by Debra Dunbar
Chapter 10
It was about four in the morning when my ringing phone woke me up.
"He's hit again. York. Time of death between midnight and three-thirty that we can tell."
Candy, I thought rubbing sleep and gunk from my eyes.
"Two victims this time. A husband and wife. I've asked the local pack to secure the scene until we get up there to look at it. They've already done their sniffing around, but your skills may be able to find something beyond our ability."
"Are you up there now? Do I meet you, or do we ride together?" I asked, still groggy.
"I'll head up there now. If you can meet me up there as soon as you can, I'd like you to check everything while it's still relatively fresh. Besides, the local guys really do need to start cleanup soon, before neighbors notice anything."
York was about a two hour drive. I took down the address, writing it on my pillowcase since I can never seem to find a pad of paper when I need one. Then I quickly called Wyatt and threw on some clean clothes. A shower would have to wait. Wyatt was just coming up the drive when I emerged from my seldom used front door. He raised his eyebrows a bit at the pillow case I was carrying, but didn't comment.
I wasn't a morning person, but this was the kind of morning to make me want to change my habits. The normal nighttime din of insects had quieted, replaced by early birdsong. It was still fully dark, but there was an expectation of light, an anticipation hovering on the eastern horizon. Everything seemed to be suspended, teetering right on the edge of daybreak. On a razor's edge of becoming. Even Boomer, standing at the corner of the house watching us, seemed to be in transition. As if he were two different beings, one day and one night, on the verge of transformation.
We drove north, taking back roads to Route 15, with Wyatt sleepily navigating through his cell phone GPS. The sun came up with orange and red over the little farmhouses and fields. It was pretty much just us, the early morning commuters, and the cement truck drivers from the plant, although there were signs the dairy farmers had been up earlier. Huge milking barns, long and flat, were lit up brightly before the first rays reached up over the horizon.
We'd made a quick stop at a 7-11 for some coffee and Wyatt grumbled. He was grumpy and the beauty of the morning was lost on him. Evidently, zombie killing last night hadn't gone well, and he'd not had much sleep. He complained repeatedly that he was tired, hungry and hated 7-11 coffee. I was ready to dump his coffee over his head if he didn't shut up about it. I may be a vodka snob, but I'm not a coffee snob. And I don't bitch and moan constantly when I don't get my preferred vodka. Well, maybe just a little. When I got tired of listening to him complain, I pointedly turned on the radio. I had thought about finding some soft rock just to annoy him further, but instead put on blue collar comedy. Wyatt was more fun when he was in a better mood.
The sun was up and Thurmont was stirring with the beginnings of their country rush hour as we passed through toward the highway. Wyatt saw a Sheetz and insisted on stopping, pointedly dumping his previous coffee into the bushes as he walked in. I bought another coffee, too, just so I could compare them. I couldn't tell the difference. The both tasted like cheap generic coffee prepared hours ago and slowly burning on the bottom of the pot ever since.
This area of Maryland was really beautiful. Green covered mountains flanked the highway, separated from the road by flat acres of fields. Signs indicating directions for various national parks, orchards, and historic attractions didn't detract from the stunning morning view. Route 15 was a scenic route north of Thurmont. Mountains all along the horizon were the backdrop for miles of forests and picturesque farms. The occasional fruit orchard, with the requisite roadside stand, and its manicured, geometrically arranged trees dotted our view.
The coffee seemed to be rousing Wyatt from his sleepy state because just over the Pennsylvania line he looked in surprise at his phone GPS and at the highway marker.
"Why are we going this way to York? Why didn't we go 70 up to 83? It would have been much shorter."
"Rush hour up 70 into Baltimore? And 83? That's even worse. That road sucks when it's not rush hour. I'd rather take the back roads and risk getting behind a tractor or some slow poke."
Wyatt fussed over his GPS, not convinced.
"No, Sam, this is really taking us out of our way. We could have gone through Westminster up 27, then through Hanover on 94 if you wanted to take the back roads. We would have gotten there much quicker."
"94 goes smack through downtown Hanover. There are a ton of lights, truck traffic that takes forever each time they stop to try to get back up to speed, and there are two railroad crossings. Two. There is a stupid train taking fucking forever every time I go through there." There was an Utz factory outlet there, though. I had a terrible weakness for Grandma Utz potato chips. They'd be closed this early in the morning, though.
