Dead Heat Read online

  She is abandoned, something whispered in his left ear. Into his right, something else said, Her true name is sorrow.

  He did not always act upon the things the spirits told him. They were interested in this girl. They hovered unseen, even by him, in the air around her.

  She could be anger, they told him. She could be vengeance, for she has much to be angry about, much to avenge. Those who should have cared for her acted for themselves when they rightly should have acted for her. She has been much sinned against.

  This, he thought, this half child, half woman was where the sorrow that was trying to enfold this house was coming from. He’d told the Cantrip agents he wouldn’t talk, but he couldn’t let this lie. Someone needed to help her before she chose to leave this existence. He had the sure feeling that she would be needed somewhere in the future, that terrible things would happen without her. But that was not why he chose to act. Brother Wolf liked her.

  He knelt on the floor at her feet, interrupting Marsden trying to coax her to speak. Judy White leaned forward as if she would have put herself between them, then paused as she realized this was no attack.

  Tempering his usual fierceness not at all, Brother Wolf said, “Little sister. What makes your eyes weep with dry tears and your bold heart ache with pain? What service can we do for you? We will stand for you in any way you need us.” And because it was Brother Wolf speaking, Charles felt the words reach through the barriers she had erected between herself and the world.

  She blinked at him, and no one in the room said anything as he waited for her to speak.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m not your sister,” she said hoarsely.

  But she was confused, not reputing them, so Charles and his wolf waited. They were here to serve her, not to pull information from her, not to take. Too many people had already taken from her.

  “My baby,” she said, finally. “They made me … and I thought, what could I do with a baby? Her father didn’t want her and my parents didn’t want her. So I let them. I should have stopped them. I should have protected her. She didn’t have anyone else. She’s dead, she’s dead before she had a chance to be born and no one cares. They wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong.”

  And when she said the last word, no more than a whisper, an entire shelf of children’s games fell off the bookcase they’d been on with a crash.

  About an hour and a half later, Charles belted himself back in the Chevy and waited for Marsden to drive. But they just sat there with the engine running for a little.

  “How did you know?” Marsden said.

  “I’m a werewolf,” he told Marsden. “I know about all sorts of things. Wizards, humans who can manipulate the physical world, aren’t common, but they happen.”

  “Frightening for her,” said Leeds. “To find out that when you get mad things fly around. Do you think the woman you recommended her foster mother talk to might help her?” He sounded like he knew all about being alone with funky powers.

  “I wouldn’t have given her the name if I didn’t.” Charles wondered what Leeds’s fae blood had left him with as a legacy. But as long as he wasn’t stealing children, Charles didn’t care. He considered that for a moment, but he could smell Leeds’s fae blood quite clearly and it bore no resemblance to whatever had bespelled Chelsea or stolen the child.

  “Fourteen,” said Marsden. He swore with feeling. “Whoever was watching out for her should have been shot.” He paused. “That baby’s father died—did you catch that? Hit by a car in a freak accident.”

  “I hope it was her,” said Leeds, then, almost contradicting himself, “and I hope she never knows it.”

  “That was powerful,” Marsden said. “What you did in there, Charles.” He rubbed the steering wheel. “It should have been absurd—you know. But it was powerful.”

  “He is a dominant werewolf,” said Leeds. “When he submitted himself to her will … of course it was powerful. What if she had asked you to kill her parents? The ones who abandoned her, abandoned her twice, by my accounting.”

  “Her name was sorrow,” said Charles. “All she needed was for someone to hear her so she could mourn.”

  “But what if?”

  He didn’t owe Leeds that answer, especially since Brother Wolf was insulted that he would ask.

  Still.

  “What do you think?” Charles said softly.

  After a moment, Marsden drove away from the curb. “Could you tell me the address of the next one, Leeds?”

  The next one was another girl, Helena, age thirteen. Her parents and counselor insisted on staying for the interview. They also answered every question Marsden or Leeds asked Helena. The upshot was that they, parents and counselor, were certain that she was possessed by a demon.

