Fair Game

They took a taxi to Castle Island where Jacob’s body had evidently washed up, leaving Leslie’s car in the parking garage next to the morgue. There was apparently parking at the Island, but it was the middle of summer and Leslie didn’t like to waste time trying to find a place to park.

A

‘Wicked,’ A

He laughed and gave her a high five.‘Frickin’ wicked yourself. You’ll be a native in no time.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Leslie told her half jokingly. ‘Native Bostonians are the ones who’ve been here since the Revolutionary War – all others are interlopers, no matter how welcome.’

The ocean air was refreshingly brisk as Leslie led the way down the cement walk that paralleled the ocean on the harbor side of the island. It wasn’t crowded, not really – there had been plenty of places to park – but there were a number of people out enjoying the sun. The tall granite block walls of Fort Independence dominated the landscape, which was mostly grass with a few bushes and moderate-sized trees.

‘Jacob wasn’t here long before he was discovered,’ Leslie said. ‘Not a lot of places to hide a body around here and – as you can see – there are a lot of people this time of year. The harbor breeze keeps the temperatures to a reasonable level and the fishing is supposed to be pretty good.’

‘Do you think he was dropped in the harbor by boat?’

‘That’s the theory. Too many people around to drop him off unseen, and the ME says the body was in the water for at least a full day. Jacob was found a number of days ago. I suspect that if there was something we missed initially, it’s too late now.’

‘Probably this is useless,’ agreed A

There were all sorts of people out and about– joggers, dog walkers, people watchers. The sound of kids yelling in the distance competed with airplanes from the airport across the harbor and seabirds.

They were passed by a woman with a Pekingese coming the other way. Her little dog hit the end of his leash and started barking hoarsely at Brother Wolf.

‘He’s perfectly friendly,’ his owner said. ‘Now stand down, Peter.’ To his owner’s obvious embarrassment, the dog growled, keeping himself between the werewolves and his owner in a brave but misguided attempt to protect her, until they were long past.

‘Peter,’ said A

‘Is that reaction usual?’ Leslie asked.

‘Most dogs have troubles with us at first,’ A

cats don’t like us. And they don’t adjust, ever.’ She gri

‘Heuter is just one man,’ Leslie pointed out. ‘Hard to judge all of Cantrip by one man.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ A

‘People who need jobs?’ Leslie suggested dryly. ‘Cantrip takes a lot of Quantico graduates who don’t get on with the FBI. As a job, Cantrip is less time-consuming than the FBI or Homeland Security, and it pays better than most police departments. It’s less dangerous, too – because they don’t actually do anything but collect information.’

‘Not yet,’ A

‘Mine is, too,’ admitted Leslie, sounding sheepish.

‘Good for you,’ A

‘I don’t know why not. I really should have.’

‘Charles did what you wanted to,’ A

‘Feed?’

‘Suck up the residual magic the killers left behind.’

‘That doesn’t sound appetizing. Sounds necrophilic.’

‘Mmm,’ agreed A

Leslie stared out in the harbor for a moment, then smiled.‘I suppose that was it. I wanted to smack her, and your Charles did it for me.’

There was a monument up ahead that looked something like the Washington Monument in miniature– or, since they were in Boston, like the Bunker Hill Monument. It was a tall, sea-battered, narrow-sided rectangle that lifted to the sky and ended in a point. On the ocean side of the path were some wharfs with a few people fishing from them.

‘Still, Heuter

’ A

Leslie frowned.‘Endangered species?’

‘And therefore not citizens,’ A

‘RFID?’

‘That one hasn’t made it into a bill yet,’ A

‘That wouldn’t be constitutional,’ said Leslie.

‘It would if we were an endangered species.’ A

He gave her a look.

A

Leslie gave her a thoughtful look as she stopped.‘I thought that you were mismatched when I first met you two. But you aren’t, are you?’

‘No,’ A

‘If you say so,’ said Leslie, amused.

A

‘Over here.’

Between the sidewalk and the sea stood a two-rail decorative pipe fence that the salt water had colored green and rust. Beyond that, a short rocky shoreline edged in green sea grasses gave way to a bit of water and a wall of worn wooden poles stuck side by side like soldiers keeping the waves off the land. Leslie pointed to a small patch of dirt between the wharf wall and the wooden poles.

Jacob would have been sheltered a little from the weather. A

Leslie gave her a searching glance.‘He can scent things better in wolf form than you can in human?’

‘Yes. But he’s also better at this than I am.’ A

‘He has a lot more experience than I do. Scents don’t come with a label – this is the villain; here is a lady with a dog; here is a police officer and that sticky-sweet-and-sour-milk smell is someone’s old banana ice cream cone. Charles can pick out what he’s smelling better than I can, and date them, too, usually.’