The Shaman Part 9

Charlie made a point of staring out of the window. "He was probably just worried I'd puke on his carpet," she muttered, trying to infuse some humor into her voice.

She heard a rustle of clothing as Rusty shifted in his seat and realized he was looking at her speculatively. "He barely took his eyes off you from the moment he opened the door-I had to ask him half the questions twice just to get his attention. Now that you mention it, though, he looked almost as sick as you did for a little bit there."

"Maybe he had lunch the same place I did?"

Rusty chuckled. "If that's the case, I think we need to find us a different restaurant while we're here."

Charlie didn't sleep particularly well that night, but by morning she'd managed to rediscover her backbone. She arrived at the restaurant on Greywolf's heels. He'd only just sprawled in the seat across from Rusty when he looked up and their gazes locked. He got up, gestured toward his seat. Ignoring him, she slipped onto the bench beside Rusty.

He settled once more, anger flashing briefly in his eyes before he turned his attention to the cup of coffee steaming in a mug in front of him.

Charlie risked a glance at him when she noticed his attention was focused on his coffee. He didn't look like he'd gotten much more sleep than she had, if as much. She refused to speculate on why he looked as if he'd been up half the night. She was fairly certain she could live with not knowing a h.e.l.l of a lot better than she could handle knowing.

To her annoyance, she discovered Rusty was a morning person. Never having had the good fortune to work quite this closely with him before, she'd been previously spared that knowledge. Resisting the urge to plug her fingers in her ears, she focused on her coffee while he ordered a man-sized breakfast. Either Greywolf wasn't feeling particularly hungry, or, like her, he couldn't handle solids so early in the morning. Like her, he contented himself with coffee.

By the time Rusty finished his meal, she'd had enough coffee to kick her brain into gear. As they left the restaurant, she suggested that, instead of accompanying him and Greywolf, she could stop by the police station and see if they'd gotten the files on the other two victims yet.

Rusty vetoed the idea, deciding to walk over to collect the files himself before they left.

Irritated, Charlie stalked over to the car and got in. Before she could close the door, Greywolf caught it. Pushing it open, he squatted beside her, leaning back against the open car door.

She gave him a wary glance, saw that he was looking particularly displeased, and focused her gaze on the wind shield, urging Rusty to get his a.s.s in high gear before she found herself in another uncomfortable situation.

"Yosemite Sam over there seems to have a lot of trouble keeping his hands to himself. Something going on between you two?"

The idea revolted her more than the surprisingly astute characterization amused her. "No!" she said sharply. "Not that it's any of your business either way."

His lips tightened. "You were pretty clear on that the last time I saw you."

Charlie felt a headache coming on. "Then why are we having this conversation?"

He was silent for several moments. "Nothing happened, Charlie."

She glanced at him, but she didn't even try to pretend she had no idea what he was talking about.

"Right," she said dryly. "I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she was in your

bedroom and you arrived at the front door half dressed." "Not that you care, either way." She blushed, irritated to realize how easily he'd baited her into admitting she was suffering from an unhealthy dose of jealousy. She sent him a reproachful glance. He sighed impatiently. "You're enough to drive a man crazy, Charlie. Does it matter to you, or not?" She'd die before she would admit it did.

He caught her jaw, forcing her to look at him, studying her for several moments. "We dated a couple of times. I hadn't seen her in over a year. She's been living back East. We just ran into each other-that's all there was to it." She glared at him. "You're a p.i.s.s poor liar, Greywolf. All? She was in your d.a.m.ned bed! What did she do, trip up the stairs?"

He ground his teeth. "You're no so hot at it yourself. You gave me the brush, remember? That means I don't owe you an explanation. I can d.a.m.n well f.u.c.k whoever I please." "And vice versa," she said sweetly. For several moments, he looked alarmingly violent. "Baby, this is a dangerous game you're playing," he growled threateningly. Her heart beat uncomfortably fast as she stared at him. "I don't want to play any games at all-that was the whole point," she managed finally. As she glanced away, she saw, with relief, that Rusty was striding rapidly toward the car.

Following the direction of her gaze, Greywolf rose to his feet. She'd already released a sigh of relief,

when he leaned toward her. "We're not through, baby. Not by a long shot."

Chapter Thirteen.

