Wild Country

CHAPTER 28

Earthday, Messis 26

Despite this being the day of the week when no one was supposed to be at work or cause any trouble, the phone in the sheriff’s office rang. And rang. And rang.

Virgil bared his teeth at it, but it was just a stupid machine that didn’t know the pack member who would normally respond to its howl wasn’t in the office yet.

Why wasn’t the wolverine in the office yet? She had said Barbara Ellen was all right, and the human bodywalker had said nothing was broken in the hand that bad male had squeezed. They wouldn’t have lied to him. They wouldn’t have dared lie to him. But he knew from the teaching stories about humans that there were degrees of untruth between an actual lie and true speaking. Was Jana late because Barbara Ellen had other injuries and needed help and the females didn’t want to tell him?

He’d make it clear to both those females that there would be no not-telling. They could whine about that all they wanted, but he’d make it clear that . . .

“What?” he snarled as he grabbed the phone that wouldn’t stop ringing because it didn’t know enough to be cowed by the dominant Wolf.

“Sheriff?” Male voice. Adult. Upset but not whining, not sounding weak.

“Yes.”

“It’s Zeke.”

He didn’t know the human well enough that he would recognize the man’s scent, but he knew the name, knew Zeke was the leader of a business pack that was clearing out houses. “Yes?”

“We found a body. You need to come.”

Parlan Blackstone looked around the private railcar that served as his home as well as a discreet place where he ran high-stakes card games and entertained women when he wanted female company. Moving from town to town had been essential to the clan. Even the wealthiest marks could be squeezed for only so long. Always better to move on and be welcomed back by those eager for a chance to get even than be seen as the embodiment of vices that had ruined a family’s fortune.

Now he was gambling that he could gain a strong enough foothold in Bennett to secure a living for all of them—at least until travel restrictions relaxed and they could make their way back to the West Coast and settle down in one of the civilized cities still under human control.

Dalton would stay in Bennett with him. The boy would have to keep a low profile for a while, maybe even change his looks and go by another last name. Wouldn’t be the first time they’d played that game. And Lawry would be there. Judd? Yes, Judd would stay with him, even if he had to put aside his preferred line of work.

They would streamline their operations back to the original clan. Bringing in Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb as muscle had been a mistake. Neither of them understood subtlety or the need to put aside their own gratification in order to do a job. They had smeared the clan with the shit of their behavior, and because of that, his boy’s face and name were tacked to train station and post office walls all over the region.

One way or another, Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb had to go before the clan could establish itself in Bennett.

Unfortunately, Parlan didn’t have a feeling about their success or failure. What he did have was the feeling that he’d dealt himself a bad hand, that coming into the Midwest had been a mistake, that he should have made the decision to play the respectable con before they’d left the Northeast. Or they should have gone to the Southeast Region and set themselves up in a virgin town—a place they hadn’t plied their trade before.

Parlan wandered around the car, idly shuffling a deck of cards. That action always soothed him, helped him think, helped him sharpen his focus. He’d always been that way, even as a boy. He’d known when he could cheat—and how much—and when he needed to play it straight. His father had loved gambling but hadn’t had the knack. Not with cards, not with dice, not with life. And his mother, who might have been a vibrant woman if she’d married a different man, had used her Intuit abilities to find the weakness in other people and inflict wounds, knowing just what to say to cause the most harm. It would have been a useful ability if she’d understood how to properly exploit it, but she’d inflicted one wound too many on him, and he’d walked away without a second thought, taking Lawry with him.

He’d had the knack, the knowing, the skill for gambling, that his father had lacked, and with Lawry’s quick fingers and skill at con games, they had done very well for themselves. They were a clan now, a family-run business, even if one of their branches handled darker projects that were always lucrative in one way or another.

His mobile phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Found one of our boys,” Judd McCall said. “We had a sharp reunion.”

“And the other?”

“His gear is here. I’ll find a place nearby to wait.”

“You’ll be able to make the meeting?”