"Even so, we'd save a ton of time going 94. Hanover would put us so much closer to York than this roundabout route."
"I'm not really comfortable going through Hanover, right now," I said.
Wyatt glared at me in suspicion. "You weren't the one who burned down the Hot and Spicy Burger, were you? I really liked that place. Was it an accident, or did they somehow get on your naughty list? Maybe they didn't put enough salsa on your burger?"
"I did not burn down the Hot and Spicy Burger," I protested. "I've never even been there and I don't just go around randomly setting fire to places. At least not on purpose," I added in the spirit of truthfulness.
I really didn't feel like explaining that I'd set loose a couple of those huge holiday inflatable lawn decorations this past Christmas and bounced them down 94 at rush hour. There were a lot of people that probably still remembered me. Especially the ones who'd wrecked their cars. It was so funny, though. Big inflatable Santa flying into the road and cars swerving everywhere. I've totally got to do that again, sometime. Maybe Halloween.
Wyatt looked unconvinced, but didn't pursue the topic further. He continued to pore over his phone, looking up as I exited the highway.
"You're joking with me, Sam. Route 30? You're going to haul down Route 30 from 15 to York? That's forty five minutes on a good day. It's two lanes, cuts through every tiny town this side of the state line, and will be filled with tractors and hay wagons. What are you thinking of?"
"Do you want to drive? You're so full of knowledge, Mr. GPS, maybe you'd like to drive?" I exploded at him.
Wyatt looked at the interior of my Corvette with something akin to lust in his eyes.
"Yes, I do want to drive," he said.
"Well, you're not." I told him. No way Wyatt was driving my precious car. No one drove my Corvette but me. Only a select few were even allowed in the passenger seat.
We meandered our way down 30 to York with Wyatt complaining under his breath the whole way. I kept turning up the radio volume, but it never seemed to sufficiently drown out his complaints.
I did need his navigation skills once we reached the York city limits, and Wyatt quickly guided me through the outskirts of town to a series of new housing developments. We went past all the gorgeous new homes toward the back, where an older section with fully grown trees hid.
The houses were built in the seventies; row upon row of split level ranches and bungalows filled the streets. They were all variations on an identical theme, with their reversed layout and different colored siding. We parked a couple blocks down so we didn't draw attention to the crime scene. Nothing like an expensive grey Corvette in the driveway to make the neighbors take notice and give everything away. Not that I was the master of stealth. I insisted on driving around the neighborhood nearly five times before I found a place I felt reasonably safe in leaving my car. Wyatt was ready to strangle me. The two hour car ride early in the morning obviously hadn't done much for his patience.
The house looked pretty much like all the other houses. A split level ranch with brick on the lower, partially underground level, and white siding on the rest. There was a car por
t off to the side of the house with a compact sedan parked in it. The house had been loved. The shutters and door were shiny with fresh green paint, and well-maintained begonias hung invitingly in baskets at the edge of the small roof covering the entryway. Carefully edged and mulched beds with newly planted, tiny boxwoods lined the path to the door. The mailbox by the edge of the driveway was cleverly shaped like a windmill and looked recently installed.
Candy met us at the side door, under the carport, her face grim.
"What on earth took you so long?" she asked.
Wyatt gave me a pointed look, but for once remained silent.
We followed her through a small pantry and into the kitchen and dining room area on the upper level of the house. The kitchen had a skillet soaking in the sink, and fresh coffee in the pot. The smell was heavenly. I wondered if Candy had made it when she got here. Thoughtful, but I didn't think you were supposed to make yourself at home in the kitchens of crime scenes.
"It's set to brew automatically at six in the morning," Candy said, noticing my glance. "Looks like all was calm at dinner, and they would have filled the coffee maker and set it right before going to bed, I assume."
The dining room was undisturbed with fresh flowers at the center of the gleaming oak table, and car keys casually tossed into a dish on the matching oak sideboard. We walked past the stairs leading to the lower floor and the front door and headed toward the bedrooms.
"They were killed downstairs, but I want you to see the bedrooms first." Candy noted in a strained voice.
There were three bedrooms. One had been converted into an office and the other appeared to be a child's bedroom. A baby's bedroom so immaculate and organized it looked like Candy herself had staged it. The crib had elephant themed sheets and bumper pad, and a parade of elephants hung from the mobile above it. Wooden elephant cutouts in bright colors danced along one wall. A glider rocker sat against the other with a bookshelf beside it. Stuffed animals were artfully arranged in the crib and along the shelves next to scores of books.
