Murder Mittens

by R. J. Blain

  “I owe you a roar for that one, but I’d rather not accidentally damage something in your father’s truck. While I can afford to replace it, I’d rather spend that money elsewhere.”

  “Good move. I’d probably cry if we damaged my daddy’s truck. I’m trying to figure out how to steal it. I also made the mistake of telling my family they could replace my piece of shit car. After that watch, those assholes can’t afford to replace my junker.”

  “If they got you a vehicle, just repay them at Christmas. Seed their presents with cash. If they ask how you got the money, just say you mugged me for the cash out of my wallet at your leisure. Henry will tell them I can afford it, and that’ll end that. If you want payback, just do what they did to you. Get them things they need but may not be able to afford. You’ll eventually get busted being a bounty hunter. Your uncle is smart, and he’ll put the pieces together, especially if he ever gets low-grade access to my file. Which will state I’m in a permanent relationship with a hunter I’m handling.”

  Crap. “I didn’t realize they put that in the files.”

  “Don’t sound so worried. It’s fine. Henry isn’t stupid, and I have almost as good of a track record as you do. He knows if I’m handling you, I’ve made your job as safe as possible. I do not like losing those in my care.”

  “You have, haven’t you?”

  “You don’t get to my level without having lost somebody. They, being the powers that be, won’t promote someone until they’ve undergone a true trial by fire—and that involves losing someone on the job. How we handle it often determines how we’re promoted, assuming we are promoted. Henry only recently got his promotion.”

  Double crap. “He lost one of his hunters?”

  “What should have been a drug bust turned into a terrorism event. The hunter stopped the terrorism event, but she died in the process. Henry finished the job himself and cleaned house, which is why he was even in the running for you. Law enforcement needs handlers who can get their hands dirty. Only someone capable of understanding the job in action can really handle somebody doing that job.”

  “What else could he have done?”

  “He could have brought in another hunter to protect his own neck. Anyway, that’s the job that landed Henry in the big times. He gave half the bounty value for that job to the hunter’s surviving family, and I suspect the other half is what has been paying for the nice things your family is enjoying right now. He would have given the entire bounty to the family, but the family refused. He was given two easy but high-end hunters to start him off, so he’s doing well for himself.”

  “They refused? Why?”

  “Henry has relationships with all of his hunters and their families. They knew exactly what happened, and they knew he finished what she started. To them, it wasn’t fair they took all the money when he finished the job. They ended up donating most of it to charity. I’m guessing his version of charity is making sure his family gets ahead for a change. And with the number of children your parents have? There is no getting ahead. There is staying afloat, but there’s no getting ahead. I’m looking forward to those days, personally. I’m not sure how having mixed litters will change things, but I expect there will be a lot of hissing, purring, and roaring in our future household.”

  “We need a bigger house than what my parents have, and we can pillage anything I have left over after my face is fixed for this purpose. Every penny. But every litter will get a bedroom to share. There will be no multi-litter bedrooms. We can have a larger bedroom for if any of the litters wish for a multi-litter bedroom, but every litter will have a bedroom. And we’ll get little nooks installed in each bedroom to accommodate every kitten in the litter. Privacy matters. Unless the litters wish to form a cuddle pile on the floor making use of a bean bag bed.”

  “Let me guess. You have always wanted a bean bag bed.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Almost as badly as I want a face that doesn’t make the kittens cry,” I admitted. “I want one big enough I get lost in it. Eaten by the bean bag. Only to be seen after someone fishes me out of it. You will be able to find me through listening for the purrs while I roll in my nest.”

  “Are you sure you’re a cat?”

  “Hey, I’m not just a cat. I’m the best of cats. I’m a proud and majestic lynx.”

  “Who plans on getting eaten by a bean bag, expecting me to rescue you after locating you by the sounds of your purrs.”

  “I have needs. That happens to be one of my needs.”

  “I’m not sure that counts as proud or majestic, Harri.”

  “I am very proud of my needs. And I don’t have to do anything to be majestic. It just happens.” I made sure my laptop was using Sebastian’s phone for the internet, as I needed to take mine to the store and get a plan that allowed for the internet. “Am I spending a bazillion hours tunneling to get to the CDC’s servers today?”

  “No. If you try that nonsense, I’m pulling this truck over, you’re driving, and I’ll do the work.”

  “I was onboard with you pulling over until you threatened to make me drive while you worked. That was not the fun place I was hoping you’d be going with that,” I complained.

  “Once we are in a vehicle we don’t have to return to someone else, I’m sure I can find some almost private location to pull over so we can entertain ourselves for a while.”

  “I feel I was not adequately prepared for my general hormone levels this week.” I heaved a sigh and went to work logging into the bounty hunter system, which spewed a bunch of flags in my general direction. Most were payment confirmations, but as I needed to click on each one to make it go away, I yowled my frustration with the system.

  Sebastian laughed at me. “Now you know my pain, my little lynx. That’s what happens to me every time you go on a job blitz. I get those damned banners warning me I’d have to worry about how you’re planning on hurting yourself next.”

