by Faith Hunter
Rick gave me a small nod, and a flush of pleasure sped through me. “The FBI is also looking into whether the discarded cell was synced to a stranger’s.”
“Why do you call them Girl One and Girl Two. They got names,” I said, frowning at Rick. “Names and histories and pictures.” I pointed at the boards. “Rachel Ames and Shanna Schendel.”
“He does that for me,” Tandy said softly. “It’s . . . difficult for me to work cases. Any cases. Everything is so personalized, everyone on the team feels the pressure. It can hit me hard.”
“In training, we learned how to work together,” T. Laine said. “It’s all business, no emotions allowed. At least not in front of Tandy.”
“Oh.” That made some kind of sense. Strange sense, but sense. “Did the girls know each other?” I asked.
“They both attend Farrington High School and had French class together last year, but there isn’t anything else to connect them, not that we’ve been able to discover, beyond that casual acquaintance.”
I studied the pictures of the two girls, both pretty, looking vivacious and happy and fulfilled. And . . . soft, somehow. Not exactly innocent. Just untried, unpunished, as if they had lived easy lives. By the time I was their age, I had buried one sister-wife and been married according to church law for years. My sister Priss had married and had a baby on the way by the time she was fifteen. Looking at the faces of the missing girls, I felt odd and old and worn, as if I were fifty years old, not twenty-three, feelings I stuffed deep inside as all good women are taught to do from an early age, and plastered a smile on my face, hoping Tandy hadn’t noticed my change in emotions. This was going to be problematic, working with what had to be a human lie detector.
Rick’s cell made a tinny burbling sound and he picked up. “Special Agent LaFleur.” He made a face and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door. The others talked and Tandy made a pot of coffee while I experimented with the laptop, opening the new file JoJo had sent, with all the information updated on the abductions. Once I got the file opened, I could see everything the FBI had on the girls, and I could also watch JoJo work in real time, updating and editing as she went. As the others said, this was “so freaking cool.” When Rick returned he said shortly, “The feds say we have permission to take a look at the kidnap crime scenes. Gear up. We’ll eat on the way.”
I said, “I’ll need to go home and eat lunch, since according to the contract I signed, I don’t get paid for three weeks. Which is really not a good way to do business. When I make a deal with someone I get half up front. That way if they stiff me, I’ll at least have something.”
“You’re getting paid by the federal government,” Rick said, closing up his laptop, his smile making him look younger and less harried. “They don’t stiff people.”
“The federal government has been bankrupt since nineteen thirty-three, when they devalued the dollar and got rid of the gold certificate. Look it up. I wouldn’t trust them to pay for a bag of flour.” Which I still needed to pick up at the store. “I prefer to barter when I can. Plants for eggs and meat and chicken. Whatever I have for whatever someone else has. That’s value. And right now, I’m hungry and nearly broke, so I have to go home.”
T. Laine made a pfft noise.
JoJo said, “No way are we letting you drive all that way back out there, girl. Good God, it’s like fifty miles. I’ll feed you.”
“I don’t need to take charity,” I said tartly. “I have food at the house.”
“When we’re doing fieldwork, expenses are covered,” Rick said. “And that includes meals. You can submit an expense report. But for now, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. You’re part of this team.”
“But—”
“What was that you said to us?” Tandy interrupted. “‘Welcome to my home. Hospitality and safety while you’re here’? You’re in our home now.” Which left me totally nonplussed. To the others he said, “Mexican?”
“We did Mexican already this week,” JoJo said, closing her own laptop. “Burgers.” Still bumfuzzled, I followed them out the door.
* * *
Following a fast-food meal that was mostly beef and potatoes, we drove by the school where Girl One was taken, and we all got out to suss around a bit. There was crime scene tape blocking off a large area, all of it concrete or asphalt and no place for me to take off my shoes and feel the ground. The werecats didn’t smell blood or semen or urine, just a lot of humans. Rick used a little device called a psy-meter. It was about the size of JoJo’s playing cards, and it measured what he called psy-energies, the energy left behind by all living things, even more so by magic-using nonhumans and by magical spells or workings. But there had been too many people around for anyone to get a good reading.