“I’m on the outskirts, so meeting up with you won’t be a problem.”

“I’ll be on the westbound train tomorrow. Should arrive in time for my business associates to set up an appointment with the town officials.”

“I’ll see you there.”

Parlan ended the call and went back to shuffling the deck as he considered how to manipulate the straw-men businessmen partners into saying the right things to Bennett’s mayor.

Walking over to the card table, he dealt four cards faceup.

Two black eights. Two black aces.

Parlan stared at the cards and wondered why they made him uneasy.

Jana had hoped Virgil would be off somewhere doing a sniff-and-pee patrol when she reached the office. No such luck. Not only was he there, but it was obvious he was waiting for her since he was standing outside. Worse, the backpack that held her crime scene kit was at his feet.

“What happened?” she asked when he opened the back of the vehicle.

Virgil picked up Rusty. “I’ll put her inside. Wait here.”

The pup was stowed in her office crate—or maybe was given the run of the Me Time cell. Either way, Virgil returned fast enough that Jana didn’t think Rusty had been given a scritch or a treat. He set the backpack in the cargo area, closed up the back, and got in the passenger seat.

“What happened?” she asked again.

He gave her an address and then stared at her.

“I should have called and told you I might be a little late.” It was tempting to point out that she wasn’t actually late since this was her day off and she was just supposed to be coming in sometime that morning to check the e-mail from yesterday. But Virgil didn’t look like he was in the mood to have her point out anything. “Barb decided her hand was sore enough that she needed some help feeding the animals, so Abby and I went with her. After I dropped the two of them back home, I came here.”

Since he still didn’t say anything, she headed for the northern road that would take her to the address.

Finally, he said, “A pack member who is injured shouldn’t run with a hunt. If she can’t keep up, she will fall behind, be alone. She can’t dodge if prey turns unexpectedly. She should stay close to the den until she heals. A pack leader should be told these things. If he can’t trust that he will be told, he will demand submission in order to find out for himself.”

She could picture Virgil forcing a female Wolf into a submissive position so that he could sniff her and decide things for himself. Doing that to human females would be a violation, an assault. He wouldn’t see it that way, but she knew how she would feel if he forced her down. Something to explain to him when he wasn’t angry with her.

“Having me and Abby help her today . . . Friends were taking care of a friend. That’s what we do.”

She felt the weight of his stare before he growled, “And I’m not a friend?”

Friend? She wasn’t sure. Pack leader? Oh, yeah.

She glanced at him and hoped her smile looked genuine. “I didn’t need to bring out the big guns—or the big teeth—to convince Barb to do the smart thing. If I’d needed that kind of help, I would have hollered for you to come and deal with her.”

He grunted and looked away, ending their little snarl-fest. Jana felt like she could breathe again.

“I brought your crime kit,” he said.

It was tempting to remind him that it was called a crime scene kit, but . . .

Don’t correct the big, big Wolf with the big, big teeth when he’s still annoyed with you, even if he makes it sound like you’re about to indulge in a bit of larceny.

“So we’re investigating a crime?” She felt her shoulders tighten when they approached the spot where the man accused of being a Cyrus human had left the road and tried to go overland. Had he been heading for the place they were going to now and turned the wrong way?

“Dead body,” Virgil replied. “The Zeke pack and the Fagen pack had gathered to scavenge what they could from the houses on that street.”

“Salvage,” Jana corrected. “They’re salvage companies, not scavengers.”

He shrugged, making her wonder if he saw any distinction. Making her wonder about something else. “Why are they working on Earthday? And why are they working so far out? There are still a lot of houses—whole neighborhoods—closer to the town line that haven’t been cleared. Why work at houses that far into the wild country?”

Virgil watched the land, watched the sky, maybe watched something she couldn’t sense or see. Finally he said, “Zeke said he and Fagen looked at the map, and they both had a feeling that they needed to check those houses today. They found the body in the first house they entered.”

“So the Elders killed someone else?”

“No. A human did.”

