“Fascinating,” Simon replied.
“There’s a training course you take online, evenings and weekends. It’ll cover everything.” I tried to sound encouraging. He looked like he needed it, and besides, we were there.
****
The WPL offices were open for business this time with two news crews filming the action. The lovely, but possibly murderous, Lisa didn’t notice us when we walked through the door. Unfortunately, one of the reporters did.
“Detectives, are these killings the work of a pack of werewolves in the city? Are you here to arrest a suspect?” She shoved a microphone in my face.
Danny stepped in to answer for me. “We have absolutely no hard evidence that werewolves were involved in any way. We’re here to ask for the help of the werewolf community in the same way we ask for the help of the community in general. We need anyone with any information to call us. Together we can stop these attacks.”
Simon gaped at Danny’s speech while I kept my applause mental. Danny’s statement was articulate, truthful, and it completely avoided her question. By saying we had no hard evidence, he didn’t deny or confirm what we thought. I was impressed.
Tom Canidae stepped from behind one of the cameras to beam at us.
“As I told you before, Ms. Janviers, the WPL is happy to work with the police in any capacity. We’ve already spoken with them several times. The media’s insistence that these crimes are supernatural when no evidence has been uncovered to say so borders on irresponsible. If you’d like to return to filming the piece we discussed, about our work here and what we’re trying to do, Lisa can assist you.” He turned away from her, ending the conversation. “Detectives, if you’d like to come to my office.”
The reporter took his advice and went back to filming the day-to-day work of the half dozen werewolves in the building. I wondered if she was nervous about being so close to so many of them. I was. My mind kept replaying the scene from the park and trying to fit the faces of the werewolves there to the faces of the people here.
It was a pointless exercise. What a lycanthrope looked like in form was never linked to what he looked like as a human. I still couldn’t stop myself. The case was ruining my mental control. In his office, Canidae settled in behind his desk, and the three of us took chairs.
“First, our new detective Simon Edwards is going to be working on the missing persons aspect of this case. We’ve found a significant number of people have gone missing on the full moon.” Danny fiddled with the folder of missing persons flyers. He hadn’t discussed his strategy with me, so I was honestly surprised when he went on. “I’m concerned they’re werewolves who are being hunted. Can you tell me if you know any of these people?”
“Let me look.” Canidae flipped through a few pages. “Unfortunately the scenario you’re describing is quite likely. The morality wars may have stopped human trafficking, but wolf trafficking still occurs.” He paused at a picture of a missing man. I remembered him from earlier, a plumber who hadn’t been seen in four months. “I’m afraid I don’t know any of these people. You know, it’s entirely possible that they are wolves, and they didn’t come to us.”
“You’ve never seen any of them before?” Danny asked.
“No, I’m afraid not.” He gave us a politician’s smile and stood up. “If there’s nothing else, I’ve got a lot of work to do to with the news crew.”
“Sure thing,” Danny said. “Thanks for your help. Would you mind if we borrowed a conference room for a few minutes, maybe showed these to Lisa or Mr. LaLaurie?”
“Um…” Canidae was looking for a way out, but Danny hadn’t given him one. He’d been polite and nice, leaving Canidae no way to turn down our simple request. “No, of course not. I’ll send them back.”
“Separately, if you don’t mind,” Danny said.
His smile flickered, and came back looking strained. “Happy to.
Lisa came first, her eyes a little vacant, her smile pleasant but serious. She probably practiced it at home each night. I fixed on it as she leafed through the flyers. She handed them all back to Danny with a simple shake of her head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to ask something completely unofficial. You’re a natural with the cameras. Do you work in the media?”
“Oh, I’m a pageant girl. I went all the way to State on the junior circuit and wasn’t doing too badly when I gave it up to be a mom.” It was the first time I’d heard her sound genuinely enthusiastic about something.
“You have kids?” Simon asked. Danny rolled his eyes as the two of us interrupted his carefully planned interview.
“Two girls, they were five and seven.”
“Were?” Danny said.
“When I last saw them. They’re with their father now.” She brushed it off, as if she didn’t want to be bothered with the children she gave everything up to parent. “I’m sorry I never got to any of your missing people.” She rose to leave the room, but Danny didn’t let her slip go unnoticed.
“You never got to?” he asked.
“What?”
“You said you never got to any of the missing people. What do you mean?”
Lisa turned on the pageant girl charm. “Did I say that? I meant got to know. I’m sorry I never got know to any of your missing people.” She twirled and walked out of the room.
We waited for a few minutes for LaLaurie. Just when we were ready to venture out of the room, Canidae popped his head in.
“I can’t seem to find Remi, I’m not even sure he’s been in the office today. I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to interview him.”
Danny thanked him for trying, and the three of us left. In the lobby, Lisa was telling a new reporter that werewolves “just want to find their place in normal society.” It was enough to make me walk faster.
****
Two blocks was all Danny gave Simon to process the information. Two blocks to the park where I’d watch a jogger turn into dog food. Thankfully, Danny picked a different spot to park the car. We turned around to face him.