  “Meth,” said Charles quietly into Marsden’s ear.

  Marsden extracted them quickly.

  “We need help,” said the counselor. “You folks are supposed to know how to deal with this.”

  Marsden frowned at them. “Meth isn’t demon possession. You change her friends and get her into a rehab program. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” He glanced at the parents. “You should also get her a better counselor.”

  The third child, another girl, Iris, was five. Her single-parent father, who introduced himself as Trent Carter, was over his head and looked it. Knew it, according to the notes the counselor had given them.

  The girl’s mother had committed suicide when she was only a toddler. Her father, in sweatshirt and jeans, looked exhausted and underweight. The little girl was dressed in a similar outfit, but in pink, and she had her hair up in lopsided pigtails.

  Charles let Marsden and Leeds question both parent and child without saying anything at all. The little girl was happy to talk to them, even though she bowed her head shyly when they asked her a direct question. Eventually, she showed them bruises on her wrists and legs and told them she was clumsy and fell down stairs. Her father paled and looked away.

  When Marsden finally looked at Charles, he shook his head. She wasn’t fae. Not what they were looking for at all.

  Reluctantly, the Cantrip agents left the pair sitting on opposite sides of the room.

  “Damn,” said Marsden. “Did you see those bruises? We got referred by a counselor, right? Why didn’t they get that girl out of there?”

  Leeds looked at Charles. “Why aren’t you angry? I mean, when that first girl came in … the ethereal temperature of the room dropped into the subarctic zone.”

  “Sometimes,” Charles said, “anger, though I am well acquainted with both it and its useful cousin vengeance, is not the appropriate response.”

  Marsden opened his mouth and Charles said, “Where to next?”

  He got in the car and shut the door. After a pause both agents did the same. They drove sedately away from Iris and her father.

  “And that, gentlemen, is an actual demon possession,” Charles said once they were well on their way.

  “The man?” asked Marsden. “That’s why he hurt his daughter?” As if he couldn’t imagine anyone hurting his own daughter otherwise.

  Charles hadn’t wanted to like either of these men, though he deemed them useful and perhaps necessary for his hunt. The other Cantrip agents he had dealt with … But these men were decent people.

  “The fingerprints on the bruises were too small,” said Leeds suddenly. “Those bruises, she did them to herself. I thought there was something off about her.” He paused. “Is there something we can do for them? Do you know someone you can send them to for help?”

  “I’ll look into it,” Charles promised.

  “Okay, then,” said Marsden. “This next one is a boy, a teenager, and he’s a long shot. He fits neither our profile nor our neighborhood. But the counselor for this one is quite insistent that there is a problem…”

  “Well, yes,” said Dr. Vaughn’s mother mildly. “Sid’s great-grandfather or some such. His human wife had just died and the whole family was concerned about him; he
wasn’t eating or drinking. We thought that his Alpha might just put him out of his misery. So Sid drove over to his house in his squad car, told him he was coming home with him. And when Archie turned into a wolf to discourage him, Sid said, ‘Fine. Be a wolf. But you are coming home with me.’”

  She looked at Anna. “He just loved our kids, Archie did. Let Alex’s older sister dress him in whatever pink and frilly thing she wanted. Pulled a wagon for the kids and saved my Alex’s life, I think. He was cantankerous as a human, but he was the best dog this family ever had.”

  “I can’t believe no one ever told me he was a werewolf.” Alex let out a laugh. “Do you remember the Christmas turkey? No wonder you were so mad.” He paused, then looked at his mother with horror. “The flea bath. You gave a werewolf a flea bath. He was not happy about it. No wonder Dad was so upset when he got home.”

  “He had fleas,” she said primly. “I wasn’t letting him sleep in your room with fleas.”

  “So what did happen to him?” Dr. Vaughn asked.

