Crowbones

CHAPTER 7

Grimshaw

Windsday, Grau 31

Grimshaw took two steps into the dark before Ilya grabbed his arm to stop him.

“I’ll look around,” Ilya said.

“It’s my job.”

“It’s not your territory. Jurisdiction. Is that the proper word?”

Damn lawyer. You know all the proper words as well as I do. “This place is flexible when it comes to jurisdiction.”

“Then let’s say I have a better chance of looking around and surviving than you do,” Ilya said.

Grimshaw hesitated. If the leader of the Sanguinati around Lake Silence said better chance, that was reason enough to be cautious. “Do you know what that was?” he asked quietly. “Why the Crows freaked out like that?”

“No,” Ilya replied. “I’ll look around; then we’ll both go inside and talk to Victoria. The Crowgard are more likely to tell her what frightened them than tell either of us.”

Ilya shifted to his smoke form—another sign that the vampire felt cautious about whatever else might be out there—and headed away from the access road. Headed in the direction where, a few months ago, a corrupt detective had been grabbed by an angry Elder and twisted in a way that still gave the cops and the local medical examiner nightmares.

Grimshaw stood where he was, scanning the edge between human lights and wild-country dark and listening for movement, whispers. Anything. Everything. He hadn’t heard any screams from the teenage boys, no sound of a car crashing as they tried to escape. Then again, the Elders were fast when they attacked.

Smoke drifted toward him. He braced, hoping it was Ilya and knowing he had no way to counter an attack from anything in that form.

Ilya shifted to his human form and stepped into the light. “Do you have any evidence bags in your vehicle?”

“Sure,” Grimshaw said, turning toward his cruiser. “I keep a few for—”

“Something that can hold wet evidence?”

He stopped. Turned back to study the vampire. “How wet?”

Ilya didn’t answer.

Crap. “I keep a body bag with my crime scene kit. We can use that, but I’ll have to help you carry it.”

Ilya hesitated. Then he nodded. “Very well. You should bring that big flashlight you usually keep in your car.”

“For illumination or protection?”

Ilya didn’t answer.

The evening was going pear-shaped in a hurry.

Grimshaw retrieved the flashlight and body bag. After a moment’s thought, he grabbed the small camera he also kept in the car. It wasn’t as good as the cameras used by the Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol, but whatever photos he could get of the evidence in situ tonight would have to do. He didn’t need Ilya to tell him that if he waited for CIU, there wouldn’t be anything for any of them to photograph in the morning.

He slipped the camera strap over his head, tucked the body bag under one arm, gave Ilya the flashlight, and said, “Lead the way.”

They were close to the trees but still on clear ground. In daylight, they would be in sight of anyone looking out a window on that side of the main house. Grimshaw gave thanks that all the children who had come to The Jumble tonight had been spared whatever he was about to face.

He smelled blood.

Ilya’s hand was steady, but Grimshaw still took in the scene in flashes.

A bottle of bleach on the ground. A decorative hollow gourd lying next to an arm that had been severed at the elbow. And a lump of something black and feathered.

“I need to take some pictures,” Grimshaw said quietly, setting the body bag near his feet. He pointed to the bleach and then aimed the camera. “Lighting isn’t the best, but I doubt we’ll have another chance.”

He took several shots of each piece of the tableau. Even with the light shining on it, he couldn’t make sense of the lump of feathers—and he wasn’t eager to find out what might be underneath it.

Tucking the camera between his shirt and jacket, Grimshaw opened the body bag to transport the evidence.

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

A sound like a rattlesnake’s tail, but worse. Somehow worse. And nearby.

Grimshaw looked at Ilya and tipped his head toward the building. The Sanguinati had a chance of getting away from whatever was out there, and all of Sproing’s residents needed a terra indigene leader who had a tolerance for humans.

“Chief Grimshaw,” Ilya said in a normal tone of voice, “now that we have photographed the items, the next step in investigating is to transport the evidence to the police station for analysis. Is that not true?”

“That is true,” Grimshaw agreed, understanding that he was explaining their actions to whatever watched them. “We will use these items to identify the person who played a cruel trick on the Crowgard tonight. Then the person can be properly charged and arrested for a crime.”

“Just like in the cop and crime shows that Victoria, Aggie, Jozi, and Eddie enjoy watching.”

“Yeah, like that.”

Ilya picked up the unopened bottle of bleach and placed it at one end of the body bag. The severed arm and gourd were placed in the middle. Wishing he’d brought gloves and accepting that his clothes were going to get soiled with something, Grimshaw lifted the bundle of soggy feathers.

Something inside the bundle of feathers. Something hard and round, but this wasn’t the time or place to investigate.

Stuffing the bundle into the bottom end, he zipped up the bag. Keeping tension on the ends of the bag, he and Ilya lifted it, trying to prevent everything from sliding into the middle and destroying any evidence he might be able to glean once he got back to the station.

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

Just his imagination, or was there anger in that sound?

Every step was taken with the expectation of an attack. Even after they reached his cruiser and placed the evidence in the trunk, Grimshaw felt his skin crawl. The attack on this prankster had been so fierce and so fast—and so silent. Except for that rattling sound coming out of the dark.

“You can’t go inside like that,” Ilya said, looking at Grimshaw’s bloody hands and the cuffs of his shirt and jacket. “Natasha is bringing out some towels and water.”

He looked at his bloody hands. Gods above and below, what was in that bundle? “Thanks. Can you talk to Aggie and Jozi?”

Ilya nodded. “With Victoria. Do you want Julian Farrow to accompany you to the station?”

He did, but Julian wasn’t a cop anymore, and he needed someone at The Jumble who would sound the alarm if there was more trouble. “No need. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

When Natasha stepped outside, they walked up to meet her. Grimshaw cleaned up as best he could.

