"Quiet."
As if from a tightened faucet, the words stopped.
Art saw Lue's mouth open in slight surprise; but this was not the time or place to explain fully. Even if it was the appropriate time and place, he wouldn't have been inclined to explain fully.
So he did what he did best: he abbreviated.
"I know the type. So does she. Nothing more here."
"Well, we could use the security tape."
"Go for it. I'll be in the car."
He felt his partner's careful gaze on his back as he left the store.
CHAPTER 20
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're staring at me while I drive. Would you rather be driving again?"
"No, Art. I am . . . admiring your driving technique."
"It unnerves me."
"I doubt that. Nothing unnerves you."
Trying to execute a right turn without looking back at the face fixed on his, Art sighed. "You don't trust me."
"I trust you. I wish I knew more about you."
Art glanced down at the gauges, over at the mirrors, looking for something that would help him with an answer. Lieutenant Lue Vue was a good man, he knew. Perhaps it was time to be more forthcoming.
"You want to test my DNA."
"What? No!"
"I understand. It's on file. You can call Bemidji."
"I would never . . . I mean, I assume it is, with you being a police officer. I have no intention of checking that. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension speaks for itself, Art. You have nothing to explain to me."
"You lie well. Check it, when you can."
That got Lue to look somewhere else, at least, for the remainder of the trip back to the station.
Once there, they got another surprise. Chief Smiling Bear sat up against Lue's desk, and another woman stood straight facing her. The second woman had vibrant orange curls that bounced lightly off the shoulders of a sharp navy suit. As the chief's gaze wandered to catch the oncoming detectives, the bright curls whipped around and revealed a tornado of freckles surrounding hazel eyes.
Art let himself drop slightly behind Lue, to earn another moment to collect himself.
"Lieutenant Vue. Lieutenant McMahon. I'd like you to meet Special Agent Mercy March. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Minneapolis office."
The stranger stepped toward them, arm extended fully. "Lieutenant Vue. Chief Bear's been--"
"Smiling," Vue said, because he lived for the coming conversation about the chief's name . . . yep. She was already mock glaring.
"Oh." Agent March faltered, then tried a tentative smile. "Chief Smiling--"
"Both words are considered my last name," the chief explained, "like MacMahon would be for an Irishman . . . I'm not Chief Mac or Chief Mahon, I'm Chief Smiling Bear. Except what Lieutenant Lue Vue didn't mention is that I'm used to confusion around my name, as I'm sure you're used to foolish men and 'Miss March' jokes."
"A pleasure to meet you," Agent March said, and then her tentative smile bloomed into the real thing. "Yeah, I do get that from time to time."
"Would've been even worse, if you'd been old enough before the Internet kinda made Playboy moot."
"Perhaps we should change the topic." Lue took her hand and shook it firmly. "I take it we have an interstate pattern now." He turned to Art and winked. "So, BCA is not in charge anymore. How devastating for you. Where shall I send flowers?"
"I'll recover." Art swallowed and extended his own hand. "Special Agent."
"Please, call me Mercy."
He nodded. "Mercy. Lue. Chief. We should find a room."
She looked him up and down--he may have been the only one who caught that--and nodded at the chief. "You have a conference room the four of us can use? This may take some time."
"Sure." The chief looked down at the thick briefcase stuffed with folders that lay at the agent's feet. "We've got most of Lue's case spread out on one of the walls anyway. You can add to what we've got." Like any good cop, the chief was horrified at adding to a complex mess, while thrilled at the chance to get more intel on the bad guys.
Two hours later, they had three walls full, and part of the conference table. The chief's assistant had just dropped off their intricate coffee and tea orders (along with Art's simpler order of water).
"It's an impressive run, if it's all true," the chief noted as she walked the length of the room. "Minot, North Dakota. Turtle Lake and Green Bay, Wisconsin. Pierre, South Dakota. All over the quad cities in Iowa and Illinois. And now Bemidji and Moorston, Minnesota. Our girl's been busy."
