My gaze stopped on her torso, hunkered down in a far corner under a table. Like yesterday’s victim, a knife had been plunged deep into this woman’s right eye, pinning her head to the wall behind.
And she’d died with a scream on her lips and terror locked in her remaining eye.
My stomach rebelled. I turned and ran for the front door, barely getting outside before I lost the contents of my breakfast into the shrubbery. I stayed there, bent over the mint bush, sucking in the scent as I tried to calm the trembling in both body and spirit.
I couldn’t go back in there. I just couldn’t.
I didn’t care if her spirit was there. It wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know—and I certainly didn’t want to feel any more of her pain than what I’d already seen.
“Here, drink this.”
Cole’s soft voice came from behind me. I looked around, then accepted the glass of water he was offering. After rinsing my mouth several times, I sipped the remaining water, not wanting to stir my fragile stomach any more than necessary but needing to get some moisture back into my body. It felt like that house had drained me in more ways than one.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. “That was very unprofessional of me.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But it’s nice to know some of our killers still have a soft side.”
“Oh, there’s lots of soft things about me,” I said, trying to force some lightness into my voice and not succeeding very well. “And if you play your cards right, I might just let you uncover them one day.”
“A day I can wait for,” he said, amusement mingling with concern in his bright eyes. “Did you get any sense of a soul in there?”
I shook my head. There was nothing in there but death that was bloody and raw. That, and the sense of evil that hovered gloating above it. Whether it was a soul or merely a lingering emotion I was somehow sensing, I had no idea. But I had no intention of opening myself up to it to find out.
I shuddered, and took another hasty sip of water. “She had no hair, just like the first victim.”
“Yeah. Seems the hair fetish is a part of this, whatever this is.”
“Did you find any hair at yesterday’s scene?”
“No. Why?”
“Because the fiancé had some hair in his hand when I found him, but not enough, and I didn’t see it dumped anywhere along the way. So what happened to it?”
“Anyone’s guess right now.”
Yeah, I guess it was. “Has anyone tried scenting out the husband?”
“No. I’m the only one here with a nose strong enough to do it, and I can’t leave the scene until the investigation is done.”
Which may well be too late to uncover anything useful. “You want to get me something with the husband’s scent on it?”
He nodded, and moved back inside the house. My gaze swept the surrounding houses, seeing neat, cared-for lawns and dwellings. Why had death come calling in this happy little neighborhood? What had this couple done to bring such destruction down upon themselves?
Cole came back out carrying a crumpled white business shirt. I took it from him and sniffed deeply, drawing in the musky scent of human male. Then I stripped off my jacket and sweater, and handed them to him, along with my purse.
“Keep these safe for me, will you?”
He nodded, then stepped back as I began to shift shape. In wolf form, Cole’s scent leapt into focus—a delicious aroma that had my tail wagging and my hormones jumping. I studiously put my nose to the ground and tried to ignore it. After scuffing around for several minutes, I caught the husband’s scent and followed it out onto the pavement.
I followed the trail down Kernan Street and onto Robinson, trotting past a mix of houses and apartments, all filled with life if not laughter. It made me feel warmer, somehow.
But dread began to fill me again as I crossed another road and entered another park. I suddenly had no doubt what I would find at the end of this trail, and find him I did. In a stand of trees near the lake.
Like Liam Barry yesterday, this man lay on his back. He’d died with a look of shock and agony on his face and the smell of terror lingering on his skin. The part not covered by blood and gore, that was.
I shifted to human shape, then called it in. Ten minutes before a cleanup team arrived. I swore softly, then set the phone to record, placed it in the branch of a nearby tree, and began my report.
And noticed there were only a few strands of dark hair clutched in his bloody fingers.
Where the hell was all the hair going?
I didn’t know, but I had a feeling it was some sort of clue.
The cleanup team arrived precisely on time. I left them to it and walked back to the house. I didn’t see any hair floating about on the breeze or caught in trees. Maybe it had already been swept down the street drains. Or maybe the answer was far more sinister.
Perhaps what I needed to do was check out past murders, and see if this pattern had been set elsewhere.
Cole was nowhere to be seen when I arrived back at the house, but his scent was drifting out from inside. I donned my sweater, then grabbed my jacket and purse and headed back to my car. There was nothing more I could do here at the moment—or rather, nothing more that I
wanted
to do.
It was time to go talk to Adrienne’s lover.
J
odie Carr lay wrapped in white hospital sheets, looking more than a little sorry for herself. Her blue eyes—a blue so pale they were almost gray—fixed on me briefly as I walked in, then her gaze skipped away to the window, staring as if there was something more interesting out there than just the brick wall of another building. She couldn’t even see sky through that window. For a werewolf, that would have been hard to take, but I guess humans had higher tolerances.
“Jodie Carr?” I asked, stopping beside her bed and digging out my badge.
“Yeah. What’s it to you?”
I held my badge in front of her. “I’m here about Adrienne.”
She finally looked at me again. “Why? What is she to you?”
The slight edge in her voice had my eyebrows rising, if only because it oddly seemed to hint at jealousy. “Her alpha has asked me to investigate her disappearance.”
She snorted. “That bastard didn’t give a damn about her, not as long as she obeyed his edicts and behaved like a girl should.”
