“Whatever happened to lighting up and spray-painting a wall?” Two-Trees asked. “God, and we thought we were hard core as kids. How do they say this came into their possession?”
Buckle’s eyes were watering with the effort of suppressing a sneeze. “One of them says they bought it, fair and square. His mom’s coming over with the receipt, he says.”
“He bought it,” Two-Trees echoed. “From where, Amazon?”
“Ossuary Canada dot something or other, he said. I looked it up. It’s a genuine vendor. They sell animal and human skeletons, most of them acrylic, some natural bone. Perfectly legal, but usually restricted to medical students.”
“Yeah, but this looks like it’s still got tissue on it.”
“I know, and that’s why all three boys are still in custody.”
“Seriously, you can buy these online?”
“You can buy anything online, if you look hard enough for it,” Buckle said.
“They bought a skull with half its face attached, and they didn’t think anything of it?”
“You think he’s cute, the one you saw?” Buckle asked. “You should see the one we brought in before him. He was grinning when he told us they found it out in a field about a kilometre away from the drop site, about a ten minute walk from his friend’s backyard. Big, shit-eating grin, as if he was daring us to charge him with something. And then his lawyer came in, and that was the last we’ve heard from him. The lawyer says they had no idea that the skull was part of an ongoing murder investigation. He said they thought it was from ‘some Indian burial ground’, being so close to Waabishkindibed as they were. Anyhow, we have a search scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
“So he’s saying the head was nowhere near the body dump?”
“It’s a lead. We have to follow up on it.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’ll have to.”
Buckle held the skull up higher, turning it whenever Two-Trees asked to see a different angle.
“What the hell did they think they were going to do with this thing anyhow?” Two-Trees asked.
“They were drinking wine out of it.”
“How, for god’s sake? What’d they do, turn it upside down and drink out of its nose?”
Buckle shrugged. “You know, the most rebellious thing I ever did was walk out of a heated game of Risk. You think you can reconstruct a face for us?”
Two-Trees had him turn the skull around. At a glance, he figured it had belonged to an adult male. Statistically speaking, a jaw that wide and square belonged to a male face, though he wouldn’t be certain until he ran a 3D scan through the software. A DNA check would provide the only reliable conclusion though. He leaned in closer to get a look at the dentition. He’d need to bring in his equipment, because the wisdom teeth were hidden behind bands of tissue that kept the jaw attached to the skull. He couldn’t tell if the wisdom teeth had erupted yet or if they’d been removed. The incisors were considerably longer than the rest of the teeth, but Two-Trees had seen worse. Even on her most human day, Bridget’s fangs were longer than that. The front teeth were straight, which meant either the deceased had been blessed with good luck, good genes, or good braces. Once they had a lead on who might be missing, they could contact the local dentists and seek a positive match, saving Two-Trees a lot of work but robbing him of an excuse to stick around. “Any X-rays on Chopper here?”
“Still pending. Medical examiner’s running some tests to confirm that Head A fits with Body B.”
“God help us if they don’t,” Two-Trees said. “How soon can I start?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Portable 3D scanner in the truck,” Two-Trees said. “Same with the computer with the facial mapping software on it. All I need is a desk and space.”
“We can provide,” Buckle declared, setting the skull back in the plastic box and letting the evidence technician seal it properly for him. He peeled off the gloves and rummaged for used Kleenexes in his pocket. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Give me a couple of hours, and I should have a preliminary analysis for you. Nothing that could be used in court, but enough to start comparing against missing persons reports. Speaking of which, do we have any bets yet?”
At that, Buckle frowned. “We’ve got three missing persons from this year, one from last year. All female. None of them as near as heavy as our boy. But I don’t want to jinx it. He could be from out of town. You need a hand carrying stuff in?”
“Wouldn’t mind the help.”
