Shift Work (Carus #4) (12 page)

I dipped my chin and waited. When it appeared we’d stand around giving each other googly eyes, I let the tension flow from my body. “Shall we?”

Stan grunted again and waved me forward. We left the detectives behind and walked into the immaculate house with freshly vacuumed carpet, smooth hardwood flooring, and Italian tiles. Death clung to the air and drifted to meet me at the entranceway.

“What’s the story?” I asked Stan’s broad back as he continued forward.

“Housewife’s habit gone bad.”

“Seriously?”

“Addicts come in all shapes and sizes. After twenty years on the force, nothing really surprises me anymore.” His tone came out even and matter of fact, but his scent spoke otherwise. Not a surprise. No lemon and pepper sprinkled the air around Stan. No. Simple sadness mired his scent with a stiff weight, and something else. Sickly sweet sweat called out to the predators cohabitating my mind. They liked Stan, but sensing fear brought forth their most primal nature.

“Why do you smell off?” I leaned in and asked. I’d never accuse him of smelling like fear in front of his comrades, but something about this crime scene had spooked him.

Must be why he called me in. I
still
awaited approval on my paperwork.

“You’ll see,” Stan said.

I huffed at his back, but he ignored me and kept leading me farther into the house until we turned a corner and walked into a large master bedroom with a king-sized bed. A door on the far side of the room let in more light from what must be the en suite bathroom.

A woman in a white negligee lay sprawled on the rumpled covers of the bed, smelling of recent sex, vomit, death…and something else…something off. Not like Stan’s fear, something different. Like sour, burnt plastic, like the vial found near Loretta’s lifeless body.

“King’s Krank,” I said as I walked up to stand beside Stan and observe the crime scene.

Stan’s gaze flicked to me before he nodded. “We’re waiting on the tox screen and test results from the lab to confirm, but we found a vial similar to…”

To the one found near his dead wife.

“What about the lover?” I asked, cutting him off from the words he couldn’t say.

He took little time to recover. “How’d you know?”

“Everything leaves a trace. The husband’s scent is ingrained on every piece of furniture, flooring, wall, and ceiling in this place, but it’s not the one fresh on the bed or her skin.”

Stan’s lips snarled up.

“Not a surprise, either?”

He shook his head.

“We got anything on the lover?”

“He’s the one who called it in.” Stan pulled out his notebook and leafed through the small pages. “Charles de Jong. No record. Not even a speeding ticket. Married. Two kids. Lives three streets over and met the victim at church over a year ago. They’ve been having an affair for the last five months. Says he came here around nineteen-hundred after the husband left for a work trip. He was intimate with the deceased and then Suzy…” Stan pointed at the dead woman with the butt of his pen, “Wanted to try something new. She drank from the vial first and apparently the effect was immediate. She started vomiting and foaming at the mouth. That’s when Charles called it in. Nine-one-one took the call at oh-two-hundred. She went into cardiac arrest shortly after and died before paramedics arrived. Liu and Edwards took the case, but called me in this morning due to the potential KK link.”

“Who supplied them with the drug?”

“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” Stan snorted. “Charles claims Suzy supplied the drug, and he didn’t know what it was. She never said where she got it, and he never asked. He couldn’t even confirm whether it was KK.”

I pursed my lips and thought about the details for a bit, trying to fit them together in a way that made sense. “If my lover pulled a vial of mystery drug out to share with me post-coital, I’d ask a lot of questions. Like what it was and where it came from.”

“My take on it as well.”

“And?”

“And without his consent, or a warrant with just cause, we can’t strap a lie detector to him.”

My lips curled up. “You don’t need to.”

“Don’t need to…” He turned to me with pinched eyebrows, but understanding spread across his face, and his features relaxed. “Ah…I see. Let’s go question him, again, shall we?”

“Let me finish in here first.” I approached the bed, careful to avoid disrupting the strewn clothes, a condom wrapper, and rumpled sheets. I leaned over the bed and started breathing through my mouth. Her scent up close couldn’t give me anything it hadn’t already ten feet away, save a nasty headache.

And there it was, the reason this crime scene creeped out the veteran cop.

Horns.

