by RJ Blain
He caught my wrist and put an end to his deserved beating. “What did I do now?”
“You contacted the FBI with my degree and bar exam results, you insufferable piece of shit!”
“Oh, that.”
I didn’t need my purse or my right hand to kill my father. My teeth would do just fine, and I still had my left hand. I snarled curses and went for his throat.
My bastard father caught my free hand and held me at arm’s length, daring to laugh at me. “Nothing in our family agreement stated I couldn’t use your degree or your bar exam results for your benefit. There was no NDA signed or promise of classification made for those records. Just like you got away with mooching a JD off me so you could spend the past five years dancing your little heart out at the theater, it’s my turn to make full use the loopholes inherent in our agreement. I even negotiated a decent starting salary on your behalf. All you need to do is handle this investigation and sign to start your shiny, new career.”
“Helicopter parent,” I hissed through clenched teeth, kicking at his ankles. “This is not funny.”
“Neither is the reality of several murdered women and a solo FBI agent here capable of handling the case. He needs a partner for safety purposes, and you meet the minimum requirements in untraditional fashions. It’ll be a good learning experience and an excellent career choice for you. You’re old enough you’d be losing your edge on the stage if it weren’t for my lycanthropy virus.”
“You’re a cretin.”
“I’m also right. As the safety angle is pretty bogus due to your utter inability to protect yourself, your mothers and I will be tagging along as helpful civilians.”
While tempted to cry, I aimed another kick at his ankles. “You’re going to pay for this.”
A strong arm wrapped around my waist, lifted me off my feet, and hauled me away from my father. “All right, jail bird. We already talked about this. We’ll negotiate about your parents tomorrow. We have work to do, and that work doesn’t involve killing him.”
Dad released my wrists. “They’ve moved the dancers to the main hall for general questioning; we thought it’d be helpful, so your mothers are there to encourage people to be honest.”
“I can understand that with Ma. What’s Mom doing in this except causing me more problems?”
“She’s playing human and glaring on your ma’s behalf.”
“Ma doesn’t need a head to glare at people, Dad. She just does it, and it’s creepy.”
“I know, I know. Just deal with it, Emma. Go help your new partner get this case closed.”
“You act like this will be a quick process.”
“Your mothers assured me it would be. They both noticed the victims look a lot like you, and neither like it. Honestly, you two probably won’t have to do a thing with them on the warpath. I’m just staying out of the way and volunteering for the prosecution to keep my wives happy. It’s tough keeping one of them happy, but when both are upset, things become very complicated for me. You should know this, Emma.”
“It’s your fault for marrying two women.”
“They’re a package set.”
“And they want to kill each other on a bad day.”
“They’re the best sort of package set a man could ever ask for.”
I twisted in Kenneth’s arms to discover both of my mothers approaching. “You fiends.”
Ma snorted. “I am no fiend.”
“You sold me to the FBI!”
“No, I sold you to the FBI agent. I merely assisted the FBI in finding a new candidate for a specialized position.”
Kenneth sighed. “I thought you were with the dancers for questioning.”
“The questioning is being moved to the police station for general recording. We weren’t invited. You two are expected at the body. Forensics found something you might be interested. And Emma?”
“What, Ma?”
“Don’t throw up on the body. That’s a good way to ruin evidence.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
“Anytime, little chick. Run along. You have murders to solve. Do put that expensive schooling to use like a good girl.”
Kenneth dragged me off before I could discover it was possible to murder an angel with my bare hands.
The woman’s body still hung from the ceiling, although someone had brought in a ladder to make it easier to reach her. A woman and a man in lab coats examined the area, and the instant we approached, Chief Rochester offered us a pair of gloves. I snapped mine on, my gaze locked on the woman’s corpse.
Ma had teased me about throwing up on the body for a reason, and I’d make sure if I lost control of my stomach, I wouldn’t ruin any evidence. The first time I’d done a forensics lab course, half the class had gotten sick during the first dissection of a human cadaver. I’d been one of them, and I’d suffered from nightmares for a week.
I gave the course a great deal of credit. It had numbed me to the presence of death. The week-long stint in a New York morgue had finished what the lab work hadn’t. The longer I stared at her hanging from the ceiling, the more I realized my parents were right in some ways. I had the right education to do the job if I got off my ass and did it.
I inhaled, steeled my nerves, and started my inspection of her body at her throat where she hung. I expected the abrasion marks and bruising from the rope, but a second set of marks just above the noose captured my attention, and I pointed at her. “Looks like she was strangled before being hung.”
“That’s our current theory, although until we get her down, we’re not going to be able to have a better look at her for additional evidence of trauma,” Chief Rochester replied. “The strangulation marks are consistent to what we found on the woman’s body in the swimming pool. The third victim, found overnight, may have also been strangled, but we won’t have a confirmation until the coroner has a closer look at her. This one’s unusual, as the body bag used to transport her is still here. We’re not sure how the other bodies were transported.”
