Deadly Descendant (5 page)

“No witnesses to the attacks,” Jack added, “and no reported sightings of a pack of dogs large enough to do it.”

We all chewed that one over for a while. It wasn’t so ridiculous to think the attacks might be supernatural
in nature. Once you allowed yourself to admit that the supernatural exists at all, of course.

“Just because a
Liberi
is probably behind the attacks doesn’t mean anything else Phoebe said was true,” Blake argued. “Like her explanation of why the Olympians care about someone who kills people.”

“It’s plausible that they would be concerned about the risk of exposure,” Anderson said. “It’s also plausible that there’s something else behind their request for help.”

“Like they’re going to use this hunt to try to trap Nikki and force her to work for them,” Blake suggested.

Konstantin had tried to recruit me for the Olympians when I’d first become
Liberi
. His recruitment techniques included such compelling persuasions as having his right-hand man kidnap and rape my sister—a fate I could supposedly have saved her from if only I’d agreed to join them. Of course, since it was their mission in life to wipe out every mortal Descendant in the world except for the chosen few they indoctrinated, if I’d joined them, they’d have made me hunt for who knows how many innocent men, women, and children whom they would slaughter. File that under “Not Gonna Happen.”

“I’m not suggesting we go blundering into anything blindly,” Anderson said. “I’d like us to start out by just doing a little more research.” He turned to Leo, who was sneaking glances at a handheld every few seconds. Guess he was afraid the stock market would pull a fast one on him if he didn’t keep an eye on it.
“See if you can get hold of the actual police reports. There might be information they haven’t shared with the public that will help us figure out whether the attacks are supernatural or not.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Leo said. I’d known he was good with computers, but the confidence with which he agreed to go searching for police reports said he was hacker-level good.

“And Nikki,” Anderson continued, “see what you can find out about the victims. See if you can find any link between them and the Olympians.”

That was something I could do, something my years as a private investigator had prepared me for. Hunting for a supernatural serial killer, on the other hand, was so far outside my comfort zone it might as well have been brain surgery. I hoped to God we’d find out there was nothing supernatural whatsoever about these attacks so that I could get off the hook. It was a selfish attitude, no doubt about it, but I figured after the hell I’d been through lately, I was entitled to a little selfishness.

I stopped by the kitchen before going up to my suite. I
needed a healthy dose of coffee before I got to work. By the time I’d brewed a pot, doctored it to my liking, and gotten to my suite, Leo had already emailed me several articles about the dog attacks, along with the police report on the first one.

I skimmed the news articles, although I seriously doubted they’d have a lot of important information compared with what I would find in the police reports.
Maybe I was just stalling because I wasn’t looking forward to cracking open files that would have photos of dead, mauled bodies. I was a P.I., not a cop, and I was embarrassingly squeamish. I’d thrown up when we had to dissect a frog in high school, and even
thinking
about looking at the photos was making me a little queasy.

According to online reports, the attacks had each occurred on a Friday night, one attack per week over the last three weeks. The first had been in Anacostia, and the victim had been so badly mauled he had yet to be identified.

The second attack had occurred in Trinidad. The victim, Eddie Van Buren, was an unemployed former banker who’d been found near the National Arboretum. According to the article, Van Buren had been forty-three when he died, though the accompanying photo showed a man who couldn’t be more than twenty-five. In the photo, he was handsome and athletic-looking, and I had to wonder if they’d chosen to use the old photo because falling on hard times had stolen his good looks.

The third attack had occurred in Ledroit Park, and the victim was Calvin Hodge, a criminal attorney. The picture in the paper showed a smiling middle-aged man with a neat black beard and a power suit.

It was impossible to imagine that a pack of wild dogs could cover that much territory in the heart of D.C. without being spotted by someone. It was also impossible that they would randomly decide to attack lone male victims on Friday nights exactly one week
apart. The reporter who wrote the third article parroted the police’s assertions that, despite the improbability of it all, these killings were all the result of wild dog attacks, but I could almost feel the reporter’s skepticism.

Either the perpetrator was a serial killer who owned a pack of attack dogs, or Phoebe was right and there was a
Liberi
behind it. I had to put my money on option number two, no matter how much I didn’t like it.

By the time I’d finished skimming the articles, copies of all three police reports were in my in-box. Leo worked fast. And I didn’t want to know how he’d managed to get hold of confidential police reports within the space of an hour.

I chugged down the rest of my coffee before it got cold, staring at my in-box, trying to work up the courage to open the first file. I gave myself a mental kick in the ass, took a deep breath, and double-clicked on the first attachment. There were several pages of notes, but I skipped immediately to the photos, knowing I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the text until I’d gotten this part over with.

I managed to get through the first shot by almost convincing myself I was looking at special effects from some cheesy horror movie. I was less convinced when I peeked at the second one, and the third one made everything too real. I had to bolt to the bathroom, where I emptied out my coffee and my lunch. By the time I was finished, I was sweaty and shaking, my stomach still rumbling unhappily. I splashed cold
water on my face and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady.

“Some kick-ass supernatural huntress
you
turned out to be,” I muttered to my reflection.

The last thing in the world I wanted to do was go back to my computer and look at those photos again. What were the chances I’d spot something the police hadn’t and that whatever I spotted would lead me to the killer? Even given my own brand-new supernatural abilities, those odds were pretty slim. But I knew I had to look. If it turned out there was something I should have seen and someone else died horribly because I’d been too much of a wimp to look at a few nasty photos, I’d never be able to live with myself.

