Page 50 of His to Possess

“Not what you might expect.”

I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, her words catching me off guard. “Meaning?”

“It would appear your murderer thankfully has a conscience. The victims were suffocated prior to their throats being ripped out.”

“What? Why didn’t the other coroner catch that?”

“There was no reason to assume otherwise, Kathleen. The horrific trauma the victims received would indicate a brutal ending,” Lois said quietly.

“This places the entire murders into another scenario altogether. Your findings eliminate an animal as the attacker,” I said through clenched teeth. The news wouldn’t be taken kindly by almost everyone else involved with the case.

“You are correct.”

“And you’re certain of this?”

“Absolutely. There is bruising on the back of all three of the victims’ necks that would indicate they were attacked from behind and strangled with significant force.”

I was almost giddy with excitement. “Any idea of the weapon used?”

“That’s just it, it would appear the victims were lifted off the ground before being manually strangled and I don’t mind telling you, that would take a very strong individual.”

Two of the three victims weighed in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds if not more. For the killer to be able to lift the victims off the ground was… phenomenal. “Wow.”

“That’s exactly what I thought. I also took another look at the saliva I mentioned before. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to clearly identify the source, which likely means the samples are contaminated. What I did find is blood on victim number three that is inconsistent with the crime scene.”

“Meaning possibly the killer’s blood.” A mistake. Halle-fucking-lujah. My entire body tingled. This was huge.

“Maybe.”

I heard the hesitation in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

“The characteristics of the DNA are… unusual. I took the liberty of putting the file through the database and I’m afraid there were no matches. I’m going to send you the file so you can see what I’m talking about. I’m sending that over to you now.”

“Can’t you be more specific?”

Lois laughed for a few seconds. “Have you ever heard of a werewolf?”

“I’m sorry. We must have a bad connection. I could have sworn you asked if I’d ever heard of a werewolf.” I was shocked to hear the word. Maybe someone had overheard my conversation with Max and was playing me for a fool. Why?

“That’s exactly what I asked you, Detective. I know it sounds crazy, which is another reason I think the killer could be purposely tampering with the crime scenes.”

“I’m confused.” I eased back onto the seat, staring at my email, extremely uncomfortable. It was unusual as hell to pull another coroner off a case. Something didn’t feel right.

“There are various cults who believe in werewolves and vampires, even going as far as having a dentist implant canine teeth.”

I sucked in my breath, convinced the conversation had been overheard. “There are weirdos everywhere.”

“Some of these cults are fairly active and dangerous. I’m no expert, but I think that’s what you might have with this case,” Lois said, huffing afterwards. “I worked on another case where the victim had their throat ripped out by a vampire. Damn kid was hyped up on drugs and had no idea that he’d killed the poor girl. Anyway, I hit send so you should have the file shortly. I’ll finish up the autopsies tomorrow and try and get you a full report by day’s end. If there are no other high-profile cases tonight.”

“I appreciate you putting a rush on them.” As the email came in, I realized my hand was shaking. I could swear she was trying to convince me of her idea.

“The mayor was very convincing. Just so you know, I had some damn reporter snooping around when I came in.”

“At the morgue?” Great. Now the press had found out about the case.

“You can find some of your best information amongst dead people,” Lois chuckled. “I’ll give you a call. Oh, have you heard of Roselake just outside of Denver?”

“A little village that’s supposedly Cherokee. Right?”

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