Keeper of the Night

The man could be extremely aggravating. Werewolf Keepers were often like that, she had discovered. But then, the more experienced a Keeper was, the more he or she often took on the characteristics of a charge to a greater or lesser degree. She suspected that Hugh could become a wolf at the drop of a hat.

With her precious Fender in hand, she left the café. She heard Hugh locking the door behind her.

She headed to the ten-year-old Volvo that her uncle had left for her use, set her guitar in the trunk and started off down the street. Her song really hadn’t been half bad. “Hollywood, oh, I hate Hollywood,” she sang as she drove.

Brodie nodded to the attendant on duty and proceeded down the hallway of the morgue, past rooms where dozens of bodies in various stages of investigation were stored.

That was one thing about L.A. that wasn’t so good. The city was huge, and the number of people who died on the streets, many of them nameless and unknown, was high. Possibly even sadder were the ones whose names were known—but whose deaths went by unnoticed and unmourned.

Of course, the morgue also housed the remains of people who were known and loved—but who had died under circumstances that ranged from suspicious to outright violent.

That night, however, he passed by the autopsy rooms, remembering all too clearly the one he’d entered when he was sixteen, a room filled with corpse after corpse wrapped in plastic shrouds—so many dead. His father had arranged it after discovering that Mac had left a party after drinking. Luckily he had only creamed the garage door. But it might have been a person, and his father had made sure he knew what the consequences could have been.

He reached a door marked Dr. Anthony Brandt, Senior Pathologist.

Tony undoubtedly knew that he was coming. Tony knew a lot. He had an amazing sense of smell that had served him well as a medical examiner. He could smell most poisons a mile away.

Before Brodie could tap on the door, Tony had answered it. “I was expecting you tonight,” he said.

“Oh?”

“We’ve gotten another body that I think belongs to your killer.”

“Where did he leave his mark this time?” Brodie asked.

Tony just looked at him, ignoring the question. “You still doing the show?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“I saw that the cast included a Mac Brodie. That’s you, I’m assuming. Not much of an alias,” Tony said.

“None of the other actors actually know me. Being Mac Brodie instead of Brodie McKay works all right—if anyone looks me up, the captain has made sure that they’ll find my online résumé and all the right information. Makes it easier if someone who does know me calls me either Mac or Brodie.”

Tony mused on that for a minute. “You’re not the only one going by a stage name, are you? I noticed a Jack Hunter in the credits.”

Brodie shrugged. “You’re right—that’s Hunter Jackson. Obviously the cast and crew know who he really is—they’re just sworn to secrecy.”

“So he is the well-known director?”

“Yes. The play is his baby, really. He found the script and decided to produce it, then sell the film rights. The play was written by a friend of his, our stage manager. Name’s Joe Carrie. Nice guy, about forty—and definitely human.”

“So you don’t think he’s our murderer?” Tony asked.

Brodie shook his head. “No, and there’s no proof the killer’s even involved with the play itself. He could just be a theater buff. But the play does seem a solid place to start, at least. So, anyway, what makes you think our killer is responsible for this corpse?”

“Exsanguination, for one thing.”

Tony was an interesting guy; he looked like what you would expect a werewolf to look like in human form. He was big and muscular, with broad shoulders and an equally broad chest. He had a head full of thick, curly light brown hair, and when he was on vacation, he grew a beard that would do Santa proud.

“And?”

“There’s never anything obvious about the marks he leaves behind, but this time it looks like they’re on the thigh. This is one clever vampire. He makes sure that he disposes of the bodies in a way that will lead to the most decay and deterioration in the shortest time.”

“Want to show me the body?” Brodie asked.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Tony led the way down the hall to one of the autopsy rooms.

It was a large room, big enough for several autopsies to take place at one time. Now, however, the room was quiet and dim, and only a single body lay on a gurney on the far side of the room.

Strange, Brodie thought. He was Elven, although the Elven were pretty damned close to human in a lot of ways, maybe more human than they wanted to be. And he was a detective, often working undercover in some of the grittiest neighborhoods of a tough town where bluebloods crossed paths with derelict drug dealers. But despite both those things, he’d never gotten over the strange sensations that nearly overwhelmed him at an autopsy. Life—flesh and blood—reduced to sterile equipment and the smell of chemicals on the air. The organs that sustained life ripped from the body to be held and weighed and studied. It was just somehow…wrong, despite the fact that the work done here was some of the most important that could be done for the dead and the living both.

Tony pulled down the sheet that covered the victim, and Brodie stared first at the face, his jaw hardening.

“You’ve seen him before?”

Brodie nodded. “It’s hard to tell, really, the body is so decomposed. But I think I recognize him. I think he was at the first performance of the show.”

“Any idea who he is?” Tony asked.

“No, he was just a face in the crowd. Second row center. Have you gotten a hit off dental records? What about fingerprints?”

“Look at the hands,” Tony told him, pulling the sheet down farther.

Brodie did, and he felt his stomach lurch sharply, even though he’d expected the scene that met his eyes.

The killer had chopped off the fingers.

Tony nodded toward the body. “Just like the other two. And here’s what I found—you’ll need that magnifier there.” He pointed.

Brodie picked up the small magnifying glass that Tony had indicated, then walked down to join Tony by the foot of the gurney. Tony slipped on gloves and moved the thigh. The skin was mottled and bruised looking.

“No lividity?” Brodie asked.

“The discoloration and bloating you see are because he was dumped in a pond out by one of those housing projects they never finished off Laurel Canyon—suspiciously near your theater,” Tony said. “But use the magnifying glass and check out his thigh. There are marks. They’re tiny, and they’re practically buried in swollen flesh, but they’re there. And, of course, the body was pretty much drained of blood. There is a slash at the throat, but despite the damage and decay, I believe it was postmortem.”

Despite his feelings about autopsy and corpses, Brodie donned gloves, shifted the dead man’s leg and peered through the microscope, searching for the telltale marks, then looked up at Tony.

“Third body in two weeks with the same marks and same method of disposal,” Tony said.

“And I know I’ve seen this one at the theater,” Brodie said wearily.

“And the killer dumped them all close to that theater,” Tony told him. “Your captain seems to have been on the mark.”

Brodie nodded. “Yeah, without his insight the victims might have fallen on to the big pile of cold cases, with no leads to go on. The captain is…a smart guy.”

“Guess that means you stay undercover,” Tony said. “Too bad L.A.’s three best Keepers have been called to council. This is one hell of a mess.”