“This is the Deep South!” I wailed. Fluffy little flakes of madness swirled on the chill breeze and dotted the knit cap covering Scott’s bald head. “It was nowhere near this cold an hour ago.”
“It’s called a cold front. Ninth grade science.” He stood with a hip cocked and a thumb tucked into his belt by his gun, looking every inch the “good ol’ boy” street cop that he was. We’d been teammates when I was on the road, and Scott had taught me more than a few tricks for dealing with the rural mentality. He made sergeant about the time I became a detective, and I had no doubt he’d someday be in charge of the Patrol division.
“Yeah, well,” I grumbled, “we’re not supposed to have snow down here!”
Scott let out a snort. “Would you rather have freezing rain?”
“I’d rather not have anything freezing, thank you very much.” I scowled and dug my hands deeper into my pockets. “I put up with hurricanes and the misery of Louisiana summer so that I don’t have to put up with snow or sleet or any other form of frozen wetness.”
“My god, you’re a weenie,” Scott said.
“I don’t like the cold!”
Scott turned to eye me, pursing his lips. “Well maybe you should try, oh, I don’t know, dressing for the weather?”
I hunched my shoulders in a vain attempt to keep the nasty little snow-bits from wiggling their evil way down my collar. “I didn’t know it was going to be this cold. Or snowy. ”I hissed the last word.
The stocky cop gave me a suitably withering look. “What, you don’t own a computer to check the forecast? A smart phone? A television? And is that really a Members Only jacket? I didn’t think anyone wore those anymore. Were you even born when that thing was made?”
I couldn’t exactly tell him that I’d been too busy putting a magical security system on the PD to check the weather, or that my other—warmer—jacket had been clawed by a demon. “Bite me,” I snarled instead.
His only reply was a laugh.
We were in the parking lot of the Beaulac Nature Center—which was a fancy name for a trail that wound through the woods and swamp. The “Center” part of it consisted of a shack not much bigger than a utility shed, and a Plexiglas-covered map of the immediate area. The lot was a mostly flat stretch of old gravel and sparse grass—barely big enough to hold the two Beaulac PD police cruisers, crime scene van, my unmarked and two other vehicles—an ancient and battered Peugeot, and a spanking new silver BMW.
The sight of the crime scene van pleased me. That meant that Crime Scene Technician Jill Faciane was already on the scene and doing her thing. A transplant from the New Orleans PD, who’d moved to Beaulac after Hurricane Katrina, she knew her shit, worked quickly and efficiently, and was my kind of smartass. Procedure dictated that crime scenes had to be processed before detectives could go tromping all over them, but if Jill was working I had solid hope that I wouldn’t have to stand out in the cold any longer than necessary.
I dug into the pockets of my jacket in the