“So he had a suspicion you and Adrienne were lovers?”
She blinked, and for an instant, fear slithered across her face. Not that I blamed her. I’d spent many years afraid of Blake and his get.
“Why the fuck would you think something like that?”
“Because it’s true? Few people would try to kill themselves just because they believed a friend was dead.”
She looked away and didn’t say anything.
“Look, her father thinks she’s in serious trouble, so any information you can provide might just help bring her back.”
“She won’t ever come back.”
“And why would you think that?”
“Because she’s dead.”
I blinked. “Her father doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Her father is a goddamn moron. He doesn’t know Adrienne. He never has.”
“He’s a clairvoyant. That would give him—”
“Nothing,” she spat. “Nothing compared to what I have.”
“And that is?”
“Love.” She closed her eyes. “She’s dead. I can feel it.”
The pain in her voice had me wanting to reach out and comfort her, but I had a strong feeling any such move would be rejected. “What story was Adrienne working on before she disappeared?”
“I’m not really sure. It was something to do with the club—something she saw there.” Jodie shrugged. “She never really talked about her work much at home. That was our rule.”
“What club are we talking about?” Even though I’d already guessed the answer, I asked the question all the same. Better to get a sure answer than to be proved wrong later. “Mirror Image?”
She nodded.
“So they
do
allow humans and werewolves to intermingle sexually there?”
“Yeah. There’s a no-claws-or-violence rule, though. Anyone seen getting a little too heavy with a human gets thrown out.” She looked at me coldly. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those wolves who believes a no-mingling-with-the-humans rule is safer for everyone?”
“I’ve seen what a werewolf in a sexual frenzy can do to another wolf. A human wouldn’t last.”
She snorted. “You misjudge the strength of humans.”
“Or you’re overestimating it.”
If there was one inescapable fact in this world, it was that werewolves were stronger than humans. We might not be able to rip someone apart limb by limb, but we could rent and tear and brutalize. And if we were in the midst of moon fever, we might not even realize we were doing it until it was all too late.
Given that one inescapable fact, I was betting the humans who went into Mirror Image signed some type of waiver before they were allowed to enter. Letting humans and wolves intermingle in a sexually charged environment
had
to be asking for trouble. Especially during a moonrise.
Jodie didn’t argue the point. Just looked away again.
I studied her for a moment, wondering just what Adrienne had seen in a woman who wasn’t only human but who was all delicate angles and bones, then asked, “Is the club monitored?”
“Heavily. Cameras and nonhuman bouncers everywhere.”
With nonhuman bouncers, they didn’t really need that many cameras. Most of us could scent trouble long before it started. But maybe the owners were just being cautious. Or maybe they got off on watching others have sex.
“Did you and Adrienne go there often?”
She sniffed. “It was one of the few places we could go and not be worried about who was watching. There’s not many choices for those with human partners.”
And for damn good reasons. “And you didn’t notice anything odd or out of place during your time there?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you saw Adrienne?”
“At the airport. She was going to Monitor Island to chase a lead.”
“Don’t suppose she mentioned what sort of lead?”
“No, but she was excited. She said it could make her career.”
Or break it, as the case may be. “Did she contact you at all while she was away?”
“Every night. The last time she was a little deflated. I gathered she couldn’t find anything good for her story.” She paused, and took a shuddery breath. “I was supposed to pick her up from the airport, but I got held up in traffic. She wasn’t there when I finally arrived, and I thought she’d gotten tired of waiting and caught a cab.”
“But she never arrived home?”
She shook her head. “I reported her missing two days later.”
“Why two days?”
“Because she’s disappeared before, but only for a day or two. She usually comes home after she’s blown off some steam.”
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Adrienne’s past disappearances coincided with her more aggressive tendencies. A careful wolf might be able to curb her instincts most of the time, but violence was a part of our soul, and sometimes it just needed to come out.
“I don’t suppose you remember what were you doing when Adrienne first started investigating the club?”
“You know she did a newspaper piece on it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“She hated doing that, you know. She preferred crime stuff, investigative reporting. She was good at it, too.”
“Then why did she do the entertainment piece?”
“She had no choice. Her old boss retired, a new guy came in. He decided she was more suited to reporting entertainment than crime.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t quit if she felt that strongly about it.”
“Oh, she was intending to, but she wanted to be sure she had another job to walk into first.”
Then she was more sensible than me. There were times in the past I’d quit over jerk bosses, and had been left for weeks scrimping for a dollar to buy my next coffee. Of course, this was well before I joined the Directorate.
“So in the process of researching for the article, she discovered something that teased her instincts?”
“No. It actually happened after the article was published. The owners were pleased with what she wrote and gave her an invitation into the Executive Room—which is a private dance area for special guests. We were coming out of there when we ran into someone coming out of the private room opposite.” She paused, and blinked away the sudden spark of moisture in her eyes. “Adrienne had a talent that went beyond the pack’s clairvoyance. She could sense things about people. Catch glimpses of their thoughts or their actions through touch. When she bumped into that man, she uncovered something that had her excited.”
“You didn’t ask what she discovered?”
She snorted softly. “Of course I did. Wouldn’t you? She just said that she’d hit the story jackpot, and would tell me more when she was certain.”
“She obviously never did?”