We caught up with everyone else as they stood gathered in front of the barn, waiting, their collective mood sobered by the task at hand. When my father saw us, he nodded and stepped toward the entrance.
Old, rusty hinges squealed as he pulled open the huge double barn doors centered beneath the gable of the steeply pitched roof. A waft of air rushed out to meet us, oppressively hot, though the temperature outside had already begun to drop from melt-you-where-you-stand to almost-tolerable.
The interior of our picturesque old barn was just as quaint as the exterior. Empty stalls stretched down the left and right sides, leaving a wide, empty space in the center, running the entire length of the building. The dirt floor was scattered with loose, fragrant hay, as was the loft overhead. On either side of the doors, wooden ladders led to the loft, where several bales still sat, left over from the year before. In a couple of months, both levels of the barn would be stacked full of hay bales, until my father sold them to the neighboring ranches, which, unlike ours, kept animals.
My father’s van sat in the center aisle, looking out of place in a barn built nearly a century earlier. Dented, with peeling blue paint and spots of rust sprinkled like a scattering of red freckles, the van had seen lots of action in its fourteen years, and had carried more than its fair share of bodies.
Our Alpha herded everyone inside, then closed the doors, shutting us in with the heat. And with the dead stray. “Okay, Parker, let’s take a look.”
I glanced at my father as he spoke, and blinked in wry amusement. There he stood, sweating into a three-piece suit, his dress shoes dusty from the dirty floor, asking to see a cadaver Parker had brought home from New Orleans. Life couldn’t get much weirder. Surely.Parker opened the van’s rear doors and Vic came forward without being asked to help remove the black-wrapped bundle from the floor of the cargo area. The stench was strong and immediate, but it wasn’t the smell of rotting flesh. It was the smell of rotting food, from the garbage the body had been buried under.
Together, Vic and Parker lowered the bundle to the straw-strewn floor, then pulled strips of duct tape from the plastic, unwrapping the giant burrito and exposing the body beneath a smattering of putrefied lettuce, tomatoes, olives, and noodles.
Inhaling deeply through my mouth, I forced all traces of disgust from my expression and made myself look at the victim.
He was about my age, maybe a couple of years older, with freckles and nearly black eyes, which I could see because no one had bothered to close them. Or maybe the eyelids had simply refused to cooperate.
At a glance, I couldn’t tell that his neck was broken, but I was more than willing to take Parker’s word for it.
My father wasn’t. He knelt next to the man’s left shoulder and grabbed a handful of soiled brown hair, then gave the head a tug to the right. It moved with no visible resistance, and chills crept up my spine at the faint scraping of bones grinding together. His neck hadn’t just been broken. It had been broken in two. As in a completely severed spinal cord. He’d never stood a chance.
Our Alpha stood, brushing straw and dirt from his knee. “Ethan, check his ID.”
Ethan dug in the man’s back right pocket and came out with a thin black leather wallet, folded into thirds, which he handed over without opening.
My father took the wallet and rifled through the contents. He didn’t pass it around, nor did he remove anything. “Robert Harper. Twenty-three. From Picayune.”
Mississippi. He’d lived in the free territory, which was no surprise.
“So what was he doing in New Orleans?” Owen asked. I’d been wondering the same thing.
“He could have been doing anything,” Parker said. “Or anyone. But whatever he was doing, it must have been pretty important for him to risk trespassing on south-central territory.”
“Not necessarily.” All eyes turned to Marc, who stood leaning against the van, his arms crossed over his chest and one foot propped on a rear tire. “Picayune’s less than an hour from New Orleans, and we only have, what, two Pride cats living there other than Holden? What are the chances that either of them would get close enough to sniff him out? He’s probably made countless trips without us ever knowing. It wouldn’t be much of a risk for him.”
My father nodded in agreement. “Unfortunately, we can’t be everywhere all the time, and Harper obviously knew that.”
“Well, someone sure as hell sniffed him out this time,” Jace said.
“Evidently.” My father turned to me, and I held my breath. I dreaded catching his attention the way a child who hasn’t done her homework fears being called out by the teacher.
