Kiss Me Deadly

by R. Lee Moore

  “Wait a minute, I was told you were in the service before joining the Department. Is that true?” Harris asked before she could say anything.

  She nodded her head because she couldn't think of anything to say to the man that wouldn't sound like she was accusing him of being one of the pod people. The man was definitely out of his mind. Strike Teams recruited from all four branches of service. It was common enough that it shouldn't have been anything that stuck out. Especially with so much else in her file that should have.

  “Marines. 0311,” she replied with some hesitance. It felt like a trap for some reason.

  “Outstanding,” Harris crowed. “Always good to have another person who put their life on the line for their country around. So you understand where I'm coming from then don't you?”

  “Not likely,” she replied.

  She vigorously shook her head to clear her head to try to make at least a little sense out of what was going on. This was definitely not what she expected from the encounter. From how Ramirez had built everything up, she'd expected the whole department to be gunning for her from the minute she walked in. Seeing Captain Harris so excited and enthusiastic had thrown her.

  Before she could say anything to try to get the conversation back on track, the office door pushed open without warning and a tall severe looking woman in what Tamina could only describe as the standard Department issue black and gray suit strutted into the office like she owned the place.

  The mutual recognition between the two of them was immediate, and whatever the woman had come in to say to Harris died on her lips the moment her eyes fell on Martinez sitting comfortably in the chair. Her eyes darkened, and her expression twisted into barely contained rage tinged with just a bit of disbelief and absolute hatred.

  “Leo, what is this-this woman doing here?!“ she demanded.

  Apparently, Tamina thought, Agent Compton could really hold onto a grudge. The tones of her voice were positively dripping with acid and venom. If looks could kill, Tamina mused.

  “Hey Compton,” Tamina said with an overly cheery wave. Some people called it killing with kindness. She always felt it was a bit closer to being able to piss people off without them being able to pin anything on you. “How's it going?”

  Compton sputtered in anger. As if all the emotion inside her made her unable to put her thoughts into words. Her hands had balled up into little fists, and she was starting to quiver and shake. The woman seriously needed some professional help, Tamina decided.

  “Leo!“ Compton demanded a second time.

  Captain Harris looked puzzled at the woman's reaction, but it didn't seem to dampen his friendly enthusiasm in the slightest. His smile widen even further than it had been, and he vigorously waved in Tamina's direction almost as if he was presenting and showing her off. It was a little off-putting.

  “This is-” he started.

  “I know who she is,” Compton said cutting him off. Her teeth clenched that forced her breath to hiss out through whatever opening it could find. “What's she doing here?”

  “Oh, well Tamina here has just been reassigned to Investigations,” Harris said. “She'll be working with us from now on. Isn't that exciting?”

  Compton opened and closed her mouth a few times. There was a twitch in her eye, and it looked as if she was about to completely lose it right then and there. This was it, Tamina thought to herself. This was the type of reaction she was expecting, and the type of reaction that she was sure to get from just about everyone else in the Division if Agent Compton had anything to say about it.

  A normal person might have been worried about that sort of thing, but Tamina found herself rather enjoying Compton's pure impotent rage. Maybe a little too much. She couldn't keep the amused-at-your-expense smirk off her face no matter how hard she tried. The whole thing was just too much to resist. The best part was, Harris seemed completely oblivious to how malicious she was being. He'd probably chalk it up to Tamina just being friendly or something of that nature. The man was oblivious.

  “No,” Compton was finally able to say with a determined shake of her head. “No.”

  Without another word, she turned on her heel and stormed out of the office shrieking at the ceiling as she went. Harris followed after her right up to the edge of the door and tilted his head in confusion as he watched her retreat through the bullpen. After a moment he stepped back into the office looking like a lost puppy and closed the door behind him.

  “Well-well that was odd,” he said. “Do you two know each other or something? I feel like I'm missing something.”

  Tamina chuckled under her breath.

  “We've met,” she said. “I might have kinda sorta thrown her down a flight of stairs a time or two.”

  “Oh dear,” Harris said with a startled and very concerned look. “Why would you do that?”

  Tamina waved away the thought with a dismissive motion of her hand.

  “Year or so back in Riverside,” she said. “Bunch of rats on second floor of this building, she was in my line of fire and didn't seem to be able to move on her own, so I helped her along.”

  “Down a flight of stairs?” Harris asked. He seemed to be trying to wrap his head around the information and try to make some sense of it all. “Well that makes sense I suppose. Dangerous line of work and all that. Have to expect the unexpected I always say.”

  Tamina shrugged her shoulders. This was taking far too long in her opinion. As much as antagonizing Agent Compton was, she wasn't here to amuse herself. Not wholly anyway. She needed to get down to it and get back out into the field. Start his first day on the job off right with some action. Besides that, Captain Harris was really giving her some odd vibes. Quicker she got out of his office the quicker she'd get away from his obvious insanity.

  “As fun as all this is, I'd really like to get out in the field as soon as possible,” she said. “Jump right into it, you know. So, what you got for me? I'm easy, I'll take anything.”

