The Judah Black Novels Box Set

by E. A. Copen

  I finished my list of rules, jotted down some emergency phone numbers, and checked the locks on the windows one more time. Then, I kissed my boy on the top of the head and told him I was going to work. “Take care of the place while I'm gone. And I'm going to call to check in randomly. But don't feel the need to wait for me. Call me if you need anything.”

  Hunter gave me a shove out of the way so he could see the TV. “Uh-huh. Yeah. See you later, mom.”

  Kids these days.

  I grabbed my keys, checked the window locks and the emergency numbers one more time, and then left to meet a detective about a werewolf autopsy.

  Chapter Two

  At six feet tall and roughly two hundred and fifty pounds of supernaturally dense muscle, our new visitor wasn't the kind of guy that I wanted to cross. A low, rumbling growl vibrated through the room when Doc didn't drop his knife right away. Somehow, I didn't think talking this guy down was going to work. He had a look in his eyes, somewhere between murderous rage and righteous contempt.

  “I said, get away from him!” He took another step forward and had barely gotten his heel back to the ground before Tindall pressed the barrel of a gun against the back of his head.

  “Go ahead and take another step, Valentino. Give me the excuse I need.”

  “You got three seconds to get that piece-of-shit gun away from my head, gringo, before I rip your face off,” the big Latino guy presumably named Valentino said.

  “Now, wait a second.” I put down the pen and paper as gently as I could. “Let's all calm down.”

  “One.”

  “Not in here,” Doc pleaded. “Please, God, not in here.”

  “Two.”

  “Tindall, put the gun down!” I came forward, drawing protesting growls from Valentino, but I didn't care. I figured it was better to anger him by moving than to let Tindall pull that trigger. If I didn't diffuse the situation—and fast—Tindall was going to be on a slab right next to our John Doe. “That's an order, Tindall.”

  Technically, I outranked Tindall as a federal officer. He was a local detective and, in a perfect world, he was obligated to follow any order I gave him. That didn't mean he had to like it. By the scowl on his face, I could tell he was thinking the same thing as me. Shoving my weight around was likely going to shorten my life expectancy here.

  It worked, though. Tindall lowered his gun but kept his finger on the trigger. “Today's your lucky day, Mr. Garcia.”

  “Now, wait outside,“ I said in my mom voice and pointed toward the door. “Both of you.”

  “I ain't going nowhere,” Valentino insisted and crossed his arms. “Not without Elias.”

  I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to ward off the headache that was already starting to crawl into my face. “Dr. Ramis, do you have an office or something? Somewhere Detective Tindall would be more comfortable?”

  Doc looked from me to the body and then to Valentino. “You want me to leave you two alone with the body?”

  “That's the idea, Doc.”

  “Oh,” he said and hesitated. “Make sure it's still in one piece when I get back, along with everything else in here.” He leaned over the dead body on the table to whisper to me. “And, whatever you do, don't disturb my assistants while they're sleeping. They don't wake gracefully.” He and Tindall made a hasty exit.

  As soon as they were gone, Valentino's posture changed. He hooked his thumbs into his belt, lifted his chin, and stalked along the wall with his eyes locked on me. The way he moved, with fluid, purposeful grace and silence, shook what little confidence I had in dealing with werewolves. Until proven otherwise, I had to assume that Valentino, like his brother, was a werewolf and react accordingly.

  Werewolf body language is complicated, too complicated for a non-expert like me to have more than a rudimentary grasp on. I remembered from my training that it worked as a form of non-verbal communication, quicker, subtler, and more efficient among their own kind most of the time than actual words. He was attempting to scare me. It was working, but I tried not to let it show.

  “You said he's your brother?”

  Valentino changed directions in his stalking but always remained out of reach as his eyes shifted to the corpse. “Yeah.”

  “You called him Elias. That's his name? Elias Garcia?” Valentino drew a hand over his chin but kept silent.

