“No please don’t touch that… oh!”
Cutter was making a nuisance of himself by pawing at anything and everything and generally throwing the well-ordered lab into disarray. Though frustrating, the wolf could be helpful – he annoyed people into talking. Or perhaps hurried them into it just to get him away from them as fast as possible.
They were visiting a research lab at Los Lobos University.
“So what is it you actually do here?” asked Avery, and in the face of Dr. Morgan’s patronizing leer added, “and remember to dumb it down for us as much as possible.”
“Well, we are interested in the between state of shifters,” he said in a surprisingly high voice.
His bow tie must be cutting off circulation huffed her lioness.
“Between what?” groused Cutter, dropping a beaker that looked like it contained something important.
Dr. Morgan winced. “Between their human and animal states.”
Avery and Cutter exchanged a glance.
“You mean when we’re in our half-beast state?”
Dr. Morgan nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, it’s fascinating.”
That state usually only lasted a few seconds, when they were still kind of human shaped but taking on aspects of their beasts. Not a very pretty time for shifters and sometimes quite painful – particularly for shifters who had such small beasts.
“Why, though? What’s the point?” rumbled Cutter, disapproving as ever.
“We’re looking to try and freeze the half-shift – in between the change, the shifters are even stronger and faster than their human selves but more agile than their animals. We want to try and find a way to temporarily freeze it and boost both strength and skin durability.”
“Why?” growled Cutter insistently.
The doctor flustered a little. “Well, think how much stronger our army would be with them.”
“Can you do it?” asked Avery before Cutter could launch into why he didn’t approve of that, and why it was a very bad idea.
“Well, we’re in the middle of testing,” admitted Dr. Morgan reluctantly.
“So no,” snorted Cutter.
“We’re making headway but there are issues,” countered the doctor hotly.
Avery pulled out a picture of their missing doctor, Kay Kringle. His eyes widened in recognition immediately. Her lioness stirred excitedly.
“Do you know this woman?”
He looked pained.
“You do.”
“She used to work here – she was one of the original researchers on this project.”
“Used to?” she prompted.
“Yes, a while ago,” he replied vaguely. “She chose to leave the project.” He walked over to a cupboard and pulled out a dusty framed photo. “This is the original team.”
Avery took the photo and looked at all the white-coated researchers. There were five of them, including Kay and Dr. Morgan.
“Why’d she leave?” snapped Cutter impatiently.
Dr. Morgan frowned. “I’m not really sure I should be telling you this.”
Avery stamped on Cutter’s foot before he could get in a retort to that.
“Do it anyway,” she said softly, and in enough of a cooing tone that he actually relented.
“Well, there were some incidents with test subjects – they displayed high levels of aggression and she decided the project wasn’t for her.”
“Why?”
Again, the pained look, but under Avery’s encouraging smile, he talked.
“Well, because she was working on a way to remove the additional aggression but the people funding us…”
“Didn’t want that,” grunted Cutter, shaking his head. “No, they’d rather have a super aggressive army of man-beasts.”
“I believe she is still working in the field, but I don’t know what she’s working on now.”
Nobody did. Just like nobody knew where she was.
“Who else is in the photo?” asked Avery.
“Well me,” he said pointing to his own image.
Cutter growled impatiently. “We can see that.”
Dr. Morgan hurriedly pointed to the other people in the photo. “That’s Abbot who is currently on vacation in Peru, and Morris who is working over there,” he gestured to an elderly scientist currently drinking something green out of a beaker. Morgan rolled his eyes. “And this is Froggett.”
“Where’s he?”
“He also left the project,” and on hearing a rumbling noise from Cutter added, “due to creative differences. Well, actually he was poached by the private sector – offered a lot more money, I’ve no idea by who, but he was crowing about it for a long time – nobody cared when he left.”
Avery stared at the photo. “Hmmm.”
*
Cutter followed the directions to Froggett’s house while Avery spoke to their tech assistant, Jessie, about following up on the other scientists – Morgan, Morris and Abbot. When quizzed, Morris and Morgan could provide alibis for any dates that Avery or Cutter mentioned. It wasn’t hard, they were either working or, well, they were pretty much always working. Occasionally they went home, but that was just when their lab technicians complained about the smell and they went home for a good, long bath. Avery wanted Jessie to look through the security footage for the lab, but she didn’t scent any lies from the two of them. They didn’t appear to have the time for a proper haircut – which they both desperately needed – never mind the abduction of their victim. However, they still needed to rule out Abbot, though given that he was on his honeymoon, he seemed like a longshot.
Avery’s nose scrunched as her lioness growled at the worsening scent.
Cutter growled as he slowed. “Fire.”
She looked out to see the charred remains of what had been a condo, and firemen milling all around the scene.
“Let me guess…”
Cutter grunted in the affirmative – that was the condo of the guy they were looking for. Cutter parked and they waved their badges at various firefighters to get to the house.
The chief, a burly bear shifter, held up an enormous paw, blocking their entrance to the condo. He smiled genially, in spite of Cutter’s glowers, curses and innate unpleasantness.
“Can’t let you go in. Structure’s too unstable, you could get hurt.”
His glance at Avery suggested that would be a crying shame. His glance at Cutter suggested he was tempted to let him.
Avery nodded. “Any victims?”
“One, smells like he was male, but it’s kind of hard to tell.”
“Do you have any idea what caused the fire?”
Part of the upstairs level collapsed, almost hitting a couple of firefighters. The huge bear chief rolled his shoulders and yelled at them to be careful.
“Looks like faulty wiring,” he replied. “There have been a lot of problems with condos built by this particular contractor.” His handsome, open face darkened for a moment, and then lightened just as quickly. “But we’ll need an investigator to be sure.”
Avery bit her lip and stood on her tippy-toes, trying to get a good look at the crime scene, but even her tall frame couldn’t give her the advantage she wanted.
“We need a cause of death. We need to make sure this was just an accident.”
The chief nodded and smiled at Avery a little dazedly – the way men sometimes did for her. “The victim will go to the city morgue, and when he reports back to me, I’ll make sure you are informed. I’m happy to give you copies of the case file, whatever you want, Avery.”
“I’ll bet,” muttered Cutter, which earned him an elbow in the gut from Avery.
“He meant to say thank you,” said Avery sweetly.
“I’ll bet,” rumbled the bear.