Shifters: A Samantha Reece Mystery Book 1

by Jaime Johnesee

  "Um, Mr. Fitzpatrick?" Quinn was able to sense my unease and tried to help.

  "Right, sorry." Ben pulled his eyes from mine and turned to Quinn.

  "So, what did you see?"

  "Well, I was at the Sleep-tite Motel on I-280 and I left my room to go to the ice machine. I saw a man coming out of a room, he smelled like blood, and a lot of it, so I followed him since he was going the same way the ice maker was. He was wearing a grey cotton tee shirt, a pair of jeans, and was carrying a knapsack. His clothes were clean, but his hair, short and brown, by the way, was slicked back … and I'm fairly certain he had some splotches of blood on his face. He got into a gold 1990s Ford Taurus and drove off. I went back to the room he came from and noticed the door was slightly ajar. I opened it and found...." He trailed off, his face turned white, and his voice got shaky. "Well, I found what I found."

  "Why were you at the Sleep-tite?" This was a question I wanted to know for several reasons.

  Ben looked at me with a slight grin to his face. "I have a business client staying there and I was hanging out with him watching the pregame for the Wings/Blackhawks match until he was ready to hit the sports bar where I usually go to watch the game."

  "How'd you find a sports bar that shows the hockey games here?" I asked excitedly.

  I know it wasn't an important detail, but there really is not much love for hockey here in Alabama. We are more of a college football state.

  "The owner at Jamz likes me and when there are no college games on he lets me turn it to hockey. Do you like hockey?" Ben's question was one that wasn't important. I answered it, anyway.

  "I do, indeed. A Yankee cousin of mine got me into it. So, tell me more about Grisly, er, the fellow you saw leaving the room. How tall would you say he was? How about his weight? Did you catch his eye color? Could you work with a sketch artist?"

  "Whoa, slow down there, Sam. I'd say he was around six foot tall, somewhat heavyset, maybe two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds. I didn't see enough of his face to actually help draw it. I just noticed his hair color, size, and how he was dressed. The smell of blood was strong on him and, sorry, but I didn't want to get any closer than I needed to. I did get part of his license plate, though. Looks like it was a vanity plate, I got the letters F-U-N. Sorry I didn't get any more than that."

  "No worries, that's actually really helpful," Quinn said.

  "Really?"

  "Yeah, we can run a partial plate and cross reference it with the make and model of the car you described to find if he is using his own car or if the plates are stolen." I gestured to Quinn. "Q is really great at the computer legwork and finding vehicles."

  "I am, it's a talent." Quinn smiled.

  "Would you be up for coming to the office and looking at some mug books?"

  We probably wouldn't have any luck, but you never know. Oftentimes guys like Grisly start out with smaller crimes and work their way up.

  "Yeah, sure. I've got nowhere to be today." Ben shrugged and sat in one of the recliners.

  "What about your client?" Quinn asked.

  Ben looked a bit startled. "Oh, he's on his way home by now, I expect. Our business is over."

  "What sort of business are you in with him?" Quinn was an expert at grilling people and making it seem like casual conversation.

  "He owns an import/export business and I have some rugs I’m shipping out."

  "Rugs?" I was puzzled.

  If he was selling rugs why was his floor bare?

  "Yeah, today it's rugs. Tomorrow it might be wine. I work with an auction house."

  "Oh. What house are you with?"

  "Sadler Brothers. Is there anything else you need to know about them? You know what, I can give you my boss's card and you can speak with him." He looked self-assured, but I smelled a tinge of fear.

  Whatever was going on at that auction house he sure didn't want us to know about it. That meant I wanted to know all about it.

  "That would be great, thanks. We will need to talk to him to ask some questions about your, um, client."

  "Oh, sure thing." Ben stood and retreated down the hallway off the foyer.

  I looked at Quinn. "I think we are being lied to."

  "I think you're right. Your maker is up to something. I don't like it."