Tolya gestured to the table in his office that he used for meetings when the big conference table in another room wasn’t needed. He waited for Judith and Melanie Dixon to take seats before sitting across from them.

Stewart Dixon had returned to his ranch, but the women had remained in town. The reason offered was that they wanted to keep an eye on the ranch hand who had been stabbed while trying to protect Melanie. He didn’t doubt there was some truth in that, but he suspected they were staying at the hotel because the girl was afraid to go home.

“Do you have some news?” Judith Dixon reached for her daughter’s hand.

“Perhaps,” Tolya replied. “A man talked about doing . . . bad things . . . to one of the young women who live here. His words sounded similar to what your daughter described when the man came into your house.”

“He’s here?” Melanie Dixon lost all the color in her face.

“We don’t know if it was the same man. The man who was in town is dead. Killed by the Elders.” Tolya tried to assess the strength of these women. “I have a photo that was taken where he was found. The photo shows part of his head. We found no identity card. Nothing in the car or in his pockets showed a picture of him.” He focused on Melanie Dixon. “I can’t tell you if this is the same man who threatened you. That is something you would have to tell me.”

The women stared at the folder under his hand.

“I want to see it,” Melanie Dixon said.

“The Elders were angry.” Tolya pressed his hand against the folder, as if the girl had tried to take it. “He doesn’t look the same as a living man.”

“I need to see, need to know . . .”

Want was one thing. You could live without things that were wanted. Need was something else. Need was about survival.

He removed the photo from the folder and placed it on the table.

“Gods above and below,” Judith Dixon whispered. She covered the lower half of her face with her hand, as if imitating what she saw.

John Wolfgard knew how to work the camera the police used to document crimes, so he’d gone out to take pictures of the body since it wasn’t safe for any human to be out there. He’d taken pictures of the head as it had been found—caught in the windshield—and then posed it in a way that could be sent to police in other towns. Tolya thought this posed picture looked more benign than the other photos since it showed the head sitting on the hood of the car. The lower jar was still on the ground and out of sight, which created the odd impression that the head was rising out of the car.

“That’s him.” Melanie Dixon shuddered. “I’m sure it’s him.”

“Then he is no longer a threat to any of you,” Tolya said quietly.

“What about the men who were with him?” Judith Dixon asked.

“We’ll find out who he is—and we’ll find the other men.” He smiled, showing a hint of fang. “That’s a promise.”

He escorted the women out of the building and watched them walk back to the hotel.

he called.

Another body? It was tempting to demand details, but Virgil was the sheriff, and he was doing his job. Besides, what Tolya had learned from his brief observations of Vlad working with Simon Wolfgard was that you got along better with a dominant Wolf by asking rather than demanding.

Tolya strolled down the street. Time to do another part of his job and listen to the reports from the rest of the Sanguinati.

Virgil studied the meat with considerable regret. The body. There were humans around, so he had to remember to call it a body instead of almost-fresh meat. Good thing Tolya hadn’t come with them. The Sanguinati would have regretted the waste of blood even more than he regretted not being able to have a quick snack. After all, this human didn’t need his liver anymore, did he? Or any of the meat on the legs?

“Is this how humans usually kill each other?” he asked as Jana gingerly moved closer to the . . . body . . . while trying to avoid stepping in the blood. Sensible, that. Lots of terra indigene would follow a blood trail, even a small one, thinking they were following injured prey.

And that’s what this reminded him of: injured prey. Run it down and hamstring it, then follow it as it bled and became weak enough to kill.

“Looks like he was already shot.” She raised her camera and began taking pictures. “But all that blood . . . It’s not from the gunshot wound.” She looked toward the doorway at the human male who had reported finding the body. “Zeke, your crew and Fagen’s will have to work another house for the next few days. Wait. You walked through the house already, right?”

“Most of it,” Zeke said. “Fagen was checking the kitchen and cupboards, and I was taking a look in the other rooms. We stopped as soon as I found . . .” He nodded toward the body. “I didn’t look in the other bedrooms.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll work next door for a while, stay nearby.”

