by Renee George
“Okay. One person. There have been three murders that we know about, so we’re talking serial killer.”
“Worse. We’re talking about a shifter serial killer. We don’t have any statistical information about shifters with Antisocial Personality Disorder. I’d like to think it’s because APD is rare with our kind.”
“But?”
“It might be because shifters are dual-natured. Who we are in our animal forms is very different from who we are as humans.”
“More primal, you mean.”
“Exactly. I’d like to think that I am analytical and careful, but sometimes my animal nature gets the better of me. I spend a lot of time hiding my impulses. I’m sure it’s the same for you.”
“It can be difficult at times. Especially living amongst humans.”
“Exactly. Which means, it might be easier for a shifter to hide a personality disorder.” I’d always found the way people behaved fascinating. And shifters, doubly so. It was one of the reasons I wanted to be a profiler. “Did you know that one percent of the population in the United States are violent psychopaths? And that one percent is estimated to be the cause of fifty-percent of all violent crimes?”
“Actually, I did know that. You might not remember, but I’m an FBI agent.”
“Yeah? Did you know that there are an estimated two million psychopaths in the US alone?”
Dom looked at me. “How does that square with one percent?”
I smiled. “Not all psychopaths are criminals. They’re CEOs, doctors, lawyers, and other types of occupations that give them power over others.”
“You’re not giving me a lot of hope that we’re gonna catch our guy—or girl.”
“The ratio of male to female psychopaths is twenty to one. It’s more likely we’re dealing with a guy.”
“Ah. But those are human statistics.”
I nodded. “True.” He had a point. I knew a few girls in school that I would have put in the category.
“So, our psycho is either goal-seeking or thrill-seeking.”
“Very good, Special Agent Tartan. I’m leaning toward mission-oriented.”
“Right. The killer thinks he is ridding his world of those he or she,” he put the emphasis on she, “believes shouldn’t breathe the same air as everyone else. I get it. And the TSS hates humans. But the dead guys aren’t human.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. They aren’t human. But they were all at the Jubilee. And they were all in Peculiar nineteen months ago.”
“And they were all integrators,” mused Dom. “That feels like the most important element to me.”
We were only a couple blocks from the Sheriff’s Station when another thought popped into my head and burst my bubble. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“Torture, mutilation. Those are not traits of a mission-oriented killer. These things fall under hedonistic thrill-seeker.”
“A psycho is a psycho,” Dom said as I parked in the Sheriff’s parking lot next to a police car.
“Not really,” I said. “If you want a viable profile, we need to go over the evidence again and determine which is more accurate.”
Inside the station, Michael Connelly, a squirrel shifter and deputy, stood near my dad’s office door. He was doing a lot of nodding. Over at a desk, a woman with a wild mane of red hair, typed away at a computer. Willy Boden. Dominic’s ex-girlfriend. I’d met Willy back when my aunt was killed. She used solid investigating to track down my aunt’s killer, so I knew she was smart and good at her job. She was also beautiful, but I wouldn’t hold it against her.
“Hey, Deputy Boden,” I said as we entered the room. “Nice to see you.”
She swiveled in her chair and stood up, leading with her enormously protruding belly. Christ, was she having twins?
“Nicole Taylor, don’t you look smart.” Willy smiled as she waddled toward Dom and me. “Or it could be that everyone looks bright next to a dim bulb.”
I chuckled when Dominic groaned.
“I’d ask how you’re doing,” Dom said. He pointed to her stomach. “But all the evidence points to pregnant with a chance of twins. Did you finally get over your commitment phobia, or is this one of those do-it-yourself projects?”
“Aren’t you sweet to ask,” she replied. “I’m banging the local handyman. He knocked me up so I couldn’t get away from him.”
“That’s not exactly true,” a man said behind us. He walked over to Willy and escorted her back to her chair. He was carrying a bag. “Sunny sent me with some poppy seed lemon muffins for you.” He looked at a steaming mug on her desk. “That better be decaf.”
“It’s ginger tea for fucksake!” Willy plopped down grumpily. “I’m not a baby.”
“No, but you’re having one. Doc said you should be at home with your feet up. You want to work. So that means you have to put up with me worrying and doting.”
I cleared my throat. “Hi, Mr. Corman.”
Brady Corman had a long history in Peculiar. He had been the mayor fifteen or so years ago until his wife went missing. She’d been a victim of an opportunistic asshole who sold out our kind to hunters for profit. The worst kind of low-life. Mr. Corman had a small son to raise, but with his wife gone, he’d fallen apart. My mom and dad had always liked the Corman family, and it was nice to see the man happy again.
“Oh.” He looked at me as if he’d just noticed there were more people in the room than he and Willy. “Nicole Taylor.” He smiled. “What are you doing back in town?”
“Official business,” I said.
He looked confused.
“F.B.I.,” I added.
“Oh.” He didn’t look any less confused. He turned his head over his left shoulder and shouted. “Sid, Willy can be here for four hours. No more. Doctor’s orders.”
“Heard,” my dad shouted back. “Willy, if you don’t clock out at eleven and go home you will not be welcome back to work until those babies are out.”
Willy sighed unhappily. “Heard,” she muttered.
