by Unknown
“A whole year should make for more of a strategy than one random attack.”
“I think they changed tactics because the things they tried last year didn’t work,” Jim concluded. “All they got for their pains was a night in jail, a court summons, a couple of fistfights, and a lot of bad press. Maybe they figured since they couldn’t change the whole town’s mind about Others, they’d just take care of things themselves, one sympathizer at a time.”
Josie blinked at that. “You still think he was after me?”
“We won’t be able to really say until we’ve taken a look at the bedroom and seen what his attack angle was and things like that. But the graffiti on the door does make me a mite suspicious.”
She drained her coffee and stood, crossing to the counter and depositing her mug in the top rack of the dishwasher. “Then I say we go on and take a look.”
Jim retrieved a large, thick, briefcase-style bag from his truck and accompanied Eli into the cabin’s bedroom. Both men insisted that Josie remain in the doorway so that she wouldn’t “compromise any evidence.” As if she wasn’t already part of the damn evidence. Still, since that wasn’t the fight she was in the mood to start at that particular moment, she held her peace and remained where she was, mimicking Eli’s favorite position by leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb and crossing her arms over her chest.
Eli insisted that they start the search for clues by the window, which he dubbed the point of entrance. “He didn’t have to break the window. It wasn’t locked. There aren’t usually any people out here to worry about keeping out, and I’d had it open this morning for some fresh air. It was closed when we went to bed, but not locked.”
Josie noticed that Jim didn’t even blink at Eli’s use of the plural in the context of bedtime. Apparently, the entire town either knew they were sleeping together or assumed it, which didn’t do all that much to improve Josie’s temper. Oh, she knew better than to think that Eli had been bragging about her to people as a conquest, but at the moment she was in the mood to hold the deputy’s attitude against the sheriff anyway. Mostly just for spite.
“When we’re done in here, I’ll head around back and check for footprints and debris and whatnot,” Eli mentioned.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until morning? When there’s light?” Josie asked.
“I’ll check then, too, but I want to get a sense tonight of where he came from and where he ran off to.”
She fell silent again and watched as they worked to process the scene. Eli appeared interested mainly in logistics, while Jim performed the basic tasks of dusting the window for fingerprints—even though Eli had said the assailant wore gloves, it was procedure to check, apparently—and scouring the room for trace evidence. She had to admit that the deputy performed his job with thorough determination. He pored over every inch of the room, collecting anything the attacker might have touched, shed, or left behind. He used a couple of different flashlights to search for latent evidence, even checking in the bedsheets and under the furniture.
After the first hour, though, neither he nor Eli had yet located a weapon.
Finally, Jim worked his way around the bed toward the door and knelt in front of the nightstand with his cheek to the floor and his high-powered flashlight aimed underneath. He passed the beam from left to right and jerked to a halt. He made a noise that Josie interpreted to be a combination of surprise and excitement, with maybe a tinge of concern thrown in.
“Hey, boss, come here and check out what I just found.”
“Did you find the weapon? Is it a knife? I never got a good look at it.” The sheriff had the words out even before he rounded the end of the bed.
“I suppose you might consider it a weapon,” Jim drawled, “but it sure as heck isn’t a knife.”
Reaching out with latex-gloved fingers, the deputy carefully stuck his hand under the small table and emerged holding the plunger end of a full, unused medical syringe.
Josie stared in astonishment. “What? He attacked us with that? What’s in it? Some kind of poison? Or was he just going to drug one of us? Or was it supposed to be some kind of a kidnapping?” She frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t know if I do, either.” Eli had his gaze fixed on the needle, and something in his expression made Josie take notice.
“Eli? What is it?”
He shrugged, but the look on his face was far from unconcerned. “It might not even be related,” he said slowly, “but when I went to look at the site where Rosemary was shot, I found a hunter’s blind that I think was used by her shooter. In the underbrush there, I found an empty vial—the kind that doctors draw medications out of. Using a syringe.”
