Hunted (Riley Cray) (18 page)

* * *

Dr. Lillian Cole was nothing like what I envisioned for the Chief Medical Examiner of Denver County. Like many people, I’d always assumed that anyone who preferred the company of the dead had to be a social misfit, awkward, and more than a little creepy. The statuesque woman that strode through the lobby in killer, bright red heels to greet us was the polar opposite of what I expected.

She possessed the agelessness of many African Americans I had met, the sparse smattering of grey in her closely cropped hair making me peg her somewhere above forty. High rounded cheek bones tapering down to a full mouth made her striking. Her face was almost entirely devoid of wrinkles, only a few creases around her eyes marring the smooth perfection of her dark skin. Those lines deepened when she smiled, extending a long fingered hand towards Holbrook, her nails painted the same daring shade as her shoes.

“Agent Holbrook?” she asked, her voice like warm velvet against my ears. “I do apologize for keeping you waiting,” she added, glancing at Mildred who appeared to sink down behind her desk, refusing to look in our direction.

“Yes,” Holbrook answered, stepping forward to shake her hand. “And this is–”

“Ms. Cray,” she cut in, shifting her inscrutable attention to me. “Yes, I know who you are.”

“How?” I asked, letting my in-drawn breath roll across my tongue, scenting the air. All I could detect was the subtle fragrance of her expensive perfume and a hint of disinfectant. She was wholly human, which was almost a relief, but didn’t explain how she knew who I was.

“You can’t watch the news for more than five minutes without seeing your face. You’re a paparazzi’s wet dream.” I didn’t like her analogy much, but I couldn’t exactly argue with it.

“Fair enough,” I agreed with a shrug as I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets, fighting to keep the bite out of my voice.

That bitch, Chrismer. One of these days she’s going to pay for making me a damn household name.

“Oh! I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m not known for my people skills,” she said. “I suppose that’s why I chose to keep company with the dead rather than the living. It’s a bit harder to offend
them
.”

“Its fine,” I lied, offering up a strained smile and forcing some of the tension out of my shoulders.

It wasn’t fair to be pissed off at her for simply stating the truth, and yet it galled me to be reminded of that ugly truth. I resented the fact that Samson and Chrismer had made me a media darling, and yet again I longed for the simple, quiet life I had once known. The irony of it all was a bitter pill to swallow.

“I can have someone fetch you some coffee if you like, Ms. Cray. Or you’re welcome to wait in my office if that would be more comfortable,” she said, managing to regain some of her previous calm, though her cheeks remained high with color.

“Oh no, Doctor, she’s coming with us.” Holbrook said, his smile friendly enough while the tone of his voice left no doubt that his mind was made up.

“That’s highly unorthodox, Agent. I’m afraid that only law enforcement and next of kin are permitted to view the deceased.”

And here I thought his disarming smile was Kryptonite to the elastic in women’s underwear the world over.

“I’m law enforcement, and she’s with me.”

“I really don’t think–” she continued to protest.

“I’ll take the rap for this if it comes down to that, Doctor,” Holbrook assured her, sealing the deal with one of his trademark 10,000 kilowatt smiles. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Very well,” Dr. Cole agreed, though the furrow in her brow said she wasn’t entirely sure why she was capitulating. “Right this way.”

Aw, nice try Doc, but no one is immune to that smile. Better luck next time.

“You guys can wait here,” Holbrook said to the other agents, who nodded and settled themselves into the hideous orange chairs, their expressions as emotionless as ever.

Holbrook and I fell into step behind the doctor, following the sharp click of her blood red heels through a maze of hallways and short stairways that led down into the bowels of the building. The air grew cold and musty the further down we went, sending a shudder down my spine. Even my transformation into a werewolf had not eradicated my instinctual fear of the things that dwelled in dark and damp places. There were monsters living in the darkness.

I should know.

The astringent smell of disinfectant assaulted my nose before we reached the exam room, making my stomach roil. Hesitation rang in my slowing steps, buzzing in the stiffness growing in my spine. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to see the evidence of Samson’s handiwork in person, but then again, when would anyone ever be ready for something like that?

