The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  The agent then asked for a hair sample from each of them.

  Eleri offered it but pointed out that hers was relatively red, whereas the girl’s was brown. Also, hers was in a ponytail. She was an FBI agent, so wherever she was could become a crime scene at any moment. It rarely ever did, but today she felt vindicated when the investigator agreed to get a sample later if they needed a cross match.

  Donovan had likely shed all over the scene. Guys often did. Any man with any real arm or leg hair couldn’t help it, unless he wanted to shave everything—eyebrows included. That look usually meant hard-core swimmer or serial killer. Donovan already admitted to being neither. For a moment she imagined that look on him. Her face pulled into something distasteful as Donovan voluntarily plucked a hair and handed it into a baggie.

  Frowning, the agent held the bag up to the light, squinting his eyes for a better look. “Wow, your hair will be easy to rule out. It’s thick!”

  Donovan clearly didn’t understand. “Lots of people have thick hair.”

  “No, not the volume, the shaft. The hair itself is almost twice the width of normal human hair.” He was grinning now. Something new for the lab.

  Donovan was not grinning, in fact he looked worried. Eleri shook her head at him, wondered how to convey that it was highly unlikely the lab would put the whole thing together on the basis of a single hair sample. How did she tell him not to worry about something she technically didn’t know yet? How did she get all that across without speaking it out loud in front of the agent who was all happy with a new anomaly to play with? She couldn’t.

  Turning back toward the body, Eleri saw that the lights were up and on, the sun already starting to ride low in the sky. Sunset took a long time out in the open, the trees the only thing to thwart it before it hit the horizon. Accepting a paper suit from one of the techs, she climbed into it, oh so excited to add another layer of clothing out here in the Texas heat.

  She donned her face shield and turned to get to work.

  SEVEN HOURS LATER, the body was out of the ground. Eleri sat back on her heels, or she hoped she did. Everything from her butt down was mostly numb.

  The majority of the work had been performed on hands and knees, carefully scraping and bagging dirt, stopping for photos and water breaks. The techs had a timer to tell them when to rotate people out; they had mandatory amounts of water a person had to consume in order to stay active. They had been working scenes in Texas for years and knew that the heat kills. Not wishing to become part of the scene herself, Eleri followed their protocol.

  The girl’s body was extracted with the same care an archaeological team would use to pull a dinosaur out of rock. They used tiny trowels to avoid disrupting her skin, which at this point would break easily, oozing decomposed fluids and disturbing the scene. They cleared her piece by piece with tiny brushes, took swabs, and sealed them in closed containers as she was slowly exposed. Donovan occasionally surreptitiously sniffed at her.

  When her face was revealed, it was as Bernard had stated. They received updates from Agent Bozeman periodically, learning that Mr. Collier buried her face up, head toward the trees, hands at her side. More details came in, all proving true. They sent a few questions back for verification, and the trucker answered each correctly. Her shirt was red, she wore jeans, no jewelry. One shoe had come untied when he dragged her. In the end, it all showed that Donovan was right: Collier had buried the girl.

  With the front of the girl exposed, Eleri spotted something and stopped the team for a moment. Using gloved hands and another person to brace her, she reached out and gently moved the neckline of the plain red T-shirt. It was on backward, the tag now in the front reading “100% Cotton.”

  Had she dressed in a hurry?

  The tag nagged at her for a little while, tugged at far portions of her brain, telling her the jeans were important, too. The team was carefully lifting the body from the ground, commenting how intact she still was after nearly two weeks out here, when it came to Eleri.

  No mixed fibers. There was a biblical mandate about wearing clothing of only one fiber. She wasn’t sure it was important, but despite the jeans and sneakers, Baxter’s cult was following some archaic rules.

  All the evidence said this was Faith, Jonah’s friend. Her face, relatively preserved, looked enough like his drawing to make at least that verification. Bozeman had sent Charity through all the pictures; she corroborated every name Jonah had given them. The question was: was she also Jennifer?