A wave of cold swept over Josie. She couldn’t decide if it came from a premonition of something sinister, or from a sense of hurt that Eli hadn’t shared something so significant with her. “And you didn’t tell me? Why didn’t you show me the vial? Maybe I could have identified what was in it.”
“I told you, there was nothing in it. It was empty.”
“But I’m familiar with all kind of drugs, and even if I didn’t recognize the name, I could easily have—”
“There was no name on it,” Eli explained. “The vial had no label. It was just plain glass. And it’s not as if I deliberately didn’t tell you. I found it just before I heard the call about Bill going berserk in the clinic. Frankly, at that point I forgot all about it because I was scared to death that you were hurt.”
“But why didn’t you tell me later?”
“Because things kept getting in the way. Every time I thought of it, something would happen to distract me. Like more wolf attacks. But I did realize it would be good to know what it contained, so I sent it to Steve along with the samples from Bill and Rosemary.”
“Oh, great, so that’s one more clue that we can’t interpret because it’s being held hostage by your friend in Colorado.” Josie threw up her hands and spun around to stalk back toward the kitchen. She could feel Eli trailing along behind her even though she couldn’t hear his footsteps. He moved more silently than a ghost.
“Stephen isn’t holding anything hostage.” His voice sounded strained, as if he had to struggle for patience. Poor thing. “I already told you, he’s doing this as a favor to me because he owes me, but he’s doing it on his own time. He does have a job to do, and I can’t ask him to make us a higher priority than that.”
Josie didn’t care how sane and logical his argument was. She was sick and tired of waiting around for answers while her world sailed merrily down to hell in a handbasket. “Maybe your favor isn’t a high priority with him, but the lives of Bill and Rosemary Evans are a high priority with me. In fact, at the moment, they’re almost my only priority, and every day we have to wait for answers is another day when they get worse instead of better. Someone has to do something, and if that means me flying to Colorado and standing over your friend’s shoulder while he runs his tests, then by God that is exactly what I will do.”
How much farther the argument would have gone, Josie didn’t know. Before Eli could form a response, Jim stuck his head in from the living room, looking almost as if he feared someone might snap it off.
“What?” Eli barked, his scowl ferocious.
“Sorry to interrupt, boss, but I kept hearing this weird noise in the other room, and I couldn’t figure out what it was until I realized it was coming from the doc’s . . . uh . . . from her clothes. I think it must have been a cell phone or a pager. You want me to bring them to you, Dr. Barrett?”
She shook her head. “No, don’t bother. At this hour, it must be the clinic.” She looked at Eli. “Mind if I just use your phone to check in?”
“Be my guest.”
Josie picked up the receiver and dialed the number of the clinic. Given the time, someone must have reached the night service with an emergency. Mentally bracing herself for a rush back to town and into her surgery suite, she waited until the line picked up before saying, “This is Dr
. Barrett. Is there an emergency?”
Instead of the voice of an anonymous call screener, Josie heard her secondary vet tech Andrea, and the woman’s voice was shaking.
“Dr. J, I got a call from the alarm company because something tripped the system at the clinic and they couldn’t reach you on your cell.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it ring. Did you have to tromp all the way out there for another falling IV stand?”
“No.” Andrea made a choking noise that sent Josie’s heart into overdrive. “Dr. J, it wasn’t a false alarm.”
Impatience melted into concern. “Someone broke in? Was anything taken? Did anyone get hurt?”
“No. Yes. I mean . . . No one broke in. The alarm went off when something broke out.”
And just like that, Josie knew it was bad. Very bad.
“The wolves somehow managed to get through the gate, Dr. J. Bill is gone. He’s missing. It looks like he went out the window in the file room.”
Her grip on the receiver tightened until her knuckles turned white with the strain. “And Rosemary?”
“God, Dr. J. She’s dead. And it looks like Bill killed her.”
