Waters shrugged and nodded, the responsibility of minding Jesse officially handed off to someone else. Jesse had to stand on one foot at a time to put on the booties, wobbling a little but managing to not fall over. Then Runa lifted the tape for him and he ducked under.
“Watch your step,” she ordered. “They put markers near the blood splatters they could find, but they keep finding more. Try not to step on any.” Jesse nodded and concentrated on stepping around the little yellow evidence markers.
“I’m just about done here,” Runa said over her shoulder. “But the ME is already getting his stuff out to take the body. You’ve only got a minute.”
Jesse followed her into the spotlights. There was a small crowd of crime scene technicians still moving around the scene, Glory among them, and the medical examiner’s people were waiting with a stretcher. Jesse nodded to a couple of techs he’d worked with before, feeling his cheeks redden self-consciously. It made no sense for him to be in the middle of such a complicated crime scene. He looked around for the Homicide Special detectives. “Runa, where’s . . .”
His voice trailed off as he noticed a woman in her late thirties approaching them. She was exactly as tall as Jesse’s six feet, a skinny woman with a splatter of freckles across her face and slightly frizzy red hair that she’d grown too long and tied back in a lifeless ponytail that hung down her back like a kicked dog. Despite her gangly limbs, she had no trouble negotiating the evidence markers. She made a beeline straight for Jesse with her right hand extended.
Runa started to introduce them. “Jesse, this is—”
“Sarabeth Bine,” said the red-haired woman. Up close she was a little older than he’d first thought, with plain weathered features. She shook Jesse’s hand vigorously. “And you’re Cruz. I’d introduce my partner, but he went to inform the next of kin. Runa tells me you have an eye for the weird ones. I appreciate you taking a look at this.”
“Not a problem,” Jesse said, trying to sound confident.
Bine looked thoughtfully at Jesse for a second, then pointed a finger at his chest. “You’re the one who wrapped up that La Brea Park thing a few months back, right? The golden pretty boy?”
“I’m not—I wasn’t really,” Jesse stammered, blushing fiercely.
Sarabeth Bine continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “That was weird. Okay, well, sign the register, take a quick look, and update me before you go. I gotta talk to the evidence guys about the search.”
“Search?”
She glanced at Runa. “You didn’t tell him? Good.” Bine smirked. “More fun if it’s a surprise.” To Runa, she added, “You should start packing up, but be ready to step in if they find anything.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Runa promised. Bine rushed off again like a questing bumblebee, and Jesse let out a breath he’d somehow been holding. “I gotta get back to work,” Runa murmured. “You good?”
“Yeah. Thanks,” Jesse said, off balance. He automatically reached out a hand to touch Runa’s shoulder, but stopped the gesture halfway there, awkwardly turning it into a professional clap on the back. Runa rolled her eyes and went off to finish her job.
Jesse put both women out of his mind and stepped up to the bodies. Both were nude, with male genitalia. The unforgiving spotlights washed out their skin tones, but Jesse could tell the man on the left had been white and had been shorter than the man on the right, who had been slim and black. They both looked like they’d been chewed and torn and sliced into ribbons of tissue. Jesse had seen a couple serious maulings back when he’d first joined the department, and this looked sort of like a super-powered version of that. The skin on all of the extremities had been shredded. Both bodies also had enormous, gaping torso wounds that must have flooded the ground with blood. The biggest single injury, though, appeared to be facial. Jesse inched even closer, trying to stay out of the worst of the blood splatter, and peered at the bodies for a long moment before his eyes were able to translate what he was seeing.
Both men were missing their lower jaws. It looked like they’d been torn off.
“That’s fucked up,” Jesse said aloud. He glanced around and saw Glory frowning over at him. She had been painstakingly tweezing bloody plant matter into little evidence baggies.
“Did you guys find the jawbones?” he asked her.
“No. But Bine has a team looking,” she said, her voice hushed. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Jesse.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Jesse replied absently. His first thought was werewolf, just based on the savagery. But this didn’t feel like the nova wolf’s kills, which had been methodical, calculated. Cold, but with purpose. This was messier than that. And why would any werewolf, nova or not, take the victims’ jaws?
But if it wasn’t a werewolf, what else could it be? Jesse thought suddenly of the La Brea Park murders, which had been committed by a human nutcase who liked playing with body parts. Those killings had been farther down the spectrum of gruesomeness, much more scattered and frantic than the nova’s previous kills. But these killings just didn’t have the same chaotic, sadistic glee as the La Brea Park murderer. His brow furrowed. Was it possible that this had nothing to do with Old World at all?
Jesse adjusted his weight, preparing to stand, but the movement caused the light to shift on the victim as well, and something shiny caught his eye. He shifted back, then again. There. Amidst the gore, he spotted the shiny surface of deep scar tissue. He played his flashlight over the body’s chest, and then moved the light up so he could stare at the top half of the face.
“What is it?” Glory asked anxiously. The bustle around them was picking up; Jesse was officially in the way of the ME’s people. But he wasn’t paying any attention, because he recognized the corpse.
“Hello, Terrence,” Jesse said aloud.
Chapter 25