Chapter Thirteen

Jasper

“Your girlfriend,” Winter says. “She's – nice.”

I smile. “She's amazing,” I say. “She wasn't at her best last night, though. I think you kind of threw her off.”

She laughs and sips her coffee. We're sitting at a table at the coffee house I frequent, Heavenly Grinds. I can't help but notice the hard glares we're getting from people wearing “Brooks Green for Sheriff” buttons. In addition to the glares, I overhear some of the whispered conversations. Not that they're doing all that much to keep their voices low. The word “murderer” seems to be getting thrown around a lot.

I just sigh and shake my head. What in the hell is happening to my hometown?

“Just ignore them,” Winter says.

I smirk. “Easy for you to say,” I reply. “You don't have to live with them.”

She sits back in her seat and takes another sip of her coffee, looking around the coffee house. I can see the wheels turning in her head.

“You think this man Green is trying to frame your clans?”

I shrug. “Either that or in addition to being a raging bigot, he's an opportunistic prick,” I reply. “Jumping on the murders to grandstand about us.”

“He could be all of the above,” she says.

I chuckle. “He's very likely all of the above.”

“Then, we need to prove that he's behind the murders.”

“It'd be nice,” I say. “But, I've looked over everything. Examined the bodies. I can't find a single thing that ties him to it.”

“Then we look harder,” she says. “There is always a tie. Even if it's small, it's there.”

“I have permission because I'm investigating this,” I say. “But, aren't you supposed to be with Merry and Holly today?”

“They would want me to help you,” she says. “After all, if this man Green wins and does what he says he wants to do, it won't be long before he starts looking north. It's in all of our best interest if we figure this out.”

“I can always use an extra set of eyes,” I say.

“And a better brain than yours, I think.”

I laugh. “That too.”

My phone buzzes on the table in front of me and when I look at the display, I see that it's Dr. Floyd calling me. I quickly connect the call.

“Dr. Floyd,” I say. “How are you this morning?”

I listen to him talk for a few moments, trying hard not to laugh as Winter blows kisses to the old ladies who are glaring at her. They all turn away, their faces flushed, muttering to one another. I disconnect the call and drop the phone into my pocket.

“We have to go,” I say. “Dr. Floyd has something he wants us to see.”

~ooo000ooo~

“Dr. Floyd,” I say. “This is Winter. She's with the Phayngo contingent that came into town recently.”

Floyd nods. “Right, right,” he says. “The polar bears from up north, if I'm not mistaken?”

Winter looks at him curiously and then at me. “This is correct,” she says. “How did you know?”

“In addition to being a Scrabble master,” I say, “Dr. Floyd is becoming quite the expert on the bear community. He's got a wealth of knowledge in that head of his.”

“I just took a guess based on your complexion and hair,” Floyd says, stammering a little more than usual.

He looks her up and down, obviously stricken by her beauty. Not that I can blame him, really. Winter is a gorgeous woman and has that effect on men.

“How is Ariel, Dr. Floyd?” I ask.

He looks at me and I see the complete lack of comprehension on his face. It's as if I suddenly started speaking Chinese to him. Winter tends to have that effect on guys too.

“Your fiancée?”

Floyd shakes his head a bit as he catches himself, clears his throat and does his best to avert his gaze away from Winter.

“She's great,” he says, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment, glancing wildly around the room. “She's better than great. Stupendous. Fantastic. Amazing. The most wonderful woman in the world. My one and only, you know.”

“Good to hear that,” I say.

I cut a glance at Winter and see the small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Having known her for as long as I have, and as well as I do, I know the attention she gets embarrasses her. She's a woman who wants to be defined by far more than her beauty. She's got a quick mind. An intellect that I'd put up against anybody. Not to mention the fact that she's clever and funny as hell.

Personality and intelligence-wise, she and Emily are actually, quite a lot alike.

“So,” I say. “What did you want to show us?”

Floyd looks at Winter again and then back at me, that lack of comprehension back on his face.

“You called me?” I ask. “Said there was something important –”

“Oh, right,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Sorry, I'm a little frazzled this morning.”

“Late night, Dr. Floyd?” I ask.

“Indeed,” he says. “Some friends are teaching Ariel and I how to play a new civilization building board game. You have to build a society from the ground up, dealing with the other players who are trying to do the same thing. Wars break out, you have famines, other natural disasters – it's actually very fascinating and was quite the wild evening.”

