Fang and Claw

by Markie Madden

  She scanned the case file and noted that Colton had added the information about their bar fight victim. 28 years old, Dennis Colby was a student at the University of Texas, Dallas campus, who’d been waiting for a friend that never showed. From what bartender Shaun had said, he’d been just minding his own business and drinking a beer when he was inexplicably attacked.

  Lacey poked her head out the office door, but still didn’t see Colton. Disgusted, she sat back down at her desk and reached for the phone. Before she could dial, she heard a knock at the door. It was Colton. He had an old paper file in his hand.

  “You’ve saved me a phone call.” Her voice was harsh with reprimand.

  “I just came back up from the library.” He referred to one of the storage rooms in the building’s basement where one could find some old reference books and dusty reports that hadn’t yet been added to the department’s computer database.

  She wrinkled her nose. “What on Earth did you go down there for?”

  “The computer thought it had a similarity between our rape case and a really old one. It directed me to this file.” He handed it to her.

  “And?”

  “Well, once I’d looked through it, I realized that the suspect in the case, though never tried or convicted, was never mentioned to be an Immortal. I Googled it; that was way back in the day, but people were aware of the Undead even then.”

  Lacey flipped through the case file. “So what you’re saying is that this suspect is likely to be dead?”

  “That was my take.” He shrugged. “But I thought you might want to look at it before I return it.”

  “Yes, I will. Give me a few minutes.”

  When he had left the office, she turned to her computer, a bit pleased that Colton had tugged this particular line just from a hunch and the computer’s suggestion. She added in the impressions from both Shellie and Linus, even though they weren’t ‘official’ reports, in their case book. She put them into the notes section because it would help her to remember the discussions she’d had with the techs later on when the reports did come in. Then, she turned to the old file Colton had left her.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve flipped through a file like this! She thought in amusement. Sometimes I miss the good old days. She winced as one of the sheets sliced her thumb. Or, maybe not! Much of the ink on the paper had begun to fade, but she was still able to read the bulk of the information. The case had been a rape, but there its similarity ended.

  The main person of interest, a man named Blayze Sherman, had been the complainant’s live-in boyfriend, and, as Colton had mentioned, he had never been tried. There was no mention that the man might have been an Immortal, and as Lacey did the math, she understood that the man would have been well over one hundred twenty-five years old now, if he were still alive.

  Even still, Lacey turned to her computer, bringing up the Public Records database. Anyone who was ever born, married, divorced, registered (in the case of the Undead), or suspected or convicted of a crime could be found in the records. Here the government was very strict; you would not find boxes of dusty paper files of birth certificates or marriage licenses anywhere. All this information had been input many years ago.

  She found Sherman’s birth certificate, saw that there was never a marriage license issued under his name, and learned that he’d been convicted of shoplifting and drug possession as a young man. She also discovered a death certificate for the man. Which she knew from experience could be faked. Lacey herself had done it many times, when Immortals still had to hide from humans. Lacey called up an I.D. photograph of Blayze Sherman and studied it closely.

  Looking back and forth between the paper police report of the assault and to the information on Sherman from public records, she found no hint at all that he could have been Undead. His photograph had given Lacey a sense of familiarity, as if she had met him sometime in the past, but couldn’t remember when. Or if she had met him; maybe she were projecting similarities of someone else she knew onto him. Eventually, she sighed in frustration, and set the file aside. I’m not going to let him take this back downstairs just yet.

  She touched a button and had the entire record on Sherman, with the exception of the ragged paper file, transferred to her tablet where she could have easy access to it later on. Something about that file was nagging at her.

  Her computer beeped, and she turned to it. Pulling up the case information, she saw that Thomas had added his sketch to the database. A few taps of the keys, and she had the artist’s rendition up on the big screen. Eyes narrowing, she called up the I.D. photograph of Blayze Sherman and split the screen so that the two images were side by side.

  The I.D. photo, while old, was still in good condition. Lacey saw a square-jawed man staring back at her, his head covered with long, tangled brown hair. She could barely discern the flat lips beneath an unkempt brown mustache and beard. He had a very short neck, giving his head the appearance of just sitting on broad, heavily-muscled shoulders. Dark brown eyes peeked through slitted eyelids.

  Next, Lacey contemplated the sketch. Of course, the artist’s impression had been drawn in shades of gray, but there was a similarity to what she could see of Sherman’s jaw structure, and Thomas’ drawing. The sketch didn’t show eye color, and she glanced back at the computer to see if the artist had noted it. The best the victim could identify was “dark”, according to Thomas, which of course meant nothing; colored contact lenses could transform any eye color to another.

  The man in the sketch had shorter hair, and no beard or mustache, but that, too, was a characteristic that could be changed with ease. Out of curiosity, she ran the sketch through the department’s facial-recognition software, which was extremely sophisticated, and leaned a hip against the corner of the desk while the machine worked. A few minutes later, and the computer had found five up-to-date I.D. photos of men with similar appearances.

  One by one, she added the new photos, comparing them to the picture on file for Blayze Sherman, and the sketch done by Thomas. The fourth image seemed to be the closest match, and she spent several minutes looking back and forth between the three.