It was immediately apparent that Greywolf's presence was going to be a boon to the investigation. The residents of the community continued to look upon the two Feds with suspicion, but several of the Owl's neighbors admitted to having heard a commotion in the alley the night of the girl's murder. No one saw anything. They'd thought the noise was dogs, trying to get into the garbage cans, or possibly wild animals. By the time they'd gotten outside to investigate, however, there had been nothing in sight. n.o.body had noticed the trail of blood.

An old man who lived near the hillside where the girl's body was discovered said that he'd heard what he had believed at the time was the scream of a puma. That was Greywolf's translation at any rate.

The downside to having Greywolf along was that n.o.body bothered to speak English, instead carrying on the entire conversation in their tongue. Something told Charlie, however, that the old man had said much more than that. She might not understand the language, but she did understand body language, and she knew the old man had told Greywolf something that had made him uneasy.

The Owl's supplied them with a list of the girl's friends and the name of the boy they believed she had been seeing. They didn't look the least bit guilty about lying before, when they'd said they couldn't think of anyone. In fact, they gave a good imitation of never having set eyes on Charlie or Rusty before.

Rusty was so pleased with their progress, he suggested that Charlie sit in the back and familiarize herself with the files. Under other circ.u.mstances, Charlie would've been ready to bite nails over being relegated to the back seat while the men 'handled' things. As it was, she was glad for the excuse, having felt Greywolf's burning gaze on the back of her head for long enough that her nerves were frazzled.

Her relief was short lived. No sooner had Greywolf settled in the front seat than he turned, placed his back against the door and looked her dead in the face.

Disconcerted, Charlie picked up the files and concentrated on studying them. She discovered fairly quickly however that reading in the back seat of a moving vehicle was a good recipe for motion sickness. Within a very short length of time, her head was swimming sickeningly. Laying the reports aside, she closed her eyes, leaned her head back and concentrated on keeping her lunch. The queasiness subsided after a little while, but it left a blinding headache in its wake.

As soon as they returned to the hotel that afternoon, Charlie bailed out of the car and headed for her room. After popping a dose of painkiller, she took a long, hot shower and then fell into bed without bothering to crawl under the covers.

It was dark when she woke. Disoriented, Charlie pushed her hair out of her face and looked around the dim room, wondering whether it was dusk or dawn.

Greywolf was sitting in the easy chair next to the door, studying her.

A jolt went through her. Her gaze jumped from him to the door, but she could see it was still locked and bolted.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Greywolf! How the h.e.l.l did you get into my room?"

Instead of answering her, his gaze wandered over her almost like a caress. When he finally met her gaze once more, his eyes were glittering with anger and something else that set her heart to fluttering wildly in her chest. "Feeling better?"

Charlie raked her fingers through her disheveled hair, trying to think what he might be talking about. Memory crashed in on her abruptly, and she looked down at her towel-which was lying on the bed. Belatedly, she s.n.a.t.c.hed at it, but discovered she was sitting on top of it. She only managed to drag a corner across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Jumping to her feet, she fought the towel and finally managed to get it around her. "I don't know how you got in, but you can go out the same way," she snapped. "I don't feel like talking and I d.a.m.n sure don't want everybody in town talking about me."

"Is that why you pretended you'd never set eyes on me before?" he asked tightly.

Charlie stared at him for a long moment and finally looked away guiltily. "What did you expect me to do?" she asked sullenly.

He got up and advanced on her. "I didn't expect you to show up at my door with another man-the same one I saw fondling you in the street earlier-acting like you didn't know who I was-and then giving me accusing looks as if you'd caught me cheating on you."

"He was not fondling me!"

Greywolf leaned over, his face only inches from hers. "It was a d.a.m.ned fine imitation then."

"You should talk! That ... female was twined around you like she was planning on growing there! And I didn't let him, anyway. I have to work with him-If I complain of s.e.xual hara.s.sment, they'll slap him on the wrist and give him a promotion and write me up as a paranoid feminist and give me a closet to work in. I've worked d.a.m.n hard to build a career. I'm not about to throw it away because some man can't keep his d.i.c.k in his pants, or his hands in his pockets!"

His eyes narrowed. "What the h.e.l.l do you mean by that?"

Charlie gaped at him for several moments before it occurred to her what he was asking. "That is too insulting even to deserve an answer!"

"Answer it anyway," he growled.

"I'm not sleeping with him!" she snapped.

