Bare Bones Page 18

  His socks didn’t match? I tried to sneak a peek, but his pants came down too far and the floor of the car was too dim to tell. Even so, I got the feeling he had on one navy and one black.

  Chuckling, I sat back in my seat and relaxed. I was so glad I’d met Detective Justin Tremelay, glad he’d trusted me, believed me, glad he was my friend. My quirky friend with his rumpled shirts, rumpled hair, and mismatched socks. What a character. And what a Templar-at-heart this man was.

  “What are you grinning about, Ainsworth?”

  I couldn’t help it. Skinwalkers, dead people. I shouldn’t be happy, but somehow I was. I had friends. I had good friends. And Raven might be dead, but she wasn’t lost to me.

  “Your socks,” I told the detective. “I swear sometimes you look like a toddler dressed you.”

  He grinned back. “I’m a toddler at heart, Ainsworth.”

  Tremelay pulled along the curb and parked on a street full of brick row houses, putting the car in park and unlocking the doors.

  “Here we are.”

  We were two blocks from the MLK. It wasn’t the best section of town, but it wasn’t the worst. I looked over at the line of houses, identical except for window treatments and front-door ornamentation.

  “I thought you said apartment?”

  He nodded, swinging his legs out of the car. “Two one bedroom apartments in the house. I’ve got the downstairs, and a single mother of three has the upstairs. She’s thrilled to have a cop living in her building.”

  I’ll bet. I shook my head at the thought of four people in a one bedroom apartment, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to judge. After this month’s rent, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay the next. In a few months, it might be me living with three other people in a one bedroom apartment.

  I followed Tremelay up the steps through a door. The lock squeaked, and when the detective flicked on the light I saw boxes. A lamp sat on a tower of three. Others were lined against the wall, black marker on the sides proclaiming them to be “living room” or “misc.” I milled about the room while Tremelay disappeared into what I assumed was the bedroom. Sofa, recliner, a couple of end tables, and a shelving unit against the wall.

  “Three months and you haven’t unpacked all of this?” I asked.

  Tremelay gave an affirmative grunt from the bedroom. I immediately jumped to the usual conclusions as I looked around the apartment. Divorced middle-aged guy, kicked out by his wife. Cops were stereotypically cheaters, so my mind wandered to the worst. I browsed the living room and kitchen, hearing the sound of ripping boxes and thumping from the back room as I tried to get a better idea of the man who’d become my friend.

  The shelf by the window housed a pile of books, mostly classics and a few military thrillers. Next to them was a stack of framed photos. A woman about my age, stylish dark hair, her smile nearly engulfing her heart-shaped face. A group of people I couldn’t make out in kayaks going down a small rapid. The girl again in a graduation gown.

  “Is this your daughter?” I shouted, feeling nosy.

  “Kyra. She’s in medical school. Third year.”

  He sounded so proud. He should be. I pursed my lips and nodded, impressed. The next picture was of a woman in her thirties, her skin tanned, her black hair in a long braid over her shoulder. It was one of those casually posed pictures, with jeans and a pristine button-down shirt while sitting on lichen-coated boulders in an autumn woods. Pretty, although there was something haunting about her dark eyes.

  “That was my wife, Anaya.”

  I jumped to hear Tremelay’s voice so close behind me. He reached out to take the photo, setting it with great reverence on the shelf.

  I was dying of curiosity, but heard the raw grief of love lost in the detective’s voice. Maybe she left him. Either way, this was an open wound for him and I just couldn’t pry further.

  I didn’t have to pry. He reached out to touch the face on the picture. “I met her when I was a wet-behind-the-ears rookie and she was a defense attorney. I’d been called to appear on a domestic violence trial that I’d responded to. She kicked my ass.” Tremelay smiled nostalgically. “I asked her out before we left the courthouse.”

  “Love at first sight.” I couldn’t help but feel warm and fuzzy at the thought.

  He shrugged. “For me. Took six months before she finally went out with me. She was so out of my league. I couldn’t believe my luck.”

