I pushed the skull pictures to her. “The orbital bones are cracked, the jaw was forcibly removed in what looks like a massive wrenching motion, and the skull itself was cracked open.” I turned to another shot. “Brain removed.” I pushed a photo of the torso toward her. “All internal organs eaten.” I pointed to what looked like two puncture marks. “Wolves and dogs share a similar canine tooth length and have the same number of teeth—forty-two—but this one bite mark”—I indicated a set of score marks on a meatless bone—“looks deeper than dog canines. What did the medical examiner say?”
Grudgingly Nadine said, “He suggested the canines of the predator were longer and sharper than a dog’s. Maybe two and a quarter inches long.”
That was big even for a werewolf. “And?”
“He says there’s no animal in the state that has teeth that long except the Florida panther.”
She was testing me. Nadine smelled of challenge. Which meant she was holding back on something and was wondering if I’d catch it. I paged through the photos and realized what was missing. Inside me, Beast huffed with amusement. Alpha woman is playing cat games. Hiding paw prints in mud. Inside me, she yawned to show her canines. Beast killing teeth are longer than small cousin called Flo-ree-da.
Still mostly toneless, I asked, “Where are the photos of the footprints?”
Nadine relaxed suddenly and blew out a breath. “Okay. You know your way around. I wasn’t sure Rick—never mind. Here.” She handed me another folder, this one much thinner.
I chuckled drily and opened the file to expose pics of prints in the mud, cracked and desiccated, several full of dried blood. Without looking up, I said, “You weren’t sure if he sent you some ditzy woman he was sleeping with or a real expert.”
“Yeah,” she said, her tone as dry as mine. “Women seem attracted to my cuz.”
I separated out and placed three different paw prints on the desk. “He is a pretty boy, not saying he isn’t.” I pointed from print to print. “All these photos have claws in the prints. Puma concolor coryi, like all pumas, have retractable claws and most prints display clawless, meaning claws retracted. Yours?”
“All with claws exposed. So. Not a lion.”
“And Florida panthers have been extinct in this state for a century or more,” I said. “It would be astounding to have three in one place.” I tapped the smallest print and spread my hand over it. According to the ruler beside the print, the paw pad was more than four inches across. “This wolf or dog is the smallest of the three, and while the density and water content of the substrate makes a difference in the size of the paw prints, I’d estimate this one weighed in at one twenty. Big for a gray wolf.” I pointed to the larger print, which was more than five inches long and more than four inches across. “Maybe three hundred pounds. Gray wolves in this country are big, very big, at one fifty. That medical examiner?”
Nadine shook her head. “He said something about a dire wolf.” She shrugged. “An extinct wolf. He’s an amateur paleontologist and archeologist.”
I went back to the photos and handed her shots as I explained them to her.
“The limbs were disjointed by wrenching, pulling, and biting, the tendons twisted and snapped. The femurs were well gnawed but also cracked open for access to the marrow, indicating that strong bite I mentioned. The pelvic cavity was wrenched apart. I need to see the site to be sure, but I’m inclined to say werewolves, at least three, and one of them a freaking monster.”
Nadine shook her head and rubbed the back of her neck as if to massage away tension. Her face and forearms were tanned, but above her sleeve line her skin was pale olive and very much like Rick’s. She gathered up all the photos and shuffled them into the order she liked and set them in the proper folders. Then she sat in one chair on the supplicant side of her desk and pointed again at the other chair. It put us sitting side by side. She crossed her legs to reveal a pair of fancy cowboy boots, which I wanted to inspect, but I figured it might be rude for me to grab her foot and haul it up. She tapped the folders on her knee, staring off into the distance.
“Ricky said you have a contract with PsyLED to identify the animals and/or perpetrators and attempt a general location.”
I guessed where this was going. “And kill it or them only if necessity or emergency or exigent situation requires it. At which point I get paid a flat kill fee per head. All liability to be covered by the federal government.”
“How about if I get the governor to one-up that?”
Ah. Negotiation. I was getting good at negotiation. Innocently I asked, “Meaning?”
“What if the state government and the governor agree to pay for any liability over and above what the feds pay, but you agree to per-head cost for kills?” She met my eyes, hers cold and hard and mean. “Those things killed Mason Walker. He was a harmless, homeless war vet with enough medals to decorate a good-sized Christmas tree. He lived under one of the overpasses in town that cross over the canal. There was no reason for him to be down in Chauvin, or none that I could see. He didn’t have transportation, he didn’t have money, he didn’t have anything to offer anyone.”