by R. Lee Moore
Harris stopped her several times in the middle of everything to ask some very pointed and surprisingly insightful questions. He agreed with her that their best chance at figuring all this out was to keep digging into the victims shared profession.
He wasn't sold on the whole spurned werewolf stalker angle though. According to him, there had to be more to it than that considering all the trouble the perpetrator went to cleaning and sterilizing the corpses before dropping them off. Then he said something that made her question her assumptions.
“You'd think a werewolf, or someone with access to a werewolf would have other ways of disposing of bodies,” he said.
Tamina stared at her phone for a moment thinking about what he'd said. She'd never even considered that angle. Why would a werewolf dump a body out in public when there were other options available to them? Granted, the Mankiller Laws that gave her such freedom to act were kind of ironically named, but there was a kernel of truth to the idea.
Whoever this wolf was, had mauled both women to death, and the marks on the both of them came from teeth not claws. It wasn't a stretch to think that after doing something like that to a person, especially in the state of mind they were likely in, that they wouldn't go all the way. They hadn't though, and that was actually kind of concerning.
“What if it's a serial killer type?” Tamina ventured. “You know, the type of person who likes to show off. Hell, the mutt probably gets off on this whole thing in general.”
“Possible,” Harris allowed. “My instincts tell me otherwise. I mean, yes my experiences are purely academic, but even with that I'm thinking this person may just be building up to the grand finale so to speak.”
Tamina couldn't argue with that as much as she may have wanted to. She may have had more experience fighting and killing the supernatural as part of the Teams, but Harris was an investigator. He may not have seen things personally, but he seemed like the sort to have made sure to study as much as he could all the same. She found herself gaining a whole new respect for the man just based off that alone.
“Well, keep me informed as best you can,” Harris said finally. “Agent Compton has been quite adamant about having a talk with you, but I'll do what I can to mollify her for the time being. Can't have you distracted by all that right now, can we? Oh, and Timothy should be stopping by any time now. I would appreciate it if you tried to get along. He is your partner after all.”
“No promises,” Tamina grumbled.
It was only mere seconds after she'd hung up, that her phone started ringing again. It was never going to end, she thought. When she thumbed the answer button, instead of speaking, Tamina elected to growl menacingly into her phone.
“Terrifying,” she heard Mendoza say dryly. “I just got a ping on Hailey Keene. LASD just got a call about someone maybe matching her description, and they sent it over. You want it? Not in the best part of town.”
Tamina was suddenly laser focused. That was the name the snake-lady had given her, and Mendoza wasn't talking about her in the past tense. It meant she was still alive. For now anyway.
“Yeah,” Tamina said with interest. “Where at?”
“Boyle Heights,” Mendoza said. “The Varrio.”
Tamina winced at hearing that. She knew the area well enough. Most of it wasn't that bad all things considered. Other parts however, she knew only because her and her team had done several incursions into the area over the last few years.
“Great,” she said bitterly. “Exile territory. How much easier would things be if the ocēlōmeh had killed all those bastards instead of letting them cross the border? Sometimes I think they do stuff like that just to make my life harder.”
“Yeah,” Mendoza replied sarcastically. “I'm sure the whole government of Aztlan just sits around thinking of ways to inconvenience you. I'll send the address to your phone. You know the locals don't go in there right, so you'll be in Cartel territory all by yourself.”
“Yeah,” Tamina said. “I figured that. What else is new.
The phone went suddenly dead, and Tamina smiled in spite of herself when Mendoza abruptly hung up on her. The dispatcher was likely to be the only sane person in the whole Department as far as Tamina was concerned. The Department, hell Supernatural Affairs in general needed more people like her.
Finishing up her coffee, Tamina hurriedly dressed herself with a fresh pair of black jeans, Motley Crue t-shirt with a new set of body armor beneath it, her leather jacket, and a pair of jump boots. Dressing, and setting up her shoulder rig was a bit of a hassle due to all the bruising, but she pushed through. There was work to be done. No time for pain.
She rushed out the door and down the stairs, when she noticed with considerable consternation that Agent Carson was leaning against the hood of her Firebird with his arms cross over his chest.
“Hey! Are you out of your damn mind? Get off the hood,” she shouted.
“Going somewhere?” he demanded ignoring her. “What, are there still witnesses out there you haven't assaulted, or are you planning on going on another drunken shooting spree somewhere?”
“Drunk?” Tamina said shoving him forcefully away from her car. “I wasn't drunk. Hadn't gotten that far yet.”
“I'm your partner,” Carson groused. “Whether either of us like that or not. And for the record, I don't. We're supposed to work together, sergeant. That's what partners do. They stop each other from being stupid and misusing the law like you've been doing.”
Tamina groaned and rolled her eyes.
“You're seriously gonna bitch about that this early in the morning?” she snapped. “It was a spur of the moment thing. But it worked out, so whatever. Get in, and I'll fill you in on the way.”
Carson blinked in surprise.
“You want me to come with you?” he said suspiciously.
“No,” Tamina said pulling her door open. “But you'll just follow me if you don't, and I don't feel like dealing with that right now. Though, I do reserve the right to ditch you at some point in the future.”