  I looked at the picture again, at the woman’s almond-shaped eyes, lined dark. Even in jeans and a button-down she looked exotic. “She’s beautiful.”

  Tremelay’s face twisted. “Yes. She is.”

  The detective turned away, picking up a box off the kitchen counter. By the time he’d turned to face me, his expression was once again serene. “Here. I want you to have this.”

  My brain raced wondering what in the world the detective could possibly be giving to me. A book on the occult? A grimoire he’d found in a used bookstore somewhere? A magical item?

  It was a flak jacket. And a gun. I held up the vest, my eyes questioning as I looked at Tremelay.

  “Figured it would be a bit harder for a demon to stab you if you were wearing that. Don’t know how effective it’s going to be against skinwalkers, though.”

  It wouldn’t exactly be stealthy. The jacket was definitely my size, but the plates were freaking huge. This was way more protection than my thin Kevlar vest from home. I could probably take a heat-seeking missile to the chest and survive in this thing.

  “Thanks.” How the heck could I wear this anywhere? A guy in a jacket this bulky would just look buff. I’d look like someone had shot me up with a truckload of steroids. It might not be great for day-to-day wear, but it would have its uses. In fact, I could have used it last month when Dark Iron shot me. Although since he’d shot me in the arm, maybe not.

  “Did you see the pistol?” Tremelay asked. His voice had an edge of excitement to it, like he was delivering Christmas gifts to me.

  “Yes.” I pulled it out and cleared the chamber, clicking to drop the non-existent clip out of habit. “Sig nine. Very nice.”

  It was a sweet pistol, and it had obviously been well maintained.

  “There are four clips and a handful of bullets in the box,” Tremelay told me.

  I looked down in the box, then up at him, perplexed. “Why are you giving me this?”

  A small flak jacket. Yeah, I could see that maybe he’d had one from whenever and thought to give it to me, but a pistol? A really nice Sig? That wasn’t the sort of thing you just handed off to someone.

  “I have my .40, so I don’t ever use it. There are going to be times when your sword isn’t going to be enough. No one will expect a Templar to be carrying a pistol, not that I’m advocating concealed carry without a license.” He squirmed, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “These guys are skinning people, Ainsworth. I know you’re going to go after them, and with your luck, you’ll get to them before I do. Whether they’re human or skinwalkers, I don’t want to find your body next.”

  I’d been meaning to get a gun, but with the handgun license laws and the actual purchase, I couldn’t spare the cash. This was…sweet.

  “It’s a loan,” I insisted. “You need it back, and it’s yours. And as soon as I can save up some money to buy my own, I’ll return it.”

  “Fair enough,” he nodded.

  Something else struck me. “How do you know I can shoot? You’ve only seen me use a sword.”

  Tremelay smirked, taking the gun from me and carefully putting it back in the case. “You joust. You have shot two types of RPGs. I know you have a shotgun back home, and you’ve done the trap shoot thing. I was pretty sure in all your Templar training they taught you to shoot a pistol. And from the way you cleared the gun when you first picked it up, I’d bet my life savings I’m right.”

  He was. I wasn’t a sharpshooter, but I wasn’t a danger to society with a gun in my hand either. I bent down and picked up the box. “Thanks. I apprec
iate it.”

  Tremelay nodded sharply, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “Don’t mention it.”

  He drove me back to my apartment, where I thanked him again before heading inside. I had a lot of research to do, but the first thing I did after stashing my new pistol in a safe place was to Google Anaya Tremelay.

  I couldn’t help but wonder about the woman who haunted my friend’s life enough to remain a picture on his bookshelf. My browser exploded with professional pictures and articles. Lawyer. District Attorney. A few high profile cases. Anaya had raised thousands running in charity marathons and had organized several races to benefit a local food bank. Her pro-bono service was noteworthy. She was a freaking saint.

  And she was dead. The stream of press-mentions ended abruptly only to be followed by an obituary three months later.