Kenneth scowled, got up onto the ladder, and leaned towards the woman’s body to get a closer look at the strangulation marks. “I don’t see any scratch marks.”
I dropped my gaze to the woman’s hands. Unlike me, she kept her nails long, and I couldn’t find a single flaw in the polish. Leaning over, I peeked at the nail bed. Despite the discoloration from blood and fluids pooling in her fingertips, I saw no evidence of abrasion or skin material from a struggle. “Her nails look clean.”
As my job was to make Kenneth’s job easier, I grabbed the notebook and went to work detailing the condition of the woman’s body, the obvious marks of violence, possible causes of death, and everything else I could glean from her, careful to keep my breathing steady so I could control my churning stomach.
Lab work and time in the morgue hadn’t made me completely immune to the realities of death.
To be safe rather than sorry, I stepped away from her corpse, shaking my head that someone would so brutally end a life.
From everything I’d learned while pursuing my education, identifying the motivation could often lead to the killer, and evidence helped guide the way much like when someone used a flashlight to walk in the dark. Brown hair, a light tan, and fit, athletic women of moderate height left a lot of motivations to undercover.
If they all had dark blue eyes like mine, I’d be on the likely potential victim list, a disconcerting reality. For the case to be classified as the work of a serial killer, there had to be links to each death. The story their deaths told would, if Kenneth, the forensics team, and the police did their jobs right, lead to the killer.
As Kenneth’s boss had said, serial killers were a different breed of cat from the average murderer, who often killed out of either greed or passion. I found it odd that flashes of rage so intense it cost someone their life were labeled as an act of passion.
Humans disgusted me sometimes.
Kenneth used the ladder to examine her from head to toe, and I dutifully took notes
for his review later. When he got down, he sighed and shook his head. “Anyone have a look in the ceiling yet?”
“There’s a body bag, and it looks like someone had put some form of acid on the rope that was holding her up there. The body bag was secured at several points in the ceiling, and she was held up there with several ropes, which show acid damage as far as we can tell. Until we get the labs back, we won’t know for certain.”
“Get her down from there,” Kenneth ordered.
I retreated, mindful of Ma’s advice and my past experiences in the morgue.
Kenneth joined me, his expression grim. “I’d rather be dancing.”
I stared at the woman’s feet. A pair of classic back Mary Janes with kitten heels wouldn’t be my first choice of dance shoe, but I’d seen similar worn by tap dancers. I frowned, approached the body again, and got on my hands and knees for a closer look at the sole.
Unlike a typical shoe, tap dancers had special metal pads on the soles to make the sounds unique to their performance style. I scowled and pointed at what I’d discovered. “She’s wearing tap dancing shoes. We might want to find out if any of the dancers didn’t show up to the retreat, Kenneth.”
Something cold and wet dripped down the back of my neck, and thanks to Ma’s warning I shouldn’t puke on the corpse, I scrambled away from the body, shudders tearing through me. Compulsive swallowing kept my stomach under control, and I closed my eyes, drew in a shaky breath, and questioned every decision I’d made in my life.
I gave the forensics people credit; they were thorough in their collection of evidence and cleaning my back, as they were worried the acid responsible for snapping the ropes in the ceiling had transferred to my skin. Fortunately, I emerged unharmed, although I reeked of disinfectant.
“You handled that a lot better than I expected,” Kenneth admitted.
“Despite appearances and my job as a dancer, I took a lot of classes to augment my field of specialty. It kept Dad from whining. After I finished my classes, it seemed like a waste to dodge the bar exam, so I took it, and I maintain my license since I don’t feel like completely wasting his investment. But honestly, it took those years of schooling to realize I don’t really want to be a lawyer or a professor.”
“That’s a really expensive way to learn you don’t want a job.”
“I tried to tell that to Dad after my third year in, but at that point, he’d already paid for three years of college, so I kept my mouth shut and finished.”
“Yet you went beyond the basics you needed to qualify to take your bar exam.”
“Angelic disappointment is a terrible thing. You try telling Ma you have a perfect GPA but don’t want to actually be a lawyer. She might not have a head, but she’s really good at hamming up the parental heartbreak. Mom was the one who suggested I take the extra time and pick a minor I liked to get through the schooling. That’s how I got into dancing.”
“You’re not really good at rebellion, are you?”
“I figured it out eventually. Mostly.”
“This really isn’t your first time dealing with bodies, is it?”
“The trick to lying without actually lying is failing to confirm the truth. You assumed I’ve never been around bodies before, and I allowed you to maintain your initial impression as I try not to think too much about the number of bodies I’ve observed in labs or at the morgue. I’d taken the labs to help build better prosecution cases in murder trials, as I figured if I had the same skill sets as lab techs and detectives, I might be able to present the puzzle in such a way the killers wouldn’t be able to mount good defenses against the presented evidence.”
“Just how many labs have you taken?”
“Don’t ask. I took the minimum criminal law classes required for my degrees and filled out the rest of my requirements with labs. I crammed in every elective I could for the arts and dancing on the side. Scheduling was a bitch, and I took the maximum allowed number of courses every semester.”
