Fair Game aao-3 Read online

  ‘I noticed none of the later victims’ crime scene photos show their faces,’ Anna said thoughtfully. ‘We saw enough of them that the oversight couldn’t have been an accident.’

  ‘No faces, no uncovered front torsos or backs, either. Also no means of murder. Were they strangled? Stabbed? I should have asked Isaac.’

  ‘You think the FBI will call us in to help?’ She thought so, but was afraid to trust her judgment when she wanted in as badly as she did. The eyes of the victims stayed with her.

  Charles shrugged. ‘Yes. Fisher looked at us like we were candy. But it doesn’t matter. If they don’t, we’ll involve ourselves. It’ll be easier if they ask.’

  They walked awhile in silence. Well, Charles was silent. Anna’s shoes made a brisk click-click-click on the sidewalk. She could have walked more quietly, but she liked the way the noise she made blended with the sounds of the city, almost like music.

  She bumped Charles as a pretty woman in a business suit and torturously high heels walked past them. ‘Did you see that? Look at her legs. Look at all the women who are wearing dresses – and look at their legs. Their calves are all bigger around than their thighs.’

  ‘They call Boston “the walking city” for a reason.’ Charles rumbled as he opened the door to the building of their condo. As soon as he was inside, the faint aura of danger he emitted eased down. Evidently Charles had been in this building often enough that he didn’t view it as enemy territory.

  ‘How soon do you suppose the FBI will be calling us?’ Anna asked. ‘If they decide to call us.’

  ‘Bored?’ He took them to the stairs and, after her previous ride in the slick, modern, very slow elevator, Anna was happy to trot after him.

  ‘Nope. I just want to make sure we have time to do the haunted tour tonight.’

  He gave her a look and Anna grinned, happily sinking into the warm, safe relationship that had somehow been restored after better than a year of fragmentation. It was too easy; she knew it. But she was going to enjoy it while she could.

  ‘Maybe the FBI will call,’ he said hopefully. She wasn’t buying it; he’d have as much fun running around old cemeteries as she would – he just wouldn’t admit it.

  ‘I’ve got my cell phone,’ she pointed out. ‘You’ve got yours. Get changed and let’s go.’

  He growled.

  After the meeting with the werewolves, Leslie ate an early lunch at a nearby soup and bread place before walking the rest of the block or so between the hotel and her office. She used the time to mentally process what she’d seen and heard so she could give a coherent, organized version of the highlights for Nick. She finished the last little bit as she rode the elevator up so she was ready before she hit the office.

  The office watchdog, known only to Leslie’s group as the Gatekeeper, nodded at Leslie and buzzed her in. Leslie headed to her desk but a sharp whistle from her boss’s office changed her trajectory.

  Nick looked tired. They’d been chasing after two different bank robbers and something that might be a terrorist cell – or might just be a bunch of broke students rooming together – before this serial-killer thing hit their radar. The terrorist cell had top priority over everything. However, one of the bank robbers had been doing his best to put himself on the top of the list. He wore a distinctive motorcycle helmet with a small sticker on top that had given him the nickname the Smiley Bandit. Lately he’d begun working with another faceless, helmeted man who liked to carry a gun and shoot it at lights and cameras after aiming it at people. One of these days really soon now he was going to start shooting people. Their team was short a few since Joe and Turk had been transferred out. The job got done, but all of them were a little light on sleep.

  ‘How’d it go?’ Nick asked after she closed the door behind her.

  Leslie thought about it. ‘Interesting on many levels.’

  He gave an impatient snort. ‘Share. Please.’

  She started with a rundown on who was there. Nick grunted when she told him Heuter had come. It was a grunt she couldn’t interpret. She couldn’t tell if he liked Heuter or disliked him – or if he was just acknowledging that Cantrip had sent in their golden boy.

  Leslie told him about the biggest revelation. ‘Our UNSUB has been killing mostly fae – we think for the past twenty-five-odd years – and no one noticed until a werewolf told us, a werewolf who wasn’t even born when the first murders began. Cantrip claims she is Anna Latham. I’ll run the name and see if I agree with them on her identity, but she didn’t deny it.’