It took several more tries before I could force myself to look at the photos for more than half a second at a time. My imagination was going to have a field day with these images if I let it.

“Mind over matter,” I kept repeating to myself under my breath, then gripped the arms of my chair and forced myself to look.

It wasn’t hard to tell why victim number one hadn’t been identified yet. Saying he’d been “mauled” was an understatement.
Shredded
was more like it. The crime scene was under an overpass, and there was blood everywhere. Blood painted the sidewalk and the street, dripped down the walls on both sides, and spotted the ceiling. Bits and pieces of him were scattered willy-nilly, and I wouldn’t have known these were human remains if it weren’t for the head—skull, actually—that rested on its neck on the sidewalk, like
it was rising out of the ground. Close-ups showed obvious teeth marks on the exposed bone.

I tried very hard to distance myself from what I was seeing, to look at it with dispassionate eyes and search for clues to who might have done this and where he might have gone, but I couldn’t get past the horror. I hoped to God the poor man had been dead before most of the carnage occurred. I told myself he had to have been, otherwise someone would have heard the screams and seen something. Of course, residents of tough neighborhoods like Anacostia knew investigating sounds of violence was seriously bad for your health, as was volunteering information to the police.

Still shuddering in revulsion, I forced myself to look through all of the photos. If there was important evidence there, I failed to see it.

I combed over the written report, hoping I’d have an easier time coping with that. And I did, until I got to the part that said the victim’s internal organs were missing. The report theorized that the victim had been killed by a pack of feral dogs and that the dogs had eaten the viscera.

Nausea roiled in my empty stomach, and my skin was clammy with sweat as I tried not to let my imagination paint too clear a picture of what the poor victim had been through. And what his family would go through, if and when the body was ever identified. The idea of having your loved one not only killed but eaten … I shuddered.

“I’m not cut out to be a cop,” I muttered under my breath. There was a reason I’d chosen to be a private
investigator instead of entering law enforcement. Numerous reasons, actually, but being exposed to violence on this level topped the list.

The next two reports were just as awful, the victims brutalized beyond recognition. By the time the third victim was found, the police were sure they were hunting a human suspect who used dogs as his deadly weapon, though they hadn’t shared this conclusion with the press.

I spent several hours going over the police reports, and while they gave me a clearer picture of what had happened, I couldn’t say they brought me any closer to finding the killer.

I closed down the files at around five o’clock, and as if he had a sixth sense, Anderson showed up on my doorstep at approximately 5:01.

“Ready to wrap up the case yet?” he asked me with a wry smile.

I was already jittery from my day’s work. Being alone in a room with Anderson was not high on my list of things I wanted to do at the moment. Someday I would have to find a way to get over being creeped out by the knowledge that he was a freaking god, but I wasn’t there yet.

I pushed back my chair and stood up, stretching out my stiff muscles and putting a little more distance between us as Anderson came to rest a hip on my desk.

“Not quite,” I responded, hoping I didn’t sound nervous. “You know, looking at crime-scene photos and police reports isn’t exactly the same as chatting up
nosy neighbors to see if they’ve seen the deadbeat dad around lately.” I waved my hand vaguely at the computer. “This is not my area of expertise.”

“Not yet,” he agreed amiably. “But expertise or not, you’re more likely to find the killer than the police are. They’re going to be limited by their insistence on rational explanations.”

I acknowledged that with a shrug. Since the police were convinced the killer had a pack of attack dogs, they were sure he was traveling in some kind of van or truck—a perfectly rational conclusion but one that could potentially skew their investigation. I didn’t know exactly what the killer was doing, but I doubted it was what the police were thinking.

“What have you found?”

I moved to the other side of the room, Anderson following me.
There’s no reason to be nervous around him,
I told myself. He was still the same guy he’d been before I learned his secret. True, I had seen him kill a couple of people, and that was bound to make me uncomfortable. But I’d known all along he had a ruthless streak, and it had never made me this edgy before.

I sat stiffly on the sofa, hoping Anderson would take the love seat. Of course, he didn’t get my mental hint, instead taking a seat on the other end of the sofa and turning to face me.

He looked so unprepossessing it was hard to reconcile that image with what I knew was inside him. His medium brown hair was perpetually in need of a cut, his cheeks were perpetually peppered with five o’clock
shadow—the kind that looks scruffy, not the kind that looks sexy—and he really needed to start buying no-iron shirts.

I cleared my throat, trying to focus on the here and now, not think about Anderson as a towering pillar of white light loping off in pursuit of his prey.

“The police are very confused,” I said. “These definitely look like dog attacks. The bites indicate at least five or six medium-sized dogs. There are some paw prints here and there, though not as many as there should be with that many dogs, and the crime-scene techs haven’t been able to find any dog hair, which is totally bizarre.”

“Maybe the dogs were wearing gloves,” Anderson suggested, completely deadpan.

The comment surprised a quick laugh out of me. “Or at least hairnets. Maybe the men were attacked by dogs in the food-service industry. That ought to narrow down the suspect pool.”

Anderson smiled. “There. Now, that’s more like the Nikki I know.”

The comment killed my amusement. I guess I hadn’t been acting as normal around him as I’d hoped. There was a long moment of awkward silence. I knew better than to race to fill that silence, but I couldn’t help myself.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “I can’t pretend I didn’t see what I saw.”

“But you don’t have to tiptoe around me like I’m a keg of dynamite just waiting to blow. I’m dangerous to the bad guys, not to you.”

I met his eyes in a challenging stare, too irritated by his statement to be cautious. “Are you forgetting that you threatened to kill me?”