“And held the top position for your class.”
“As I said, infection with the lycanthropy virus doesn’t mean we’re stupid.”
“No wonder my boss is itching to get a hold of you. He usually has to pick from law enforcement wanting more from their careers.”
I shrugged. “What’s our next step?”
“We get the victims identified, get a complete list of everyone registered for the dance retreat, and find out if our Jane Does were supposed to be attending. If so, we start looking into who might want to kill a bunch of dancers and why. If we’re lucky, we’ll get DNA evidence pointing to the killer, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”
“For someone from the narcotics department, you know a lot about the procedures for handling murder cases.”
“I told you I’ve done work in the violent crimes division.”
“So why would your boss view you as wasted in narcotics? Didn’t he assign you there?”
“No. I requested to be transferred.” Kenneth’s expression soured. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Enlightenment struck me like a bolt of lightning, and I wondered at the circumstances. Something had happened to him in the field, but what?
I could make a few guesses, and his choice to join the narcotics team, which would fight daily to save lives from drug overdoses and addiction, led me to the same place. He’d been hunting for a killer and hadn’t gotten to the victim on time, and he blamed himself for the death.
Hunting serial killers would put him back in those old, worn shoes. “A killer beat you.”
He flinched. “It happens in this line of work.”
“Let me guess: you made a mistake you feel cost someone their life, so you moved into narcotics, which likely has a high rate of deaths from overdose.”
Kenneth glared at me but said nothing.
“I don’t have a psychology degree, so I can’t really help you with those issues, but if your boss is relying on a lycanthrope who can’t even shift to kick you in the ass and get you back to work, I can do that. If I have to put up with this, so do you. Do whatever it is you FBI agent types do so I can get back to dancing.”
He snorted. “Keep holding onto your delusions there, jail bird. I know my boss. He’ll annoy you into doing what he wants, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll trick you into it.”
“So I gathered. He’s already scheduled me for training.”
“Good luck escaping him. You’re going to need it.”
Mr. Woolwright did not like handing over the registration list for the dance retreat, and when Kenneth asked for the list of those who hadn’t made the cut, hadn’t shown up, or otherwise were missing, he demanded a warrant for the information.
It took Kenneth two phone calls and less than an hour to get a warrant for the documentation. The dance instructor stared at the papers. The moment it sank in there was a real murder investigation going on involving his retreat, the man turned whiter than my ma’s wings.
In addition to the list of attendants, Mr. Woolwright provided us with a list of all applications, no-shows, and cancellations. Armed with the information, we returned to our suite, and our coffee table became a war zone.
Kenneth called Chief Rochester with the names of four women who hadn’t showed up for the retreat and their contact information, requesting that someone call and verify their whereabouts. He feared he knew where three of them were already, but without the databases he only had access to at work, he couldn’t be certain.
I worried he was right, and if he was, it meant trouble.
On paper, we were interchangeable. We all had brown hair, were of similar build and age, and fit the same profile, adding weight to the idea it was the work of a serial killer.
But why would a serial killer target a dance retreat? If it was a deliberate targeting of dancers, there had to be something more to them than hair color, build, and age.
I scowled at the papers scattered over the coffee table. “Can we get information on these women? Thei
r work history, dance specializations, or similar?”
“That depends on a lot of factors, including if we can contact them. If the information is determined to be a requirement for the investigation, we’ll get a court order to have records pulled on each of them. If they’re our victims, we’ll be able to get the information without much effort; it’ll all be classified as a part of the investigation by default and used for evidence and the identification of other potential victims.”
I pointed at myself. “I fit the bill so far.”
“I was trying not to think about that, honestly. The last thing I need is an infuriated lycanthrope rampaging because some idiot serial killer went after his daughter, and if the information on your card is accurate, your virus isn’t robust enough to protect you from much.”
I shrugged. “If we’re looking at the patterns, I fit the pattern. We don’t have to like it, we just need to accept it’s probable. Unfortunately, probably half the women in attendance are our build. A lot prefer to dye their hair away from brown, though.”
“That still leaves us with several women, yourself included, who match the pattern thus far. You don’t tap dance, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s something, but not something I’m willing to gamble on.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to be stuffed in a ceiling and hung. Why would someone stuff someone in a ceiling and design it so she fell out after a while? How is it no one caught this person in the act?”
“That is a very good question.” Kenneth grabbed his phone and dialed a number. “Sorry to bother you again, Chief Rochester, but have we gotten any information from the resort security about the three incidents? The pool should’ve had surveillance.”
Kenneth listened, jotting a few notes and shaking his head. “All right. Give me a call when you have an update. Right now, we’re trying to establish probable motives, but until we can get an ID on the bodies, it’s guesswork. If the resort gives you any pushback on the security recordings, I’ll go downstairs and crack some heads together. There’s no reason they shouldn’t have had those for you unless they need time to doctor them. I’ll give a few contacts in the CDC a call if I need to get to the bottom of this.”