Last of the Shapeshifters

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

DYLAN

She had been delectable! Dylan was beginning to realize that he was wrong. He hadn’t quenched that thirst, never exhausted that drive. It had only been lying dormant, buried under more pressing, more immediate needs. The need to find answers. The need that had brought him to Salty Springs, that had introduced him to a woman that made him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

This D.I. Sasha Monroe… the thought of her intrigued him in a variety of ways, none of them particularly appropriate.

He turned around as he walked away, seeing the car still parked. He was certain she was looking at him in the rear-view mirror. She might even follow him for a while, or get one of her boys to.

And that also intrigued him. What had made her so worked up that they would hold and question a person in public like that? Granted, nobody else had been around, but the tactic smelled of desperation.

Those two uniformed policemen had acted oddly, hands quick to their guns as though they were expecting danger. And while Dylan could certainly see why he could be considered dangerous, only someone armed with the knowledge of what he truly was could make that call. And these police officers had no idea.

He did have one clue, though, and he didn’t doubt that it was spoon-fed to him by the lovely and curvy Sasha. Name dropping the street was definitely laying bait. It was attractive that she’d do that, bend the rules a little. He liked a girl with an edge.

He’d take the bait, of course – he had nothing to lose, and he might find out what all the fuss was about.

Wolf sightings in the greater area? The scent of a wolf in the desert? A police force antsy, quick to their sidearms? No, this was all too much to be coincidence. Something was smoking here, and it wasn’t just Sasha.

“Lester Street,” he hummed to himself, pulling out a folded map from his back pocket. His arms glistened with sweat, but the heat was dry. He wasn’t dripping. It was just a sheen. The map of the small town was from the tourist office, and was one of those sorts of maps that were cartoon-like, off-scale and with little clipart images of the major attractions in and around Salty Springs.

You can read a brochure when we’re done.

He replayed her voice in his head, focused on the small curl of her lips as she had said it. This woman was sexier than she knew.

Dylan had read a brochure, but the naming of the town was hardly difficult to decipher. The town had first been settled because there were generous springs, the only water source for miles. The town had, at first, been called Megan Springs, after the horse of the man who found the water source. Fresh water in the desert! Rarer – and more valuable – than gemstone.

But over time the water started to grow salty, and so the name of the town was changed to Salty Springs. But by then it had already been settled, and the people refused to move out. That was seventy years ago. Scientists had recently discovered a great underground lake sitting beneath the town, dozens of meters deep; the source of the springs. The lake was salt water, a long-lost sea caught by encroaching land, from a time when a world map would have been unrecognizable. What little fresh water had seeped through the ground from the occasional rains over time had floated on the surface of the salt water, being less dense. The town of course used up the fresh water supply, and the spring water was no longer potable.

You can read a brochure when we’re done, Dylan replayed in his mine, grinning. He liked Detective Inspector Sasha Monroe. He liked her a lot.

Lester Street was clear on the other side of town, and so he had a long walk ahead of him. Looking over his shoulder once again, he was a little surprised – and a little disappointed – to see that Sasha’s car was gone. He had expected her to stick around just a little bit longer.

SASHA

“Anything?” Superintendent O’Neill asked as Sasha pushed through the revolving door to the police station. He seemed to always be at the front desk whenever she was getting in.

“He didn’t incriminate himself, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why didn’t you bring him in?”

“On what? A description from a person you told me was a known drunk? Yeah, you want to guarantee this guy gets off on a bogus arrest technicality?”

The superintendent puffed his chest out, and his face grew impossibly ruddier. “So you just let him go?”

“I’ve got a car keeping an eye on him.”

“You’re taking liberties with hierarchy today, Monroe.”

“Same car you gave me for the search. Let me have them for the day, okay?”

He relented. “Fine.

“So I’ll know anything he does.”

“What if he does nothing?”

She looked at the square-shaped man. “There’s something odd about him, boss. I’m pretty sure he’s connected to all of this, but I’m not so sure he’s our guy.”