"I thought you said there were two victims," I asked Candy. "What happened to the baby?"
"I didn't know until I got here," Candy said, struggling to keep her voice neutral. "The female was pregnant. Very pregnant. So, really, there were three victims."
My kind breed a lot. It's not uncommon to have over a thousand offspring. Of course, a huge percentage of those never make it past infancy, let alone into adulthood. We don't have any agony over the mortality rate. We don't raise our children or have any kind of familial bond with them. We just form them, and hand them over into a kind of group home for their upbringing. There is no lengthy pregnancy, and once you hand them over you never bother to find out whether they survive, what they turn out to be like, nothing like that at all. We just don't really do the children thing.
At home, there was no particular taboo against killing young, or killing a parent who was in the process of forming an unborn child. This was definitely a terrible crime to angels, though. Did he know she was pregnant? Did he care? Genocide was one thing, but killing a baby, even an unborn one? How could he have done such a thing, violated the precious code the angels live by and get away with it? We get cut down for far less by them.
Wyatt and Candy appeared to be giving the room a moment of silence, so I went across the hall to the master bedroom. The queen-sized bed had the comforter turned down, and one side slightly rumpled, with the sheets aside. Someone had gone to bed briefly, and then gotten up. I was guessing the female.
"Does it look like she hurried out here?" I asked Candy as she and Wyatt came into the room. "Do you think she heard something going on in the basement and ran to check?"
Candy went over to the bed and looked at it carefully. She pointed to the bedside table where a set of reading glasses and a thick pregnancy guide lay.
"It doesn't look like she raced out of here in any hurry," she said. "Everything looks carefully placed. Glasses on top of the book. Book marked at a spot and placed evenly on the table. If she hurried, I'd expect to see the sheets pulled from the bed a bit and dangling on the edge, and the book tossed aside."
I thought about this as we went downstairs. Had her husband been quietly dead before she went down? Had she surprised the killer and he had no choice but to kill her too? Or had the killer waited for both of them to be together before he made his move?
I expected downstairs to be a bloodbath and I wasn't disappointed. The room itself is what you would expect to see. Couch. Two comfy chairs. Coffee table. TV. There was also a small desk with a laptop on it.
The guy was sprawled on the floor by the laptop. He looked like a human. A human with his head twisted backward and his torso sliced open from sternum to pelvis. The guy didn't have a shirt on, and his sweatpants were sliced at the drawstring waist where the cut extended. The blood appeared to be localized in a pool around him. Not sprayed all over the walls or on the ceiling. I walked carefully around to look at his face. His head was turned at an abnormal degree, the neck clearly broken. Blood had seeped out his nose and mouth. His expression looked placid. He had a pale set of angel wings on his temple, like a birthmark.
"Looks to me like he may have been killed before he was even aware there was someone in the room," I told Candy, wanting her opinion on the matter.
She nodded. "If an angel showed up unannounced in his house, he'd have been partially transformed. It would have been an immediate, instinctual thing. He was clearly dead before he had time to realize the angel was here."
"Maybe he thought it was a friendly visit? If an angel knocked on your door, would you invite him in and serve him tea?" I asked Candy. "Would you automatically think you were in danger? Especially if you hadn't done anything wrong?"
Candy shook her head. "If he'd knocked on the front door, the kitchen and dining area would show signs of late hospitality. He would have put a shirt on out of respect. And she wouldn't look like that." Candy pointed to the figure crumpled against the front wall of the room.
Wow, I thought walking over to the female. This had been a struggle. There was blood sprayed in arcs all around her and over the sofa. A huge smear of blood started high up on the wall, almost at the ceiling, and dragged down to the floor. I couldn't see much of her without touching her, but the heap of pajama clad flesh was torn and burned all over. Claws curled from massive hands, inexplicably at the end of delicate wrists. I saw a pretty white gold chain bracelet with an initialed heart charm and a tiny baby shoe attached.
I turned to Candy. "If it's okay, I need to move the bodies and better examine them."