  I felt like shit for all my stupid assumptions about Tremelay’s marriage and fidelity. I’m sure they’d encountered a few rocky points in their time together, heck, even my parents had their rough spots. What mattered was he clearly loved her, still loved her. She’d died far too young, and after two years he still grieved.

  I went and looked at the flak jacket and pistol with fresh eyes. That jacket was way too small for Tremelay. Had it been hers? Was this her Sig? It warmed my heart to think my friendship meant enough for him to part with his wife’s things. I needed to be nicer to Tremelay. We both lived for our work. We both had family we loved. We were both from Templar backgrounds, even though his had evidently gone underground after the purge. But beyond all that, the detective was a good guy.

  Yeah. I needed to be kinder to Tremelay. And maybe once in a while, if finances allowed, I could bring him some cookies.

  Chapter 25

  I WAS TWO hours into Hakan Garza’s Native American Magic and I was ready to throw the book across the room. It wasn’t just the weird, archaic prose that frustrated me, it was the way the author danced around the fact that he didn’t know squat about how to catch or kill these creatures.

  One idea he put forth was to learn the skinwalker’s real name, then basically “out” them, thus rendering them unable to use the skins to change form ever again. That sounded promising except for the fact that I had no stinking idea who these people were. Tremelay said he’d been wading through missing and endangered children reports out of South Carolina, checking Amber alerts nationwide in case the three teens had hitchhiked their way from somewhere else before Stu Mooreland had picked them up. Who knows if he’d even get a hit. They could be from the sort of family situation where their disappearance wasn’t noted, let alone reported. Lawton King was the only name we knew, and searching a decade for missing children named Gary and Becca was proving a daunting task.

  And that was if the teenagers were their real identity. Lawton’s skin had been the one in the backpack, making me wonder who these three skinwalkers really were under all the aliases. I noted the name solution, just in case, but kept reading and hoping for a more reliable method of subduing these killers.

  Another idea was to use bullets coated in ash. What sort of ash, Mr. Garza didn’t say. Wood? Bone? Did the type of tree or animal matter, or did the ash need to be from human remains? There were just too many variables for me to feel confident in this method. Then the author went on to say that I’d need to shoot the skinwalker in the neck, because even with the unspecified ash coating, hitting them elsewhere wouldn’t kill them, it would just piss them off.

  With my luck I’d hit the guy in the neck only to find out I’d used the wrong ash. Besides, the idea of shooting teenagers bothered me enough that I decided I wasn’t going to pursue that option. I really wanted to neutralize their magic and bring them in for Tremelay to prosecute, not kill them.

  The next extremely vague idea that Garza put forth was to turn the skinwalker’s curses back upon himself. Fat lot of good that would do me. From what I’d seen, they hadn’t been using magic at all, they’d been breaking their victim’s necks, draining their blood, then skinning them. Kinda hard to turn a curse back on the skinwalker when there was none.

  Or maybe there was. Outside of Amanda Lewis, the victims hadn’t shown any defensive wounds. Were the skinwalkers using some type of magic to knock them out? Not a curse precisely, but some type of spell to freeze or bind a victim. It made sense. That way there’d be no struggle that would mar the skin. Magically render them unconscious, kill them quickly by breaking their neck, then get to work. Dario had said there must have been some kind of magic to subdue the vampire victim. This fit.

  Except that hadn’t happened with Amanda Lewis or in the first two vampire attacks. Perhaps their sleep spell was only effective on some individuals? Or maybe the teenage practitioners weren’t skilled enough to obtain reliable results? Either way, Amanda Lewis had been sliced repeatedly, then had her legs dislocated. And the other two vampires—one had said the woman tried to break his neck. Of course the other one didn’t fit at all with the attacker trying to bite the vampire.

  Whatever. It was all I had. Of course, to turn a spell back upon the caster, I’d need to not only have a rebound spell, but manage to make myself the victim. And becoming one of the skinwalkers’ victims was going to be pretty difficult when I had no idea where to find them. I couldn’t exactly put myself in their path when I didn’t even know where their path was.

  I was at a dead end. And I didn’t even have any cannoli to eat as comfort food. I was in the middle of such a pity party that I was contemplating breaking out my Emergency Beer when Tremelay called.