He looked slightly mollified. "Not that its any of your business." His eyes narrowed, but after a moment he seemed to relax, looking almost amused. "We're not making a lot of progress here, are we Charlie?" She looked at him a little distrustfully and finally sighed, smiling faintly. "No, I guess not." His gaze flickered over her face, his own amus.e.m.e.nt vanishing. For a moment, Charlie thought that he would close the small distance between them and take her in his arms. Instead, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. "You don't trust me, do you, Charlie? That's what all this is really about, isn't it?" Instead of answering, she shrugged. "It's a bad time for me-I spend most of my time working." It was true, not all the truth, but certainly a big part of it. "I need to get dressed," she added, turning and heading for the bathroom.

"Charlie." She stopped and turned to look at him. "You have to take what life offers when it offers it to you-if you want it. Life isn't order. It's chaos." She frowned. "I'm not sure what you mean." "Yes, you are." When she left the bathroom a few minutes later, he was gone. Disconcerted, she looked at the door and saw it was still locked and bolted. The only windows were at the front of the room, next to the door, and they were locked too.

Chapter Fourteen.

All three victims had been between fifteen and sixteen years of age, five foot to five foot two inches, one hundred to one hundred ten pounds. The third victim had been attacked right outside her own home. The first one had been on her way home from a party with friends and had taken a short cut through a park. The second had left home on a date. Her boyfriend had been found in the car where they'd gone to park and fool around. She was found a half a mile away-which meant that there had been four victims already, not the three they'd believed.

There were only a few, badly focused pictures of the earlier victims, and it wasn't likely any amount of tweaking on the photos was going to help much.

The parents of the first two girls were still fighting the order to exhume the bodies. The Owls, still in shock, had been too bewildered by their daughter's death to defend themselves. They'd signed the exhumation papers and then complained that they hadn't understood what they were signing.

In all likelihood, they'd been too upset to understand. Charlie felt badly about it. She realized that that was probably the main reason n.o.body would talk to them, but she knew it was necessary. The body had already been embalmed. They might not get any evidence from it at all, but there was always a chance that they might ... and they needed all the help they could get.

They had no leads. After days of questioning everyone even remotely connected and every potential witness, they hadn't managed to come up with a single thing that tied the victims together. The girls were from three different communities. They didn't go to the same school. They didn't have the same friends. The youngest had been a girl scout. The last victim a cheerleader, but the remaining victim hadn't been involved in any extracurricular activities.

They knew they had a serial rapist/murderer on their hands. They knew he would strike again. He had been preying on girls on the reservation, but it was a very big reservation-he could strike anywhere, at any time-unless they could figure out a where and when, there were going to be more victims.

There had been almost six months between the first and the second attacks, only two between the second and third. He was escalating and, they knew, could attack again any time. They desperately wanted to prevent a fourth victim from falling prey, but they couldn't do that unless they could get ahead him.

The report from the pathologist was almost as confusing as it was enlightening. He was no longer certain that the marks he'd thought were bite marks actually was a bite. If it was, it didn't match a human or a puma-too large for one, two small for the other-wrong teeth. He was positive the girl had been raped. The s.e.m.e.n samples had been compared with the boyfriend and they now knew that he had definitely had s.e.x with the girl-but they couldn't determine whether it had been consensual or not- He was as certain as he could be, given what he had to go on, that the puma attack, and the rape, had taken place at the same time. He couldn't absolutely rule out the scenario that the girl had been mauled by the puma after being left there, but he didn't believe it could've happened that way. Combined with the other two attacks, the possibility was even more remote-one incident of a puma happening up, or even drawn to, a fresh victim was farfetched. Three separate but virtually identical such attacks became astronomical odds.

Specialists in animal behavior that had been contacted had insisted that the behavior was not typical of a wild puma-they weren't scavengers by nature and the distance separating the scenes was more than a single puma usually hunted.

There was only one conclusion to draw from it. The puma wasn't a coincidence. It was the weapon.

For a week and a half they worked their way through the reservation and through the communities and farms nearest it, asking everyone they met if they knew of anyone who owned a pet puma, if anyone had been seen with one, or if there were anyone they knew of who bred, and or trained, pumas.

Coming up empty handed, they decided to see if they could scare anything useful out of the Owl girl's boyfriend and brought him in for questioning. It was then that they discovered the one thing the three girls had in common, something that had been staring them in the face all along-Earlier on the same night that she was killed, Chast.i.ty Owl had been at the same lover's lane where the boy and girl, who'd become victims two and three, were killed. When they questioned the boy the first girl had been seeing, they found that she, too, had been at the lane on the night that she was killed.

Finally, they'd caught a break. Charlie was elated. "All we have to do now is to get the location and keep an eye on the place."

