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“Not yet. I’ve had to put that aside for now. Another case has come up. I’d like you to look at something.” She pulled an attaché case off the chair.
“It’s not autopsy photos, is it? Because I’m not really in the mood for autopsy photos.”
I’d meant it as a joke. In our last set of encounters, Hardin kept asking me to look at bodies and tell her if a werewolf had ripped open their torsos and torn them to pieces.
But her expression didn’t change. She frowned, expectant and impatient. “Crime scene photos. Homicide.”
Damn.
“Is there someplace we can talk in private?” she finished.
“Do I have to?” I almost whined.
At least her smile was sympathetic. “I’ll owe you a favor. Never underestimate the power of a cop owing you favors.”
Fine. Whatever. “Upstairs conference room.”
I led the way, surreptitiously glancing over my shoulder at her. I could feel her studying me, as a prickling up and down my spine. I made the trip as short as I could, and she got right to work, pulling a handful of five-by-seven photos from her case and spreading them on the table. Ten of them lined up.
Each one showed a face, some of them merely spattered with blood, some of them drenched, so that their hair was red and plastered to their skin. Some of them showed slashes across cheeks and throats—claw marks. A couple had jagged wounds, pieces of flesh torn and hanging. Teeth marks. All of them had their eyes closed. My gut twisted.
“We got a 911 call at around 3:00 A.M. from a warehouse south of downtown,” Detective Hardin explained. “This is what we found when we got there. We traced the 911 call to a mobile phone dropped just inside the building. It might have belonged to one of the victims. We couldn’t get prints off it. All the victims were inside. All of them showed signs of struggle, like there’d been a fight. A really nasty fight—no weapons, all hand-to-hand. Or claw and fang to hand. All ten victims tested positive for lycanthropy. Do you know any of these people? Can you identify them?”
These were Rick’s lycanthropes. Despite the blood, I recognized them. No sign of the confident pack he’d gathered looked out at me now. I touched the pictures, lining them up.
“We also found three sets of what might also be remains, but there’s not much there. Some ashes. I think they might have been vampires. There’s no way to ID them.”
Only seven of these were Rick’s. Two others were wolves from Carl’s pack. Tough guys who didn’t mind fights. Both had been wolves for over a decade. One of them worked as a bouncer in Denver. Now they were dead.
The tenth photo was Jenny. Her throat had been torn out. I couldn’t see her neck, only a pulped mess. She was wearing the shirt she’d had on yesterday. Blond hair made a tangled, bloody frame around her. Her face was only speckled with blood and seemed incongruously relaxed, almost peaceful. She’d found another way to escape.
“You do know them,” Hardin said.
I’d lifted Jenny’s photo and couldn’t turn away from it. I couldn’t feel what my face was doing, what expression Hardin saw on me. I only knew that I couldn’t talk. My throat had shut tight, my voice had died.
“Kitty?” the detective prompted.
“She wasn’t supposed to be here,” I said, forcing it out. The effort made my voice taut to the breaking point. “She was supposed to be on an airplane. She’s the one I told you about last night.” She was supposed to be free now.
Gently, Hardin drew the photo from my hand and put it back with the others. “That one’s odd. Her time of death came about seven hours earlier than the others. Her body was left there. She didn’t die with them.”
No, Carl had killed her before and then
dumped her with the rest. I had to assume it was Carl. He might have had help with the rest, but he’d killed Jenny all by himself. But how had he found her? How had she let him find her? How had he stolen her past airport security?
The implication of the rest of the photos only settled on me slowly, the shock wave after the initial blast of seeing Jenny dead: Rick’s coup had failed. One of those piles of ash might be him. I had no way of knowing if he’d died. I might never know. Seven lycanthropes, three vampires—that was almost everyone.
“Are they all wolves?” I’d never seen Rick’s henchman Dack as a human. I couldn’t know if one of these was him. “Was there any other kind of lycanthrope?”
“The tests aren’t that good. I can tell you lycanthrope or not. Not which flavor. Yet.”
“What happened?” I said softly, though I could already guess. I already knew.
“These seven died from wounds inflicted by other lycanthropes. They practically had their hearts ripped out.” She grouped five of the photos together, the ones with the worst of the blood and mess. A lycanthrope could survive a lot of damage, but not that. “These three, the bites are smaller, human-sized, and the victims died of blood loss. Vampire, I assume. I have to make some calls to verify that. What I don’t know: Were they part of the same pack, or were they from two different packs having a conflict? Do vampires ever get involved in this sort of thing? What can you tell me about this?”
This wasn’t just about the vampire and werewolf territories anymore; a third one had gotten involved: the law enforcement jurisdiction. How would she treat this sort of thing going on in her territory? I didn’t want her involved. She and her people couldn’t handle it. Unless she could, of course. She was open-minded about this. She had educated herself. She had silver bullets.
Maybe I didn’t want to see what would happen if she took on this mess and was able to handle it.
