“He’s okay,” the bald guy said. “He’ll get a reprimand for being a dumb-ass, but he’s okay.”
“Ingram,” Occam said. “Readings and analysis?”
“Question first. I’ve seen two houses. Is this the only two-story?”
The bald cop swiveled until he faced me and crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah. Why?”
“I won’t know until I take readings of the other houses, but I have a theory based on the second story and the cat.”
“Based on the cat?” The cop laughed as if he thought I was a silly female. He probably thought all females were silly.
I narrowed my eyes at him and went on. “We have redline readings all over the first floor. Upstairs reads in the low normal range on three psysitope levels and only redlines in psysitope level three. Because I know you guys areunschooledandignorantabout paranormal events, I’ll explain.”
Occam’s mouth quivered with a suppressed smile at my tone. Too bad. I didn’t like being talked down to because of my gender.
“Each of the four levels read by the P 2.0 is specific for each creature species. Witches read high in psysitope one. Weres read high in psysitope three, midrange in psysitopes one and two, and psysitope four nearly zero. The upstairs reads like a were-creature. The difference in readings seems significant. The fish at Point A were swimming in circles, but the cat on the second level here is sitting easy.
“Of the five people who were hospitalized from this house, two victims have already gotten better. Upstairs, two colas were open, two recliners were stretched out, two bowls of chips, and the TV was on, though someone had muted it at some point. Having talked to a visitor who was here last night, I confirmed that three blood-related females were in the kitchen drinking wine and two unrelated people were upstairs watching the game.
“I’d say that the contamination, whatever it is, is low to the ground. It’s also possible that it’s bloodline specific.”
The bald-headed cop kept his eyes on me but spoke to Occam. “This the little girl who brought down Benton?”
I felt my cheeks heat at the little-girl comment. Thomas Benton the fourth had been the head of the Knoxville FBI. He had not been human. “Yes, I am,” I said, silently adding,you creepy misogynist. I smiled sweetly instead, but looked him up and down, head to foot. “He was a Welshgwyllgi. A devil dog. Something youboysmissed entirely.” With that, thislittle girlgot out of there. Before I said something that could get me fired.
As I walked out the door, the bald cop asked Occam, “What the hell was that about?”
“You called her ‘little girl.’”
“Sheislittle. And young enough to be my daughter.”
I had a feeling that the bald cop had ongoing gender and age sensitivity issues. Stuff I had learned in a half-day seminar on diversity at Spook School. Behind me, Occam answered, and I slowed to hear.
“You meet her at a church social, you can attempt to address her any way you want, hoss,” Occam said, a thread of something I couldn’t identify in his tone. “On the job? She’s a competent field agent. Learn some professional manners or go home.
“And before you try to make thisyourassessment, I’ve already documented that Special Agent Ingram offered her professional expertise and conclusions. And I’ll be sending that up the line to your boss, the ADIC, Penny Francoeur. And, hey. You callher‘little girl’ too? How’s she like that?”
No one answered. I heard Occam leave the house behind me and I hurried to put some space between me and my bad temper. And my hero. I had seldom been protected in my life; it was nice having someone stand up for me, and I couldn’t hide the smile on my face.
The third house, Point C, was easy to find. It was on a triangle from the first two, and it was full of cops. Because here, like at the other single-story house, there were dead inside.
A middle-aged man and two elderly people, a man and woman, had died violently, and the bodies were still on scene while CSI and PsyCSI worked up the site. The specialized team from outside Washington, DC, had sent enough techs to cover multiple sites, the pond, the other houses, and here. Thankfully I wouldn’t have to work up this site with the P 2.0. That had already been done, by the DC team with their own 2.0 device, but it didn’t stop me from having to see the house and the killing scene.
Occam said, “You need the experience, Nell. If you’re gonna remain a PsyLED special agent, you’ll see plenty of these scenes.”
“Yeah?” I challenged my former (like two minutes past) hero. “How many haveyouseen?”
“Before today? Four. Four scenes with dead bodies. One of them children. After today that brings my total to seven.”
I screwed my face up into something worse than a frown, but when Occam stripped out of his dirty uni, I changed out of mine. At the door, we put on fresh 3PEs. I was not looking forward to this. Every time I blinked my eyes, I saw the dead bodies floating in the pond. I never had nightmares, and I wondered if that was about to change.
The house was an open floor plan, tastefully furnished in greens with white cabinetwork, trim, and woodwork. The place smelled of fresh paint and the stink of new furniture. The neutral-toned carpet was brand-new clean, and the furniture was upholstered in a pleasing mix of fabrics. It wasn’t a house where young children lived, but looked like the house of empty nesters who had only recently finished redecorating. Maybe just in time for children and parents to come for Thanksgiving. There were three bedrooms in the main part of the house, all showing signs of having been used the night before, and a separate suite in the back that appeared to have been added on. The suite was where the bodies had been found, a bloody track of bare footprints on the new carpet, leading from it.
At the end of the footprint track, a body lay. The middle-aged man had been shot with a handgun about a dozen times. I didn’t try to count. In the back suite, an elderly couple had been beaten to death, but unlike the young men in the other one-story house, these two hadn’t gone down without a fight. It was clear that the elderly woman had shot her attacker, emptying her weapon into him, but he hadn’t died fast enough, not until after he had struck both of the elders in the heads with a baseball bat.
I had seen plenty of killings in my life—hogs, cattle, chickens, sheep, goats. I had been on-site when deer and wild boar were processed. I had studied crime scene photos in Spook School. I might have thought that the blood of those deaths would have inured me to most anything. It hadn’t begun to harden me to violent murder scenes. The smells were the unexpected part. At the pond, the air had carried the stench of death away. Here, it was contained and rank. The sickly sweet scentof old blood, the stink of bowels and bladders released in death were all stronger than the fresh-paint smell. The sight of blood in sprays up the soft green walls and soaked into the pale bedding was still fresh—bright and vivid. I feared for a moment that I’d be attacked by bloodlust again, but it didn’t happen. I wasn’t on Soulwood and the bodies weren’t on soil, but on floors, so maybe that was the reason.
I stood in the doorway, doing what I was supposed to do. Getting used to the awfulness of what people did to people. The horror of violence. The utter helplessness of being too late to help, too little to save. I studied each body, teaching my insides not to react, not to feel. Not to throw up.