  "Me, neither. Wait here." I had really hoped Ben was on the level with me. I was starting to not quite hate him, and something like him lying to me was definitely not the way for him to start a friendship with me.

  I stood and followed the path he had taken. I found him in his bedroom digging through a drawer.

  "What’re you doing?" At my voice he started and dropped the card he was holding.

  "Getting my boss's card for you and your partner."

  "Why are you lying to me, Ben?"

  "I'm not. I work for this auction house."

  "Oh, yeah? What do you do there?"

  "Purchasing. Also shipping and receiving." He avoided looking me in the eyes and I knew something wasn't right.

  "Stop fucking lying to me. I don't give a fuck what crap you're mixed up in, but I won't stand here beside you and be lied to. You want a chance to be friends? Tell me the truth or I'm done."

  "I can't. Not yet. What I am doing isn't illegal. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's wholly on the up and up. Call my boss, Henry. He'll vouch for me."

  "It's too bad I have to have someone else vouch for you." I picked up the card he dropped and walked out, leaving him with his mouth open and a weird mix of sadness and anger playing about his face.

  The most important thing to know about me, I hate liars.

  Chapter 9

  I CALLED QUINN FROM MY CAR. I knew he'd stay behind with Ben and get him into protective custody. To be honest, I didn't want to spend another second in that asshole's presence. I should've known better than to start believing in him.

  I had to get a hold of Q. I hadn't stopped in the living room to let him know I was leaving. He was a smart guy, and I've no doubt he knew what happened the second he heard the front door shut, but I wanted to make sure he understood I was okay. Which, I wasn't. For being the guy who turned me into a cat, Ben was acting more like a cowardly dog.

  "Sam? What happened?" Quinn sounded cool and professional to anyone listening in, but I could hear an undercurrent of worry in his voice.

  "Just tired of being lied to, nothing to worry about. I'm going to verify Ben's employment, can you stick with him?"

  "Yeah, sure thing. Call me when you've confirmed and we will figure out the next step together."

  "Thanks, Q, you're aces."

  "So are you, kid." Quinn hung up.

  I turned off my phone and slid it into my pocket. After a quick rant on the dangers of trusting men, I started up my baby and went for a drive. I figured I would head to the zoo and do some thinking.

  I liked going to the zoo; it calmed me down when I felt riled. The big cats understood me and I liked to be near them. It made me feel a little less alone in the world. It was one of my favorite places to go when I was feeling lost. Sadly, they didn't have jaguars, but their lions were awfully chatty with me.

  I'd sit outside their exhibit and we'd mew and grunt back and forth. I did the same with their white tiger, Mac. The entire big cat area was like one big family reunion for me. Real cats are so different from what I am. They're so much surer of themselves and their place in the world.

  When I say the cats were chatty, I meant through their behavior and sounds they told me what they wanted to say. I'm not bilingual in that respect. I don't speak cat or anything. It was actually more complex and scientific than that.

  Their body language tells me what they're trying to say. A tiger with whiskers forward, ears up, grunting and leaping is one who is happy to see you. If he rolls over and shows you his belly, he is admitting you are dominant. If he pees on you it means he’s claiming you as belonging to him.

  Speaking of, one of the male lions likes to pee through the fence onto visitors. Pe
ople get so grossed out, but they don't understand it's a compliment. For the most part they're just angry they've been peed on. Which, on a hot Alabama day, I can't exactly blame them.

  I pulled into the zoo's lot and parked. I walked to the entrance, dug my membership card out of my wallet, and smiled. Then I stepped up to the gates and shoved forth my treasured plastic rectangle.

  "Like you even need that anymore," Gladys said.

  She worked the front gates and (sometimes) the cafe in the children's zoo. I smiled and shrugged. I was here an awful lot lately. After a rough day I would come and interact with the cats. I’d love to have housecats, but the little guys tend to be afraid of me.

  "True. I'm just waiting for them to start paying me." I grinned and waved as I sailed through the gates and turned right to go and see the kitties.

