Kitty Takes a Holiday kn-3

by Carrie Vaughn

  "No one reported it. No one witnessed it. Bodies just vanish out there."

  That was just weird. But I'd never understood Cormac's "profession."

  "They didn't mention their daughter?" Ben asked. "Not once?"

  "Not once. I spent a couple more days looking. Then I got your message."

  "Not checking your phone?"

  "I was in the backcountry most of the time. I didn't have reception. I came back as soon as I did get it. I don't think she followed us. How could she?"

  "You heard what Tony said. She was a witch. It may have taken her a few days, but she found us."

  Then Cormac asked, "What are the odds they can pin this on me, Ben?"

  Ben shook his head. "I don't know. The primary wit­ness has it in for you, Espinoza's a hot young prosecu­tor who'd love to land a Class One felony conviction. We don't have a whole lot in our favor."

  "We have a bunch of witnesses," I said.

  "And Espinoza will do everything he can to discredit them."

  "You'll figure something out," Cormac said. "You always do."

  Ben's shoulders bent under the weight of Cormac's trust. "Yeah, we'll see about that," he said softly.

  After an awkward moment, Cormac said, "What hap­pened back there, at the hearing—should I be worried? Are you up for this?"

  They stared at each other, studying each other. "If you want to get someone else—"

  "I trust you," he said. "Who else is going to understand this shit?"

  Ben wouldn't look at him. "Yeah. I'll be fine. Some­how. Not getting bail was a setback, but you'll be okay."

  He didn't sound confident, but Cormac nodded, like he was sure. Then he made a sour-faced grimace and mut­tered, "I can't believe they dug up that Brigade shit."

  I jumped on him. "Yeah, what the heck is up with that? Those guys are insane. It just doesn't seem like your style."

  "And what would you know about it?" Cormac said.

  Before I could fire back, Ben said, "She spent yester­day in the library digging up every article the Denver Post ever printed on the Brigade. Got the whole story."

  "Talk too much, and you're nosy as hell," he muttered.

  "I also found the story about your father," I said, almost chagrined at the confession, because when he put it that way, it did seem like going behind their backs. But what else was I supposed to do when no one would tell me any­thing? "I'm really sorry, Cormac. About what happened to him."

  He waved me away. "That was a long time ago."

  "And now she knows everything about our dark, secret past," Ben said.

  "Shit, I was having fun being all mysterious."

  "Now you're just making fun of me," I said. "The Brigade. Start talking."

  "So. You want to know why I spent a couple of years running around with a bunch of gun-toting wannabe skin­head maniacs?"

  "Uh. Yeah. And you can't dodge, 'cause I'm going to sit here until… until—"

  "Until what?"

  Until you convince me you aren't crazy. I looked away.

  Then, he spoke almost kindly. "I was working on my uncle's—Ben's dad's—ranch. He got caught up in it, and I tagged along. I was just a kid, must have been nineteen or so. I didn't know any better. Those guys—I was still getting over losing my dad, and I thought maybe I could learn something from them. But they were playing games. They weren't living in the real world. They hadn't seen the things I had. I left. Quit the ranch. Spent a couple years in the army. Never looked back."

  Simple as that. I knew as well as anybody how a person could get caught up in things, when that pack mentality took over. He'd been a kid. Just made a mistake. I bought it.

  "Why are you worried about it?" he said, after my long hesitation.

  I didn't know, really. After seeing what Cormac was capable of, it seemed strange to find him involved, however tangentially, with such garden-variety creepiness. I said, "I keep finding out more things that make you scarier."

  And I had trouble balancing both liking him and being scared of him.

  He stared at me so hard, so searching, like it was my fault we'd never been able to work out anything between us. Which one of us hadn't been able to face that there was anything between us? Which one of the three of us? Because Ben had dropped all those hints. He'd known. And now it was Ben and me, with Cormac on the outside, and all three of us locked in a room together.

  He'd run, and that wasn't my fault. He scared me, and maybe that was my fault.

