Cheetahs Never Win

by RJ Blain

  “I know that,” Sassy snapped. “Fucking coalition males.”

  Years of frustration laced her tone, and I fought my urge to smile. I tugged on her bag. “Look at what I got you.”

  “You really didn’t have to, Aaron.”

  “But I wanted to. You like them.” While I wanted to believe I foresaw fewer trips to the shoe store in my future, I got the feeling I’d have to get more creative about my acquisition of presents for her.

  Cops likely didn’t get paid nearly as well as private investigators who took on high-level clients.

  Sassy pouted but peeked into the bag. “There’s two pairs of shoes! You said one and a purse! And there’s the purse. Aaron? Aaron!”

  I laughed. “I’m only responsible for the clear pair. I didn’t know about the other pair until I peeked into the bag right now. You’ll have to investigate who added those.”

  The ploy distracted her for all of five minutes while she examined her new shoes. Once she satisfied herself, she returned them to the bag and placed it between her feet. “Give it to me straight, Joe. How bad was the bleeding? Really. None of this sugar coating bullshit you like to do when you think I might be upset. I’ll be really upset if you lie to me right now. I’ll ambush a fucking angel if I must to get the truth out of you.”

  “It was bad enough I told Mark to investigate the hospital and the surgeons to find out if someone there might be connected to the accident. Without the lycanthropy virus, I don’t know if he would’ve survived being released. Mark asked me to do a full examination because he didn’t like how Aaron was looking, a good move on his part. So, I’ve already been in touch with the CDC, and they approved the transfusions. Dad’s virus was spiking, which helped our case. That leaves you.”

  “What about me?” Sassy demanded.

  “Dad’s virus isn’t going to be able to handle many more transfusions, and while we’re willing to donate, your virus is likely the best for the job. First, you’re a breeding female. Second, he’s demonstrating like a breeding male. If you donate, he’s yours for life. You’ll have to take some additional steps, but if you want him, you can have him. If you don’t, I’ll interview some coalitions to see which one is best suited for him.”

  I wanted to reach over Sassy and throttle her brother for even suggesting I join a coalition.

  Sassy went for her brother’s throat, kicking her shoes halfway across the living room in her determination to kill Joe. “Like hell you will!”

  The pair tumbled off the couch, crashed onto the end table, and hit the floor hard. I cringed at the shatter of glass as the lamp met its end along with some trinkets out for display.

  “They came from the thrift store,” Sassy’s mother announced. “You just don’t keep nice things near the couches.”

  Well, that was something.

  I leaned over the couch to observe the brawl between brother and sister. “Should we stop them?”

  “No, leave them,” Sassy’s father ordered. “She needs to work out her nerves. Joe, don’t let her roll in the glass.”

  I sometimes forgot how strong lycanthropes could be. With no evidence he combated his struggling sister, Joe hopped to his feet, snagged Sassy around her waist, and relocated her to the other side of the living room before allowing her to get a hold of him and drive him back to the carpet.

  I wanted to be like Joe when I grew up. If I could move an infuriated Sassy without effort, I’d be able to keep us both out of trouble. “That should be a sales pitch for lycanthropy.”

  “Military training,” Joe countered. “I’ll tell your brother you need an instructor. It’ll do you good on the force, too.”

  “Want me to take care of the glass?” I offered.

  “No,” everyone in the room replied, even Sassy.

  I scowled but stayed on the couch. “I see how it is.” Since I’d been outvoted, I grabbed the nearest briefcase and opened it to discover a new laptop, one that’d probably cost my brother a small fortune. “I sense brotherly disapproval over my choice of laptops.”

  Sassy snorted. “Your laptop was a piece of shit compared to mine, and mine was due for an upgrade. I paid your brother back for my machine, but he wouldn’t let me buy yours. He said something about having to give you an escape from maternal prison gift from last year since he missed it.”

  “He’s missed it most years of my life. He was too busy celebrating his.”

  “Just accept it, Aaron. Please.”

  Damn it. I couldn’t say no when Sassy said please. “All right.”

  “You gave him a transfusion from Daddy? What were you thinking, Joe?”

  “I was thinking he was already infected and needed a transfusion immediately. You were too unstable to sit through the hours needed to do it safely. There’s also the issue of being an unmated female. You giving him a transfusion would make it so you’re bonded to him for life. You don’t make that decision when it’s a critical need. You can think about it until after dinner. If you’re not willing, Mom and Dean are willing to donate. Charlie’s virus is too tapped to right now, but the others are fine. If we run out of donors from the family, I’ll start hitting up other coalitions to get him as much diversity as he can.”

  Cheetahs struggled with virus diversity, that much I remembered from Sassy’s bitter complaints over the dating pool, which was limited at best. While Dallas had several strains of the cheetah lycanthropy virus, her family counted as the freshest of the lot.

  Cheetah females rarely approached human males, which further limited the strain pool.

  “No.” Sassy went for her brother’s throat again, and Joe fended her off. “You’re not letting a coalition corrupt him!”

