Souls of the Reaper

by Markie Madden

  “Yes, so I would prefer to test him in my office,” he replied, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Although I do believe him to be sociopathic, I don’t feel that my safety will be an issue. Or that of anyone else, for that matter.”

  “Okay, but I want him escorted by two corrections officers at all times, and they’re to have orders to stay outside Marcell’s office unless and until they’re invited in.”

  Colton nodded to her as he walked away, presumably toward his desk in the bullpen.

  When they were alone, he turned to Lacey. “This means, of course, that your appointment scheduled for later this week will have to be rescheduled.”

  “At your convenience, doctor.”

  “Very well, I’ll let you know when I’m available.”

  They turned toward the elevator, but he turned back toward her and asked in a soft voice, “How are you doing, truly? In light of the Skinwalker being safely behind bars?”

  If she was surprised, her expression revealed nothing. “I’m fine.” She must have realized from his expression that he didn’t believe her. “Well, not fine. I’ll be better once the case gets through trial and there’s no chance of him ever seeing the light of day again.”

  “You’re that certain of the outcome?” He voiced the question he was itching to ask.

  “Yes, I have to be.” Her voice grew quiet, a sign he knew meant introspection. “If I can’t be, then I’m wasting my time here.”

  “You have a very strong sense of justice for someone who’s never found it.”

  “Never found what? Justice?” She laughed without humor. “No, there will never be any justice for what happened to me. Maybe I’ll be able to accept that, sooner rather than later.”

  “It’s my opinion, when you do accept it, you’ll be surprised at how much closure that will bring to your life.” With that, he stepped into the elevator, leaving her speechless and agape.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  She shook her head as she watched Dr. Dilorenzo’s smug face disappear behind the closing elevator doors. Just when I think I’ve got the man figured out, he goes and does something new to surprise me. With a shrug, she returned to her office, closing the door behind her. Once again, Lacey was grateful to her partner for the new door. She smiled at the memory of his Cheshire-cat grin when she walked in and saw the honey-colored wood and frosted glass for the first time. She might have said he looked like the cat who ate the canary, but it would be more like...well, like the dog who ate the cat.

  Shaking off the amusement, she sat at her desk and picked up the phone. She dialed the number for Medical City hospital from memory. When the switchboard operator answered, she identified herself and asked if Dr. Matthews was available to answer a few questions regarding a patient. She was put on hold, and pulled the phone away from her ear as the generic canned music began to play through the receiver. Several minutes of the annoying and mindless music went by before Lacey heard the click of the extension being picked up.

  “Doctor Matthews.” His warm and calm voice reached her ears.

  “This is Lieutenant Anderson with the Dallas police. I wanted to ask you how our assault patient is faring.”

  “Lieutenant, I was actually about to contact you in a few minutes.”

  “With good news, I hope?”

  “The patient responded well to treatment. I think we were able to stop the inflammation before it caused too much damage to the brain. He’s even semiconscious, not to the point of speaking or answering questions yet, but he’s responded by moving his hands or blinking upon request. So, I think he may be out of the woods, but I still don’t want you to get your hopes up yet. The seriousness of this head injury might cause retrograde amnesia or other memory loss.”

  “That is good news. Doctor, in your opinion, will he live?”

  She heard a sharp intake of breath. “You know I’m not comfortable giving you a straight yes or no answer,” he finally responded. “However, I’d put his odds at, oh, say 80 percent. Chances are good.”

  “Please, will you let me know if that changes? If it does, I can press additional charges on the guy who did this to him. And call me right away if you think he’s able to answer a few questions.”

  “Yes, I certainly will, Lieutenant. You have a good day now.”

  “Thank you, you too.”

  Lacey hung up the phone and pulled her tablet from her pocket. She made a few notes in the assault case file before beaming it wirelessly to the big black screen taking up the entire wall opposite her desk. A touch of a button and the screen lit up, displaying their current case and all her notes. She stepped to the office door and looked in the direction of Colton’s cubicle.

  “Hey, Colton, come here.”

  He glanced up and, when he saw her wave toward the office, he disentangled himself from the desk chair, grabbed his tablet off the desk, and loped in her direction, his unusual, tip-toed gait suddenly striking her as odd once more.

  “What’s up?” He asked as he entered the small room.

  She gestured to the screen. “Just got off the phone with Doc Matthews at Medical City. He said the patient’s condition is improving, gives an 80 percent chance he’ll make it.”

  “Good for the vic,” Colton responded. “Too bad about the suspect, though. It wouldn’t bother me any to get him for manslaughter. Smart ass rubbed me the wrong way, you know?”

  “Me, too,” she agreed. “I’m curious to see what Dr. Dilorenzo’s evaluation will reveal about him.”

  “Oh, about that. He’s scheduled for the first session at 1300 hours this afternoon. That was the quickest I could get him through the system.”

  Lacey shook her head, wondering at the justice system she had devoted a great deal of her life to. It seemed it was always hurry up and wait; though she knew there was a specific process involving booking, arraignment, assigning of counsel, the scheduling of a date and time for the preliminary hearing and the setting of bail in many cases. Their suspect would have to get through that process before he would be able to undergo any testing or evaluation, whether it be medical or psychological testing. She chafed at the delay, but accepted the inevitable. “There’s not much more to do, then, until we get at least a basic report from the shrink.”

