by R. Lee Moore
The stench that assaulted her as she drew closer was putrefying enough to cause an involuntary gag to rise up painfully in her throat. Like the raw meat of a carcass left to spoil out in the heat of the summer sun. There was blood and bits of gore everywhere. Two of the sheet covered corpses were soaked with it. Fresh kills it looked like just from the amount of seepage spilling out messily into bile-filled puddles all around them.
Tamina swore to herself under her breath the moment she recognized Lieutenant Decker standing off to the side talking to a pair of officers. She couldn't figure out if it was coincidence or just bad luck to run into him on both scenes. It sucked either way, she decided.
“The dispatch said there was only one,” she called out. “What gives?”
Decker looked over with obvious irritation, and gave a negligent shrug of his shoulders. Whatever, she thought as she crouched down next to the first of the bodies and turned up the corner of the sheet. The stench hit her like a hammer. She reared back reflexively and dropped the sheet to get away from what was beneath. She'd recognized what was under the sheet the second she saw it.
“'Ak'eed,” Tamina swore. “Ghouls! What the hell man?”
“Ugly bastards ain't they,” Decker observed. “Almost hard to believe those things used to be human isn't it.”
Tamina scowled up at him as she rose to her feet to confront him.
“Nobody said anything about ghouls,” she snapped. “Thought this was another mauling victim like the other day.”
Decker nodded his head.
“It is,” he said simply. “The ghouls are just a bonus. Victim is the one over there that's not covered in blood.”
Tamina pinched the bridge of her nose to keep herself calm, and inwardly wished she hadn't left her vodka-laced coffee in the car. The day was getting better and better, she thought.
“Rookie do-gooder,” Decker offered as an explanation. “You know the type. Still think they can make a difference. Trying to change the world and all that crap. This idiot decides all on his own he's going to do a patrol through here all by himself. Spots these two fuckers chowing down on what he thinks is one of the resident homeless, gets out his car, and caps the both of them right there on the spot.”
Tamina looked over the scene and shook her head swearing under her breath. That was just what she needed right now.
“You call it in?” she asked while looking critically at the two blood soaked messes beneath the sheets.
“Why?” Decker asked. “Only two of them, and they're dead. Well, Dead-er.”
Tamina groaned. This was why locals generally couldn't be trusted to deal with anything supernatural related. Well, that and the general lack of training they tended to have when it came to these sorts of things. They knew just enough about the supernatural to get themselves killed. Most of them didn't take it seriously either. Right up until some big wolf or a pack of hungry ghouls was gnawing at their guts anyway.
“Idiot,” she snapped.
Decker quirked a brow, but mercifully kept his thoughts to himself. Tamina would have ignored him anyway. Her instincts to be on high alert in this type of situation kicked in immediately. Where there was one ghoul, or in this case two, there was always more. They were pack hunters. She turned over her shoulder thoughtfully and spied Carson standing at the edge of the police line. Great place for him, she thought to herself.
“Hey Timmy,” she shouted over to him. Ignoring his instant correction of his name. “Get a call out for a Sweeper team. There's a ghoul nest out here somewhere. See if you can get them out here before a bunch of L.A.'s Dumbest here get themselves eaten.”
Tamina thought about unloading on Decker for being so blasé' about the situation, but ultimately realized it wasn't going to get her anywhere. Decker wasn't likely to listen anyways. None of them were. No one ever saw the danger until it bit them in the ass both literally and figuratively. It was why the Strike Teams were usually so busy. Besides, she thought, she had better things to do than to waste her breath on an idiot.
She looked between Decker and the third sheet meaningfully, and after a nod from the Lieutenant she made her way over and crouched down next to it and pulled up the sheet. Unlike the ghouls, there was no blood, but the dark haired Hispanic woman beneath the sheet had seen better days. Her face was untouched, but locked into that same frozen mask of indescribable horror as Amy Lynn's was. It almost felt like whoever did this wanted to make sure they could see every detail of the poor girl's final moments.
The neck down, however, was a different story. The first victim had been mauled, this one had been nearly devoured. There was a sizable cavity torn into her chest. The edges were torn and ragged. Like they'd been ripped and shredded in the jaws of some large beast. This was definitely the work of a shapeshifter. The bite was obvious in spite of the more recent additions. Taking down the rest of the sheet, Tamina could clearly see where the ghouls had been feeding. Small human sized bites were all over the woman's midsection all the way down her legs. None of them too deep, and all of them looked like the ghouls had started to bite down, gave up and started biting someplace else. That was a bit odd, she thought. Ghouls weren't generally picky eaters.
She gently parted the woman's legs to get a look at her inner thigh. There was more resistance than she'd expected. The joints and muscled had stiffened considerably. She had to pry the legs open to get a good look, but there wasn't anything there to see. No scars from vampire bites, fresh or otherwise. Just clean, smooth unmarred skin. Too clean, she thought. Just like at the first scene, this woman looked like she'd been drained and bleached after the fact. There wasn't likely to be any forensic evidence to be found outside the small circular mark stamped on the inside of her wrist.
