The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

Walls of blank whiteness solidified and shifted to the cheery yellow-brick tiles of the LAPD’s morgue. For once, the haze of ozone wasn’t replaced with fresh air. Instead, the scents of rubbing alcohol, formalin, and decay pervaded my nose. A soft ‘thud’ as Quinval’s body landed on the floor next to me.

That was followed by a clatter of hooves as Galen staggered for a moment. His forehead banged into one of the room’s hanging lamps. The wizard let out a curse.

Liam gasped in horror, nose wrinkling, eyes wide.

“Wh-what is this place?” the Fayleene stammered. “The stench of death…it is everywhere!”

“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “This is where I do my job.”

“You work…here?” He shuddered as he asked, “What crime are you being punished for?”

“Such surroundings are indeed challenging to one’s senses,” Galen agreed, as he rubbed a tender spot just above his eyebrow. “The aroma does little to improve its ambiance.”

“This is where we examine dead bodies,” I explained. “So that we can figure out the cause of death. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can even identify the killer.”

Liam nodded his understanding. He swallowed nervously and took a step forward to look at one of the steel examination tables. Thankfully, the table was empty, and the room deserted for the moment. I couldn’t count on the latter for much longer, though.

I went to one of the nearby clothes lockers, pulled out two pre-packaged sets of pale green scrubs, and tossed the one marked ‘Men – XXL’ to the wizard. “Galen, I need you to switch to your human form. Then get dressed, it’ll help us blend in here. Put the gloves on, too.”

The centaur nodded. He took a deep breath, as if preparing to plunge into an icy pool of water, and began to recite the lines of his transformation spell. I tore open the clear plastic of my own scrubs package, shook out the items inside, and began to gown up.

Liam watched intently as I slipped the loose trousers and gown over my street clothes. “Strange garb for stranger work quarters. What will I need to wear to ‘blend in’ here?”

“You’re not going to wear anything. I’ve got no idea how I’m going to explain bringing a white-tailed deer into work. But dressing you up a scrub cap and gown isn’t going to help my case, not unless I’m pleading insanity.”

A fizzy
pop
like a magnum-sized champagne cork going off echoed off the tile. Galen’s superbly muscled, extremely male form gleamed under the lights as he opened his own scrubs package and put on the clothes. The centaur handled the shirt, trousers, gloves, and cap well enough. He looked helplessly at the shoe covers, so as soon as I’d gowned up, I helped slip them on over his bare feet. With a little luck, the sheer bagginess of the trousers would ensure no one would notice that Galen had no socks or shoes.

“I do hope we won’t spend much time down here,” he remarked. “It is unseasonably cold in these chambers.”

I sighed. “The result of us not having preservation-magic. The scrubs I gave you won’t keep you all that warm, but at least you’ll be street legal.”

“If by that colloquialism you mean that we’ll be able to walk out of this building, I will be more than satisfied. Between our transport and my transformation, I’ve expended all the magic I can tap into for at least the next hour.”

“We’ve got little choice but to make it work,” I said, and I indicated Quinval’s body. “Help me lift the Protector onto one of these examination tables.”

“Fayleene are quite a bit heavier than they look,” he intoned. “Let me handle this.”

With that, Galen knelt and scooped the stag’s body up in his massive forearms. He let out a grunt of exertion as he lifted the dead weight and carefully deposited Quinval’s corpse onto the closest examination table. I went to a nearby cabinet and pulled out an evidence collection kit. Steel forceps and empty syringes gleamed in the cold light.

“Dayna,” Liam asked uneasily, “what are you going to do?”

I pulled up my facial mask and moved to the table. “I’m going to prove once and for all that the Protector of the Forest was murdered the same way as Captain Vazura.”

“But why bother? The way the Lead Does were acting…they’ll not forgive your trespass in exchange for that information. Let alone your spiriting the Protector’s body out of its sacred resting place.”

I deftly pulled one of the syringes out of the kit and located the dark path of a vein on Quinval’s neck. A quick stab, and I was able to draw out the blood sample I wanted as I replied to Liam’s question.

“It’s worth it because I need them to see that something bigger is going on here.”

“Something bigger?” Liam canted his head at me. “I don’t follow.”

“This isn’t about you, Liam. No matter if you’re an outcast or the Heir Apparent. I think this is about all of the Fayleene.”

