2 Blood Trail (17 page)

“You’ve got to bring the crossroads up here!”

“Do not.”

“Do so!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Vicki told them, stopping the argument cold. The wer, she’d realized while watching them draw the neighborhood on a bald patch of lawn, had very little sense of mapping. Although they probably knew every bush and every fence post on their own territory, the dimensions Peter had drawn were not the dimensions Vicki remembered. She frowned and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “As near as I can tell, here’s the tree. And here’s where I ended up coming out of the woods.”

“But
why
didn’t you just follow your back trail?” Rose asked, still confused on that point despite explanations.

Vicki sighed. The wer also had a little trouble dealing with the concept of
getting lost.

Before they could reopen the subject of noses, a small black head shoved itself under Vicki’s hand as Shadow crept forward, trying to get a better look at what was going on.

Peter grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him back. “Get out of there you, you’ll mess it up.”

“No, it’s all right.” Vicki stood, dusting off the seat of her shorts. The grass on the lawn was sparse and bare dusty patches were common. “I think I’ve seen as much as I can here.” She should be inside making phone calls; this really wasn’t helping.

Shadow squirmed in his cousin’s grasp and, when Peter released him, turned into a very excited small boy. “Show Vicki your trick, Peter!”

Under his tan, Peter turned a little red. “I don’t think she wants to see it, kiddo.”

“Yes she does!” Daniel bounced over to Vicki. “You do, don’t you?”

She didn’t, but how could she say no in the face of such determined enthusiasm? “Sure I do.”

He bounced back over to Peter. “See!”

Peter sighed and surrendered. “All right,” he reached out and tugged at the lock of hair falling into Daniel’s eyes. “Go and get it.”

Barking shrilly, Shadow raced off to the front of the house.

“Is he talking when he does that?” Vicki wondered aloud.

“Not really.” Rose’s ears pricked forward toward the sound. “Fur-form noises are kind of emoting out loud.”

“So Shadow’s barking translates into ‘Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy’?”

The twins looked at each other and laughed. “Close enough,” Rose admitted.

Shadow raced back silently, but only, Vicki suspected, because the huge yellow frisbee he carried made barking impossible. He dropped it at Peter’s feet—it looked more than a little chewed—and sat back, panting expectantly.

Peter skimmed out of his shorts and scooped up the plastic disk. “You ready?” he asked.

The entire back end of Shadow’s body wagged.

Looking not unlike an ancient Greek discus thrower, Peter whipped the frisbee into the air. Shadow took off after it and a heartbeat later so did Storm. Muscles rippling under his russet coat, he raced past the smaller wer, drew his hindquarters under and flung himself into the air, jaws spread, ready to clamp his teeth down on the rim of the disk.

Only to have it snatched out of his grasp by a larger black wer who hit the ground running with both Storm and Shadow in hot pursuit.

Rose giggled, thrust her sundress into Vicki’s hands and Cloud took off after them. They raced around the yard for a moment or two then, working as a team, Cloud and Storm cut the larger wer off and jumped it. Shadow, still barking whenever he managed to find a spare breath, threw himself on the mix of tumbling bodies.

A moment later, Nadine looked up out of the pile of multicolored fur, tossed the frisbee to one side and grinned at Vicki. “So, you about ready for lunch?”

 

“We found tracks, not five hundred yards from the house.” The words were almost an unintelligible growl. The silence that followed them took only a few seconds to fill with answering anger.

Nadine crossed the kitchen and clutched at her mate’s arm. “Whose?” she demanded. “Whose tracks?”

“We don’t know.”

“But the scent. . . .”

“Garlic. The trail reeks of nothing but garlic.”

“How old?” Peter wanted to know.

“Twelve hours. Maybe a little more. Maybe a little less.” Stuart’s hair was up and he couldn’t remain still, pacing back and forth with jerky steps.

If Ebon had been shot from that tree in the woods, as all evidence seemed to suggest he had, five hundred yards and twelve hours meant the assassin had come within range of the house sometime last night.