“Thanks.” Jana waited until Zeke left. Then she raised the camera again and took pictures of the lower half of the body. “To answer your question, no, this isn’t how humans usually kill each other. They shoot each other, or stab each other, or they strangle with their bare hands or with some kind of ligature, or they hang each other, or poison each other. What they don’t usually do is . . .”

“Hamstring them?” When Jana looked at him, he shrugged. “If his legs still worked, wouldn’t he have tried to escape, even if he was weak?”

“I guess one of our town doctors is also going to be our medical examiner, so he’ll have to give us the full list of injuries, but . . .” Jana pulled back the man’s shirt, revealing one shoulder. “I think more than his legs were cut. I don’t think he could move his arms to fight off his attacker. Once he was helpless, whoever did this cut the arteries. But the throat wasn’t cut. That would have been a swift death compared to bleeding out.”

“Two-legged predator. Maybe brain sick.”

“Why do you say that? Don’t Wolves go for the legs?”

Virgil nodded. “But we don’t do it to make the prey suffer. And we don’t stand back and watch it bleed unless the prey is too strong and we have to wait until it weakens before we can move in. This human doesn’t look strong.” He walked to the door. “I’m going to sniff around.”

Returning to their vehicle, he stripped off his clothes, tossed them on the passenger seat, and shifted to Wolf.

“Yes,” Jana said to whoever was on the phone, “we need the ambulance to pick up a body at this address. No sirens. No need to alarm everyone.” She tucked the mobile phone back in her duty belt.

He caught a scent. Caught another. Not Zeke, not Fagen. But one of those scents . . .

Virgil leaped in front of Jana and snarled.

“What?” Jana snapped. “I’m just going to check out the rest of the house.”

Me first.

He roamed through the house, keeping ahead of her. Old scents in these bedrooms. One fresher scent in this room. Not on the bed but under it.

He tried to squeeze under the bed to reach what he could smell, but he was too big.

Jana nudged his hip. “Get out of there before you get stuck. I’m smaller. Let me try.”

He worked his way out from under the bed, yelping when he ripped out a bit of fur that got caught in the bedsprings.

Jana took the flashlight out of her belt and went down on her belly. “That backpack? That’s what you want?”

“Roo.”

She squirmed and wiggled her way under the bed. “Got it.”

When the squirming and wiggling didn’t seem to work to get her back out, Virgil closed his teeth over her boot and pulled.

She let out a startled yip. As soon as he saw all of her, he let go of her boot and grabbed for one of the straps on the backpack, pulling it into the center of the room.

Yes. It had been covered by death smells and the scents of Elders marking territory by the time he’d returned with John Wolfgard to take pictures of what little meat was left, but he recognized the scent of the male who had hurt Barbara Ellen’s hand.

So easy to shift paws into hands and open the zippers, but he scratched at the backpack and waited for Jana to finish brushing herself off.

“Darn dusty under there,” she muttered. Then she looked at the backpack. “But that’s not dusty.”

She opened each compartment. One held very stinky clothes. Another held money. Since Jana whistled when she saw it, Virgil assumed that meant it was a lot of money. Finally . . .

“This would be easier if you didn’t keep sticking your head inside the pack.”

It would be easier if she just pulled everything out so they could look at it instead of doing this dainty kind of pawing. The human was dead. And not just dead. He was already part of somebody’s poop. He wasn’t going to howl about her touching his stinky clothes.

“Identity card,” Jana said as she pulled several items out of an inside pocket. “Several of them. And . . . a driver’s license. I don’t recognize the name of the town listed as his address, but I bet it’s not in the Midwest. Sweeney Cooke.” She sat back on her heels. “You think he was trying to get back here after the incident in the Bird Cage Saloon?”

Wounded animal going to ground. Made sense.

“Do you think he killed that other man?”

No. There was that other scent in the meat’s room. He returned to that room, sniffing under the bed and in the closet. He sniffed around the rest of the house, following the scent out the door to a big stink that stung his nose and made him sneeze.