His forehoof clacked against the hard floor in annoyance as I used a set of forceps to pluck a single hair from Quinval’s side. “This is all Wyeth’s doing! He’s betrayed both me and my people, plain enough!”

“That’s where you’re wrong. He’s betrayed himself. You saw how he acted at the ceremony. He was just as surprised as you when he learned that the Protector was dead. And just now, he was shocked when you accused him of murder.”

The hair went onto a clean glass dish. I took the samples over to the bank of forensic appliances against the wall. While we didn’t have the latest equipment down here compared to the Chem Lab, it would do for what I needed. I slid both solid and liquid samples into the appropriate analysis machines before returning to my examination of Quinval’s body. I held the forceps ready in one gloved hand. With the other, I began to ruffle through the thick hair that covered the nape of the Protector’s neck as I went on.

“But the choice of the Lead Does to bypass him…after he’d dedicated his life to becoming the next Protector? It broke something inside of that stag. In desperation or madness, Wyeth must have allied himself with that demon-thing.”

A nod from Liam. “To kill me and take the Protector’s position for himself.”

“That explanation is sorely lacking,” Galen put in. “If your nemesis truly wished you dead, then why did he not have his demon friend murder you, instead of Captain Vazura? From his vantage point, I daresay that he could have targeted his darts at either of you.”

“That’s why I think this is about something bigger,” I agreed. “Whoever we’re up against doesn’t care in the slightest whether you or Wyeth come out on top. They just don’t want you learning how to stop Sirrahon…before the dragon crushes the Fayleene.”

The Protector’s heir shook his head as if to clear away the terrible thought. “Wyeth is truly mad, then. Why would he wish for Sirrahon to lay waste to his own people?”

“Because he wants the Fayleene to suffer,” I concluded. “Before he gets to save them. Before he gets to be the hero he’s seen himself as all of his life.”

“And what of Lady Behnaz’s role in this? We know that she’s meeting with Wyeth.”

I had no explanation to offer. Right then, my fingers encountered a hard spot under a spot where Quinval’s coat grew the thickest. I brushed the soft wooly underfur out of the way and found a dime-sized bruise. A tiny puncture mark lay in the exact center. A quick probe with the forceps, and I removed a pine-needle dart from the wound. The wizard and the Fayleene stared at the blood-smeared weapon, their expressions as grim as I’d ever seen.

The printer next to the analysis machines started up with a chatter and a whine, making us jump. I placed the dart into a secured sample case, tossed my soiled gloves, and went over to pick up the results. The results were the same, right down to the last tenth of a percentage point, as what I’d seen from Vazura’s samples.

“Sodium cyanide poisoning,” I remarked. “And again, that odd trace of gold.”

“What that trace could portend, I have no idea,” Galen said. “Perhaps it is mere chance.”

“Once is chance. Twice is a pattern. It means something, and I’m missing it.”

A soundless ripple made the air vibrate around us. The wizard looked about, startled, until a familiar black shape phased into existence. Destry solidified before us, his mane a rough tangle and his spectral sides heaving, as if he’d been galloping full-tilt.

“Our quarry, he is
très rapide
.” His voice was strained, breathless. “Not many beings are faster than one of the
pouquelaye
. I am sorry, Dayna, but this demon managed to elude me.”

Galen frowned. “That places us back at square one, then.”

“Maybe not quite to square one,” I mused. “We’ve just proven that the murder of the Protector and Captain Vazura were connected. It’s no coincidence that Sirrahon is showing up when there’s no experienced Protector to shield the Fayleene’s woods.”

“And it’s hardly coincidental that we’ve lost the one man who could have helped us find a way to beat Sirrahon, either.”

“We have to find some way,” I insisted. “Unless we want to trust to Wyeth showing up in the nick of time to save everyone, we still have work to do.”

Chapter Twenty-One

A rattle came from the door as someone put a key in the lock. Galen and Liam looked to me expectantly. I almost let out a groan. I hadn’t been kidding about having no sane excuse for bringing a pair of deer (one dead, one live) into the examination room.

“Galen, just follow my lead,” I said quickly. “Liam, no talking. If someone tries to examine you, just…I don’t know, make deer sounds.”

He blinked. “What sounds do deer make?”

I stared at him. “But…don’t you–”

“Fayleene don’t keep company with deer! How would I know what they sound like?”

“Just wing it, then,” I whispered, as the door swung open.

