Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,152

a promise.”

He escorted the women out of the building and watched them walk back to the hotel.

he called.

Another body? It was tempting to demand details, but Virgil was the sheriff, and he was doing his job. Besides, what Tolya had learned from his brief observations of Vlad working with Simon Wolfgard was that you got along better with a dominant Wolf by asking rather than demanding.

Tolya strolled down the street. Time to do another part of his job and listen to the reports from the rest of the Sanguinati.

* * *

* * *

Virgil studied the meat with considerable regret. The body. There were humans around, so he had to remember to call it a body instead of almost-fresh meat. Good thing Tolya hadn’t come with them. The Sanguinati would have regretted the waste of blood even more than he regretted not being able to have a quick snack. After all, this human didn’t need his liver anymore, did he? Or any of the meat on the legs?

“Is this how humans usually kill each other?” he asked as Jana gingerly moved closer to the … body … while trying to avoid stepping in the blood. Sensible, that. Lots of terra indigene would follow a blood trail, even a small one, thinking they were following injured prey.

And that’s what this reminded him of: injured prey. Run it down and hamstring it, then follow it as it bled and became weak enough to kill.

“Looks like he was already shot.” She raised her camera and began taking pictures. “But all that blood … It’s not from the gunshot wound.” She looked toward the doorway at the human male who had reported finding the body. “Zeke, your crew and Fagen’s will have to work another house for the next few days. Wait. You walked through the house already, right?”

“Most of it,” Zeke said. “Fagen was checking the kitchen and cupboards, and I was taking a look in the other rooms. We stopped as soon as I found …” He nodded toward the body. “I didn’t look in the other bedrooms.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll work next door for a while, stay nearby.”

“Thanks.” Jana waited until Zeke left. Then she raised the camera again and took pictures of the lower half of the body. “To answer your question, no, this isn’t how humans usually kill each other. They shoot each other, or stab each other, or they strangle with their bare hands or with some kind of ligature, or they hang each other, or poison each other. What they don’t usually do is …”

“Hamstring them?” When Jana looked at him, he shrugged. “If his legs still worked, wouldn’t he have tried to escape, even if he was weak?”

“I guess one of our town doctors is also going to be our medical examiner, so he’ll have to give us the full list of injuries, but …” Jana pulled back the man’s shirt, revealing one shoulder. “I think more than his legs were cut. I don’t think he could move his arms to fight off his attacker. Once he was helpless, whoever did this cut the arteries. But the throat wasn’t cut. That would have been a swift death compared to bleeding out.”

“Two-legged predator. Maybe brain sick.”

“Why do you say that? Don’t Wolves go for the legs?”

Virgil nodded. “But we don’t do it to make the prey suffer. And we don’t stand back and watch it bleed unless the prey is too strong and we have to wait until it weakens before we can move in. This human doesn’t look strong.” He walked to the door. “I’m going to sniff around.”

Returning to their vehicle, he stripped off his clothes, tossed them on the passenger seat, and shifted to Wolf.

“Yes,” Jana said to whoever was on the phone, “we need the ambulance to pick up a body at this address. No sirens. No need to alarm everyone.” She tucked the mobile phone back in her duty belt.

He caught a scent. Caught another. Not Zeke, not Fagen. But one of those scents …

Virgil leaped in front of Jana and snarled.

“What?” Jana snapped. “I’m just going to check out the rest of the house.”

Me first.

He roamed through the house, keeping ahead of her. Old scents in these bedrooms. One fresher scent in this room. Not on the bed but under it.

He tried to squeeze under the bed to reach what he could smell, but he was too big.

Jana nudged his hip. “Get