Eyrn, found by ???, in storage room ???. Removed by unknown female(s). Body buried ??? (public land). Call to dispatch logged following night from Helania, other blooded daughter of Eyrn.”
The question was whether they needed to go so far as to request permission from Helania, as next of kin, for an exhumation. The problem with that, assuming a typical civilian Fade Ceremony had been performed, and the body wrapped only in layers of cloth, was that the remains would be severely degraded by now. There wouldn’t be much more than bones left.
The other problem with that idea was that he had to weigh any potential for evidence against the trauma on Helania. If there was a chance of finding out anything material from whatever was left of the remains, he would do it in a heartbeat—and go so far as to force the issue with a decree from Wrath if he had to. But he didn’t know what the hell he was looking for or could hope to find, and the ground was frozen. So it just seemed cruel.
Roman numeral III was the column with the glossy, gruesome photographs. Starting at the top, he had the same kind of basics: “Female, Mai, blooded daughter of Roane, found by Helania, blooded daughter of Eyrn, January 23. Fourth storage unit on the right. Remains removed by V.”
The black-and-white images that Butch had put up included some of the ones taken by Vishous at the scene: The facial close-up that showed the hook. The full-length of the hanging body. The storage room through the open door. And then there were ones Butch himself had taken in Havers’s morgue: The slices in the throat and cuts to the wrists. The bruises. The abrasions from her having been dragged. That little nail Boone had noticed.
As he’d told his shellan, Mai’s family had agreed to an autopsy and Havers was going to do it at nightfall once he worked his way through his surgical schedule.
So right now, it was just a waiting game.
Balancing his chair on its back legs, Butch crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the board he’d created.
He had done exactly this with José countless times: Put everything they knew about a case up on a wall so they could stare at the shit until something clicked. God . . . there had been so many deaths that they’d investigated together. So many lives lost that they’d tried to redeem in some small way. So many family members that they’d had to deliver bad news to.
Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Grandparents. Aunts and uncles and cousins.
And meanwhile, he’d been busy trying to kill himself with the drinking.
José, on the other hand, had been a family man. A good Catholic who loved his wife and his children.
“Wonder if you could see what I’m missing, José,” he said into the still air.
There was so little to go on, and the familiar churn of his brain as it chewed over what he had and what was not yet found, what he knew and what he wondered about, was a gateway to a ten-year span of his former life. As a human.
The great shift in his existence, in his very identity, did not seem weird anymore. Probably because he liked everything about being a vampire: His shellan. His friends. His work, his purpose, his lifestyle.
Contrary to the fables about those with fangs, he was one of the very rare half-breeds who had been “turned” from what was essentially human into something that was wholly not. In the real world, a bite from the “undead” didn’t condemn a pious virgin to an eternity of bloodthirsty stalking. You were either born of the species or you weren’t. Except in his case, and that of a mere handful of others.
And just as that species divide was a hard line not crossed, so, too, were the two worlds that separated Homo sapiens from vampires. So . . . when he came over to this side, he hadn’t been able to take José with him. And he hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Or explain where he had gone or what had happened to him.
One of his biggest regrets in life was the fact that he had disappeared on his former partner. He had always imagined that José hadn’t been surprised, though. Given the way Butch had been living? Only an idiot wouldn’t have seen the coffin headed his way.
Butch stared at the photograph of Mai’s remains and felt guilty. As