2 Blood Trail

by Tanya Huff

  “If Gary comes up tell him I said, I told you so.”

  “Uh, sure, Bertie.”

  “His wife’s down in the pistol range,” Bertie confided to Vicki as they headed out the door. “They come by most evenings after work. He hates guns but he loves her so they compromised; she only shoots targets, he doesn’t watch.”

  Bertie’s car was a huge old Country Squire station wagon, white, with wood-colored panels. The eight cylinders roared as they headed out onto the highway and then settled down into a steady seventy-five kilometers an hour purr.

  Vicki tried not to fidget at the speed—or lack of it—but the passing time gnawed at her. Hopefully Donald’s wound would remind the wer of why they had to stay close to the house after dark, but she wasn’t counting on it: As long as the wer insisted on their right to move around their land, every sunset, every extra day she spent solving this case, put another one of them in danger. If she couldn’t convince them to stay safe, and so far she’d had remarkably little luck at that, she had to find this guy as fast as possible.

  A car surged past, horn honking.

  “I wanted to get a bumper sticker that read, ‘Honk at me and I’ll shoot your tires out’ but a friend talked me out of it.” Bertie sighed. “Waste of diminishing natural resources driving that speed.” She dropped another five kilometers as she spoke, just to prove her point.

  Vicki sighed as well, but her reasons were a little different.

  Fourteen

  Bertie Reid lived in a small bungalow about a ten-minute drive from the range.

  Ten minutes had anyone else been driving, Vicki sighed silently as she got out of the car and followed the older woman into the house. “May I use your phone, I’d better call—Oh, hell, what do I call Celluci? —my driver and let him know where I am.”

  “Phone’s right there.” She pointed into the living room. “I’ll just go put the kettle on for tea. Unless you’d rather have coffee.”

  “I would actually.”

  “It’s only instant.”

  “That’s fine. Thank you.” Vicki was not a coffee snob and anything was better than tea.

  The phone, a white touch-tone, sat on of a pile of newspapers beside an overstuffed floral armchair with a matching footstool. A pole lamp with three adjustable lights rose up behind the chair and the remote for the television lay on one wide arm, partially buried under an open TV Guide.

  Obviously the command center. Vicki punched in the Heerkens number and looked around the living room while she waited for someone at the farm to answer. The room bulged with books, on shelves, on the floor, on the other pieces of furniture, classics, romances—she spotted two by Elizabeth Fitzroy, Henry’s pseudonym—mysteries, nonfiction. Vicki had seen bookstores with a less eclectic collection.

  “Hello?”

  “Rose? It’s Vicki Nelson. Is Mike Celluci still there?”

  “Uh-huh, Aunt Nadine invited him to dinner. I’ll get him.”

  Dinner. Vicki shook her head. That should prove interesting, a little alpha male posturing over the hot dogs. She heard voices in the background, then someone lifted the receiver.

  “Great timing, we just sat down. You ready to be picked up?”

  “No, not yet. Ms. Reid arrived late. I’m at her place now and likely to be for some time. She doesn’t know who the marksman is, but she thinks we can find out.”

  “How?”

  “Anyone as good as this guy is has to have left some kind of a record and if someone made a record of it, she says she has a copy. But,” she glanced around the living room, nothing appeared to be shelved in any particular order, “it may take a while to find it.”

  “Do you want me to come in?”

  “No.” The less time she spent with him, the less likely he’d restage the afternoon’s fight and she just didn’t want to deal with that right now. Letting Celluci tie her in knots wouldn’t help anyone. Her job was to find the killer and stop him, not argue the ethics of the case. “I’d rather you stayed there and kept an eye on things.”

  “What about Henry?”

  What about Henry? She wondered how his absence had been explained. Celluci swore he always knew when she lied so she chose her words carefully. “He hasn’t any training.”

  “Christ, Vicki, these are werewolves; I haven’t any training.” In her mind’s eye she saw him tossing the curl of hair back off his forehead. “And that wasn’t what I meant.”