At the ballet studio it was pretty much the same, except for a strip of land in the parking area where one tree, a dogwood, had taken root and another had tried to and died. The ground was covered in pine needles, and when I pushed a hand through to the soil, it was to discover that the lone tree was afraid, fearfearfear leaking through every rootlet and stem and reddening leaf. It had been afraid since its partner tree had died, thinking it the last tree on the face of the Earth. I willed it to listen to me, while the others sniffed around and muttered to themselves. I willed it to live and promised it I’d bring another dogwood back to plant in the place of death, and I’d bring fertilizer and water and help them both to survive. When I pulled my hand away, it was . . . not happy. But maybe looking forward to winter rather than fearing death.
* * *
We had done all we could at the old crime scenes, and headed back to the hotel. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and was nodding by the time we were ensconced in the suite of rooms again. I fixed coffee while Rick and the others checked e-mail and made calls. From the few comments they made, I deduced that Girl One was still among the missing, meaning that the Human Speakers of Truth were looking less likely to be culprits, and the girl was more likely to already be dead. The team’s emotions were both excited and fearful, and Tandy looked drawn and worn from trying to ward them off. I made sure he had coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, and I stood over him waiting for him to drink, trying to project happy emotions toward him.
I had just taken my own first sip when Rick stepped in from the back room, ended a call, and said, “Listen up.” His face was empty and cold. “The news media finally caught up with social media about the abductions. An hour after it hit the airwaves, a third girl went missing, a human girl with a strong paranormal association to one of Ming’s scions. Her mother is Claretta Clayton, and so her daughter falls completely under PsyLED jurisdiction.”
The tension in the room ratcheted up so high it took my breath away. T. Laine sat up straight. JoJo grabbed her laptop and started a search for something on the Internet. Tandy’s skin went a bit pale, his Lichtenberg lines going brighter.
“Who’s Claretta Clayton?” I asked.
“A VIV—Very Important Vampire,” T. Laine said, her eyes focused far off.
Occam paraphrased from his tablet, “The Clayton family helped settle Knoxville in the late seventeen hundreds, and Claretta married into the family in the eighteen hundreds. Her husband died in the Civil War, and she was turned by a marauder. She broke with the family. According to our files, Ms. Clayton has a human daughter, age eighteen.”
“How much was released to the public?” T. Laine asked. “The paranormal family, compounded with the time . . . Could this abduction be a copycat?”
Rick made a noncommittal sound, his face grim. “We can’t rule anything out at this point. But with the FBI already entrenched and because the cases are currently linked, the director decided that the feds will remain in charge. This unit will be offering our expertise and our data on HST. But this has nothing to do with the readiness of this team to take on an assignment, nothing to do with division of responsibilities, and everything to do with needi
ng a bigger team than PsyLED can offer at this time. So we’re working with the feds, and everyone in this unit will accept that. Understood?” There were impassive nods around the room, but Tandy looked distressed, and I knew that not everyone agreed with the decision to work under the FBI. Or maybe some thought that the FBI wouldn’t work with them.
Someone turned on the huge TV, and I saw a gorgeous blond woman talking about three missing girls in Knoxville, believed to all be abductions, but it was quickly clear she knew that and nothing more, because she immediately went to a specialist on nonfamily kidnappings. I downed my coffee, thinking about what I knew and what I didn’t.
“There are other significant differences with the third girl,” Rick said. “She didn’t attend Farrington High. No white panel van was seen. However, she did disappear from school, after being dropped off by a limo driver. He’s at FBI headquarters being questioned now.”
“Which school?” JoJo asked, typing again.