“How does Parker’s body compare with yours?”
Great. A pop quiz, I thought, recognizing his transition into lecture mode.
“How does Parker’s body compare with mine? Hmm.” I gave Parker a quick, theatrical once-over, and he smiled, clearly catching on to my line of thought. “Nice legs and killer biceps. But I have better boobs. No question.”
My father frowned, but not before a flicker of amusement flashed across his face. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I never would have seen it. “Faythe…”
“Oh, fine.” I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes, gathering my thoughts for the test he’d just presented. “There don’t seem to be many differences at a glance.”
Our esteemed Alpha nodded, and I continued, walking slowly around the body as I spoke. “The only difference I see at the moment is their respective ages. Harper was twenty-three, and Moore was about a decade older. Each apparently died of a broken neck. Both men are Caucasian, and both are strays. Both are sturdy in build, which makes me wonder how an attacker could get close enough to either of them to break his neck without suffering so much as a scratch.” Okay, technically Marc had pointed that out first, but if he could borrow my shower, I could borrow his wisdom. Right?
Squatting on the ground next to the corpse, I made myself examine the fingers. “And based on the lack of blood and tissue beneath their nails, I’m going to assume I’m right about that.”
I glanced up at my father, and he nodded for me to go on, his face carefully devoid of any expression. Behind him, Marc beamed at me, obviously pleased. I smiled at him and stood, rubbing my hands on the front of my shorts out of habit, though I hadn’t actually touched the corpse.
“Both bodies were found on our territory, but near the Mississippi border, each less than an hour from his own home.” I paused, closing my eyes in thought as the gears in my brain whirred fast enough to make me dizzy. “Oh, wait. I just thought of another difference.” A second pause. “No, two.”
“Go on.” Though my father’s face remained unreadable, I thought I detected a hint of encouragement in his tone.
“Assuming they died where they were found, Robert Harper was killed in the middle of New Orleans, but Bradley Moore died in an empty field in Arkansas, miles from anything but empty fields and a small patch of woods.”
“And the other difference?” Marc prompted.
“Moore’s murder was reported, albeit anonymously, but Harper’s was not. In fact, it’s a miracle Parker and Holden found him before anyone else did.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then the boss had to go and ruin my good mood. “Does anyone see any flaws in her logic?”
Glancing around boldly, I silently dared them each to speak. I’d ruined the curve in my college logic class with a perfect score on the final, and I was pretty confident in my deductions. So it came as a complete slap in the face when Ethan spoke up.
“Sure, no one called to report the body in New Orleans, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been reported. For all we know, the killer was on his way to a pay phone when Parker and Holden found the body.”
“That’s certainly possible,” Daddy said as I stuck my tongue out at Ethan, well aware of how immature I was being. My brother reciprocated, as I’d known he would. “Anyone else?”
Vic cleared his throat. “Well, this isn’t a flaw in Faythe’s logic, since she mentioned it, but there’s always the possibility that one or both of them were killed somewhere else, then moved.”“Yes, but without a forensics lab, we have no way of knowing, so I’m going to suggest we concentrate on what we do know. Or what we can smell.” My father’s eyes came to rest on me, then flicked to Marc, who now stood behind me, his arms wrapped around my shoulders.
Marc’s chin brushed the back of my head. “I’m guessing you want us to get up close and personal with Harper’s trace fragrances.”
The Alpha nodded.
“I can smell him fine from here, thanks,” I said, doing my best not to wrinkle my nose. While a human probably would have found the stench of rotten garbage offensive, for us it was virtually unbearable. At least in human form. As cats, we were more accustomed to nature’s less-pleasant scents, most of which were a normal part of life in the wild. But things were different on two legs.
My father frowned, and his face hardened, but before I could make things any worse for myself, Marc gave me a little shove and followed me toward the body.
Kneeling by Harper’s shoulder, I turned to look up at my father, who was wearing his Alpha face. Again. “I assume you want to know if he has the same weird smell as the last one.”