SHOUTING JARRED TWO-Trees out of his work. It was almost three in the morning, and until that very moment, he hadn’t even felt tired. He stood up and followed the sound of Buckle’s voice. He saw him through the wall-mounted monitor. Buckle was at one end of the table, the jungle punk at the other, and DS Richard Palmer was moving from foot to foot.
Palmer hadn’t aged well—not that Two-Trees had. Palmer had gone bald except for a ring around the back of his skull, plus an extra-wavy tuft where a unicorn’s horn could have grown. Judging by the cut of his suit, all the mass from Palmer’s chest and stooped shoulders had slid south to his belly. Despite the paunch, his legs were skinny. It was hard to take a man like that seriously, and Two-Trees couldn’t remember why Palmer had been so scary, once upon a time.
“No, you can’t go home now,” Palmer said. Two-Trees heard it through both the monitor and the closed door. “You took somebody’s skull, and then you destroyed it. You tampered with evidence in a murder investigation!”
The kid shrugged and flicked his ragged bangs up with a flip of his head. “So?”
Palmer inflated with rage. He started off slow and quiet, then built up into a train wreck of hurled accusations, each shouted so loudly and so close that careless bangs flew back from the boy’s face. “You’re in direct violation of Section 182 of the Canadian Criminal Code, you sick puppy—indignity to a dead human body! You sick son of a—” The lawyer, who’d been standing off camera, stepped in to intervene, and Buckle would have done likewise if someone hadn’t run past Two-Trees to knock on the interrogation room door. Palmer was shouting something about desecration and psychological examinations when Buckle disappeared off screen, all except for his shoulders and back. He spoke with the person at the door, then with Palmer. A moment later, the lawyer sat down, as did Palmer, and Buckle came out of the interview room, following the constable who’d rushed by. Buckle went directly to Two-Trees’ borrowed desk.
“Come on,” Buckle said. Darting eyes switched from Two-Trees’ face, to his hands, then to the clock, to the constable’s back, and finally over at the front desk. “You’d better come with me.”
A courier had come in with a large document envelope from the hospital. Inside was a brief report confirming that the deceased had wisdom teeth which hadn’t yet erupted, which meant the deceased was probably under twenty years of age—more likely under the age of eighteen. Two-Trees read the rest of the dental report and was partway through the paragraph about cranial wounds when Buckle slapped down his photocopied file and said, “Sheeyit. Son of a camel-toed bitch.”
“So it’s good news then,” Two-Trees said.
“Skull A does not match Body B because of Blood Type O.”
“Oh.”
Buckle bared his teeth and tensed his upper body so much that ropes stood out along his throat all the way up to the corners of his jaw. “Jesus H. Murphy, we’ve got another victim.”
AROUND 3:30 A.M., Two-Trees went back to the hotel to set up his laptop and connect to Wi-Fi. The party was in full swing, though occasionally a sober guest would stomp down the hall and threaten assault if the music wasn’t turned down. The noise helped prevent Two-Trees from falling asleep, though it did nothing for his powers of concentration.
His first search was for an all-night internet café; he found a café, but it was closed between one and seven a.m. His second search was for preliminary information about the latest murder. He half-hoped, half-dreaded, that
something had already hit the newswires; with Palmer lurking about, Two-Trees doubted he’d get much of an inside scoop on either murder, so he’d have to settle for rumours. He found nothing, only the brief mention of a wanderer found dead overnight after having succumbed to the elements. It was better for the OPP to broadcast a flat-out lie, rather than make a few hundred people wonder why the press made no mention of an evidence truck and convoy of police cars on Range Road Twelve. Lies were bad, sure, but silence led to speculation, which led to public questions and national media coverage. They’d learned those lessons from the Pritchard Park incident.
He sent a situation report to Angie Burley, blind carbon copied to Gil Burton. Gil had a knack of asking off-the-wall questions, which would unlock a whole new avenue of investigation. As late—or as early—as it was, Two-Trees didn’t expect a response for hours. So, he went back to work.