  “Listen, Mike, I told you what I think of your organized crime theory and I haven’t got time to pander to your bruised male ego right now. You and Henry work it out.” The best defense is a good offense—she didn’t know where she’d first heard it but it made sense. “I’ll call you when I get done.” She could hear him speaking as she hung up. He didn’t sound happy. Odds are he’ll repeat it later so I haven’t missed anything.

  The early evening sunlight stretched long golden fingers into the living room. Almost two and a half hours remained until dark. Vicki found herself wishing she could push that pulsing golden ball down below the horizon, releasing Henry from the hold of day. Henry understood, unlike Mike Celluci who was trying to apply rules to a game no one was playing.

  And wasn’t I just thinking it was nice to have Celluci around, lending an aura of normality to all this? When did my life get so complicated?

  “Cream and sugar?” Bertie called from the kitchen.

  Vicki shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “Just cream,” she said, moving toward the voice. Nothing to do but keep going and hope it all untangled itself in the end.

  The second bedroom had been turned into a library, with bookshelves on three of the four walls and filing cabinets on the fourth. A huge paper-piled desk took up much of the central floor space. The desk caught Vicki’s eye.

  “It’s called a partnership desk,” Bertie told her, caressing a gleaming edge of dark brown wood with a fingertip. “It’s really two desks in a single piece of furniture.” She lifted a pile of newspapers off one of the chairs and motioned for Vicki to sit down. “Ruth and I bought it almost twenty-five years ago now. If you don’t count the cars or the house, it’s the most expensive thing we ever bought.”

  “Ruth?” Vicki asked, leveling a space on the desk blotter for her coffee.

  The older woman picked up a framed photograph off one of the bookshelves, smiled down at it for an instant, then passed it over. “Ruth was my partner. We were together for thirty-two years. She died three years ago. Heart attack.” Her smile held more grief than humor. “There hasn’t seemed to be much point in housecleaning without her around. You’ll have to excuse the mess.”

  Vicki returned the picture. “It’s hard to lose someone close,” she said softly, thinking that Nadine’s eyes had held the same stricken look when she’d spoken of her twin. “And I’d be the last person to criticize housecleaning. As long as you can find things when you need them.”

  “Yes, well . . .” Bertie set the photograph of Ruth carefully back on the shelf and waved a hand at the rows and rows of titles; History of Marksmanship, Rifle Shooting as a Sport, Position Rifle Shooting, The Complete Book of Target Shooting. “Where do we start?”

  Reaching into her purse, Vicki drew out the lists of those who used the conservation area with any frequency—both sets of birders, the nature photography club—and laid it on the desk. “I thought we’d start at the top and compare these names with first the Canadian Olympic teams, then regional award winners, then down to local winners.”

  Bertie bent over and scanned the lists. “Be easier though if you knew who had registered weapons in this group. Doesn’t the OPP have . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  The older woman looked a little startled at the tone and the muscles moved around her mouth, but Vicki’s expression helped her to hold back her curiosity. After a moment she asked, “Just the Canadian teams?”

  “To start with, yes.” Vicki took a long swallow of coffee and wondered if she should apologize. After all, it had bee
n her own damned fault she didn’t have that registration list. “If they turn up empty, we’ll start on other countries. If you have . . .”

  “I have every Olympic shooting team for the last forty years as well as the American nationals, most of the regionals, and local competitions from Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York.”

  The Canadian teams were in seven fat red binders. Even ignoring all the statistics, the photocopies of newspaper articles, and the final results, the daunting number of names to wade through started Vicki’s head throbbing again.

  If this were a television show, I’d have found a bit of shirt caught in that tree that could have belonged to only one man, there’d have been a car chase, a fight, time out to go to the bathroom, and everything wrapped up in a nice, neat tidy package in less than an hour. She laid the first list of birders beside the first binder and pushed her glasses up her nose. Welcome to the real world.

  A half a dozen times during dinner, Peter changed his mind about telling the rest of the family what he knew. A half a dozen times, he changed it back. They deserved to know. But if he could present them with the proof. . . . Back and forth. Forth and back.