  “Then you, Dean, and Mom need to make sure his tank stays full. He lost a lot of blood to internal bleeding, and while I’m pretty sure the leaks are patched, his body is trying to adapt to the lycanthropy virus. He’s going to be iffy for a while.”

  Sassy growled but gave up trying for Joe’s throat. “Explain iffy.”

  “Fever, chills, and stalker-like tendencies.”

  “Stalker-like tendencies?”

  “Sassy, next time you walk out of the room, sneak peeks at Aaron. He’s so busy admiring your ass he won’t notice you looking at him. Also, it grosses me out that I’m admitting this, but you obviously dressed to get attention today.”

  “I grabbed the nearest damned thing so Mom wouldn’t whoop my ass!”

  Sassy’s mother laughed. “You tried going out the door half naked, kitten.”

  “I really don’t want my ass whooped this week.”

  “And how old, exactly, were you when you last got your ass whooped?” Sassy’s mother challenged.

  Sassy’s eyes widened, and she gulped. With a whimper, she attempted to hide under her brother. “We were never supposed to talk about this ever again.”

  I needed to know. “I will do any chore you let me, just please tell me this story.”

  Sassy’s father laughed, retrieved Sassy’s new shoes and purse, and handed me the bag. “She was four, and she ran out in front a car because she hadn’t looked both ways before chasing after a ball. She was always behind the curve on situational awareness. Charlie got clipped getting her out of the way. Fortunately, Charlie wasn’t contagious, so I didn’t have to pay to have the neighbor’s truck neutralized, but he broke his ankle, and there’s nothing whinier in life than a vain male cheetah who can’t run at his leisure. Sassy got a spanking for not watching traffic before crossing the street.”

  “Had to pick the switch?” I guessed.

  “It’s like you grew up in the Chetty household. After she got switched, she got to do Charlie’s chores until he escaped his cast, and to add insult to injury, I made her wash the neighbor’s truck and supervise its repainting since Charlie scuffed the paint. Watching paint dry is not a fun activity for a young feline.”

  I bet. “Can’t say I wouldn’t have whooped her for that one,” I admitted.

  “Aaron,” Sassy wai
led.

  “Sassy,” I replied, mimicking her tone. “If you hadn’t run out in traffic, you wouldn’t have gotten your ass whooped.”

  “Traitor.”

  “Don’t run out in front of traffic, and you won’t get spanked.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So if I run out in traffic, I’ll get spanked?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, wondering how I’d wandered right into that trap unawares. I blamed the medications. “This is your fault, Joe.”

  “If you run out in traffic, you won’t get spanked,” Joe announced. “If you want spanked that bad, just ask him. Sometime after the rest of us are far, far away, because the last thing I need to hear or see is my sister getting a spanking.”

  “Damn it, Joe!”

  “What? You started it.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Sure it is. You got your older brother’s blessing. You should be thanking me. Just not on your knees or anything. Aaron will get ideas, and he’s in no condition to control any new impulses. You also don’t want him controlling new impulses right now. It’s good for him to get a feel for what it’s like. Also, you need to be more concerned about the investigation. We have jack shit on this killer, and we don’t know where he’ll strike next. Mark’s been nagging me about getting Aaron back into action sooner than later, but until I’m certain he won’t start bleeding again, he has to stay put. You’re his best chance to get back on his feet.”

  “The entire police force and the FBI are on the case. Why is Aaron so damned important?” Sassy hissed her displeasure and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t see what we can do that they can’t.”

  That made two of us. “The more eyes on this, the better. It’s not that we can do something they can’t, Sassy. It’s that I’m the one who got away. The sooner I’m back to investigations, the faster we can possibly lure the killer out. We have exactly one potential lead, and I only have one way to protect her, although it’ll smear Mark’s reputation doing it.”

  “And Mark’s willing, by the way. I already asked. He’s working on making contact with Miss Gray as we speak. With luck, the groundwork will be in place on that by dinner tonight,” Joe announced. “We’re still worried she’ll become a target, but if Mark can’t protect her, no one can. Miss Gray’s getting to the point she’s ready to settle down and have puppies of her own, so maybe your brother will get lucky for once in his life and settle down.”

  “Mark, my brother, settle down? Have you lost your mind?”

  “The lycanthropy virus can convert even the rowdiest of players into a loyal family man,” Joe replied. “In your case, you’ll just become extra loyal with a side dish of overprotective and having entire litters of children. Just look at my dad.”

  “You’re going to scare him off,” Sassy’s father warned.

  The warning revitalized Sassy’s desire to murder her brother, and shaking my head at the insanity, I resumed my investigation of the briefcases Mark had left to me so I could begin doing my share of the work.

  Chapter Ten

  I needed a trip to the library to check out the newspaper archive, but I’d have to make do with digital files until Joe and my brother relented. I doubted either would let me out of the Chetty home until I’d staked my claim on Sassy or goaded her into making claims on me. I found their obstruction obnoxious, but at the same time, I was getting exactly what I’d asked for.

  Only a fool would complain.