“This one's been here a while,” Tamina said absently as she re-covered the body with the sheet and rose to her feet. “Got the same mark on her wrist though. What you make of that?”
“Tech says victim was killed at least a few days before the one from yesterday,” Decker said. “Scrubbed clean just like the last one too. Whoever this guy is, he's pretty thorough. Not a lot of evidence left behind. None in fact unless you count the body itself.”
Tamina swore under her breath and took a few seconds to collect her thoughts. A second body had just thrown the one theory she had all out of the water.
“You got any idea who she is yet?” she asked. Decker shook his head. “Damn. What about that names I gave you. You get any hits off either of them?”
Decker snorted.
“More than I wanted on the first one,” he said, then smirked at Tamina's quizzical reaction. “When I mentioned the name, one of the boys piped up. Apparently he's a big fan. Got a few posters and even an autograph apparently.”
“Eww, Tamina said. Considering what she'd seen of Amy Lynn's work she was both surprised and horrified that anyone in Decker's crew was into that sorta thing. “Seriously.”
“Hey, to each his own,” Decker replied. “Saw a few examples of her work, not my thing. Not her real name either though, so we're getting in touch with her production company to find out what we can. I'll let you know if we find anything. Nothing came up on the second name though.”
“Thanks,” Tamina replied thoughtfully.
She looked down at the victim beneath the sheet and tried to gather her thoughts. She was seriously hoping that Amy Lynn's death was just a one off. A stalker who couldn't take the rejection any more kind of thing. It might still be a stalker, but it didn't look like Amy was their first. That complicated things quite a bit. Opened up a few possibilities, though.
“What are the odds this one was in the same line of work,” she asked absently.
“Didn't see any bites down there,” Decker replied.
“Yeah, neither did I,” Tamina agreed. “Doesn't mean she isn't though. You don't even want to know all the types of porn I saw for sale last night. Something to keep in mind at any rate. Got nothing else to go on right now do we?”
“We?
” Decker said meaningfully.
Tamina groaned and dropped her head. She really wasn't in the mood for dealing with these kinds of game right now. Pissing contests over jurisdiction were tiring and didn't interest her in the slightest. Why didn't he understand that?
“Like I said yesterday,” she stated with a weary sigh. “It's your show. I'm just trying to help okay? Take all the credit. I don't care. Nothing changed Lieutenant.”
She made sure to put extra emphasis on Decker's rank. It was petty and childish, but it seemed to do the trick, and that's what mattered.
Leaning up against the wall with her arms across her chest, she took a long sweeping look over the crime scene. There had to be something that she was missing, she thought. Though, with all the garbage and debris, all the bits and pieces of human refuse strewn about everywhere, it wasn't going to be easy for the techs to go through it all. The odds of them finding anything useful was pretty slim as it was, and that was just made worse by the fact that whoever was dropping bodies all over the city seemed to know what they were doing. If they went through all the trouble of draining the bodies of fluids and then bleaching them, the chances they'd leave anything behind by mistake wasn't good.
This whole thing was giving her a headache, and the beating she'd taken last night wasn't helping matters. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see a lot of options open to her. Sitting on her ass and waiting for another body to turn up hoping there'd be something else left behind was unacceptable. She didn't like it. Any of it. Waiting around for anything always got on her nerves. It was a lot easier when she had a known target to fixate on.
“You have a problem working under the assumption that the two victims, and possibly the other name I gave you are all tied together?” she asked Decker. “Maybe look at it like there's some freaky sort of supernatural kink involved?”
“Outside of that neat little mark on their wrist and they way they died,” Decker replied. “If there's any connection involved, I'm not seeing it. Don't have any ID on this girl here, so won't know for sure until we do. It's all up in the air until then. Not saying it's not there, I'm just not seeing it.”
Tamina nodded her head. Disregarding the being mauled by a wolf part, the mark was the only thing connecting the two for the time being. Without an ID on the woman laying under the sheet beside her, there wasn't much else to go on, though.
“See, I thought it was a nightclub stamp, but this lady I talked to last night made it sound like it might have been something else,” she said. “A vampire mark specifically. Some House insignia or something. Said she didn't recognize it though if it was. So, might be nothing. The vampire I got into it with on the other hand, definitely recognized it. Near killed me because of it. There's got to be something there. Right?”
Decker quirked a brow at that.
“This vampire that kicked your ass bother to tell you what it was?” he asked.
“Nope,” Tamina replied with an annoyed shake of her head. She was trying not to think about that part too much. The fact that the bitch knew what she was looking for and had kept it to herself aggravated her. “Got the Diplomatic Office working on it though. They might be able to pry something out of the bloodsuckers that I couldn't.”
“Good luck with that,” Decker replied dryly. “That sorta thing is way beyond me and mine.”
“Yeah,” Tamina said absently. “I'm going to try another angle. Got someone who might have some insight into the whole werewolf porn thing. Might be nothing, but got nothing else going for us at the moment. I'll leave you to deal with Ms. Lynn's production company. Civilian's don't like it when I talk to them.”
