Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) (3 page)

“Or if it
had prints,” Lupo added. “But you can bet he handled it with gloves.”

Brian
nodded.

Lupo tried
to visualize the sequence, but he was starting to feel distracted. He hated to
see the vic treated like meat. But he felt the usual terrible itch beginning in
his palms. He found himself suppressing a growl that wanted to work its way up
his throat. Lupo told them to let her body back down.

“Gently,” he
said, almost in a growl.

He turned
away quickly, before the Creature could make its presence known.

DiSanto turned
with him, touched his arm. “Gets you every time, eh? I know, man. I still hate
seeing this stuff.”

Lupo grunted
and half-nodded, looking away. Rich DiSanto was his most recent partner, after
Ben Sabatini had been murdered by the psychopath Martin Stewart. DiSanto was a
good guy, but a little on the naïve side, and Lupo’s secret was just too far
out there. It was best to let the young cop think Lupo was growing weary of
seeing the result of senseless violence. It was a perfectly reasonable
assumption to make.

But in
reality the Creature had been awakened by the scent of bloody meat. It was hard
to work with the wolf lurking so close to the surface, and the blood was
calling. Plus Lupo always had a tough time suppressing the monster’s instincts
anyway.

His own instincts.

For he was the monster, and the monster was him.

He gave
DiSanto a half-grin, mostly so he wouldn't growl at him.

Charlie Bear
watched the two of them interact, and Lupo thought he showed a bit too much
interest. In Lupo.

Hmmm
, he
thought. He squinted at the big Indian.

JESSIE

It was her
day off from the clinic this week, and since it was a Friday and she was not on
call for the weekend, she saw the three days stretch out before her, a welcome
respite from the daily routine of cuts and bruises and colds and broken arms
and diabetes and hypertension and…

She shook
her head to clear it of the racing thoughts. Too much of that and she’d just
end up going back to her office and helping out until the free days were but a hazy
memory.

No, this
time she was going to
take
the three
days. Three days
off
.

She’d hired
several nurses and a new doctor to the staff recently, and if there was ever a
time she could afford to leave the place, it was now. The rez
was
doing better since the casino had
opened. Business was starting to bloom, if not
boom
, and a small trickle of funds had begun to flow into her
coffers as
de facto
senior hospital
administrator. So she’d gone on a spree, purchasing some greatly needed medical
equipment they’d been doing without. No more sending people down the road for
easy x-rays or medium level surgery. The MRI machine was almost a reachable
dream. Things were on an upswing.

And she was
taking the weekend off.

Dammit, yes
.

Jessie
Hawkins made sure everyone in the administrative offices knew she was gone,
changed her phone and email messages, posted notes on her desk and her door,
and then double-checked to make sure everyone understood that she would be
gone
. As in
not available
.

Then she sat in her banged-up Pathfinder and let her breath out
slowly.

If she
thought about what had happened to her and Nick, and so many people they knew…

And what had
happened to Sam Waters…

Then she'd
start to hyperventilate and the nausea would rise in her throat and she'd
suddenly feel the headache wrap itself like a torturer’s helmet over her head
to drive sharp screws into her temples. And maybe she’d have to lean out the
car door and vomit her guts out.

This
sometimes happened, if she let herself relive the events of – well, those
recent events. Happened more often than she’d let on to Nick, who had his own
troubles.

Man’s a werewolf, for Christ’s sake
, she’d think.
He has a lot more
to worry about than I do
.
That's a
real
burden.

But trauma
is trauma, not recognizing relative levels among different people, so knowing
his problems didn’t alleviate hers. Intellectually she was aware of that.

Post-traumatic
stress, she thought, while trying to let the sudden anxiety attack evaporate.
She closed her eyes and grabbed the wheel and let it wash over her, and
hopefully off. Her chest tightened and she wanted to gasp, except she knew not
being able to breathe was an illusion.

Ride it out…

A few
minutes later her breathing began to return to normal. She opened her eyes,
experimenting, letting light in slowly because it hurt. She closed her eyes
again. But the nausea seemed to be retreating along with the headache’s
pounding rhythm, and she gave herself another few minutes with her eyes
protected.

When she
opened them, she jumped, startled.

A face
hovered outside her window.

LUPO

DiSanto went
off to question any of Rosskov’s coworkers who might be on shift or coming in.
The casino was within walking distance, and one of Charlie Bear’s guys led him
to where he could use a conference room in the administrative staff-only area.
Lupo waited around, knowing the media would show up soon. The Milwaukee PD had recently
stopped broadcasting over most scanner frequencies, so reporters were forced to
rely on other ways to get the news – but they’d adapted.

He figured
he had about fifteen minutes, max, before the antenna-draped vans would start
showing up, noses fixed on the story.

The crime
scene guys were mostly done with what they could do, and the ME’s guys were
getting ready to bag the victim.

He stood
upwind and watched as the huddle around the body changed shape.

Charlie Bear
approached. “What’s your thought?”

Lupo shook
his head. “Hard to say. Doesn’t look like a crime of passion, you know? Too
planned. Revenge maybe? But for what? Did she reject the guy? We’ll find out
when we get a sense of her coworkers and friends. Why, what do you think?”

Bear turned
his face up, as if tasting the wind. “It looks like a statement. A message.”