Greywolf and the officers in the meeting room with them exchanged glances. Chief Brown cleared his throat. "As far as I know, there's only one-we patrol it pretty regularly, rousting the kids out, but---they always come back. During the week, we do one drive through. On the weekends, when the kids are out of school, we do two."

Charlie glanced around at the officers. A couple of them were smirking, no doubt remembering their own exploits. She looked at Rusty questioningly. "Fine," he said. "Keep to the routine. We want to catch him, not scare him off. We'll go out and inspect the area, find the best place for a stake-out and see if we can catch the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h."

The officers exchanged a look.

"What?"

"You're talking about you and Agent Boyer?"

"Yes."

"In the government vehicle?"

"He's saying we'll stick out like a sore thumb," Charlie muttered. "Two white people in a government vehicle."

"He attacks at night," Rusty pointed out.

"Most of the kids around here drive old, beat up trucks," Greywolf said. "We need a truck and two people that will fit in a little better."

Charlie didn't like the sound of that, and neither, apparently did Rusty. "It's our show."

The safety of the young girls was their first concern. Patrolling wasn't keeping the kids out of harm's way. Two of the girls had been killed on their way home from the lane, not in it, but they believed the lane was where the killer was choosing his victims, which meant any girl who went could end up being the next victim.

They were also fairly certain the killer was American Indian, however, which meant a reservation wide announcement might warn him off.

It seemed unlikely the killer would strike during the week-few kids ventured out to the lane during the week, and all of the victims thus far had been there over the weekend. They decided the best they could do would be to go directly to the schools and speak to the teens. Officers frequently visited the schools, and were more trusted, in any case, than federal agents, so Brown selected men to go out and speak to the teens. Charlie also made up several posters and took them to the school to post on the school bulletin board. At Chast.i.ty's school, she pinned the poster up directly beside a public service poster encouraging safe s.e.x and planned parenthood. The irony of it wasn't lost on her, but she hoped Chast.i.ty's death would be enough to make them take it seriously.

They took it seriously-but not quite in the way Charlie had envisioned.

Stake-outs were often the most dangerous part of law enforcement. They required long hours of watching, and waiting, sometimes for days, weeks, or months. No matter how much training, or even experience, one acc.u.mulated, it was almost impossible to maintain the necessary level of alertness for such extended periods of time. Rotating, when possible, helped a great deal, but even so there were long stretches of time doing nothing but waiting and watching that allowed boredom and inattention to infiltrate one's defenses.

The first weekend they spent on stake-out, Rusty, just by virtue of being his wonderful self, managed to keep her on high alert. About half way through their first shift, when he decided they weren't likely to see their perp, he decided they might as well use the time to become a little better acquainted. They were at lover's lane, after all. They'd been observing teens at play for hours with their night vision field gla.s.ses.

She'd managed to hold him off and keep her temper the first night. The second night she'd had to resort to being nasty.

She was not looking forward to another weekend cooped up in a car for hours with randy Rusty!

The moment he parked the car at the spot they'd chosen, Charlie opened the door, climbed out, and then got in the back seat. Rusty swiveled around in his seat and looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. She favored him with an artificial smile. "Just so we have this straight between us, Agent Stephens, I don't expect a repeat of last weekend. Let's just keep this professional, shall we?"

Even in the dimness of the car, she could see his complexion fluctuate. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about touchy feelly, d.a.m.n it! I'm here to do a job, not save you from boredom!"

He sulked for the next hour. Charlie was irritated, but as long as he didn't get it into his head that her climbing into the back seat was an invitation to join her there, she was satisfied. She had no desire to play musical chairs with him.

At two o'clock, when they'd just been discussing calling it a night, a scream rent the night air that made the hair stand up all over her body. Her arms, back and neck goose fleshed at the same instant. Even the flesh on her scalp contracted. She broke three nails getting the car door open. "Did you get the direction?" she called in a harsh whisper to Rusty, who'd bailed out the driver's door and, like her, was standing by the car in shooter stance, scanning the woods.

A shot gun blast answered her. In an instant, she and Rusty were racing toward the sound, guided by a girl's hysterical wails. Rusty, taller, and muscle bound from his neck to his toes, took the lead. He was agent in charge, but Charlie didn't let that hold her back. The plain fact was that her d.a.m.ned short legs made it a h.e.l.l of a lot harder to get over the brush. She tripped, sprawled out and Rusty pulled ahead.