We had been partners—friends—long enough; I knew that he knew what I was thinking. But I still felt the overwhelming need to hide any indication of my suspicions.
I nodded and opened my mouth, but when I tried to talk, my throat felt stuffed with sand. Alex put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently.
“Is there somewhere we can grab a drink of water?” Alex asked Romero, but kept his eyes on me.
“Yeah, sure.” Romero stepped back from us. “I can grab you guys something. You’re going to want it before we take a look at the crime scene . . . and probably to wash your mouth out with after.” Seemingly unaffected, Romero left the room and Alex and I were alone.
“So?” Alex’s brows went up into his bangs.
I flopped into one of the big leather executive chairs set in front of the monitors and swiveled so my back was facing them. “So, what?”
Alex cocked his head, his lips pursed. “Wolf.”
The way he said it, I wasn’t sure if he was asking or telling me. I started at my thighs, drew a squirrely figure eight on my jeans with my fingernail. “Is that what you think?” I finally asked him.
I heard Alex sigh. “I thought it, you said it.”
My ears burned.
“Did you recognize it—uh, him?”
I know the question wasn’t meant to be inflammatory, but I was suddenly mad. “No, I don’t know who that was,” I hissed. “My—our werewolves adhere to strict bylaws. You know it’s true, Alex. If not, this wouldn’t be the first case like this you’ve ever seen.”
Alex crossed his arms in front of his chest. “It isn’t.”
He turned and walked away leaving me sitting in the monitor room, the hum of the TVs mercifully drowning out any sound in my head.
Romero led us on a cursory walk of the crime scene. There wasn’t much to see as the room was in shambles from the attack, but every gauge, every blood-soaked slash brought me back to the Sutro Point crime scene, to the vacant eyes of those two girls as their blood pooled in the dirt. The magnitude of the destruction, of the images on the tape should have prepared me for the body. I steeled myself as we closed in on it, our bootied feet sinking into the heavy pile carpet, the blood bubbling around my toes. I knew it would be bad. But until Romero peeled back a few inches of the blood-soaked cloth covering Tia Shively, I didn’t know how bad.
I tried to suck in a breath. I tried to keep my knees from buckling, to keep my stomach from folding in on itself as what remained of Tia—what remained of her mangled body—looked up at me. Her face was so ravaged that I could only imagine what she must have looked like in real, non-grainy life. But even in death, her terror—her torture—was unmistakable.
“Oh God,” I breathed.
Alex nodded curtly once, all the blood rushing from his face and leaving it a pasty, sallow yellow. Romero dropped the corner of the sheet back down. “I thought we’d never see anything worse than the last one.” He laughed a barking, guttural laugh that had no joy in it and shook his head. “Guess I should have known better.”
“You have any leads?”
Romero shrugged. “You saw the tape, Grace, same as I did.”
“So what are you calling it?”
“Wild animal attack.”
My mouth felt glued shut. My feet felt rooted to the floor, but I felt like I wasn’t there, that I was watching the entire scene from above, ready to change the channel, to turn off the TV at any moment.
Romero jerked his head toward me. “Maybe you should get her out of here.”
I knew I should be angry. I was tired of being meek, of being led away by the elbow or patted on the head with a patronizing smile, but Tia Shively was more than I could take. I felt Alex’s fingers close around my arm; I felt for the floor with my toe as I tried to take a step, and suddenly I stopped.
“Are there any other cameras?” I managed.
Romero blinked. “Uh, no. I mean, she’s got six cameras, and you saw—” He breathed heavily, the buttons straining on his uniform. “You saw what happened.”
I shook Alex’s hand from my arm. “You think what did this—you’re sure it was an animal?”
Romero scratched his chin. “I don’t want to face the media and tell them that there is a wild dog loose in San Francisco. A dog—or wolf, or fuck, a wooly mammoth—that’s doing this kind of thing. People are going to think the police department has lost it. But you saw the same thing I did. That wasn’t human.”
I licked my lips. “What are you planning on doing?”
Romero swung his head toward the other officers and crime scene investigators in the room as they brushed for fingerprints and bagged evidence. He leaned in close and Alex and I leaned toward him. “I’m not a man who believes in any of this hoodoo or myths, but I saw what I saw. I’m getting my men silver bullets and I’m telling them to shoot to kill.”
Alex and I were silent as he drove me back to my car. We had just pulled into the police station parking lot when he looked at me, his face partially obscured by the moonless night.