Little nubby horns had punctured through Suzy’s forehead near the hairline. Blood had trickled down her face to dry in a cobweb pattern. The skin around the protrusions looked raw and fresh.

Stan stepped up to the bed. “There’s no evidence she was a supe and lover-boy denies any knowledge. The husband is on a plane and won’t touchdown for another three hours, but once we get hold of him, we might get a better picture.”

“She must’ve hid it well.” I sniffed her skin. “Doesn’t smell like a Were or Shifter, there’s no animal scent on her. Not sure what kind of supe she is…was… but she must’ve wanted it kept a secret. She probably masked her scent with a Witch charm. Her skin smells like a norm’s.”

“Can you detect the charms?”

I shook my head. “Not always. The really expensive ones will mask even the Witch’s scent. The one the dealer Aahil wore smelled faintly of Witches, more of a transfer scent, if anything. I can’t detect a Witch’s involvement with this deceased in any way.”

Stan’s shoulders drooped.

“But I know someone who can.”

****

Ben straightened up from his crouch near the corner. He’d been resting his face in his hands with his elbows braced on his knees. His skin had paled at least three shades and dark bags under his eyes had appeared.

“Lover give you anything?” he asked as we walked into the bedroom.

I glanced over my shoulder at Stan. He shook his head.

“I can’t give you the details of an ongoing investigation, but yeah. He gave us a little.” The lover had taken one look at my animal shifted eyes after he told his first lie and decided “honesty was the best policy.” We had confirmation the drug in the vial was King’s Krank, not that we needed it, and the name of a street level dealer.

“That’s fine. I don’t need to know any details,” Ben said. “Glad you got something out of him. Can you tell me if he did it?”

“He may be scum, but he’s not a drug addict, dealer or a killer,” I said.

Ben nodded. His gaze slid to the bed before he quickly looked away. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him to help. He may be my best guy friend, but he wasn’t a crime scene investigator, and the only harm he’d ever caused anyone, to my knowledge, was an earache from his midnight karaoke crooning.

Well, not entirely true. He had blasted me with a wicked spell once to stop me from gutting his denmate.

“Thanks again for coming,” I said. “I know this isn’t your thing.”

He nodded, then gulped.

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

Ben wiped his hands on his jeans. “Nope. She wasn’t a Witch and the nearest charm is three houses over on the left-hand side to mask a marijuana grow-op.”

Stan’s eyes narrowed. He pulled his phone out, punched some numbers in, and when someone picked up, he prattled off a series of number codes.
Crap.
The VPD probably expected me to learn those.

“Any idea what she is?” I asked Ben, nodding my head toward the bed.

He shook his head. “My magic reacted to her as if she was a norm.”

“A norm with horns,” I said
. What the heck is going on?
“Can I call you for future crime scenes? If we get another like this one? You don’t have to come into the actual room next time. I didn’t know you could detect things that far away.”

Ben’s lips pursed and his gaze cut away, not in a way that made any sense for this situation. “I need to go. My shift at the SRD starts soon.”

“Ben?”

He dropped his head.

“Ben, what’s going on?”

“I’ve been summoned to the Elders. Me and my den. We have until midnight tomorrow to present ourselves, or they’ll…”

“Retrieve you?” Despite my calm tone, my brain fired millions of signals to comprehend Ben’s words, and my heart went into full panic-attack mode.

Ben nodded.

“Because of Bola?” I whispered. Ben had said there’d be backlash for his den’s actions. I should’ve known this was coming. Over a month ago, Ben’s mentorees—Christopher, Patty and Matt—summoned the sadistic Demon without Ben’s knowledge or consent, in a desperate attempt to get Christopher’s voice back. He’d lost it from a spell gone wrong and figured Bola could help with his science background and Demon skills.

Christopher did get his voice back, but the Witches forgot to specify the length of time Bola could possess Christopher’s body, and Bola used the opportunity to wreak slaughter and mayhem across the Lower Mainland.

Now, the Witch Elders wanted to speak to Ben and his den, most likely to exact punishment.

“Yeah,” Ben said, interrupting my thoughts. “Because of Bola.”

“No!” I snarled, in a voice more animal than my own. The beast roared inside my core. My feras growled in agreement.

Ben snapped straight and took a step back.

I cleared my throat. “Sorry. My feras really like you. They don’t want anything bad to happen to you any more than I do.”