Decker rolled his eyes.
“Yeah I don't doubt that,” he said. “Considering what happened yesterday. Whatever. I'll think about giving you a call when I get her real name and find out where she lived.”
If he was waiting for an answer, he wasn't going to get one. Tamina had already lifted herself off the wall with a slight wince and had started back towards her car. She was tempted to wait for the Sweeper Team so she could relieve a bit of tension ghoul hunting, but she needed to keep going on figuring this whole thing out. She wasn't going to be able to do that splattering ghouls across Skid Row, no matter how satisfying that might have been.
“Hey Timmy,” she said as she ducked under the police tape and started towards her car. “Might want to catch a ride with someone back to the station. I got something I need to do and don't need you under foot while I do it.”
“Timothy,” Carson corrected angrily. “And No. If it has anything to do with this case, I'm coming with you. I thought that was made clear to you, but maybe the words Captain Harris used were too big for you to understand.”
Tamina groaned and fought the urge to drop the guy on his ass and leave him where he fell. It might have been fun and made her feel a hell of a lot better, but that probably would just cause her more problems than she wanted to deal with in the long run. Besides that, he was already opening up her passenger door and sliding inside.
Fine, she thought as she jerked her door open and climbed inside. If she was stuck with him for the moment, she'd deal with it, but not sober. She picked her cup up from the console and made a show of draining the cup right in front of Carson's disapproving face. The coffee wasn't all that good cold, but the burn of the alcohol in it more than made up for it. She wanted as much of a buffer against what was coming next as she could get anyways.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tamina didn't mind working with other people. She'd done it six years in the Marines, and another six years in the Strike Teams. So, it wasn't like she couldn't work with others, it was more that she couldn't work with others who were as diametrically opposite to her as Agent Carson and every other Supernatural Affairs field agents was. It was just a different culture between the two of them. Carson didn't seem like he was able to think about anything other than protocol and regulations. She couldn't work like that. It was like oil and water. It didn't mix.
The whole trip, Agent Carson had made little comments citing this or that regulation about her drinking, her driving, her drinking and driving. He even complained about the music she listened to when she tried to drown him out by cranking up the radio as loud as she could bear it. The man never stopped.
It got to the point where she had to pull into this little convenience store just off the freeway just to get herself some peace. That and some more alcohol to put into the largest cup of coffee they had available.
She had to do something to keep herself from losing it on the little man sitting in the car beside her. She was sure that the moment Carson saw her walking out of the little shop and start dumping the little bottle of vodka she'd bought into her cup, that he was immediately on the phone tattling to Captain Harris. The man was starting to aggravate her well beyond the limits of her patience. The alcohol would numb her somewhat, but with him around nipping at her heels it would be a miracle if she made it the rest of the day without shooting someone.
To make matters worse, she ended up spending close to an hour driving in circles trying to find what she was looking for. It wasn't on any maps, and the only information she had didn't give much more than a vague idea of what to look for.
When she finally found what she was looking for, and saw the little place nestled back into a corner, Tamina groaned under her breath and took a long deep swig from her alcohol-laced coffee.
“You've got to be kidding me,” she muttered incredulously as she pulled off to the side of the road to find a place to park. “I'm gonna kill him.”
She honestly could not believe what she was looking at. It couldn't be real, she thought to herself. If she'd have been a little closer to Hollywood, she would have thought she was looking at a set for one of those old gangster movies she used to watch when she was a kid. Places like this didn't exist outside the movies, yet here it was anyway.
From the outside it just looked like an everyday run-of-the-mill mom-and-pop type pizza pla
ce. A green, white, and red awning hung out over the walk with little wrought iron tables and chairs spaced out cozily beneath the shade it provided. The name Fat Anthony's was scrawled in colorful calligraphy in big letters all across the window right next to the obligatory cartoon caricature of an Italian pizza chef tossing dough up over his head. From the outside, nothing about the place looked out of the ordinary or like anything special at all.
Tamina might not have even given the place a second glance if she didn't see the two overweight men in tracksuits lounging around lazily playing cards out under the awning. It was like someone plucked them straight out of a movie and surrounded them with every Italian mafia stereotype they could think of. They couldn't have thought they blended in, Tamina thought to herself. If anything, with all the representation on TV And in the movies, they stuck out all the more. There wasn't a chance in hell anyone could look at those two and see anything other than a pair of gangsters. They weren't even trying to hide it.
“This is it. You need to stay here and let me handle this,” she told Carson as she started out of the car. “You wouldn't like what's going to happen, so it's best if you just sit here, keep quiet, and stay the hell out of my way and let me work.”
Agent Carson gave her a narrow eyed glare from behind his glasses and promptly threw open the passenger door and followed her out onto the street.
“Again, Sergeant,” he said snidely. “Department regulations require me to accompany you everywhere you go in the line of duty. And besides that, if you're thinking of doing something in there that violates Departmental policy or procedure, it's my duty as a Federal Agent to be there to intervene. So if you think I'm just going to sit quietly in the car while you go in there and start assaulting people, think again.”