For fun, Two-Trees decided to try three different body templates: a skinny young man, one of average weight, and one that was morbidly obese. Each body type would have a dramatic effect on the shape of the face, especially on the eyes. Then he decided to craft a fourth model: he’d toss out all prior guesses and assume the body was female. He could then play with each template: changing hair colour and hair styles, and adding accessories like glasses or piercings. In any case, judging by the general three-dimensional shape of the skull, the deceased had a pointed chin and bad underbite, a sunken nasal passage and a protruding forehead—no supermodel, to be sure. Multiple reconstructions meant painstaking, repetitive, slow work, but he had to start with the assumption that Head B did not belong to the morbidly obese Body A he’d seen earlier under the evidence tent.
Around 4:30, police lights turned Two-Trees’ flimsy curtains red, blue, and white. Boots clomped along the upstairs hallway, doors were knocked upon, the music died down. Voices rose and diminished. There was a shout, and someone fell yelling into the carpet. More boots clomped down the hallway, orders were issued, and boots marched away.
At five, Two-Trees drowsed in the middle of stretching a virtual muscle, giving the already grotesque figure an engorged tumour where a temporal depression should have been. He gave up, stripped down to his underwear, crawled under the sheets, and turned off the lights.
HE STARTLED AWAKE when his cell chimed. He’d been physically shaken out of a bad dream he couldn’t quite remember. He felt nauseated, shaky, and even his blood seemed to vibrate in his veins. A text message was waiting for him from Gil. It was eight thirty—seven thirty in Varco Lake.
< Bridge & gang en route. Bad news in truck. Have fun. XOXO>
Two-Trees considered sleeping for another two hours or so, but once he was up, he was up, and there was nothing more to do but eat and wait. He rolled out of bed, opened his laptop, and logged back into the Wi-Fi. There was no email.
But then he noticed one of the email folders was highlighted in bold. There’d been no indication in his main inbox, but there was a notice in his junk folders. Marked as spam, there was an email from bumbulum1962. He opened it. It had been sent only a couple of minutes before seven.
“Checking dent rec now, but may have an ID on vic 2,” it read. “XRef recent missing persons, public domain. Expand your search S & W. Vic may not be local. Same morph’y as b4. Big belt, few remains. Pls tell me u have a theory.”
Two-Trees did have a theory, but it wasn’t one he could share with anyone outside of Wyrd. And since he had no idea who bum-bum-u-lum was, he decided it was better not to respond.
Then his phone signalled a missed text. He checked it. This one wasn’t from Gil. It was from a local exchange, sent almost half an hour before Gil’s text came through, and Two-Trees had slept right through the notification. He checked the origination number against his received call list and confirmed it was from DS Buckle.
“The hell?” Two-Trees muttered.
The email had been sent only seconds before the text message came through. So Two-Trees ran a search on the word bumbumulum, which returned no results. He checked the spelling and tried again. Bumbulum—or bombulum—in Latin meant flatulence, or farting. He got the message. Buckle was reaching out to him by unofficial means, probably because Palmer knew Two-Trees was in town and wanted to cut him out of the investigation. Two-Trees texted back:
Two-Trees then replied to the email, sending it to bumbulum1962 from boogidi1965, a new, private, non-Wyrd email address. “Any ID on those animal tracks yet?” he wrote. “Heat signature? FLIR?” He sent the email and started dressing.
He hadn’t finished shaving when the reply came in.
“Wildlife angle out as primary,” Buckle had written. “Forensic testing backlog (the usual). But prelims show human saliva. We are dealing with one very sick bastard. ”
“Not necessarily,” Two-Trees grumbled aloud. “Werewolves test positive for human saliva.”
He hoped to God there wouldn’t be a third crime scene by the time Bridget arrived. He ran his fingers over the missing persons pictures. One had been gone for less than a week, and he had a bad, bad feeling she’d turn up soon.
