Chapter Four – Sam

 

“What can I do for you…what was your name again?” the doctor asked, as I shut the door on his beautiful assistant and those honey brown eyes and long legs of hers.

Just something about her had been…I don’t know. Special? Magical? Just the sound of her voice, with the little bit of a southern twang. God, why hadn’t I gotten her name?

But, no, that was stupid of me to even think about shit like that. Col. Harrington’s biggest directive to us was to not get entangled with the locals. We were in, we were out. And that was it.

Damn, she’d been sexy, though. Just the right amount of sweet mixed with the right bit of heat.

Oh well. She’d never go for a guy like me, anyways. She looked like the type who’d be interested in a nice lawyer or stockbroker type. Someone stable, who knew where they’d be from week to week, rather than an itinerant shifter working security gigs during the day and hunting ghouls by night. Time to push her out of my mind and get down to business. I wasn’t here for the scenery, after all. I was here to figure out just what in the hell was going on in Potterswell, Texas.

I turned to Dr. Lawrence after I shut the door and fixed him with the most winning, shit-eating smile I could muster. As I began to speak, the small town medical examiner straightened his thin black tie out and retook his seat. “So, doc,” I said casually, “one of my contacts in the Houston FBI office tells me you’ve got a story to tell. A big story. Maybe, you know, we can work with each other on this, and I can help get you some of the press you need to get it investigated.”

There wasn’t any sense in beating around the bush. The research I’d pulled up on the small town of Potterswell before leaving St. Louis had given me names and addresses, approximate histories. Dr. Lawrence here had been the resident medical examiner for over four decades, and I knew he’d been involved in performing the autopsies on several murders throughout the 80s and 90s that had garnered some federal attention, and I suspected the doc had kept his contacts fresh over the years. It was really freaking doubtful the lady on the burner phone had been referring to anyone else in town when she’d talked about someone informing the FBI regarding the mutilations.

So, I figured, be up front. Let him know we both wanted the same thing: for these things to be investigated and stopped. That way, I could get to the remains.

Easy. Or so I thought.

The doctor laughed a little, shaking his head. “Sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. Me? Call the FBI?”

“You didn’t call them, then?” I asked carefully.

“What would I call them about?” he asked, spreading his hands out in front of him as if he were showing me they were empty. “We haven’t had any murders or foul play in this county in a while. And certainly not anything that would make me place a call to federal investigators.” He paused. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

It had been Tabitha’s idea for me to go with the reporter angle, saying it would give me more leeway with the part since the doctor clearly knew people in local field offices. I’d argued against it and had wanted to go with the federal investigator line of disguise, but our in-house adept reminded me that impersonating a federal officer was still a felony if I got caught.

Something in my gut, though, was telling me that Dr. Lawrence was hiding something from me, was trying to cover something up. There were some remains here, or somewhere else, but he was trying to put me off from it. I was seriously regretting following Tabitha’s advice, now. Maybe going with the FBI angle would have given me a little bit more leverage in the situation.

“Samuel Fitzgerald,” I said, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet loaded with fake credentials. I pulled out a business card and passed it to him. “With the Tyler Gazette.”

The cards had been printed up at the office, and we’d gathered some reporter equipment for me to carry and use while on the trip, including paperwork and memos in a briefcase with forged letterheads from the newspaper. Of course, if they went investigating with the newspaper, my thin, spur-of-the-moment cover story would evaporate like morning dew under the afternoon sun.

He eyed the card, eyed me, then eyed the card again. “Uh-huh, Mr. Fitzgerald. Now, what would you think I had here that was of so much interest?”

“A mutilation,” I replied. “Of livestock.”

He lowered the card, set it on his desk in front of him. “Mutilation? We haven’t had anything like that since, I don’t know, sometime in the 70s? I believe the police determined it was coyotes, at the time. Whatever pack of rascals was causing it, they must have moved on, because we didn’t experience any other such disturbances.”

“Until recently?”

He laughed, shook his head. “You are persistent when it comes to finding a story, aren’t you? But, no, I assure you, not even until recently. Whoever you’re receiving your information from, Mr. Fitzgerald, I’m afraid to say that they’ve been feeding you a red herring.” He paused again, and a broad smile began to grow on his face. “Or pulling your leg. Any member of law enforcement you’ve gotten on the bad side of recently? One that might enjoy the idea of you driving all the way out here to Potterswell on a snipe hunt?”

As he spoke, I paid close attention to his body language. Nothing right off the bat told me anything seemed off. I sniffed the air like I was chagrined at the little jab he’d made at my expense. Disinfectant, corpses. No smell of anything supernatural, like sulfur or blood, which meant the doctor wasn’t being controlled by anything I’d ever come into contact with. But, there was something else there. Something I couldn’t quite put my nose on. I knew it.

“Not that I’m aware of, Dr. Lawrence,” I replied, smiling and giving him a flash of teeth. “But maybe I need to reconsider my dealings with the local offices, huh?”

