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Chapter 19

THEY HAD FINISHED undressing the body when Memphis walked me back inside the room It lay bare and very unalive It looked like a body noithout the clothes, and the wounds like bright tears on the skin

Froroin was bloody I couldn&039;t tell how bad the dae was from here I didn&039;t really want to kno bad it was, but as usual I had to see it all Crap

Rose either had taken all the pictures he needed or was too shocked to take theotten in his hands The other two techs were no better Dale had busied hi at the cabinets Patricia went to stand by Rose and turned her back

"Anyone who needs to leave can do so," Memphis said

Dale went for the door without a word "They were friends," Rose said, and that was enough

"Patricia," Meo?"

"No, doctor, no, I&039;ll stay I didn&039;t know him as well as Dale did, and there are some of the I did know some of them better I don&039;t want to work on them, so I&039;ll stay" She turned around, pale, lips thin, but a determined look on her face She&039;d do

"Rose?" Memphis asked

"I&039; all wimpy about the wound Sorry" He nodded "Sorry, I&039;ll do better" He raised the ca

I walked around the body so I could see the wound closer Not that I wanted to see it, but it was an odd wound Of course, once I was on the other side, I could see the inside of the right thigh clearly Soroin to almost knee The femoral artery would have been toast You bleed out from that in fifteen, twenty h for a tourniquet andBut whoever sliced hi hiht have been once as a enitalia were intact, or looked it The only way to be certain was to touch them and see, and I didn&039;t want to know that badly I had to peer a lot closer than I wanted to, but I was right, the wounds didn&039;t actually go across the genitalia,to wash the blood away?"

"Yes," Memphis said, "we&039;ll be able to see those woundsthe body, but anted you to see it first"

I looked up at him "Why?"

"You&039;re our shapeshifter expert," he said

"You have shapeshifters in Vegas," I said

"We do, but they wouldn&039;t be allowed near a lycanthrope kill"

"Yeah, same at home, so you have to make do with me"

"If half your reputation is real, Marshal Blake, we aren&039;tdo"

I looked away from his too-intense eyes He wantedthat had killed their people I wanted to help, but I hated that feeling of pressure The sensation that if IEdward in, but wasn&039;t sure I could call in part ofthe rest of it back I was done with Olaf for the day if I could e it

I peered as close to the wounds as I could "It looks like the claere driven in around the groin, deep, but straight in and out, no tearing" I stood up and gestured at the thigh wound "Not like that"

"Was it more than one shapeshifter?" Rose asked

It was a good question "Could be, but I don&039;t think so This up close and personal, there just isn&039;t roo it, but all these wounds are so debilitating that once it happened, there wouldn&039;t be any need for two shapeshifters to fight this man"

"His name was Randall Sherman, Randy," Memphis said

I shook ue I function because it&039;s a body I&039;m sorry that he was your friend, but I can&039;t think of hiht you had to have a name to raise the dead," Patricia said

"Yes, but none of these bodies will be able to be raised"

"Why not?" Patricia asked

"Murder victio after theirthat gets in their way, including innocent civilians"

"Oh," she said

I stared down at as left of Officer Randall Sher me a name I don&039;t knohy it can make such a difference, but suddenly I looked at him, not at a body I noticed that he was tall and athletic, and had spent a lot of ti in shape He was probably on the other side of thirty, but it had been a good early thirty All that work, to be strong, to be fast, to be the best, and soer, faster, and better, just because of a disease in its blood No a would everthe equal of a shapeshifter So unfair, so true

"What kind of hair did you find on the body and clothes?"

"We found human hair, but no animal hair," Memphis said

I looked at him

"Yes," he said, "you can look surprised I&039;ve seen two other shapeshifter kills, and we found a lot of aniet this close to someone and not shed on them, but this shifter cleaned the body of hair so ouldn&039;t knohat it was"

I shook my head "Not necessarily, doc You can police your brass, but not the little bits and pieces of your body I saw the criht, and there was no time to clean up like that"

"Then what did the creature do? Did he wear a suit?" He touched his own suit

"I doubt it," I said, "but a really powerful shapeshifter can do a partial shift"

"I know a manwolf or mancat form," Memphis said

"No, I mean the really powerful ones can shapeshift just the hands into claws, and the feet I saolf cli like that"

"That was one of your cases?"

"I don&039;t knohat you mean by that, but I saw the bastard do it"

"He used claws to shove into the building?" Patricia asked

"Yes," I said

"Wow, shades of Spider-Man," Rose said

"More Wolverine," I said, "but the principle&039;s the saot away," Memphis said

"Temporarily," I said

"How did they catch hiot theue olf, then I killed him"

"What do you mean you killed him?" she asked

"I mean, I walked up to him and put a bullet between his baby blues"

Her mouth made a little soundless O Rose said, "Just one bullet?"

"No," I said

"Back to the case; you can listen to war stories froht our man"

"Sorry, doctor," Patricia said

"Sorry, doc"

"So you think we have a very powerful shapeshifter that did this"

"I&039;m pretty sure, and that means that it&039;s a very small pool of suspects There aren&039;t that e aniroup Maybe one in a small"

"Do you think the shapeshifter cut up the other men?"

