Death of a Wolfman (A Lily Gayle Lambert Mystery Book 1) (2 page)

He gave me a stern look. “I’m speaking as the sheriff of Barkley County, not your cousin. If I’d realized this was a murder and not some Halloween prank, I’d have taken you home before I came out here. Now go get in the car before I really get mad.”

“Get a grip on yourself. You’re acting like a first-year rookie cop about to pee his pants.” I adjusted my jacket, glaring at him.

He glared right back. “I mean it, Lily Gayle Lambert. You get on back to the car and find out where my backup is. Then stay in the car.”

I watched him put on paper booties and latex gloves before he stalked across the clearing and knelt next to the body. He shone the flashlight over the furry mass, but from my position I still couldn’t tell anything about what might have happened.

I rushed back to the car and radioed Todd. Found out he was five minutes away, then hurried back to the clearing. Before stepping into the crime scene I donned my own paper booties and latex gloves from one of the pockets in my hobo bag.

Ben looked up when he heard me stepping gingerly through the dead leaves. “I thought I told you to stay in the car.”

“I thought you might want to know Todd will be here in about five minutes.”

“Stop right where you are. You’re going to mess up my crime scene.”

I lifted one foot, then the other, and showed him my hands. “No, I won’t. I’ve got gear on just like yours.”

A scowl brought my cousin’s eyebrows into a straight line above his aquiline nose. “For God’s sake. Where’d you get those?”

“I had Buddy over at Taylor’s Drug Store order me some. I always knew they’d come in handy someday. Looks like that day has arrived.” I moved a few steps closer, wanting to get a better look.

Ben sighed. “I reckon you can come on over here. Seems like I won’t be able to stop you anyway.”

I moved close to the mound of fur and squatted. When I looked down into the pool of light from Ben’s flashlight, I got the shock of my life. This was no Halloween costume. I’d been thinking maybe some poor partier had wandered out here in the woods and gotten shot by mistake. But it wasn’t hunting season, so that might explain why the 911 call had been anonymous. Now that I was over my initial shock, I saw that even though it wasn’t a costume, the face didn’t have the elongated snout of a wolf. Or the razor-sharp teeth. This guy looked more like Lon Chaney Jr. in those old black-and-white wolf man movies.

We squatted on either side of the body, Ben’s flashlight picking up the bullet hole in the middle of the corpse’s chest. Blood ran down the dark fur in rivulets, disappearing beneath the body.

Realizing I was squatting on the downhill side of the body, I lifted each foot to check my booties.
Yuck. Blood all over them.
Well, nothing I could do about it now. I’d just put it out of my mind. I reached out to touch the body but halted at Ben’s words.

“Don’t touch it. I don’t want you disturbing anything.” Ben smiled to take the sting out of his reprimand. “We’ll wait until Todd gets here. We shouldn’t have even walked over here ourselves, but I wanted to see if this person might still be alive.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “You might have been right. This is no costume.”

Listening hard, I didn’t hear the sound of sirens on their way. The night creatures had quite a concert going, though. Whatever had happened here had been long enough ago for the creatures to forget the disturbance and go about their nocturnal business. Even the presence of myself and the sheriff hadn’t disturbed the night songs. At least that came as small comfort in an otherwise unnerving evening.

“What’s taking Todd so long? He said it’d be five minutes. It’s been at least twice that.”

“Now that I’ve let you come over here, don’t go all girlie on me.”

“I’m not going girlie on you. I’m just wondering out loud. Besides, I know what this guy is, but I’m holding out till Todd gets here so I don’t have to explain it all twice.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. It is. I saw it on
CSI
.”

Ben shifted his weight and rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Lord, give me strength. Lily Gayle, you know that show is a fake. Nobody solves a case that fast. Fingerprints don’t get matched in an hour. DNA results don’t come back in an hour. I can’t believe you think you know what this guy is based on some half-assed TV show.”

I fumed in silence. I’d be damned if I’d tell him what lay on the ground in front of us. Let old Doc Hallowell tell him what I already knew. That’d take some of the starch out of his shorts. What Ben didn’t seem to realize was that I knew the TV show condensed everything. But the basics were right. And I’d seen a rerun last month about this very thing.

The more I thought about it, the more my temper rose. He’d always been this way, even when we were kids. We’d had the misfortune to be born on the same day so we’d always had to share our birthday parties. But Ben insisted he was my elder and therefore in control because he’d been born five minutes before me. And because he was a boy. I snorted. Ben shot me a look, but I refused to meet his eye. Big bully.

Before I got even more irritated by my thoughts, red and blue lights strobed the darkness. Todd had arrived without sirens. Ben and I sat glaring at each other until Todd scuffed into the clearing with a camping lantern in one hand and the crime scene kit in the other.

“I come in with no sirens ’cause I didn’t want a bunch of drunken rubberneckers followin’ me out here.” Todd stared at the corpse. “Whoa! That’s some costume the vic’s got on there, ain’t it?”

“It’s not a costume,” Ben and I said simultaneously.

Todd laughed until he caught the look in our eyes. “Oops. Y’all havin’ at it again? Maybe I should just back off over there till y’all decide who’s in charge here.”

In a chill voice, Ben said, “She knows who’s in charge here. And this isn’t a laughing matter.”

I scooched a pile of dry leaves together and sat back on my rear end, careful to keep the bloody booties away from my clothes. When Ben got that tone in his voice everybody straightened up right away.

Todd wiped the grin off his face. “Uh. Right, Sheriff. You want to fill me in on what you know so far?”

“Call came in to Dispatch about an hour ago. Reenie contacted me immediately on my cell and instructed me an anonymous caller had reported a dead body out here in the woods. I was having dinner with Lil here at the time. Figured it must be some Halloween prank since we haven’t had a murder in this county in over twenty years. And that was a bar fight out on the rough side of the county. So the two of us came out here and found what you see.”

