Still feeling the effects of the alcohol she had consumed, Sarah narrowed her eyes at the card. Had she left someone’s number out? This was her apartment, her life. If Jaime didn’t like it, too bad. She liked him, and she wanted to please him, but she belonged to no one.
He turned the card toward her, and she saw the blue shield embossed on it.
She smiled with relief. “Some lady cop gave that to me.”
“Did you rob a bank?”
The playful tenor of his voice made her crave him even more. “She was here about Professor Glenzer’s murder.”
Jaime set the card down again. “And you’re one of ’the usual suspects’?”
“Can’t you tell? I’m dangerous.”
Jaime unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “Let’s see about that.”
Biting her lower lip, Sarah skipped into her bedroom, where she peeled off her one-piece garment, tossed it aside, and stood naked beside the bed. Jaime’s shadow crossed the wall to her left, and her body trembled with longing. When he entered, she saw that he had already removed his shirt. As she watched him shed his shoes and slacks, she admired his lithe physique. Stepping before her, he cupped her breasts, then pinched her nipples. Her body shuddered.
Feeling wet between her legs, she pulled him onto the bed, where his body lay down on hers, his features masked by darkness. She raised her lips to meet his, and he plunged his tongue into her mouth and bither lips. Unable to control herself, she moaned, shifting her body beneath his. She spread her legs, inviting him inside, and he entered her. Dragging her fingers through his short black hair, she slid her hands down his back, raking his flesh with her long fingernails. His muscles flexed beneath fine body hair, and he explored her sensitive spots with his erection. Her eyes opened wide and she gasped, startled by his size.
Astonishment and a touch of alarm crept into her voice. “Oh … Oh, God!”
She squeezed his buttocks, and she felt the muscles along his back ripple. He rose on his arms and thrust into her with aggressive force. Sarah closed her eyes again, her moans becoming whimpers. Then Jaime rolled her over, facedown on the bed, and jerked her up onto her knees. She arched her back as he reentered her, then rocked against him. His breathing grew heavier, matching her excitement.
With tears forming in her eyes, Sarah sucked in her breath. She felt his fingers dig into her biceps and his knees press against hers. Multiple orgasms shook her one after another. She felt his hot fluid flooding her and she cried out, a rapturous sensation shaping her features. She collapsed on the bed, wet hair splayed out over the pillow and her body covered with a sheen of warm sweat. With his weight still on top of her, she ground her crotch against the bed. He remained inside her, hot and throbbing.
Laughter escaped her lips. “Goddamn, that was good!”
When he didn’t respond, she opened her eyes and glanced at the mirror on the wall. She didn’t see him at first, just a black shadow above her. But he was there all right. She felt him thrusting again. Sharp pain lanced her back, as if ten knives had sliced her all at once.
“Hey!”
Then her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and what she saw reflected in the mirror made her scream for her life.
CHAPTER NINE
“Christ,” Mace said, standing in the center of the bloodbath. Patty had arrived ahead of him and Willy just after him, but Morrissey had been the first detective on-site. Blood dripped from the ceiling and walls. One half of a glistening skeleton occupied the soaking wet bed. Tissue clung to the furniture. Organs marked the floor. Cool night air blew through the shattered window. Somewhere in the room a pair of excited flies buzzed.
“We were here today,” Patty said in a bewildered voice.
Mace raised his eyebrows.
“One of Glenzer’s students. I was so tired I left my notes back on my desk.”
Mace faced Morrissey, who flipped through his notepad.
“Landlady called forty minutes ago when she heard screams coming from this apartment. As soon as she hung up, she heard glass breaking. When the uniforms busted in, they found what they believe to be the remains of Sarah Harper”—he gestured at the bed—“age twenty-one.”
“Pretty blonde girl,” Willy said in a soft voice.
Patty nodded. “I remember now.”
Mace stared at the wall above the bed. A single word had been scrawled on it in blood.
“‘Nahual,’” Willy said. “Mexican, I think.”
