by Lori Drake
“Very well,” Adelaide said after a thoughtful pause, nodding. “Benjamin, you can come with me.”
“Alright,” Ben said, shooting Joey a look that clearly indicated she owed him for falling on this particular sword. Fortunately, she knew his favorite brand of scotch.
After breakfast, Joey and Sam piled into his truck to head out again.
“Thanks for the assist back there,” she said, fastening her seatbelt.
“You’re welcome, but it wasn’t entirely out of the kindness of my heart. Mother charged me with picking out an outfit for Chris. I, uh…”
Joey’s lips twitched in a thin smile. “You’d have trouble coordinating more than jeans and a T-shirt?” she asked, needling him gently.
He mumbled something unintelligible in reply as he backed the truck down the drive.
“Aw, there’s no shame in it, man. Lots of men are fashion-challenged. Does Mom still lay out your clothes for you?” Joey found herself smiling a little wider.
He shot her a look, and she struggled not to grin. For a brief moment she was able to forget the ghoulish errand they were on. Her expression sobered when her mind circled back to it. It was morbid and more than a little depressing to think about selecting clothes to bury her best friend in.
“I’ll pick out something nice for him,” she said, leaving it at that. “Why didn’t she ask Jon to do it?”
Sam shrugged, “You know how she is. Maybe she hoped I’d rise to the occasion.”
“Kind of glad she didn’t teach us to swim. Pretty sure it would have involved being thrown in the deep end,” Joey said, half-mumbling. Her eyes shifted to study her brother’s profile as she added, more conversationally, “What would you have done if she hadn’t let me come?”
“Probably would’ve dragged Jon along.”
They chuckled together, and Joey fiddled with the vents so the air blew more directly on her face. It was a little easier to ignore being in such an enclosed space that way. Putting her head out the window was not an option.
“Did you talk to Selene yet?” she said.
“Not yet. But that reminds me, what was up with that guy at the club? The blonde.”
Joey looked out the passenger window again, frowning to herself at the memory. “That was Alex. We dated for a while.”
“Ah.”
She sighed. “I know, he’s not a wolf, it wouldn’t have worked out, blah blah…”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.” Joey folded her arms and frowned out the window some more. “It’s not like San Diego is teeming with eligible wolves. There’s only one other pack, and they’re already paired off. Well, except for Ryder but he’s only 16. Sometimes loners pass through, but you know how often they settle down. Besides, I’m not ready to settle down. I’m only twenty-six, I’ve got plenty of time to find a mate.”
“How long have you been rehearsing that one?”
“Shut up,” Joey growled, despite the hypocrisy of being able to dish it out but not take it. It’d been a rough morning.
They sat in silence for a little while after that.
“You know Mom’s going to start trying to fix you up, right?” he said, after a few minutes and miles had passed.
“Huh?”
“It’s her goal in life to be surrounded by little grand-pups. She’s been doing it to me for decades. Pretty sure you only got a pass because she was hoping you and Chris would make a go of it.”
Joey smirked, shaking her head. ”She’s always been more than a little delusional on that subject. Was incest still socially acceptable when she was born?”
Sam snorted. “You weren’t actually related to him, you know.”
“Don’t be gross.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Are you trying to make this more difficult for me?” She turned her head, looking over at him with a frown. “He’s gone, okay? Stop trying to push me into some sort of epiphany about what could’ve been.”
He kept his eyes on the road, and an awkward silence settled between them. Sighing, she went back to looking out the window. Yes, her mother had been nudging her toward Chris for years. She’d even let them move out of the house, probably hoping that being alone would bring them closer together. What Adelaide didn’t know was how many nights they’d spent doing the same thing in their apartment that they’d done in their childhood home: Watch terrible horror movies, eat junk food, and fall asleep at opposite ends of their U-shaped leather sofa.
A few more minutes and miles passed before Joey felt a need to break the silence. Sam didn’t mind silence, generally. He was a pretty quiet guy.
“So, what’s the next step in our investigation?” she asked, steering things back into safer territory. Sort of safer, anyway. “Are there any likely suspects to shake down?”
Sam didn’t answer right away. He could be difficult to read, so she wasn’t sure if he was uncertain or reluctant.
“Well, I need to follow up with Selene and see if she has anything for me,” he said. “If we’re lucky, she can get us in touch with someone that can help draw a clearer picture of the mystery woman we’re looking for. Literally or figuratively. I also figured it would be a good idea to, uh, examine the body. It was released to the funeral home this morning.”
Joey was following along pretty well until that last bit, which made her grimace. “Looking for what? We know what killed him.”
“Maybe,” Sam said, clearly reserving judgement. “Looking for anything, really. Any other wounds, signs of a struggle. A scent. Something the medical examiner might have missed.”
Frowning, Joey folded her arms and went back to looking out the window, sorry she’d asked. “I want to help but I don’t—I don’t know if I can do that.” The memory of Chris's lifeless body laying on that cold steel table surfaced unbidden. She had a hard time dismissing it, and for a moment she could almost smell the chemical cleaning agent that had lingered throughout the medical examiner’s office. Joey swiped at her nose, not that it helped.