  “Well, anyway, how do you know it’s not going to reveal he’s only a garden-variety scumbag? The city’s full of them, you know.”

  She chuckled in amusement. “Yes, I know. But I’d rather leave the head-shrinking to those who are best at it.”

  “Well, that reminds me. Now, I don’t mean for you to take this the wrong way, and tell me to mind my own business if you want to. But, how qualified is this shrink, anyway? To work this case, I mean?”

  “I did some research on him during our last case.” She knew he was aware of her enforced therapy with the psychologist, and she understood that he meant no harm in the question. “He worked with the New York City police before he came on staff here, and has a lot of higher education behind him. He’s also a renowned profiler whose opinion weighs heavily in courts all across the world. He’s probably the most qualified person we could find in cases involving sociopaths, or psychopaths. Or any other ‘paths you could throw in the mix.”

  “Okay, then, I trust you. If you say he’s good enough, he’s good enough.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she laughed.

  “Anytime, Little Sister, anytime.”

  She shooed him out of her office, then on impulse turned to her laptop. Lacey called up the department’s database, then stared absently at the wall for a moment, not sure what to ask it to look for. Recalling the incident at the bistro, she decided to have the computer search for any like petty crimes, things possibly involving a police presence but not necessarily ending in an arrest. She chose key words like road rage, verbal altercations, and disorderly conduct. Thinking back over recent weeks, she added a time frame of the last two months. Then, she hit ‘enter’ and let the computer go to work, cul
ling out any cases within her chosen parameters.

  4

  A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned. ~~Xun Zi

  The next day, Lacey arrived at work early, optimistic that a report from Dr. Dilorenzo would be forthcoming. Though she was beginning to wonder if Colton didn’t have it right, that their perpetrator was a regular asshole after all, plain and simple. Maybe all the weirdos she saw in the streets on a daily basis were just regular assholes. Though, she couldn’t remember a time when people were quite as loony as they appeared to be now. Or, when quite this many people were loony, I suppose.

  However, her mood vanished like a bubble popping once she sat at her desk and booted up her computer. There was no report from the psychologist waiting in the case book, only the information she and Colton had entered the previous day. She glared at the screen as if she could somehow will it to produce the report she wanted. It remained stubbornly blank, causing a sour mood to ignite through her like a wild fire. She resisted the temptation to slap the computer as one might to rid a reticent teenager of a smug look.

  She began to call up the details of the case, when suddenly a young female officer appeared at her door.

  “Lieutenant!” Her voice held the tinge of excited fear often present in newer officers, a by-product of the human body pumping copious amounts of adrenaline through the system.

  Lacey looked up at Officer Karan Moss, who, for some reason she couldn’t understand, everyone called Kazz. She was a petite young woman with blonde hair and bright blue eyes tinged with fright anticipation. “What is it, Officer Moss?”

  Excitement mixed with terror seemed to vibrate from the young woman. Lacey mentally flipped through her memory, and remembered that Officer Moss was one of the newest members of the Major Crimes Unit, coming to the department with a wave of other new recruits about six months before. “You have to come, quick. An anonymous call came down from dispatch about a dog fight in progress, a big one! They’re calling for all available units.”

  Dog fighting, though a felony in the state of Texas for a hundred years, was still a big part of criminal life. But Lacey had never seen one happen in broad daylight. “Where’s Detective Scarber?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Kazz replied in a shaky voice. “I haven’t seen him.”

  Lacey turned to her phone, dialing Colton’s cell number from memory.

  From the sound of things when he answered, he was still in his truck. “Scarber.”

  “Detective, it’s Lieutenant Anderson.” Since young Kazz was still in earshot, Lacey kept the conversation more formal than she would have otherwise.

  “What’s up, Little Sister?”

  Lacey winced, glad that she hadn’t activated the speaker phone. “We seem to have a call for dog fighting.”

  “Yeah, I know. Dispatch called me, so I’m on the way there now.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She hung up the phone and turned back to Kazz. “Want to tag along?”

  The woman’s face lit up as if a cloud had suddenly moved away from the sun. “As if you could keep me away!”

  They moved rapidly through the expanse of the building housing the Dallas Police department, heading for the parking ramp. Kazz managed to keep up with her, Lacey noticed, a surprise from a woman with such a small stature. She imagined that Kazz barely met the department’s height requirement and wondered how well she’d done with the Academy’s physical endurance testing.

  Once they were strapped in and Lacey began to thread her Audi S4 through morning traffic, Kazz commented, “This is some kick-ass ride, Lieutenant!”

  Lacey glanced at her; unlike Colton, who often grabbed the “chicken stick” above the passenger door, Kazz was leaning forward, her posture begging for more power and speed. With a grin, Lacey zipped onto the highway, made her way to the far left lane, and punched it. Then, something that had been nagging the edge of Lacey’s mind suddenly burst forth.

  “You’re a Shifter, aren’t you?” She asked the young officer.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  “That explains it.”