To my delight, Shelly Richardson stepped through the door. Maybe my luck was starting to turn, at least a little. Her face registered puzzlement as she spotted me, and then it positively lit up as she saw Galen standing at my side.

“Oh my stars and garters!” she exclaimed, as she came over to greet us. “Dayna, you have brought an angel back into our midst.”

Galen turned his charm up to eleven as he took her hand and bent to kiss it. “I am indeed lucky to have met you again, Milady Richardson.”

“And…and I too, Galen Friesain.”

I opened my mouth to correct her, only just catching myself. That had been the name I’d used when I’d first introduced the wizard to Shelly, after all.

“I’m afraid that we have come yet again at a moment of need,” Galen cautioned her.

“Oh, no worries, darlin’. I’m just happy that you remembered me.”

“Remembered? And how might one forget a lady as distinguished as you?”

A ghostly chuckle sounded inside my head.

“Ah,
oui
,” Destry sighed. “Love, she is at once the most coy and strange mistress.”

I rolled my eyes at that. “Um, Shelly, Galen’s right. We’re really in a quandary here, but maybe you can help us out.”

“Of course, of course.” Shelly pulled her gaze away from Galen’s, only to have it settle on the soft brown eyes of the Fayleene princeling. She walked in front of Liam and put her hand out to pet him. “Aren’t you the cutest thing! Are you tame?”

Liam hesitated, and then said, “Moo?”

“He’s tame,” I hastily put in, as Shelly scratched her head in puzzlement.

My friend snatched her pince-nez glasses from where they hung by a neck chain and gave Liam a closer look. She stroked his head and began examining his hair, his antlers.

“That may be,” she agreed, “but he just doesn’t sound right. And he’s a little small to have such big antlers. If he’s ill, I’ll need to start by checking his temperature.”

Liam’s eyes went wide as he looked to me. “Moo! Moo!”

“That’s not necessary,” I assured her.

Shelly’s hand flew to her mouth as she spotted Quinval’s corpse, laid out on the examination table. “The poor thing! Must be the stag you were tellin’ me about earlier.”

“That’s him.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the deer’s body as she reached into a nearby bin to grab a pair of latex gloves. Shelly pulled them on and then took hold of the Protector’s foreleg. She gave the knee joint a gentle flex. Then she went around to the front of the table and examined the stag’s nose, his lips, and even probed the animal’s mouth.

“That’s dang peculiar,” she said, half to herself. “Strange break at that joint. Probably caused during a final convulsion. As to what caused the convulsion, on the other hand…it’s something poisonous, all right. That there is a blood flush giving the nasal tissues the unnaturally black look.”

I handed her the printouts. “I’d come to that same conclusion.”

She let out an amazed whistle as she read the results. “Sodium cyanide? To kill a
deer
?”

“I didn’t say that it made sense. I’ve been trying to figure out the origin of the poison.”

Shelley pulled off her gloves with a
snap
. She tossed them into a waste bin and gave me a stern look. “So you already knew what killed it. And you snuck a live deer in here for what, exactly? Comparison? Come on, if you really needed my help for anything, then you need to throw me a bone here.”

My mind raced through a half-different excuses, and discarded them out of hand. I hated not being straight with Shelly, but this entire situation was getting out of hand. A demonic assassin had targeted everyone who would possibly be of help to us in Andeluvia. And there was no telling if that same assassin could strike in this world as well. Destry’s presence proved that ethereal beings could travel between worlds.

My mind did one of its weird little
clicks
right then. Why I hadn’t made the connection until just now amazed me.

“I brought more than just a couple of deer with me,” I admitted. “Because I need your experience as a big-animal vet. I need your help diagnosing a problem that’s critical to the world that Galen comes from.”

“It’s true,” Galen said, as he put a mournful tone into his voice. “If Dayna’s entreaties do not move you, perhaps mine will? Among my kind, there are the five treatises of mercy, which I need explain at length.”

As wizard spoke, I motioned to Destry to follow me. The big black horse did so as I walked around to the back side of the freezer unit, out of sight of the rest of the group.

The pooka gave me a curious look. “What is it,
chére?
”

“I need you to go full-on corporeal for my friend to examine you. Can you put some pupils into those eyes of yours? My friend might freak out if she knows you’re a full-on nightmare in the flesh.”

A nicker. “She is a gentle soul, though not as delicate as you perceive. For you, I shall pass myself off as a normal equine so as not to give her a fright.”