  A part of him just wanted to dump the whole thing on the older wer and let them take care of it but Rose’s knee bumping randomly against his under the table kept knocking that thought out of his head. He hardly tasted a mouthful of his food because every time he inhaled, the only thing he could smell was his twin and the only thing he could think of was proving himself to her.

  “Peter! The bread?”

  “Sorry, Aunt Nadine.” He couldn’t remember her asking for the bread but her tone made it obvious she had. As he passed the plate of heavy black bread up the table he realized that whatever else he decided, he couldn’t tell his aunt. To say I think I might know who killed your twin without having the proof so she could act would just be worrying at the wound. Besides, she thought he was still a cub and treated him not much different than Daniel. He had to prove to her that he was a man. He hadn’t noticed before, but Aunt Nadine smelled very much like Rose.

  He couldn’t tell his father. His father was wounded. He couldn’t even talk it over with his father because his father didn’t do anything without talking it over with Uncle Stuart first.

  Uncle Stuart. Peter tore at a piece of meat as Uncle Stuart accepted the saltshaker from Rose. He didn’t have to touch her. Thinks he’s so . . . so shit hot. Thinks he knows everything. Well, I know something he doesn’t.

  “Whacha angry about, Peter?”

  Peter glared at his young cousin. “I’m not angry.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Smell angry. You going to jump on Daddy again?”

  “I said I’m not angry.”

  “Peter.” Stuart leaned around Daniel, brows down and teeth bared.

  Peter fought the urge to toss his head back, exposing his throat. His ears were tight against the sides of his skull, the torn edge throbbing in time with his pulse. “I didn’t do anything!” he growled, shoving away from the table and stomping out of the kitchen. You just wait, he thought as he stripped and changed. I’ll show you.

  Rose made as if to follow but Nadine reached out and pushed her back into her chair. “No,” she said.

  Stuart sighed and scratched at a scar over his eyebrow, the result of his first challenge fight as an adult male. This had to happen when there was a stranger with the family. He looked over at Celluci who was calmly wiping ketchup off his elbow—Daniel had been overly enthusiastic with the squeeze bottle again—and then at Nadine. Arrangements to separate Rose and Peter would have to be made this evening. They couldn’t put it off any longer.

  Storm skulked around the barn, looking for rats to take out his bad temper on. He didn’t find any. That didn’t help his mood. He chased a flock of starlings into the air but he didn’t manage to sink his teeth into any of them. Flopping down in the shade beside Celluci’s car, he worried at a bit of matted fur on his shoulder.

  Life sucks, he decided.

  It would be almost two hours until dark. Hours until he could prove himself. Hours until he could take that human’s throat in his teeth and shake the truth out of him. He imagined the reactions of his family, of Rose, when he walked in and declared, I know who the killer is. Or better yet, when he walked in and threw the body down on the floor.

  Then faintly, over the smell of steel and gas and oil, he caught a whiff of a familiar scent. He rose. On the passenger side of Celluci’s car, up along the edge of the window was an area that smelled very clearly of the man in the black and gold jeep.

  He frowned and licked his nose.

  Then he remembered.

  The scent he’d caught at the garage, the trace clinging to the hood release of Henry’s wrecked car, was, except for intensity, identical to the scent here and now.

  This changed things. Tonight’s meeting could only be a trap. Storm scratched at the ground and whined a little in his excitement. This was great. This alone would convince everyone to take him seriously.

  “Peter?”

  He pricked up his ears. That was his uncle’s voice, over by the house, not calling him, talking about him. Storm inched forward, until he could see around the front of the car but not be seen. Fortunately for eavesdropping, he was downwind.

  His uncle and Detective Celluci were sitting on the back porch.

  “He’s all right,” Stuart continued. “He’s just, well, a teenager.”

  Celluci snorted. “I understand. Teenagers.”

  The two men shook their heads.

  Storm growled softly. So they could dismiss him with one word could they? Say teenager like it was some kind of disease. Like it explained everything. Like he was still a child. His hackles rose and his lips curled back, exposing the full gleaming length of his fangs. He’d show them.

