Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  She flipped deeper through her filing folder to a faxed copy of the registration and eyed the owner’s name:

  Dante Alighieri.

  They had a full legal name now. It was a solid lead. The sheriff would have to be ecstatic. If he was well-read, however, he might be annoyed, but if he was, it wouldn’t be because of Rachel’s police work.

  She was annoyed as well.

  After a little research, she’d discovered that the name Dante Alighieri once belonged to a fourteenth century poet who was best known for authoring an epic poem entitled, “Dante’s Inferno,” a Divine Comedy about a journey through hell. Rachel’s gut was telling her that the use of this particular poet’s name was obviously some kind of sick joke, an alias meant to intrigue and puzzle the precinct. But it was a lead no less. Where else might Dante have used the alias? Had he checked into a bed and breakfast with it? Had he opened a bank account using it? She was one warrant away from finding out.

  There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that the contents of her carefully organized file would tip the scales in her favor and secure her promotion. No doubt. So when she saw Rick returning to the precinct, she leapt from her desk with the file in hand, and didn’t think twice about bombarding him before he reached his office.

  “Sheriff! Is now a good time?” she asked as she lifted the file and gave it a little shake.

  “What have you got, Clancy?” he asked, unenthused as he waved her into his office.

  She closed the door and was in the chair in front of his desk before he’d even taken off his sheriff’s hat.

  She could barely contain herself as he rounded to the business side of his desk and eased his stocky body into the chair. She was on her feet again, slapped the filing folder open on his desk, facing him, and angling sideways over the contents she was thrilled to present.

  He drew in a deep breath, heaving his barrel chest, and leaned back in his chair, taking more interest in her jittery behavior than the actual case file.

  “Canine DNA. A partial print we might be able to use later down the road. Silver bullets. And, the cherry on top of this kick-ass sundae, a name, Sheriff. An actual name that one of the firearms was registered to,” she summarized, shoving the file at him for a closer look.

  But the only look he gave it was one of being unimpressed.

  “Interesting,” he said, doing her the professional courtesy of feigning interest in the details.

  She sat down in her chair and fought like hell to keep her spirits high, but when Rick flipped through the contents of the folder, much too fast to actually read and absorb the details, then closed the manila entirely, a hot burst of anger swelled in her chest.

  “What’s the problem, Sheriff?” she said in what she’d meant to sound like an even, unemotional tone, but her voice had come out deep and hard. She challenged him with a confrontational guess, “My uterus?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Or maybe it’s my boobs, or my menstrual cycle, or my little lady brain—”

  “Are you accusing me of something, Clancy?” he spat, leaning towards her over the desk and glaring at her hard.

  She pressed her mouth into an offended line to prevent herself from flying fully off the handle. This was still the man who would either permit or deny her request to make detective. She didn’t want to blow it by becoming the “hysterical woman” who he’d always suspected she would turn out to be. Hysteria would be his best reason for denying her the promotion this time, and once and for all.

  Maintaining her composure, she said, “I strongly encourage you to read through the findings in that folder. These are facts, Sheriff.”

  “These,” he told her without batting an eye, “are circumstantial.”

  “They’re leads, Sir. We can use them to fill in the picture. I’m not suggesting that we present it to the DA in Jackson Hole. I’m suggesting we explore the facts to their farthest conclusion and see what shakes down.”

  “It’s interesting, Clancy,” he assured her, but she didn’t trust him. “I’ll take a closer look.”

  He patted his large hand on the file and gave her a thin smile that she recognized. It was time for her to excuse herself from his office. As she rose to her feet she was tempted to remind him that making detective meant the world to her, but she didn’t want to seem desperate or like she was begging him, so she said in a curt, professional tone, “Sir,” and left him to have a closer look at her work.

  But when she reached the door and opened it, she turned on her heel. She couldn’t help it or hold back. She’d taken it on the chin from him too many times and far more than she deserved. She wasn’t going to pull this punch.