“Private school. Senior at Wyatt,” Rick said. His cell chimed again and he turned back into the bedroom, saying, “LaFleur.”
I didn’t know much about nonchurch schools, but even I had heard of the private Wyatt School of Knoxville, and I pulled a map of it up on my laptop. Wyatt had a soccer field, a baseball field, a lacrosse field, whatever that was, a tennis center, plus two arts buildings and a theater, a sciences building, and a swimming pool. I’d never been in a swimming pool, hadn’t even seen one except on films. There was one teacher or staff member for every ten kids, which, according to the Wyatt Web site, was much lower than in public schools. Wyatt was a day school for rich kids, though financial aid was available. Tuition and food went for nearly twenty thousand dollars per year. Per child. I’d never made that much altogether in a single year. And I’d been homeschooled all my life, until I had taken over my own education at age twelve. Photos of the student body suggested they all were from a financial upper class, all with perfect teeth, athletic bodies, and artistic, scientific, or political leanings. The future artists, doctors, lawyers, and politicians of the state went to school at Wyatt.
“Theodore Roosevelt said,” I quoted, “‘A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education he may steal the whole railroad.’” Trying not to be sour but not succeeding, I added, “Looks like these kids might be on the way to greatness stealing railroads.”
“Meow,” Occam said. The others laughed, and I realized I was being gently teased, as if they were testing the waters to see if I had a sense of humor or if I was going to be difficult to work with.
Even I knew I’d sounded catty, and fought off a responding blush. I wasn’t accustomed to being sarcastic or snide and it left me feeling itchy and odd in the face of their careful laughter.
Rick walked back in, his face holding an expression I couldn’t identify. JoJo said, “What part of the campus did Girl Three disappear from?”
“We don’t know,” Rick said, studying me for reasons I didn’t understand, that odd look still on his face. “The chauffeur dropped her off at the Upper School Building this morning, but she never showed up for class.”
“Are there security cameras on campus?” JoJo asked, fingers tapping like a snare drummer.
T. Laine whirled her computer so we could see the screen and said, “Two facing the entrance. The chauffeur had to pass them when he dropped her off. Neither one was working that day.”
“Neither camera was working?” I asked, clarifying. “I don’t particularly like happenstance or coincidence,” I said.
“You got a quote for that?” Rick asked.
Tapping the keys of my laptop, studying the map of the grounds before starting a virtual tour, I said, “A paraphrase. Once means happenstance, twice means coincidence, three times means enemy action. Ian Fleming said something like that, I think in one of the James Bond books.” I spotted the cameras on my computer. Both were facing front, both big enough to see at a glance. “If I was planning a kidnapping and I had a way inside, I’d dismantle both of them the night before and then take out my target. A bigger question is how the kidnapper knew she would be let off at that entrance and not one of the others.”
Silence settled around the table, and I looked up. They were all staring at me with looks that ranged from surprise to outright suspicion. I sat back in my chair and folded my arms over my chest, feeling protective and proud, the latter of which was a sin, but not one I could honestly repent of this time, even if I was of the mind to. “What?”
“Trained investigators would know that sort of thing. Not a . . .” Rick bit off his words.
“Not a backcountry hillbilly?” I said stiffly, my church accent creeping back in. “I keep telling you’uns. I was raised by hunters. I snuck around a lot when I was a little’un, listening to the menfolk talk and brag. I also had a husband who intended me to be able to take care of myself when he was gone. I know how to bait a trap, set a snare, shoot a varmint, and skin and dress a deer if I need to. I never have, not since the lessons, but I know how. I also learned how to observe and draw conclusions—that was called deductive reasoning, which linked premises with conclusions or potential conclusions. Or brought up more questions and observation leading to more conclusions.
“And back to that quote? This looks like enemy action,” I finished hotly.