“From the top, how much was Canidae lying?” Danny demanded.
“He wasn’t. At least not in the beginning, he didn’t recognize any of the photos. But at the end, when he said he couldn’t find Remi, that was a complete lie.”
“Huh, so he doesn’t know about the missing people, but he’s covering up for a known felon. That’s a little odd. What about Lisa?”
“I think she might be crazy, like disturbed or schizophrenic.”
“We knew that,” I said. “Was she lying?”
“It’s hard with people who are mentally ill. They don’t think they’re lying when they are. If they tell you aliens are beaming signals to their brain, it’s not a lie. They actually believe it. Even though we all know it isn’t true,” Simon explained.
“Tell us what Lisa believes is true.” Danny said.
“Okay but remember I already warned you it doesn’t make any sense. When she said ‘she was sorry she never got to any of the missing people’ that was true. When she said ‘she was sorry she never got to meet any of the missing people,’ that was a lie. As we were walking out when she said ‘wolves just want a place in normal society,’ that was a lie.”
“You’re right, that doesn’t make any sense,” I agreed.
Chapter Eighteen
The lab reports for Madame Marie were waiting for us back at the office. Danny and I talked them over, trying to understand what it all meant. She’d died of a heart attack. The bites had taken place postmortem.
“Maybe they don’t like dead meat?” Danny wondered.
“Maybe the FBI expert can tell us. When is he going to get here?”
“In his own good time,” Danny laughed. “I don’t think you like being someone’s do girl.”
“You’re right on that one.” The phone rang on his desk, and all of the mirth drained away from his face. When he spoke I knew why.
“New crime scene with lots of blood but no bodies yet. Let’
s go.”
“Another hour and it would have been the night shift’s problem,” I complained.
“Maybe if we’re lucky Auster will meet us there,” Danny replied, leading the way out of the squad room. The afternoon thunderstorm, a regular occurrence in the city, was darkening the sky. I hoped whatever we were going to see was inside. I didn’t want any evidence washed away with the rain. We ended up outside Nate’s Auto Shop, a few blocks from the park where I’d been attacked. Everything seemed to come back to this neighborhood. Property values must be dropping like stones.
Detective Ben Auster had beaten us there but hadn’t beaten the rain. His shirt was plastered across his broad chest. I’d never asked, but I suspected he could bench press my weight or maybe even twice my weight.
“I’ve been inside. There isn’t much for us to look at yet,” he said. We followed him through a side door.
Walking into the garage was like returning to a former life. It wasn’t Greg’s garage. The dingy shop where I’d met the man who had been my husband was miles away, but the resemblance was remarkable. The same mildly offensive auto parts posters hung on the walls and the same smell of oil filled the air.
“We’ve got a trail of blood stains leading there.” Ben pointed to one of the bays cut into the concrete floor. A late model Honda sat on the lift over it. “As soon as someone can figure out how to get the car up, we can go further.”
“Here.” I walked over to the wall and found the lift switch, a solid silver box with one button and a green light. The hydraulic system protested but slowly the car rose. The bay was a mess of blood splatter and gore. One of the uniform cops turned slightly green at the sight.
“Where’d you learn that trick?” Danny asked.
“My husband was an auto mechanic.”
“What’s he now?” Ben chimed in as we pulled on gloves and coveralls.
“Dead,” I answered, climbing down into the bay. He might have said something, offered his condolences or stumbled over a bit of conversation, but I didn’t hear it. My mind focused on the static buzz coming from the pile in front of me. I tried to tune it in, pulling the power into my body, closing my eyes to focus. There wasn’t much left. A feeling of terror overwhelmed everything else. There had been two deaths: horrible, pain-filled endings. The terror they left behind made me sweat, but I couldn’t see anything more, couldn’t feel anything else.
I opened my eyes and stared into the blood. When you looked closely, you could see the regular debris of any auto shop under the thick red stain. An oil filter box obscured the edge of something that might have been a hand. I pushed it aside and realized what it was covering.
“We’ve got an intact dead body here,” I sang out, hopeful that some forensics expert would hear me. Instead, I heard a voice that sounded only a bit familiar.
“Check for the heart and liver.”
I couldn’t see the person to match them to the voice, but the order was mildly annoying. I took it anyway. I didn’t want anyone else coming down and messing up the crime scene before forensics got their chance. The body was hidden under more cardboard. I couldn’t understand why someone would cover the more recognizable body, but leave the mess of tissue in the open, then go to the trouble of putting the car down.
I gently shifted the cardboard. The chest cavity of the body was an open gaping wound. The ribs had been broken apart, and the heart was gone. Lower down there was an ugly entry wound. I’d never dissected a human body. I looked but realized I wouldn’t recognize if the liver was missing or not. Irritated at being given a gruesome task, I climbed out of the bay to find Mark standing next to Danny.
“Well?” he asked.
“The heart’s gone. I wouldn’t know about the liver, but it could be gone. How did you know, and what are you doing here?”
“Detective Mors, Special Agent Mark Zollern, FBI. It looks like we’ll be sharing our case with them,” Danny introduced Mark, not knowing he’d ruined my Sunday night hours ago.