Carson closed his eyes and took a deep calming breath. He didn't look all too thrilled, and Tamina couldn't say she didn't feel the same way, but he got in the car with her all the same. Tamina cranked the engine, switched the patrol radio on and keyed up the Mic.
“Dispatch, 220-Victor on the move to Boyle Heights,” she said over the radio.
“Boyle Heights!“ Carson said with alarm in his voice.
“Yup,” Tamina said turning on the stereo and cranking up the volume. “Not afraid of the Cartel's are ya?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She'd heard at one point Boyle Heights had been a good neighborhood. That was probably before most of the current residents arrived, though. Now the area was filled with cast-offs and refugees that had been chased out of Aztlan by the ruling Jaguar elite.
It wasn't as bad as Skid Row had been, but that was a low bar. The neighborhood was still in relatively good shape, there just happened to be packs of werewolves running around everywhere.
It wasn't the usual werewolf gangs that had been cropping up the last few years either. Regular street gangs were little more than mutts. Dangerous, but not nearly as much as they could have been.
The ones she was seeing out on the street now though were something wholly different. They all had that near feral professional killer look about them. Kind of like all the wolves in the Preserve. They were the real deal.
Most of them likely had fought against and survived the full might of the Aztlan army during the uprising. Either that or their parents had. That kind of experience tended to harden and radicalize a person.
There were still good people in the Varrio, though. A lot of them in fact. Problem was, that all those good people had been completely overwhelmed, and were at the mercy of the werewolf cartels and their hopeless dream of Reconquista.
It was never going to happen. The Empire had systematically slaughtered any supernatural that wasn't a Jaguar decades ago. The werewolves here, a
nd the Aztlan nobility that backed them in their little uprising, were lucky to have made it out alive. Aztlan still wanted them dead, but some idiot in the State Department had gotten the bright idea to classify them as political refugees. Made them almost untouchable. It was one of the reasons why regular law enforcement didn't come down here. Too much of a hassle politically. That and it was dangerous as all hell for them.
Tamina on the other hand, had rolled through these same streets with her team quite a few times to put one cartel or another back in its place. The Cartels were dangerous enemies. They couldn't rule over Aztlan, so they'd turned the local Varrio into their own little kingdom. They thought they could do whatever they wanted here. Even if it meant killing cops and Federal Agents.
LAPD and the Sheriff's Department took a hands-off approach to the area. They wouldn't even come into the neighborhood without a damn good reason. Which made the fact that they'd apparently received a noise complaint that described the woman Tamina was looking for kinda odd.
It wasn't like police unwillingness to give a damn about the area was a new thing. It was pretty much common knowledge. That someone would even bother calling in a complaint knowing it was likely to be ignored just on general principle was somewhat suspicious.
“It's a trap,” Carson said firmly.
They'd been parked quite a ways down the street from the address Mendoza had given, and had been arguing for at least a half hour. Tamina had been staring down at the large rundown looking apartment complex down at the end of the block warily the whole time. Carson was adamant about the whole thing being a set-up, but Tamina wasn't so sure.
“No. How?” Tamina demanded. “How could this possibly be a trap. I mean, who would be dumb enough to try to bait me out here. Anything happens to me, and this 'they' that you keep talking about has to know that they'd roll the Strike Teams and glass this whole area. It'd be suicide.”
“It's simple,” Carson replied in a way that made it sound like he was trying to explain something to a child. “If this woman you're looking for is connected to the other two, the person responsible knows you've found the other two victims, and figured out the connection between them. All they'd have to do to get you here is dangle this woman out in front of you, and you'd come running. Your previous actions have proven how mindless and stupid you are.”
Tamina scowled, and drove her elbow into the man's gut. He should have known better than to insult someone sitting in a car next to him. Especially if it was someone like her. It was his own fault really, she reasoned.
“Your still overlooking the whole thing about the Strike Teams nuking a few square miles in response,” she snapped.
Carson wheezed and fought to catch his breath. She'd tagged him pretty hard, and yet somehow he'd recovered a hell of a lot quicker than she'd expected. She was actually kind of impressed by his resilience. The man didn't look like he had it in him.
“And you're assuming whoever called in a phony noise complaint would still be in the area,” Carson retorted. “If they were even here in the first place. It's not like they'd need to kill you themselves. All they'd have to do was point you in the direction of a cartel safe-house, and let you blunder blindly into your own death. Which, if that was the plan, it's progressing quite nicely. And that's not even mentioning the political minefield you could be walking into. Whatever else they may be, the Cartels have serious backing in Washington.”
Tamina stuck her tongue out at the man beside her and turned her eyes back to the house and the end of the road. It was childish, and she knew it, but it was the only thing she could think of at the moment. He actually made a pretty good point, but she'd be damned if she was going to let him know that.
“Screw it,” she said under her breath. “I'm going in to scout it out.”