  “Look, Mr. Garcia. When I found him, he was like this, lying naked in the middle of the laundromat. No ID. Nothing. If you could give me some information—”

  He planted his feet and directed a hard scowl at me. “I ain't telling BSI shit.”

  Aha. Well, at least I knew why he was being so combative. I'd expected some level of animosity to exist between the residents of Paint Rock and a government agent. It comes naturally when the government forces any group of people from their homes and relocates them to a crappy patch of desert in the middle of nowhere. I'd been relocated against my will, too, but I knew better than to expect any sympathy from these people. So far as they were concerned, I was the enemy. The only thing that was ever going to change that was time and trust.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the BSI badge I always carried. I showed it to him and then casually tossed it to the side of the room. “Me neither. As far as I'm concerned, you were never here, and this conversation never happened. All I want is a name to go with the face.”

  “You're going to pull his file.”

  “One way or another,” I admitted. “But I'd rather hear your version first.”

  Valentino's forehead wrinkled. “Names have power. A lot of power in places like this. You give me yours and I'll give you his, but I won't sell nobody out. I ain't a rat.”

  “Judah Black.”

  Valentino looked surprised when I extended a hand toward him. He stared at it as if it were a bear trap. Then, he grunted and rolled his shoulders back. “My name's Valentino. That's my brother, Elias. Elias Garcia. He wasn't an official resident here, see, so don't bother checking the roster. Elias was sort of a drifter.”

  “A drifter?”

  For the first time, Valentino ventured close to the body, though he wrinkled his nose at it. I couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary but, then again, maybe his nose was more sensitive than mine.

  “He had a problem.”

  “With drugs?” Valentino turned to scowl at me. “We saw the track marks on his arm. Tindall's going theory is that this whole thing can be chalked up to a drug deal gone bad.”

  “No way. Elias was clean. He had to be to sleep at my house. I know. I made him piss in a cup once a week at random. One positive and he was out on his head. Those marks are old news. Scars.”

  “I thought werewolves didn't get scars?”

  Valentino snorted. “Things like that usually heal, yeah. Jab yourself enough times with silver, pump toxins into your body, and then refuse to embrace your wolf, and you don't heal so well. Nah. Elias' problem was more with people and authority figures than anything else. He didn't adjust well to life on the rez. Sometimes, he stayed with me. Other times, he'd go wherever he could find a roof. I kicked him out when I caught him doing barbs in the house. He was sleeping under an overpass in Ballinger for most of last year before he got arrested again. He got clean and, one day, showed up on my door. Stupid pendejo.”

  I frowned. If what Valentino was saying was true and Tindall was wrong, then we didn't know anything useful at all about why Elias had died. We wouldn't find anything useful out either if Doc didn't get the chance to sort through his insides. Valentino's testimony aside, we needed to rule out drugs.

  “Other than the drugs, did Elias have a history of any mental health problems?”

  “Why?” Valentino snapped. “You think he did this to himself?”

  “The suicide rate among werewolves is pretty high, Mr. Garcia.”

  “He didn't fucking stab himself in the neck, did he?” He didn't say anything for a long time, leaning in with his palms flat on the exam table. “I didn't k
now my brother as well as I should have, Agent Black.” Valentino reached into his pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes, sticking one in his mouth and lighting it before continuing. “We didn't always get along, you know?”

  “You and Elias fought?”

  Valentino stared at the glowing end of his cigarette. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

  “About the drugs?”

  “Look,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “he can't be bringing weird people into my house. It's my house.” He jabbed his thumb into the table firmly. There was a short pause before he mumbled, “He’d been seeing someone.”

  I leaned in. “What?”

  “He’d been seeing someone. Nobody from around here. I don’t know. Maybe it was some illegal. I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him. I don’t want to get mixed up in his personal life. I got a record. You people, you'd put me away again if I sneezed wrong.”

  He was getting more and more agitated, which was pushing us off-topic. I needed him to trust me, or he was going to stop talking altogether.