  ‘There have been rumors, if you know where to listen, that werewolves may share a trait or two with the fae. That their ability to heal damned near anything also keeps them from aging.’

  Leslie absorbed that. ‘If that’s so, I peg our Anna at sixteen and her husband at ten thousand and change.’

  Nick laughed. ‘Impressed by him, were you? Craig was, too. He gave me a call as soon as the meeting was over to tell me that he was headed over to see Kip at the Boston PD. He was hoping the police might have someone familiar with the fae they can take the photos to, so we can get a confirmation.’

  ‘If you talked to Craig already, why have me do a basic report?’ she asked, a little annoyed.

  ‘He said he’d leave the briefing for you to deliver, as he was the senior field agent,’ said her boss equitably, and then got back to the business at hand. ‘If it’s true, that so many of the victims have been fae, why didn’t anyone in the fae communities say anything?’

  Leslie shrugged. ‘Why do the fae do anything, Nick? Maybe they don’t want to draw attention or encourage a copycat. Maybe they didn’t notice.’

  ‘So the killer was out shooting fae and decided to hit a couple of werewolves, too.’

  ‘That’s the latest theory Craig and I subscribe to.’

  ‘What about the werewolves? Will they help us? Do we want their help?’

  Leslie tapped the side of her foot on the floor. ‘The guy is Native American and big. He stood back and didn’t say a word he didn’t have to. All of us in that room were doing everything we could not to pay attention to him because he was that scary.’

  ‘Scary how? Cold? Crazy?’

  Leslie frowned at her boss. ‘Like you get when you are trying to intimidate someone we’re questioning – only not so deliberate.’

  ‘Thousand-yard stare?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Leslie agreed. ‘He’s seen some blood somewhere.’ And the thing that had been bothering her about the pair of werewolves coalesced. ‘The girl who is his wife, she looks so sweet she ought to be attracting honeybees. Innocent. Even Jim Pierce was feeling protective around her; you could see it in his body posture – and Dr Singh deliberately distracted the Cantrip agents when they got in her face and tried to intimidate her. And you know Singh.’

  ‘You think she was faking it?’

  Leslie shook her head. ‘No. Not really. But both of the werewolves looked at photos of dead bodies and didn’t bat an eyelash. Granted we didn’t show the bad ones in full color, but the old police black-and-whites are pretty nasty.’

  ‘You think they’ve spent some time looking at dead bodies,’ Nick said. ‘You think they’re killers.’

  She nodded. ‘Him, yes. He has that … that look. You have it. A lot of the armed forces guys have it. I think he could have killed us all and not given it another thought. As for her …’ She frowned, trying to get a better handle on it. ‘Have you ever worked with Lee Jennings? The guy the Behavior Analysis Unit sends to interview the nasty guys in prison?’

  Nick frowned. ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s pretty unremarkable. I like him a lot, and so does everyone else who’s worked with him. And the reason they send him into the prisons with the scum of the earth and the crazies is because they like him, too. They fall all over themselves to give him whatever information he asks for.’

  Nick raised his chin and his face went still. ‘Right. She’s like that?’

  Leslie nodded. ‘Her husband didn’t
say more than two or three words, but he dominated the room. The only one not intimidated was Craig – and he just wasn’t looking. I’d bet Charles Smith is an Alpha of some pack we don’t know about.’

  ‘Intimidating.’

  She nodded again. ‘He was playing muscle, I think. But she didn’t treat him that way.’ Why did she think that? ‘He came in late with coffee for all of us – she’d sent him out so she could explain to us how to make the matter easier for him.’

  ‘To keep everyone safe?’

  Leslie shook her head. ‘She said so, but I got the distinct impression she was a lot more worried about him than she was any of us. It was the standard stuff – don’t meet his eyes if you can help it. No aggressive moves. The only new thing was that we weren’t supposed to try to touch her at all. I expected a wild-eyed maniac, and the man who came in was tight, controlled, and at ease. He looked like he conducted meetings with the federal government every day of his life.’