  Tonight.

  “. . . course, up until the early 60s, most shooters thought that no one would ever shoot a score above 1150 in an international style competition but then in 1962, a fellow named Gary Anderson shot 1157 in free-rifle. Well, there were some jaws hitting the floor that day and most folks believed he’d never be beat.” Bertie shook her head at the things most folks believed. “They were wrong, of course. That 1150 was just what they call a psychological factor and once Gary broke it, well, it got shot all to shit. So to speak. I’ll just make another pot of tea. You sure you don’t want more coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” Since she’d left the force, Vicki’s caffeine tolerance had dropped and she could feel the effect of the three cups she’d already had. Her nerves were stretched so tightly, she could almost hear them ring every time she moved. Leaving Bertie in the kitchen, she hurried to the living room and the phone.

  The evening had passed unnoticed while she’d been comparing lists of names. The sun, a disk so huge and red and clearly defined against the sky that it looked fake, trembled on the edge of the horizon. Vicki checked her watch. 8:33. Thirty-five minutes to sunset. Thirty-five minutes to Henry.

  He said his arm would be healed by tonight so maybe he and Celluci could stake out that tree together and she could get Peter to drive in and pick her up. She snickered at the vision that idea presented as she sat down in the armchair and flicked on one of the lights. She’d definitely had too much coffee.

  The surnames of eleven Olympic shooters had matched with members in the local clubs. Time for the next step.

  “Hello, Mrs. Scott? My name is Terri Hanover, I’m a writer, and I’m doing an article on Olympic contestants. I was wondering if you were related to a Brian Scott who was a member of the Canadian rifle team at the ’76 Olympics in Montreal? No? But you went to Montreal. . . . That’s very interesting but, unfortunately, I really need to talk to the contestants themselves.” Vicki stifled a sigh. “Sorry to bother you. Good night.”

  One down. Ten to go. Lies to get at truth.

  Hi, there. My name is Vicki Nelson and I’m a private investigator. Have you or any members of your family been shooting werewolves? />
  She pushed her glasses up her nose and punched in the next number without any real hope of success.

  For Henry the moment of sunset came like the moment between life and death. Or perhaps, death and life. One instant he wasn’t. The next, awareness began to lift the shroud of day from his senses. He lay still, listening to his heartbeat, his breathing, the rustle of the sheet against the hairs on his chest as his lungs filled and emptied. He felt the weave of the fabric beneath him, the mattress beneath that, the bed beneath both. The scent of wer wiped out even the scent of self but, all things considered, that didn’t surprise him. Redefined for another night, he opened his eyes and sat up, extending his senses beyond his sanctuary.

  Vicki wasn’t in the house. Mike Celluci was.

  Wonderful. Why hadn’t she gotten rid of him? And for that matter, where was she?

  He flexed his arm and peered down at the patch of new skin along the top of his shoulder. Although still a little tender, the flesh dimpled where the new muscle fiber had yet to add bulk, the wound had essentially healed. The day had given him back his strength and the hunger had faded to a whisper he could easily ignore.

  As he dressed, he considered Detective-Sergeant Celluci. The wer had obviously accepted him, for Henry could feel no fear or anger in his sensing of the mortal. While he still thought that burning the memory of the wer and the witnessed change out of Celluci’s mind was the safest plan, he couldn’t make a decision without knowing how things had progressed over the course of the day. He wished he knew what suspicions the man harbored about him, what he’d said to Vicki last night, and what Vicki had said in return.

  “Only one way to find out.” He threw open the door and stepped out into the hall. Mike Celluci was in the kitchen. He’d join him there.

  Just before the sun slid below the horizon, Storm leapt the fence behind the barn and using the fence bottom as cover, moved away from the house. If his uncle saw him, he’d call him back. If Rose saw him, she’d demand an explanation of where he thought he was going without her. Both would mean disaster so he used every trick he’d learned in stalking prey to stay hidden.