“I'm sure it was,” I say, stifling a chuckle.

“You are playing Kingdoms and Empires?” Winter asks.

“That's the one,” he says, a hint of awe in his voice.

Floyd turns to her, his eyes wide, a stunned look on his face. Given that she spoke directly to his nerdy heart, I can practically see the cartoon hearts floating over his head. I groan and run a hand through my hair.

“I never pegged you for a gamer geek before, Winter,” I say. “No offense, Dr. Floyd.”

He's so caught up dreaming up a perfect nerdy little life with Winter that I doubt he even heard me. Winter though, looks at me and shrugs.

“We have sunlight like one hour every day,” she says. “What else are we going to do to pass the time?”

She makes a good point. But this whole conversation is also diverting us from our reason for being here in the first place. I try to distract him, get him focusing on the technical parts of his job, knowing that once he gets going on the body, he's got such a one-track mind, that he'll stay focused on that.

“Dr. Floyd?” I say.

He looks at me and then seems to snap back to reality. The cartoon hearts fade away and I can tell he's doing his best to put his professional face back on.

“Right,” he says. “We got another body in this morning. I thought you'd want to have a look.”

“I appreciate the heads up, Dr. Floyd,” I say.

There is a body beneath the sheet on his autopsy table and I can tell just by looking at it, that it's not going to be pretty. There are blood stains on the sheet and the body beneath seems to be lumpy and misshapen.

“Same condition as the others?” I ask.

“Seems a little bit worse to me,” he replies. “If you can believe that.”

Given what I've already seen, I have a hard time believing the bodies can be in worse shape than those I've already seen. But, when Floyd pulls back the sheet, I see that I was very wrong about that. Even the eternally unflappable Winter lets out a small noise of surprise.

The body on the table – if it can even still be called that – is torn to shreds. Literally. The level of mutilation seems to be a hundred times worse than the last bodies I saw. To put it in not-so-clinical terms, what I'm staring at is little more than a clump of chewed up, shredded meat.

“Well, it's a good thing we didn't have breakfast before coming over,” I say.

“Yeah,” Floyd says, clearly fascinated by the mutilation. “This is a real nasty one.”

Winter moves closer to the table, her eyes riveted on the body. She's inhaling, scenting the body.

“What is it?” I ask.

“A scent,” she says. “It's – familiar. Yet, I can't quite place it.”

“Is it bear?” Floyd asks.

She shakes her head vehemently. “No, it's definitely not bear,” she says. “It's something else.”

“Dr. Floyd,” I start, “the level of overkill on this body, is it an attempt to mask the wounds, like you originally thought?”

He nods. “I'm pretty sure about that,” he says. “I found more scoring on the bone that suggests the killer's claws are long and narrow. Nothing like a bear's. The secondary wounds, the ragged tears in the flesh were again, inflicted post-mortem. They're also strategic in that they obliterate traces of the original wounds. Just like in the others.”

“Is it possible that a wild animal got to this body?” I ask, making sure to tick off all my boxes.

He shakes his head. “Again, it's possible, but given the precise nature of these secondary wounds, I tend to doubt it.”

Winter leans forward again, drawing in a deep breath. She looks off into the distance, as if trying to access her memory banks. I can see the spark of recognition in her eyes, but she can't quite make the connection. Not yet, anyway.

“What about puncture wounds?” I ask. “Like with those vamps. Have you run across any?”

Again, he shakes his head. “No, I think we can pretty definitively rule out a return of the C'latha,” he says. “I'm thinking this is something else. Some other big nasty that's out there lurking in the dark.”

“Wonderful,” I say. “Just what we need right now.”

“You better bet that once word of this gets out, Green is going to make some hay out of it,” Floyd says.

“Yeah, don't remind me.”

“Emily's doing a great job though,” Floyd says quickly. “She's been on some of the morning radio programs and has been doing a bang-up job. She makes Richards sound a lot nicer than he actually is.”

“I'm not sure nice is what's going to win this election,” I say. “Not when you have somebody like Green running around out there sowing division and hate.”

“When is this election?” Winter asks.

“A week,” Floyd replies.

She looks at me, a steely determination in his eyes. “Then, we have a week to solve this and prove Green is behind it.”