  “Excellent!. That's the spirit. Jump right in with both feet. I knew it when I saw you that this was going to work out great,” Harris crowed. “So, what you'll need to do is go and find Sergeant Mendoza at the dispatch window. I already let her know ahead of time to be expecting you some time today. Probably should have been an hour ago but let's move on from that. She'll be your point-man so to speak. I've already told her to let you have it. Everything she's got. Metaphorically speaking of course. Got to make a good first impression after all, and what better way to do that than charging straight into the fire. Let everyone know you mean business.”

  “If you say so,” Tamina said entirely convinced that Harris was on something. “So just out the door and-“

  Harris nodded his head as Tamina stood from the chair and politely held the door open for her. He motioned out into the bullpen towards the far end where Tamina could barely see a little window built into the wall.

  “Maria will give you everything you need,” he said brightly. “Radio frequencies, call-signs, that sort of thing. She's a treasure. Don't know what we'd do without her.”

  Tamina paused on her way out the door just long enough to take another close and hard look at the Captain. For the life of her she couldn't quite figure him out, but something told her that he was on the level. It didn't seem like he was trying to play her, and that was a bit worrying. That meant he was serious, and she wasn't sure if that was going to be a problem yet or not. Something to figure out later, she decided.

  “Catch ya later then Captain,” she said walking away.

  “Oh I'm dying to hear all about your first day when you get back. A full report,” he said. “And please, it's just Leo.”

  Tamina found herself wondering just how this man ever made it as far as he had with a personality like that. It wasn't natural. The man was a freak. Had to be. Problems for another day she thought. First order of business was to get out in the field and get things going. Harris wanted her to jump into the fire with both feet, so that's what she was goin
g to do. First step to that was finding the cage and Sergeant Mendoza, and there was no time like the present.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sergeant Mendoza was not the kind of woman Tamina had expected. Of the three examples of Supernatural Affairs operatives she'd encountered so far, this woman was nothing like any of them. She wasn't a trigger puller like the guy at the gate, she wasn't all angry and holier than thou like Compton, and she definitely wasn't all chipper and excitable like Captain Harris.

  If the woman had a sense of humor, or even any emotions at all, they'd been surgically removed years ago. The short little woman had a cold, stone-faced expression that was devoid of any warmth or anything even slightly resembling humanity. Even the tone of her voice was flat and devoid of life or interest. Strictly professional, nothing personal. Tamina realized quickly she wasn't going to get anything that wasn't strictly related to her job out of the woman.

  All she could get out of the woman behind the glass at all was radio frequencies, call-signs, and the relevant credentials necessary to do her job. Other than that, Mendoza was a blank wall. Aggravating is what it was.

  “All the top tier cases have already been taken by more experienced field agents,” Mendoza droned on. “Monitor your radio, and we'll call you if something comes up.”

  Martinez groaned inwardly. Waiting around was definitely not her style. There had to be something.

  “Seriously?” she said pressing the woman on the other side of the window as much as she could. “You got nothing?”

  “As I said,” Mendoza replied. She wasn't even really paying attention to Tamina anymore. More focused on the computer in front of her to bother even looking up from the screen. “All the available actionable incidents are being pursued already. You'll have to wait.”

  Tamina scowled and paced back and forth in front of the window. This was what she was afraid of. She wasn't being stonewalled per se, but she wasn't being given any action either. In a city as large as Los Angeles, with the Vampire Preserve and the large supernatural population in general there had to be something going on. Sure, she thought, anything high profile with even the slightest bit of chance of being used as a career stepping stone got greedily snatched up, but that wasn't what she was interested in. Unlike everyone else, she actually wanted to get out and make s difference. To actually do the job she was given. That wasn't going to happen if she was forced to wear a hole in the floor in front of Mendoza's window.

  “What about that big pile in the box behind you?” she demanded as she pointed to the table behind Mendoza. “What about them? Got to be something in there worth looking at.”

  Mendoza gave her a hard look.

  “Those are being handled by local PD and the Sheriff's Department,” she said without looking up. “There's a supernatural element to them, so Supernatural Affairs gets notified. That's it. Nothing special, nothing we need to deal with.”

  “Seriously?” Tamina said in exasperation. “So we don't even pop in and give them a look see? Isn't that kinda what we're supposed to do?”

  “Not usually, no,” Mendoza replied. “If the situation warrants our involvement, they let us know. Otherwise, it's not our concern. Local problems, local authorities.”

  So that was how things worked around here, Tamina thought. Unless it was big and flashy it just got swept under the rug and left for the locals to handle whether they knew what they were doing or not. That explained quite a bit in her opinion. As good as they might have been, LAPD and LASD just weren't geared for handling the supernatural. They didn't have the firepower or training. Which meant, that most likely situations that should have been dealt with by Supernatural Affairs got brushed off to the side and left to fester until everything blew up. That assumed of course that the people who did have the training had any interest in fixing problems before they got out of hand.

  Tamina thought about the whole situation for a moment. Mendoza seemed like she was just going through the motions. She probably saw Tamina in the same light as she saw everyone else. Like she was just out for herself and to hell with actually doing the job. There had to be a way in, Tamina told herself.