“You okay?” Holbrook asked, the tender brush of his fingers along the back of my arm sending a wave of reassurance through me.

“Would you believe me if I said yes?” I asked with a wry curve of my lips.

“No,” he replied, mirroring my smile. Pausing, he caught my wrist, making me stop and face him. “You don’t have to do this. No one is asking you to.”

“Yes, I do. I have to know what’s happening. I need to know if these dreams, visions, whatever the hell they are, are somehow a link to Samson, or if I’m just going insane. If there’s even some small chance that this could help you catch that crazy bastard it’s reason enough.”

For a moment Holbrook looked like he was going to argue the matter, perhaps even walk me back out to the SUV himself and lock me inside, but then his shoulders slumped just a little and his lips spread in a thin smile. It was an expression I was all too familiar with, my grandfather had worn it often when inevitably giving in to my grandmother’s wishes no matter how much he was against them.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re stubborn?”

“As a mule,” I replied, grinning.

Looking ahead I saw Dr. Cole waiting at the end of the hallway in front of a large set of doors, the garish fluorescent lighting overhead gleaming on the brushed metal, distorting her reflection.

“Everything alright?” she asked as we approached, my steps still echoing with hesitancy.

“Fine,” Holbrook and I chimed in tandem, though neither one of us sounded very sure of our answer.

Quirking an eyebrow at our response, Dr. Cole moved to push open the door, and then paused. Turning to look at me she asked, “You’re not a fainter are you?”

“Umm...no?” I replied. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Good. The last civilian I had in here was a fainter. Cracked his head on the floor. Blood everywhere. It was a damn mess.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

The scent of disinfectant was almost overpowering in the exam room. The smell seemed to crawl up my nose and camp somewhere in the back of my throat, coating my tongue with an oily film that made me want to take a scrub brush to it. And maybe a gallon of mouthwash.

The body laid out on the slab was a portrait of brutality painted in shades of deathly grey and brilliant slashes of red where somewhere torn his skin to ribbons. Rigor mortis had come and gone, his blood pooling on the underside of his body to mark the pale flesh with dark purple and red bruises. Savage lacerations had turned his face into a bloody ruin, exposing the stark gleam of bone and muscle beneath. Dread settled, cold and heavy, in my stomach at the sight of him. Even through the bloody mess of his face I recognized him from my dream. Dreams or visions, whatever they were, I had some kind of link with Samson.

Bile rose up the back of my throat, bitter and acidic on my tongue, before I could force it back down with an audible gag.

“If you’re going to vomit please try to get it in the trash can,” Dr. Cole said, gesturing across the room.

Shaking my head I swallowed again and said, “Just give me a sec. I’ll be fine.”

I’d witnessed the inevitable end for us all more times than I cared to count. I’d even seen the evidence of Samson’s savagery before, but bearing witness to it in person was different. The young man who lay cold and broken before me was a stranger, and yet I felt a kind of twisted kinship to him. That could have been my body on the slab eight years ago, it could have been my grandmother standing in my place, looking down at the atrocity Samson had wrought.

“Do you recognize him?” Holbrook asked, his words holding far more weight than their simplicity would suggest. He stood closer than I remembered, a hand hovering at my elbow, not quite touching me, but close enough to send flickering sparks of energy along my skin.

My nod was little more than a minute dip of my head, but Holbrook’s stiff stance let me know he had caught it. “Yes, he’s the last one I saw.”

Straightening my shoulders and curling my hands into fists as my sides, I stepped up to the metal exam table. The overhead lights gleamed on the brushed metal surface of the table, the refracted light making his skin almost appear a normal shade. If I ignored the gruesome injuries marring his face and abdomen, I could almost believe he was merely sleeping. Before I knew what I was doing I had uncurled the fingers of one hand and raised them to brush a lock of flaxen hair back from his forehead, revealing the white gleam of an old scar just above his eyebrow.

