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The rest of the morning passed peacefully enough. I swam, I sat on the sand and soaked up the sunshine - or at least I did until my skin began showing signs of severe sunburn again. Why was it suddenly so damn sensitive?
I shifted to the shade of the trees, drank coffee, and read the newspaper. There was no mention of Landsbury's murder anywhere, although the paper catered to Western Australia as a whole, not just this town. And given the vastness of WA, maybe the murder of a rapist wasn't considered newsworthy enough.
Or maybe an embargo had been placed on it.
Lunch came and went, and it was midafternoon when Evin decided he was going to have a little siesta. I glanced at my watch and waited fifteen minutes to insure he was well asleep, then wrote him a note telling him I was going to buy some decent coffee. I slathered on some sunscreen, then grabbed my wallet, hat, and sunglasses, and headed out.
The air was unbearably hot and the sun beat down almost relentlessly. I could feel its heat caressing my skin, but this time, it didn't feel like it was burning as deep. Obviously, sunscreen and I were going to become firm friends while I was in this part of the world.
There were plenty of people out and about in the caravan park, though most of them were sticking to the shade of the big old gum trees. There were a few kids splashing about in the crystal blue water, but most were - like me - slathered with sunscreen and wearing hats. All of them smelled human. It wasn't until I reached the main town that the scent of wolf became stronger.
I headed down the side street again and walked toward the stand of trees. There was a young, bored-looking uniformed officer standing under the shade of one of them, and I smiled. Harris had obviously taken my jibe about protecting the crime scene seriously.
Of course, this also meant that I couldn't nose around like I wanted to. I gave the young officer another smile as I walked by the trees, and continued on until the grass gave way to the tufted wild grass. I turned around and studied the houses surrounding the paddock. I couldn't imagine Landsbury living in the immediate area - not with the police station and Harris's house so close, but he'd have to live somewhere near the paddock because otherwise someone would have noticed him being carried. Although for all I knew, someone had. Harris wasn't about to tell me stuff like that.
The houses behind Harris's - the ones closer to the pub - were all pretty, well-looked-after places. Which didn't seem the sort of place someone like Landsbury would be living in, so that left the area to the left of the park. It was more isolated, more rundown. The perfect area for a criminal wanting to get away from his past.
I spun on my heel and headed left. The cop was still watching me but, even from this distance, it didn't "feel"
suspicious. More an "I'm bored and there's a leggy redhead wondering around in a bathing suit" type of feel.
Interested, but not aroused.
It struck me then that since I'd woken up in the desert, nothing remotely resembling desire or lust had hit me. Which was odd, because I was a werewolf and sex was an important part of our makeup. But the urge just wasn't there.
It couldn't be just the soul-mate factor. Losing a soul mate might rob a werewolf of happiness and their life companion - and sometimes even their life - but it didn't erase the need for sex. It couldn't. That was ingrained in us and, when a soul mate died, the restriction of having sex only with them was lifted.
But maybe they'd stolen that the same time as they'd taken my memories, I thought glumly.
I headed past the last of the houses lining the paddock, then turned left into what was little more than a dusty side track. The houses lining either side of this track were even more decayed than they'd seemed from a distance, with most needing major structural work as well as a good lick of paint. The sea air obviously played havoc with timber surfaces. There were ten houses in all, and I walked past each of them slowly, drawing in the scents and trying to uncover anything that vaguely resembled Landsbury's stench.
I found it in the last house on the street. I paused and took off a shoe, shaking imaginary sand out of it as I studied the building. It wasn't much to look at, but the windows were unbroken and the curtains appeared to be newish. There was a dead bolt on the front door and padlocks on the side gate, and both were new.
Awareness surged at that moment - someone was coming toward me. Not Harris; someone else. I put my shoe back on and kept walking. A big, dark-skinned man was approaching, and he didn't look happy.
"Well, I'm guessing you'd be Hanna London. " His voice was gravelly, and filled with a sense of familiarity that seemed out of place, given he was a stranger.
"That's what my driver's license tells me," I said somewhat flippantly. "Who are you?"
"Mike West, the other cop stationed in this shit hole we call a town. Harris told me that you might wander down this way. "
He stopped, waiting for me to get closer. His scent washed across the air - an odd combination of smoke and dirt.
"I didn't realize it was illegal to walk around this section of town. "
He turned around and fell in step beside me. "It's not - except when the person doing the wandering has already been warned away from a crime scene twice and was seen there yet again only a few moments ago. "
So the young officer didn't only ogle. Good for him. "I didn't go anywhere near the taped-off area. I just walked through the field. "
"A technicality, as we both know. Consider this a final warning. If we find you near that field again, we'll arrest you. "
I raised my eyebrows. "On what charge?"
"Obstructing an investigation. " He glanced at me. His eyes were brown - like almost everyone else in the West pack - but his seemed to hold his emotions clear and sharp. What I saw was resentment, unhappiness, and just a touch of anticipation.
And it was that last one that struck me as odd, because while it wasn't sexual in nature, it did seem to center on me.
"I can hardly obstruct an investigation when there's not a lot of investigation happening. "