“Maybe the perp is an illegal werewolf,” Morrissey said. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. I’m Puerto Rican.”
Morrissey rolled his eyes in a like there’s a difference manner.
Mace gestured at the bloody writing. “I don’t want anyone from the press to see this. If any of them want to bitch, they know who to contact. I want a media blackout.”
Nodding, Patty scanned the floor. “I don’t see a head.”
Mace called Gibbons on his cell phone. “Don, I need you to do a search on a word for me.… Yes, again. Ready? N-A-H-U-A-L. We think it’s Mexican. There may be several different definitions. I want all of them. Give this to someone who can keep their mouth shut.”
They stood in silence for a moment, overwhelmed by the violence radiating from the walls.
“Have any neighbors come forward?” Patty said.
Morrissey snorted. “Right.”
“Everything is just like this morning.”
“Not everything,” Mace said, moving over to the window. “This time the window was broken from the inside.”
Joining him, Patty looked for shards of glass on the floor. “You’re right.”
“Front door wasn’t broken,” Morrissey said.
“She knew the perps,” Patty said. “She let them in.”
Mace nodded. “Let’s find that landlady.”
In the downstairs lobby, Morrissey led the detectives to a woman in her late fifties who wore orange slippers and a matching bathrobe spotted with coffee stains. The first officer on the scene stood watching at the front door.
“Mrs. Welsh, these are my colleagues. Do you think you can answer their questions like you did mine?”
Sniffling, the landlady wiped her nose and nodded. “I’ll try.”
Morrissey looked at the other detectives, and Patty said, “Can you tell us anything about Miss Harper’s personal habits?”
Mrs. Welsh’s face grew stern. “I didn’t approve of them.”
Patty cocked one eyebrow. “Why not?”
“She was always bringing different men home with her. I don’t think I ever saw the same face twice.”
“Did you see her with anyone tonight?”
“No, but I heard them on the stairs.”
“How many people did you hear?”
“Just two: Sarah and her date. If you can call him that.”
“Are you sure there wasn’t another person with them?”
Mrs. Welsh’s voice grew indignant. “I’m positive. I’ve lived here for thirty-one years. I know the sound of these stairs”—she pointed at the stairway behind them—“and there were only two people on them.”
“Is it possible Sarah was already upstairs, and two men went up the stairs?”
Mrs. Welsh offered a patronizing smile. “No, dear. I heard Sarah and one man on the stairs. I know the sound of her drunken laughter, just like I know the other sounds she makes. These apartments aren’t soundproof, you know.” She turned to Mace. “If I’d seen them, I would have stopped them. I don’t allow dogs in here.”
Mace raised his eyebrows. “There was a dog in here tonight?”
“There sure as hell was! You should have heard it carrying on while she was screaming. I’ve never heard such barking. It was sickening.”
The detectives exchanged uneasy looks.
They moved outside, where two POs and yellow crime scene tape held back a growing crowd. The number of spectators had doubled since Mace’s arrival. Cameras flashed, and he detected severa
l camcorders pointed in his direction. Across the street, silhouettes pressed against almost every window of a brick building.
Mace toed the shards of glass on the sidewalk. Looking at the broken window above, he saw the full moon shining in the dark sky.
Rodrigo Gomez …
Somewhere behind him, a man howled like a wolf, and the crowd issued a communal laugh.
“Another Full Moon Killer,” Patty said beside him.
Looking at her, he shrugged. “That’s a second-floor window. No fire escape, no tree limb …”
“Just that ledge.”
“Still, a far jump. Especially for a man with a dog.”
“You think the landlady was right about there being just one perp?”
“Hard to imagine. Someone standing in this crowd must have seen something. Use the uniforms to help you round them up, and get statements before it’s too late.”
Morrissey joined them. “Am I the primary on this, Tony?”
“Why? Do you want it?”
“Not on your life.”
“Good, because Patty’s in charge. Help her run the crime scene, and handle the paperwork so she can concentrate on more important matters.”
“Whatever you say.”
