“It couldn’t just be that you were horny and he’s hot?” I asked the woman in the mirror.
She gave me the finger.
My boots made a satisfying thunder against the steps as I ran downstairs. I concentrated on the rhythmic thud and not the pain in my chest.
The best way to forget all of this was to throw myself into my work; it wasn’t as if I didn’t have plenty to do. I had a dead citizen minus one heart, and a lot of relatives to interview.
I opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.
The wolf was back.
Chapter 19
The animal stood on the hood of my brand-new squad car. If I hadn’t known she was a messenger, I might have been worried about the paint job. Those claws appeared awfully sharp for a spirit wolf.
“Now what?”
The beast tilted her head.
“I got the message. Watch over Quatie. I’ll go there later today. You don’t have to keep coming back, Grandmother.”
The wolf growled and jumped off the hood. The car bucked up and then down as if something heavy had just been removed.
I took one step forward. The wolf turned and ran. I followed, but by the time I reached the trees, she was gone.
The mist was lifting; the sun shone through, sparking brightly off the droplets of moisture on the grass, the branches, my shiny new car. Come to think of it, the spirit wolf had looked a little wet, too.
Too much was going on this morning. Far too much had been going on all night. I sat on the hood and put my head in my hands.
“What’s done is done,” I said. “If the wife ever turns up, I’ll apologize. Let her pop me in the nose.”
I probed my recently healed appendage. It was only fair.
“Until then,” I continued, “leave him alone and you’re good.” Or at least as good as I was going to get.
Standing, I peered at the smooth finish of the car. Not a mark on it. I hadn’t expected there to be.
I gazed in the direction the wolf had gone. North, just like last time. I hadn’t figured to see the wolf again since I’d gotten the message, but either I’d gotten the wrong message or there was a new one.
I wished I could ask Ian about this, but I was going to have to make do with my own investigative skills from here on out.
Inside I found a book I’d bought on Cherokee traditions—sad that I had to get a book off of Amazon for something I should already know, but I didn’t have much choice. I turned to a section on directions.
As Ian had said, to the west lay the Darkening Land, a place of thunder, its color black. In the east was the land of the sun, triumph, power, the color red. The south held Wahala, the white mountain where peace and good health were found. To the north waited the Frigid Land, a site of sadness and trouble, its color blue.
The wolf had materialized each time either before Ian had shown up or after he’d left, then run north. Was she trying to tell me that Ian was trouble?
As if in answer, a sharp, insistent howl rose from the distant hills. I’d never heard a wolf howl in the daytime. I’d never heard a wolf howl at all until last summer. As previously stated, we didn’t have them.
If the messenger wanted me to help Quatie, I would. If the wolf wanted me to be careful of Ian, I’d already figured that out for myself. And if she came back?
I almost wished the thing were a werewolf, because then I could shoot it.
* * *
I didn’t bother to go to the office. I didn’t want to see Cal or Jordan. I called in, said I was going on patrol. I could do whatever I wanted. I was the boss.
Pulling out the obituary section, I headed for the first house on the list. Before I got there, my cell phone buzzed. I nearly let it go to voice mail, figuring the caller was Cal or, worse, Ian. But I was too responsible to ignore what could be an emergency, so I glanced at the display, then I jerked my car to the side of the road, nearly dropping the phone under my seat in my haste to answer.
“Doc?”
“Freaking caller ID,” he muttered. “I hate progress.”
“Tell me you’ve made some.”
“Have you ever known me to dawdle? I’ve performed autopsies on two of the bodies still at the funeral home. No hearts.”
I’d suspected as much, but now what?
“Don’t you want to know what killed them?” Doc asked.
“Not the lack of a vital organ?”
“No.”
Which led me to believe that my initial diagnosis was correct: The victims weren’t people, but creatures we hadn’t identified yet, and there was someone in town who knew not only how to recognize them, but also how to kill them.
“Okay,” I asked when Doc didn’t elaborate, “how did they die?”
“From the exact cause you’d expect in the particular circumstance of each victim.”
“Which makes no sense.”
“And human beings without hearts do?”
“I’m not so sure they were human.”
“I didn’t find any indication of that,” he took a deep breath, then let it out, “except for the pesky tin-man syndrome.”
“I don’t understand how this wasn’t discovered before now.”
“In the case of these victims, I’m not surprised.”
“Why not? I’d think that a dead...” I paused, not wanting to use the word “person” but being unable to think of a better one, since we had no idea what they were. I gave up and moved on. “They come into the funeral home with a gaping hole in their chest cavity and no one notices?”
“The chests were unmarred, so the lack of a heart would only be found during an autopsy, and there wouldn’t be an autopsy ordered in any of these cases. Nothing suspicious.”
“What about during the embalming process?”
“None of them were embalmed.”
“But isn’t that required?”
“Embalming’s only used to preserve the body for the funeral. If there’s a quick, planned, small ceremony, no ceremony, or a cremation without a viewing, no embalming.”
Since I’d already had a variation of this conversation with Grant, I remained silent.