He leaned back across his desk towards me, my business card offered out between two fingers. “Well, it happens to the best of us, Mr. Fitzgerald. We all get taken for a ride once in a while, don’t we?”

Suddenly, I had a nagging doubt at the back of my mind about what I was doing here, nearly a twelve-hour drive from my home. Something about his words had struck a chord in me. I wasn’t exactly sure how to describe it, but they triggered a memory of the British dame who’d spoken into my ear back at the office in St. Louis. Maybe she was taking me for a ride? Or trying to take the whole office for a ride? Like, maybe she was trying to shake us off some other scent?

But, no matter what it was, I still didn’t trust the doctor. Not completely. But did that mean something supernatural had happened here? Recently? No, of course not. I mean, if there was no evidence, there was no evidence. No matter what a spooky old British lady said over the phone.

And, besides, if the doctor was completely on the up and up, it might be better to have someone in town willing to give me a call when something interesting did actually hit the fan.

“No,” I said, waving off the offer of the returned card, “you keep that. Never know when you might have actual news for me, right?”

He laughed. “Yes, quite.” He took the Rolodex from his desk and began to thumb through it till he found an empty spot and taped it inside. He looked up at me and winked. “There. Just in case, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, still smiling. “Just in case. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I guess I need to start heading back to Tyler. Still need to track down a story that’ll make the pages, you know?”

“Yes, of course.” He went to rise as he extended a hand to me. “A pleasure, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

“The same, Dr. Lawrence,” I replied, shaking his cool hand. “Stay frosty, you hear?”

I turned and pulled the door open, left his little office.

And whom should I find there, other than the cute little assistant from earlier? She was sitting back against her desk, trying to look relaxed, as I stepped out of the office. She turned towards me, flicked her dark hair out of her brown eyes.

I cracked a grin, at first, but quickly let it drop when I remembered Col. Harrington’s rule about not fraternizing with the local populace. I was headed back out of town, after all. And, like I said earlier, she didn’t want a guy like me. Not really. What woman in her right mind would?

“Get what you needed for your story?” she asked.

Damn, she was cute. There was just something about her, like the girl next door. Beautiful, but not in some bombastic way. But, still, beautiful nonetheless. I could see myself in a few years with a woman like her. I really could. But then I shook my head a little, tried to knock those thoughts loose.

“Not quite,” I admitted. “Looks like I wasted all that gas for nothing.”

She shrugged a little, glanced around the office.

“Thanks again for letting me see him,” I said as I headed for the door and tried to put her out of my mind. “I imagine he’s a busy guy.”

“Not really,” she said, smiling a little. “But, you’re welcome anyways.”

Having to struggle to not even look back at the beautiful assistant, I headed back out through the little front entrance to the parking lot where I’d earlier left my car. As soon as the door to the morgue shut behind me, my phone was in my hand and pressed to my ear, the line ringing for Tabitha.

Tabitha picked up on the third ring. “Find anything?” she asked in a soft voice without even missing a beat.

“Nothing,” I groaned as I grabbed the door handle of my ’67 Camaro and opened the driver’s side. “Doctor’s saying he didn’t report anything weird or fishy, and everything else in town seems normal. You find anything?”

Tabitha was not only our IT person, but she was also our resident witch. She knew full well that we were a bunch of shifters, but none of that ever seemed to faze her. After all, she’d spent her teenage years seeing ghosts and other spirits. What difference did it make if we occasionally turned into a wolf, a dragon, a bear, or God only knew what else?

“Nothing,” she said. “No word from any of my contacts on any kind of demonic possessions. No prophecies, no myths, no legends on the books. Best I’ve gotten is a shrug of some spiritual shoulders, and that’s it.”

I laid my head back onto the headrest, trying to think of my next move. Whatever had been telling my gut that this was real back in the office was still there, whispering in exactly the same way as before. I ran a hand down my face, considered my options.

The only problem was, I didn’t have any.

I could maybe spend some time at the library, see if there were any local newspapers that had gone out of business over the years. Most of them had switched to microfiche and stored them that way. Wasn’t exactly something I was looking forward to, or anything, but it came with the territory of this job. I glanced down at my watch, saw it was getting into the evening already. Most libraries in small towns shut down early, so I’d have to get a move on if I wanted to squeeze any more time out today.

“How long are you planning on staying down there?” Tabitha asked.

“Probably just tomorrow,” I said. “If I can’t find any evidence, I’m going to chalk this up to a wild goose chase—”

I stopped mid-sentence, though, at the sound of gravel crunching behind my car. I picked up my head and looked back behind me.

Standing there, looking even more beautiful in the light of day than she had under the harsh florescent lights inside the morgue, was the assistant whom I’d never gotten the name of.

“Sam?” Tabitha asked from St. Louis. “Everything all right?”

“Hey,” the assistant said, her hands tucked into her jeans pockets, her hips cocked to one side. “I need to talk to you, but I need to make it quick. It’s about my boss…he’s lying to you.”

“Tabitha?” I asked into the phone. “Let me call you right back. Think I might have found my lead.”