Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"Can you find all the body parts in those pictures?" Edward asked, looking at Nolan.

The Captain was quiet for a moment, watching everyone's face. Only Logan had looked away, arms crossed over his chest, as if he were trying not to give anything away. Finally, Nolan said, "No, but you could have stray dogs, or crows that picked up some pieces."

"Do you see animal footprints in the blood?" Pearson asked.

Nolan leaned over Edward farther, looking at the pictures. I pushed them closer toward him, but he finally shook his head. "No."

"We don't rule out crows, or other birds flying in and grabbing some of the body before we found it, but there's no bird native to the area that could carry off enough of the body to explain the missing pieces."

"What do you think happened to the missing body parts?" I asked.

"I don't know," Nolan said.

"I was actually addressing everyone in the room with the question, not just you, Nolan. You're as late to this party as I am."

"We'd like to hear your theories first," Sheridan said.

"Why?"

"Forrester had his theories, but I requested he not share them with you until you had your own opportunity to view the evidence yourself," Pearson said.

"Why withhold information from me?"

"Because Ted here has been bragging about you for days, and we wanted to see if you're as good as he said," Logan said, his arm flung out from his body and half-pointed and half-flapped toward Edward.

"That is not it," Pearson said, frowning at Logan.

Sheridan stepped away from the map to say, "Ted had some . . . interesting insights about this particular series of photos. We wanted to see if another vampire hunter would come to the same . . . insights."

They were all being so careful about their word choices; even Logan had been less obvious and that seemed like something he found difficult. I sighed and gave Edward a look. He gave me a steady look back. "I'd have told you, because I know you'll see it."

I gathered the pictures back from Nolan and spread them out in front of me again. "Did you put these pictures in here to trip me up?" I asked.

"What do you mean, trip you up?" Sheridan asked.

"Trick me."

"No. I mean, no." She looked puzzled enough that I believed her.

"Are these photos from another case?" I asked.

"Why would you ask that, Marshal?" Pearson said.

"They don't match. Not just this man, but any of the dismembered bodies."

"We only have three," Sheridan said.

I looked at her to see if she was kidding, but she looked totally serious. "Does Dublin get enough dismembered bodies that three new ones are no big deal?"

"No, of course not," she said.

"It's as rare a crime here as it is back in your city," Pearson said.

I looked at Nolan and Edward. The first looked puzzled, and the second inscrutable. No one kept a secret like him, no one alive anyway.

"This doesn't look like the work of a vampire," I said.

"We thought they were strong enough to do it," Pearson said.

"They are, but they don't usually go in for this kind of display of pure visceral violence."

"Why not?" Pearson asked, and he was looking at me as if he wanted to see inside my head to exactly what I was thinking.

"It wastes blood and it's messy. Once you tear into a fresh body like this, you are going to be covered in blood and gore. No way could you walk the streets after that and not have someone call the police."

"Except for the wasting blood part, what you just said could apply to anyone," Pearson said.

"A human being couldn't rip a body apart like that," Logan said, flailing his arm nearly into Sheridan's shoulder. He stepped away from her as if she were hot to the touch and went around to the other side of the room near the door.

"It doesn't look like a blade was used to dismember the bodies; am I wrong? Did you find tool marks?"

"No, no tool marks," Pearson said.

"Then I don't think a human being did it."

"Then what are you talking about, Blake?" Logan said.

"I'm saying you might have a vampire crime spree and something else has moved into the city, too. I agree it's supernatural, but the one thing vampires can't do is eat solid food. A human serial killer could take souvenirs to eat later but isn't strong enough to tear the bodies apart. A vampire could tear the bodies up but would have no reason to take meat away from the scene."

"Did you just call the victims' body parts meat?" Logan demanded, striding into the room and trying to fill more space than he could. Pearson and Nolan were taller, and almost everyone in the room lifted more weights than showed on their frame, and that included Sheridan now that I'd seen her arms in the short sleeves of her white blouse. She was built like a taller version of Mort, all sinew and muscle except with more curves. She might work at being thin, but she worked out, too. I liked that I wasn't the only woman in the room with perceivable biceps.

"That's what I think our killer thinks."

"What do you mean, Blake?" Pearson asked.

I fought a sudden urge to look at Nolan. "A shapeshifter could dismember the body without tools and could have just eaten part of the body."

"But wouldn't a shapeshifter be covered in blood and unable to hide from the police just like a vampire or a human?" Nolan asked; if he felt weird taking part in the conversation, it didn't show. If I hadn't known his secret, I wouldn't have thought a thing about it.

"Yes, but a shapeshifter can literally change not just their clothes but their skin, so that the beast form could be covered in blood, but once they shift to human form again they're blood free and clean."

"But we should have still found a nude human passed out near the crime scene, and we didn't."

"I told them that not all lycanthropes have to fall into a comalike sleep after they switch back to human form, but they didn't want to believe me," Edward said.

"Why not? You're right," I said.

"Because all the literature says that they fall into a deep, almost comalike sleep after they shift from animal to human form," Pearson said.

"Unless you think you two boyos know more than all the other experts combined?"

"On this, yes, because the books you're reading are from people who studied lycanthropes, interviewed them. I live with them," I said.

"I'm just good friends with them," Edward said in his Ted voice, "but that's still more personal than the book experts."

"How can you be so certain of that?" Sheridan asked.

"Because we read the same books you're reading," I said, "and I read them before I was close to any shapeshifter. Most of them do have to sleep it off, almost like a blackout drunk. In fact, a lot of the ones that sleep hard like that don't remember most of their night in animal form."

"But you're saying that some of them just change to human form and can walk away from a scene like this?" Sheridan asked.

"Absolutely."

"Is this the point where I say I told you so?" Edward asked in a heavy down-home accent.

"Only if you're not the gentleman I know you are," Sheridan said with a smile.

Edward gave her a smile and a little nod. If his hat had still been on his head he'd have tipped it at her. I couldn't tell if he was flirting with her, or he was so far into his part as Ted that he couldn't react any other way.

"So you were right about her, Forrester," Logan said as he continued to pace the wall by the door. "You trained her. You taught her everything she knows."

"Oh no, Logan. I trained Anita to be better at killing the monsters. She taught me how to understand them better."

"Thanks, Ted, and thanks for nothing, Logan. Just love it when men assume that because there's a man in a woman's life they teach us everything we know."

He scowled at me, but he was an amateur compared to Nolan. "It's just a figure of speech, Blake."

"You just keep telling yourself that, Logan, while the rest

of us try to catch the bad guys."

"What do you mean, bad guys, Blake? You're here to help us find the vampire that's behind all this, so it's just one bad guy."

"Someone is also killing people by tearing them apart, and that's probably not a vampire, and there are a couple of neck wounds that don't show any fangs."

Edward picked them out of the pile of photos without me needing to point them out. He handed them to me and I held them up to Logan, Pearson, and Sheridan like I was doing show-and-tell. If Nolan wanted to see them better he would have to move his chair. "Did your medical examiner find any marks that couldn't have been made by human teeth?"