  Following the team the short distance to where they set the body on the bag laid out on the gurney and waiting, Eleri was lost in thought. She almost missed the comment as one of the team members moved the clothing around for a better inspection, “Something odd is happening here. She’s still preserved, maybe has some drug or chemical in her system? But look here,” He pointed and Eleri looked, too. “She was beaten pretty badly, just before she died.”

  21

  Exhausted and weary to his bones, Donovan climbed into the driver’s seat of the small car. Somehow Eleri managed to be relatively graceful despite the fact that she claimed her ass was asleep and that she managed to slide like raw meat into her designated seat. While he didn’t think he was at his level best, he was in better condition to drive than she was.

  “Do we find a place in Brownwood?”

  She had pointed out earlier that they needed showers. Though their paper suits had been peeled off and tucked into evidence bags, the two of them still smelled like they’d just dug up a rotting corpse. Her comments reminded him that most people found that smell to be extremely unpleasant.

  He leaned back, watching as she did the same and thought that the smell of cat that had been in the car when they got it was going to be the least of the rental car company’s concern now.

  Her body may have draped listlessly in the seat, but her voice was firm. “Oh hell no, we are not spending another night in this town.”

  He almost laughed but couldn’t quite summon the energy. Eleri’s comment also reminded him that they were homeless. Their bags, their equipment, it was all in the trunk of the car. Donovan had checked on it before climbing in—he’d become suspicious when traffic on the lonely back road had picked up about four hundred percent after the ambulance came out to fetch Collier.

  It was inevitable. Having lived in several very tiny towns over the years, Donovan had come to understand that the reputation of the residents breathing gossip wasn’t exactly true. When everyone knew everyone else, gossip was as much a way of keeping up with the goings-on as it was about telling fish stories. Still, news traveled fast in small towns. The dispatcher sent out two EMTs with the ambulance, which meant that everyone at dispatch and everyone at the station knew what was going on. If they said something to their families at the dinner table or called to say they’d be late, that they had to pick up a truck driver with asthma in a field off Farm Road 16, then everyone knew.

  He understood why Eleri didn’t want to stay in the fishbowl. Why she didn’t want to walk back into the lobby at the Hampton Inn in Brownwood. Anyone in the lobby, anyone in the parking lot, the mother of the kid who worked the nightshift would know the Feds were back. And if the agents smelled of dead body?

  They had to get out of here and get relatively far away. Dallas was the best bet. The field office keeping watch on Jonah and Charity—or Ashlyn again?—was in the area. He aimed the car roughly northwest looking to turn onto State Road 183.

  The sun came up over his shoulder while he drove, and while the road exhibited plenty of weather damage, it didn’t have many gaping potholes. Which was good because the repetition of noise and gentle jostling on the shocks was about to put him to sleep.

  When he checked on his partner because she was quiet, he saw that she’d already succumbed. Uncomfortably backed into the corner made by the seat and the door, she appeared to be held upright by the seatbelt. She also appeared to not care about any of this.

  Maybe it was good that she was asleep, beca
use for the moment there was nowhere to shower. They could only drive the remaining half hour into town, stinking up the car. At least in Dallas they could go to the FBI building and use the locker rooms. There was no point checking into any hotel smelling like this. It would only draw attention.

  The day was bright by the time he pulled into the parking structure at the building that housed the Dallas office. Leaning over, he nudged Eleri, who blinked and frowned at him.

  Putting the car in park, he said, “We’re at the Dallas FBI building. I’m hoping they have showers here. No hotel we’re willing to stay at would even allow us in the lobby.”

  She blinked a few more times before looking down at her knees. Despite the paper suit, she’d managed to grind dirt into them. Her first words—spoken mushily—were “literal field work.”

  He had to laugh as he popped the trunk. The building was beige concrete, geometric, reinforced, and well within spitting distance of Waco. These architects had not forgotten Oklahoma, they weren’t messing around.