Exp. 10-1017.03
Log 03-00141
It is nearly time to move into the final phase. It becomes difficult to conceal my enthusiasm and to maintain the proper distance of a trained scientist. I have worked so long toward this goal that to come so close to its final realization . . .
Words fail me.
Soon it will be past time to collect data and record observations. Anticipation is my constant companion. Anticipation and elation.
The end is near.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Josie white-knuckled it all the way back into town, and she wasn’t even the one driving. She sat beside Eli in the front of the Jeep and stared through the windshield at the eerie flashing red and blue of the emergency lights unaccompanied by the shrillness of the sirens; it was almost four in the morning, after all. The silence didn’t matter, though, because she still thought she could hear a high-pitched wailing noise without them. Too bad she knew that sound came from inside her own head, not out of it.
Behind the wheel, Eli’s features were set in a grim cast, the telltale muscle of his jaw twitching from the clenching of his teeth. He had said barely a word since the call, just switched into his super-efficient-sheriff mode, barked an order at Jim, hustled Josie into the car, and peeled out of the drive as if it weren’t already too late for speed to do Rosemary the slightest bit of good.
“Jim will be right behind us,” he said, breaking the silence with the gruff attempt at reassurance. “And he put out an all-hands call from my radio. I will have every man on the department working on this, Josie. I promise. We’ll find Bill.”
She said nothing, just clenched the hands on her lap together in one big fist and squeezed until she could feel her fingers growing cold from lack of circulation.
“I never should have stayed away last night,” she murmured. “None of the sedatives was working and Bill was getting more and more violent and aggressive by the hour. I should have stayed. I should have realized this was a possibility.”
“Don’t be stupid.” He shot her a hard look, softened a bit by the expression of compassionate concern in his green eyes. “No one saw this as a possibility, and there was no reason we should have. Bill and Rosemary were married for ten years. And more than that, they were mates. I’ve never even heard of one mated Lupine killing another, and I doubt Rick has, either. This kind of thing doesn’t happen, Josie, and you can’t beat yourself up for not predicting the unpredictable.”
“Don’t say it ‘doesn’t’ happen.” She meant to snap it out, but it sounded more like a plea. “You can’t say that. Because it just did.”
He made no response to that, just fixed his attention on the road and drove in tense silence.
When they pulled up in back of the clinic, one police cruiser had already beaten them to the scene. Eli parked beside it, but he’d barely finished applying the brake before Josie had the door flung wide and was sprinting for the entrance, past a very surprised Deputy Able.
Eli shouted at her to wait, but she ignored him. She heard him slam his door and curse, knew he would be following hot on her heels, but she didn’t slow down. Something inside compelled her to hurry—faster!—as if by getting to the scene a second or two sooner she could force the news not to be true. If she reached Rosemary before anyone else, maybe she could save her. Maybe she could make it all go away and both wolves would be locked inside the makeshift kennel, glaring and growling and pacing like ticking time bombs. She could live with time bombs, so long as she could turn back the clock and be here before one of them went off.
But of course, she couldn’t.
She bolted past Andrea, huddled on a stool in the triage area, looking white and shaken and miserable, and slammed into the wall of the hallway because she had taken the corner too fast. She blocked out the pain of the impact and kept running, reaching the isolation room breathless and desperate.
And it made not the slightest bit of difference.
She skidded to a halt just inside the doorway of the small windowless chamber and felt her stomach heave at the sight that greeted her. It looked as if some kind of monster had torn through the chain-link enclosure with the sheer force of his hate. And maybe that was exactly what had happened. A sharp and twisted mass of thick wire framed a hole the size of a hula hoop in the center of the gate. Blood and bits of fur clung to the ends of some of the wire, which looked not as if they had been cut neatly with a man-made tool, but as if they’d been simply snapped in some places and in others stretched until they gave out against an enormous force. The slightly bloody evidence of Bill’s passing, though, failed utterly at preparing her for the sight of what lay just beyond the fence.
