been a requirement of my job. He'd been a killer - a ruthless, cold-blooded murderer. And yet he'd made my wolf soul sing, and she still ached for him.
Would probably always ache for him.
Cole offered me a box of gloves, forcing me to take a hand out of my pocket. If he noticed the shaking, he didn't say anything.
"As you can see, he's been strangled," he said. "He's probably been dead for about five hours, and there's no sign of a struggle."
"Meaning he was probably drugged beforehand." I couldn't imagine anyone not fighting such a death. Which didn't mean he wasn't conscious or feeling every brutal bit of it.
"Or," Cole said grimly, "that he was killed somewhere else and dumped here. There's very little blood on the ground."
I snapped on a pair of gloves then walked around to the opposite side of the body, squatting near the victim's neck. The bits of wire that weren't embedded or bloody shone brightly in the growing sunshine. "The wire looks new."
"Yeah. And we've got very little chance of tracing it back to the source."
Not when barbed wire was still a staple fencing material for most farms - and Melton, despite being a suburb of Melbourne, was surrounded by farms of one kind or another. I touched the victim's chin lightly, turning his head away from me so that I could see the back of his neck. The wire appeared just as deeply embedded at the back as it was the front. I wouldn't mind betting it had severed vertebrae.
"Who discovered the body?"
"Anonymous phone call." I raised my eyebrows at that, and he grinned. "Line trace said the call came from 12
Valley View Road. That's the white brick house above the lake."
I twisted around and looked at the row of neatly kept houses that lined the park. The curtains twitched in 12
Valley View, indicating we were being watched.
"Have the police interviewed the owner?"
"The police weren't called first. We were."
I frowned. "That's a little unusual, isn't it?"
He reached forward and plucked a bloody thread from one of the wires, putting it in a plastic bag before saying
"Not when you're reporting that the killer is a red-faced demon."
That raised my eyebrows. "Really?"
"Seriously." His gaze met mine. "My normal response would be to suggest the witness's alcohol intake might have been a little high, but Dusty found cloven hoofprints. Which supports the whole demon thing."
A laugh escaped, then I realized he was being serious. "But demons don't have cloven hooves."
"That we know of. But there's no saying there isn't a branch out there that has."
"I guess that's true." I shifted, my gaze sweeping the park. Neither Dusty nor Dobbs was in sight, and the morning was filled with the sound of children's laughter. It was a happy noise that seemed so out of place given the brutality that lay at our feet - although we'd certainly seen far worse over the years. And done worse. Like shooting a soul mate. I bit my lip for a moment, using one sort of pain to control another, then added, "Anything else worth knowing?"
"Nothing obvious at the moment. I'll send you the report as soon as it's done."
"Thanks." I rose and pulled off the gloves.
And that's when I felt it - the rush of power, the chill of death. There was a soul here.
I scanned the park again, trying to pinpoint the soul's location. There was nothing obvious - no wispy, insubstantial form, no obvious focal point for the energy that was washing across my skin.
"Have we got an ID on the victim yet?" I asked softly.
I felt rather than saw the sharpening of interest from Cole. "His name is Wayne Johnson. He was released from prison a week ago."
"His crime?"
"Murder. I requested the trial records, but they haven't been sent through yet. He served twenty-five years."
Then it had to be a nasty crime, because the average sentence wasn't usually that long - unless you were a nonhuman, and then the sentence was death.
"I'm betting he strangled his victim." It would certainly explain the method of his demise as well as the bitter taste in the air.
"I agree," Cole said, "and it would certainly be worth finding out who he killed, and where the victim's relatives were during the early hours of the morning. You never know; it might turn out to be an easily solved case for a change."
I snorted at the improbability of that and turned, my gaze moving to the strand of trees behind us. There in