  The current I.D. was for a man named Jason Blyge, and had an inner-city last known address listed. The two photos looked quite similar to her, but she wanted her partner’s opinion of it as well. May never get used to thinking of him as my partner! She tried and failed to repress a quick shudder.

  Leaving the split-screened images on the board, she rose from the desk and stuck her head out into the bullpen. She saw Colton’s back as he hunched over his computer, slowly punching the keys with the forefinger of each hand. “Colton!”

  He started, then tossed a glance over his shoulder. “What’s up?”

  “Sketch is in.” She retreated back into her office.

  In moments, Colton’s bulk appeared, taking up the breadth of the doorway. Lacey waved a hand at the screen. “What do you think of that?”

  He turned to gaze at the three images on the screen, and she stood behind him with arms crossed over her chest.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally, an uncertain tone to his voice. “I guess it’s close. I mean, the hair’s different and all, but that can be cut. Did Thomas say anything about eye color?”

  “Just dark.”

  He made a noncommittal noise. “Well, what do you want to do, boss?”

  This time, she noticed no sarcasm in his voice. “Have some uniforms pick him up,” Lacey ordered. “I want to have a talk with Mr. Blyge.”

  6

  “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” ~~Mark Twain

  Lacey stood at the one way glass in the observation room, hands clasped at her back. She watched the brown-haired man sitting inside the tiny room, his cuffed hands pinned to a ring welded to the hard, cold metal of the table. The lights inside the interrogation cell were blazing, and the heat had been turned up high enough to make most people uncomfortable. That, and the fact that Lacey had left Jas
on Blyge sitting alone in the cell for almost an hour, were all techniques designed to break down the resolve of a potential suspect during interview.

  Colton, standing next to Lacey, shifted his weight with a sound betraying his more-than-obvious restlessness. He seemed to be running out of patience just sitting and watching their person-of-interest while he sat and fidgeted in the uncomfortable metal seat which was bolted to the floor. It was positioned so that, since the person sitting in it couldn’t scoot it closer to the table, he was forced to lean forward slightly in order to avoid stretching his arms out in an unpleasant manner. “How do you want to do this?”

  She never took her eyes off the man in the interview room. “I’ll make it known that you’re a Wolf right off the bat; he’ll be expecting poor treatment and behavior on your part. I want you to use that, and his own fear, against him.”

  “So, Good Cop/Bad Cop?” He chuckled as if amused by the thought. “Guess I can play Bad Cop well enough.”

  “I’ll be making nice, and trying to temper your anger, and the more I try, the angrier I want you to get.” She looked away from the glass now, at the tablet she had just pulled from her pocket. “I have the dates of all three cases here, we need to find out if he’s alibied for them. Has he asked for a lawyer?”

  “Nope. Cocky bastard. Or else just plain stupid.”

  “Okay, let’s hope he doesn’t. Come on, and follow my lead. Don’t mention Sherman yet, we’ll hold that card for a while. In fact, I think we should dig a little deeper into that old case you found.”

  Lacey stepped into the interrogation room, and Colton closed the door as he followed behind her. The suspect looked up at them, and Lacey thought she detected a touch of fear cross his face before he covered it up with a bland look. He shifted his arms a bit; the design of the cuffs and ring on the table was such to prevent much movement on the suspect’s part, and he was unable to rest his elbows on the smooth metal surface. By the time Lacey and Colton had seated themselves in chairs across from him, Jason had managed a look of polite confusion.

  “Jason Blyge?” Lacey asked after consulting her tablet and setting it to record.

  “That’s me.” He had a surprisingly high-pitched voice for someone of his stature, and he gave Lacey a quick, almost flirtatious grin.

  Colton slapped his hands onto the table with a loud bang! “You were read your rights when they brought you in?” His voice was a vicious snarl.

  “Yeah, I—”

  “Good, then we don’t have to go through that nonsense again, and we can get started.” Colton snapped, his gruff voice drowning out what the other man was going to say.

  Lacey gave Colton a soft, wordless murmur, then turned to Jason. “You have to excuse my partner.” She infused a kind tone to her statement. “He’s a Wolf.” She lowered her voice as if confiding in the suspect. “You know how they can get.”

  Jason shifted with a nervous chuckle. “Oh, yeah, I used to work with one.” He sounded as if he were afraid to say the word. “But I’m confused. The goons who brought me in didn’t tell me why I’m here.”

  “We’ll be the ones asking the questions around here.” Colton growled low in his throat and Lacey saw their suspect tremble.

  “Detective.” She looked right at Jason as she chided her partner. “This is Detective Colton, I’m Lieutenant Anderson, and we just need to ask you a couple questions, is all.”

  Colton leaned far enough over the table to invade the other man’s personal space. “And we don’t take kindly to liars.” It was a thinly-veiled threat.

  Though it unnerved her to do so, Lacey laid a pale hand onto her partner’s arm.

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” Jason stuttered. “I have no problem being cooperative with the law.”