  “So,” she started, trying to be as casual as possible. “Is that policy, or is it just that no one is ever interested because it won't get them promoted?”

  Mendoza suddenly focused all of her attention on directly onto Tamina forcing her to take an involuntary step back. Being completely honest with herself, Tamina found the way she was being looked at, scrutinized somewhat unnerving. Mendoza just stared at her with those dead lifeless eyes of hers without saying anything.

  “Hypothetically,” Tamina continued with a bit of caution. “If I wanted to go and check out one or two of those unimportant incidents, as a member of Supernatural Affairs, I can right? It is within my jurisdiction. Right?”

  “Why?” Mendoza demanded. Her eyes had locked onto Tamina and fixed her with a frightening intense gaze “Why would you do that?”

  Tamina suddenly felt like she was being interrogated. Like she was being silently judged by the smaller woman behind the glass.

  “Might be nothing,” she said. “But in my experience, if you deal with the small problems, they don't get to be big problems. Even if it turns out to be nothing, what's the harm in looking. I mean, it's gotta be better than sitting around and doing nothing until it gets so bad you have to roll out the Strike Teams to go deal with it. Right?”

  Mendoza still didn't reply, but that unnerving stare never wavered. Tamina could almost swear she saw the gears moving behind Mendoza's cold unflinching eyes. Had she gotten through to her? What else was it going to take? Eventually the woman behind the glass gave a sharp nod of her head, spun around in her chair and swiped a slip of paper off the top of the pile and slid it through the window in the glass.

  “Someone dropped a body in an alleyway in Culver City,” she said. “PD is on scene and reports the victim has severe bite marks. Address is on the report.”

  That was interesting, Tamina thought.

  “Vampire or shapeshifter?” she asked.

  Mendoza didn't answer. She'd already turned her focus back to the computer screen and had gone back to ignoring Tamina's continued presence.

  “Thanks,” Tamina said dryly. Apparently that was all the information she was going to get.

  She turned away from the window and read over the report on her way back towards the lobby and the elevators. There wasn't much to go on in the report. In fact, it was pretty bare bones for details. All it had was that there was a possible supernatural element to the investigation. That was it. Presumably there'd be more in the report if Supernatural Affairs involvement had been requested, but since it hadn't, this was all she had to go on. Better than nothing, she thought.

  She gave a wave to the Security Forces officer at the desk in the main lobby ignoring the hate-filled glare she got in return. He'd get over it. Once she got to her car and cranked the engine to life she was fully focused on the mission at hand. If she was going to do this job, she was going to do it right. Full on and no holding back. If that meant picking through all the crap that nobody else wanted to deal with, then so be it. She had not problems getting down in the dirt when she needed to.

  It took a little while to get down to Culver City even with how fast she normally drove. The whole city looked wildly different in the daytime. It was somewhat of a challenge to reorient herself to how the various landmarks looked in the sunlight.

  When she found the crime scene she slid her Firebird behind a pair of black and whites, switched off the ignition and got out to survey the area. Caution tape had sealed the area off, but there was still a crowd of onlookers hovering around the edges like there always seemed to be. People just couldn't stay away from carnage.

  The ambulance was just pulling up, and it looked like she'd arrived just in time right before they were about to haul the body down to the morgue. Good timing, she thought. If she'd gotten here any later, any evidence there might have been would hav
e been gone or contaminated. She'd have to rely on local PD for information after that, and she could guess how that would go over.

  After grabbing her badge from the glove compartment and hanging it around her neck from the chain she'd latched it to, Tamina confidently strode up to the caution tape and ducked beneath it. She wove through the small crowd, stopping only to grab a pair of latex gloves from a box on the hood of one of the patrol cars. She made her way over to a knot of people standing over a sheet covered body just inside the filthy garbage covered alleyway.

  Without a word to anyone she crouched down beside the body and tugged the sheet down, so she could get a good look. A normal person might have been freaked out by what they saw under the white sheet, but Tamina had seen far worse in her time with the Strike Teams. At least this one was relatively in one piece, she told herself.

  It was a woman, blonde with an ashen gray coloring tinted with a faint bluing around the lips and eyes that only came from severe blood loss. Her death hadn't been an easy one from the looks of it. Her eyes and her expression were frozen in place, a final reflection of her last terrified moments on earth.

  What was left of the poor woman's face from her temple all the way down to just below her bared breasts was just a mass of torn and mangled meat that was barely hanging on to the bone. She'd been savaged. Mauled by something with very large and very sharp teeth. Something capable of biting all the way down to and through bone. No, Tamina thought, it wasn't an easy death at all. This woman suffered. A lot.

  They were bite marks alright, and definitely nothing a human was capable of. She wasn't even sure a fully feral vampire could or would do something like this. A werewolf though, yeah, she'd seen werewolf attacks that looked remarkably similar to this many times before. Two things caught her attention. The first was the lack of blood. There wasn't any anywhere. With a wound as big as she was seeing, the whole of the street should have been painted red. There was nothing though. The body looked almost sterile. That made the second thing she noticed all the more horrifying.