For a Few Demons More(21)

I followed Glenn to midway down the Inderland side, watching him double-check the card against a slip of paper before unlocking the door and yanking it open. “Came in Monday,” he said over the sound of sliding metal as the tray slid out. “Iceman didn’t like the attention given to her, so he gave me a call.”

Monday. As in yesterday? “The full moon isn’t until next week,” I said, avoiding the sheet-draped body. “Isn’t that early for a Were suicide?”

I met his deep brown eyes, reading a sad understanding. “That’s what I thought, too.”

Not knowing what I would see, I looked down as Glenn folded the sheet back.

“Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed. “Mr. Ray’s secretary?”

A sour expression fixed on me. When had being a secretary become a high-risk position? No way had Vanessa committed suicide. She wasn’t an alpha, but she was pretty damn close.

Glenn’s surprise turned to understanding. “That’s right,” his low voice rumbled. “You stole that fish from Mr. Ray’s office.”

Irritation flickered through me. “I thought I was rescuing it. And it wasn’t his fish. David said Mr. Ray stole it first.”

Eyebrows bunched, Glenn seemed to think it made no difference. “She came in as a wolf,” he was saying, his manner professional as his eyes lit on only the bruised and torn parts of her naked body. A small but gorgeous koi tattoo swam in orange and black across a high patch of her upper chest, a permanent sign of her inclusion into the Ray pack. “Standard procedure is to turn them back after the first look. It’s easier to find the cause of death on a person than on a wolf.”

The smell of dead things in a pine forest was getting to me. It didn’t help that I was running on empty. The coffee wasn’t setting well anymore. And I’d known the SOP, having briefly dated a guy who made the charms to force a shift back to human. He was a geek, but he had lots of money—it wasn’t an easy job, and no one wanted it.

Jenks was making a cold spot on my neck, and not seeing anything out of the ordinary—other than her being dead and her arm torn to the bone—I murmured, “What am I looking at?”

Nodding, Glenn went to a low drawer at the end of the room and, after checking the tag, pulled it open. “This is a Were suicide that came in last month,” he said. “You can see the differences. She would have been cremated by now, but we don’t know who she is. Two additional Jane Wolfs came in on the same night, and they’re giving them a little extra time.”

“They all came in together?” I asked, going over to look.

“No,” he said softly, gazing down at her in pity. “There’s no connection other than the timing and that none of them can be found in the computer. No one’s claimed them, and they don’t match any missing-persons report—U.S.-wide.”

From my shoulder came Jenks’s muffled voice saying, “She don’t smell like a Were. She smells like perfume.”

I winced when Glenn unzipped the bag to show that the woman’s entire side had been ravaged. “Self-inflicted,” he said. “They found tissue between her teeth. It’s not uncommon, though they’re usually a lot less brutal than this and simply open a vein and bleed out. A jogger found her in an alley in Cincinnati. He called the pound.” The faint wrinkles around Glenn’s eyes deepened with anger. He didn’t have to say that the jogger had been human.

Jenks was quiet, and I searched for cool detachment as I examined her. She was tall for a Were, but not overly so. Big up top, with shoulder-length hair that curled gently where it wasn’t matted. Pretty. No tattoos that I could see. Mid-thirties? She took care of herself, given the definition. I wondered what had been so bad that she thought the answer was to end it.

Seeing me satisfied, Glenn opened a third drawer. “This one was hit by a car,” he said as he unzipped the sturdy bag. “The officer recognized her as being a Were, and she made it to the hospital. They actually had her turned back to treat her, but she died.” Creases appeared in his brow as he looked at her damaged body. “Her heart gave out. Right on the table.”

I forced my gaze down, flinching at the bruises and skin split by the accident. IV tips were still in her, evidence of the efforts to save her life. Jane Wolf number two had brown hair as well, longer this time, but it curled the same way. She looked the same age and had the same narrow chin. Apart from a scrape on her cheekbone, her face was untouched, and she seemed professional and collected.

Running in front of a car wasn’t uncommon, the Were equivalent of a human jumper. Most times they weren’t successful, landing under a doctor’s care, where they should have been in the first place.