"For years," Mercy said. "I've been lucky; I work for a group who thinks about the long run."
"A group who can afford to," Lue interjected.
"Yes, of course." She nodded respectfully. "I wasn't trying to play nyah-nyah with our national budget. But my point is she's been doing this a long time, all over the place."
"There's no sequence," Art observed. His voice startled them; it was the first time he had spoken since Mercy March laid out the evidence she had compiled.
"I take it you mean," Mercy replied, "that our suspect did not follow any geographic pattern over time. That's not entirely true. There are multiple murders at each of the sites. In all cases, Ms. Scales 'cleaned out' an area before moving on. She spent anywhere from a week to two months in each city."
Lue was flipping through the file marked "Scales, E." "Are you sure about the name?"
"The Saint George's incident confirmed what we'd suspected. The destruction of that building matches with the more violent scenes at residences in the Quad Cities, and in Pierre. Ms. Scales doesn't always take the building down with her--sometimes she's more surgical."
"You're sure she's acting alone?"
"Excellent question, Lieutenant McMahon."
"You are so good at those," Lue piped up, grinning. "My hero."
Mercy betrayed irritation at the interruption, but quickly recovered. "Yes, we're sure it's just her. You've likely seen this in the Bemidji cases, and it's true across all these instances. There's never any other foreign, unexplained DNA or other trace evidence at any of the scenes. All the DNA matches correspond to her sequence, and she leaves plenty of it. She's not careful at all. It's like she wants us to find out she was there."
"She wants us to follow her," Art asserted. "She's daring us."
Lue pulled a flash drive out of the folder. "What's on this?"
"I'll show you." Mercy pulled a laptop out of her briefcase--it surprised Art after everything else that had come out of there--opened it, and plugged the drive in. A few moments later, a video appeared on the screen.
"This was taken by a college student about two blocks away from a murder scene in Green Bay, that same night. Fortunately, the kid didn't have the presence of mind to send this viral before law enforcement on the scene got a hold of it. We haven't released this to the public, for what will be obvious reasons. Detective Vue, based on the transcript of your call a few days ago, this should look familiar."
Watching the screen was both difficult and stressful. The shakiness of the handheld camera didn't help. Four teenagers--maybe five--were crammed into a vehicle a smidge bigger than Lue's childhood moped. The young women had bare arms featuring plastic bead bracelets over tanned wrists; the young men had wispy facial hair and wild looks in their eyes; everyone, including the driver, had a beer bottle in his hand.
They were whooping and hanging limbs and heads out the window and flashing passersby. Whoever was holding the camera (likely a smart phone, given the resolution) had a particular affinity for the redheaded woman to his right, in the backseat. The sky outside was dark, punctuated by the occasional streetlight and neon bar sign. She called out to every person they passed on the sidewalk and asked if they knew "a really cool place to party." Every guy had a different recommendation.
Suddenly, one of the girls in the car screamed. Two seconds later, something slammed into the right side of the car, tilting it wildly,
forcing the driver to slam on the brakes, and almost making the cameraman drop his phone. The picture veered to face the cause, and for a moment the surroundings blackened. Then the dark corona passed, and the assailant came into full view through the open window.
The reptilian head seemed as surprised to find the car there, as the occupants were to find it scraping the edges of the passenger door. Coal scales gleamed, and a claw braced against the window opening, inches from the screeching redhead. Instead of the two slit dinosaur eyes one might expect, there were multiple bulbous clusters, each glistening an array of primary hues.
"Bobby, hit the gas! HIT THE GAS!" someone yelled, and the car lurched forward. An awful sound resulted--Art guessed an axle was broken--and then Bobby ditched the car in a rather nonchivalrous fashion. The camera view jerked about, showing random views of the broken car's panicked interior. The device left the car and documented some speedy pavement shots, followed by a more conscious attempt to film what had run into the car.
