Blue Moon (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 8)

32

The murder scene was in the middle of the woods. Five miles from the nearest road good enough to take even a four-wheeler, according to Dr. Onslow. It was a great place for trolls, but not for conducting a police investigation. They were going to have to hike everything in, and when the time came, hike the body out. Not pleasant, not fast.

One good thing about the isolated location was no gawkers. I'd been to a lot of murder scenes, but the only ones without an audience were either at really odd hours or in the middle of nowhere. The odd hours weren't enough if there were people nearby. People would climb out of their beds before dawn to see a corpse.

Even without the civvies, there was a crowd. I spotted the uniforms of Wilkes and one of his men. I was really looking forward to seeing them again today. The state troopers were thick on the ground along with some plainclothes state detectives. I didn't have to be introduced to them to know they were cops. They moved around the scene with little plastic gloves on, squatting on the balls of their feet rather than kneeling on the evidence.

Yellow crime scene tape wrapped around it all like a ribbon on a package. There was no uniform on this side of the tape because no one expected company from the direction opposite the road. I was wearing the Browning and the Firestar and the knife down my spine, so I dug out my license and held it aloft as I ducked under the tape. Eventually, someone would see me and some uniform would get yelled at for letting me cross the perimeter without being spotted.

A state trooper spotted me before I'd come down the hill very far. They'd made a wide circle of tape, and he'd been standing near the upper edge of it. He had brown hair and dark eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across his pale cheeks. He walked towards me, hand out, "I'm sorry, miss, but you can't be in here."

I waggled the license at him. "I'm Anita Blake. I heard you guys were looking for me. Something about a body you want me to take a peek at."

"A peek," he said. "You want to take a peek at the body." He said it sort of soft, not like he was teasing me. His dark eyes stared past me for a second, then he seemed to remember where he was. He held his hand out for my license.

I let him take it, look at it, read it twice. He handed it back to me. He looked down the hill to the knot of people. He pointed. "The short man in the black suit, blond hair, that's Captain Henderson. He's in charge."

I just looked at him. He should have taken me to the man in charge. No way would a cop who didn't know me let me walk a crime scene unaccompanied. Vampire executioners aren't civilians, but most of us aren't detectives, either. I'm one of the very few who deals so intimately with the police. In Saint Louis where most of the cops knew me by reputation or on sight, I could see it. But here, where no one knew me, no way.

I read the trooper's nameplate. "Michaels, is it?"

He nodded, and again his eyes weren't looking at me. He wasn't acting like a cop. He was acting scared. Cops don't spook easily. Give them a few years on the job, and they perfect jaded indifference: been there, done that, wasn't impressed, didn't bother to get a T-shirt. Michaels had sergeant bars on his uniform. You didn't get sergeant stripes in the state troopers by getting shook at every crime scene.

"Sergeant Michaels," he said. "Is there something I can do for you, Ms. Blake?" He seemed to be rebuilding himself before my eyes. It reminded me of the way Dr. Carne Onslow had recovered. His eyes lost that vague, glassy look. He looked at me straight on, but there was still a tightness around his eyes, almost like something hurt. What the hell was down at the bottom of this hill? What could make a seasoned cop look like this?

"Nothing, Sergeant, nothing. Thanks." I kept my license out because I was almost sure to be stopped again without a police escort. A woman was throwing up by a small pine tree. She and the man holding her forehead wore Emergency Medical Services uniforms. It's a bad sign when the EMS techs are throwing up. A very bad sign.

It was Maiden who stopped me. We stood there for a second or two just looking at each other. I was standing uphill, looking down at him.

"Ms. Blake," he said.

"Maiden," I said. I left off the officer on purpose, because as far as I was concerned, he wasn't an officer. He'd stopped being a cop when he became a bad guy.

He gave a small, odd, smile. "I'll take you through to Captain Henderson. He's in charge."

"Fine."

"You might want to prepare yourself, Blake. It's ... bad."

"I'll be all right," I said.

He shook his head, looked at the ground. When he looked back up, his eyes were empty, cold cop eyes. "Maybe you will, Blake, maybe you will. But I won't be."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Who the hell is she?" It was Captain Henderson. He'd spotted us. He came up the hillside in his dress shoes, sliding just a bit. But he was determined and knew how to walk in the leaves even in the wrong shoes. He was about five-eight. with short, blond hair. He had odd eyes that changed color as he moved through the dappled sunlight. One moment pale green, the next grey. He came up to stand between the two of us. He looked at Maiden. "Who is this, and why is she inside my perimeter?"

"Anita Blake, Captain Henderson," Maiden said.

He looked straight at me, and his eyes were cool and grey with swirling flecks of green. He was handsome in a clean-cut, ordinary sort of way. He might have been more than that, but there was a harshness to his face, a sourness, that robbed him of something likeable and pleasant.

No matter how funky the eye color when he looked at me, the eyes were distant, judging, cop eyes. "So you're Anita Blake?" His voice was almost angry.

I nodded. "Yes." I didn't let the anger get to me. He wasn't angry at me. Something was wrong. Something beyond the crime itself. I wondered what.

He looked me up and down, not sexual, but as if he were taking my measure. I was used to that, though it was usually a little less blatant. "How strong's your stomach, Blake?"

I raised eyebrows at that, then smiled.

"What in the hell is funny?" Henderson said.

"Look, I know it's bad. I just left your sergeant at the top of the hill so spooked he wouldn't come near it a second time. Maiden here's already told me it's awful. Just take me to the body."

Henderson stepped up, invading the hell out of my personal space. "You that confident that you can take it, Blake?"

I sighed. "No."

The no seemed to take some of the anger away. He blinked and took a step back. "No?" he said.

"I don't know if I can take it, Captain Henderson. There's always the chance that the next horror will be something so awful, I'll never recover. Something that stains my mind and sends me screaming. But so far, so good. So, take me to see the grisly remains. The foreplay is getting tiresome."

I watched the emotions play over his face: amusement, then anger, but finally, amusement won. Lucky me. "The grisly remains. Are you sure you're not a reporter?"

That made me smile. "I'm guilty of a lot of sins, but that's not one of them."

That made him smile. When he smiled, he looked ten years younger and was more than just ordinarily handsome. "Okay, Ms. Blake, follow me. I'll take you to see the grisly remains." He laughed soft, low, and deeper than his speaking voice, as if when he sang he might be a bass. "I hope you're as amusing after you've seen the show, Ms. Blake."

"Me, too," I said.

He gave me a strange look, then led the way down the hill. I followed because it was my job. An hour ago, I'd have said the day couldn't get much worse. I had a sinking feeling it was about to get worse -¨C much worse.