  When I situated myself on a bench outside the cat building I pulled my phone out, turned it back on, and called the number Ben had given me. The secretary confirmed that he worked there and when I asked what division I was told import/export. I thanked her and asked for his boss. She told me he was out of the office and I left Gerry’s number and told her to have Ben’s boss call mine, then I hung up.

  Whatever was going on with Ben's work they were covering their tracks, which made me suspicious. Between dealing with my maker suddenly popping up and pulling this forgive me, I love you shit on me, and trying to hunt down the world's most vicious psychopath, I was feeling a little spread thin. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted, but I did know what I needed.

  I needed time to think about Ben and about Grisly. Coming here always got my mind working. Some people like a hot bath; I feel most relaxed when I watch lions be lions. As they ran and played with each other I got a good sense of the group dynamics and could tell who was in the top this week.

  That's the best part of prides, the leadership is always changing. Those who were nobody yesterday can pop up to lead the family today. Then they can go right back to being nobody tomorrow. It works about the same in human societies, but, instead of the best candidate you go for the prettiest, or the most opinionated. It's a very primate sort of hierarchy which is far more ludicrous than cat hierarchies.

  Over time, in a primate society, the strongest aren't in the running anymore. In less time than you'd think, it goes from being about who is the best provider and leader to who is the most popular. Anthropologists see it in primates who have every need catered to them in zoos and sanctuaries. There's no need to push for survival, it's guaranteed, so why not enjoy what you have?

  Cats on the other hand like to earn it, for the most part. Lions are simply lazy bastards who allow the lionesses to do it all and then they show up once a month and act as muscle. Then they go back to sleeping twenty-two hours a day and eating the best of the food the ladies bring home. It makes me proud to be a jaguar.

  Jaguar behavior is similar to tigers, but less hasty. If you're in a tiger's territory it will attack, kill you, and leave part of your body behind to serve as a warning. If you're in a jaguar's area, it will follow you completely silent and unseen just to keep an eye on what you're doing. If you need to be attacked, you will be, but why waste energy and effort on something that might not be necessary and could possibly bring harm to yourself?

  Stealth in hunting is always a good thing. Jaguars and leopards are the ninjas of the cat family. You won't know they're there until they want you to. It's also behavior that doesn't lend itself well to playing with others. As a human, I was always somewhat subservient in ways I had never really noticed until I became a cat.

  Being a jaguar gives me the confidence that I was sorely lacking otherwise. I suppose it's the same reason I got the car I did. Sure, she's a great car, but she makes me feel like a badass when I'm behind the wheel and that was the most important thing for me. Probably some sort of mid-transition crisis, but it is what it is and you won't catch me complaining.

  Sorry for digressing, but animal behavior is something I find important in my life, for obvious reasons. I sat across from the lions and thought about Grisly. He was going after supers. That much was sure. Why though? Why did anyone attack a particular group? Because he was hurt by a shifter? Maybe his mom was one of us and a hooker? Maybe he felt that his mother's job contributed in some way to her being a were or maybe her being a shifter contributed to her being a prostitute?

  Maybe someone he loved was turned into a wereanimal, or killed by one? We knew he was a shifter himself; perhaps he didn't want to be turned and was taking it out on the whole were society. Whatever his motives we had to find him soon or more women would die. A lot more based on how violent he was getting.

  I recalled that first scene in my mind and compared it to the last. In the first he had cut her arms, legs, and head off, but had kept the body parts in the tub with the torso. By his last kill he was tearing them into little tiny pieces and we were having to remove plumbing to get back bits that had slipped down the drain.

  He was escalating and it wouldn't be long before he stopped hunting hookers and just went for the first shifter he could find. Considering the mayor of our fair city is married to a wolf we were told that we had to work this case faster. The last thing we needed was Grisly exploding in the media. We do try our best to stick to the shadows.

  Grisly would change all that. If the news got hold of this story we supers would be front and center in everyone's living room. We'd be making more noise than we ever wanted. Maybe that was Grisly's goal, or maybe he didn't have a goal. Based on the crime scenes, I'm leaning towards him not having a goal or plan in mind.