If the dead were some kind of supernatural creature, then how could they be dying from a human ailment?
Maybe they hadn’t been, but the “hunter” was able to kill them so it looked as if they were, or perhaps infect them, somehow, some way, so that they died in a manner that wouldn’t begin a rash of autopsies. Which was pretty far-fetched, but I wouldn’t put it past the Jäger-Suchers.
Except Elise insisted none of them were here. I wasn’t sure I believed her; however, plenty of people in the world had seen strange things and might have decided to kill them. Neither me, Mal, Claire, nor Doc was a J-S agent, but we all kept silver weapons close at hand.
“None of the deceased showed any signs of waking up and walking around?” I asked.
“Not when I was through with them.”
I grimaced at the image of what had been done.
“You’re thinking zombie? Vampire?” Doc asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Huh,” Doc said, as if we were discussing the new special at the Good Eatin’ Cafe. “I saw no evidence of movement or reanimation. If they were capable of it, I’d think they’d do so before I—” He paused before elaborating, and I was glad. “But who knows? I’ve scheduled an exhumation for this afternoon. Three o’clock.”
“That was fast.”
In most places, exhumation of bodies is a long, drawn-out, expensive process. Here we did things with a bit less fanfare.
“You need to come,” Doc continued. “If we open up the grave and there’s no one home, you could be on to something.”
* * *
I agreed to meet Doc at a quarter to three; then I went to the house of Barbara O’Reily, daughter of Peggy, who’d passed away the morning after the Thunder Moon from complications of Alzheimer’s and whom Doc Bill had just sliced up like a Thanksgiving turkey. How was I going
to explain that?
Barbara opened the door wearing a black dress and heels. Today must be the day of the small ceremony. Could I have picked a worse time?
“Grace.”
Those of my father’s generation or older continued to call me Grace instead of Sheriff, and I didn’t mind.
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
“Thank you.” She stepped back, inviting me in. “It’s nice of you to come by.”
I followed Barbara into the living room, accepting her offer of a seat before I disabused her of the notion that this was a condolence call.
“Ms. O’Reily—”
“Call me Barbara. I’ve known you since you were four.”
Which would be a good reason for me to continue to call her Ms. “Thank you, Barbara. I need to ask you a few questions.”
Her distracted, artificial smile faded. “Questions?”
“About your mother.”
I decided to leave the autopsy news until last. Some people tended to get pissy when you ordered knives and saws applied to their relatives. In case Barbara was one of them, I wanted my questions out of the way first.
“All right.” She glanced at the clock on the mantel. “I’ve got a little time before I have to meet my sister at Farrel’s.”
The O’Reily sisters were twins. Betty had married and moved to Atlanta. Barbara had stayed home with her mother. Since Betty’s husband had already died and she’d never had any children it would make for the small ceremony that seemed to be a requirement of this strange rash of deaths.
“I can’t imagine what you’d want to ask,” Barbara continued.
I wasn’t quite sure myself. “Can you tell me how she died?”
Barbara frowned. “Alzheimer’s.”
“I mean how? Was she conscious? Did she say anything? Did she seem—” I remembered Ms. G. “Afraid?”
Barbara’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
Bingo.
“What happened?”
She hesitated, as if she didn’t want to speak of it, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Where are my manners? Would you like some coffee? Tea? A soft drink?”
“No thank you,” I said politely, though I wanted to snap, Get on with it. I patted her hand awkwardly. “Just tell me.”
“All right. Mom was in a home. I couldn’t keep her here anymore. She’d take off in the night. She was always looking for Dad. Didn’t remember he’d been dead for a decade.” Her lips trembled.
I made noises of commiseration. At least my dad had gone quickly. There was something to be said for a massive coronary.
“I’d gone to see her after work. I always did.”
“Was she any better, or worse, than usual?”
“That was the strange thing—she was better. The doctor thought she’d last a few more weeks. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Her going was really a blessing.”
I nodded. She was right.
“I sat with her longer than usual, but she got agitated. Said there was someone in the room.”
An icy finger seemed to trace my neck. “Who?”
“She was paranoid, a symptom of her disease. I didn’t think anything of it until she screamed and began to thrash, clawing at her throat like she was fighting for breath.”
“How strange.”
“The doctor had warned me. Some of them forget how to eat, how to swallow, and literally starve to death. Some forget to breathe and—” She lifted one shoulder. “Struggling for breath sent her heart into overdrive, and it just couldn’t handle the stress. She died of a heart attack.”
We seemed to be having a rash of those, too.
Barbara took several deep, slow breaths. “Her face when she died ... She was so afraid.”
“Not being able to breathe would scare the crap out of me.”
Barbara gave a wan smile. “I don’t like to believe that in her last moments she thought someone meant to hurt her. I’d hoped that when she went, she’d do so peacefully. I guess that was too much to ask.”
I didn’t think so. Unfortunately, no one had asked me.
“Was there anything else about the night that struck you as odd?”