  “Dean Quinn was shot that day with a silver bullet. If there are werewolves in the Fist, Dean isn’t one of them.”

  The look in the sheriff’s eye turned steely. Whether he believed in werewolves or not, he was far from happy to hear that a Quinn couldn’t possibly be one of them.

  “Close the door on your way out,” he told her and she did.

  But after padding off, she glanced over her shoulder, sneaking a peek at Rick through the windows that spanned his office, partitioning it from the bullpen.

  Rick dropped her file into the trash bin beside his desk and picked up the phone.

  Right then and there, the spirits that Rachel had been fighting so hard to keep up sank like a stone to the bottom of a very dark pond.

  ***

  “Lucy, come on, girl! Hop to it! We’re gettin’ slammed out there!”

  That was one of the waitresses, Tammy, who had rushed through the kitchen in search of her. Lucy had been collecting herself, having remained seated on the stack of milk crates, and waiting for Leeanne to return with her prescription bottle of Xanax. At least her eyes had dried and her hands had stopped trembling, but she really didn’t want to have to go back out there, especially not if Kaleb Quinn was still lingering in one of the booths.

  “Did you hear me?” barked Tammy. “Come on!”

  Reluctantly, Lucy hoisted her emotionally drained body off the crates and padded, heavy-footed, through the kitchen and out into the restaurant where Tammy had been working wonders to pick up her slack.

  “Hold up, girl,” said Tammy breathlessly before Lucy could get very far from the order counter.

  When she turned, Tammy gave her two warm plates of stacked pancakes and said, “Table Seven.”

  “Thanks,” said Lucy, as she turned with the plates.

  Once she’d set them down in front of the customers at Table Seven, a father and his eight-year-old son, who looked like they’d be heading off to Yellowstone for a little hiking and bird watching next, she started through her section, moving from table to table to take orders and check on her customers.

  When she came to Kaleb’s table, however, she didn’t slow up or say a thing, only kept her eyes down just enough to sense his red shirt in her periphery before stopping at a neighboring booth.

  The breakfast rush unfolded and soon Lucy was lost in the rhythm of her work. Countless laps to the kitchen, skirting through her section, topping off mugs of coffee, and collecting tips. Her emotions ebbed away and as she carried a bin of dirty plates, utensils, and cups into the back of the kitchen where the dishwasher could take care of it, she realized that she felt as good as ever. The memories of her murdered parents that had crashed over her was the furthest thing from her mind, and when she passed Angel who was ladling soup into a bowl in the kitchen, she even gave her a big ol’ smile.

  The breakfast rush had finally ended. She didn’t have to race around, and the diner eased into her favorite slow-and-steady pace.

  It was then that she realized Leeanne wasn’t on the floor.

  Back in the kitchen, she asked Angel, “Have you seen Leeanne?”

  Without lifting her beautifully made-up eyes, Angel responded, “Haven’t seen her. She’s not out there in her section?”

  Lucy kept a lid on it. She wasn’t about to get her friend in trouble.


  “I need to run upstairs for a sec,” she told Angel instead, wondering if perhaps Leeanne had been so curious about her anti-anxiety meds that she’d taken one and gotten so loose and loopy that she’d laid down for a little couch nap. “Gotta change my socks.”

  “Fine,” said Angel. “Just be quick about it.”

  Lucy wasted no time. She spilled out into the rear parking lot behind Angel’s Food and immediately rounded into the door that would lead her up to her apartment above.

  Leeanne had closed the door behind her, but hadn’t locked it, thank goodness, so Lucy was able to enter without having to double back and ask Angel for her landlord set of keys.

  She called out, “Leeanne?” as she barreled into her living room.

  It was a small one-bedroom apartment. The entrance door opened right into a modest living room that Lucy had furnished with a couch, coffee table, and one end table, since that’s all she’d been able to afford years ago when she’d convinced Angel Mercer that she’d make for an excellent tenant, quiet as a mouse and clean as a whistle.