  “His Alpha came and got him, finally. Told your dad that it wasn’t healthy for a werewolf to stay in wolf form for that long. He went back to his house. Apparently the pack had kept it clean and the bills paid while he lived with us. He visited a couple of times, but he eventually had to move for work. I think that living in his house just wasn’t good for him.” She pursed her lips. “We never heard from him after that. I know your dad was unhappy, but there wasn’t much we could do. Werewolves don’t let humans interfere with their pack. Matters are less tense now, of course, because everyone knows about werewolves. But then? I think we had a wolf watching us for a while, just to make sure no one was talking.”

  She looked at Anna. “Are you a werewolf, dear?”

  “Yes,” said Anna. She didn’t mind, but the unexpectedness of the question caught her off guard.

  “Mom,” said Dr. Vaughn. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what, dear?” she asked.

  Darin chuckled. “I love you, Mary Lu. And I need to recruit you for the PD. Our confession rates would go way the hell up.”

  “Do you know this werewolf’s full name?” Anna asked. “He saw the fae and he wasn’t a five-year-old kid. Maybe he can help us if we can find him.”

  “Archibald Vaughn, dear.”

  “I’m thinking you’ll have an easier time finding Archibald Vaughn than I will,” said Leslie.

  “Probably,” Anna agreed. “Do you want me to start making calls?”

  “Let’s check out the rest of these first,” she said after a moment’s thought. “We scored big on the first one, maybe there will be a second.”

  “Okay.” Anna picked out another file and read off the address. She called the phone number of the witness before she waded through the four-page report. No answer. She checked the paperwork and found no other phone number. She skimmed the report. This one was a clean printout on white paper.

  “You’ve got to hear this,” Anna said. She tried to keep her voice businesslike as she quoted the witness report for Leslie. “It was a unicorn and two small dragons, no bigger than a poodle. Not the little ones. Well, not really the medium-sized ones, either. But you, know, a big poodle. Standard. The unicorn was bigger. More like a black lab, maybe. Or a big German shepherd.”

  “Why did we pick this one out?” Leslie asked.

  Anna kept reading—this time to herself. “Oh. Here it is. She has been looking for fairies ever since she saw the green man living in her garden a couple of years ago. He never leaves and no one else can see him. Except for the dog who jogs past every day with his owner. The dog barks at him every time he passes our witness’s garden.”

  “All right,” said Leslie. “You try that number again and if he’s not home—”

  “She,” said Anna. “Kathryn Jamison, age sixty-four.” There was another report behind the first—it had another witness’s name on it. She reported that her dog barked every day as they passed Jamison’s garden. She didn’t say anything about the unicorn and dragons.

  “We can at least get a look at her garden the same way the jogging lady’s dog does, right?”

  They were spared the indignity of skulking around Ms. Jamison’s garden fence. The second time Anna tried the number, the lady answered on the first ring.

  “Call me Katie,” she said, her voice slurring just a bit. “Kathryn was my grandmother. You want to come talk to me about a police report I made about the unicorn and dragons?” She laughed, her voice low and husky, a sexy laugh for a sixty-four-year-old woman. “It’s been a long time since I had to worry about a unicorn, right?” She laughed again. “But those dragons might burn something down and that would be a shame, don’t you think? That’s why I thought I should report them. Sure. Come on over.”

  Ms. Jamison, “call me Katie,” lived in Gilbert, another Phoenix suburb, about fifteen minutes south and east of Dr. Vaughn’s house. Leslie pulled into the spotless, half-round driveway and parked. There were two fountains in front of the house, and the whole impression given was a combination of beauty and money, both flaunted with equal abandon.

  Anna looked back at the road left and right and saw no sidewalks for jogging. The house, huge as it was, was set between two other houses that varied in architecture if not in stucco color.

  “How’d a jogger see into the yard at all?” Anna asked. “Where would a jogger run?”

  “Maybe the jogger knows the unicorn and the dragons,” murmured Leslie. “And flew over the stone wall and looked into the garden with her dog.” She put on a practiced smile and headed for the door.

