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Another pause. “Are you okay, Hart?”

“Iamcrazy?” That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

“No, you’re not fucking crazy,” he came back with, quickly enough that it made me feel a little better. “But you aren’teverworried about whether or not you’re right.”

Ouch. “That’s one way to tell me I’m an arrogant asshole, thanks, Tony,” I muttered.

He huffed. “Not what I meant, Hart. Especially since you usuallyareright, or at least close enough to be in the ballpark. The point is, you don’t sound like you. Usually you’d call me and be like ‘hey, give me something on this person,’ and instead you’re asking me if the very disturbing list of potential murder-disguised-as-suicide victims is actually raising a red flag.”

“Well, is it?” I asked him.

“It’s raising an entire field of flags,” he retorted. “No, you aren’t crazy, and yes, this is deeply concerning. Email me that list, and I’ll see if I can’t pull coroners’ reports on them.” He paused a moment, then continued. “I really hope they aren’t all victims, here.”

“I don’t think they are,” I told him. “I—I didn’t want to leave anybody off, but that just seems like too many.”

“Any is too many,” he replied, and I didn’t disagree.

“The part that worries me most is that Gregory said he was hit on the back of the head, but the coroner didn’t indicate an injury—it wasn’t enough to kill him, but it had to be hard enough to knock out a fucking shifter.”

Raj hummed. “Let me pull background for the coroner, as well, then. You got a name for me?”

I flipped through the file I was starting to build. “Dr. Leon Reynolds.”

“Leon… Reynolds.” He repeated it in the way you do when you’re writing something down. “Okay. I’ll look him up, look up his associates, all that jazz. Who’s primary on this case?”

“I talked to a Detective Smith, but when Ward called in his tip from Gregory, he talked to a Van Buren.”

“Smith. Van… Buren. Okay. I’ll look them up, too. Did your friend happen to mention who worked her sister’s case?”

“No. I can ask her, if you want.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just as easy for me to pull it as for you to hunt someone down. Easier, probably. Hang on a minute.” I heard shuffling, then I heard him ask Kurtz to look up the three names he’d written down, and that they were working in Shawano, Wisconsin. “Okay, Kurtz is on that. I’ll start looking into your list of potential victims.” He fell silent, but I could tell he was waiting to say something else.

“What is it, Tony?”

He let out a sigh. “I don’t know how much help I can give you on this one, Keebler.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I probably can’t claim jurisdiction in Wisconsin. Even if things get extra messy, you’ll end up having to deal with somebody else.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I figured,” I answered with a sigh of my own. “Can you tell me what you find, at least?”

“I can,” came the answer. “If it ends up mattering. And if it does, I can try to light a fire under somebody’s ass in the Shawano PD or possibly the local branch office.”

“That’s in… what? Green Bay?”

“Probably. I’m guessing that’s closer than Madison, Milwaukee, or… where the fuck is Eau Claire?” He said it ‘ew-claire.’

“Eau,” I corrected him. “The French way.”

“Whatever, Keeb-lehr.” His fake French accent was terrible.

I chose to ignore it. “Yeah, Green Bay is closest.”

“The main office is in Milwaukee, so you’ll end up with not much if Green Bay does want to get in on it, anyway,” Raj warned.

“To be completely honest, I’m not so sure I want Green Bay in on this,” I admitted.