  Then the spell broke. Cormac dropped his gaze. "It still cracks me up, that you're a goddamned werewolf and you can talk about me being scary."

  "It's like rock-paper-scissors," I said. "Silver bullet beats werewolf, and you've got the silver."

  "And cop beats silver bullet. I get it," he said, and he was right. Almost, the whole thing made sense. Cormac turned to Ben. "What's the plan?"

  "I'm going to go to Shiprock to learn what I can about Miriam Wilson. There's got to be someone willing to tes­tify that she was dangerous, that it was justifiable. We'll decide our strategy when I get back."

  "Has Espinoza said anything about a plea bargain yet?"

  "Yeah. I told him I didn't want to talk about it until I had all my cards in hand. Hearing's on Wednesday. We'll know then, one way or the other."

  He nodded, so it must have sounded like a good plan to him. "Be careful."

  "Yeah."

  Ben knocked on the door, and the deputy came to take Cormac back to his cell.

  "I hate this," Ben said when he was gone. "I really, really hate this. We've never gone as far as a preliminary hearing. I want to tear into something."

  I took his arm, squeezing to offer comfort. "Let's get out of here."

  We'd only just stepped outside, into the late-morning sunlight, when we were ambushed. Not really—it was only Alice, lurking across the parking lot and then head­ing straight for us on an intercept path. My heart raced anyway, because all I saw was someone half running, half trotting toward me. I stopped, my shoulders tensing, and only an act of will forced me to smile.

  Ben grabbed my arm and bared his teeth.

  "Hush," I whispered at him, touching his back to calm him. "It's okay. It's just Alice."

  He froze, seemingly realizing what had just happened. His features shifted; he didn't relax much, but he didn't look like he was going to pounce anymore.

  Strange how I was still getting used to this new Ben. He was a new Ben—strangely, subtly different, slightly less steady, slightly more paranoid. As if he were recovering from some sort of head injury. Which maybe he was. Maybe all of us who'd been infected with lycanthropy were.

  "Kitty! Kitty, hello. I'm so glad I caught you." She smiled, but stiffly, as you do in awkward social situations.

  "Hi, Alice."

  "I just came to give another statement to the sheriff. I thought it might help your friend. Even Joe gave another statement, said that if he hadn't come along—well, I don't know what would have happened."

  I did, or I could guess. It really wasn't worth describ­ing to her. "Thanks, Alice. I'm sure it can't hurt."

  I was about to say goodbye, to get out of there before I said something impolite, when Alice spoke.

  "I wanted to give you this. I've been thinking about what Tony said, about how much we all might still be in danger. It's not much, but I want to help." She offered her hand, palm up. "Tony may be right, I may not know what I'm doing most of the time. But this came from the heart, and I can't help but think that means something."

  She held a pendant to me, a clear, pointed crystal about as long as my thumb. The blunt end of it was wrapped with beads, tiny beads made of sparkling glass and pol­ished wood, strung together in a pattern and bound tightly to the crystal. A loop of knotted cord woven into the beadwork had a string of leather through it, so it could be worn around the neck. It was a little piece of artwork. It glittered like sunlight through springtime woods when I turned it in the sun.

  "I usually use silver wire to
string the beads," she said. "But, well, I didn't this time. I used silk thread."

  It was so thoughtful I could have cried. If only it hadn't been too little, too late.

  Did I trust it to actually work? A talisman made by Alice, who'd cast that horrific curse against me—and cast it badly, gutlessly, so that it hadn't worked. Had that one come from her heart as well? Did I trust her?

  At the moment, it didn't cost me anything to pretend that I did.

  "It's beautiful," I said. "Thank you."

  She stood there, beaming, and I hugged her, because I knew it would make her feel better. Then I put the pendant over my head, because that would make her feel better, too.

  She went to her car, waving goodbye.

  "It's hard to know where to draw the line isn't it?" Ben said. "About what to believe and what not to believe. What works and what doesn't."

  I sighed in agreement. "She's right, though. If it comes from the heart, it has to count for something."