She nodded, looking at the female werewolf with glassy eyes. Her lips twitched even as she clamped her teeth into them to hold them still. I looked at her and did the math. She looked to be mid fifties. She'd clearly had at least one child, probably more from what I saw of her body the other day. Her kids would be the age of this young couple. Maybe she was expecting a grandchild. I don't know why her distress bothered me, but it did.
Wanting to give Candy a moment to pull herself together, I asked her to go upstairs and get me a towel. I would probably need one anyway to wipe the blood off myself. She headed up, passing Wyatt on the way as he came down.
"Wow," he said surveying the scene. My thoughts exactly. "I haven't had a chance to look at the computer upstairs, yet. I thought I'd come down here first," he told me.
I nodded over at the laptop. "There's one down here, too. I'm thinking the guy was on it when he was killed."
He looked at the body blocking access to the small desk. "As soon as you clear that aside, I'll take a look at the laptop."
Okay, game time. I removed my clothes, but unlike Candy, just flung them over a chair in a relatively clean corner. Candy came down with a towel and skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stairs.
"Why are you naked?"
"I only have the one set of clothes and I don't want to be walking around in blood-soaked clothes all day." Or get it all over my Corvette's seats. "What
did you think?"
Candy had the grace to look embarrassed. "Sorry," she muttered.
I thought I'd start with the guy first. I went over to him and removed his sweatpants and boxers. His genitals were intact. The cut ended a good three inches above the pelvic bone. It didn't look like it was done for torture or need to access the organs, which were all there. Why had the angel slit him down the middle like this? The neck breaking action had clearly happened first, and had caused the werewolf's death. Maybe there had been an interruption before the angel could do what he intended with the organs?
I ran my fingers through the body and sent out feathers of energy to explore. There was no energy in it beyond the normal energy that all matter carried. I could feel the DNA signature of the werewolf with its odd mutation. All the other kills had been altered and turned basically human. Why had this one been left werewolf? The angel must have been interrupted before he could finish.
I couldn't feel anything of the angel until I ran my fingers along the burnt edges of the skin. There. There was an energy signature with a faint personal energy note. This hadn't been a weapon, or claws or teeth. The cut had been made by a burning energy, but it wasn't just used to cut the flesh, it was used to explore the victim. Once something is dead, we usually don't mess much with it, so this finding was perplexing. Why would the angel want to explore the werewolf after his life essence left? Why didn't he just do the DNA conversion and hit the road? Was this part of the process he needed to do for the DNA conversion?
I gripped the victim's head on either side, sending feathers into the brain. No one was home, but the brain was intact and free of any angelic energy signature. The angel hadn't been looking for memories. I searched through the circuitry of the connectors in the brain, checking to see if I could access any remnant of the guy's last thoughts. I'm not very good with brains, so I wasn't sure I could gain anything by this or not. I could only find a relaxed sense of comfort. Well, at least he'd died in peace.
Reaching up a finger, I grazed the wing marks on his temple and the energy signature poured into me. Gotcha. This was strong. Very strong. I'd recognize him. I'd have a good chance of sensing him if he was anywhere in a mile or two radius from me and used his energy. Adrenaline flooded me. Fuck, I loved a good hunt. This was the best feeling ever. Better than sex even.
I rolled the body over, away from the desk so Wyatt could reach the laptop. There was nothing at all on his backside. And I checked it very thoroughly just to annoy Candy.
"It was an angel, not an alien," she told me. "I don't think anal probes were involved."
"Best to check," I told her cheerfully, my mind furiously working the angel's energy signature and locking it in to my memory.
"I'm done," I told Wyatt as I moved to the female, carefully wiping my hands on the towel Candy gave me. Wyatt leaned over the blood soaked carpet, and carefully picked up the laptop, stretching the cord to a clean spot.
I looked at the female and wondered where to begin. I lay her face down first. Peeling off her shirt, I noticed her backside was surprisingly clean of cuts and burns. She didn't run, didn't turn her back on him, I thought with admiration. There was a significant hole in the back of her head though, with a great volume of blood streaked down her hair and soaking her shirt back.
I stuck my finger in the hole and realized that it was about the size of my index finger in diameter and jagged as if something had been shoved in and dragged upward and out. I looked up the wall, up the blood smear to the round splat near the ceiling. Too high. Grabbing the chair from the desk, I dragged it over and stretched as far as I could. There was a huge nail protruding from the wall. A hefty ten penny nail, which must have originally held some type of heavy artwork. It must have been in the wall pretty tight as it hadn't been removed, and had been painted over. Now it was red with blood. Okay, he was strong enough to pick her up and pitch her high up against the wall where she smacked her skull on the nail and slide down in a trail of blood.