  She got not three steps into the living room when she was struck by a dark, doom-filled feeling and cut her eyes to the bathroom.

  Leeanne was on the tiles, her legs stretching out into the living room, her body motionless…

  …and covered in blood.

  Lucy screamed. A shrill, panicked, soul-murdering cry that didn’t quiet until she ran out of breath.

  She rushed to Leeanne and nearly slipped on the pool of blood that had crept across the tiles, spreading onto the wooden floor of the living room.

  When she dropped to her knees, crying, panicking, she reached out to touch Leeanne, but didn’t know how. There was so much blood. So goddamn much of it.

  It was her parents all over again.

  Chapter Three

  KALEB

  Having set cash on the table, Kaleb was working his wallet back into jeans when a shrieking scream pierced through the quiet diner.

  Everyone froze and began looking around for answers.

  The scream had sounded like it came from the apartment above.

  Kaleb glanced around the diner, looking for Lucy. Everyone knew she’d been living upstairs since she’d graduated from college. She wasn’t here.

  Breaking out at a jog, Kaleb tore through the diner and burst through the glass door. The sharp Wyoming sun cut his eyes as he jogged up the sidewalk and made a left onto Bison Road, making his way around to the very back of the building.

  After giving the unmarked door a moment’s hesitation—he’d never gone up to Lucy’s apartment, he’d never even gotten the pretty blonde into his pickup truck—he was certain it was the only way up, since the only other door behind Angel’s Food connected straight into the back of the kitchen.

  He threw it open and took the narrow staircase steps two at a time.

  When he reached the landing, her apartment door was open and he heard pained, whimpering sobs coming from deep inside.

  “Lucy?” he called out as he eased the door open wider and entered the small space.

  The living room was decorated as he might have imagined, not that his thoughts had wandered in Lucy’s direction much, with modest, kitschy furniture that seemed almost bohemian chic.

  Following the hollow sounds of muffled whimpering, he came to the bathroom where he found Lucy, covered in blood, and kneeling over an even bloodier woman.

  Relief washed over him at first—Lucy didn’t appear harmed—and he edged closer, trying not to step in the long puddle of blood that had stretched out from the bathroom tiles and into the living room.

  As he took her by the shoulders, urging her to her feet and away from the body, he noticed the dead woman’s blue button-down dress—the Angel’s Food uniform that all of the waitresses wore. Though the body was face down, as soon as he saw the brown hair, he knew who it was. Leeanne Whitaker. But there was so much blood that he wouldn’t even know where to begin if he wanted to guess the exact manner in which she’d been killed.

  Having shepherded Lucy out into the living room, away from the body, he gave her the once-over. Blood was dripping down from her knees. It spotted her white, slip-proof sneakers. She hadn’t been cut, though. It was purely the result of having knelt beside Leeanne, he reasoned. Her blue uniform was smeared with bloodstains as well, but as he handled her gently, he determined that she was unharmed, except for having been clearly traumatized.

  Her whimpering had quieted and a mile-long stare filled her glassy eyes. Her lips were parted, slack-jawed to a degree. She looked vacant, like she was somewhere inside of herself, hiding and unreachable.

  He took hold of her shoulders and stooped, trying to make eye contact with her, but she just zombie-stared straight through him.

  “Lucy?” he said softly, as he took her hands. They were sticky with blood. She began to sway, but only slightly, as though her legs were turning to jelly so he suggested, “Let’s sit down.”

  After steering her to the couch and helping her to sit, he glanced around the room and spotted a landline telephone fixed to the wall that led into the narrow kitchen.

  As he crossed towards it, Angel Mercer spilled into the apartment with Jack Quagmire at her heels. The second she saw Lucy, she gasped, but as she rushed to her, the dead body on the bathroom tiles, those limp lifeless legs of Leeanne’s that were stretched out into the living room, caught her eye and she screamed.

  Jack pulled her into a hug to shield her eyes and Kaleb informed him, “I’m calling 911.”

