Second Skin Part 6

"It's a charm," I said. "A protection charm. Against what, I don't know."

"I see. And you stole it from the poor grief-stricken girl's apartment why, exactly?"

"Because it's not for protection against weres or blood witch curses or anything in the standard rule-book," I said. "I want to know why she has it."

Bryson rubbed between his eyes. "Wilder, I can't go in there and ask her that. What will McAllister say?"

Lieutenant McAllister's door was shut and the light in his office off. "Nothing," I said in relief. "He's not here."

"Regardless," said Bryson. "I'm gonna get her statement. You want to look over the other three vics' files, be my guest. Just don't eat my pastry snacks." He swept a packet of Little Debbie protectively into the center drawer of his desk.

"Happy to help," I said to his back, absently opening the drawer up again and unwrapping one of the cup-cakes. Cream-filled. Divine. I pretended to read the case files until Bryson had gone into Interrogation Three and locked the door, and then slipped between the desks, down the hall, and into the narrow, nicotine-stained observation s.p.a.ce behind the interrogation room's mirror.

I clicked on the speaker box in time to hear Bryson say, "Tell me exactly what happened that night. Start from the beginning. Don't leave anything out."

Laurel was starting to perk up from whatever she'd taken and she shivered when Bryson spoke. "I don't know how much help I'll be. I didn't really see see anything . . ." anything . . ."

"Just talk, miss," said Bryson. "I'm begging you . . . you're my first break in this case."

"Why, Bryson," I murmured, smiling as I licked chocolate frosting off my thumb. "Who knew there was a sensitive man underneath all that hair product?"

"Gerard had sent Bertrand to pay some guy off, out at some rest stop on Highway Twenty-one. I waited in the car for that. Bertrand never wanted me close to the business . . . he took a gun. He never took a gun because, well . . ."

"He was an intimidating son of a b.i.t.c.h," Bryson supplied. "I got that much. So he pays the guy off and . . ."

"Um. Afterward, he wasn't happy. He said Gerard was an idiot to close off the deal they had going with the guy, but that was pretty standard talk for him, and he calmed down when we got to the preserve. We were camping . . . Bertrand loved to camp . . . he did it once a month in the summer," said Laurel.

"You get followed?" Bryson asked, twirling a paper clip in his fingers. "This payee have a beef?"

Laurel shook her head. "The fire went out . . ." A pause to tear up, sniffle, take a tissue and compose herself. The most animated thing in the interrogation room was the blinking light on Bryson's digital recorder.

"The fire went out," Bryson prompted. "And?"

"Bertrand went out," Laurel said. She left it at that until Bryson made a spinning-wheel motion with his hand. "He went outside the firelight to get more wood. He left the gun, and the light."

Bertrand Lautrec wouldn't have needed to take a flashlight. Most weres can see well enough in the dark not to stub their toes on things. Most weres would also be able to scent an attacker a mile away.

Unless they were city weres in the unfamiliar wild, with unfamiliar scents, disoriented in the dark . . .

"The wind picked up," said Laurel quietly. "It kicked leaves and dirt against the tent and I got scared so I took the light and went to find Bertrand. There was mist . . . blowing in from the coast. Droplets on my face."

I stood up straighter, examined her through the gla.s.s. Her recitation was earnest and inflected, and she was leaning forward, staring into Bryson's face as she twisted the tissue between her fingers.

Laurel Hicks was not lying. Never mind that we hadn't had any rain all up and down the coast, from valley to mountains, for weeks. There wasn't enough moisture in the air to wet my tongue to spit. The Sierra Fuego range was patchy with wildfires.

If there was rain the night Bertrand Lautrec died, something other than the weather had caused it.

"I walked for a long time, following Bertrand's trail," Laurel whispered. "Broken branches kept scratching my arms and legs. Then I heard a gunshot."

Bryson tapped his fingers against the edge of the table, eyes bright. "Yeah. Great. What'd you see?"

"Nothing," said Laurel.

Bryson slumped. "What? You're jerking me. You're out there alone in the middle of the G.o.ds-d.a.m.n woods and you don't see anything anything?"

"I saw Bertrand," said Laurel, softly and sadly. "He was on his back, and his eyes were open. I saw the bullet hole. The air smelled bad."

"Gunpowder," I murmured.

Bryson's fingers stopped their rat-tat-tat cadence abruptly. "You didn't get anything about the shooter? Nothing?"

"I didn't see anyone," said Laurel. "Just Bertrand. Lying on the ground." She tucked her head to her chest. "I'd like to go home now, Detective Bryson."

"Okay, okay," he muttered. "Interview terminated at thirteen twenty," he said into the recorder and clicked it off. "Hang on here for a minute, sweetheart, and I'll see about getting you a ride."

I caught him when he came out of the interview and he jumped a mile. "Christ on a bike, Wilder! Were you spying on me?"

"I don't think it really counts as 'spying' when we're members of the same department. What do you make of her statement?"

