"What could have killed this woman?"
"Won't know until I see the body."
"I don't want you going there alone. I'll go with you."
"The police don't like it when you bring your civvie boyfriends to crime scenes, Richard. Stay here; comfort Dr. Onslow."
He frowned at me.
"I'm not being catty, Richard." I smiled. "All right, not very catty. She's shook. Hold her hand. I'll be okay."
He touched my face gently. "You don't need much hand-holding, do you?"
I sighed. "One night with you and I nearly eat Verne's neck. One night, and I just ran through the woods like ... like a werewolf. Just one lovemaking session, and you say you knew it was a possibility. You should have at least tried to tell me last night, Richard."
He nodded. "You're right, I should have. I don't have any excuse good enough. I'm sorry, Anita."
Staring up into his so-sincere face, it was hard to be angry. But it wasn't hard to be distrustful. Maybe Richard had been learning more from Jean-Claude than just how to control the marks. Maybe lying by omission was contagious.
"I need to go see a body, Richard."
Dr. Onslow pointed me in the right direction. I started off through the woods. Richard caught up with me. "I'll walk you."
"I'm armed, Richard. I'll be okay."
"I want to go with you."
I stopped and turned and stared up at him. "I don't want you with me. Right this moment, I need you to be somewhere else."
"I didn't mean to hide things from you. Everything happened so fast last night. I just didn't have time. I didn't think."
"Tell it to someone who cares, Richard. Tell it to someone who cares." I walked away into the trees, and he stayed where I'd left him. I felt him watch me as I moved through the trees. I could feel the weight of his gaze like a hand on my back. If I looked back, would he be waving? I didn't look back. I loved Richard. He loved me. I was sure of those two things. The one thing I wasn't sure of was whether that love would be enough. If he slept with other women, it wouldn't be. Fair or not, I wouldn't survive it.
Richard said he hadn't asked me to give up Jean-Claude. He hadn't. But as long as I shared my bed with Jean-Claude, Richard would sleep with other women. As long as I wasn't monogamous, he wouldn't be, either. He hadn't asked me to give up Jean-Claude. He'd just made sure that I wasn't going to be happy in either bed. I could have them both as long as Richard slept around. I could have Richard all to myself, as long as I gave up Jean-Claude. I wasn't ready to make the second choice, and I couldn't live with the first. Unless there were a third choice, we were in trouble.
32
The murder scene was in the middle of the woods. Five miles from the nearest road good enough to take even a four-wheeler, according to Dr. Onslow. It was a great place for trolls, but not for conducting a police investigation. They were going to have to hike everything in, and when the time came, hike the body out. Not pleasant, not fast.
One good thing about the isolated location was no gawkers. I'd been to a lot of murder scenes, but the only ones without an audience were either at really odd hours or in the middle of nowhere. The odd hours weren't enough if there were people nearby. People would climb out of their beds before dawn to see a corpse.
Even without the civvies, there was a crowd. I spotted the uniforms of Wilkes and one of his men. I was really looking forward to seeing them again today. The state troopers were thick on the ground along with some plainclothes state detectives. I didn't have to be introduced to them to know they were cops. They moved around the scene with little plastic gloves on, squatting on the balls of their feet rather than kneeling on the evidence.
Yellow crime scene tape wrapped around it all like a ribbon on a package. There was no uniform on this side of the tape because no one expected company from the direction opposite the road. I was wearing the Browning and the Firestar and the knife down my spine, so I dug out my license and held it aloft as I ducked under the tape. Eventually, someone would see me and some uniform would get yelled at for letting me cross the perimeter without being spotted.
A state trooper spotted me before I'd come down the hill very far. They'd made a wide circle of tape, and he'd been standing near the upper edge of it. He had brown hair and dark eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across his pale cheeks. He walked towards me, hand out, "I'm sorry, miss, but you can't be in here."
I waggled the license at him. "I'm Anita Blake. I heard you guys were looking for me. Something about a body you want me to take a peek at."
"A peek," he said. "You want to take a peek at the body." He said it sort of soft, not like he was teasing me. His dark eyes stared past me for a second, then he seemed to remember where he was. He held his hand out for my license.
I let him take it, look at it, read it twice. He handed it back to me. He looked down the hill to the knot of people. He pointed. "The short man in the black suit, blond hair, that's Captain Henderson. He's in charge."
I just looked at him. He should have taken me to the man in charge. No way would a cop who didn't know me let me walk a crime scene unaccompanied. Vampire executioners aren't civilians, but most of us aren't detectives, either. I'm one of the very few who deals so intimately with the police. In Saint Louis where most of the cops knew me by reputation or on sight, I could see it. But here, where no one knew me, no way.
I read the trooper's nameplate. "Michaels, is it?"
He nodded, and again his eyes weren't looking at me. He wasn't acting like a cop. He was acting scared. Cops don't spook easily. Give them a few years on the job, and they perfect jaded indifference: been there, done that, wasn't impressed, didn't bother to get a T-shirt. Michaels had sergeant bars on his uniform. You didn't get sergeant stripes in the state troopers by getting shook at every crime scene.
"Sergeant Michaels," he said. "Is there something I can do for you, Ms. Blake?" He seemed to be rebuilding himself before my eyes. It reminded me of the way Dr. Carne Onslow had recovered. His eyes lost that vague, glassy look. He looked at me straight on, but there was still a tightness around his eyes, almost like something hurt. What the hell was down at the bottom of this hill? What could make a seasoned cop look like this?
"Nothing, Sergeant, nothing. Thanks." I kept my license out because I was almost sure to be stopped again without a police escort. A woman was throwing up by a small pine tree. She and the man holding her forehead wore Emergency Medical Services uniforms. It's a bad sign when the EMS techs are throwing up. A very bad sign.
It was Maiden who stopped me. We stood there for a second or two just looking at each other. I was standing uphill, looking down at him.
"Ms. Blake," he said.
"Maiden," I said. I left off the officer on purpose, because as far as I was concerned, he wasn't an officer. He'd stopped being a cop when he became a bad guy.
He gave a small, odd, smile. "I'll take you through to Captain Henderson. He's in charge."
"Fine."
"You might want to prepare yourself, Blake. It's ... bad."
"I'll be all right," I said.
He shook his head, looked at the ground. When he looked back up, his eyes were empty, cold cop eyes. "Maybe you will, Blake, maybe you will. But I won't be."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Who the hell is she?" It was Captain Henderson. He'd spotted us. He came up the hillside in his dress shoes, sliding just a bit. But he was determined and knew how to walk in the leaves even in the wrong shoes. He was about five-eight. with short, blond hair. He had odd eyes that changed color as he moved through the dappled sunlight. One moment pale green, the next grey. He came up to stand between the two of us. He looked at Maiden. "Who is this, and why is she inside my perimeter?"