  ‘And that made you think he was running the show behind the scenes?’

  ‘No. That’s not all of it. Body language said she respected him and deferred to his judgment. She was in front, but he was more than just backup.’

  ‘So do we invite them in?’

  ‘She pointed out that our killer took out werewolves. Taking out werewolves, I gather and surmise, is akin to taking out a SEAL team. This UNSUB has been hunting fae and coming out – as far as we know – unscathed. Do we have a choice?’

  ‘The FBI has some fae on payroll. We have a choice. You met them and you’re damn near the best agent I have for reading people. What do you think?’

  Leslie sighed loudly. ‘I like her. I told you. And he is … competent – he’s got that air. The one that says, “I’ve seen a lot and made it out alive.” They won’t cost us anything, so the budget will be happy. But’ – she held up a finger – ‘he’s not going to take orders.’

  Nick nodded his head and did his finger-hand-talk thing for a good half minute before blowing out a breath of air. ‘There’s a couple of people at the BAU who are familiar with the Big Game Hunter. I’ll give them a call and see what the profilers say might happen to our killer if the media knows we have werewolves hunting him. You and Craig can pick up information on werewolves as you work with them. Let me think about implications for the rest of today, and if nothing strikes me as too stupid, I’ll give you a go tomorrow.’

  5

  After a hard day of being a tourist, Anna slept deeply in the bed on the other side of the bathroom wall. Charles put his forehead against his side of that wall for a long moment before he worked up his … ‘Courage’ was not the right word. Fortitude.

  After a deep breath, Charles stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. It was one of those full-length things that women used to use to make sure their ankles weren’t showing below their skirts and now used to make sure, he assumed, that their underwear showed only when they wanted it to.

  And he was trying to distract himself by looking at the mirror rather than looking at the image it held.

  Charles couldn’t see them if he turned his head to look behind himself, but in the mirror the spirits who haunted him were as clear, as three-dimensional, as they were when they were still alive. They had stayed away all day while he and Anna did the tourist thing, this evening when Anna took him on the silly haunted tour that had been a surprising amount of fun, and tonight when he had held her as she fell asleep.

  As soon as she slept, they returned.

  We see her, they said. Does she see you? Does she know what you are? Murderer, killer, death bringer. We will show her and she’ll run from you. But she can’t run far enough to be safe.

  Hollow-eyed and cadaverously thin, they stared at him, meeting his eyes in a way that no one except Anna, his father, or his brother had dared to do in a very long time. The oldest ones morphed into something they had not been in life – their eyes black, their faces distorted until they hardly looked human. The three newest ones looked as they had the moment before he’d ended their lives. They stood so close to him that it was strange that he could not feel the heat of them – or the chill – at his back. Even so, it wasn’t only his eyes that told him they were there.

  Charles could smell them. Not the odor of rotting meat precisely, but something close, the sweet, sickly smell that some flowers produce to attract flies and other carrion-feeding bugs. The smell penetrated his skin. Like the ghosts in the mirror, the scent was a reflection, not the real thing.

  And he heard them.

  Why? they asked. Why did you kill us? He knew they weren’t interested in the answers, not really.

  The first time he’d seen them, when he’d first started this job for his father, he’d tried answering them, though he’d known better. He’d been certain that if he hit upon just the right thing to say, they would go away. But explaining things to the dead never works. They don’t hear the way the living do and words have little effect. The questions were for him, but not for him to answer – and talking to them just gave them more strength.

  Guilt attracted them. His guilt – it kept them from moving on to where they belonged. There should have been something else that could have been done for them. That there had not been didn’t make him feel any differently about it.

  They had been protecting a child and lost control of their anger. Charles knew, as any werewolf did, all about losing control. There had been a pedophile stalking children in the pack’s territory, and they’d been sent out to hunt him down. That was exactly what they had done. Then they botched the job beyond repair. In another time, they’d have been punished, but not killed.