Then he tilted his head and looked at the photograph more closely. Sydney Mission, the notice said, seventeen years old, brown hair, brown eyes, five foot three, last seen in Elmbury, Ontario. No fixed address. The teenaged girl’s face was far too narrow to fit the skull he’d scanned, and yet, the features seemed familiar. He couldn’t place it, but he knew her from somewhere.
Chapter Seven
ON THURSDAY MORNING at 5:45, Ishmael stumbled out of the main house with an extra-large coffee and a takeout breakfast. He’d packed all his things in the truck the night before. He was surprised to see Bridget, the Padre, and Holly all waiting for him. Upon spotting Ishmael, Bridget and the Padre both called shotgun, then made like they were going to punch each other in the teeth before resorting to paper-rocks-scissors. He settled the dispute by reminding Bridget that she had shit-for-night-vision, while he was a nocturnal animal, so she should take the wheel first; and as for the Padre—being presumed dead for the last six years—he had no ID and so couldn’t legally drive. For that matter, the Padre didn’t even have a legal name, though he’d settled on Paul Rhodes as an alias for now. The name didn’t fit the face. He was simply “the Padre”, and Ishmael couldn’t wait for him to be officially ordained so he could keep the honorific. Bridget muttered, the Padre crowed about his little victory, and Ishmael climbed into the very back row of seats, leaving the middle bench to Holly.
They left Varco Lake, Manitoba, with a full tank. Around noon, they stopped in Dryden, Ontario, for food, gas, and to change drivers, because Bridget’s knees were aching, everyone was starving, and the truck was running on fumes. They had to hit two restaurants, a gas station, and a Tim Hortons drive-thru, because the inestimable appetite of one lycanthrope alone is enough to raise eyebrows. The four of them around one table would close a buffet and draw press coverage. By ordering takeout from multiple restaurants at once, locals wouldn’t notice anything amiss.
“My God,” Bridget said, through a yawn, “what I wouldn’t do for a private plane.” She stretched until something popped, and she groaned. “It’s a nineteen hour drive between Varco and Wyndham Farms. You know how many times I’ve made that trip?” No one answered. No one wanted to remember. “And did Grey have the decency to keep all his victims in one major metropolitan area? No-ho-ho. Of course not. Do you have any idea how many times we drove back and forth across the prairies with a brand new lycanthrope raging through his false starts in the back? Prairies, man. It’s like driving on a treadmill. The faster you drive, the longer you stay in one place.” She went on and on about how many back roads she’d taken to avoid the cops, how many times the roads had been washed out, how many times she’d had to flush out urine and shit from the back of the truck. They’d used a specially modified vehicle then, with a tightly controlled, self-co
ntained environment in the back, so if a prisoner up-cycled, he wouldn’t take Bridget with him. But that didn’t make the truck self-cleaning.
And just when they thought Bridget had run out of complaints and dropped off to sleep, she’d remember another horrible trip and spend the next twenty minutes bitching about it.
Ishmael drove on for another four hours, with Holly, Bridget, and the Padre taking turns playing card games with a deck they’d picked up from the Dryden gas station.
The plan was that if Two-Trees had made no progress, they would use Bridget’s Wyrd-issued credit cards to book a couple of hotel rooms and crash for the night. If something new had developed, they’d push on overnight for Halo County.
By the time they got to Thunder Bay, the sun had gone down, Bridget was snoring, and everyone was hungry again. But, most importantly, they’d regained cell phone reception, and Bridget was able to check her messages, once Ishmael had poked her awake.
“Nope, no overnight stops,” Bridget announced at the local pseudo-Greek restaurant, where the food was starchy, cold, overcooked, and clotted with orange grease.
“Bad news?” Ishmael asked.
Bridget turned the phone around. Two-Trees’ message said.
Ishmael broke into the crunchy roast beef, which was not a sound Ishmael liked to hear from beef. Nothing short of battery acid would help to tenderize the blackened meat now. “He works fast.”
“Who?” Bridget asked. “Two-Trees? Or the murderer?”
Helix: Plague of Ghouls Page 9