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Her nails tapped against the counter. “And what about Dee Daniels? How is she?”
Seriously, no human should be that shade of red. “Dee.”He’d said the name like it was a curse. Based on that telling response, Erin figured the man had probably seen Dee in the ER a few times. With the way Dee fought, that sure made sense. “Dee, she’s, ah, in recovery. Not up to visitors yet.”
“But she’s okay?”
A weak nod. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
Her shoulders relaxed. “Good.” Better than good. She’d come to the ER at Mercy General alone. Jude had stayed behind to keep answering all the million and one questions that the cops had.
She’d gone after her mother because she’d had to make certain she was all right. If the woman was well enough to flee, then, yes, she had to be on the mend.
Voices buzzed behind her. Machines beeped. Doctors rushed past. She couldn’t see Dee yet?—
But there was someone else upstairs.
Erin shoved away from the counter.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” The desk clerk’s strangled voice.
Erin walked toward the bank of elevators.
“Ma’am? You—you’ve got a lot of blood there...”
She glanced down. The shirt had dried, finally, but the blood made it thick and heavy. And her fingers—the ones she’d been tapping on the counter—were stained red.Whoops.
The elevator doors opened with a chime. She walked inside and turned back to face the clerk. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “Only half the blood’s mine.”
The doors slid shut, but not before she’d seen his face turn from red to a very dark purple.
* * *
The crime scene looked like chaos, but Jude knew Tony had everything under control. The body had been tagged and bagged. The area had been sectioned off. Evidence collected. No detail would be overlooked under Tony’s watch.
Erin wouldn’t be charged. Hell, after she’d given her story, Tony had even gotten one of the cops to take her to the hospital. A police escort. No, she wouldn’t be charged, and good old Judge Harper would go down as a twisted freak who’d gotten too attached to one of the lawyers in his courtroom.
“When we start digging into his past,” Tony said, coming to stand beside Jude and staring out into the darkness of the swamp, “I give you fifty to one odds that we’re gonna find out this wasn’t the first time he got batshit crazy.”
Jude grunted his agreement. No telling what skeletons were about to fall out of the judge’s closet.
“Thisisn’this first time.” Ben Greer paced toward them, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He’d clipped his badge to the front of his shirt. Lines were etched across his pale face. “There have been some...killings in Lillian over the last few years.”
Jude narrowed his eyes on the cop. “What kind of killings?”
“The kind that some cops don’t care about.” Ben’s lips twisted. “A rapist had his throat slit two years ago and his body was tossed onto the steps of the PD. Before that, a guy who’d walked on a murder charge—a guy guilty as fucking sin, because everyoneknewhe’d killed his wife and her lover—someone cut out his heart... and then sent thepackageto the fellow’s lawyer.”
“You’re saying that Harper did this?” Tony demanded. “If you knew about him, why the hell didn’t you move on the creep?”
“Because I didn’t have any proof.” A shrug. “I still don’t.” He didn’t look at the bagged body. “I remember, though, that Harper was the judge on those cases and a few others where the defendants walked when they shouldn’t have gotten off.”
A pattern. “Like Donald Trent,” Jude stated quietly.
“Yep, just like Trent. And just like him, these other bastards all ended up dead within six months.” Disgust had the faint lines around his mouth deepening even more. “No evidence was left behind, except, on a few of the bodies, we found some dog hairs—” He broke off and gave a loud burst of laughter, the kind that sounded a little crazy and the kind that didn’t have one ounce of humor. “Dog hairs.Guess that makes sense now, doesn’t it?”
Jude just stared back at him.
The human shook his head. “I still don’t have a bit of solid evidence, though, do I? It’s not like I can go to my captain and tell him the judge was awerewolfwho liked to get off on-on?—”
“On handing out his own justice.” Because Jude realized that was exactly what the judge had been doing, probably foryears.If he’d been Lone all that time, battling a nature he couldn’t control, he would have needed prey. The criminals would have been perfect for him.