Brady Corman smiled. “Good. Now keep off your feet. Put them up when you can. I’ll see you at home this afternoon.”
“Don’t you have a job?” Willy asked.
“Yes,” he told her. He kissed her on the forehead. “Taking care of you.”
Watching the exchange between the two of them, I was still jealous, but for different reasons. The two of them were awesome together. I wanted that in my own life.
I nudged Dominic. “Let’s have Connelly bring Mallory in for our first interview.”
He nodded, looking a little bewildered and a lot less tense. “I’m ready.”
Chapter Ten
I handed Dom a note with questions I’d written down. The notebook paper felt rough on my fingertips. I had to admit I felt a little nervous. After all, he was the senior agent, and I was a newbie. But I also had good instincts about people—and shifters. A trait I no doubt owed to my parents who were both expert interrogators in their own way. Especially when quizzing their daughter about why she was late for curfew. Ahem.
Dom read the list, and then looked at me. “You know this isn’t my first interrogation, right?”
“But it is mine.” I tapped the back of the paper. “People, in general, don’t like to lie. There is always the fear of getting caught, and so when they can avoid it, they will.”
“Interrogation 101,” said Dom. He reread the questions and nodded. “You want to know if she’s a psychopath.”
“Exactly. Psychopaths have no qualms about lying. For them, lying is the same as telling the truth. That’s why lie detectors are ineffective. They test for fear not for dishonesty.”
“Agents can be trained to pass lie detector tests. It doesn’t mean they’re psychopaths. And some people are just really good at lying even if they’re not suffering from a personality disorder,” said Dom.
“Mallory Evans is not a trained agent.”
“How do you know? Seems to me the TSS trains their member
s to do a lot of things. They’re all about preparing for the so-called war with humans.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought about that. Despite my education and my eagerness to do well, I was still inexperienced when it came to actual field work. That chafed at my ego. Patience had never been my strong suit. “Dom, these questions are meant to make Mallory nervous, force her to come clean, albeit reluctantly, or tell a white lie.”
“In which case, she’s not a psychopath.”
“Or a trained TSS goon.”
He smiled. My stomach dipped at that sensual curve of his lips. The man was too good-looking for his own damned good.
“Okay, Doc. We’ll try it your way.”
God, I loved a man who wanted to do things my way. “Thanks.”
“I’ll ask the questions—and you watch her physical reactions.”
“Will do.”
Dom tucked the list of questions into the folder he held. Then we walked into the interrogation room no bigger than a broom closet. Mallory Evans sat there with red, puffy eyes, her nails bitten down to the quick, and her hair looking like she’d twirled on her head all night. Her hands shook as she fumbled for the bottle of water Connelly had provided for her. Well, hell. She was either the most ingenious psycho ever or terrified. I opted for terrified.
“Mallory, why did you run away when you saw me last night?” I asked.
The curvy brunette sniffed, her dark eyes hardening as she met mine. She remained silent, but I could see the fear in her gaze. She was in full-on bluffing mode.
Dom glared at me, but he was too much of a professional to ream me outright. Yikes. Okay, I’d earned his ire. I’d flipped the script on him without notice, but I wasn’t sorry I followed my instincts. Mallory was on teetering on the edge. I believed we could push her over.
“Innocent people don’t run,” Dom said.
This wasn’t true. Innocent people went on the run all the time because they were scared of being presumed guilty. However, Dom wasn’t trying to determine her innocence. He was using a classic interview technique. Most people didn’t know that law enforcement officers had carte blanche to lie when conducting interrogations. Both human and shifter investigators rely on it as a tool used to rattle the person of interest. Innocent people got pissed-off. Guilty people usually back-pedaled or tried a different story than the one they’d told before.
“I want a lawyer,” said Mallory.
“I want a million dollars,” said Dom, taking the seat across from Mallory. “Looks like we’re both going to be disappointed.”
I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed. Mallory’s gaze darted around the small, dark room. Sweat dotted her brow and rolled down her temples. Her fear was tangible, so much so that I could smell—even taste its acridness.
“I know my rights. I’m entitled to a lawyer.”
“For someone who’s supposedly anti-human, you sure are eager to use their laws.” Dom slapped the file onto the square metal table. Mallory’s eyes were drawn to the manila folder. “We’re in therianthrope territory, Ms. Evans. We follow shifter law. And that means you don’t get a lawyer. You don’t get released. You don’t get a damned thing—unless I say so.”
“Guilty until proven innocent,” I chimed in. “That’s the way it is for us. And you know it.” Unfortunately for Mallory, we served up justice differently than the humans. If a therianthrope received a life sentence of one-hundred years or more, or hell, even forty years, humans would notice the slow aging and our secrets would be exposed. A century ago, shifters found guilty of heinous crimes were killed. At least these days, we attempted reform before ending their lives.
“I won’t talk to no damn integrators,” she spat.
“Brandon Messer was an integrator,” I said casually. “You seem to be dealing with him all right.”
The woman blanched. “He...he’s not. He made a mistake, and he knows now. Knows it isn’t right.”
“So, he’s a convert then? Did you personally convert him?”