Hopping off the chair, I rolled her over to see the front. Now, this was where the action was. Her hands were massive claws, and her snout extended slightly to accommodate strong pointed teeth the size of my thumbs. Her lips curled up in a snarl and her eyes, even in death, were fierce. She had a burn-edged slice across her right cheek and nose. Her neck and legs were covered in the same burned slices. The huge bulge of her belly was untouched. Interesting. It was as if the angel didn't want to target the area where the baby was. I examined the wounds. They were not terribly deep, but one on her leg had severed her femoral artery. Game over, girlfriend.
Looking at the blood on her claws, I ran my finger over them. I'd never had an angel genetic signature before, since normally I'd be dead if I ever got that close to one. I was kind of surprised to get one from the claws. I'd expected that they'd fought from a distance and she'd not been able to actually cut him. I caught my breath as I processed the unusually long DNA chain. It was the same as the one I carried. Outside of markers for personal characteristics, we had the same DNA. I'd expected them to be vaguely similar. Our races had formed about the same time, and we had some overlap in skills and abilities, but I hadn't expected this nearly carbon copy. How ironic, given our past. I looked up at Candy. Wyatt was furiously typing away on the laptop in a corner of the room.
"I'm thinking the angel came in and surprised the male while his back was turned breaking his neck. I'm conjecturing, but I think he placed the angel mark on the male's forehead, then proceeded to slice the cut in his abdomen with his energy. I'm assuming it's part of that genetic modification he is doing. He didn't get that far before he was surprised by the female. The victims don't have the genetic alteration, so the angel left in a hurry before he could complete the job."
Candy nodded and I turned to face the pregnant body on the floor.
"She interrupted the angel, who shot her at a distance, taking some care not to cut her where the baby was." I waved at the splatter of blood on the walls and couch. "Those cuts were rather superficial. I think he probably didn't know how to subdue her and get away without causing her and the baby's death. She approached him and actually got her claws on him. He was injured, but I don't know how badly, and he's probably healed himself by now. When she clawed him, he sliced her legs, then grabbed her and threw her against the wall. "
I walked over and pointed my finger at the line of blood soaked carpet. "He hit her femoral artery, and she bled profusely. It flew across the room as he threw her against the wall." I pointed to the wall, near the ceiling. "She impacted with her head against a large nail, up there, and slid down the wall. But, it was the cut to her leg that killed her. She couldn't lose much blood with a fetus, and she'd lost too much by the time she hit the wall."
Candy nodded. "That's what the werewolves who were here earlier thought, too."
"I don't think he intended to kill her," I said. "I think he meant to kill the male, and head out without her knowing. Not that that makes him a saint," I added hastily. "He's killed other women by your records, just not any children or pregnant women, which follows their code somewhat. I don't know what peace of mind it will give you, but I honestly don't think he meant to kill either her or her baby."
Candy looked thoughtful. "Is there anything else here we need to see? Do you have enough to maybe track and find Althean?"
"I've got his energy signature, so I think I'm done here," I said slowly, looking at the wing marks on the female's temple.
As an afterthought I ran my finger over them. It would be the same as on the guy since I already had the angel's energy signature. Shocked at what I felt, I jumped about a foot across the room and toppled over on my ass with enough speed to make Candy and Wyatt jump, too.
"There was a second angel," I said in amazement.
Candy stared at me while Wyatt looked off in the distance toward the bookcase with a slight frown on his face.
"The energy signature on this wing mark is completely different from the one on the guy. Two angels
were here," I insisted.
"Is the blood from the first angel or the second?" Candy said, her brows knitted in concentration. "Could one angel have killed the guy, left, then another came here, did the weird abdomen cut, then was surprised and killed the female?"
"I don't know," I replied slowly. "I have the DNA signature off the blood on the claws of the female, but that's different from energy signatures. I can't tell whether the blood DNA belongs to the first or second angel." I was so frustrated. I thought I had it all, and here was that big old monkey wrench.
"Let's just watch the video," Wyatt said from over by the bookshelves. He was holding a small round device. "It's a security camera. I have these at my house. This one is active right now and feeding to the computer up in the office."
Jackpot!