“I won’t think less of you if you don’t. I know you two were close,” Sam said.
Close didn’t quite cover it. She felt like she was missing part of her soul, but she wasn’t about to try and explain it to Sam. Fortunately, she was saved by the ringing of Sam’s phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and tossed it to her.
“Sam’s phone,” she answered.
“May I speak with Sam, please?” It was Detective Harding.
“Sam’s driving right now, can I take a message Detective?”
“Just put it on speaker,” Sam said, loud enough that Harding should have been able to hear it, even with normal human hearing.
“Hang on,” Joey said and poked the speaker button, then held the phone up so the microphone was pointed toward Sam.
“Hey Jim, what’s up?” he asked. Joey shot him a curious glance over the familiar address.
“I just wanted to follow up on the Martin case,” the detective explained. Joey could hear the quiet hum of the busy squad room in the background, though the voices were too indistinct to make anything out. “We’ve got the victim’s car in impound.”
His words sent a little thrill through Joey, who saw an end to being reliant on others for transportation on the horizon. Freedom!
“When can we pick it up?” she asked, momentarily ignoring that it wasn’t her that the detective had called.
Sam cleared his throat and gave her a pointed glance. “Where was it found?” he asked instead. Joey grumbled quietly, but continued holding the phone for him.
“A parking garage, a few blocks away from the club. Took us a while to find it. It wasn’t until the garage owners called for a tow that it showed up on our radar. Anyway, we searched it and forensics has been over it. It’s clean. I was going to call Miss Grant to let her know she could pick it up at her leisure.”
Joey gave a silent fist-pump.
Smirking, Sam replied, “I’ll be sure to let her know.
So, no new leads?”
“Nothing I’m at liberty to discuss right now, sorry. But speaking of which, I need to get back to work.”
“Of course. Thanks for calling, Jim.” Sam motioned for Joey to disconnect the call.
“Jim?” she said, quirking a brow. “Yesterday you couldn’t even remember his name.”
He shrugged.
The stop at the apartment was brief, though Sam insisted on searching the whole place before setting Joey loose to grab some clothes for Chris. She moved through his room carefully, not wanting to disturb anything for reasons she couldn’t quite quantify. In the end, she picked out a nice suit and a blue striped tie that would’ve brought out the color in his eyes before heading back downstairs with Sam.
The funeral home was another twenty minutes away. As they pulled into the front drive, Joey took in the manicured landscaping and well-maintained building. There were two hearses parked in a side lot, along with what she assumed were a few employee vehicles. It looked like a pretty classy operation, but Adelaide Grant wouldn’t settle for anything less for one of her sons.
Inside, it was all wood and polished brass, with thick carpets to dampen footfalls. A man in a crisp suit met them at the door and led them back into the bowels of the building after they introduced themselves. They ended up in a cold, white room. Joey’s nostrils tickled from the smell of bleach. She half-wondered why keeping it sterile was so important—these people were dead, right? But it probably had something to do with keeping the workspace clear of bodily fluids and other bits of decay that might stink up the place or get someone sick. It didn’t take a neat freak to appreciate that. Joey did, regardless.
After exchanging a few quiet words with Sam, the attendant left them alone in the room. It had happened so fast; Joey had expected someone to take the clothes and maybe lead Sam back while she remained outside. But before she knew what was happening, she was standing in a sterile room with Chris's body again. As before, it was covered by a white sheet but only up to the shoulders. Unprepared to be confronted with him again like this, she swallowed hard.
“Um…”
Sam turned toward her, concern etched into his face. “You can wait outside if you want. This won’t take long.” With that said, he turned and walked over to the table where Chris's body lay.
Joey stood there for a long moment, rooted by indecision. Finally, she took one step forward. Then another. Reluctant but determined footsteps carried her over to the table, clutching the hangers she’d brought tightly.
She stopped just shy of the table and studied his face. Loosening the death grip she had on the hangers, she reached out and brushed his hair back from his forehead. Her fingertips brushed his cold skin in the process and she flinched back.
“I need to move the sheet,” Sam warned. “And I’m going to have to take some pictures. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Joey nodded. Now that she was there, she felt like she had to do it. She had to be there with him now in death, as she had always been in life. Except that one time, when it’d mattered the most.
Sweeping aside a stab of guilt, she draped his clothes over the stainless steel side table. When she turned back, Sam had lowered the sheet down to the waist, exposing Chris's torso. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but the fact that he lay there pale and unmoving made it damned unsettling.
The wound that had killed him wasn’t difficult to find. It was a stab wound to the abdomen, barely an inch long. The wound had been stitched closed for whatever reason, but their wishes had been honored and there was no Y of stitches from an autopsy on his chest. The flesh around the knife wound was discolored, like a bruise with black spidery veins spreading out from the center. Frowning, Joey reached out reflexively.
“Wait,” Sam said. He reached for the box of latex gloves and passed her a couple of them.
She put them on and, once her hands were adequately covered, looked at the wound again. It was easier to focus on that one spot than to take in the whole of her dead brother lying on the table. She traced the edge of the bruising with a latex-sheathed fingertip and leaned over to inspect the skin around the wound more closely.