“You’re FBI?”
“FBI, NSA, G2, MI6 and a bunch of other letters you don’t know.” Mark walked away in the middle of our conversation to get a better view of the body. “He was covered, right?”
“Yes. How did you know about the heart?”
“The heart and the liver are the only two parts they eat even when they’re not hungry. The wolf was full after the first one but couldn’t leave the sweetmeat behind.” He stood back up. “I’m an official werewolf expert.” The scars across his face made his grin lopsided.
“So I see.” I started to ask where he’d gotten so many acronyms, but he ignored me and glided down into the bay, half flying, not bothering with the ladder. Everyone in the room stopped to stare. Most people considered using their supernatural abilities in public to be in poor taste. We’d had to strong-arm poor Simon into reading the bad guys, but Mark was more than willing to show off. It didn’t help my opinion of him.
“You know this guy, Mal?” Danny’s curiosity overpowered him as we walked away from the bay.
“He and Jakob are friends.” I stripped off my bloody latex gloves, wondering what else I could say.
“Best friends,” Mark corrected from ten feet away.
I muttered something about vampire hearing and went to interview the man who’d reported this fiasco.
****
Looking at the owner of the garage made me wonder what Greg would have looked like in twenty years if he hadn’t taken that fateful motorcycle ride. The owner was the same type of man: stocky without being fat, medium height, with a few days’ worth of salt and pepper stubble to match his hair. He looked shaken but was doing his best to cover it.
“Can you handle a few questions?” I tried my best to sound non-threatening.
“Yeah, sure, can you tell me if they found all of them?” His anxiety showed on his face and in his voice.
“First, you’d have to tell me how many people that would be. Why don’t we start at the beginning? Was the shop open today?”
“No, we’re closed half a day Sunday and all day Monday.” Answering normal questions helped him sound normal.
“So the last time you were here was when?”
“Sunday afternoon. Mike asked me if he could use the lift. He picks cars up cheap, overhauls them, then sells them for side money.”
“Is that his car on the lift—older four door?”
“Yeah, did you see if it had new brakes? That’s what they were going to do Sunday night, new brakes and maybe new rotors. They might have played with the engine too.”
“I didn’t notice, sorry. Would Mike have been here alone?”
“No, I mean the three young guys were thick as thieves, they were all complete grease monkeys. They would have been here. Maybe Jamie, too. Jamie can strip gears like nobody’s business, if they were smart they called Jaime.”
“So we’re looking for the bodies of four young men?”
“No, sorry.” He shook his head. “Jamie’s a girl.”
“Three men and a woman?”
“Yeah, but they’re still kids. You know, in the mechanics program over at the community college and all.” His voice went shaky making me think he was going into shock.
I glanced at Danny who looked pointedly toward an ambulance that had come with the initial call. I got the hint and ended the interview, gently suggesting the garage owner get checked out. We headed back inside. Mark was giving instructions to my forensics officers. Of course, I had no right to be possessive. Still, he was FBI, and I was a cop.
“I guess we’ll have to wait on the lab to see if either of those is the girl?” Danny asked me looking into bay.
“Both male,” Mark said from across the room. His habit of answering questions no one asked him was decidedly grating. I did my best to swallow my anger. Jakob had been close to him for centuries. Mark had to have some redeeming quality. He walked over to us.
“The corpse is male, sure, but the rest is nothing but tissue and blood. How can you
tell?” Danny asked.
“Female blood smells different,” he said offhandedly. “I’m going to need all of your case files.”
“I can get them together for you tomorrow morning.” I pointed to the large wall clock. “I’m officially off duty.”
“I need them tonight. The more time you waste, the more people die.”
I seriously doubted the files would stop the wolves from killing anyone tonight, but I wasn’t going to argue with someone who was being so asinine.
“I’ll have them emailed to you in the next hour, unless you’d like them delivered here?” My sarcastic tone was lost on him as he had once again walked away.
“That’s fine.” He dismissed me without looking back.
Danny rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. It was a smart move. Mark could hear us and, unlike every other vampire in the world, he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
Left with nothing to say and nothing much to do, Danny and I called it a day. We drove out of the parking lot while someone lifted the police tape to let us through. The full moon had chased away all but two of the most hardened camera crews. I was trying to catch the name of the station, so I could send a note telling them how touched I was, when Danny interrupted me.
“What else can you tell me about the less than personable Special Agent Zollern?” Danny asked, waiting until we were a block or two away.
“You know how Jakob hasn’t hunted werewolves since they were declared people?”
Danny nodded, “I seem to recall something to that effect. He’s a pretty moral person.”
“I don’t think Mark suffers from the same moral restrictions.” I was terse but then thought better of it. If Danny was going to work with him, the details might help. “Mark was attacked by werewolves.”
“I guessed as much from the scars.”
“I don’t think he’s gotten over it. He’s been hunting werewolves ever since, and that was four centuries ago. I think it made him a little psycho.”
Under a Blood Moon Page 18