Ben frowned. “Define ‘really like.’ You’re not exactly my type.”

I groaned and punched him in the arm. “Not like that.”

Ben’s sad face brightened as his lips twisted up. “I know.”

“Don’t try to distract me with your lame jokes. If anything happens, Ben, I’ll come for you.” I meant every word. In this life, I was short on friends. Living as a mountain lion for over three decades to emotionally heal from an abusive relationship tended to put a kink in the social life. As one of my close friends, one of my only friends, I’d defend Ben any way possible. Even if it meant going against the all-mighty Witch Elders.

He reached out and squeezed my hand. His tone dropped into a more somber one. “I know.”

Chapter Fourteen

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”

~Philip K. Dick

The old man dodged my calls. Without any leads on the street-level dealer named “Patty Cake,” I used my precious spare time after helping Stan with the crime scene to drop by the SRD Vancouver headquarters and track down Agent Donny O’Donnell, fellow Shifter, former handler, and wily old coyote.

Ben and Matt winked at me as I skipped the sign-in desk and headed straight to the elevators. They’d cut the security tape feed with a little magical interference on my behalf. Not that I couldn’t enter the building, I’d just prefer not to deal with ATF unless necessary. Sadness punched my heart at seeing Ben and Matt on their last shift before facing the Elders. They’d be okay, though. They had to be. Ben promised.

Maybe I should take Tucker out as a going away present for my Witch bros.

My finger hovered over the button for the tenth floor where Tucker’s office sat.

No. Too obvious.

Besides, it would be a total abuse of the trust the Witches gave me. Not that they didn’t owe me, because they totally did. I’d spared their insufferable buddy from being put down as a rampaging Demon host, but they had enough on their plate. I hit the button for the fifth floor instead.

I found the old man exactly where I expected. Stooped over an old book in the resource library on the fifth floor.

The double swinging doors opened to a large room. It always surprised me the SRD valued the reference books enough to house them in their downtown headquarters in a space the size of ten offices. Real estate didn’t come cheap in this area, and the media preference these days skewed toward the digital format.

Regardless, someone in the SRD knew these books couldn’t be scanned and retain their value. Amazingly insightful for the SRD.

Two long tables with plastic chairs were placed in an open area and on the far side ten tall, solid wood bookshelves stood floor to ceiling. Books of all shapes and sizes adorned the units, giving the room that studious, dusty smell I loved. It reminded me of school.

Donny sat at the end of the far table, hunched over a large odorous book. His coyote familiar, Ma’ii, curled up on his feet, legs straight out and eyes closed. A soft snoring sound vibrated from his chest.

When the doors swung shut behind me, the air blew forward, announcing my entrance. The old man ignored me, but Ma’ii stopped snoring and popped one eye open.

Don’t stress him out
, Ma’ii warned.

I ignored the ankle-biting familiar and took in Donny’s appearance as I walked toward him. Slight and wiry, his white hair hung long and curled around his ears. The wrinkles on his face spoke of a long life lived well, full of humor and sunshine.

“Carus.” The old man’s voice travelled softly through the air.

“Is the SRD investigating King’s Krank?” I asked. No need for preamble. This guy could evade answering me like a pro-boxer dodged and weaved. I needed to pin him down with straight to-the-point questions.

“That’s an odd question to ask right away. Normally, ‘hello’ and ‘how are you?’ are more typical conversation starters. It’s good to see you, Carus. How are you?”

“Annoyed. Is the SRD doing anything about KK?”

“Like what? Enforcement?” A small smile danced on the old man’s face as he turned to me.

I nodded.

“It’s a street drug, not a supe-on-supe crime. Not necessarily, at least.”

“What exactly does the SRD do, then? Aside from ordering hits on supes?” I closed the distance between us and took the seat opposite Donny.

He opened his mouth, but I talked over his response.

“I mean, I get that King’s Krank might not be on their radar because it lacks a supe connection, but it just highlights their lack of initiative. They were completely useless in the Kappa and the Demon incidences. They’d labelled me rogue, but couldn’t track me down in their own backyard. Didn’t appear like they even tried. It’s like they’ve completely given up on having an enforcement or investigatory presence for current crimes.”