Two news vans competed for a parking space at the curb. Mace turned to Patty when Willy walked over. “I’m going home for a few hours. Stay in touch.”
His cell phone rang as he unlocked his apartment door.
“We’ve got about a dozen witnesses so far,” Gibbons said on the other end.
Stepping inside, Mace said, “And?”
“You’re not going to believe this.”
He closed the door. “Try me.”
“They all claim they saw more or less the same thing: a big black dog broke through the window, landed on the sidewalk, and ran away—on two legs.”
Mace hesitated before locking the door. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as a wake. What scares me is that they’re serious too.”
“Do they know each other? Maybe they’re pulling our detectives’ legs.”
“Some, not all. You home yet?”
“Just walked in.”
“Go to our favorite channel.”
Entering the living room, Mace picked up the remote control and aimed it at the TV, which brightened to New York One News. He saw Connie Kellog, an attractive brunette who had replaced Cheryl, standing outside Sarah Harper’s building, surrounded by a crowd.
“—that’s right, ‘nahual,’ the Mexican word for ‘werewolf.’ This is Connie Kellog, New York One News.”
Damn it! Someone had already leaked to the press. “Something tells me CSU hasn’t finished at the crime scene yet.”
“According to Diega, they’re just setting up now. Patty’s making a list of all the uniforms who saw the writing on the wall.”
“Forget about that. It could have been the landlady or another tenant.”
“What do you want them to do?”
“Have them bring those witnesses into the squad room. Maybe they’ll tell you what they really saw—if they really saw anything—when they’re sitting in an interview room.”
“Copy that.”
“I’ll be in before shift change. No one signs out. I’m authorizing the OT.” As Mace shut off his cell phone, he heard a creak behind him.
Turning, he saw Cheryl standing in the bedroom doorway, dressed in her robe.
“This is going to be a bad one, isn’t it?”
“It already is.”
CHAPTER TEN
Exhausted after a twelve-hour day, Peter Danior drove his unlicensed gypsy cab over the Queens Bridge to Long Island City at around 5:00 AM. He had earned three hundred dollars for the day, better than usual. Once he deducted his gas money, food expenses, and coffee tab, he had just over two hundred dollars left in his pocket. Aishe would be pleased, though he doubted she’d show it.
His beautiful wife still had too much of the old country in her blood. While Peter had lived in the United States since he was twelve, Aishe had arrived only two years earlier, her marriage to him arranged by their parents a decade earlier. They were Gitanos: Roma people. Gypsies. Peter’s family lived in Spain, Aishe’s in France. Peter had been thrilled to learn Aishe would be his bride, but marriage had proven difficult. Money preoccupied his wife, who made as much telling fortunes part-time as he did driving his cab full-time. They constantly bickered about financial matters.
Aishe refused to take an American name, as he had, and insisted on calling him Pitti rather than Peter. She hated New York City and wanted to own a house in what she called “the real suburbs.” Peter hadlived in Queens most of his adult life and had no desire to leave. But if moving would bring peace to his marriage, he was willing to work hard to buy her a home wherever she desired. He wanted a son and hoped he’d grow up in a stable, loving environment.
Peter drove through his neighborhood, which had become crowded and noisy over the years. Beyond the elevated train tracks, Manhattan gleamed beneath a full moon. He pulled into his driveway and shut off the engine. Getting out, he faced the white siding on his little house and sauntered from side to side as he mounted the concrete steps leading to the front door.
Aishe had turned on the kitchen light, and he heard bacon sizzling in a frying pan. Unzipping his green army jacket, he hung it on a coat hook and walked through the dark hallway to the kitchen. Aishe moved into his vision, her back to him, dressed in a baize robe. Her long, curly black hair hung down to the middle of her back, and he admired the shape of her ass. Feeling himself growing hard, he appreciated their life together when they weren’t fighting.
“Aishe?”
She looked over her shoulder, a startled expression on her face. “Oh, Pitti, you frightened me! I didn’t hear you come in.” She spoke in a heavy French accent.