Two black, leathery wings covered the car roof. Wisps of shadow trailed off the beast's crest and wingtips. Above and between the wings, the previously seen reptilian-insectile head opened its mandibles and howled an unearthly sound, blasting green and black spittle across the road.
Here the cameraman lost his nerve again, and the video ended as he turned to run.
Mercy rolled back the video slowly, until they could see the clearest frame of the monster clutching the wrecked car, maw wide open to consume the chilled evening.
"Spirits save us," Chief Smiling Bear muttered. "What is that?"
Art was watching Lue carefully. Lue was watching him carefully. Neither one of them showed an iota of surprise. Interesting.
"It's a dragon," Mercy replied matter-of-factly.
"That's impossible," the chief insisted.
"Was anyone hurt?" Art asked, without breaking eye contact with Lue.
"You mean from the car? No. A few witnesses nearby suffered some scrapes as their drunk friends pushed them down and ran away. The only fatality was the murder victim two blocks away."
Lue grinned at Art. "I guess I should count myself lucky that it was heading the other direction when I showed up at Webber's."
Art nodded slowly and kept the staring match going. "Special Agent March. Have any federal agents engaged her?"
"Not yet. Frankly, we're not sure what kind of firepower is necessary to subdue her."
"Subdue her," he repeated. "I doubt that's possible."
"We'd prefer to bring her in alive, of course." Mercy seemed not to notice that neither man was looking at her. "The research possibilities alone are staggering."
Chief Smiling Bear snapped her fingers several times. "Excuse me, did no one else hear the word dragon? What you're talking about is impossible."
Lue finally broke away from Art's gaze. "Chief, dragons are not impossible. Do you remember that video from Winoka, couple of decades back?"
She shrugged. "I always figured that for a hoax."
"It was not a hoax," Mercy assured them. "Susan Elmsmith faithfully recorded what she saw. While it's best if the public chooses not to believe her, we in law enforcement don't have the luxury of illusions. Dragons are rare but real. This one is particularly nasty. Her name is Evangelina Scales . . ."
"Back up." The chief raised her hand. "These things fly around in the streets, breathing fire and eating livestock . . . and we've never seen a video of one until now?"
"Well, technically, you saw a video of one twenty years ago," Mercy pointed out. "You chose not to believe it."
Art smiled; he couldn't help it. What this woman brought into the room, helped him think better. Interestingly, it also calmed the headache.
"Nice wordplay, Special Agent: but there were at least three movies that came out in theaters that same year and featured dragons, which I also chose to believe weren't real."
Mercy shook her head, tumbled curls flying. "I was younger and more impressionable, I guess, because I never doubted it. Not for a second; not for part of a second."
"That would be a nanosecond," Lue piped up helpfully.
Mercy was still shaking her head, but more slowly. The vibrant curls seemed to be flowing in slow motion. Art was having a difficult time not staring at her. "I remember being terrified to sleep for weeks."
"I don't know if I'll sleep myself, anytime soon. But you didn't really answer my question. How can they stay secret, given their size and . . . appearance?"
"These dragons are not simply large lizards," Mercy answered. "They're shape-changers. On a normal day, they look like you or me. When conditions are right--conventional wisdom is that the crescent moon brings out the change--they change into true form."
Art kept watching Lue. The man was not sweating, but he was plainly uncomfortable in his chair. And his silly jokes . . . they seemed to have a somewhat forced quality. Perhaps it was these rigid plastic seats.
"And the eyes? They all have eyes like that?" The chief shuddered. "They look like flies, or locusts."
"Ah. Yes, that's a complication," Mercy admitted. "Evangelina is not like most dragons. Unfortunately, Chief Smiling Bear, dragons are not the only species that can adopt a human form."
A pencil slammed down. "Of course they aren't . . ."
"Sorry," Mercy said, smiling. "The fun isn't over yet. While rarer, there are also reports, confirmed by forensic evidence accumulated over the last two or three decades, of arachnid shape-changers as well."