Gone. Lost.

He shifted back to human form and got dressed. A minute later the ambulance pulled up. Letting Jana deal with packing up the meat, he walked over to the next house and found Zeke and Fagen.

He stared at the Intuits. “The human who killed that man is still out there. He could be hiding in any of these houses. Or he could have moved on to another territory.”

Zeke and Fagen exchanged a look. “When we saw that body, we had a feeling that the killing was personal, that the killer had followed that man here,” Zeke said.

“Not a lot of places to go, so this would have been a good choice,” Fagen added. “We’ve seen signs of squatters in other houses. Some places were searched and valuables were taken. Money, jewelry. And food.”

“No one should be living out here,” Virgil said. “Anyone who is might be dangerous. Might even be the two-legged predator who kills his own kind. If you see any sign of humans out here who aren’t part of your pack, you run away and call us.”

“Will do.”

He returned to the sheriff’s vehicle. Jana was still inside the house doing . . . something. He didn’t need to see anything more.

He looked up and watched the Eagles riding the thermals while searching for prey.

No, he didn’t need to see anything more. From now on, all the terra indigene around Bennett would be watching for signs of unwanted humans.

“Thanks for helping out today,” Barb said.

“It’s a change from mopping floors.” Abigail worked up a smile she didn’t feel. She rinsed out Rusty’s water bowl and filled it with fresh water from the kitchen faucet.

She didn’t want a dog. She didn’t want something that would depend on her so much. But sweet Abigail might adopt one of the kittens in order to have a little fuzzy company now that Kelley had moved out.

Barb looked uncomfortable. “I saw Kelley this morning.”

“A lot of people saw Kelley this morning.” Saw him walking out of the hotel with that bitch Dina. Saw them talking and holding hands.

“I’m sorry, Abby.”

“Me too.” She put on a brave face but made sure her lip trembled. Had Kelley taken a room there, or had he and Dina met at the hotel for a meal? It didn’t matter now that she had a plan.

While Barb and Jana had been busy feeding the cats that morning, Abigail had followed the susurrus to a closed room that held a desk and a wall of books. A study or office? Didn’t matter what it was. Didn’t matter who had lived there. What mattered was the small wide bowl that held the stones.

Obsidian. Onyx. Hematite. Jet. Black stones. Protection stones.

Abigail had held one hand over the bowl.

They hadn’t protected the person who had used this room from anything. And they wouldn’t protect anyone else. Even properly cleansed, these black stones had absorbed too much anger. They would remain dissonant and draw the dark things instead of repelling them.

She’d read her cards that morning, and she knew the black stones were coming. Her father, her uncle, her brother, Judd McCall. She’d run from them, but there was no place to run anymore. There was, however, a way to sour things for them once they arrived.

Obsidian. Onyx. Hematite. Jet.

She would offer to help the girls who cleaned the hotel rooms, and she would hide these stones in the rooms that were reserved for guests who were passing through.

Let her father and the rest of the Blackstone Clan experience a run of ill fortune and see how they liked it.

“Why do you think she’ll know?” Virgil asked when Jana finished the call asking Candice Caravelli to meet her at the sheriff’s office.

“I don’t know if she’ll recognize our victim,” Jana replied. “But we didn’t find anything in the house or the other backpack we found that would identify him. Everyone carries an identity card, even if it’s a fake. Everyone carries a ration card, even when they’re traveling.”

“There is still plenty of food in Bennett.”

“Supplies are more restricted in the Northeast and, I imagine, the other regions too. We’re lucky that we have pantries and freezers of food available.” Of course, eggs were becoming scarce and whatever milk Fagen’s team found in the houses now had spoiled. She’d never thought she would look at a glass of milk as a luxury.

“My point is that I doubt anyone who came from Lakeside would recognize this man, which means we need to ask everyone who lives in Bennett who didn’t come from Lakeside.”

“Didn’t you howl to other police?”