“She was right,” Rick murmured. Paka snarled and, from her reaction, I realized that the “she” Rick was talking about had to be Jane Yellowrock, the vamp hunter who had brought me to the attention of this group. Jane must a said something to him about me, something good, to get him interested in my consulting with his team. Maybe I owed Jane an apology for all the bad things I’d thought and said about her.
“Yes, she was,” Tandy said, his Lichtenberg lines glowing a bright, unvarying red.
T. Laine was watching me with delight; Occam and Paka with something like the way cats look at a new toy, as if they wanted to sink their claws into me and see if I’d bleed. A small smile crept over my face. Here I was in a hotel room with a bunch of people I’d not met until recently, men and women both, in a hotel room, not a one of the people related by marriage or blood—and no one had molested me, not once. The churchmen had been wrong about the constant danger to the womenfolk. And I was having fun. How ’bout that? I hadn’t had fun since before I became a woman growed, but I was having fun.
“So, if we were in charge, what do you think should be our next move?” Rick asked, “Assuming we won’t interview the family until tonight.”
I felt the test in the question. He was checking out my vaunted deductive reasoning. I tapped my pursed lips with a finger. “The police are probably all over the crime scene, messing up the scent patterns for the cats among you. But just in case we can pick up something that a human can’t, I say we should go to the school as soon as possible.” Rick didn’t indicate an answer, just waited patiently, like a cat staring at a mouse that was acting distinctly un-mouse-like. “And it’d be nice to get the chauffeur driver to the school to show us exactly where he dropped her off. Exactly. Not in general. It would be even nicer if the local cops were told to stay away from the site so you could all smell it, but I’m guessing that won’t happen.” While there, I’d also be able to take off my shoes and put my toes into the soil where Girl Three stepped out of the car, to see if I could pick up anything, but I wasn’t gonna tell them that.
I said, “If the FBI hasn’t already done it, somebody should talk to all the girls’ friends about whether any of them were seeing someone on the side. Boyfriend, someone their parents were against them seeing. Something secret that they might not put on social media.” They were all looking at me even more weirdly, as if I were some new critter they’d caught in one of my own snares and they weren’t sure what to do with me.
Crossly, I said, “I’ve read a few mystery books. It’s called looking for clues. Like, were there fingerpr
ints where the cameras were disabled?”
“The FBI is on-site, checking everything you mentioned and a good deal more besides,” Rick said.
“But you got cats, and they can smell around to see if anyone new was in the school. The cats can also smell for Girl Three’s scent patterns and blood or body fluids where the driver let her off. If she was scared, she mighta peed a little, and some cats can see body fluids in ultraviolet, in the dark. Can you’uns, when you change into cats?”
Rick laughed softly. “She was right. And yes, Watson, the FBI crime scene techs are doing most of those things, and we will redo anything that looks pertinent. The ones that haven’t been done are on the list for the day.”
Near sundown Rick got word that the FBI crime scene techs were finished with the private school, and we headed for Wyatt, where Girl Three, the vampire’s daughter, had been taken. The team chattered and entered things into their synced laptops as we rode toward Wyatt School. Here, there were trees, enough to actually make a wood.
I studied the roads and the surrounding area the way a hunter might, taking in details like high ground for observation spots—not many—roads in and out, nearby streets and buildings, bodies of water, the thick woods, subdivisions, and a trailer park. Dutchtown Road took us to Wyatt School Lane, and that road took us to the school itself, which occupied a lot of acreage, bigger than most family farms in the state. The school had multiple entrances off Wyatt School Lane, making any observation about the cameras less than helpful. A black limousine was waiting for us at the entrance to the Upper School, parked in a small, paved, circular turn-around area. I got out, looking around like the others were doing. The cameras on this entrance were the ones that had been disabled. On the other side of the road from the school were trees and what most people called natural areas, in this day and age, though the trees were only a few decades old and a grounds crew kept the undergrowth clear. The rest of the team went to talk to the chauffeur and sniff around the spot where Girl Three had been let off by her chauffeur. I went to the woods.