  “So,” I said, “you got a name for this girl?”

  “No, I don’t got no name. I didn’t fucking ask. I told you that.” He sucked down the rest of the cigarette and lit another. “Elias was clean, though. I know he was. I did the test on him day before yesterday.” He shook his head. “Shit. Three months he was with us. I think that's the longest he's ever been clean since we were kids, you know? And now he's dead? Who the fuck did this?”

  I drummed my fingers on my forearm. I didn't really have any details to give Valentino since he'd interrupted the autopsy. Even if I did have information to give him, I wasn't sure it was wise to pass that along, given how worked up he was. Someone like Valentino was more likely to take the law into his own hands than to give a killer due process. As much as I hated the bad guys, I had to admit that a lifetime behind bars was a far worse punishment than any death Valentino could dream up. Prisons were a nightmare, especially in Texas.

  “We don't know anything yet. The autopsy would be a major help. I'd also like to have a look at Elias' things if you don't mind.”

  His brow wrinkled. “Don't you need a release from the next of kin to cut into him? I mean, what guarantee do I have that you're going to put everything you take out back in and not ship it off to some government lab somewhere?”

  “Until ten minutes ago, nobody here seemed to know he had any kin, but I'm sure there's a form somewhere if you're not averse to signing it. Otherwise, if you object, you'll have to file your objections with the county clerk of courts and make a legal mess of it. I don't think that route is going to benefit anyone, to be honest. We want to know what happened to Elias as much as you do. No one's going to ship his parts off to a lab. Trust me when I say the government already has more werewolf cadavers than they know what to do with.”

  The thought didn't seem to comfort Valentino any, though he nodded. “What exactly are you going to do with him?”

  I told him. In the decade or so I'd been working for BSI, I'd seen a few autopsies and their aftermath through the glass, though I'd never attended one directly. Most of what they show on television isn't far off. They cut the body up, pull out the insides, and look for anything out of the ordinary. Even if the cause of death was obvious on the inside, they had to do the whole thing, weighing organs on a scale and writing out a nice, detailed report. Samples of tissue and blood went to an independent lab that analyzes them in a period of three to six weeks and then sent another report back to the local coroner and police station.

  At least, that's how it worked back in Cleveland. Here, the process might take even longer. I finished by promising him that I would make certain the body was released within twenty-four hours after Doc completed the autopsy.

  “I guess that's fine,” he said when I was done. “I'll make arrangements with my people.”

  “Valentino, you wouldn't happen to have a picture of this girl he was seeing? Maybe a description? Even a name would help.”

  He tapped his chin in thought. “Dressed like one of them chola whores. You know? With the painted-on eyebrows, the long, red fingernails, and the gangbanger attitudes?”

  “A name, Valentino. I need a name.”

  He gave me a funny look, started to say something, and then stopped, thinking better of it. “Maria or something like that. At least, I think that’s what I heard Elias say once or twice.”

  He really looked like he wanted to say more. I waited, but all Valentino did was snarl and smoke, so I jotted down the description as best I could. I didn't think it would help me find her any more than the generic name he'd given me. For all the information I'd squeezed out of Valentino during the interview, I still knew absolutely nothing.

  “You got a phone number, Valentino?”

  He hesitated. “I guess,” he said and grabbed the pen from my hands to write a number down. He glanced at Elias as he handed both the paper and pen back to me. “Just so we're clear, I'm only letting you touch him because you said it would give me answers. You'd better have some when you call me.”

  I took the items from him, ignoring the threat. “It would really help if I could see his things or look around his room a little. When can I come by?”

  “Absofuckinglutely not. And I want him released by this time tomorrow, or I'm coming to get him.”

  “I'm trying to help, Valentino.”

  Valentino let out another growl and stormed for the door where he paused. “Government help is what got us relocated to this dead, dry patch of Hell. You can take your help and shove it up your blanco ass, puta. And you better pray you find the fucker who did this to my little brother before I do. 'Cause if I see him, I'll rip his beating heart out of his chest and shove it down his throat.”