“Maybe you’d all better stay at a hotel, in town, until this is over,” Vicki suggested, knowing even as the words left her mouth what the reaction was going to be.

“No!” Stuart snapped, turning on her. “This is our territory and we will defend it!”

“He’s not after your territory,” Vicki pointed out, her own voice rising. “He’s after your lives! Take them out of his range, just for a time. It’s the only sensible thing to do!”

“We will not run.”

“But if he can get that close, you can’t protect yourselves from him.”

Stuart’s eyes narrowed and his words were nearly lost in his snarl. “It will not happen again.”

“How do you propose to stop it?” This was worse than arguing with Celluci.

“We will guard. . . .”

“You haven’t
been
guarding!”

“He has not been on our territory before!”

Vicki took a deep breath. This was getting nowhere fast. “At least send the children away.”

“NO!”

Stuart’s response was explosive and Vicki turned to Nadine for help. Surely
she’d
understand the necessity of sending the children to safety.

“The children must stay within the safety of the pack.” Nadine held a solemn looking Daniel very tightly, one hand stroking his hair. Daniel, in turn, held tight to his mother.

“This coward with a gun does not run this pack.” Stuart yanked his chair out from the table and threw himself down on it. “And his actions will not rule this pack. We will live as we live.” He jabbed his finger at Vicki. “You will find him!”

He wasn’t angry at her, Vicki realized, but at himself, at his perceived failure to protect his family. Even so, the heat of his gaze forced her to look away. “I will find him,” she said, trying not to resent the strength of his rage.
Let’s just hope I find him in time.

 

Lunch began as an assault; meat ripped and torn between gleaming teeth, an obvious surrogate for an enemy’s throat. Fortunately for Vicki’s piece of mind, things calmed down fairly quickly, the wer—especially the younger wer—being incapable of sustaining a mood for any length of time when distracted by the more immediate concerns of who forgot to take the butter out of the fridge and just where exactly was the salt.

The entire family ate in human form, more or less in human style.

“It makes it easier on the kids when they go back to school,” Nadine explained, putting Daniel’s fork into his hand and suggesting that he use it.

The cold mutton accompanying the salad was greasy and not particularly palatable, but Vicki was so relieved it was cooked that she ate it gladly.

“Ms. Nelson went to see Carl Biehn this morning,” Peter announced suddenly.

“Carl Biehn?” Donald glanced over at Stuart, whose ears had gone back again, then at Vicki. “Why?”

“It’s important I talk to the neighbors,” Vicki explained, shooting a look of her own at the dominant male. “I need to know what they might have seen.”

“He hasn’t been around here for years,” Nadine said emphatically. “Not since Stuart ran him off for frightening the girls. Jennifer had nightmares about his
God
for months.”

Stuart snorted. “God. He wouldn’t know a real God if it bit him on the butt. Old fool’s a grasseater.”

Vicki blinked. “What?”

“Vegetarian,” Rose translated.

“Did he tell you that?”

“Didn’t have to.” Stuart cracked a bone and sucked out the marrow. “He smells like a grasseater.”

Donald tossed a heel of bread onto the table and dusted his hands off against his bare thighs. “He stopped me in town once and pointed out the evils of giving life to animals only to kill them.”

“He did it to me once too but I pointed out that killing animals was easier than eating them alive.” Peter tossed a radish up into the air, caught it between his teeth, and crunched down with the maximum possible noise.

“Like majorly gross, Peter!” Jennifer made a disgusted face at her cousin, who only grinned and continued devouring his lunch.

“You don’t think it’s old man Biehn, do you, Vicki?” Rose asked quietly, pitching her voice under the general noise level around the table.

Did she? Living so close, Carl Biehn had opportunity to both accidentally discover the wers’ secret and access the tree the shots had come from. He was in good physical condition for a man his age and deeply held religious beliefs were historically a tried and true motive for murder. He had, however, expressed an abhorrence for killing that Vicki believed and, besides a sneaker tread he shared with all and sundry, no evidence linked him to the crimes. The fact that she’d liked him, as subjective as that was, had to be considered. Good cops develop a sensitivity to certain personality types that, no matter how carefully hidden, set off subconscious alarms. Carl Biehn seemed like a decent human being and they were rare.