  “I don’t plan it, it just happens. But I did good this week. I bruised a knuckle on an idiot’s face, and other than that, I emerged without a scratch. And nobody can blame me for that bruise. That asshole’s head had nothing but rocks in it. How can anyone be that stupid?”

  “That’s a good question, although I did enjoy watching you bruise your knuckles on that guy’s head. He actually thought it was a good idea to slap a cop’s ass.”

  “He’s lucky that cop didn’t flatten him. I saved his life, Sebastian. If I hadn’t distracted the cop indulging in violence, she would have killed him. She’s a bear. A hybrid bear. He slapped the ass of a hybrid bear.”

  “I want to know who she hired for her uniform, because it seems really useful to have her clothes magically adjust to handle her hybrid form. However, I about had a heart attack when she picked you up so you wouldn’t kill the bear. She tucked you under her arm like you weighed nothing, and then she clobbered the idiot and knocked him out.”

  I nodded, as the cop could have ripped me in half with ease. “She was amazing.”

  Sebastian chuckled. “That was some pretty nice morning entertainment, especially when you started caterwauling you couldn’t collect the bounty if you couldn’t drag him off and finish turning him in. Her solution to that problem was hilarious. The bear just dragged you both to the CDC location down the street, and she even gave you credit for the capture. She was just containing my cranky kitten so there wouldn’t be any unfortunate accidents, as is her job as an outstanding member of law enforcement.”

  “I would have subdued him without her help. Or her dinner-plate sized paw. Hybrid bears have bigger paws than I do, and this really isn’t fair.”

  “You still have the biggest paws in the cat kingdom, so there’s that. Once you get through your flags, there’ll be a folder under Loureni’s bounty for you to browse through. I helpfully assigned the bounty to you, and I abused my powers as your handler to mark it as accepted. It wasn’t an optional bounty, anyway.”

  “I’m sure you can
make it up to me at some later time.” I finished sorting through my flags, rolling my eyes at the notification I had been assigned a handler. “The CDC really wants me to be certain I’m aware I am being handled.”

  “I’ve been enjoying my job more than I have in the past. It’s good to be the handler.”

  Once I successfully navigated the CDC’s system, I went into the folder for the Loureni job, sighing over the collection of files, which ranged from autopsy reports, police records, education records, and everything the government had on the man that might be relevant for the investigation. “Am I even qualified to see this stuff, Mr. Mane? I don’t have a college degree. Do I need a degree for this stuff?”

  “No. You don’t even need a degree to be a cop in the United States.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “All you need to be a police officer in the United States is the equivalent of a high school diploma and be a citizen. That’s it. You can be disqualified for having a record, but the base requirements aren’t all that much. The various departments and cities are responsible for the training of officers.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What, do you want to be a cop?”

  “Well, not particularly, but I didn’t think I was qualified. I thought I needed a degree or something.”

  “No, no degree is required.”

  Huh. I clicked on Loureni’s basic profile, ignored the cover letter swearing legal death, doom, and destruction if I misused the information present in the file, and began reading about the man. His monthly salary beat my yearly pay as a customer service slave, and I sighed over the unfairness of it all.

  “That was rather heartbroken. What’s wrong with my little lynx?”

  “The potential serial killer asshole makes more in a month than I do in a year, and I’m so much more useful than he is. People need working internet. The world needs potential serial killer assholes to be evicted from life in a swift and brutal fashion.”

  “Would you like me to rub your back tonight and massage your scalp? Will that help you get over his salary?”

  “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.” I continued to read. “He’s forty, he has a degree in business of some sort, and he manages people who manage people who make money for other people. I’m assuming that’s what an upper management in stock investments person does.”

  “That is actually a pretty good summary, yes. He also oversees various intellectual properties of the company he works for. He’s a candidate to become a member of the board, but he doesn’t quite have the right image for it.”

  “Right image?”

  “House, wife, kids, and perfect life. A lot of these companies want their visible board members to maintain the appearance of upstanding individuals.”

  “Doesn’t that make him less likely to be a candidate if he’s a serial killer who murders pregnant women and steals the babies?”

  “The killings have been happening over a period of eight years, which falls in line with his initial promotion to upper management. The investigation records I’ve read so far state that it is usually a ten year promotional gap from his position to the board. That would give him plenty of time to cherry pick the perfect kid from the batch—and it implies he has a woman in the wings who will play the part of his wife. Anything that fits the narrative he wants the corporation to see. Becoming a board member would significantly increase his personal wealth, which is a fairly strong motive. The interviews the FBI has conducted offer some other clues.”

  “Such as?”

  “He has been a lobbyist for one woman, one child laws in the United States, modeled after large-population countries around the world. The lobbyist group he’s a part of wants all women to undergo mandatory sterilization after the birth of her first child.”

  My mouth dropped open, and I scrolled through the file in search of any references to the lobbying group. Sure enough, I found references in the general notes section, and I went to a browser to look up the group. “He touches my momma, and they’ll be using tweezers to pick him out of the treetops, Sebastian.”