“Good. And no talking inside her head, okay? Trust me on this.”

“But of course.”

A barely-there
whoosh
, and Destry solidified next to me. Galen was just extemporizing on the fourth treatise of mercy as I led the pooka out into the examination room. Now, Shelly had gone mushy at seeing Galen, then positively goo-goo at the sight of Liam. But she let out a squeal of girly delight as she watched me bring in a horse that looked as if it could have stepped out of
The Black Stallion
.

“Oh my, oh my!” Shelly rushed over, leaving a now-forgotten Galen and Liam in her wake. She put her hand out, palm up. Destry nuzzled my friend’s hand like an ordinary, friendly horse looking for a carrot or sugar cube. “You’re gorgeous, simply gorgeous! When I was ten, I had posters of horses just like you all over my bedroom.”

A Gallic chuckle sounded in my ears. “Your friend has good taste, no? Beauty, she can be such a burden.”

I ignored him. “His name’s Destry. And he’s the one who needs your expertise.”

I quickly related an edited version of what Destry had told me about his phobia. Shelly listened intently as she stroked the black horse’s mane. She rubbed her chin in thought as she went to a cabinet on the far side of the room and began rummaging through it.

“Kind of a long shot,” she said, as she brought out a miniature flashlight. “But if there’s no specific experience that caused his phobia, then we’re dealing with something biological in nature. This here is a flashlight that’s almost lost its battery. Should be dim enough not to startle him.”

“He won’t be startled,” I assured her. I stepped out of the way as she cooed to Destry, calming him as she gently touched the side of his head with one hand, clicked the light on, and held it near one eye, then the other. Luckily, Destry made sure that his pupils contracted the way a normal horse’s would.

“Well, I’ll be,” Shelly breathed. “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen a case.”

Liam, Galen and I traded a look.

“A case of what, pray tell?” Galen asked.

“Moonblink. At least, that’s what they called it when I was growin’ up.” She switched off the light and crossed her arms, considering. “The technical term is CSNB. Short for Congenital Stationary Night Blindness, if you’re curious.”

I keyed into the first word of the acronym. “So it’s genetic.”

“Yep. That’s why I was surprised to find it. I’ve seen it mostly in your leopard-spotted variations of the Appaloosa. The rod cells in the retina aren’t able to respond to light properly. So even in dim lighting, the world goes completely black for the horse. That’s why he’s afraid of the dark. He just can’t see
anything
.”

“Ah,” the pooka’s voice echoed sadly in my head. “It is as I feared. I am malformed.”

“There must be something we can do for it,” I insisted. I remembered the thinly veiled threat to have Destry ‘unmade’, which still made my blood run cold.

Shelly went back to stroking the big black horse’s velvety muzzle. “Sure is. It’s called vision-impaired equine management. Schedule things so that you won’t be ridin’ Destry here in the dark. Then remove low-hanging tree branches, file off the sharp wire on the fence, and be sure to fill up the chuck holes in his pasture.”

I rubbed my temples again, as if my earlier headache were coming back to haunt me. “That’s not going to be good enough. I can’t care for Destry that way, not if he’s going to be of use. I mean, the people who care for him…they won’t accept that.”

“Then what kind of care are you giving him, and how are you moving him around?” My friend gave me a very pointed look. “Come on. I know that I’m a soft touch for both good-lookin’ men and good-lookin’ critters, leastwise anything with a heart and a hoof. But I’ll be damned if I can explain how you got a deer, a horse, and a naked hunk of a man past security, let alone into our examination room. So you better talk, and fast.”

I swallowed, hard. Then I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “What makes you think I got Galen down here without any clothes?”

“How’d I know? Pshaw!” Shelly directed a thumb in Galen’s direction. “The way that man bulges under those scrubs, there’s no way he’s wearin’ skivvies under ‘em.”

Galen had the sense to move his hands down below, and follow that up with a blush.

Before I could say anything else, the door to the examination room opened again. Shelly hadn’t locked it behind her, and someone must have heard us talking.

That someone turned out to be Bob McClatchy.

The man’s ruddy face took on a bright, unholy shine of pleasure as he stepped forward to take in the view.

“Well, now,” he gloated, “it seems you’re bringing livestock into work now. And you’re doing autopsies on dead animals right on the tables we’re supposed to use for human cadavers! As far as I’m concerned, Chrissie, you just cashed your last paycheck. Because I’m putting my foot down on your
neck
.”