Lupo nodded,
thinking about it. “Not a bad guess. A warning?”

“Maybe. To
who?”

“Yeah. Too
staged? Too
studied
?”
 

“Yeah,
that’s what I mean…”

“Guy wants
to be mentioned on TV?”

Bear nodded
slowly. “Yeah, I could see that psychology. He planned the weapon and the
location, so not very spontaneous. I’d bet he wants the publicity of a strange
crime.”

“But you
think he wants it for some kind of cause.”

    
Bear nodded. “Seems
right to me.”

“What about
the choice of weapon?” He watched Bear closely.

The big man
twitched his nose, probably unconsciously. “Either he’s a medievalist, or…”

“Or?”

Bear grinned
sourly. “Or he just thinks he’s using an Indian-type weapon?”

Lupo nodded.
“I thought that. But don’t most people know the difference?”

Bear barked
a laugh. “When it comes to my culture, Detective, I doubt people know anything.
Hell, my own people don’t always know their own culture. Too much television
and movies, not enough reading of history.”

“Okay, so
we’re back to square one. No obvious reason for the crossbow.”

“Unless it
has more to do with the motive…”

“Like he’s
got a broken heart? Arrow in the heart? Deadly valentine?”

Bear tilted
his head. “Possible, right?”

“Anything is
possible,” Lupo said, sighing. “I like it better when it’s not so wide open.
But my guess is it's just because it'll get him on TV. You know, it's more
exotic. All that
slayer
stuff the
kids like. Maybe this guy wants ratings.”

“You think
he’s going to do it again, don’t you?”

Lupo nodded.

Although he
could only admit it to himself, he rather liked the challenge of tracking down
an adversary like this before he could strike again. At least, he liked the
challenge until the department started getting pressure from the mayor or the
common council, who would press for the strange and frightening to be rendered
safe. And there was a point in each such case when this would happen,
guaranteed.

Until then,
it was like a chess game.

    
“I’m gonna need her
home address,” he said.

Bear nodded
and called the casino human resources office. In about two minutes, he was
showing up on his phone screen. “Text it to me,” Lupo said, and after it was
done he stood and watched the ME’s attendants finish the body-bagging.

DiSanto
called and told Lupo he’d spoken to two immediate section coworkers who’d been
in earlier, their whereabouts accounted for. That left a half-dozen who weren’t
in yet. He had left two uniforms to get statements in case they arrived.

“The change
of shift is gonna mess this up, Nick,” DiSanto said.

“Yeah.” Lupo
didn't want to say it, but he had a feeling – no, he just
knew
– that the coworker angle was
wrong. He couldn't tell DiSanto to abandon it just like that, but it
was
a waste of time.

Why was he
so certain?

He wondered
about the two of them discussing the killer’s profile so bluntly.

Yeah, maybe we all watch too much TV
.

Time for
real police work. The boring kind. The kind that might even prove useless in
the end.

Because the
asshole would strike again, and that was how Lupo would catch him.

JESSIE

“You all
right, Doc?”

The face
outside her window was speaking loudly, smiling and waving.

It was Tommy,
one of the security guards the new tribal council had hired after the brutal Wolfpaw
mercenary murders. Concern was written all over his lined face. He was elderly,
but it had turned out that he was one of the more efficient and alert guards.
He'd done a tour or three in Nam.

Jessie
gasped as her lungs realized that she’d stopped breathing. Awkwardly she tried
to smile, breathe, and roll down her window at the same time.

She gasped,
swallowed, gasped again. “Tommy, yes, thanks. I was just—”
 
She forced herself to take regular
breaths. “You startled me a little.”

“Sorry, Doc.
Didn’t mean to. You just looked kinda lost, there.” His kindly face crinkled
into a smile. “I got worried.”

Jessie was
breathing normally again. She nodded and smiled back. “Thanks, I really
appreciate your concern…”

They chatted
briefly. In a minute she was driving away, his shape in her mirror, watching
her.

Sheesh, she
was turning into a wreck.

It wasn’t a
long drive home, but halfway to her cottage she’d made a decision. It was
early. If she started right after grabbing some clothes and a bite to eat, she
could pull into Milwaukee about dinner time. A late, late dinner. Maybe Nick
was free. Hell, he’d free up some time for her.

It would be
good for her to spend the weekend out of town, away from the memories of
gunfire and death on that thin strip of beach.

Poor Sam…

She nodded
decisively, mind made up.

THE ARCHER

He was
sitting in the dark, his eyes closed, the images flashing past.

He saw her
again.

Tanya
.

He saw her
walking, and he remembered the feel of the crossbow’s pistol grip in his hand.

He recalled
the cold air entering the van as the window powered down, and he saw the bolt
where it sat like a missile in its track, nocked to the stretched string. He
remembered how the bow seemed to already vibrate in his grip, harnessed forward
thrust, ready to be loosed. The feeling as he released the missile.

Then he
remembered her look of surprise as she took a half-step back, her head lowering
as if in puzzlement at the wood and steel javelin protruding obscenely from her
punctured flesh, the dark stain flowering under her coat. The pain suddenly
building.

He breathed
rapidly, flashing through the images again. A tremor ran through his trigger
finger, as if he were taking a second shot.

He hadn’t
needed a second shot. He was an expert.

But now he
sensed the need rising again, the need to replay the action.
The feeling
.