Todd swung his lantern up and down the body. “Not a costume, huh? So how do you explain all this here hair all over the body?”

Ben glanced at me, but I looked away, crossing my arms. No way would I say anything after the way he’d acted earlier.

Ben rubbed a hand around his chin, creating a rasping sound from his five-o’clock shadow. “Lil here seems to think she has the answer, but she’s pissed at me right now so she’s not speaking up.”

I quirked a single eyebrow at my cousin. A trick he’d never been able to master.

Ben sighed. “She says she saw something about it on
CSI
. If you can believe that.”

“It’s a pretty good show, Ben.”

“Don’t tell me you watch it too!”

I couldn’t be sure if it was the lantern light shining upward or if the tips of Todd’s ears had turned red in embarrassment. Poor kid. He was no match for Ben when he got in one of his states.

“Oh, leave him be, Ben.”

“So. We have any idea who this is?” Todd asked.

I watched Ben trying to come up with an answer. Of course we had no idea who this might be, but the all-knowing sheriff didn’t want to admit that.

“I’ve never seen anybody around here who looks like this. Must be from somewhere else and the killer dumped the body here.”

“How would the killer know about this clearing?” Todd asked.

Good question, I thought. How would a stranger know there was a clearing here in the woods unless he or she had been here? I didn’t like to assume anything about gender when it came to a case. Even though a bullet through the heart was generally a man’s way of killing, there’d been women who’d used guns too.

Usually on men who’d irritated the fire out of them.

I looked at Ben again, wondering how it’d feel to put a bullet in him. Not through the heart of course. Maybe the leg. Put him out of commission for a while.

Picturing myself free of his misguided oversight, a wiggle of pure pleasure shot through me. Wouldn’t that be a nice change? No Ben out there bossing me around. Treating me like I didn’t have the sense of a two-year-old. Telling me I couldn’t get involved in his cases. Cases
I’d
helped to solve, as a matter of fact.

I sighed. I’d never be able to pull the trigger on another human being. Not even my annoying cousin. But it’d been a pleasant diversion for a minute there.

Ben blew out a big breath. “Well, I reckon that’s something we’ll have to find out, Todd. I’ll make some calls to the surrounding counties to see if any of those sheriffs know anything about this guy.”

Ben motioned to me and when I stood, he put his arm around me, turning me toward the path we’d walked in on. “You need to head on home now, Lily Gayle. Take my car and I’ll get a ride home with Todd.”

I dug my feet into the ground, pulling away from Ben’s arm. “What?! You can’t send me home just like that. I want to see what all y’all find out.”

Ben’s hand squeezed my shoulder. Hard. “You’re not an officer of the law, hon. Now go on home. You can’t be involved in this case. A murder investigation is no place for a woman.”

What a Neanderthal.
“Don’t you dare patronize me, Ben Carter. You sound like something out of the fifties. Women should be barefoot and pregnant, I suppose? No wonder you’re divorced. Alene couldn’t put up with that crap anymore.”

At the hurt and anger in Ben’s eyes, I realized I’d gone too far bringing up Alene. I shut my big mouth for once.

Through tight lips, he said, “Todd and I have a crime scene to process here. You’re going home right now and staying out of this case.” He squeezed my shoulder again, hard. “Right?”

I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jacket. I’d go home since Ben was being this way about it, but I’d get involved in the case somehow.

“OK. I’ll do what you say.” I turned, started up the path to the car, then stopped. “Todd?”

“Yes’m, Miss Lily Gayle?”

“Can I borrow your notepad for a minute?”

Todd glanced over at Ben, who shrugged his shoulders. He produced the pad from his pocket, handed it to me with a pen. “There you go.”

I wrote on the first page of the pad, tore it off and folded it small. “Can I trust you not to look at this paper until after Doc Hallowell does his autopsy?”

Todd gulped. Looked from me to Ben and back again.

“Go ahead and promise her. Then maybe she’ll get on out of here and we can do our job.”

“Now, Todd. Give me your wallet.” I held out my hand.

Todd pulled the wallet from his back pocket, handed it to me. I stuffed the piece of paper behind his driver’s license, folded the wallet closed and handed it back. “Now remember: No looking at it till after Doc Hallowell gives his opinion.”

“No, ma’am. I won’t.”

“Not you either, Ben.”

Ben’s hands went into his hair, tugging at the short strands. He looked like his boiler was about to explode. “OK. Fine. Nobody will look at your stinking paper until after the autopsy. Are you happy now?”

I pointed my finger at the younger law officer. “I know your mama, Todd. If I find out you peeked, I’ll have to report it to her.”

Even in the dim light I could see Todd’s face lose color. As well it might. His mama was a mean curmudgeon who’d been a hell-raiser in high school. She’d gotten in the family way senior year, married the loser who got her that way and had Todd. Then the loser had run off with a waitress from the truck stop out on the interstate, leaving Todd and his mama to the good graces of the ladies of Mercy. Typical country music cryin’-in-your-beer story. I hated to threaten the poor kid, but I had something to prove to Ben. I’d never really report Todd to his mama, but it didn’t hurt to have some cards in my hand for the moment.

“All right, then. I’m going on home now. I’ll check in with y’all tomorrow to see what you found out.”

“No, you won’t. You promised to stay out of this case and I’m gonna make sure you do.”

“Oh. That’s right. I did promise, didn’t I?” Giving him my sweetest smile, I turned my back and strolled to the car.

Now I had the rest of the night to figure out how I’d worm information about the case out of my cousin. Or maybe Doc Hallowell. He’d had a soft spot for my mama back in the day. Maybe he wouldn’t mind helping out the daughter of his old flame.