Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,30
so much evil as it is mind-numbingly dull.”
“I’ll meet with Ford.” Cooperation, here I come. “We’ll start interviewing the alphas.”
The henna lead would keep. It was present on one victim out of nine. This one burned hotter.
“I wouldn’t mind putting in some OT with him,” Lisbeth sighed dreamily. “Would dating him be a conflict of interest?”
“Yes,” I told her without thinking. “He said so himself.”
“You talked to him about dating?”
“Yes?”
“You, who haven’t gone out once since you got here, talked to my secret crush about dating?”
“As your crush was a secret, I didn’t realize you had a thing for him, and it was hypothetical.”
“Hadley, Hadley, Hadley.” Bishop patted my shoulder. “A man doesn’t bring up dating unless he wants a woman to start getting ideas—about him.”
“Too bad Lisbeth called dibs.” I shrugged off his hand before he started giving me pointers. “Good thing I have a case to distract me from the heartbreak over what might have been.”
“We’ve got an update.” Reece pulled up his personal screen on a lower monitor then used his mouse to highlight a block of text for us all to see. “There’s a slight—I’m talking blink-and-you’d-miss-it—hormonal difference between a warg’s body fluids when it attains each form.”
I got a bad feeling about where he was going with this. “Please tell me it didn’t kill Shonda with its human teeth.”
“I can’t do that,” he said in his scientist voice. “The evidence is inconclusive.”
“A warg, on two and four legs, killed and ate her instead of shooting, stabbing, or any of the other things people enjoy doing to one another?”
“That’s how it looks.”
“How individual is the hormonal signature?” Anca asked. “Enough that it would skew one way or the other, depending on the individual?”
“It’s possible,” he allowed, but he didn’t sound happy about giving her theory legs.
“What about the bite imprint?” I massaged my forehead. “Do we have that yet?”
“It shows a mixture of human and canid teeth,” Reece said, pointing it out on a second report.
“Are we talking one person?” Backing up, I clarified, “Pre and post shift, I mean?”
Killing on four legs, dining on two. Or, I suppose, the reverse might be equally true.
“Or do the hormones indicate two different individuals?” Bishop finished my thought. “One human and one shifted warg?”
“I would need a saliva sample to be certain.” He hummed under his breath. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The cleaners did a damn fine job, and they saved us a hell of a lot of time, but they raced against the clock. Sometimes we had to pinch the minute hands and rewind them a bit to decode the exact chain of events.
“Skip Shonda. There are too many eyes on her. Get your sample from one of the Perkerson Park victims.” I hated the political aspect of the job, but no office was ever held without playing the game. “We can always double back to Shonda if we need verification.”
“All right.” Reece made a thoughtful sound. “I should be able to crosscheck my findings in a noninvasive manner.”
“Good deal.” I scanned each screen. “Anything else?”
“No.”
“Nope.”
“Nah.”
“No.”
“In that case, meeting adjourned.” I tried to resist, but in the end, I caved to the geek in me. “Tune in tomorrow—same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”
A chorus of groans met with that gem of a catchphrase from the 1960’s Batman TV show before their screens went dark.
When I dropped my gaze to Bishop, he was staring a hole through Snowball. “Not this again.”
“What I said earlier might have been out of line, but that doesn’t mean I’m not on the right track.”
“We covered too much ground, and I haven’t had any chocolate. You’ll have to remind me.”
“Bonnie showed up a week ago, give or take. What do you bet the oldest of the bodies from Perkerson date back to the same time frame?”
“Are you saying this because she tried to bite you or because you think she’s involved?”
“You had Midas Freaking Kinase on-scene for Shonda Randall, and he couldn’t place the killer’s scent. Your buddy Ford couldn’t positively link both scenes either. That’s not normal. They’re both familiar with wargs, the local packs in particular, so how do they not recognize a warg if that’s what it is?”
“Bonnie,” I addressed the corgi pretending to nap. “Care to defend yourself?”
A fake snore, albeit an adorable one, sealed the deal.
“She can understand us however she appears,” I told Bishop, “but she can’t talk without shifting back, and she’s stuck.”
“How sure are you she can’t?” He eyed the dozing loaf. “How sure are you