“I’ll escort Victoria’s guests to their cabins,” Ilya said.

“We will escort Victoria’s guests.” Natasha smiled, showing a hint of fang that no man could mistake for anything but a spousal warning.

Ilya didn’t look happy, but he said, “Yes. We will escort the guests.”

“Will you be okay returning to Silence Lodge?” Grimshaw asked. “You don’t know what’s out there.”

“I’ll find out what I can from the Crows before we leave,” Ilya replied.

Meaning the Sanguinati really didn’t know what was out there, and that wasn’t good. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

He drove slowly, scanning the land on either side of the gravel access road. He didn’t expect to see any of the terra indigene, but he breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t find a car that had been flipped or crushed or bent around a tree. He didn’t see any debris or body parts. Maybe those idiot teenage boys had gotten away.

As he turned onto Lake Street and headed north toward Sproing, he also didn’t see Aiden. Apparently Fire had completed his stint of directing traffic.

Grimshaw pulled into his parking space in front of the station. A month ago, there hadn’t been any officially reserved parking spaces on Main Street. People took any available spot. But after he’d returned from answering a call one afternoon and had trouble finding a parking space near the station, someone who wasn’t him or the Sanguinati had decided that the three spaces in front of the station were now reserved for police vehicles and Ilya’s black luxury sedan and had painted POELEESE POLICE across the spaces.

It had taken only a couple of cars having BAD HUMAN! clawed into the hoods to teach the residents of Sproing the value of letting the police have those spaces.

“Assess, then decide,” he said quietly. It wasn’t that late in the evening, and he couldn’t leave the evidence in his trunk overnight. Best get on with it, then, as long as things had stayed quiet in the village.

He went into the station and nodded to Osgood, who was on the phone.

“No, ma’am,” Osgood said politely, “you can’t make out an official complaint against the diner for running out of brownie squares and offering peanut butter cookies to youngsters coming in for a treat.”

Standing on the other side of the desk, Grimshaw couldn’t make out the words, but he heard the tone loud and clear—and he recognized the voice. Mrs. Ellen C. Wilson was one of Sproing’s newer residents. She seemed determined to let everyone know that living in a village the size of Sproing was beneath her. She complained about everything and reported poor quality at least twice a week in an effort to be given a steep discount at a store or receive something for free from any business serving food. And somehow, despite the growing dislike for her throughout the village, she usually managed to get what she wanted.

Personally, he thought it was because her voice grated in a way that reminded him of a horror movie he’d seen as a kid where sentient worms burrowed into people’s brains and took control, causing people to go on murdering rampages.

He’d love to see the back of her. He’d happily drive her and her son, Theodore, to the train station and see them heading anywhere. And he was afraid that, one of these days, she would offend someone who wasn’t human and most of her wouldn’t be seen again.

“We don’t have time for this.” He held out his hand.

Osgood hesitated, then gave him the receiver.

“Mrs. Wilson? This is Chief Grimshaw.” He listened to her diatribe for a full minute before he interrupted. “Since I saw your boy stuff a handful of those peanut butter cookies into his mouth earlier this afternoon, you and I both know any tummy ache he has right now was caused by overindulgence rather than him being sensitive to certain foods, and I’m telling you now that, at his age, he should know if there is something he shouldn’t eat. The people working at the diner aren’t going to act as surrogate parents while you go flitting from store to store, spreading ill will, but if you want to pursue this, here’s what you do. You have Doc Wallace give your boy a thorough physical and run whatever tests are available to check for food sensitivities. I, in the meantime, will inform the food businesses in the village that they should not serve your son unless he can give them a note from you specifying what food he is allowed to purchase. And if you think for one moment you’re going to use whiny complaints to slide out of paying for those tests or the doctor’s bill, you should know that the Sanguinati can also test blood for all kinds of things. They just take an extra pint or two as their fee.”

He hung up and looked at Osgood, whose brown eyes were wide with shock and whose brown skin was looking paler by the minute.

“The Sanguinati can test blood?” Osgood asked.

“They react to substances in the blood.” Grimshaw shrugged. “Any trouble in the village? Besides Ellen Wilson?”

Osgood shook his head. “The younger kids cleared out early. Even the home parties are done by now. No calls about any adult parties getting out of hand.”

“Anything about the people in the camper park? No trouble there?”

“No, sir.” Osgood waited a beat. “Were you expecting some trouble?”

If those teenagers were on the road, they were someone else’s problem by now, but he’d like to be sure. “In the morning, you go over to the camper park and knock on every door. I want to know who’s renting the campers and how long they plan to stay. If anyone doesn’t answer the door, you roust the park’s owner and find out who he has listed on the rental agreements.”

“You looking for someone in particular?”

“Four boys. Teens. They were looking to cause some trouble at The Jumble this evening. If they are renting one of the campers, I want to know if all four of them made it back. Right now, I want you to call Doc Wallace and tell him I’m picking him up in ten minutes. Then call Sheridan Ames and tell her we need her facility to examine some crime scene evidence, and Doc Wallace and I will be there shortly.”

Sheridan Ames and her brother Samuel ran the village’s funeral home. It was the only place to access the equipment to examine a body without driving to the mortuary in Crystalton or Bristol.

“You have a body at The Jumble?”

“Part of one.”

“Gods,” Osgood breathed. “Do you know what did it?”

This past summer, Osgood was one of the four police officers who had been left at The Jumble when Vicki DeVine had been brought to the station to answer questions about a dead body. He had been the only survivor when the other men ignored the boundaries the Others had heard Vicki establish.

“No,” Grimshaw said. “I don’t.”