Page 17

Chapter 17

It was strange leaving the body behind, but we couldn’t do anything about it. If we went all law and order on them, the dwarves would shut down and disappear and we’d get nowhere. Sometimes the human world was much easier than the paranormal one: in the human world law and order was more black or white and applied to everyone; in the supernat world, each faction had its own rules and regulations. It made things messy.

We were headed to the tailings site, hoping to find the real crime scene. Thomas was meeting us there; he’d already been in the wind when we’d finished up with Alfgar.

‘Thoughts?’ Gunnar asked, once we were back on the road.

‘I think a dwarf is definitely involved, although not necessarily the killer,’ Sidnee said.

‘A miner certainly,’ I agreed. ‘ Leif was pretty vitriolic about the head removal thing, though he seemed certain no dwarf would do it.’

‘You’d think a doctor would never kill a patient but it happens,’ Sidnee said darkly. ‘Shit happens. Life isn’t fair.’

I grimaced: she was having another of her downward spirals. I texted Thomas discreetly, letting him know that she needed some TLC. I hoped she’d do the same for me if I was feeling blue.

Gunnar looked in the rearview mirror. ‘Reggie,’ he asked, deliberately using Fluffy’s human name, ‘have you got anything?’

I looked over my shoulder at my dog. He cocked his head but didn’t indicate anything, nor did he shift to join the discussion. I tried to hide my disappointment. ‘What do you think, boss?’ I asked Gunnar.

‘I’m with Sidnee. I’d be surprised if the hag is involved. She doesn’t seem like the message sending type. She’d just kill and be done with it.’

‘I agree. However, she could have taken the head after the fact.’

‘Indeed,’ he grunted.

‘This is such a mess.’ I sighed. ‘We have one hair, a little dirt and a note. Alfgar could have picked up the stupid hair anywhere – hell, it could be one of his wife’s. She’s a redhead. And he was killed at the tailings pile. How much do you want to bet that Leif has radioed ahead and the dwarves have already found any blood there and taken it?’

Gunnar nodded. ‘I’m not fool enough to take that bet. Thomas said he’d meet us though, so we’re hustling. Maybe – just maybe – we’ll get there before they interfere with our damned crime scene.’ He thumped the steering wheel in frustration then pressed the pedal to the metal.

The SUV roared forward. We’d left the paved section and were on a well-used gravel road. We passed a huge truck full of dirt and kept on chugging around the mine, up a hill and then back down to a desolate looking valley. It was just the other side of the mine, but the hill and valley made it more of a journey than if we’d just been able to walk as the crow flies. Thomas’s dark-green truck was up ahead, so we pulled in next to him and I climbed out with our trusty black bag in tow.

Thomas looked as prepared as ever with a rucksack slung across both shoulders and a plethora of weapons strapped to him. Despite his deadly nature, he opened Sidnee’s car door and held a gentlemanly hand out to her. ‘Miss Fletcher,’ he greeted her with a soft smile.

She hit him playfully. ‘Sidnee,’ she cooed.

His smile widened. ‘Miss Sidnee.’

She laughed, and I felt a smile tug at my own lips. He was so good for her. I tried not to watch as he took her hand and raised it to his lips to brush a kiss against the back of it. If she wasn’t swooning, I sure was.

I texted Connor. I want a kiss on my hand next time you see me. xxx

The response was immediate. I’ll kiss you wherever you want, as long as I also get to kiss wherever I want. Xx

My cheeks heated. Deal! xx

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and tried to focus on work.

I let my Fluffy out of the car, sure that this was where he would shine. We weren’t sure where the murder had taken place and his nose was already full of Alfgar’s scent. ‘Okay, bud, time to find a murder site. You ready?’

He jumped a little on his front feet and barked. I adjusted his vest since it was skewed and flashed him an approving grin. ‘Hunt.’ He didn’t really need commands because he understood what I wanted, but after our demonstrations at the police academy I thought we should be more professional, if only to maintain the illusion to outsiders that Fluffy was really nothing more than a dog.

He started from where we were, working in an arcing pattern with his nose to the ground. Gunnar and I walked slowly behind him, staying out of his way as he searched for any scent that might indicate where the murder had taken place. Sidnee and Thomas followed, and I noted approvingly that he had slipped a protective arm around her slender waist.

Things were starting to cook between them and I was pleased to see it. She deserved a happy ever after, or at the very least some phenomenal sex and a few orgasms. I’d bet any money that Thomas was an attentive lover; he was a man who missed nothing.

Fluffy let out a bark and wagged his tail excitedly. We were in a flat valley dotted with small hills of gritty dirt and gravel. Everything was an even gunmetal grey mixed with brown; it was ugly and unremarkable to my uneducated eye.

My dog continued to work his way at ground level. I’d thought he was on to something, but now I wasn’t so sure; this was a large area and it could take him a while to search it all. I’d need to give him a break in a while – he deserved a snack and some water.

‘Thomas,’ I asked belatedly, ‘are any of these materials going to be bad for Fluffy?’ I’d read on my phone about the possibility of toxicity with some types of chromite.

‘No, I promise he’ll be fine,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Our mine is checked continually. We’ve never detected any hexavalent chromium – that’s the dangerous kind. Everything here has been tested, and it’s stable and nontoxic.’ He waited a beat. ‘Though I still wouldn’t recommend eating it.’

Sidnee burst out laughing, and Thomas looked faintly pleased. Huh. That was a joke? He was always so stoic that he was difficult to read at times but apparently Sidnee knew him well enough to recognise his joking face, or maybe she’d genuinely found his remark funny. Stan’s sense of humour was off, too; I blamed Sigrid and Gunnar.

