Tooth and Claw (The Harry Russo Diaries Book 2) (7 page)

Nash arched an eyebrow at me as if to say ‘I’ll be the judge
of that’ and put his hand on my bare thigh. I knew I should have worn
tights. The warmth of his hand on my skin sent a little jolt through me and
he paused taking a deep breath. I scowled at him and tried to push his hand
away, but he held fast. He shot me a grin and then looked around the church, searching
for the wolf, finding him at the front near the altar where he had started
pacing again.

When the service ended and the congregation rose to its feet,
I pushed Nash’s hand away, earning another cheeky grin from him. I stood up
and moved to the side aisle of the church trying to spot where the wolf had
disappeared. The crowd had begun to thin, although I noticed there seemed to
be a lot of young women still lingering about on Nash’s side of the aisle, when
I spotted a flash of grey. The wolf was stalking across the altar of the
church to the side door leading down to the refectory in the basement.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Nash by the sleeve. “I need
some coffee.”

“Here? You want to stay here? We can’t just…”

“Why not? You’re the cop investigating Jonathan’s mysterious
death and I’m just a respectful mourner. Besides, we sat through that whole
boring service; they owe us at least a cookie.”

***

It appeared that the majority of mourners had felt the same
way I did and the church’s basement was packed. The Nash groupies tittered in
excitement when we entered the room and I could feel their critical eyes
glaring at me.

I looped my arm through his, leaning into him and smiled.
“I don’t see the wolf yet.”

Nash arched his eyebrow at me in surprise at my sudden
desire to be near him. “Take my hand,” he replied. “I’ll help you look.”

I put my hand in his and together we scanned the crowd.
Nash was the first one to spot the wolf. He was sniffing at the heels of a
middle-aged woman. She was dressed conservatively in a navy pant suit and was
standing off to the side nervously drinking a cup of tea. The wolf suddenly
stepped back and looked at the woman, his ears partially flicked back. He let
out a low whine. His body looked tense and his tail drooped towards the
floor. If I didn’t know better I would say that the woman made the wolf
nervous.

I said as much to Nash and he looked at me surprised.
“That’s exactly what the wolf is saying, he’s anxious.”

“He said that?”

“Not in words, but his body language.”

Nash let go of my hand and began making his way through the
crowd to the woman.

At Nash’s approach, the wolf stepped back, his pose becoming
more submissive, flattening his head down as he backed away. The crowd shifted
and I lost sight of him.

Nash introduced himself to the woman, probably using his
police status to find out who she was and her connection to Jonathan. I left
him to it and looked for the wolf instead.

I found him pacing the perimeter of the room. He looked up
at me when I approached and then disappeared into the crowd almost as if he had
been waiting for me. I followed him as discretely as I could, nodding and
smiling at people as I passed. The wolf finally stopped halfway across the
room. I didn’t need Nash to interpret his body language this time. He was
pissed. His ears were forward, his eyes narrowed and his lips drawn back in a
silent snarl. His tail stood straight out from his body which was tense, his
shoulders and hackles raised making him appear bigger. He snapped at the man
standing in front of him, his ghostly jaws gnashing together. He let out a
loud bark, startling me. Of course no one else could hear it.

I looked across the room at Nash, but he had his back to me.
The woman, however, looked nervous and I noticed that she glanced my way, or
rather the mystery man’s way, several times. I wondered if they knew one
another. I looked back to the man the wolf had led me to. He was amiably
chatting with another man and a woman, oblivious to the fact that he had a
wolf’s snarling ghost practically chewing on his leg. The wolf turned to look
at me and with one last snap of his jaws, disappeared. I guess he had got his
message across.

I turned my attention back to the man. He was tall and thin
although not weak looking. In fact, he seemed to exude strength, like someone
who took pride in his health and worked out. He had dark hair but with a
considerable sprinkling of grey at his temples. I would have guessed him
to be about fifty or so. The most distinguishing thing about him however, was
the large signet ring he wore on the middle finger of his right hand. The face
was square, with rounded corners and was blood red with a white ‘X’ across it.

