While the majority of the damage was to the torso, there were some slash marks on the victim’s shoulders and arms. Taking a pair of gloves from the cardboard box on the shelf under the table, Tate slipped them on, then nudged the body onto its side. There weren’t any marks on the man’s back.
Tate frowned. The bruising on the man’s arms indicated he’d been strapped down during the attack. Not with ropes or anything else that would leave obvious ligature marks, but something had definitely been wrapped around the arms.
He leaned in closer to look at the bone-deep slice along the inside of the man’s left thigh. That had been the killing strike, delivered after the shifter or hybrid had gotten whatever information he or she was after. Or had simply tired of torturing the victim.
“Did the coroner identify the animal?” Tate asked, glancing at the sheriff.
“The coroner’s report listed the animal as a bobcat or Canadian lynx,” Deputy York said, holding up the folder in his hand. “I’m leaning toward bobcat. Lynx are pretty rare in these parts, and I’ve never heard of one large enough to do this. But bobcats up here can easily get up to forty or fifty pounds.”
Tate nodded, wondering how the coroner had explained the bruising on the victim’s arms and the deep slash on the inner thigh. What, did he think the bobcat was carrying a switchblade? Not even a fifty-pound bobcat could slice open a person’s leg like that.
But Tate had seen feline shifters and hybrids do things exactly like this. Of course, that sort of screwed up the likelihood Ashley was the attacker. According to Trevor, she was a coyote shifter like he was. While they were still sharp as hell, the claws on canine-based shifters like coyotes and wolves tended to be thicker. He couldn’t see one of them making a slash this clean and surgical. Then again, he’d never met a female coyote shifter. Maybe Ashley’s claws were more delicate than Trevor’s. That could make the difference.
Regardless, he couldn’t take her off the table as a suspect yet. Based on everything Trevor had told him about Ashley, the woman was certainly unbalanced enough to do something like this.
Tate continued to study the dead man’s body, hoping there’d be something that would tell him why the guy had been killed. But other than what he’d already seen, the body had nothing left to tell him.
He turned his attention to the two cops. “What do we know about this guy?”
York glanced over at the sheriff. Bowers’s jaw tightened, but he gave the deputy a nod.
“His name’s McKinley Bell. He was a doctor at the medical center in Scarborough, which is just south of here,” York said. “He was well respected by all accounts and part of several prestigious research and education programs involving genetic testing. He lived alone and had no family I could locate.”
Well, damn. A doctor with a background in genetic research? It wasn’t anything conclusive, but it definitely increased the possibility this guy had been working with Mahsood on a new hybrid program. Wasn’t much of a hop, skip, and a jump from there to the notion that Bell had been tortured by one of his own creations to get back at him for turning him or her into a monster.
Tate glanced at the body again. Would a hybrid be patient enough to spend hours slowly slicing a man to ribbons? The hybrids he’d dealt with in the past were a lot of things, but patient wasn’t one of them. Even the ones who worked for the DCO would best be described as mercurial. They could go from fully in control to wild animal in a matter of seconds.
That left Ashley. He could see her torturing Bell if she thought there was a connection between him and Mahsood.
“So, Agent Evers,” Sheriff Bowers grumbled. “You ever plan on answering my question about why the Department of Homeland Security spent so much money to send an agent all the way up here to personally look at a man killed by a bobcat?”
Tate cursed silently. If he didn’t deal with this now, he wouldn’t get any more assistance the rest of the time he was here. He glanced at Arnold standing over by the doorway, then at the two cops.
“Nothing I’m about to tell you can leave this room,” he said softly. “It’s extremely confidential information provided by protected sources outside the U.S. Is that completely understood?”
That definitely caught everyone’s attention, and all three men practically leaned forward as they nodded in unison.
“Homeland, as well as the FBI and NSA, have been tracking a terrorist known as Kyfus through Europe, across the Atlantic, and into Canada. We don’t have confirmation yet, but there’s a good chance he’s already crossed the border into the U.S. en route to his next target.”
“Kyfus?” The sheriff frowned. “Never heard of him.”
Tate shook his head. “Not many people have. That’s because he never takes credit for his attacks. He kills, then moves before the dust has even settled. No one knows why he does what he does, and as far as why he’s in the States, we don’t know that, either. We have no clue what his target might be. Worse, we’re not even sure what he looks like.”
Tate paused, partially to let his words sink in, but mostly to give himself time to fabricate the rest of the story. He’d come up with the name Kyfus on the drive from the airport, piecing together parts of two different street signs. The whole thing was complete BS, but he had to admit the name sounded pretty damn cool.
“The only thing we know for sure is that Kyfus frequently travels with a big cat like a mountain lion or jaguar that he’s been
