, but I enjoyed Nadia’s laughter. She didn’t laugh as often as she ought.

  • • •

  Harper Sullivan was a retired doctor.

  Divorce is a nasty business and secrets tend to come out. The good doctor’s secret was that he liked to diagnose his patients with various life-threatening diseases they didn’t have. Of course, that meant they had to come in for frequent treatments. Eventually (especially when they were getting ready to get a second opinion), they were miraculously cured, all credit going to the doctor.

  Kyle’d used blackmail to get a nice settlement for the doctor’s ex-wife (who wasn’t any great shakes herself if she’d kept quiet about what he was doing for twenty years) and to force the doctor to retire. There wasn’t real proof, Kyle’d explained to me, only hearsay—enough to ruin Sullivan’s reputation and get the AMA on his case, but he’d likely have kept his license. Blackmail was better because it kept more people from being harmed. Kyle can occasionally be as pragmatic as a wolf when it comes to making sure that justice is done.

  Dr. Sullivan was weeding his azalea bed when we drove up. He didn’t look up until I cleared my throat. It always bothered me that he looked like that doctor in that old TV show—Marcus Welby, M.D.

  “Doctor,” I said, “I’m Warren Smith. I’m a private investigator. This is my partner for the day, Nadia Popov. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”