Part of Josie wanted to laugh at the sheer amount of gore in the compact space, just because it seemed so impossible for something this horrendous to be real. It was logical to think that a Hollywood film crew had broken into her clinic and used the isolation room to stage an elaborate and ostentatious shot of the aftermath of a mad slasher’s latest murder spree. Surely that had to be it. Those couldn’t be pieces of Rosemary Evans lying like chunks of bloody meat on the perfectly polished linoleum floor.
They couldn’t be.
Eli threw himself into the room behind her, nearly knocking into her before he saw exactly where she was standing. He took one look at her chalk-white face and followed her gaze to the evidence of the Lupine massacre. He uttered a brief, filthy, Anglo-Saxon epithet and grabbed Josie, attempting too late to shield her from the sight. If only he could erase it from her memory.
That, of course, was impossible. As was her fantasy of saving Rosemary. The wolf wasn’t just dead, but torn apart. Clumps of fur and flesh lay everywhere, and more blood than it seemed possible to contain in one body pooled and dripped and dotted every surface. Josie would never be able to look at this room again without seeing the thick, dark liquid and the gruesome evidence of her failure. She had wanted so badly to save these creatures, and she wondered if what she had done had been worse than if she’d never involved herself with them at all.
“You don’t need to look at this,” Eli rasped, his voice harsh and strained against her hair. Despite his words, his hands remained exquisitely gentle where he cradled her to him. “Come back out of here and sit with Andrea. She’s still shaking. You guys can be together and help each other through this. My men and I will deal with what happened in here.”
She shook her head and pulled carefully away from his comforting strength. She knew he was trying to help her, trying to make things easier for her by shielding her from the even more horrific task to come—that of sifting through what remained of the female Lupine in order to piece together what had actually gone on in this room. That would be the first step in figuring out where Bill had gone, and no matter how it turned her stomach, Josie intended to be there for every minute o
f it.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and pulled carefully away from him. “I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine, but I’m not going to fall to pieces. I can cope. And I want to be part of this. I have to be. I need to help sort this out, and I need to help make it right.”
For several long heartbeats, Eli said not a word. His bright eyes studied her face, noting the pallor of her skin, the bruised look beneath her eyes, and the determined set of her jaw. “You’re already tired. You haven’t gotten enough sleep tonight.”
“It’s already morning. And neither have you.” The steadiness of her voice surprised even Josie, and she drew strength from the sound of it.
But she still didn’t have it in her to argue. She didn’t want to argue; she’d had enough of fighting. More than enough. She just wanted to help.
“Please.”
He watched her a moment longer, his gaze searching. Then he nodded. “All right, but anytime you need to take a break, you do it. No heroics and no need to make a fuss about it. You leave and you take exactly as long as you need before you come back. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Josie did leave to talk to Andrea, but only long enough to ensure that the woman’s boyfriend had already been called and was on his way to pick her up. Since the clinic was closed on Sundays, there was no reason for the tech to linger after the police had finished taking her statement, but she shouldn’t be alone, either.
Once she had that taken care of, Josie dug a spare pair of scrubs out of a cabinet and went into the file room to change. When she stepped out again, she felt steadier in the familiar green uniform. The soft cotton cloth comforted her, and with her hair pulled up and back with a black clip, she felt almost ready to face the isolation room again. She grabbed a box of latex gloves and a pair of long tweezers on the way.
By now, the triage room was crowded with the entirety of the Stone Creek sheriff’s office, with the exception of only the secretary and part-time dispatcher, Cindy Lautenberg. Jim Cooper and the other full-time officer, Mike Driscoll, were carrying crime scene cases through to the isolation room, while part-timer Tim McGann quietly interviewed Andrea, her boyfriend Stu now standing with her, his hand on her trembling shoulder. Eli was near the door giving orders to Greg Able and Will Chkalov.