  “Then this should be easy.” Lacey read his full name and current address aloud for the record. “Is this correct?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the suspect answered.

  “And what is your employment?”

  “I’m a window washer.”

  “I beg your pardon? Do people really pay well for you to do this?” Colton seemed incredulous.

  “Well, yeah, windows gotta get cleaned. We do all the windows, like, for the big high rises downtown?” Jason somehow managed to make a statement into a question.

  “You mean you’re one of those crazy bastards that sits up there all day in those little cages?”

  Jason looked from Colton to Lacey and back again before answering his question. “Yes, that’s right. It’s the only way to clean the windows in buildings like that. The company I work for specializes in it.”

  “Interesting.” Lacey murmured as she made a note in her tablet. “Isn’t that frightening?”

  The man shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  “Can you tell us where you were, let’s see...” Colton snatched his own device out of his pocket and turned it on. He read the date and time aloud.

  “I was at home.”

  “Alone?” Lacey raised her brows.

  “Yeah, I’m not married, and my girlfriend had to work so she didn’t stay with me the night before.”

  “We’re going to need to talk with her. What’s her name?” Colton asked with a ferocious tone.

  “Jenna. Jenna Stiles.”

  “Where were you yesterday, about three a.m.?” Colton’s eyes bored into the suspect.

  “Three? Likely in bed. I got a job!” Jason gave Lacey a look that said please, make it stop!

  “How about this date?” Lacey read off the day and approximate time of the apartment home invasion.

  Jason screwed up his eyes for a moment. “Let me think. Well, I was at work.”

  “All day?” Colton demanded. “Where?”

  “I’d have to check my log to be sure, but I think it was Fountain Place that day.”

  “Your employer can verify this?”

  “Sure.” Jason answered Lacey, then rattled off the name of the company he worked for. “It’s easy enough, we have to log in and out of the scaffold with our I.D. card for safety reasons.”

  Lacey cut her eyes toward Colton but didn’t say anything in response. Colton seemed to be engrossed in whatever notes he was inputting into his tablet. She had programmed an alarm on her tablet before walking into the room, and it pinged as if right on cue. She pulled up the suspect sketch from the database, nudged Colton with her elbow, and pretended to show him the image on her screen. She held the tablet so that it somewhat shielded their faces. Pitching her voice so low that she knew humans couldn’t hear it, she whispered, “Look really mad, then we’ll both get up and leave for a minute.”

  He didn’t bat an eye, didn’t look confused even for the briefest of moments, instead just snarled and jumped to his feet. Again, Lacey laid a cool hand on his arm. It somehow seemed easier to do, this time. Without so much as a word to the suspect, she steered Colton out of the room, slamming the door hard behind her.

  Colton held his tongue until they had re-entered the observation room. Only then did he yank his arm from her grasp.

  “What the hell?” As soon as she freed him, he moved to the other side of the tiny booth.

  “Thanks for playing along,” she replied blandly. “You did good in there. Especially there at the end.”

  She turned to glance through the glass, watching their suspect squirm in the hard metal chair. She could see beads of perspiration lining his brow under the blazing lights.

  “I could have broke him!”

  “We’ll let him think that this sketch just now came in, then maybe we’ll surprise him with the Blayze Sherman connection. That’s why I wanted us out of the room for a moment. See how he’s uncertain now, wondering what would make us leave in the middle of the interview?”

  Colton seemed to pull in his temper long enough to look at the suspect. “Okay, yeah. So what now?”

  “Coffee.”

  “You want coffee?” His voice showed his surprise.

  “No, but you do. So go get one, and we’ll s
tand here and watch him sweat while you drink it.”

  He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind, then shrugged and left the room. While he was gone, Lacey contacted the company that Jason claimed to work for, and verified that he had, indeed been on the job at the time of the home invasion. However, Fountain Place was near enough to the crime scene to give her pause. And he had no alibi for the other attacks. There’s something off about him, she thought with a sense of unease. I just can’t quite put my finger on it.

  She also contacted the first victim, finding her at home, to show her both the sketch and the photo I.D. of Jason Blyge. Angelica still had the wariness that Lacey had known before from victims of assault; she wasn’t certain it would go away in the near future. The young woman couldn’t positively identify Blyge as the man who attacked her, only said that he “might have looked like your drawing.” She was unable to reach Dennis Colby or Betsy Smith to show them the images. Frustrated, Lacey turned her back to the impact-resistant glass.

  Colton returned a few short minutes later, and to her surprise, he carried two recycled cups in his paw-like hands. “Chai tea,” he muttered as he grudgingly handed her the flimsy paper cup. She managed not to flinch when her skin touched his.

  She lifted an eyebrow questioningly. “Are you sucking up?” She was somewhat amused.

  “I know you prefer it over coffee,” he grumbled as if embarrassed to be caught in an act of kindness. “Just trying to be nice.”

  “I didn’t realize you had ever even noticed.”

  “Hey!” He seemed offended. “I am a detective, you know!” He took a sip of the steaming brew and looked through the glass at their suspect. “Anyway, I kind of figure we’re stuck with each other, for now, so I might as well try to make the best of it.”