“Does this look strange to you?” she asked.
Sam grunted in response, noncommittal at best.
Joey sighed. “Come on, don’t hold out on me. See these lines spreading out from the wound?”
“I see them. It could be from a toxin. We need to look and see if there are any other wounds.”
So they did. The shutter noise on Sam’s phone sounded every time he snapped a picture. She let him look under the sheet while she inspected Chris's hands and arms. When Sam leaned over to sniff the body, Joey recoiled inwardly. However, when she thought about it, it made sense to use every advantage they had. What if they could catch a whiff of the killer’s scent? Though reluctant, she added a bit of sniffing to her inspection. Her nostrils tingled. He still smelled like Chris. She expected to smell decay, but there wasn’t any. The wonders of refrigeration, keeping food and bodies fresh since the 19th century.
There were fewer scents clinging to the body than she had caught a whiff of at the crime scene. She didn’t recognize any of them, which struck her as odd until the soap registered. Someone, probably at the morgue or mortuary, had washed the body.
Once they’d completed their examination of the front of the body, they rolled it onto one side to check the back before carefully easing it down onto the table again. There were no other wounds. Joey adjusted the sheet once they had settled Chris again, making sure it didn’t fall off. Even the dead deserved some dignity, and while he was among family now they’d soon be turning him back over to the mortuary staff.
“I’ve seen what silver does to our skin,” Joey said, pointing at the stomach wound. “That isn’t it. It should be burned, blistered. This is an ordinary knife wound.”
“Nothing ordinary about it,” Sam replied, taking off his gloves and folding his arms across his chest.
“You know what I mean,” Joey said with a scowl. “If it were a normal knife, he should have been able to heal before he bled out.”
“So, it obviously wasn’t a normal knife.”
“But not a silver knife.”
“No, not a silver knife,” Sam said, unfolding his arms and pulling the sheet back up to Chris's shoulders. “It might have been coated with poison.”
“It’d have to be fast-acting poison. There aren’t any defensive wounds. Whoever did this caught him by surprise, and he was incapacitated so quickly that he didn’t put up a fight.”
Sam’s brows lifted as he studied her from across the table, lips twitching in a faint smile. “Good observation. I think we’re done here. I got what I need.”
“It can’t be a hunter.”
“It must have been someone who knew what he was. A garden-variety poison wouldn’t have worked. This wasn’t a random act of violence.”
“But why would a hunter go through the trouble of using a designer poison when silver would have been just as expedient? And who on earth would have a reason to murder Chris?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m not sure. Which leads us to the real problem.”
“Oh?”
“If it wasn’t a hunter, then I have no idea who it was.”
That was, indeed, a problem.
12
After the incident in the bathroom, Chris became more determined than ever to make contact—real contact—with Joey. He managed to shadow her through breakfast and to the apartment afterward. Riding in the truck had quickly proved beyond him, but since he knew where they were going it was pretty simple to catch up to them there.
Joey hesitated before stepping into his room, lingering in the doorway with a hand on the doorframe. His eyes were drawn to the movement of her thumb, absently rubbing at a ding in the painted wood.
“Remember when that happened? Moving day?” he said aloud, watching her.
“Strength and balance are two different things,” she murmured, afte
r a quiet pause. Her eyes held a distant quality to them; she was lost in remembrance, not answering him.
He remembered that day like it was yesterday… The odor of fresh paint was so strong that they’d had to open every window to let the apartment air out. It was January and there’d been a cold snap. Outside, the temperature was a mild fifty-five degrees, but that was cold by San Diego standards. They’d unpacked in coats and gloves, and discovered that the movers had put both dressers in Joey’s room. No problem for a couple of strong, young wolves. Right?
The dresser was too bulky for Chris to move by himself, so he and Joey had awkwardly shuffled across the hall with it carried between them. They’d gotten it about halfway through the door when Chris had stumbled over something while walking backwards. His gloved hands had slipped and the heavy dresser had lurched unexpectedly, banging loudly against the doorframe.
“If this is too heavy for you, I can probably manage it,” she’d teased him, peeking around the side of the dresser.
He’d laughed. “Strength and balance are two different things.”
Shaking off the memory, he noticed Joey had finally crossed the threshold and was approaching that same dresser, nimbly stepping around obstacles in her path. There was an unconscious grace and fluidity to her movements that he’d always admired. She moved like a dancer, even when she wasn’t thinking about it.
Leaning against the wall, he watched as she gingerly picked through the dresser to remove what she needed, then did the same with the closet. His brow furrowed and he looked around the untidy room with a frown. It wasn’t a total sty, but there were clothes scattered around, dresser drawers half-closed, an unmade bed, and papers littering the desk.
“You know, this always felt comfortably lived-in to me. But I never intended it to be enshrined or anything. You can do whatever you want with it now,” he said, watching her carefully for any reaction. She carried on with no obvious notion that he was present.
A moment later, he realized he was leaning against the wall and tumbled right through it.
“Really need to work on that,” he said, picking himself up off the floor in the hallway and turning his thoughts from his lackadaisical legacy to his current predicament.