The man appeared to be wrapping up his conversation with the
couple. Where was Nash? I had lost him in the crowd. The man said his goodbyes
and turned to leave. Damn. I’d have to follow him.

I fell into step behind him and we both joined the small
exodus to the stairs leading outside. It seemed like everyone had been given
the same invisible cue to leave and so I was jostled a bit as people made their
way out.

A hand grabbed my arm from behind. “Harry, wait up.” It
was Nash.

“Where have you been? I was looking for you,” I said,
grabbing his hand and pulling him up the stairs. I had lost sight of the
mystery man. “Come on, we’re going to lose him.”

“Lose who?”

“Just come on. I’ll explain later.” I hustled up the
stairs, pushing through some stragglers on the landing, dragging Nash behind
me.

When we stepped outside, I looked around quickly. “Damn. I
don’t see him anywhere.”

“See who Harry? What’s going on?” Nash stood with his
hands on his narrow hips, he had his detective’s shield clipped to his waist by
his belt.

“There was a man. The wolf
hated
him. If he could
have torn him limb from limb, he would have.” I paced to the corner of the
church and looked down the street. The man was nowhere to be seen. “What
about the woman? Who was she?” I asked, walking back to stand in front of
Nash.

“She’s just a nurse who works for a private firm. She was a
friend of the family, nothing more.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look
Harry, enough with the super sleuth routine. Leave the investigating to me.”

“No, you don’t get it, Nash.” I huffed out a breath. “The
wolf is trying to tell us something, tell
me
something. We have to find
out who the man is. He’s connected somehow, I know it.”

“Come on Harry. Don’t you think it’s a bit of a stretch?
Some unknown man is involved in, well, we don’t even know what exactly, but you
think he’s guilty because a ghost wolf growled at him?”

“It’s more than that and you know it, Nash. You
saw
the wolf. It’s not just some crazy thing I’m making up. And if you had seen
how he reacted to this guy,” I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Besides,
the nurse knew the man too. She kept looking over at him nervously the whole
time you were talking to her.” I stamped my foot. “They’re connected. I know
they are.”

“All right, calm down.” Nash reached out and rubbed my
arm. “Even if it’s true, we have no way of finding this guy now.”

I frowned. He was right. If only I had gotten his name or
his license plate or something. And then it dawned on me. “Of course, the
ring!” I grabbed Nash by his upper arms - man, are his arms pumped - and gave him
a little shake. “We can use the ring to find him.”

“What ring? What are you talking about?” he asked.

“The man was wearing a very distinctive signet ring. It
must be for a fraternity or maybe a professional designation. We can figure
out who he is using the ring.”

“I don’t know Harry. That’s a pretty big order. With only
the ring and a physical description, we’ll probably have to spend hours and
hours searching for some kind of match.

“Not if we get Bryce to help us,” I replied gleefully.

Nash was understandably confused about how a dead guy was
going to help us find our mystery man. Of course he didn’t know that Bryce’s
ghost, who I had helped out a month or so ago after he had been murdered, had
never really left. Instead, he had taken up residence in my old computer.

When he was alive, Bryce had been a computer specialist and
hacker extraordinaire, so it wasn’t really all that surprising that he had
managed to meld himself into the circuitry of my computer. Okay, so it was. I
didn’t know ghosts could do that, but ghosts do thrive on electricity, and so Bryce
had somehow figured it out. He had even upgraded and totally rebuilt my old
system from the ground up, and paid for it with money from a secret offshore
account. It was like having my own version of the super computer HAL inhabiting
my living room - without the plotting to kill us, hopefully - at least when he
was around, which hadn’t been much these days.

Since Bryce was now the equivalent of a bunch of nanobytes
or whatever, and since just about everything was connected to the internet
these days, he had a lot of room to roam. Most of the time he wasn’t around
because he was off exploring some new corner of the World Wide Web. I also had a
strong suspicion that there were a lot of good-looking women who kept their laptops
open in their bedrooms and had their webcams turned on remotely. He was a bit of a perv.