Tamina cranked her Firebird back to life and made a slow and casual approach towards the target house. She didn't want to get too close or too obvious. At the same time she didn't want to park so far away the had to do a marathon to get back to the car if things went south. Parking on the opposite corner across the street seemed like the best bet. Close enough to provide a safe retreat if needed, but not enough to draw too much attention.
“Stay here,” Tamina told Carson as she got out the car and started looking around.
Almost no one seemed to notice her presence, or if they did, they pretended not to. That was kind of how things worked in places like this, Tamina observed. You never wanted to get to involved with people you didn't know. Hell, you probably didn't want to get involved with people you did know a lot of times. Keeping to yourself kept you alive.
She surveyed her surroundings making note of all the potential threats, then narrowed her focus to the apartment block in front of her all on its own. It was a bit on the small side as far as the other blocks in the vicinity, but it was still somewhat formidable for one person to be going into alone.
The few windows along the outer perimeter that weren't boarded up, all had thick and heavy bars on the windows. There were a few balconies, but even those appeared to be sealed off from the inside. The scattering of bullet holes all throughout the plaster was a good explanation for why that was done.
Tamina could only see a single entrance into the structure that led into a central courtyard with stairs zigzagging up the walls on either side that led up to the second and third floor walkways. There weren't any people around that she could see, but there were definite signs of habitation. Open doors, the faint sounds of Banda music drifting from cracked open windows, even the odd shouting from inside the apartments.
What surprised her was that she couldn't see any lookouts. If this was a cartel place like she thought it was, there should have been people keeping an eye out for trouble. Then again, she thought, as deep as she was inside their territory maybe they were just complacent in the power they held over the neighborhood. If that was the case, that was a mistake that was going to bite them in the ass sooner or later.
“Sit tight,” Tamina told Carson as she poked her head back into the car window. “I'm just going to take a look see.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Carson demanded.
“Probably,” Tamina replied. She was already walking away.
The fact that Carson wasn't arguing with her about leaving him behind was a bit concerning. Maybe he was just following her lead for once, Tamina thought, but more likely he'd sensed the same thing she did. Something was off about the place. Hell, something about the whole area didn't feel right.
She crossed the street, waiting until she was fully on the other side before drawing her sidearm from her shoulder rig. The safety was off, and she had a round chambered before she even made it to the entrance to the courtyard.
There was movement all around her. She could hear it, but she still couldn't see anyone. The courtyard itself was completely empty. Not just of people, but of anything. No furniture, no cast aside junk or garbage strewn across the yellowed and dying grass. Nothing but what looked like a small red stained stone altar tucked out of the way in the far corner. Tamina didn't even want to think of what that was for. It wasn't the first she'd seen, and probably not the last. It was one of the more disturbing elements that the exiles had brought with them from Aztlan.
When she swept her gaze up to the walkways suspended above her on either side, she saw why. The railings all around her were fortified with a combination of cinder blocks and thick sandbags that had faded in the sun. The courtyard had been kept clear for a reason, she realized. It was a kill-box. Anyone who came in here was going to be funneled in through the one narrow entrance, and then surrounded on three sides by fortified fighting positions on higher ground.
All of that, and there still weren't any lookouts or guards. None. All logic and experience told Tamina that they had to be there, but they weren't and that didn't sit well with her at all. It was starting to feel like Carson was right and this was a trap. Like they were trying to draw her in and lull her into a false sense of security.
The trouble was, if that was the plan, it was working.
Not that she felt all that safe and secure, but she couldn't let herself pull back. Her instincts were telling her that this was a bad place, and that bad things were happening here. She couldn't just let that go. It wasn't in her nature.
She made a slow circle of the lower level with her weapon drawn out in front of her. Her finger hovered beside the trigger as she crept down the edges of the courtyard peering and peeking into the windows looking for anything she could find.
The units on the first floor appeared to be empty and abandoned. The most she found on her whole circuit was the discarded remnants of previous occupants. Old ratty furniture, scattered piles of mildewed musty clothes left behind. Not much else.
She was about to start making her way up the stairs when the door on the very last unit opened up beside her. Tamina whirled around with her weapon out in front of her and found herself confronted by a little old lady in a flower print dress and sandals staring silently at her. The old woman showed no reaction to Tamina's presence, nor to the heavy pistol pointed directly at her. There was just this calm, expectant look in her eyes. Like she was waiting for something.
Tamina slowly reached down the neck of her shirt and drew out her badge and let it hang down from her neck. The old woman nodded her head approvingly, and held her fingers to her lips. Tamina understood immediately. Keep quiet, people were listening. The old woman looked to the stairs Tamina was about to take and shook her head. Instead, she motioned with her fingers to a specific unit on the second floor balcony. Tamina's gave followed the directions and took careful note of everything around it.
She pointed insistently at the old woman's apartment and gave a short and curt nod of her head. The woman smiled, reached inside her apartment and pulled out a large spray bottle. Without warning Tamina found herself being doused with rapid misting sprays of whatever the woman had in the bottle. Then, without a word the woman turned on her heel, went back inside and closed the door behind her. Tamina took a deep breath to steady and refocus herself. She'd been right, she thought. There was something here. What, she didn't know, but there was something.