“Why not?”

Sasha shrugged. She wasn’t entirely sure. “Call it instinct. Anyway, I have a hunch he might do something soon that I can bring him in on. That way, we can hold him longer than just a day.”

“Be careful, Monroe. I don’t want this to get out of hand.”

“Yes, sir. Any news from the doc?” Sasha was still waiting on that autopsy report.

“No, he’s still down with food poisoning.”

“Great.”

“Says he’ll get on it when he can.”

“Push him, please, Sir?”

“I will.”

Sasha returned her thoughts to the darkly handsome Dylan Macready. “Sir, I need to borrow a car. Unmarked.”

“Why?”

“Our person of interest will recognize mine, and I need to go somewhere I think he’ll be.”

“You should have just brought him in, Monroe. We can sit on him for twenty four hours. You’ll be able to call the lab by then, and the doctor will have done his autopsy probably. s**t, he might have had something on his person that tied him to the scene! He reached down under the desk, and Sasha heard the jingle of keys.

“We can always bring him in anytime if that’s how you want to play it, boss. We don’t have to let him leave town.”

“Just don’t f**k up, Sasha.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” Sasha said, catching the keys he tossed underarm at her. “I’ll get him.”

“Car eight.”

Sasha looked at the car keys, and then back up at the superintendent. “Oh, come on, sir!” she cried. “Not eight!”

“Take it, or walk.”

“Fine.” Sasha turned to leave, but was interrupted mid-step.

“Monroe.” The superintendent waddled around the front desk, and approached her. His nose, like a prize strawberry, was redder than ever, and his balding crown matched its shade, perpetually sunburnt. He had a look in his eyes that informed her she should brace herself. His temper was legendary.

“What is it, sir?”

He sneered at her. “I’ll be watching closely. Don’t screw up.”

Sasha scowled. What an asshole!

He waved her off. “Go.”

She went back out through the revolving door, trying not to let herself get angry. In the dusty, windswept parking lot of the police station, she saw the car she’d been given sitting out in the sun. She sighed. Car eight was the department’s worst car, dark, and equipped with a weak air-conditioner, and it meant she’d have to ride with the windows down if she wanted to stave off the heat.

But it would have to do. If she was right about her hunch, then Dylan would be snooping around the crime scene, either to check for evidence he had left behind, or because somehow he was connected. Even if it was out of mere curiosity, it would be a big enough violation that she could hold him for a full seventy-two hours. She reaffirmed to herself that she didn’t believe in coincidences, not of this magnitude. Dylan was definitely connected. Even if he didn’t kill Charlie Kinnear, he’d probably lead her to the person who did.

And for now, it was all she had to go on.

DYLAN

Dylan consulted his map again, and drained his small bottle of water in one gulp. Chucking the plastic into a rubbish bin, he listened to it rattle in as he looked at the tacky town map. He wasn’t far from Lester Street. At least, that was the best he could glean from the ridiculously off-scale illustration of the town.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearly three in the afternoon, and yet the sun above was showing no signs of relenting. It beat down on him, the buildings, the tarmac, and the desert, with equal force. Nature was indiscriminate.

He wondered what he would find when he got there. He knew he was taking a chance, but risks were something he’d learned to shrug off. If experience was anything to go by, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.

Of course, the way Sasha had dropped that tip told him that something had definitely gone down. He was almost certain that a crime had been committed. A doubt flitted into his mind: what if this was completely unrelated to the wolf? What if he was just following an incorrect thread blindly? All this attention he’d received from the police could be g**g-related. The waitress at the café had said there were meth houses popping up in the area.

But that wasn’t what his animal told him. His bear, bleeding through into his human cognition at the edges, told him he was on the right path. He had to trust his instincts. He had done so his entire life, and he wasn’t going to stop now.

