“Then you need me to do my job, doctor, because once a shapeshifter crosses the line this badly, they almost never go back. They get a taste for letting the beast out. It feels good to them, and they will do it again unless someone stops them.”
“You mean kills them,” he said.
“Yes, kills them. I want to kill the shapeshifter that killed your friend, before it kills someone else.”
It was his turn to look away. “You’ve made your point, Marshal. If you need it, I’ll sign off that a shapeshifter did this, because it’s true.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
He nodded. “But the way DPEA is written, you don’t need me to sign anything, do you? You just need to call Washington, and they’ll fax you the warrant.”
“Contrary to popular media, we do have to assure them it’s preternatural in origin.”
“Assure them, but not prove beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
“Shadows of doubt are for courts, doctor.”
“This shapeshifter is never going to see the inside of a courtroom, is it?”
“Probably not.”
He shook his head. “They offered to let someone else work on Randy, but it’s the last thing I can do for him.”
“No, it’s not, Dr. Memphis. You can help me gather enough evidence to get a warrant and hunt his killer down.”
“And see, there you go, Marshal, right back at my moral dilemma.”
I didn’t know what to say to that; I had my own moral dilemma to work on, and I didn’t know Memphis well enough to tell him I was beginning to have doubts about my job, too. I did the only thing I could think of; I went back to work.
“I am sorry for your loss, but can you let me see the personal effects I missed?” In my head, I added,
In a plastic baggie was a silver pentagram. “Was he Wiccan?”
“Yes,” Memphis said, “does that matter?”
“It may be why the shifter ate his face off first.”
“Explain,” Memphis said.
“If I’m right, then Sherman was saying a spell, and the shifter stopped him.”
“There’s no spell against lycanthropes, is there?” Rose asked.
“No,” I said, “but there are spells that impact other preternatural entities. Spells are almost exclusively for noncorporeal beings.”
“Like ghosts,” Patricia asked. She’d been so quiet in her corner of the autopsy suite that I’d almost forgotten her.
I shook my head. “No, not ghosts. You just ignore them. But spirits, entities, demons, and other things like it.”
“You mean like the devil,” Patricia said.
“No, my bad, I shouldn’t have said
“Whatever wielded the knives was very physical,” Memphis said.
“The knives were very physical, but if Sherman thought a spell could help against them, then maybe whatever was using them wasn’t.”
“I don’t understand,” Rose said.
“Nor do I,” Memphis said.
I hated trying to explain metaphysics. It always came out wrong, or at best confusing. “I’ll need to talk to Sherman’s coven, or at least his high priestess, but if he was any good at the magic side of his faith, then he wouldn’t have wasted breath on something that wouldn’t help save them.”
“Randy was very devout, and very serious about his faith,” Memphis said.
I nodded. “Okay, I’ll still want to talk to his priestess, but for right now, I need to see if I can figure out what animal flavor did this.”
“There are no nonhuman hairs, Marshal,” Memphis said.
I nodded. “I heard.”
“It will take time to analyze the claw marks.”
“That may not help you that much anyway, not in this modified form. We know we’re looking for a smaller person.”
“What do you mean, Marshal?”
“When a shapeshifter makes the claws come out, the hand gets bigger than human-normal. Marshal Jeffries was able to palm the marks on the chest. He’s a big guy, but his hands aren’t as big as a shapeshifter’s when it’s in half-man form. That means we’re looking for someone who isn’t that tall, or has smaller hands.”
“But you just said that the hands get bigger,” Patricia said.
“Yes, but there’s a limit to how much bigger. If you take two people who are both the same animal, but one is six feet with large hands, and the other is five feet with small hands, when they both shift, the animal form will be larger than their human form, but the smaller man will still be a smaller shapeshifter than the larger man. It’s a mass ratio thing.”
“I’ve read widely on shapeshifters, Marshal, and I’ve never read where anyone has written that up.”
I shrugged. “I know shapeshifters, doctor.”
“All right, then we’re looking for a smaller man.”
“Or woman,” I said.
“You really think a woman did this?” he asked.
“I’ve seen shapeshifters of both sexes do some pretty amazing things, so yeah, this damage doesn’t rule out female.”
“You said you’re going to try and figure out what animal did this. We’ve got swabs for DNA, and we may get lucky, but if the lycanthrope was in human form except for the claws and teeth, as you maintain, then the DNA may come back human.”
“There should be some of the virus in the DNA,” I said.
“Yes, and in a few days we’ll have it back.”
I shook my head. “We don’t have a few days.”
“I’m open to suggestions, Marshal.”
“I told you, I’m carrying lycanthropy; that means that sometimes I can smell things people can’t.”
“You’re going to try to smell what kind of animal it was.”
I nodded.
“But,” Patricia said, “if the shapeshifter was in human form, then won’t it just smell human?”
“No,” I said, “once you know what you’re smelling, there’s an under-taste.” I shook my head. “I can’t explain this, but I want to try.”
“I would be eager to see you try,” Memphis said.
“I’ll have to take the mask down.”
“That’s against protocols.”
“I may get my breath, saliva on things, but I can’t catch anything from the… Sherman.”
“If it will catch this creature days early, then do it.”
I looked at the objects and tried to decide what would be the piece of clothing or equipment that the lycanthrope had gotten the closest to. I looked at it all in the baggies, and finally settled on the throat/ear microphone getup. It had actually been damaged by the teeth.
“I need one of you to unbag and make sure that the chain of evidence doesn’t get fucked up.”
“Your smelling something won’t be admissible in court, not even with this many officers dead,” Memphis said.