“I sent a picture of the man to every police department I could reach. I even sent it to the communications cabin to send on to the police in Lakeside, Great Island, and Talulah Falls just in case I’m wrong about him coming from that area of the Northeast.”

“Sweetwater too?” Virgil asked. “There is a human town near there.”

She’d thought Sweetwater was too far out of the way and too far west, but in frontier stories, outlaws often chose places that were out of the way and overlooked. So Virgil had a point. The human town near Sweetwater was called Endurance. If that wasn’t a name for a hole-in-the-wall place, she didn’t know what was.

“I’ll send the picture to Jackson Wolfgard.” Jana looked over as Candice walked into the office.

“Sheriff,” Candice said warily.

Virgil stared at Candice, then pointed at Jana. “Talk to her.” He walked into his office and closed the door.

“Am I in trouble?” Candice asked. “I didn’t mean for that man to get killed. It’s just, he”—she waved a hand in the direction of Virgil’s office—“scared me.”

“He tends to do that.”

Candice gave her a wobbly smile. “I bet his bark is worse than his bite.”

“You’d lose that bet,” Jana said quietly. “Look, we found another body. We think it was one of the men who were at the Dixon ranch. Some things you said about your ex got me thinking, so . . .” She pulled out the crime scene photo she had cropped to just a head shot.

“That’s Charlie,” Candice said after a moment. “Charlie Webb. I guess he came hunting for me after all.”

“I don’t think he knew you were in Bennett. He was with three other men when he hit the ranch. Was he strong enough to be the leader of a gang?”

“No. After I’d known him for a while, I had the impression that he talked big but he was afraid of whoever was giving the orders. I think that’s why he was rough with me; he needed to prove he was a scary son of a bitch because he was afraid.”

He had reason to be afraid, Jana thought. Whoever caught up to him isn’t just a scary son of a bitch; whoever is out there enjoys inflicting pain as much as he enjoys killing.

“Did Charlie mention any names?” Jana asked.

Candice shook her head. “He was always careful about that, even when he was bragging.” She frowned. “A couple of times early on he said things about the people he was working with. Called one the Gambler and called another one the Knife. Then one night he came over and he was really scared. That was the first time he hit me. But he never used even those code names after that night.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Candice had barely closed the outer door when Virgil walked out of his office.

“This Charlie Webb ran with a pack,” Virgil said.

“Sounds like it.”

“You think he ran from the pack enforcer called the Knife?”

According to Abby, the Blackstone Clan was a family of gamblers and swindlers. Dalton Blackstone, Abby’s brother, had been at the Dixon ranch when another man attacked Melanie Dixon. Charlie Webb had been recovering from a gunshot wound before someone had found him and killed him. Odds were good he had been shot while driving away from the ranch, and that connected him with Dalton Blackstone.

She’d have to ask Abby if her father was known as the Gambler. If he was, then someone else in that group was called the Knife—and was nearby.

“Before you came to Bennett, you were the dominant enforcer for your pack, right?” Jana asked.

She looked into his eyes and wondered if Wolves suffered from survivor guilt.

“Yes,” Virgil replied, a warning growl beneath the word.

“If the actions of a member of the pack had put the rest of the pack in danger, what would you have done? I don’t mean making a mistake, but a deliberate act.”

“The enforcers would drive that Wolf out of the pack. But if that Wolf continued to be a threat, I would hunt it down and tear out its throat.”

Not so different from the Knife, then. Once you were accepted, you didn’t betray the pack. And since most packs were usually made up of family members . . .

Gods! What if they realized Abby was here and had been the one who identified Dalton Blackstone?

“We need to tell Tolya about this.”

Virgil nodded. “He’s expecting us.”

Of course he was. She kept thinking that Virgil was as new to police work as she was, but that wasn’t true. The human elements of the job were new to him, but he’d had plenty of experience protecting a pack.

She looked at him, stunned she hadn’t seen it until now.

He was experienced. And that’s why he’d realized this morning that a human enforcer for the outlaw clan was now encroaching on his territory.