  “I’ll get you, my pretty,” murmured Anna in her best wicked-witch voice. “And your little dog, too.”

  Ms. Jamison was tall and had muscle under her tanned and well-cared-for skin. Her chestnut hair was cut short and expensively. She looked closer to forty than sixty. Some of that might be surgical, but not all of it. She wasn’t stunning, but she was memorable.

  She was also wearing a holey pair of jeans with dirt on the knees and a very ratty old ASU football jersey. She smelled like alcohol, for which she apologized.

  “I was out gardening and drinking when you called,” she told them. “And now I’m a little drunk. I don’t usually overindulge, but my divorce from husband number three just came through. My sister told me he was just after my money, and she was right.”

  She sighed. “I knew she was right. But he was thirty. He could keep up with me. Men my age…” She shook her head. “But, as I told her, that’s what a prenup is for. I guess he believed that if I thought he loved me, I’d be stupid in other ways, too. Caught him red … well, red-assed if the truth be known, and I have the photos to prove it. So he went and took nothing with him except for the liposuction on his stomach and two years of luxury living. I’d have paid a gigolo more for his services. But I’d have probably gotten better services.” She looked pensive.

  “Do you want us to come back later?” Leslie asked.

  “No. It’s all right,” she said. “Waiting would only waste your time and mine. I only had two shots—okay, three. But I did it on a full stomach and I’ve been drinking water since you called.”

  Leslie looked doubtful, but Anna said, “Look. We’re not after her. We are not going to use this testimony in court. If we need real testimony, you can come back and get it.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Leslie asked. “We can return later.”

  “That stupid jogger set the police on me. Her uncle is a judge, I think. Now she’s set the FBI. Sure. Come talk to me about unicorns and dragons.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  They followed her into the house, which smelled like cinnamon and vanilla in a combination not quite strong enough to cause Anna distress, though she’d be glad to leave. The entryway led them into a huge circular room with hardwood floors trimmed in stone around the smallish fountain in the center of the room and around the fireplace on the wall opposite the entryway.

  Other rooms opene
d off the main room. Anna caught a glimpse of a kitchen, a dining room, a weight room, and a room where everything had been torn out down to the studs. The drywall, shreds of carpet, and bits and pieces of furniture were left in an untidy pile on the floor.

  “My ex-husband’s office,” Katie caroled as she walked by. “I did the demolition myself. Better than therapy. But my contractor is sending people in the next few days to redo it. And clean up the mess.” She paused, then looked at Anna and winked. “He put that carpet in for me, right after we got married. When he came in to give me a bid on repairs, he asked me what had been wrong with the carpet.” She smiled. “I told him there wasn’t any blood on it.”

  Katie led them into her own office, bright and airy with a view of a swimming pool dominating a huge backyard. Other than the pool, it was mostly xeriscaped but with patches of green hidden under fruit trees. The back fence was eight-foot wrought iron with a gate leading out to a waterway and presumably, because Anna couldn’t see it from the window view, a jogging path.

  The office was big enough to swallow a desk and a couch and love seat with room left over. Katie plopped down on the love seat, tucking one sandal-clad foot underneath herself.

  “So did she tell you that there must be a body in my garden because her dog barks at my yard all the time?” Her voice rose and sweetened. “‘Remington doesn’t bark anywhere else, just at her garden. Remington is an intellectual genius and knows, absolutely knows, that there must be a body buried there. He’s trying to tell us.’” She narrowed her eyes at Leslie, and when she continued, it was in her own voice. “Remington is a squat toad who pokes his nose in other people’s business. If I were going to bury someone in my garden, it would have been my hushband. Husband. Ex. Ex-hushband. But he’s still alive and living in sin with his girlfriend, who is the same girlfriend he’d just broken up with when I met him. Stupid dog. Stupid men. All of them should rot in hell.”

  “So the jogger’s report was first,” Anna said, suddenly understanding what had happened. “She has connections, so the police came to ask you about your garden.”