"Arachnids? You mean spiders, don't you? Don't mean spiders as a personal favor, okay? Please tell me you're screwing with me." Then, in a tone of curiosity, amazement, and horror: "How big are these things?"
The FBI agent reached into her briefcase--again!--and threw something on the table. The chief cursed as she kicked her chair and backed away from the table. Lue pushed away himself. While the gesture surprised Art, he was able to keep his calm.
He wondered if any of these people had ever hunted for their food. He doubted it. Of course, they never would have hunted this . . . more likely the reverse.
The leg segment--Art figured it for the lower third of a foreleg--was bent to fit in smaller spaces (like this woman's briefcase), but straightened it would be the width and length of a man's arm. Clearly preserved with formaldehyde, it bristled with thick, brown black hairs of uneven length. The tarsus at the tip appeared coated in a dark green substance.
"You carry that around with you?"
"I don't normally keep it with me, Detective Vue. I brought it with me because I didn't know how many law enforcement personnel I'd have to convince. You wouldn't believe how stubborn some people's belief system can be."
"The video was sufficient."
"Also, it's good luck. I took it to Vegas last weekend and killed at keno." At their thunderstruck gapes, she held up her hands, palms out, in a placating gesture: "Kidding!"
Art reached out and grabbed the segment. The preserved hairs were stiffer than they would be in real life, he knew. And, fond as he was of her on short acquaintance, he wondered how he would feel if Special Agent March had flung a severed human limb across the table--which, in a way, she had. Or how she would feel if he did it. He stood and handed the tissue specimen back to her. "The thing that hit that car had both legs and wings."
"Correct, Detective McMahon." Mercy nodded appreciatively at the return to topic, as she took back the segment. "We believe what hit the car--again, her name is Evangelina Scales--is a hybrid. If you look closely here"--she pointed at a shadow above the hood of the car, and then the roof--"and here. You'll see multiple leg segments. More than the dragons of western descent typically possess. She's got the skin, wings, tail, and mass of a dragon; and the eyes, mandibles, and legs of a spider."
Art touched Lue's shoulder, bringing him back to the table. "You saw her at Webber's?"
Lue nodded.
"How can you be sure it's a her?" the chief asked Mercy. "And how can you be sure of her name? Have you seen her as a human?
"
"No one we know who's seen her has lived."
Lue rubbed his nose. "That would be one way to cut down on witnesses."
"The closest we came was actually here in town--when she self-admitted to the Saint George's facility. Unfortunately, in the devastation that followed her arrival, all decent visual recordings were lost. We know her gender and name, only because of a single audiotape that survived the incident. Security handed it over directly to the FBI on the scene. We've had it ever since."
"It might be nice to hear that tape," the chief suggested icily. "Especially since that facility is here in Moorston, and the killer is still likely within town limits. I don't suppose you have that somewhere in that briefcase?"
"Actually, it's on the flash drive. Of course, Chief, I'll be happy to play it for you. In fact, you can have the drive when we're done here." Mercy leaned forward, her expression intent, her tone respectful. "I hope you understand I had nothing to do with how we received the information. Had I been on the scene, I would have insisted on leaving you a copy in the first place."
Mercy smiled apologetically, and Art felt himself wanting to smile back. This woman radiated integrity, and he liked that. Even if she did store gruesome limbs in her briefcase.
"Anything else on that flash drive?"
Mercy shrugged and motioned around the conference room. "PDFs of all the stuff I've got hanging on the walls. Also, a composite sketch we've been running in the area, based on survivor accounts from Saint George's."
"Yes, we saw that," the chief said. "It's everywhere, now."
"Survivor accounts," Lue said, and shook his head again. "Not much."
"Exactly . . . we're not sure how reliable the sketch is, but it's all we've got."
Lue and Art looked at each other. Lue spoke first. "So no other audio or video."
"Nope. Audio recordings are rare in this day and age, of course, and video--well, cameras are all over the place in this day and age; but her sketch isn't the sort of thing you can search effectively for, among civilian populations. How would we know who she is?"
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