Besides, it was his only lead. There was nothing else to go on. He’d been walking across town all morning, since before the sun was up, and hadn’t seen any signs of the wolf, hadn’t seen any tracks, not that they’d stick around for long. The endless light breeze washed the desert town clean with sand.

Arriving at Lester Street, Dylan saw yellow police tape cordoning off an entire house, and he knew he had found what he was looking for.

He looked around, specifically for Monroe’s white car, but all the parked cars looked empty, so Dylan approached the taped-off house. Everything on the outside looked fine. There was no sign of forced entry; the door didn’t look like it had been busted open, and there were no broken windows.

It was strange, though, that there wasn’t a police guard, especially as this must have happened earlier today. If it had happened earlier than today, it would have been in the paper.

He thought about that article about Sasha, remembering that he had read she had been meritoriously promoted. He wondered what exactly she had done to earn it. The details were sketchy at best. She was the first female Detective Inspector in the town, and the only woman in her precinct. It must have been something pretty ballsy to force a higher-up’s hand with a political promotion, which was exactly what it smacked of.

It pissed him off that because she lacked a pair of testes, she’d been held down, and that it took something big to finally shake the system loose and give her the promotion she deserved.

Dylan thought about going into the taped-off house, but decided against it for now. He wanted a better idea of what had gone on, and so looked at the neighboring houses to the left and the right. All low bungalows with wide, slatted roofs, they were designed to keep the cool air in and the hot air out, and so were probably quite airtight. But if somebody had left a window open, a neighbor perhaps, they might have heard something.

He went first to the house on the left, and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and so he tried again, this time banging harder. The door’s hinges were old, and he could hear the screws rattling.

“Coming,” he heard, followed by a raspy cough. The door opened, and he saw a woman standing there, in her nightie, with a cup of coffee in her hand that smelled strongly of whiskey. “Well, aren’t you dashing!”

“I’m with the police,” Dylan said. “Actually, I just got off shift, but they’ve sent me down here to clarify your statement.”

“Again?” the woman asked, tapping her feet. The smell of stale cigarette smoke wafted out from behind her.

“I just wanted to clarify, you said that this morning you saw a…” Dylan let his voice trail off, hoping the woman would answer for him.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I mean, it’s just, the boys at the station were a little unclear,” Dylan continued, trying again. “You didn’t hear anything?”

“No, I keep my windows shut up tight and locked.” She sniffed. “That woman detective this morning felt the need to remind me to do so.”

“So you really saw-” Dylan had been about to say ‘nothing’ when she cut him off.

“Yes, I did. Nobody believes me, but it’s the truth. It was huge. Bigger than any dog I’ve seen ever before. Then again, I’ve never seen a Great Dane.”

A smile broke over Dylan’s face. “I understand. Thank you very much, ma’am.”

“Would you like to come in for some coffee?”

Dylan looked at her cup, and then shook his head. “No, that’s quite alright. We, uh, can’t-”

“That’s right,” she said, cutting him off. “Can’t take anything.”

“That’s right, ma’am. Thank you again, you’ve been very helpful.”

“Tell you the truth,” the woman added. “It looked a bit like a wolf. Crazy, right? In the desert. Believe that?” She shut the door, and Dylan heard the sounds of three latches locking. Excitement thrilled through him. His instincts had been right.

He turned his gaze onto the crime scene. Just what the hell had the wolf shapeshifter done?

Dylan stepped back from the door, and walked back to the pavement. He looked up and down again, and shoved his hands into his pockets, thinking. The possibility that she had seen a shadow and then embellished her tale loomed, especially since he had smelled the waft of whiskey in her coffee.

Making his way to the cordoned-off house, he didn’t know what he expected to find, but he did realize that a part of him was holding back, stalling, because he didn’t want to discover that the wolf, the shapeshifter, the only other one of his kind that he had managed to track – possibly the only other one in existence – had done something horrible.

Sighing, he ducked under the tape, and tested the front door’s knob, hand wrapped in the bottom of his t-shirt. It was unlocked. He opened it and stepped inside.