"She's a d.a.m.n creepy gal, is what I make of it," said Bryson. "And useless. She let the guy that plugged her boyfriend get away clean."

"She's a Hexed nurse," I said, "not John Rambo. Anyway, I think we may be dealing with something bad here, David."

"Don't say that," he moaned, pacing to the coffeemaker and pouring himself a tall travel mug, black, and dumping in three packets of sugar. "Don't start me on the Freak Squad. I'll never get promoted out of this sinkhole."

"Bertrand Lautrec-and all the victims-were shot at close range with a handgun," I said. "No silencer. And we were wrong about Lautrec's body being dumped. Something stalked him and hunted him down and got away before anyone could see them."

Bryson swigged his coffee down in four gulps. "I don't believe in ghosts, Wilder. Werewolves, fine. Blood witches and spooky-a.s.s daemons, whatever. But I ain't buying that some invisible bogeyman got Lautrec."

"I don't think this was a ghost," I said. "I think Gerard Duvivier hired someone to hit Lautrec, so Gerard wouldn't lose his status with the Loup. That payoff was the setup. Murders on Loup territory have to be justified to the pack elders in Montreal, but outside the city . . ."

I was doing Bryson a big favor. By making it an internal war in the were packs, I was telling him it was okay to wrap it up neatly and not dig too deep. I was letting the victims lie quietly in their graves rather than trying to voice their last words for everyone to hear.

You are not a detective anymore, Wilder. Let them be.

"Okay, but I still got these other three b.a.s.t.a.r.ds cold and dead with nothing to show for it," Bryson said, swiping his hand over the case files on his desk.

"Give me a few hours and I'll do what I can," I said. A uniform led Laurel Hicks past Bryson's desk. She gave me a long, mournful look before she turned her head deliberately away.

"Go nuts," said Bryson. "Can't f.u.c.k this thing up more than it already is."

"Get me some coffee and a bagel and I'm yours unless I get paged away to go fight crime," I said. Sitting in the Twenty-fourth in close proximity to Bryson was preferable to going home, and I tried not to think about how dysfunctional that was.

Bryson shuffled off to do my bidding, which, I won't lie, gave me a thrill, and I started puzzling out which dead were belonged to which pack and what connection they might have to Gerard Duvivier.

I'd missed this work. I'd missed sitting and letting the gears of my mind churn on to wherever they might go, until I finally honed the point of a theory out of the rocky crags of my case.

"Getting sentimental, are we?" I muttered as I paged through the scene reports from the state police. All four of the victims were found in the same fifty-mile stretch of the preserve, off access roads or illegal dump sites. Bertrand Lautrec had been the first to die, followed by pretty blond Priscilla Macleod and then the two other men, s.p.a.ced randomly apart over the last month and a half.

Bryson set a coffee mug at my elbow, the liquid inside mocha-colored, and a sesame bagel loaded with spread. I looked up at him, slightly shocked. "You remember how I take my coffee?"

"You sat your cute a.s.s across the aisle from me for two years, Wilder. I'm not totally un.o.bservant over here."

"Touching. The dead girl, Priscilla, is from the Warwolves." I tapped the green Celtic knot inked on her neck. "I recognize the tat. Scottish. I think some of their pack members run numbers over in Mainline at the underground betting places. The other two will be more difficult." Especially since asking Dmitri for his help was right out.

"And their connection to this Lautrec guy is . . . ?"

"That's your job, David," I said. I picked up the root charm and slipped it into a spare evidence bag so I wouldn't have to hold it with my bare hands, and then secreted it in my pocket. "I'll dig into the other two vics' backgrounds a bit, try to get a shot at IDing their packs."

"I'll check out the Macleod girl's priors," said Bryson. "Text me or something when that long doggy nose of yours digs something up, okay, Wilder?"

I opened my mouth to shout at him, but a ruckus from the lobby beat me to it.

"Hey!" Sh.e.l.ley was yelling. "Hey! Hey! Settle down, people!"

"We demand to be seen!" a ba.s.so voice with an accent snarled at her. "Don't give me the runaround, missy."

Oh, G.o.ds. Was that a Scottish Scottish accent? accent?

The scent of weres-nervous, angry weres-rolled slowly through the squad room and I tugged on Bryson's sleeve. "I think we'd better get out there, David."

"What the Hex is goin' on now?" he said, starting for the lobby. I followed him through the security gate and metal detector and smacked into his back when he stopped short. "Oh. Hex me."

Six or seven weres cl.u.s.tered together, some in suits and business casual, the three Asian males in bright satin jackets and tight black jeans, their hair spiked within an inch of being a deadly weapon.

The owner of the impressive, Connery-esque brogue was pounding his fist down on Sh.e.l.ley's high desk, in the full light of a television camera and reporter from NC-1, NC-1, the trashiest and loudest of the city's cable news shows. They'd done a piece on me after the Duncan case t.i.tled "Were Bites Man." the trashiest and loudest of the city's cable news shows. They'd done a piece on me after the Duncan case t.i.tled "Were Bites Man."