  “Explains what, ma’am?”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to call me ma’am. Lieutenant is fine. Or Lacey. Explains your love of speed.”

  “Ooh, I love going fast. Reminds me of roller coasters. You ever been over to Six Flags?”

  Lacey suddenly changed lanes to go around a car moving much slower than she was. “No, I can’t say I’ve ever been.” She thought of the historic amusement park with its tall coasters and various other rides engineered to scare the tar out of people. After her harrowing incident on the roof of the Bank of America building during their last big case, Lacey assumed that her fear of heights, rather than being overcome, would be even stronger than it was before. She couldn’t imagine any force on Earth or beyond that would get her into such a rolling metal death trap.

  Before she knew it, she was out of the main part of the city and into the suburbs. Fancy homes dotted the landscape among historic old farm houses, some run down and dilapidated. The caller said the dog fight was going on at one of these older homes. It was obvious from the street that something was up; cars lined the old dirt driveway, the lawn and an old animal pen, and even spilled out on the main paved road.

  “Something strange is definitely going on here,” Lacey commented. Even though the farm seemed to be run down and possibly abandoned, each and every vehicle parked there was new, well-kept, sporting fancy ground effects, stickers and decals, low profile tires on big chrome rims, and illegally-tinted black windows.

  “Yeah, I don’t think everyone’s out here for a baby shower.” Kazz agreed.

  Colton’s truck pulled down the road from the opposite direction, and he stopped nose-to-nose with Lacey’s car, not quite covering the driveway. He left the squad cars behind him to do that, and Lacey knew that he wouldn’t place his precious truck in danger of being rammed. She was pleased to see him in the truck rather than his wife’s van, since it might indicate his mood would be much better today.

  More squad cars pulled in behind her, and she and Kazz stepped from the car into the blazing morning sun. She winced as she felt the tingle and burn on her face. She had a stray thought of allowing her hair to grow a bit longer, so it would somewhat shield her face when she had to be out in the sun. But she pushed the thought away as Colton and the other officers converged on her.

  “What’s the plan?” Colton barked.

  She looked around at all the faces. Most of the officers were armed with shotguns as well as their standard sidearm, and she was happy to note they had safety in mind; each held the long gun with the muzzle pointed to the ground, and more than likely had the safeties on. In a circle reminiscent of a football huddle, their faces, young and old, looked to her for direction. She scanned the property with a quick glance, observing the old house, several pens with rotting wood planks fencing them off, and a derelict barn way in the back of the property, framed with tall trees on three sides. It took Lacey a few moments of weighing her options to determine the best approach.

  “Here’s the deal. I’m willing to bet that’s where they are.” She pointed to the barn. “Now, I want Detective Scarber and half of you to go around the back. Watch yourselves in those trees. Cover the back door, if any, and take down anyone who goes out that way. The rest of you, come with me. We’ll cover the front and go in to see what’s going on. Officer Kazz, you stay with my group. The rest of you,” and she indicated which officers with a sweep of her hand. “Go now. Detective, notify me when you’re in place.”

  “Yes, sir.” Colton waved his arm and half the group fell in behind him.

  She took her group of officers and started down the long driveway, keeping to the very edge where a line of shrubs offered some cover. The others followed her, not loudly, but as
quietly as humans wearing body armor and carrying shotguns could move. There was no talking, not even a whisper from one to another. They walked in a crouch, heads up, one hand resting on the back of the officer in front of them. When Lacey stopped and kneeled down to better see the barn through the bushes, each cop did so as well. Lacey was pleased and made a mental note to commend the patrol officers’ primary instructor.

  Lacey peered through the leafy shrubs, using her sharp eyesight to track Colton and his group as far as she could. Her sensitive hearing, now that she was closer to the barn, could pick up the commotion: yips, snarls, and barks from the animals inside, and the sound of excited humans, cheering, and handlers commanding dogs. From the stances of the human officers with her, it was obvious they could hear some of it as well. She glanced over her right shoulder to find Officer Kazz leaning forward intently.

  “What’s your Animal?” She asked the other woman in a quiet voice.

  “Oddly enough, Dog,” Kazz replied with a crooked smile.

  “Interesting.”

  Lacey’s face must have betrayed something, for Kazz said, “What?”

  “Think you could sneak in there, maybe have a look see?”

  “Probably. But if they caught me, they’d throw me into the pit.”

  “Good point,” Lacey agreed.

  Suddenly a quick howl pierced the air, and she recognized it as Colton. It seemed he made sure his signal was too quiet for anyone inside to pick up on, but loud enough for Lacey to hear it. And Kazz, too, from the way the woman tensed in readiness.

  Lacey looked back at each of the officers with her. “Okay, let’s go. Keep low and stay safe.”

  She stepped from the reasonable cover of the bushes, crouched low, and began to make her way swiftly across the open area of the driveway, where it split to go to both the house behind her and the barn. In a handful of moments, they had reached the barn, flattening themselves against the wall and the closed doors. The dog fight could be clearly heard now, and the sounds of the dogs as they attacked one another brought chills to Lacey’s spine. It was a reminder of the incident in her past where her entire family had been murdered by a pack of Wolves.