  It was a quick call and the operator assured him that an ambulance and police cruiser were on the way.

  “She’s dead,” Jack told him in response to having gleaned that an ambulance was on route.

  “It’s not for Leeanne,” he said as he neared the body. He cut his eyes to Lucy who looked practically catatonic.

  Jack joined him at the body where Kaleb had crouched to try and make sense of who could have done this. When he did, Angel covered her mouth and paced away. She didn’t sit next to Lucy on the couch, didn’t offer the traumatized girl any comfort. She only stood at the window that faced down onto Main Street, holding her hand over her mouth, in horrified repose.

  “We have to roll her over,” Kaleb said quietly.

  “Rick’s not going to like that,” Jack warned.

  “Rick?” he challenged, giving the rugged bar owner an astonished glare. Speaking in an even lower tone, he reminded Jack, “We need to figure out what caused this if we want to protect our kind.”

  Jack pressed his mouth into a hard line of agreement and together they muscled Leeanne’s lifeless body onto its back.

  Jack had to be wondering the same thing Kaleb was. Had Dante come back to town? Or had one of his “damned” done this? How many had the rogue werewolf turned when he’d been in the Fist?

  There was so much blood covering Leeanne that at first Kaleb couldn’t tell where all the hemorrhaging was coming from. A thick, bubbled up and clotted layer of drying blood stretched across the woman’s neck, but so much of her hair was matted into it, stuck in a rat’s nest of mess, that it took Kaleb a very long moment to understand that her throat had been cut severely.

  Cut by what, though?

  The mad wielding of a rusty machete?

  Or the fangs of a hungry werewolf?

  It was impossible to tell.

  “Christ,” Jack breathed as he rose to his feet, not able to bear looking at the gaping wound for one more second.

  Kaleb lifted his eyes to Lucy.

  Her lips were moving but no sounds were coming out.

  He needed to call Troy.

  The sheriff wasn’t going to like it.

  ***

  The sheriff had ducked into the men’s room. Rachel had watched him. And the moment he slipped inside, she’d walked briskly from her desk, through the bullpen, and boldly entered his office.

  The nerve of that man, throwing her file of groundbreaking evidence in his trash bin. So what if most
of it was circumstantial? She’d been at this job long enough to know that a lead was a lead. Circumstantial evidence could give way to hard evidence. She’d also been at this job long enough to know that Rick Abernathy was a shameless sexist who, in her humble opinion, should’ve never had a street named after him.

  As she recovered her file from his trash bin and dusted it off, giving the bent corners a good straightening, the telephone on his desk rang.

  She cut her eyes through the open doorway, looking at the men’s room door on the far side of the bullpen, but he didn’t emerge.

  Rick couldn’t possibly like her any less, so with an air of defiance, she answered his ringing desk phone, stating, “Sheriff’s office.”

  It was Dispatch. “We got a cruiser and ambulance on route to Lucy Cooper’s apartment above Angel’s Food.”

  Crap, thought Rachel. Had she been in her cruiser, she would’ve gotten the call from dispatch first. She would be the officer on route. The first on the scene.

  “What’re we lookin’ at?” she asked the woman on the other end of the line.

  “Dead body. Leeanne Whitaker. Sounds like a homicide.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Kaleb Quinn,” said Dispatch.

  The sheriff wasn’t going to like it, but as Rachel thanked the woman and returned the phone to its cradle, she decided that the sheriff wasn’t going to know.

  With that, she rushed through the precinct just as Rick was starting out from the men’s room, unaware that he had another homicide on his hands.

  ***

  At about the time Sheriff Rick Abernathy was debating whether he should order a burger for lunch or a Cobb salad to counteract all the beer calories he liked to consume afterhours, never the wiser that Leeanne Whitaker had been brutally murdered across the street, police officers and medics charged into Lucy Cooper’s apartment and immediately began ushering Kaleb, Lucy, Angel, and Jack outside.