Skin Deep (6 page)

Logan didn't need to look at the images again. They were etched into his memory for a lifetime of nightmares. The victim's body lay bare, every inch of skin flayed, including the eyelids.

"Notice anything strange?" Murdoch's voice was low, emitting an undercurrent of concern.

Logan clamped his jaws on the word "strange." The last few years had been nothing but strange. Things needed to be pretty whacked to appear strange to him, as numbed as he was to the weird and unexplainable.

"The claws, you mean?" He reached out and touched the shots of the corpse's unusual hands—human fingers ending in garish animal claws.

Feline claws.

"What do you make of it?" Murdoch watched Logan, intent on gauging his reaction.

Murdoch was all too familiar with the paranormal. He wasn't a mage, but his wife, Chloe, who possessed a special ability to calm the traumatized and unstable, definitely qualified as paranormal—a regular walking sedative. But she had chosen to work outside Omega's investigative squad as a social worker of sorts, helping families deal with raising kids born with or manifesting paranormal abilities.

Logan turned to Jess, having almost forgotten about her. She had a weird way of disappearing, despite her physical presence.

"Skinwalker," she said, her voice soft and musical, her eyes too calm for such a revelation. "Cougar Walker to be specific."

"Thought they were a darned reclusive bunch?" Murdoch grumbled, his eyebrows waggling. "What would they be doing smack bang in the middle of my neighborhood?" He frowned and leaned forward to grab the stills, his stomach smashing into the table. He studied them for a few seconds, then met Logan's eyes, his face a few shades darker with worry. "Answers, Westin. Get me some answers."

Logan nodded, the movement sharp and brisk. He opened the door and waited while Jess moved past, listening as Murdoch called for a squad car to take Logan and Jess to the scene. They remained silent, deep within their own thoughts, each probably thinking about human fingers and feline claws.

They passed through the police station, exiting the building swiftly and silently. A cruiser waited outside, its flashing lights making the back of Logan's eyes ache.

***

Dark shadows clung to the streets when Logan and Jess arrived at the scene. Logan glanced at the sky as he left the car, grateful for the veil of darkness. The light of day would only throw this whole mess into a starker, more glaring reality. He paused at the yellow tape cordoning off the area, and studied the surrounding scene.

Buildings stood on two sides, hemming in the planted garden and wire-mesh fencing barely doing its job. Too many police officers milled around; perhaps movement gave them purpose. Murder was common enough on these rough streets, but this particular victim would’ve touched a nerve for many of the city's finest. This kind of debasement delved into unfamiliar territory.

Logan understood their discomfort better than they would ever know.

Ruby lights spun and flashed coarse red hues from the roof of a nearby ambulance, a gurney waiting before the vehicle's open doors, like an offering to the maw of death. Logan and Jess ducked beneath the cordon and made their way toward the gurney.

A strange silence hung over the scene, broken by hushed murmurs. Murdoch's men were familiar enough with Omega, but it didn't mean they welcomed Logan or his fellow officers with open arms.

Omega's officers outranked the city’s lawmen, notably a sore point, but Logan Westin's youth had started more tongues wagging and set more tempers aflame than anything else. Hardworking, long-serving officers simply didn't respect rookie officers who outranked them.

Logan registered the glares and curious stares, but merely nodded and greeted those whose eyes met his, hostile or not. Beside him, Jess appeared oblivious to the flagrant hostility.

They reached the gurney seconds after the paramedic enclosed the body in thick, black plastic. Logan glanced inside the bright interior of the ambulance. All those life-saving vials, machines and tubes were useless for tonight's passenger.

Even with Jess there, Logan hesitated. Being a mage didn't mean he automatically had an iron gut. He took a breath and unzipped the body bag. Black plastic crackled and the metal zipper grated aloud, slowly revealing the face of the victim.

As he stared, the ghastly face stirred another dark memory free from his mind. His first mission, in a warren of hidden caves in Jerusalem, proved similarly macabre...
. Thirteen dead women had been strung from the roof of the spooky cave. The sliced-open corpses, no segment of their skin spared by the blade, had spilled their precious blood into thirteen golden bowls beneath them. The half-congealed blood had still been warm when Logan arrived at the horrific scene. Those earth-mages had been bled to death for their powerful essence.

Yet as gruesome as those murders had been, the body of this cougar walker, flayed of its skin, seemed even worse. Garish somehow. Must be the way the lack of skin turned a person into a slab of meat.

"Go on, we need to inspect the corpse," Jess urged.

Logan slid the zipper down farther, exposing most of the upper body and the hands.

The fingers.

He wanted to examine them firsthand. Logan's chest constricted and Jess tensed beside him, as neither of them breathed. All ten digits ended in curved black claws etched with blood. And seeing them in the flesh, so to speak, was all the more evocative. His first case with a Walker and it had to be a dead one.

***

Police officers had cordoned off the area but made way for Logan and Jess to reach the scene. The soil was a mess. A tomato plant lay squashed, its ripe red fruit pulverized.

The aroma of mint flooded Logan’s nostrils—trampled plants broadcasting their disapproval. Footprints littered the garden, a tangle of tracks almost impossible to identify. He hunkered down over the shallow depression left by the body. He checked the soil, the plants, and the broken fence, which ran along the plot. Anywhere that could provide a clue. Nearby, a crime scene tech dusted the curbside, and another photographed a hole in the fence. Logan suspected they needn't bother. Any prints left out there, or on the holes in the fence, would be distorted by a thousand others.

He called one of them over, a young woman, all blond hair and serious poker face, and instructed her to vacuum the site. He'd have Omega's lab review the contents of the vacuum bags later. Something was sure to show up. In the meantime, they'd need a Death-talker for the corpse.