On the other hand, the next likeliest suspect was a police officer and Vicki didn’t want to believe that Barry Wu was responsible. She glanced down the table at Colin who, while larger than his uncle and father, was still a small, wiry man and probably wouldn’t have made the force under the old size requirements. He looked like someone had a knife in his heart and was slowly twisting the blade. He hadn’t said two words since he’d sat down.

Did she think it was old man Biehn? No. Nor did she want to think it was Colin’s partner. Nor could she completely rule either of them out, not until the murderer was found. A great many people had access to the woods, however, and in spite of the statistics, the most obvious suspects didn’t always turn out to be guilty.

She turned back to Rose, waiting predator patient for an answer.

“Until I get more information, I have to suspect everyone, Rose, even Mr. Kleinbein. This is too important not to.”

 

Having cleared the table of anything remotely like food, the wer were rising and going their separate ways. Donald had already changed, padded out to the porch, and collapsed in a dark triangle of shade. Shadow, with permission from his mother, had taken a bone into a corner and, holding it between his front paws, was chewing it into submission.

Vicki stood as Colin did, but he turned and headed out of the kitchen without acknowledging her in any way.

“Colin!” Even Vicki stiffened at the command in Stuart’s voice and Colin stopped dead, shoulders hunched. “Vicki wants to talk to you.”

Slowly, Colin turned, canines gleaming.

“Colin. . . .” The name was a growl, low and menacing.

The younger wer hesitated for a moment, then his shoulders dropped and a curt motion of his head indicated Vicki should follow him.

It was far from gracious, but it would have to do. She fell into step behind him as he started up the stairs.

“It’s too hot to walk outside, so we’ll talk in my room,” he said without turning. “Then the kids won’t interrupt.”

Vicki wasn’t so sure of that, given the wer sense of privacy but, if it made Colin more comfortable, they could talk on the roof for all she cared.

His room was one of three in the addition built on over the woodshed and the door next to his was the first closed door Vicki had seen in the house.

“Henry,” Colin said by way of explanation as they passed. “He bolts it from the inside.”

“It’s not a bedroom. . . .”

“No. It’s a storage closet. But it doesn’t have a window, and if we shuffle stuff around there’s room for a cot.”

Vicki brushed her palm over the dark wood and wondered if Henry could sense her in the hallway. Wondered what it was like, lying there in the dark.

She sighed and entered Colin’s room. He threw himself down on the bed, fingers laced behind his head, watching her through narrowed eyes. Despite the outwardly relaxed position, every muscle in his body hummed with tension, ready for fight or flight. Vicki wasn’t sure which, nor did she want to find out.

“I used to get the laundry to do mine, too,” she told him, nodding at the half dozen clean uniform shirts hanging on the closet door, still in their plastic bags. Pushing a pair of sweatpants off a wooden chair, she sat down. “I had better things to do with my time than iron.

“So,” she leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees, “do you think your partner did it?” Colin’s eyes narrowed further and his lips drew back but before he could move she added matter-of-factly, “Or do you want to help me prove he didn’t?”

Slowly, his eyes never leaving her face, Colin sat up. Vicki accepted his puzzled scrutiny with her blandest expression and waited. The next line was his.

“You don’t think Barry did it,” he said at last.

“I didn’t say that.” She rested her chin on her folded hands. “But I don’t
want
to believe he did it and you’re the best person to prove he didn’t. For Chrissakes, Colin, start thinking like a cop, not a . . . a sheepdog.” He flinched. “Did he have the opportunity?”

For a moment she wasn’t sure he was going to answer her, then he mirrored her position on the edge of the bed and sighed. “Yeah. We were working days both times it happened. He knows the farm and he knows the conservation area. We got off at eleven last night and he could have easily come out here after shift and made those tracks.”

“Okay, that’s one against, and we know he has the skill. . . .”

“He’s going to the next Olympics, he’s that good. But if he’s casting silver bullets I couldn’t find any evidence of it and, believe me, I looked.”