Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

“You want me to go on a call? Alone?”

He didn’t look up at the obvious excitement, apprehension, and delight mixed together in my voice. “Sending coordinates and address to your cell. Meet Officer Holt at the scene. Convenience store robbery a little after midnight, on the heels of an earlier title loan shop robbery as the employees were closing. The businesses are within a mile of each other and the perpetrator in both cases was described as male, five-nine, black hair, pale skin, and ‘acting strangely.’ He stole cash and a gun and ammo from the pawn shop and food items and cash from the convenience store. Neither business’ security footage shows the unsub’s face, but both describe bloody clothing. The descriptions were similar enough for KPD to put them together. They want the place read for vampire.”

Unsub was cop-speak for unknown subject. “Species profiling because of blood and pale skin? Maybe he’s a butcher.”

Tandy didn’t look up, but the amusement was clear on his face in the glare of his tablets. “You get to decide what species. If human, you can give the investigation back over to the local PD.”

So, no crime workup, just a reading. Scut work. I gave a long-suffering breath and gathered my gear—my weapon and Kevlar/antimagic vest, the psymeter 2.0, and a comms set.

? ? ?

I didn’t push my old red truck, didn’t run lights and siren. The C10 wasn’t designed for the strain of pursuit or emergency driving, and since the delivery of my official vehicle had been delayed while I was a tree, I had to protect my only mode of transportation.

I reached the address to find a Pilot Gas and Convenience store just off Cumberland Avenue. Before I stopped, I drove around and found the title loan shop, an odd business for what was a midscale retail area. There was no crime scene tape, no indication of a crime committed, which was odd. I motored back to the gas and convenience store. The Pilot was newish, open twenty-four hours a day, with bright lights and a lot of traffic. It wasn’t the kind of place I’d expect a robbery during heavy business hours. After two a.m. maybe, but not before that. Again here, there was only a single strip of bright yellow crime scene tape around one entrance and one cash register, but no plethora of detectives.

I parked beside the KPD unit and pulled up the security footage of the Pilot robbery itself, which Tandy had sent as I drove. I watched on my tablet as the skinny unsub in jeans and a dark hooded jacket walked through the entrance and pointed his pocket at the cashier closest to the door. The pocket could have concealed a hand holding a weapon, but looked like the tip of a finger. It was hard to say. The cashier removed a handful of bills from the drawer and handed them to the subject, who reached out and accepted the bills, his hand narrow, thin, and shaking, as white as any vamp’s. He left the Pilot at a steady, slogging pace. Not running, not panicked, but not acting odd in any way I could see. No cameras caught his face, and he seemed to disappear into the shadows across University Commons Way toward the Walmart.

Something seemed odd and I watched the video again, realizing the male unsub could be a gangly female. The slender hand. The way he, or she, ran wasn’t suggestive of gender.

I read the rest of the report. The kid—estimated to be about seventeen by the cashier—had asked for four hundred dollars. Not everything in the register. Just four hundred dollars. That was weird. I looked up felonies and discovered that in Tennessee, a robbery involving less than five hundred dollars, and committed without a weapon, (fingers didn’t count) was a misdemeanor. That explained the lack of police presence here, just the one police car, Unit 102.

I accessed the surveillance cameras from the earlier title loan shop robbery. Same slim form, same white skin, same hand in pocket. A finger. He had stolen a gun and ammo as well as money. Here, the lanky thief stole less than a hundred dollars and the .32 Smith & Wesson. He—I chose male for convenience—had calculated the value of the gun and ammo, adding them to the cash. Stealing a gun carried heavier penalties. I was guessing he didn’t know that. But, if both robberies had been connitted by the same person, he or she had been in possession of a gun on the second robbery, and hadn’t used it. So why steal the gun?

I clipped my badge where it could be seen, adjusted my vest and weapon, and stacked my tablet on top of the psymeter. The robberies hadn’t been violent, but the robber wasn’t in custody. He’d taken off on foot, was smart enough to dodge security cameras, and was armed. Better safe than sorry. I checked my comms unit and went inside, spotting the cop right away, leaning over the counter, chatting with the Pilot employee. I said, “Officer Holt?”

The cop turned and looked me over, a frown on his face. He muttered, “You gotta be kidding me,” just loud enough to make sure I heard. Holt didn’t like female special agents, especially ones who looked too young to have come up through the ranks and paid their dues, as he had. And based on the hint of fear in his eyes, he especially didn’t like paras, and I didn’t look quite human right now.

His attitude got all over me like deer ticks on a dog. “Not kidding at all, Officer Holt.” I looked him up and down just like he looked at me, my eyes alighting on his thinning hairline and his paunch, which he sucked in to make himself look in better shape. “You were hoping for a nice big former Green Beret with scars and wartime experience? You call PsyLED about a nonviolent, very questionable vamp robbery after midnight, and you get me. Special Agent Ingram. You got a problem with that, you can call your headquarters and see if they’ll let you run and hide from the big bad para.” I tapped my chest.

Holt flushed.

“Did you get all that, Special Agent Dyson?”

“Every word,” Tandy said into my ear. “Making friends, there, Ingram.”

“I got your report,” I said to Holt. “How about you stand outside and ask people to wait out there for five minutes while I read the premises.” I turned my back on him and set the psymeter on the counter near the Slim Jims and Ho Hos. I heard the door open and close and I caught sight of Holt walking it off outside. I hadn’t done a very good job improving interagency relations. LaFleur would probably have a few things to say about that.

To the clerk I said, “Okay if I tape our interview?”

“Sure.” The cashier nodded. He was in his midthirties, with patchy facial hair and an old odor of alcohol and weed about him. Idly I wondered where he’d hid his stash when he’d had to call the police. His name tag read HANK.

“Okay, Hank. Speak into the tablet. Tell me your full legal name, the date, and the current time. Then tell me what happened.” I set the tablet to record and as he talked I calibrated and did QC on the psymeter 2.0. His story was pretty much what I had seen in the security cameras. “Can you describe the alleged thief?”

“Kid. I’m saying male. I mean, chicks don’t rob stores, ya dig?” I nodded, encouraging him to talk. “Probably between seventeen and twenty. White skin, black greasy hair to his shoulders, skin was dirty, medium height. Skinny.” He added, “He was shaking like a junkie, but the thing that made me think vampire was the white skin and the blood on his clothes. And he talked funny, so I was thinking fangs.”

I was betting that this kid loved horror movies and read vamp porn. “But you never saw fangs?”

“No, ma’am. Just the blood on his clothes and the white skin. But I thought bloodsucker and the cop agreed.”

“Uh-huh. Right. Okay, with your permission, I’m going to read you, then take a reading everywhere the perpetrator stood.” I calibrated the four levels to zero and then scanned Hank, who was excited to be part of a PsyLED investigation and who read fully human. But his countertop read moderately low on psysitope one, slightly lower on two and four, and a rise on three, giving a nod to every para in the book. The Pilot store had a lot of traffic and the residue had accumulated. I frowned. Such an accretion of psysitopes didn’t make sense. I pulled up a map and compared the location to the Glass Clan Home and to the address of the leader of the local witch coven. The store was close enough to these social gathering places to be used for gas and late-night purchases, hence the readings. “What made you think the subject was male?”