Jess walked in the wake of the destruction left by the footprints, her own blond head down, eyes probing. Her hair, tied low on her head, flipped over her shoulder as she bent to inspect the soil. Logan watched her silently. There were so many things he didn't know about his new supervising officer. He really disliked this business of not being in the know, but he was still the kid in the outfit. Although the team gave him the utmost respect, he still happened to be Omega's youngest operative. Ever.

He returned his attention to the forensic tech’s progress. She'd gridded, marked, and photographed the area, then attached a sterile plastic bag to the specialized vacuum and sucked up the dust and debris for each quadrant, then labeled the bags for Omega testing.

Logan approached the officer in charge, who threw him a glance, part suspicion and part relief.

"So what's the situation here, Officer Romano?" Logan snagged a glance at the older man's badge, also noting olive skin, which appeared paler than seemed possible, even in the strong floodlights.

Romano kept his eyes on his notes the whole time he spoke and stiffened his fingers to hide the intermittent tremors. "Young male, about six foot. Cause of death looks to be trauma from the
...er...from being skinned. No blood on the sidewalk, not much on the blanket he was wrapped in. No other visible wounds." He clapped his book shut and seemed relieved when he could stop talking.

Logan scowled, staring off into the distance. The flaying would've taken place somewhere else, after which the body was dumped here. A dumb place to dump a body in this condition, he thought. "Time of death?" he asked.

"Coroner called it...time of death 11pm," Romano said.

Logan nodded and made a mental note to have Omega double check the TOD. Couldn’t hurt to be sure.

"Witnesses?"

"No." He shook his head sadly. "Just a bunch of residents who heard the shots."

"How many?" Logan asked absently as he stared out across the lot.

Romano frowned at Logan, perplexed.

"Shots? How many shots?" He looked back at Romano, curbing the impatience in his voice.

"Er
...seven. Ten, maybe. From what those guys told us, nobody can agree." He scanned the mixed crowd of residents straining at the police barriers and wondered how reliable they were.

"And shells?"

"Four so far." Romano looked over at a tech scanning the area with a material detector, the screen revealing what lay within and below the soil of the now-mutilated garden.

"Have you checked for patterns?" Logan asked, already knowing the answer. The Chicago PD was efficient. Murdoch made sure of that.

"Yeah." Romano hailed another tech walking by, borrowed a tablet and tapped at it, his forehead twisting in concentration. He placed the screen in Logan's hand. A map of the area glowed on the face. Little pinpricks of red lights flashed next to the outline of the body. Logan and Jess studied the screen. She pointed at the pattern, which placed the first shell a few feet away from the body and each one farther away, moving across the left quadrant of the garden.

They both looked up simultaneously and stared straight ahead at the three-story building next to the garden plot.

"What's that?" asked Logan.

"Downtown drug rehab," Romano said, tucking his thumbs into his belt.

"Have you inspected the alleyway yet?" Logan kept his eyes on the squat building. He saw the outline of a door at the top of a short flight of stairs. If there was a light bulb above the door, it wasn't working now.

"Tell the techs to look there." He pointed at the door, as Jess hurried toward them, then added, "Check the walls for bullet holes."

"What are you thinking?" Jess asked.

"Don't you already know?" he quipped.

"It is not as if I hear your thoughts clearly, as if what you are thinking comes to me in neat little sentences. I receive images and feelings and words. And sometimes they aren't easy to unscramble. I can still sense your emotions, though, even when your walls are up." She spoke the words so matter-of-factly, as if she knew he’d believe her just because she said so. She looked at him with clear, hazel eyes set in a porcelain face. She was a beautiful woman any guy would love to work with, but he wasn't any guy. Besides, he wasn't into older women. Although Jess looked about Logan's age, he got the feeling she knew a lot more than she could possibly have learned in such a short life.

"You are having one of those 'feelings' again?" She tilted her head at the question.

"Yeah, someone took shots from over there. They ran in the direction of that door, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they got inside. See that light?" He pointed out the light blazing from the second floor. "That same someone may be inside the building. Could be the shooter, could be a witness."

Romano sent his techs to search the alley, and Logan turned his attention to the scene. Romano hadn't mentioned the claws yet. Seemed he was keeping that particular piece of information under wraps. Or maybe he just didn't want to know. The police would probably concoct some run-of-the-mill, gang-related cover-up to keep further questions at bay. Good thing Logan had never been the kind of person to blindly accept what someone else told him, even those in authority.

"I will call HQ. We need a Death-talker." She made the call while Logan spoke to the police officers, then combed the scene a second time in case he'd missed anything. Logan liked to be thorough.

He listened as Jess requested a Death-talker. They gave him the heebie-jeebies, with their pale corpse-like faces and glazed eyes. Those white eyes, the irises so milky they were barely discernible from the whites of the eyes themselves. Logan had no idea if Death-talkers were born with those scary eyes or if they were the result of the trauma experienced in each session. He'd never dared to ask. He respected them, of course.
On more than one occasion, he'd seen the toll communication with a spirit took on a Death-talker.

He'd felt sorry for them, bound to those almost malevolent rituals by the powers they'd been born with. Logan shivered. He'd be witness to another Death-talk soon enough.

"They will send her soon," Jess said, as she walked up to him.

"Soon" for the Walkers meant any second. The
Human
soon meant any time in the next few hours. Logan still appreciated those differences, being one of many mages who'd come into their powers in their early teens, old enough to remember life as a normal human.

"She will know where to find him," she stated to put Logan at ease, as if Jess knew he'd wondered how the Death-talker would appear at this particular scene without creating mayhem herself. "She will go directly to him."