  Chapter 14

  We set off in the morning. We had five days until the hearing, when Cormac had to enter a plea. Ben had to find evidence on Cormac's behalf that would get the case thrown out.

  The weather was on our side; it felt like a small advan­tage. I hadn't had to work very hard to talk Ben into let­ting me go with him. I didn't know how much help I'd be in hunting down the information he needed to shore up Cormac's defense, but that wasn't the argument I'd made.

  I had to be there to keep Ben sane.

  "Wolf Creek Pass," he said when we passed the high­way marker over the mountain. We had a couple more hours until we reached New Mexico. "Am I the only one who thinks that's funny?"

  "Yes," I said, not taking my eyes off the road ahead. Too many signs advertising local motels and gift shops had featured pictures of fuzzy, howling wolves. The Wolf Creek ski area was doing a booming business.

  I let him drive the stretch that took us over the pass. Just over the mountain, cruising into the next valley and toward the junction that turned onto the highway that led to New Mexico, a zippy little sports car with skis in a rack on the back roared up behind us, gunned its engine, swerved around us, and nearly cut us off as it pulled back into the right line, obviously expressing great displeasure at our insistence at driving only five miles an hour over the speed limit.

  Ben clenched the steering wheel with rigid fingers and bared his teeth in a silent growl. Something animal crawled into his eyes for a moment.

  "Ben?" I spoke softly, not wanting to startle him. Not wanting to startle the wolf that adrenaline had brought to the surface for a moment.

  "I'm okay," he said. His breaths were rough, and his body was still more tense than the stress of driving moun­tain roads warranted. "How many days?"

  "How many days?"

  "Full moon," he said.

  "Sixteen," I said. Keeping track had become second nature.

  "I thought it was sooner. It feels sooner."

  I knew the feeling. The wolf wanted to break free, and it let you know. "It's better if you don't think about it."

  "How do you not think about it?" His voice cracked.

  "Do you want to pull over and let me drive?"

  He shook his head quickly. "Driving gives me some­thing else to think about."

  "Just don't let the jerks get to you, okay?"

  He pushed himself back in the seat, stretching his arms, making an effort to relax. After another ten miles or so he said, "I started smoking in law school. It was a crutch, a way to get through it. You feel like you're going crazy, so you step outside for a cigarette. Everything stops for a couple of minutes, and you can go back to it feel­ing a little bit calmer. Quitting, though—that's the bitch. 'Cause as much as you tell yourself you don't need the crutch anymore, your body isn't convinced. Took me two years to wean myself off them. That's what this feels like," he said. "I want to turn wolf like I wanted a ciga­rette. That doesn't make any sense."

  "Like any of this makes sense," I muttered. "You don't have to wait until the full moon to Change. The wolf part knows that. It's always trying to get out."

  Watching him, I could almost see the analytical part of him trying to figure it out—the lawyer part of him on the case. His eyes narrowed, his face puckered up with thought.

  He said, harshly, "Where does the part about that side of it being a strength come in?"

  I could have said something cutting, but our nerves were frayed as it was. He needed a serious answer. "Being decisive. Sometimes it helps seeing the world as black and white, where everyone's either a predator or prey. You don't let details muddy up your thinking."

  "That's cynical."

  "I know. That's what I hate about it."

  "You know what the trouble is? We all see this case—what they're doing to Cormac—as black and white. But we're looking at white as white and Espinoza's looking at white as black. Does that make any sense?"

  "When maybe if we all saw it as gray we'd be able to come to some sort of compromise."

  "Yeah." He tapped the steering wheel as he lost himself in thought.

  It started snowing as we left the mountains.

  * * *

  Northern New Mexico was bleak, windswept, and touched with scattered bits of blowing snow from the storm. Stands of cottonwoods by the river were gray and leafless. All the colors seemed washed out of the landscape, which was barren desert hemmed in by eroded cliffs and mesas.

