Fair Game

Goldstein commented, ‘In 1984, two of the victims matched our UNSUB’s previous victim choice. From 1985 on out, there are no apparent patterns to the victims. Men and women, young and old. He’s still kidnapping, raping, and torturing them for a week before going after the next victim.’ He took his time, showing them each victim’s face. Charles noticed that Goldstein never had to consult his notes for the names, and that when he did go to his notes, it was usually to confirm something he’d just said. ‘The next year he started in September.’

Charles knew three of the victims in 1985 and all of the bodies found in 1986.

Stop him, he told Anna, deciding that the killer’s victimology was no coincidence. This is important. Go back to that first year, the one the FBI joined in the hunt.

‘Wait,’ Anna said, glancing down at her notes. ‘Can you go back to the victims in 1984?’

The fae came out about that time, Charles told Anna. Melissa Snow was fae and as close to eighteen as my father is. She wasn’t out then, I don’t think, but she was fae.

Maybe it was an accident? Anna thought as Melissa’s face, shining and happy in a family-type snapshot, appeared on the monitor next to her gray and lifeless face. The fae aren’t exactly everywhere, but it is reasonable that he picked one up by mistake.

She wasn’t a half-breed, he told her. If someone picked her up thinking they were getting a teenaged human, they’d never have been able to keep her. She wasn’t powerful, but she could defend herself better than a human would have.

Can I tell them that?

Absolutely. Then have them go to the next year. Some fae have no bodies when they die. That could be why there is no fourth victim.

Goldstein watched Anna with sharp eyes. ‘Was she a werewolf?’

‘No,’ Anna said. ‘Fae.’ And then she told the feds what Charles had told her.

‘Fae.’ Singh frowned. ‘How do you know?’

‘I’m one of the monsters, Dr Singh,’ Anna said without a pause. ‘We tend to know each other.’ It wasn’t quite a lie. ‘The question is, how would the – what did you call him? The Big Game Hunter? How would he know what she was? If he attacked her thinking she was human, she’d have escaped.’

‘I knew the agent who worked this case,’ said Goldstein. ‘Melissa had parents and two siblings who were ten and seven at the time. He talked to them. She was eighteen years old.’

No parents, Charles told Anna. Or maybe they were fae as well. Or she could have taken her appearance from a dead girl. Hard to say. But I knew her … not well, but well enough to say that she was not eighteen.

Could the victim have been the real Melissa Snow and the fae took her identity after she died?

Anna was just covering all the bases, but it was a good question. When had he met Melissa? Years tended to blend into one another … I knew her during Prohibition, she was working at a speakeasy in Michigan – Detroit, I think – but long before the eighties.

‘She was fae,’ Anna said. ‘If she had parents and siblings, I suspect they were also fae. They know how to blend with society, Agent Goldstein. Apparent age has very little to do with reality when you’re dealing with the fae.’

‘The other two?’ Goldstein asked, though he didn’t sound convinced.

‘I’m not an expert on fae,’ Anna said. ‘It’s just chance that I recognized Melissa. But there are fae among the victims every year from here on out.’

Goldstein asked, ‘Every year?’

That would account for the lack of bodies, Charles told her. Some of the fae just fade away when they die. If the fae lost his glamour, the other fae would make sure the body never came to light.

‘That I’ve seen.’

There was a growing tightness in Goldstein’s shoulders, and an eagerness in his scent that told Brother Wolf that Goldstein was thinking, adding this to all of the bits and pieces he knew about the killer, trying to see how this changed the big picture.

Charles considered the repercussions of a serial killer who hunted fae. Surely the Gray Lords would have noticed that someone was killing their people? But they were not Bran, who protected and loved his wolves. If a fae who was not powerful and kept his head down for safety died, would the Gray Lords who ruled the fae even notice? And if they did notice, would they do anything?

‘Could the killer be a fae?’ That was from Pat, the Cantrip agent. ‘If he’s been killing since 1975 and he was human, he’d be using a wheelchair by now.’

Agent Fisher frowned. ‘I know an eighty-year-old man who could take you with one arm tied behind his back, Pat. And if this guy was eighteen at the end of the Vietnam War, he’d be a lot younger than eighty. But most serial killers don’t last this long. They devolve or start making mistakes.’

‘The Green River Killer hunted for over twenty years,’ offered Pat. ‘And when they finally found him, he was a churchgoing married man with two kids and a stable job he’d had for over thirty years.’

Goldstein hadn’t been listening; he’d been staring at Anna without really looking at her. Thinking.

‘I don’t think he’s fae,’ he said. ‘Not our original killer. Why else would he have waited until the fae came out to start killing them?’

Not our original killer, thought Charles to himself.

‘I don’t know all of the fae personally,’ said Anna dryly. ‘Maybe they’ve been fae all along.’

Goldstein shook his head, and Charles agreed with him when he said, ‘No. This is an escalation of the type of prey the killer hunts.’

He’s on the scent, said Brother Wolf, watching the older FBI agent with interest.

‘Hunting the enemy,’ said Singh unexpectedly. ‘Say he’s a Vietnam vet. He goes home and sees Vietnamese – or Asian, which is close enough for him – on his territory. So he goes hunting, just like he did in the war. He switches to boys. Maybe it’s because he likes sex with boys better – but let’s say that it is because he finds them tougher, better hunting. And then he finds the fae – and decides they are more worthy opponents. And, like his original victims, in his eyes they are invaders.’

‘He’s good and he’s smart if he’s killed this many fae,’ said Anna. ‘They tend to be harder to kill than humans. Too bad he didn’t pick the wrong one; we’d never find the pieces of his body. I wonder how he managed that.’

‘He’s killed werewolves,’ said Heuter, unexpectedly. Charles had quit paying attention to the Cantrip spokesperson, dismissing him. ‘Aren’t they harder to kill than the fae?’

Anna shrugged. ‘I don’t run around killing fae, myself. But anything as old as some of them are have a few tricks up their sleeves.’

‘Melissa Snow died before you were born,’ said Pat. ‘How did you know she was fae?’ It wasn’t what he said, but rather the aggression in his voice, that caused Brother Wolf to take notice that the tenor of the meeting had changed.

‘Family photos,’ Anna shot back, curling her lip. ‘Or maybe I’m older than I look. Does it matter?’

‘You are twenty-five,’ said Heuter. ‘Got your photo on my phone and sent it to home base. They got a hit about two minutes ago. Anna Latham from Chicago, mother deceased, father’s a hotshot lawyer.’

‘So how does he know?’ murmured Singh, ignoring the Cantrip agent’s attack on Anna. ‘How does he know they aren’t human? If they’d been out, someone would have noticed he was killing fae.’

A werewolf could scent the fae, most of the time.

‘Maybe he had some way of watching while his potential victims touched iron. My Scottish grandmother swore that there were herbal salves you could rub on your eyes to see the fairies,’ continued Singh, who didn’t look as though he could possibly have a Scottish grandmother, though Charles could hardly talk because Charles didn’t look very Welsh, either.

‘Turning your clothes inside out or wearing cold iron is supposed to work, too,’ said Fisher, who’d been pretty quiet up to this point. Charles rather thought that she was making sure that the Cantrip agents didn’t take control of the meeting again, as she’d spoken just as Heuter opened his mouth to say something else.