  Eleri stood at the back of the car, one hand holding her luggage upright, the other rubbing her face. Fighting the urge to comment on what germs she might be forcing into her eyes, he led her to the elevator. Inside, they flashed badges and made their way through security. When Donovan asked where he might find showers, the guard pointed and said a few terse words, but it was clear Donovan and Eleri were not even the worst he’d seen since starting his shift a few hours ago.

  The locker room provided shampoo, conditioner, and soap in carefully labeled dispensers. Towels were just outside the concrete-sided stalls. Even naked and wet, he felt relatively safe here. Now if he could just catch some sleep. The soap smelled faintly of pine trees and he wondered if it was intended to be ironic in this land of horses, leather oil and grass everywhere. He only needed to get into his bag for a change of clothing.

  He emerged, Eleri only two minutes behind him. She didn’t say anything, just held her hand out for the keys. “Food or sleep?”

  Oh God. He had not yet thought about food but the mere mention of it sent his stomach into fits. It growled loud enough for her to hear, and it seemed she was awake enough to smile over it. “Your vote has been duly noted.”

  At the car, he leaned back in the passenger seat, now ravenous and nearly in pain. Eleri took the turns sharply, winding on and off freeways and access roads, driving them up onto overpasses high enough to make a good roller-coaster drop, and turning their direction completely around about three times before pulling into a place that looked a little chi-chi but like they could conjure a decent breakfast.

  As he unfolded himself and climbed out, he noted that she’d brought them directly into the heart of restaurant central. Though by that measure, Dallas had a minimum of five hearts. He’d never seen so many mid-level chain restaurants in one place. The extended cluster of high signs was interrupted only by low-level taco joints and high-end steak places. He guessed if he didn’t like Eleri’s choice he could probably walk to a seafood place, two steak places, a chicken place, or something Tex-Mex.

  “I don’t think they’re open yet. It’s still only nine-thirty.”

  “McDonalds is.”

  Only one side of her mouth smiled. “Feel free to walk.”

  “No way in hell.” He caught up to her with a few quick steps and momentarily found himself in a padded booth in the only open restaurant considering breakfast. Eleri had ordered a coffee and a fruit plate before the server even got her name out.

  Ah. His partner needed green things. He only nodded at her and ordered the crab cakes.

  Eleri sighed and it turned out he’d been reading her mind. “I hope our next assignment is in New York. They have organic everything, lots of veggies you can find easily, and even soda machines with no high fructose corn syrup drinks.”

  “Not so much here, huh?”

  “I’m having trouble with the concept of salad here.” She stirred three packets of sugar into her coffee, and he wondered if she was one of those who thought it didn’t matter what she ate as long as it was “natural.”

  He’d been hungrier than he thought and his crab cakes disappeared quickly. They were chased with pineapple pancakes and pecan syrup. Eleri even finished all her food for the first time, including a whole Belgian waffle. Apparently she needed the fruit but it wasn’t enough. No surprise though, they hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before—random granola bars and twice hourly forced water breaks notwithstanding.

  She paid the check, stood and said one word. “Hotel.”

  Settling in, he barely pulled the shades and set his suitcase into the closet when he heard the knock at the door. The peephole revealed the top of a strawberry blonde head, the hair only just now drying. His keen sense of observation—not at its best, he could admit—deduced that it was his partner. Had she not been senior to him, he might not have opened the door.

  “I can’t sleep. Maybe too much coffee?” She came in and made herself a seat on the second bed.

  He sat on the one where he had already pulled back the covers. Not having the same problem himself, he decided silence was the better part of valor.

  “So,” Her eyes were clear and bright now, direct. She’d slept in the car and it had apparently revived her. They’d told him at the Academy that he’d learn to do this. Donovan had scoffed, he’d been to medical school. He could sleep anywhere, revive and perform surgery on ten minutes rest. But he’d either lost the touch or he had performed some very bad, very arrogant surgeries in the past. He waited.