She cast me another quick, suspicious glance. If I weren’t careful, people would be whispering that I had the sight. Too bad I didn’t, because it would make interrogations a whole lot easier.
“There was a scream,” she said. “It didn’t sound—” She dropped her gaze to her lap, where she began to pick imaginary bits of lint from the black material.
“It didn’t sound what, Barbara?”
“Human.”
Uh-oh.
“Screams probably sound a whole lot different than a person’s voice,” I managed, “and if your mom was scared—”
“Maybe. I was in the hall, and then there was this horrible, blood-curdling shriek. I thought someone was in there with her, even though I knew no one could be.”
“You didn’t see her scream?”
“I was talking to the nurse, and—” She made a vague motion with one hand. “We both froze for a second, then ran in. Mom was gasping, choking, struggling.”
“But she was alone?”
“Yes. I was right outside the door. No one went in or out.”
“The windows?”
Barbara’s gaze met mine. “She’s an Alzheimer’s patient, Grace. There were no windows.”
Chapter 20
“Why are you questioning me about my mother’s death?” Barbara asked. “It was pretty cut-and-dried.”
Except for the scream, the choking, the mask of fear upon dying, and the lack of a heart, but I decided to keep that to myself. However, one thing I couldn’t keep to myself, no matter how much I might want to, was the autopsy I’d ordered.
“There’ve been more than the usual number of deaths in town over the past few days. Doc Bill has been asked by the CDC—” At her blank stare I elaborated. “The Centers for Disease Control want him to do some tests.”
“Why?”
“Hard to say. But I authorized an autopsy on your mom as well as the others.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t ask me.”
“It had to be done right away.”
“Is there some kind of epidemic?” Her hand fluttered up to rest, trembling, at the base of her throat.
How had I known that would be the first question? Maybe I was psychic.
“Doc assures me nothing’s contagious. The tests are just a precaution.” I spread my arms, trying for the good-old-boy grin my father had used so well. “You know how those folks from Atlanta are.”
To the citizens of Lake Bluff, Atlanta was a strange and foreign land, a place of crime and dirt, one that dazzled the youth of our town into absconding down the mountain, then spit them back out when they were ruined.
Claire had come home from Atlanta a ghost of her former self. If it weren’t for Mal, I wasn’t sure she’d have been able to get over what had happened to her there.
Playing the Atlanta card usually worked to bring people into an “us against them” partnership. I just wasn’t sure how many times I’d be able to get away with using it today.
“Did Doc find anything?” she asked.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that. It’s an ongoing investigation.” I stood. “Until we’ve come to some kind of conclusion, I won’t be able to give you any answers.”
“As soon as you know—”
“Of course.” I headed for the door. “One more question—was there anything different about your mother recently?”
“Besides her thinking I meant to kill her every time I walked in the room? Or the charming way she started to keep her shoes in the refrigerator and the milk under her bed?”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’re just looking for a pattern.”
“To what?” Barbara threw up her hands.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Can’t tell me. Never mind.” She patted her hair. “I need to go.”
Barbara shut the door behind me a little harder than necessary, and I headed for the residence of the next name on the obituary list.
The interviews were all eerily similar. Walking down Center Street after the last one, I was cataloging those similarities in my trusty notebook when I bumped into someone.
A sharp, horrified gasp, followed by, “Oh no!” made me glance up as a glass jar of something sped toward the ground. I snatched it out of the air before it smashed into the pavement.
“Grace.” Katrine Dixon set her perfectly manicured hand against her great big breasts. “You always were the quickest gal in these mountains.”
I handed her the jar, which appeared to be a jelly container full of swirling liquid the shade of skim milk. I glanced at the nearest storefront. Ian’s clinic.
“Have you met him?” she asked. “I think he might be able to help me.”
Lake Bluff being what it was, I already knew that Katrine didn’t need any help. There wasn’t a thing wrong with her that a good, swift kick in the ass wouldn’t cure. Katrine liked attention, hence the balloon breasts and itty-bitty skirt.
“What did he give you?”
“A natural cure. Suzanne Somers used natural cures on her breast cancer, and it went all away.”
“You don’t have breast cancer, Katrine.” What Katrine had was a raging case of hypochondria.
She sniffed and stuck her suddenly pert nose in the air. Had she had that fixed, too?
“Ian takes me seriously. He gave me a complete physical.” She drew one blood red nail over her left breast. I half-expected the pointy tip to pop the silicone like a balloon. I took a step back just in case. An explosion like that could put out an eye.
“He gives great physical,” she purred.
I could imagine.
Katrine had once been a knobby-kneed, flat-chested, stringy-haired whiner. But she’d left Lake Bluff after high school—no one knew for where—and come home a completely different person, except for the whining.
I eyed the short white skirt and the tight red top, which showed off the body she’d returned with to perfection. I wondered how many plastic surgeons she’d had to blow to get those breasts. I wondered how she planned on paying Dr. Walker for his exam. Despite the shiny new exterior, Katrine was poor white trash— emphasis on “poor,” double emphasis on “trash”—and she always would be.
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