  “When I saw that notation, I figured you would not be happy about that group’s existence. In good news, it’s considered to be a radical religious group, and they do not have the backing they might like. There are too many people who want the multiple kids and white picket fence family image.”

  “Except he might get that, he’s just murdering the women and keeping the kids—or worse, cherry picking the kids.”

  “The FBI is highly concerned that Loureni is keeping the children to evaluate their temperament, keeping the ones that appeal to his goals, and getting rid of the others. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of any of these kids. We do have a DNA sample of his, which will be useful if we find any children that might be his. We can run the paternity tests if we do find any kids that may be his. If the maternity tests come back positive from the murdered women, then the courts have the legal right to inquire for an angel during the trial.”

  “There just needs to be sufficient evidence.” I grunted, reading over the lobbying group’s website. “Have you read this load of shit about this group?”

  “The one woman, one child group?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s just say I was roaring for unpleasant reasons over it, and when some of my co-workers wanted to know what was going on, they likewise made similar noises, and eventually, the entire floor got worked up. Yeah, we read about it. Basically, it boils down to people wanting to control women using the guise of overpopulation to do it.”

  “Because there isn’t a one man, one child portion of their campaign.”

  “Correct. The group also lobbies for a lot of restrictions on women as well, from evaluations on if the woman is healthy enough to have a child, if she is genetically sound, and so on. The men have no such requirements.”

  “Can I douse him in gasoline and light him on fire?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Sebastian. If this shit is true, he deserves it.”

  “The fifty thousand dollars he submitted to them as a donation implies it’s true, but you still have to follow the CDC’s general guidelines on dispatching a bounty, should sufficient evidence be gathered.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “If you think that’s bad, it gets worse,” Sebastian informed me.

  “How could this possibly get worse?”

  “The first of his victims, and which is what tipped the FBI off that he might be involved, is his cousin. His first cousin, to be specific.”

  “That is disgusting!”

  “Yeah. This whole case is disgusting.”

  “Just for the record, I did not need to be paid to look into this one. If this is even remotely true, I would have done this one on the house for the sheer enjoyment of wringing the bastard’s neck between my hands.”

  “For some reason, you’re not the only one.”

  Eleven

  I have more than two problems.

  We stopped at a motel once on our way back to my home, and we spent the time working. Sebastian made use of his upper connections to ferret out more information on Stefan Loureni while I reviewed the information we had. It turned out the week at the spa hadn’t changed much of anything beyond solidifying Loureni as the top suspect.

  We wouldn’t have been able to work until the last day of our retreat anyway. Half of the information we needed had been submitted on our final day in Cincinnati, which meant we would have been waiting around with our hands tied. Despite the mountain of circumstantial evidence surrounding Loureni, the CDC couldn’t make an accusation without more proof—and the government couldn’t approach an angel with an accusation, either.

  A team of ten investigators from various branches of law enforcement came to the same basic conclusion. They believed Loureni held significant responsibility for the murders, but none of them could find any proof. Finding the proof was my problem, and I expected I’d be finding proof by following the pattern and seeing what hap
pened while Sebastian went insane trying to figure out how to keep me away from a serial killer when my job required me to get close and personal to put an end to said serial killer.

  Our motel room became a cage of lion containment, and when I wasn’t trying to piece together information on my target, I admired him while he paced. His soft huffs and growly grunts amused me almost as much as his roars.

  According to his scent, he was torn between anger and lust, a state I’d suffered through most of my adult life. “There is a solution to both of your problems, Mr. Mane.”

  Sebastian halted. “What solution, and which problems are you talking about? I have more than two problems.”

  “You want to fling me onto the bed, and you’re mad because I’m a competent woman you can’t contain in a velvet-lined box. You want to contain me in such a box, because you are a lion, and lions get protective around their mates. Only an idiot goes after a lioness if she has a lion around. I’m the safest lynx on this planet even when I’m hunting a serial killer. This guy requires his victims to be alive, Sebastian. Sure, he could do some pretty reprehensible things to me, but that’s something I could survive. That’s a risk I’m willing to take because there are probably two women who need us to save them. The timing is about right if the pattern continues.”

  He stopped, inhaled, and released his breath. “Okay. You’re definitely right on the first part. My virus is spiking, which it has been all week. Yours, on the other hand, seems to be happy and not spiking.”

  I considered my dual nature, the other part of me I never quite fully controlled. Ever since Sebastian had made it clear he wanted me, she’d been content, pleased with my personal drive to secure our hold on the lion. “We’re in general agreement with our situation, so she’s happy. She doesn’t feel a need for anything to change, so she’s pretty stable—more stable than usual. But you said she has to change my blood type, so she’s probably busy trying to figure out how to make your virus do what she wants. She’s bossy like that, and she likes how busy I keep you in bed. She doesn’t have to encourage me on that front. Your virus probably just wants to stage another takeover, and he, just like you, loves my purrs.”