"I want satisfaction!" the Warwolf bellowed. "I want Detective David Bryson to come out here and account for what's being done about my niece's murder!"

Priscilla's uncle was graying, and he sported an impressive network of scars on his hands and neck, one running from the corner of his mouth back to his ear. He looked like he chewed on beer cans for fun. Even the impa.s.sive Sh.e.l.ley was beginning to show panic in the corners of her eyes.

The Warwolf thumped the desk again. "Detective Bryson! Now!"

"He's right here," said Bryson, and I could have throttled him. Six pairs of eyes rotated to face David, and six sets of lips pulled back to show fangs.

"You know how you said you didn't want to be the rabbit?" I murmured. "Hate to say it, but your nightmare has come true."

"s.h.i.t," muttered Bryson. Louder, "People, I'm doing everything I can! Your cases are being handled with the utmost sensitivity!"

"Sensitivity?" spat one of the Asian men, stepping forward and crossing his arms. He moved fast, like liquid from one spot to another, and I shot a glance at the other two. They stayed flanked, eyes on their leader. "Is six weeks with no leads and no suspects your idea of sensitivity, Detective?"

"Y'all are gonna have to leave before I get you thrown out!" Sh.e.l.ley added, unhelpfully. "You can't come in here and cause a scene."

"We're taxpayers the same as you!" the Warwolf bellowed. "Don't you dare try to bar us from a public office, woman!"

"Sir, you're nothing like me," Sh.e.l.ley snipped. "Now go back to scratching behind your ears before I get you more involved with the police than you have any desire to be." She reached for her phone and the Warwolf snarled, moving for her.

"Don't," I said to him, my body blocking Sh.e.l.ley. Not that she didn't deserve whatever the old man had being going to give her. "Please. Can't we settle this?"

The Warwolf looked me over, scented me, met my eyes. The rest of the weres stared at him to see what he would do.

Great. If he decided I smelled funny I'd be hamburger before Bryson or Sh.e.l.ley could flick an eyelash.

"Who are you?" he said finally. "Insoli. But who are you?"

"Luna Wilder," I said. "I used to be a detective here."

"You're trespa.s.sing!" Sh.e.l.ley shrilled, brave now that I was in the line of fire.

"Sh.e.l.ley." I turned on her. "I know it's hard with that weave weighing your head down, but shut the f.u.c.k up shut the f.u.c.k up."

"Yeah, Sh.e.l.ley," said Bryson. "Jesus."

Backup from Bryson. Wonders never cease in Nocturne City. "I apologize on behalf of us all," I told the Warwolf. "You can talk to me."

"Luna Wilder?" said the NC-1 NC-1 reporter. I recognized her as Janet Bledsoe, a perky bottle brunette who normally showed up doing cheesy shaky-cam exposes of crooked day care centers and elder homes. She must have thought she'd hit the jackpot with this story. reporter. I recognized her as Janet Bledsoe, a perky bottle brunette who normally showed up doing cheesy shaky-cam exposes of crooked day care centers and elder homes. She must have thought she'd hit the jackpot with this story.

"That's right," I said.

"Luna Wilder who was not only not only involved in the death of Alistair Duncan, the district attorney, but also present when Seamus O'Halloran was shot?" involved in the death of Alistair Duncan, the district attorney, but also present when Seamus O'Halloran was shot?"

Before I could respond the camera's eye and Janet's mike were in my face. "What's your involvement in this case, Miss Wilder?"

I smiled right into the camera. "That's Officer Officer Wilder. Just helping out a fellow member of the force." Wilder. Just helping out a fellow member of the force."

"Miss Wilder, with your record of unprovoked violence on civilians and repeated suspensions, do you really think you're the best liaison for this highly sensitive case? Some might suggest that you're in over your head!"

I leaned past the lens and the light and grabbed Janet Bledsoe by one of her twenty-four-carat diamond stud earrings, pulling enough to make her squeal. "If you don't get that camera out of my face, I am going to break it in half and use the pieces to shoot home movies straight down your throat." I grinned at her, my fangs stretching out delicately to just brush her ear. Janet Bledsoe whimpered. "Are we clear?"

"Let . . . go . . . ," she squeaked, trembling all over. Elder-abusers and irresponsible nannies must not have prepared her for being threatened by a cranky were.

I released her and stepped back. "David, if you please?" I pointed at the cameraman.

"No unauthorized footage inside a police precinct," said Bryson. "Security risk. Give me the tape."

The cameraman attempted to argue, but Bryson closed on him and, I can only presume, stunned him with a whiff of cologne.

"Don't think this is the end," Janet Bledsoe yelled as a uniform ejected her from the precinct. "You can't silence the truth! Fascists!"

"I've never been called a fascist before," I muttered as the doors swung shut on her screeching.

"There's a first time for everything, miss," said the Warwolf. "You going to give me a straight answer?"

"That depends." I pointed at the rest of the weres. "Who exactly are you people?"