  We didn't have much to go on. The woman's name, the missing person report. We arrived in Shiprock in time to stop at the police department—Tribal law enforcement. Shiprock was on the Navajo Reservation. The town's namesake, a jagged volcanic monolith rising almost two thousand feet above the desert, was visible to the south, a kind of signpost.

  Ben spoke to the sergeant on duty at the front desk, while I lurked in the back, peering at them with interest.

  "I'm looking for information about Miriam Wilson." He showed them a picture from the coroner's office. A terrible, gruesome picture because half her face was pulped, but the other half still showed recognizable fea­tures. Her cheeks were round, her large eyes closed. "A missing person report was filed on her about three months ago. I don't know if the Huerfano County sheriff's depart­ment sent you the news that she was killed in Colorado."

  "Yeah, we got word," said the man behind the counter, a Sergeant Tsosie according to his nameplate. He had short black hair, brown skin, dark eyes, and an angled profile.

  "You don't seem concerned."

  "She won't be missed."

  Ben asked, "Has her family been notified? The Coroner up there hasn't received any instructions about what to do with her body."

  "He's not likely to, either. She's not going to have any­one asking about her. Trust me."

  "Then who filed the missing person report on her in the first place? Families who don't want to find out where their kids went don't normally do that."

  "This isn't a normal family," Tsosie said, almost smiling.

  "What if I went to talk to them?"

  "Good luck with that. The Wilsons are impossible to deal with."

  The officer looked nervous. He kept glancing around—over his shoulder, toward the door, like he expected some­one to come reprimand him. "You want some advice? Stop asking about her. She was bad news. That whole family's bad news. You keep going on about this, you won't like what you find, I guarantee it."

  "Bad news," Ben said. "Would you be willing to testify to that in court?"

  The officer shook his head quickly—fearfully, I might have said. "I won't have anything to do with it."

  Ben leaned forward and almost snarled. "I'm the defense attorney for the man who shot her. I need to show that it was justifiable, and you need to help me do that."

  Tsosie's lips pressed together for a moment while he hesitated. Then he made a decision. I could see it settle on his features. "Hold on a minute."

  He went to a filing cabinet off to the side of the room. He opened the top drawer and flipped
through a few fold­ers, drew one out, and studied the top sheet for a moment. Then he brought the whole folder over and lay it open in front of Ben. "Take it," he said. "Take all of it. And your client? You thank him for us."

  “Yeah. I'll do that," Ben said, a little breathlessly. "Thanks. Look, it would really help him out if I could get a statement. Just a signed statement."

  "I'm not sure a judge would look twice at anything I could say about her."

  "Anything'll help."

  He got the statement. One paragraph, vague, but it was on the department letterhead and had a signature. It was a start.

  Tsosie watched us leave, an unsettling intensity in his eyes.

  "What was that all about?" I said as we returned to the car. I drove this time, while Ben studied the folder's contents.

  "We just witnessed what happens when a police force wants a person put away, either behind bars or with a bullet, but they don't have any right to do it themselves. Miriam pissed somebody here off real good, but for what­ever reason—no evidence, no real crime committed—they couldn't touch her. Tsosie here has expressed his gratitude that somebody was able to do it."

  "Then why won't he testify on Cormac's behalf?"

  "If they don't have any evidence against her, then he's just a bitter cop bitching about some local nobody liked."

  "What did she do?"

  "That's the million-dollar question." He turned a page over, studied it. "Looks like she's got an arrest record. Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, vandalism. Typical juvenile delinquent-type stuff. A bad kid head­ing for trouble. Nothing unusual. But here's something." He shuffled a couple of pages aside and studied a typed report. "A little family history. Her older sister Joan died about three months ago."

  "How?"

  "Pneumonia. Natural causes. She was only twenty-three."

  "Then what's it doing in a police file?"

  "Someone thought it was important. It happened right before the missing person report was filed. Maybe there's a connection. Maybe that's what caused her to snap. And here's her brother John's death certificate. Two gunshot wounds. No investigation conducted."

  "Does that seem weird to you?"