  “Valentino,” I said in a warning tone, “don't.”

  “Try and stop me,” he spat back at me and pushed through the double doors.

  Chapter Three

  My car could put Frankenstein's monster to shame. It was a sixty-eight Firebird, but it had parts in it from every major car on the road because it was constantly breaking down. The body was black, and the doors red. The bumper was a dented-up strip of silver and the clutch was a bit touchy. While I could afford something better, there was a certain appeal in saying I drove a classic car, even if it looked like it'd been through a war zone.

  I could only change radio stations if I busted out a screwdriver and pulled some wires out of the dash, but I never bothered. The AM station it was stuck on was static in all the other places I lived, but on the reservation, it was an oldies station that played mostly seventies and eighties rock, which suited the car.

  “Stayin' Alive” by the Bee Gees played that morning as I pulled into the gravel lot next to a building that could have served as a backdrop in a John Wayne western. It had that perfect, flat front with white columns and hitching posts out front. Maybe the building was old enough to be authentic, but now it bore the scars of modern remodeling. The doors were the pressure-sensitive, automatic kind instead of the swinging saloon doors that might have fit better. A big red neon cross glowed against the dawn, the only bit of neon in the whole town.

  There were two other vehicles on the lot: Tindall's Cadillac and a class A motorhome that took up most of the parking lot.

  I parked and got out to look at the motor home with a whistle. There were some trailers on the reservation that weren't as nice as that thing. Still, it had seen some road. An inch of dirt had caked to the side, though someone had painstakingly wiped down the back end to make sure the bumper stickers, of which there were plenty, were still visible.

  Inside, I stopped by the empty receptionist window. Tindall sat in the waiting room, flipping through a magazine. He spoke to me without looking up. “Body's in the back. Doc's waiting on you.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Listen, Black. Where you come from, maybe they got fancy, well-equipped law enforcement teams that handle this sort
of thing, but Paint Rock is a backwater, God-forsaken place. Don't ask me how it attracted talent like Doctor Eugene Ramis. The guy's foremost in the field of weird, dead things, even if he isn’t certified through the state. Still, he’s the closest thing we’ve got. That’s how it is here. We work with what we’ve got. But if something goes wrong, it’s my ass in the fire, since I am employed by the state.”

  “So, what you're telling me is that you need someone to pass the blame to if he screws up?”

  “Bingo.” Finally, he looked up from his magazine. “Since you technically outrank me, you get to deal with that nut today.”

  I tried to object, but Tindall jerked his chin in the direction of the door down the hall. “Get on down there before the place starts to stink even more than it already does, will you? I've got other things to do today.”

  I clamped my jaw firmly shut and started down the hall. The elevator music faded the further I went, shifting into a different rhythm. By the time I reached the end of the hall, I realized the door was vibrating to the familiar beat of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Despite myself, I was smiling when I opened the door. The smile quickly faded when I realized that Doctor Ramis wasn't the only one waiting for me on the other side.

  Three corpses, not counting the werewolf we'd brought in, stood in the middle of a small, temporary stage, dressed in the tattered remains of dust and dirt-sodden suits and prom dresses from what could have been another century. They weren't behaving much like corpses, though. Every one of them was up and walking around. More accurately, they were dancing.

  The doctor, a stick of a white guy with an honest-to-God afro and thick-rimmed glasses, sat in his white lab coat, tapping the beat out on his CD player with a drumstick and mouthing the words to the song. The song reached the chorus, and he got up, tapping on the wall, acting as if he was going to join them. When he saw me, he did a cartoon-style double-take, then dropped his drumstick and shrieked.

  The corpses behind him immediately stopped moving around and stood there blankly staring ahead with dead, glassy eyes. The doctor adjusted his glasses and composed himself before clearing his throat and shutting off the music. “You scared the bejeezus out of me!”