“How old was he?” I heard myself ask as though I was listening to someone else, my voice distant and thick with emotion.

After flipping through the man’s chart, the rustle of papers loud in the otherwise silent room, Dr. Cole answered, “Twenty-six. His name was Nicholas Evans.”

Just two years younger than me.

“Nicholas,” I said, stroking through the soft curls of his hair. “Did your friends call you Nick? I bet your mom called you her Little Nicky.”

Holbrook stepped up beside me to lay a gentle hand on my elbow. “Riley...you don’t have to do this.”

“Let her be,” Dr. Cole said.

Looking up, I found her standing on the other side of the exam table, her face bearing an expression that I could only assume was a reflection of mine. She knew what I was feeling, understood the depth of sadness I felt for this young man who had suffered a senseless death for me, because of me.

Does she always feel that emptiness when she watches the endless parade of lives cut too short cross her table? Does she talk to them, uttering a few last words of comfort to their spirits?

Answering her sad smile with one of my own I ran my fingers through Nicholas’s hair one last time, and then drew in a deep breath through my nose. I was instantly bombarded with a thousand scents, each one with its own story to tell.

“Are you getting anything?” Holbrook asked.

“I’m not sure,” I answered slowly, struggling to pick up anything beyond the caustic stink of cleaning fluids.

Resettling my feet, I let the first trickles of the wolf’s energy weave through my consciousness, further heightening my senses. My vision sharpened, details shifting into stark relief, as my eyes changed to the wolf’s gold. I could hear the steady drip of a leaky faucet in the room next door and the heavy breaths of a couple going at it in a broom closet down the hall, no doubt seeking to escape the grim reality they witnessed every day for a few blessed moments.

Leaning in as close to the body as I could stomach, I sucked in another deep breath, letting the air roll across my tongue, tasting the scents. Sifting through the varied chemicals used to clean his body, I delved deeper, envisioned the assorted scents in my mind as a tangled web that had to be picked apart to reveal each strand.

It was faint at first, like the barely remembered fragments of a dream. Closing my eyes I drew another breath, zeroing in on the hot copper and spice smell that I associated with my wolf’s scent. Samson’s was different from mine, it held a sour note, somehow managing to hint at the wrongness in his mind. The longer I focused on it the stronger the scent became, searing itself into my memory, never to be forgotten.

“It’s him,” I said, sure of my words as I opened my eyes. “It’s Samson.”

Whatever Dr. Cole saw in my face when I raised my head caused an expression of startled surprise to ripple across her features, her eyes widening.

Releasing the wolf’s energy, I willed her to sink back down into the dark places inside. For a moment I felt as if my head had been stuffed with cotton, the room appearing dimmer and my hearing muffled as I adjusted to the loss of her heightened senses.

“You’re sure?” Holbrook asked, tapping out a quick message on his cell phone.

“Positive. It was Samson alright. He’s getting closer.”

“Shit,” he hissed, finishing typing out the message and then lifting the phone to his ear. “Marge? It’s Holbrook. I need to speak to Santos. It’s urgent.”

“Thanks, Doc,” I said, smiling sadly at Dr. Cole as Holbrook stalked out into the hallway, irritation echoing in his footsteps.

* * *

I was still shaken when we got back to the hotel, the grimness of it all weighing heavily on my shoulders. Ignoring the curious looks from the hotel staff and guests as I was herded through the lobby by my entourage, I gratefully stepped into the quiet of the elevator, closing my eyes and resting my head back against the cool mirrored wall.

I was no stranger to death, or the brutality that one man can exact upon another, but it hadn’t made it any easier to look at the young man laid out in Dr. Cole’s morgue. I couldn’t decide if the clinical, emotionless atmosphere had made his death easier to process. If anything, it was almost harder to witness him in such a cold and sterile environment, with no one there to mourn his passing except Holbrook, the doctor, and me. Holbrook and Dr. Cole were good people, dedicated to their work, but they were jaded towards the death of innocents, they didn’t feel it in the same visceral way I did. Or maybe they did, and were just better at hiding it.