"No, it&039;s almost like whatever did it had multiple arms An arm for every blade"

"Do you know any preternatural creature that has ht about it "There are a lot of ies with many-armed creatures, but none native to this country And frankly, Dr Memphis, none that I&039;m sure are real and in existence today"

"So hard to tell fact from fiction e live in a world where myth is real," he said

"Some of it&039;s extinct," I said

"Whatever killed Randy Sherman wasn&039;t extinct," he said

I felt that unpleasant slad it was hidden behind the half mask I wouldn&039;t want to scare the civvies "We&039;ll work onit extinct"

"You&039;ll need a warrant of execution," Memphis said

"Four dead police officers One obviously dead by wereani the warrant won&039;t be the problem"

"I suppose so," Memphis said, not like he was entirely happy about it

"So?" I asked

"It&039;s just that I signed the petition that they took to Washington to try to get the Doerment Act repealed I believe that the warrants for your job are too broad and violate huhts"

"You&039;re not alone"

"Now, all I want is for you to get the bastards that did this; I don&039;t care that the warrant is based on bad law So that makes me a hypocrite, Marshal Blake, and I&039; of myself that way"

"You&039;ve seen vampire and shapeshifter victih Vegas has one of the lowest rates of murder by preternatural means of any city in the United States"

I widened ht, Max and Bibiana run a very tight ship Out loud I said, "Is this the first person you kneho died like this?"

"No, first friend, though I guess if I really believed my convictions, that wouldn&039;t make a difference"

"Emotion always makes a difference," I said

"Even for you?" He looked at me when he asked it

I nodded

"I&039;ve heard the screa the day They beg for their lives"

"Everyone on death row is innocent, doctor; you know that"

"It doesn&039;t bother you then?"

I had to look away froaze The moment I had to look down, I forced myself to meet his eyes and said the truth "Sometimes it does"

"Then why do it?"

Was it mean to say the next? I couldn&039;t tell anymore; maybe it was just true "I&039;m sorry for your loss, doctor, I truly am, but this moment is a perfect example of why I do my job Look at what they did to your friend Do you want that to happen to someone else&039;s friend, husband, brother?"

His face hardened, and it was back to the original hostile look "No"

"Then you need me to do my job, doctor, because once a shapeshifter crosses the line this badly, they al the beast out It feels good to theain 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&039;ve n off that a shapeshifter did this, because it&039;s true"

"Thank you, doctor"

He nodded "But the way DPEA is written, you don&039;t need ton, and they&039;ll fax you the warrant"

"Contrary to popular media, we do have to assure thein"

"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 so I can do for him"

"No, it&039;s not, Dr Meet a warrant and hunt his killer down"

"And see, there you go, Marshal, right back at my moral dilemma"

I didn&039;t knohat to say to that; I had my own moral dileh to tell hi to have doubts aboutI 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, when I let Olaf run me out of the rooh without sharing I was thinking better without him in the roo one Division of labor would not leave ain, I proie 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," Meht, then Sher a spell, and the shifter stopped hiainst lycanthropes, is there?" Rose asked

"No," I said, "but there are spells that impact other preternatural entities Spells are als"

"Like ghosts," Patricia asked She&039;d been so quiet in her corner of the autopsy suite that I&039;d alhosts You just ignore thes like it"

"You mean like the devil," Patricia said

"No, my bad, I shouldn&039;t have said dey than physical, sort of"

"Whatever wielded the knives was very physical," Memphis said

"The knives were very physical, but if Sherainst the them wasn&039;t"

"I don&039;t understand," Rose said

"Nor do I," Me to explain"I&039;ll need to talk to Sherh priestess, but if he was any good at the ic side of his faith, then he wouldn&039;t have wasted breath on so that wouldn&039;t help save them"

"Randy was very devout, and very serious about his faith," Memphis said

I nodded "Okay, I&039;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 thisfor a smaller person"

"What do you mean, Marshal?"

"When a shapeshifter er than human-normal Marshal Jeffries was able to paluy, but his hands aren&039;t as big as a shapeshifter&039;s when it&039;s in half- for someone who isn&039;t that tall, or has smaller hands"

"But you just said that the hands get bigger," Patricia said

"Yes, but there&039;s a lier If you take two people who are both the sae hands, and the other is five feet with ser than their human form, but the ser "

"I&039;ve read widely on shapeshifters, Marshal, and I&039;ve never read where anyone has written that up"

I shrugged "I know shapeshifters, doctor"

"All right, then we&039;re looking for a smaller man"

"Or woman," I said

"You really think a woman did this?" he asked

"I&039;ve seen shapeshifters of both sexes do soe doesn&039;t rule out feure out what aniet 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&039;ll have it back"

I shook my head "We don&039;t have a few days"

"I&039;estions, Marshal"

"I told you, I&039; lycanthropy; that s people can&039;t"

"You&039;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&039;t it just smell human?"

"No," I said, "once you knohat you&039;re s, there&039;s an under-taste" I shook my head "I can&039;t explain this, but I want to try"

"I would be eager to see you try," Memphis said

"I&039;ll have to take the ainst protocols"

"I s, but I can&039;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 ould be the piece of clothing or equipotten the closest to I looked at it all in the baggies, and finally settled on the throat/ear ed by the teeth

"I need one of you to unbag and et fucked up"

"Your s won&039;t be admissible in court, not even with this many officers dead," Memphis said

"No," I said, "but I&039; for a clue as to where to go to find people to question That&039;s all we can hope to get from this"