touched her mate, to reassure herself that he was okay.
"Heuter," said Leslie sharply. "That was uncalled for."
He gave the FBI agent a tight smile and put some money on the table. "I'm due back in the office. I'll leave you to your afternoon of fruitless explorations."
Leslie waited until he was gone and then shook her head. "Trippers," she said.
"Trippers?" asked Anna.
"What the boss calls Cantrip agents." Leslie took a sip of her iced tea. "Just when you think that they are actually by golly professionals, they pull some weird stunt like that." She looked at Anna thoughtfully. "I'm not going to blow rainbows and happy faces at you and say that there aren't people worried about werewolves and the fae. We probably have some agents in the FBI who are pretty freaked-out by you or by people like Beauclaire. But at the very least they are professional enough not to go ape all over you when all you're trying to do is help us catch a freaking serial killer."
THEY TOOK A taxi to Castle Island where Jacob's body had evidently washed up, leaving Leslie's car in the parking garage next to the morgue. There was apparently parking at the Island, but it was the middle of summer and Leslie didn't like to waste time trying to find a place to park.
Anna's doubts about traveling by taxi with Brother Wolf proved to be unfounded. Their taxi driver had a big mutt at home, he told them, who was a Great Dane crossed with a dinosaur. Once he found out that Anna had never been to Boston before, he gave her a complete rundown on the island that hadn't really been an island since the 1930s. His stories included a ghostly tale of an escaped prisoner that somehow resulted in a haunting and a wandering yarn about how Edgar Allan Poe's army service at Fort Independence had led him to place his story "The Cask of Amontillado" at the fort.
"Wicked," Anna told him when they got out of the car and she handed him a tip.
He laughed and gave her a high five. "Frickin' wicked yourself. You'll be a native in no time."
"Don't you believe it," Leslie told her half jokingly. "Native Bostonians are the ones who've been here since the Revolutionary War - all others are interlopers, no matter how welcome."
The ocean air was refreshingly brisk as Leslie led the way down the cement walk that paralleled the ocean on the harbor side of the island. It wasn't crowded, not really - there had been plenty of places to park - but there were a number of people out enjoying the sun. The tall granite block walls of Fort Independence dominated the landscape, which was mostly grass with a few bushes and moderate-sized trees.
"Jacob wasn't here long before he was discovered," Leslie said. "Not a lot of places to hide a body around here and - as you can see - there are a lot of people this time of year. The harbor breeze keeps the temperatures to a reasonable level and the fishing is supposed to be pretty good."
"Do you think he was dropped in the harbor by boat?"
"That's the theory. Too many people around to drop him off unseen, and the ME says the body was in the water for at least a full day. Jacob was found a number of days ago. I suspect that if there was something we missed initially, it's too late now."
"Probably this is useless," agreed Anna. "But I'm not clear on what else we can do right now that is more helpful."
There were all sorts of people out and about - joggers, dog walkers, people watchers. The sound of kids yelling in the distance competed with airplanes from the airport across the harbor and seabirds.
They were passed by a woman with a Pekingese coming the other way. Her little dog hit the end of his leash and started barking hoarsely at Brother Wolf.
"He's perfectly friendly," his owner said. "Now stand down, Peter." To his owner's obvious embarrassment, the dog growled, keeping himself between the werewolves and his owner in a brave but misguided attempt to protect her, until they were long past.
"Peter," said Anna, smiling involuntarily. "Peter and the Wolf."
"Is that reaction usual?" Leslie asked.
"Most dogs have troubles with us at first," Anna admitted; then she smiled. "He was all of ten pounds, wasn't he? Pretty brave of him when you think of it. After insults have been exchanged it usually works out