‘No eating. Got it,’ I replied, giving a thumbs up.

Fluffy disappeared between two hills of tailings and I moved forward to keep him in my sight. He gave a sharp bark, whirled towards me excitedly and gave me three more clear barks in rapid succession. ‘We’re up,’ I called to the others as I ran towards him.

When I reached him, he was sitting and staring pointedly at a spot on the ground. I patted him. ‘Good boy.’

Gunnar took the camera and started taking photographs of the area as I scanned the ground for any obvious clues. The place Fluffy was staring at looked exactly the same as everywhere else and I couldn’t see any bloodstains. If Alfgar’s head had been removed here, I’d have expected to see something .

I squatted down and used the flashlight on my phone to scan the earth more closely; although the area was lit by bright halogen lamps, they threw odd shadows between the two hills. There was still nothing to be seen, not to my eyes anyway – which gave me an idea.

‘Sidnee, can you do a partial shift and look around with your mer vision?’ I asked.

She brightened. Her mer eyes could see extremely well in the dark and she had an increased colour spectrum. ‘Sure!’ She was bouncing on her toes, excited to help in a way only she could.

Before she said anything else, Thomas was reaching into his rucksack and pulling out a bottle of water. She beamed at him. ‘Thank you.’ With the water close to her, when she smiled again she revealed teeth like a shark’s – not unlike the hag’s – and her eyes were as black and flat as a great white’s.

When Sidnee went mer, her nature changed, too. She leaned into Thomas, her whole body sinuous and sensuous as she sniffed up his neck and gave a soft clicking noise I’d never heard before. Thomas held himself still as the woman he desired above all others wrapped herself around him like a stripper round a pole. She ground up against him and leaned in, then she went on tiptoes and lightly nipped his ear. He inhaled sharply and couldn’t hold back a low groan.

Abruptly, Sidnee seemed to remember what she was supposed to be doing – and it wasn’t taunting poor Thomas. She took a deep breath and, with a visible effort, turned away. His expression was carefully neutral but he couldn’t bank the heat in his eyes, and he was definitely staring at her ass when she exaggerated the swing of her hips as she sauntered to the scene of the crime. His breathing was faster, and he took the rucksack off his shoulders to hold casually in front of him. Heh-heh-heh. Yes, things were really starting to cook between them.

Sidnee crouched next to me and stared at the ground. ‘There,’ she pointed.

I looked around for a stone to mark the spot. ‘What is it? Blood?’ I asked, seeing nothing.

She sniffed. ‘Not blood, not sure what it is.’ Her speech was a little muffled. As a mer, she spoke underwater with a series of high-pitched sounds and clicks; her teeth weren’t that conducive to English. ‘It’s green, I think.’

‘Hold on.’ I retrieved a small spade and an evidence bag. ‘I’ll let you get it since you can see it.’ She nodded then removed my marker and scraped a tiny bit of whatever it was into the bag. ‘Anything else?’ I asked .

She blinked and her eyes went back to their usual warm brown. ‘No, there’s nothing. This site is very clean. Too clean,’ she added.

‘Dammit.’

‘Yeah.’ she smiled. ‘I wonder what that was? It was almost neon green in my mer sight. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

I shrugged and picked up the bag. ‘We’ll have to hope the lab can identify it.’

We walked back to Gunnar and Thomas. ‘What did you find?’ my boss asked.

I looked at Sidnee. It was her explanation to give. ‘Not sure,’ she admitted. ‘Some sort of green substance. There wasn’t much and we don’t know what it is.’

Gunnar picked up the evidence bag and stared at it. ‘I don’t see anything but dirt.’ He looked at us curiously.

‘Sidnee could see it but I can’t,’ I told him. ‘It’s only neon green in another spectrum of light that we can’t see. We’ll have to send it to one of the labs.’

He looked at Sidnee. ‘Great work, kid.’ She beamed, displaying her perfectly white, human-shaped teeth. Gunnar put the evidence in our black bag and I put the bag in the SUV.

‘Are you going home or back to work?’ Sidnee asked Thomas as we busied ourselves .

‘Home, I think. You want a ride?’ His voice was still a little husky, and I wondered what kind of ride he was offering.

She smouldered at him. ‘Oh yeah,’ she purred at him. ‘I definitely do.’

Thanks to my vampire hearing, I heard his muttered, ‘Thank God.’ I stifled a giggle with a lot of effort.

‘Thomas is giving me a ride,’ Sidnee said loudly to Gunnar and me.

I grinned. ‘Enjoy.’

She winked. ‘See you later.’ She gave a finger wave and climbed into Thomas's truck. As she slid all the way over to lean up against him, I smirked. She was off shift and I was still on, so I hoped she had fun – but it made me miss Connor even more.

Gunnar and I talked a bit about our case on the way back to town, though there wasn’t much to say. I wanted to get a better look at the note, dust it for prints and look at it under the microscope; it was pretty much our only real clue apart from the weird substance Sidnee had found. We had the red hair that we could send to the lab and maybe it would have a follicle attached to get a DNA profile; it wasn’t likely, but it was possible.

Once I received the emailed staff list from Leif, I’d have a tonne of miners to interview – including Faran Ashton, the dwarf who’d hated Alfgar because of his choice of a human partner. I also needed another tête-a-tête with our resident hag.

I’d take doughnuts again so that she wouldn’t be tempted to take my head.