  Eleri didn’t disappoint.

  “Tell me about the wolf.”

  ELERI SAT CALMLY WAITING for her answer. Between the coffee and the food, and probably the nap in the car if she was being honest, she’d hit her second wind.

  But Donovan just stared. Clearly he’d heard her. Just as clearly he had no intention of saying anything. So she tried something a little bolder. “So, you’re a wolf.”

  Had he been drinking something, he would have spit it out.

  Eleri couldn’t quite believe she said it. She was thinking it, had been for a while now. She was still blinking when he spoke.

  “So you think I’m a werewolf?” Suddenly, he seemed perfectly alert and together. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not so much.” She should have brought a drink or candy, maybe popcorn—something to do with her hands. Something to put in her mouth to maybe make her think for a minute before she spoke. But she hadn’t thought ahead, and here she was, sitting in his room, accusing him of being a mythical creature and pretty convinced she had the right of it. “There’s a scientific basis for many of the creatures we thought were just stories in the past. Why can’t you be a werewolf?”

  “They don’t exist.” His facial expression was blank. He wasn’t outraged that she accused him of this. He wasn’t shocked. He didn’t look at her like she was crazy. He just looked blank. Which meant he knew more than he was—or wasn’t—saying.

  “Why not? Are you a god and know all that science has yet to tell us? I find that much harder to believe than that you can transform into a wolf and run thirty-two miles an hour!”

  Leaning back onto her hands, she bounced her foot and tried to look calmer than she was. At least she tried to look like something. He looked nothing but empty until she threw the number out there. “You had the GPS on. The machine isn’t broken. I double-checked everything. So how did you do it?”

  “I’m a fast runner.” “You broke human land-speed records for the hundred-meter sprint and maintained that rate for miles. I find it easier to believe you’re a wolf than that you dust the fastest man in the world, do it over terrain that is only beaten for horribleness by sandstorms, and that you—a proclaimed runner—aren’t out winning medals.” She leaned back on her elbows this time. “Oh, and no one sees you and the wolf at the same time.”

  “You have me mixed up with Clark Kent.”

  She tipped her head, watching him. “You’re very funny.” She delivered
the line deadpan, but paid close attention. He hadn’t moved one bit from where he sat.

  He also hadn’t told her ‘no’.

  Eleri waited, convinced she was backing him into a corner. It was tough business, getting him to confess. But she wasn’t going to throw him in jail, study him, anything. She just wanted the truth. She knew how to interrogate and she was really good at it. The problem was, he’d just graduated the Academy, so he knew at least the basics if not the nuance of the techniques. Which pretty much shot them all out the window. Maybe she should tell him she only wanted to know, she wasn’t going to do anything with it. She was lining up her ducks, figuring out how to say it, when he delivered a counter blow.

  “So, how did you know to bring in Bernard Collier?”

  22

  Donovan didn’t like this game Eleri was playing with him.

  This was exactly why he stuck with his previous job for so long. He almost wanted to cry. All his life, he managed to successfully hide his condition. Thirty-four years—most of it moving around, some of it finally, blessedly, stationary in South Carolina—and now in just a few weeks, she managed to ferret him out.

  His brick wall had sprung back up rather quickly when the words tumbled out of her mouth. She looked like even she was surprised that she said them. Everything he said to her was true: the very idea was ludicrous. That didn’t reduce its factualness at all.

  Turning the table at least startled her.

  Truthfully, he expected nothing but an impasse.

  This would be it. Just a few weeks in and his career with the FBI would be over. He would leave while she still had only suspicions, before she had proof. Before she could hold him up to the powers that be so they could study him.

  His father had told him horror stories. There were no boogeymen for his kind. There were fanatics, true believers, hunters, even groupies, but nothing good. People didn’t understand, and when they didn’t, they made up tales to fill in the blanks. Silver bullets, full moons—he’d read it all. And he’d hidden it all his life.