  And now they haunted him. That Charles could not release them was a second burden to bear, a second debt he owed to them.

  His grandfather – his mother’s father – had taught him it was so, and his very long life had given him no reason to doubt it.

  Dave Mason, the dead man nearest Charles, the last of the Minnesota wolves Charles had killed, opened his mouth and darted forward. Dave had been a good man. Not the brightest or the kindest, but a good man, a man of his word. He’d understood that Charles was only doing what was necessary. Dave wouldn’t have wanted his ghost to torment anyone.

  In the mirror Dave’s cold, eager eyes met Charles’s as his lamprey mouth attached to Charles’s neck, cold and sharp, feeding on guilt. He disappeared from sight after a few minutes, but not from Charles’s senses as, one by one, the ghosts behind him did the same, until Charles stood apparently alone in front of the mirror and felt his ghosts gain strength from him while they weakened him. They didn’t touch him physically, not yet. But he knew that he wasn’t thinking as clearly, wasn’t able to trust his judgment anymore.

  On the other side of the wall, Anna moved restlessly. Not awake, but aware.

  He should close down his bond with her, again. He didn’t think any of his ghosts could cross it and touch her, but he wasn’t certain. He couldn’t bear it if he caused her harm.

  Equally, Charles couldn’t bear to be separated from her again.

  Anna’s cell phone rang and she grumbled as she fumbled around the unfamiliar nightstand for it.

  ‘Hello, this is Anna,’ she said, her voice husky with sleep.

  He was too distracted to pay attention to the words of the person on the other end of the conversation. He listened to Anna, let her voice remind him that he hadn’t driven her away, hadn’t hurt her irreparably. Not yet.

  ‘Right now?’ A pause. ‘Sure. We’re glad to be of assistance. Can you give me the address? No. Not necessary. There’s Wi-Fi here so I have the Internet. Just wait for me to find a sheet of paper.’ She pulled something else off the table next to the bed – her purse, he thought from the sound of it. Charles looked away from the mirror.

  ‘Okay. Have pen and paper. Shoot.’

  He couldn’t go out and perform for the feds. Not like this. He would hurt someone, someone who didn’t deserve it.

  Use me, said Brother Wolf. If I
stay with Anna, it will be safe for everyone. I will not harm any of the people. I will keep her safe.

  Which them? Charles asked.

  FBI, killers, the dead. All of them and any of them. She will be safe – and so will the others. I will not hurt them unless I have to. Can you say the same?

  Charles almost smiled at the thought that Brother Wolf would be less dangerous than he, but at the moment it seemed to be true enough. Without another look in the mirror, he let the change take him: he would trust the wolf to keep her safe.

  ‘How long will it take you to get here?’ Leslie Fisher’s voice was cool and professional in Anna’s ear, but her question had just a hint of urgency.

  A young woman was missing from her condo, though she hadn’t been gone long. Luckily, the policeman who’d gone to check it out had been briefed on their serial killer and thought it was a close enough match to the way other people had been taken to call in the FBI.

  There was something wrong with Charles. It had been nagging at Anna since she woke, but she’d already answered the phone. It didn’t feel urgent, just not good – so she decided to take care of the truly urgent matter first to get it out of the way. If it was their serial killer, they had a chance of getting to the girl before anything happened.

  ‘How far is the apartment from the hotel we were at’ – it was two in the morning – ‘yesterday morning?’ Charles hadn’t been in bed beside her, though she knew he was in the condo. She could feel him.

  ‘Ten-or fifteen-minute walk. Something like that. The victim’s apartment isn’t too far from the Commons.’ Then Fisher clearly remembered that Anna and Charles weren’t from Boston. ‘The Boston Common. The big park a couple of blocks from the hotel.’

  After a day of sightseeing, Anna could have told Fisher how big the Common was and approximately how many people were buried in it and all about the ducks that inspired a famous children’s book.