  “God, I love the FBI. I’ll never say another bad thing about the feds ever. If I do, slap me, because they are the best thing since sliced bread and microwave ovens.”

  His excitement was infectious. I held my breath waiting for him to tell me what breakthrough on the case the FBI had brought to the table.

  “We got the names of Stu Moreland’s three hitchhikers, and the lab got back to us on the body from the museum, and the body in the cooler. I’m hoping we’ll have something soon on the two dead at the Powerplant. Right now all I’ve got is the M.E. saying they’re two young Caucasian males, early twenties and fit.”

  “Lab reports first,” I told him. This was like Christmas morning, and I wasn’t sure which present to open first.

  “I’m not going to go into the excruciating details, but between the lab data, the fed’s database, and their amazing ability to get hospital and juvenile records, we’ve discovered that the body in the cooler is Bradley Lewis. The body at the museum is Brian Huang.”

  “And how are the feds explaining that we interviewed Brian Huang days after his death?” I wondered. The fact that Gary had hidden Bradley’s body in his own house bothered me, too. That was ballsy.

  “No idea. They’ll probably go with the secret identical twin thing like in the soap operas. They’re conjecturing this is a group of teens who joined up with some Baltimore people they most likely met on the internet, but now they’ve begun to turn on each other.”

  “Killing Lawton King and Bradley Lewis.” I finished the line of reasoning. “And the creepy jail break was the evil twin who left Brian Huang’s skin behind as a sort of calling card to go with the skinned body in the museum.”

  “With the ‘death’ of King and Lewis, the Feds have concluded the two remaining members of the gang are Becca Campbell and Gary Jarvett. They’ve narrowed it down to Gary as the killer based on Stu Moreland’s account and that he was seen with both Brian Huang and Bradley Lewis. They are thinking Becca ditched the group once they got to Baltimore and is an accessory after the fact.”

  The other two hitchhikers. It didn’t bother me that the Fed’s had overlooked the Teen Formerly Known as Lawton King and Brian Huang. I was beginning to agree that Gary was our main man. Catch him and we’d eventually find Lawton and Becca. Well, the vampires would probably find Becca and woe to her if they did.

  “Anything else on the Powerplant dead?” Those two bodies bothered me. Lawton would need a new skin to conceal his
true identity, and Gary seemed to be in collecting mode. If they were impersonating those two dumped in the bathroom stall, then I’d have no way to recognize them.

  I wish there was an Identify Skinwalker spell. It sounded like something from my Wednesday night Anderon game, but that sort of spell really needed to happen. Maybe there was a ritual in Raven’s books that could help me.

  Or Chuck. These monthly visits might prove more useful than I’d originally thought. Although right now I didn’t have time to wait for a month to find an identification spell.

  “The usual broken neck, stab wound stuff. The manager said the rear entrance was unlocked when he came to let the band in to set up, but one of the other managers was there at the same time. They each thought the other unlocked the door. Weird band. A group called Midnight Visitor. They were a one-hit wonder back in the grunge era and something of a local favorite. They didn’t see anything, but had me talk to the opening act which is a local garage band. Rabid Rabbit. Nice kids, although they seem a bit antiestablishment. They don’t usually do big venues, sticking to impromptu raves in abandoned buildings and shit like that. Lead singer, Travis Dawson said they were huge fans of Midnight Visitor and couldn’t turn down the chance to open for them.” Tremelay made a hmm sound. “I think I know these Rabbit guys. The name sounds familiar, but I don’t listen to that sort of music.”

  “Bradley Lewis.” I was so excited. “He had a Rabid Rabbit T-shirt. It’s got to be a connection.” Three teens, of course they’d be into that sort of music. And Gary did seem to be an antiestablishment guy. Finally I had a lead on where I could manage to find these kids, and possibly lure them in. I just had to find a Rabid Rabbit concert, and show up. I’d stick out, being a bit older than their target demographic, but I was close enough to pass for a fan of their music.