  Aside from killing them I don't believe he thinks out his attacks any further than who to grab. Since they are always a shifter he definitely had to do some digging into them to find out. As I said, we don't exactly broadcast ourselves. There is no coming out ball where young shifters dance and mingle and get to know each other.

  New weres aren't listed in some Society page in a newspaper. We try to just fit into the human world and live with our duality as best we can. Sometimes one of us screws up. The Council (made up mostly of vampires) gets scared and the idea of rounding us all up for some sort of inoculation causes us fear enough to clean up the mess and pretend it was something other than what it was.

  Luckily for us it never lasts long. Usually because some other super will mess up and do something ten times worse and they'll back off the shifter issue and glom onto the that one. If word about Grisly got out there were a few anti-shifter groups, AFWA being the top, in the paranormal underbelly that would love to use his crimes to create their own and cause people to think a mad were was killing humans for fun.

  It would be exactly the sort of thing these groups would need to get that nudge to start broadcasting about supers and ruin our lives for good. I walked past Mac, a white tiger, and leaned my head against the glass. I was feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. I looked up to see Mac standing before me resting his own head against where mine had been. A show of solidarity for cat kind.

  He was a sweet boy and I always enjoyed seeing him at the zoo. He rather enjoyed staring at the children's zoo and drooling. As much as I liked the guy I hoped he never got out. I couldn't tell if he wanted to be free and have fun like the kids or if he wanted to eat them. Better safe than sorry, methinks.

  I pulled back from the glass and he chuffed at me. I returned the greeting and moved on. I was standing across from the sand cats when my phone rang. It was Quinn, Grisly had left us another body. I sighed, it was a heavy one rife with the melancholy which had clung to me tightly since this case began, and moved toward the zoo entrance.

  "Have a great day, Gladys!" I hollered, waving to her as I left.

  "You, too, Sam!" She smiled and waved before turning back to the little girl who had been asking her a question about the green wing macaws.

  Sometimes sensitive hearing was a good thing, sometimes it could perk you up, especially when you heard a question like the little girl’s, "Why don't the par
rots just fly away? Are they nailed down?"

  I walked to my car with a smile on my face when I heard Gladys' response of, "No, they just really like it here."

  I really liked it there, too. I opened my car door and left it open a moment to cool down a bit before getting in. It was still about a hundred degrees when I slid behind the wheel. I started up the car and rolled down the windows, putting the AC on full blast and turning up Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama.

  When the air coming through the vents turned cooler than molten lava, I rolled up my windows and pulled out of the parking lot, swinging a right onto Park Lane. I was hoping to hit 280 East before traffic got too bad and a look at my watch told me I might just get lucky. I edited that thought as women were dead and nothing about that could ever be lucky.

  Chapter 10

  I PULLED UP TO THE SLEAZY MOTEL and turned into the parking lot. There were at least seven police cars and two crime scene evidence recovery vans. It was nearly double what we had at the last victim. I spotted James talking with Josh by one of the room doors. I walked over to them.

  "What's the haps, gentlemen?"

  "Haps?"

  "Yeah, I thought I'd give it a try, I know better now." I grinned.

  "Another Grisly vic. There's more to this one. He left a bloody handprint right on the doorjamb." James sounded excited.

  "Yeah, but we've already hit a dead end with his prints."

  Unless James knew something I didn't, that handprint was currently worthless. It'd be helpful at Grisly's trial, if there ever was one, but for right now it didn't do shit to help us.

  "The blood type doesn't match the vic!" Josh and James were wearing matching grins.

  "That's awesome! If we can assume the blood is his then we can type it and check DNA. It'll be easy to detect if it is his blood; we think he's a shifter, right? We just run the test for the viruses."

  "How much easier will narrowing down suspects be if we have his DNA? Man, this is the break we've been waiting for. Hey, where's Quinn?" Josh looked around.