At my insistence, Nash had followed me home to see for
himself. He paced the corner of my living room where the office was set up,
tousling his hair with his hand.

“So let me get this straight,” he said with exaggerated
patience. “Bryce, the ghost, didn’t go to wherever ghosts go…”

“Into the light,” I added helpfully with a grin. I was
kind of enjoying Nash’s discomfort.

“Right, into the light. He didn’t go into the light.
Instead, he figured out how to live in your computer.”

Tess, who had arrived home about the same time we did,
rolled her eyes. “I tried to explain all this to you a month ago when we were
trying to find Harry,” she said.

“I don’t think you could really say live, since he’s dead,”
I added, ignoring Tess’s complaint. “But yeah, Bryce is now in the computer.
Or the computer is really Bryce, I guess.” I shrugged. I really didn’t
understand the logistics of it myself. “However it works, Bryce is part of the
computer and he’s a super hacker and can find just about anything on the web.”
I sat down at the desk chair and flicked the monitor on. We kept the computer
running all the time now, Bryce preferred it that way. “We just have to hope
that he’s around.”

“Where does he go when he isn’t there?”

“I don’t know, surfs the web, talks to other computers.” I
shrugged again. I really didn’t know although I did have my suspicions, but
Nash didn’t need to hear about Bryce’s predilections.

The computer monitor remained black and I jiggled the mouse
a few times. “Come on Bryce,” I said. I really didn’t know if he would be
there.

Nash began to look at me skeptically. “You’re yanking my
chain aren’t you?” He looked at Tess. “Both of you.”

“No, we’re not. Honest,” I said holding up two fingers like
a boy scout making a pledge. “It’s just he isn’t always there.”

“Very funny, Harry, you had me going for a minute
there.”

“Look, it’s not a joke.” I banged on the side of the
computer. “Bryce, quit kidding around if you’re in there.”

“Hey, hands off, hot stuff!”
The disembodied voice
that came through the speakers sounded like a male version of an automated
smartphone voice.

“Bryce. You’re there.”

“
At your service, darlin’
” The voice took on a
distinctive twang.

“Holy shit! He’s really in the computer.” Nash looked at
the computer screen in disbelief. As a joke, Bryce had placed an animated GIF
of a robot on the screen that
interacted with us whenever we spoke to him. At Nash’s words the robot began
to wave then held up a sign that said “Hi Loser”.

“Very funny, Bryce,” I scolded. “Where have you been?”

“
Oh you know, here and there. There’s a really hot MILF
in Seattle…
”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Too much information,” I interrupted.
“So listen, I have a job for you.”

“
I’m all ears, or rather microphone. Speak and I shall
obey
.”

I described the man to Bryce and then told him about the
sigil on the ring. “It had a red background with a white cross. Only the
cross was sideways so it looked more like an ‘X’.”

“
Like this
?” The computer screen suddenly had an
image similar to what I had seen.

“Close, but the cross isn’t quite right,” I replied, biting
my lip in thought. “It’s the arms of the cross, they’re different. They
weren’t all equal in length so it wasn’t exactly an ‘X’. Two of the arms were
a little shorter, like if you took a regular cross and turned it on its side.”

“
I think you mean a saltire cross. Like this?
” He
displayed another image.

“Yes, that’s it.” I clapped my hands and looked over at
Nash. He still looked like he was a bit dazed at the whole talking computer
thing. “The face of the ring was rather large and it was square with rounded
corners. It looked like it was some sort of enamel maybe, or a polished agate
with a pearl inlay.”

“
I’ll do a search of all known symbols of fraternities
and professional organizations.
”

“It could be a family crest of some sort too,” added Nash,
his detective instinct overriding his shock.

“
Roger that. I’ll add family genealogies and heraldic
symbols to the search. It may take a couple of hours.
”

Tess looked at me and then Nash, “So, who wants to watch a
movie?”