He stared past her at the frying pan. “You’re cooking for me.”
“Is that so unusual?”
Yes, he thought. She never got up early to feed him, so he usually cooked for himself. Pulling a chair across the linoleum, he sat at the table. She had laid the early morning edition of the New York Post on the table for him.
What’s gotten into her? She must want something. But what? She had her own money.
Aishe served him a cup of black coffee, then returned to the stove.
Peter sipped the bitter liquid and set the cup back down on its saucer. Taking the tabloid in both hands, he gazed at the headline:“Werewolf” Stalks City! A photo of a smiling blonde woman faced him from beneath the lurid headline. The image blurred and he felt light-headed. As he wrinkled his brow, he heard what sounded like a footstep behind him. With Aishe standing before him, he knew that was impossible.
Lowering the paper, he saw the upside-down reflection of a man in the polished surface of the silver fruit bowl on the table. He turned to identify the intruder, but a wire garotte ensnared his throat and he gasped for air. Clawing at the wire as the garotte crushed his windpipe, he stared at the reflection.
Djordje, his brother-in-law! With his face turning scarlet, he kicked at the edge of the table, knocking over the fruit bowl to catch Aishe’s attention.
Turning off the stove, his wife opened the silverware drawer. Then she faced him with a silver carving knife clutched in her right hand. What in God’s name was happening? Aishe approached him with the knife poised to strike.
“You think I didn’t know?” Aishe said. “I knew. So did my brother. We always suspected. You just couldn’t control yourself, could you?”
Peter’s head felt ready to explode. If he could just loosen the garotte …
“You monster!”
Aishe drove the knife straight into his heart, and he stared down at her hand with disbelieving eyes. Raising them once more, he gaped at her snarling features as she twisted the blade.
“Loup-garou!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“The Custer Wolf, Phantom, Rags the Digger, Three Toes, Bigfoot, Digger—
these were the true legends of the Old West. Collectively, these rogue wolves destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of livestock owned by settlers, and it took as long as ten years for bounty hunters to kill some of them. They were known on the plains as ‘outlaws,’ ‘monsters,’ and ‘criminals.’”
—Transmogrification in Native American Mythology, Terrence Glenzer
Mace stood in the center of the squad room, with Patty on his right and Landry on his left. Willy stood leaning on the water cooler, nibbling on a Pop-Tart, and detectives crowded the bull pen. Mace had skipped his morning run again, but at least he’d caught a few hours of sleep. He held up a copy of The News for everyone to see. “As hard as it may be to swallow, we have reason to believe that Glenzer and Harper were each murdered by a single perp.”
This generated skeptical whispers.
“And as this morning’s headlines suggest, this nut thinks he’s a werewolf, or he wants us to think he is.”
A sea of heads shook in unison.
“Don, would you mind telling us all what ‘nahual’ means?”
Don Gibbons stepped forward. The sergeant, who had already stayed well beyond the end of his shift, had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Large sweat stains spread from his underarms.
“‘Nahual’ is a South American term,” he said before focusing on the printout in his hand. “According to Aztec and Mayan mythology, it means a ‘spirit being,’ like the animal totem of North American Indians. Everyone has a nahual watching over them and protecting them, like a guardian angel. In Mexico, shamans, mystics, and healers are sometimes called nahuales. The Aztecs believed that a nahual had the power to turn into a were-creature, like a wolf, a jaguar, or a coyote. Aztec hunters claimed that when they sometimes killed an animal during the night, it turned into a human corpse the next day. The nahual can only transform at night. The Santa Inquisition hunted nahuales for many years.”
As Gibbons spoke, Mace saw Carl Stokes enter the squad room and stand at the back, unnoticed by the detectives. As CPI—Commissioner of Public Information—Stokes cut a sharp figure: tall and well dressed, the former TV crime reporter knew how to project a commanding image. He had been appointed CPI, a civilian position, by Deputy Commissioner Patrick Dunegan, and he served his master well.
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