  The digital archive of the newspapers annoyed me as it excluded the original typesetting; uniform, digital fonts ruled all the prevalent papers. I did find one thing of use: at least one paper had a corresponding date to the murder victims. As the dates had been from nine months prior to the victim’s birth, I decided to do some math and check the papers for articles from the estimated birthdays of the victims. As I couldn’t leave the house and wanted nothing to do with the war raging between Sassy and her brother, I read the entire newspapers from front to back.

  A political article with a familiar face caught my attention, and I dug through the photographs of the women until I found her.

  Renata Kirkville had announced her departure from political management a few weeks prior to the birth of her child for personal reasons, and one newspaper had bothered to report about it—on the day she’d given birth. In the background of the photograph, taken on the street, was a second familiar face.

  I hated finding links in the oddest of places, but I wanted to kiss the newspaper who’d captured the photograph and posted it. Grabbing my new phone, I called the anonymous tip line for the police, and I used the line that handled tipoffs by recordings rather than discussing the situation with an operator. I listed the newspaper, gave the victim’s name, the date the issue had run, and indicated Tom Heatherow was in the background of the image, a potential person of interest in the serial killing of single women and their children.

  By the time I hung up, I’d captured everyone’s attention.

  “You can’t be serious,” Sassy blurted.

  I turned my new laptop so she could see the screen. “Recognize them?”

  According to her curses, she recognized our client in the background. “That fucking piece of shit. But she’s not pregnant in that photograph.”

  “Exactly. And while the newspaper didn’t expressly confirm her pregnancy, isn’t it interesting they picked a photograph showing Heatherow in the background? They may as well have put their speculations on a billboard. And why opt to run the article on that specific date? According to this, she’d announced it weeks prior but only chose to run it the day she’d given birth. This newspaper was still printing daily, so it was a deliberate choice. She must have gone into labor the evening before the print run was set. Is there a way we can confirm that?”

  “For us? No,” Joe announced. “However, Mark can probably get the intel legally—or at least in so clever a way no one will know we accessed the information. The police can probably get the records as part of the investigation. Let Maxwell know directly; the anonymous line might take time to get through to him.”

  I tapped a text message to Maxwell requesting he look into Renata Kirkville’s labor along with a heads up I’d left a tip on the anonymous line and a request he delete the message after receiving it. “Done.”

  “It’s probably a coincidence that article ran right on the boy’s birthday,” Joe warned.

  “As much as it is a coincidence Tom Heatherow is in the picture?”

  The silence promised everyone wondered as much as I did over how much of a coincidence it could be. Joe hesitated, his brows furrowing. “Some of the dates were estimates.”

  “And I found this one exactly nine months following the date left with the victims. What if they all coordinate with a similar newspaper? What if it isn’t actually the date of conception but a clue to get us from the conception to a matching article about the victims—or to someone related to the victims.”

  “Like Tom Heatherow,” Sassy growled.

  “Exactly.”

  “Once is a coincidence,” Joe reminded me.

  “Investigations is all about finding out if the coincidences become a trend and how those trends lead to the story of a murder. Every murder has a story, Joe. Sometimes the story is as simple as a mugging gone wrong, but sometimes, it’s far more than that. We realistically need to check every newspaper from the date listed and nine months later to make certain there’s a trend. And if there is, what is the trend? What sort of puzzle are we solving? Why is the killer giving us clues like this?”

  Sassy grabbed her new laptop along with a printout of the victims, the dates of birth of the children, their corresponding numbers and dates left at the crime scene, and general profile. “The killer’s telling us a story, and he’s trying to give us enough clues to figure it out. But why would he do that? It’s a trademark of a serial killer, but you broke the trend.”

  “Did he? We haven’t looked for any newspapers with my date of birth yet.” I dug
through the online archives and found six newspapers with matching dates. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m looking for, but if the killer’s trying to send a message through old newspapers, perhaps the link isn’t in our birthdays but what was in the news on our birthdays. Not a day goes by without some form of political news in the media, and that applied even when I was born. The real question is this: what happened when I was born that might be a part of that story?”

  “Graduations,” Sassy blurted. “Tom Heatherow would have been graduating when you were born. Is there a section in any of those newspapers congratulating graduates?”

  “Wait, what? Graduates?”

  “College graduates, Aaron. He’s a lot older than we are. He would have been graduating college when you were born.”

  I’d peg the man to be in his late thirties, which would’ve put him as a high school graduate when I’d been born. “Just how old is he?”

  “Mid-forties. He aged well. He’s not infected with lycanthropy as far as I know. He might have been mentioned in a newspaper. According to my tentative research on him, he graduated on the Dean’s list. Since he’s from Dallas, he might’ve gotten a mention.”

  “Which school?”

  “University of Texas at Austin.”

  “Rank in the school?”

  “Best of the best. The guy’s smart.”

  “Type of degree?”

  Sassy frowned and grabbed a stack of papers, sifting through them. “Business degree from the business school. I don’t remember which type of business degree.”

  “Decided to go into business, then when his father ran for President, he was exposed as a bastard son?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  A headache brewed, and I wondered if I could function if I begged another little white pill out of Joe and his stash of painkillers he fed me to keep the whining at a minimum. “What are our other options?”