“You think it’s funny. You think I’m crazy. That we’re all crazy. But, when the humans come for us, and they will, you will beg us for shelter.”
“Therians have been worried about exposure since the dawn of man. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“In this day and age of technology, how long do you think it’s going to be before the humans discover us? The end is coming! If you can’t see that what I’m saying is true, then you’ve been living your lie among the humans for too long. You think they’re your friends. They’re not. They don’t know you, and if they did, they would hate and fear you.” Her speech was typical TSS rhetoric. I wondered how much of her diatribe was rote—and how much she actually believed.
I’ll admit, her speech made my stomach hurt. She wasn’t wrong about the humans never being able to know me. I had a couple of human boyfriends in college, and I hated constantly having to hide my true self from them, but they were nice guys, and I had two best friends that I trusted with every secret, except the biggest. I often wondered how they would have reacted to the truth. Would they have been accepting of me or terrified of the stranger they’d shared their own secrets with?
“Are you done?” asked Dom in a bored voice.
“You should be praising the efforts of the TSS. We are the last hope for our species.”
“If that’s the case, we’re screwed.” Dom opened the file and pulled out pictures of the three victims.
“What are those?”
He pushed the photos across the table. Mallory looked down at them and blanched. “That’s sick.” She looked at Dom, her expression both appalled and furious. “You’re sick.”
“You just told us how much you hate humans. And you don’t have much respect for integrators.”
Mallory swallowed hard. “I haven’t killed anyone.”
“Hey, Agent Taylor, you like the Blonde Bear Café?” Dom’s stern tone smoothed out.
“Best burger in town,” I said.
“What about you, Ms. Evans?” Dom put the pictures back into the folder. “You a fan of the Blonde Bear Café?”
The switch from the accusatory tone and aggressive questioning to pleasant conversation and seemingly inane queries stunned Mallory into confused silence. I knew immediately where Dom was going with this new tactic.
“Probably not,” I said. “The other night, she turned around and left as soon as she got in the door.”
“Is that the real reason you left the café?” asked Dom. “You don’t like their food?”
Mallory’s gaze shifted from Dom to me and then back again. “It’s all right, I guess.”
“How much do you like the food there, Agent Taylor?”
“A lot. I even have one of those loyalty cards. Every time I eat at the café, the card gets punched. I’m two meals away from a free entrée.”
“You got one of those cards, Mallory?”
“No,” she said cautiously.
“You sure? Maybe you’ve used a friend’s loyalty card.”
Recognition flashed in her eyes. Aha, I thought, we gotcha.
“What are y’all going on about?” she asked.
Dom withdrew another photo—this one a close-up of the punch card. The fingerprint dust on the laminate showed five clear prints. “See these two prints on the left side?”
“Yeah. So?”
“They’re yours.” Dom’s smile was feral. “This card was found at the scene of a crime. And I think you were there.”
Mallory emitted a loud and obnoxious laugh. “That’s what this is all about? The entire compound has touched that card, you idiots. We all take it with us when we go to town to get leadership dinners for Wednesday meetings or when someone is going into town for a meal. You guys are fucking geniuses.”
“So you admit that this card can only be accessed by your TSS compatriots?” asked Dom.
Mallory lost her smile. She’d unwittingly implicated someone in the TSS by IDing the card as belonging to the group. “Well, now, I don
’t know,” she said.
“If it doesn’t belong to you or one of your friends, then the only explanation for your fingerprints on this card is that it belongs to the TSS.” Dom tucked the picture away. “Unless you’ve been lying to me, Ms. Evans. So, which is it? You lied about having a personal loyalty card—or you recognize this card as belonging to TSS?”
It took Mallory less than a second to decide she was loyal—to herself. “I recognize it as the group card. There’s a tear on right side. And a blue mark in the middle.”
“How do we find out who used the card last?” asked Dom.
Mallory sighed heavily. “We keep it in the common area in the main building. Anyone can take it if it’s available. We don’t have a sign-out sheet or anything, but Harry will probably know who used it last.”
DOMINIC HANDED ME A Cherry Dr. Pepper while we waited for Connelly to drop Mallory Evans off at her cell and bring us Gary Davis for the next interview. “You’ve got good instincts, Nicole. You did well—even if you did jump the gun.”
“Sorry about that.” I popped the top on the can and took a drink. The sweet carbonation burned its way down my dry throat. “Thanks for the Coke.”
“That’s not Coke. Did you want a Coke? I can get that for you instead.”
“Down in these parts if it’s a carbonated beverage it’s a Coke.” I chuckled. “It’s like saying soda or pop or soda pop. It’s all-encompassing.”
“Why is that?”
“Ah, the sweet mysteries of life.” I took another sip. “Mallory’s not a psycho. Well, I guess I should amend that to say she doesn’t have APD. She’s her own special kind of crazy.”
“She didn’t exactly look away from the photos,” mused Dom. “But shifters are used to the more brutal sides of life. What do you think?”
“She’s reactive. Impulsive. If she was our killer, I think the crimes would be a lot messier—and not as well planned. Our suspect is an organized killer. He has to watch his targets for a while, get a feel for their routines. Then he figures out where best to grab them.”