There was silence over the phone and Occam looked at me again, his mismatched eyebrows raised. “Call him back,” FireWind said after a moment. “Tell him we’re dealing with logistics and shipping but will get him a null room posthaste. Thank him for his offer of a tracker, but…” He stopped. And he laughed shortly and said, “Remind him that FireWind can shift into a very large wolf and track. And we have Occam, who has a very good nose as well. Next time you make a call to the leader of another paranormal group or species, no matter your personal relationship with them, discuss it with me.First.” The call ended.
“Oops,” I said.
“Not oops. I deliberately went over his head, and he knows it, because I was the most likely to get through. But he has to lodge a formal protest for form’s sake.”
“I don’t understand.”
“FireWind and the pack have a difficult history. They have little interest in talking with him, even decades later. And where the pack is concerned, my personal connection will always come before FireWind’s order.”
He turned in his seat, mirroring my position, but he clasped his hands around his knee, not reaching to me. That body language said something about his state of mind, and so I gave him the space I thought he needed.
“Just like you talking to Mud or Esther,” he said, “would come before a discussion with FireWind. Family first.”
“The Montana pack is your family?” I asked carefully.
“Soul took me to them when I was set free. I stayed with them for months. They helped me recover. Taught me to shift to human, and to control my shifting. How to hunt. Gave me family, as much as a feral wildcat can have in a wolf pack.”
His lopsided grin was charming and I curled my fingers tight to keep from stroking his jaw in a gesture for cat comfort. Instead I nodded, accepting what he was telling me. “Okay. Did you arrange for thegwyllgito go to the Montana pack in the first place?”
“Soul and I did.”
“Thank you. Despite what they might become, I want everyone who was hurt by the church’s history to get help, and to have an opportunity to become better people.”
“Mmmm.” Occam gave a single twitching nod, though his eyes were glowing with his cat, and with nothing human. And “Mmmm” was not exactly agreement. He returned to the onerous job of driving through freezing streets.
The pikes had been re-scraped and heavily brined, along with most of the major city streets, and there were piles of dirty snow everywhere. The schools would be open tomorrow, and I needed to get home before dark so Mud could have her school night with me. But I had another call to make too, one I had been avoiding because I didn’t want to talk to Gomez at UTMC. But since I was chicken, as we drew near HQ, I called PsyCSI and spoke to the harried-sounding person who answered, “PsyLED CSI, Pinchot.”
FIFTEEN
“This is Special Agent Ingram with PsyLED Unit Eighteen.”
“What can I do for you, Ingram?”
“Can you give me an update on the forensic postmortem of the human found at the abandoned house this morning, as well as the evidence collected?” I gave the case number, and added, “Specifically, what can you tell me about the tufts of hair you and Knoxville CS took into evidence there?”
“UTMC will be doing the post in the morning. You’re welcome to observe. We’re still processing trace evidence. What do you want to know about the hair?”
“Everything that wasn’t human based.”
“Sure, sure,” she said, in what sounded like a verbal tic. “I’m not a hair specialist, but sure,” Pinchot said, and launched into lecture mode. I had discovered that techs in general—unless grumpy and sleep deprived—were talkative and liked to share their information and knowledge base. “Okay. The nonhuman hair found at today’s crime scene. First, though, to know why I’m saying this: human hairs, unless artificially dyed, are generally consistent in color and pigmentation through the length of the hair shaft. Animal hairs may exhibit radical pigment color changes in distribution and density in a short length. We call these changes banding, and in animal hairs, banding can often be used as identifiable features as to species. Morphologically and microscopically, the nonhuman hair samples were similar to cases a while back. Hang on. I have to pull up the case files for the species name.”
“No need.” I spelled outgwyllgi, and said, “It’s pronounced gwee-shee.”
“Yeah. That’s it, thanks. Now I won’t have to look that up for my report.”
I heard typing as Pinchot entered the information into a computer.
“The hairs from today match the banding of the knowngwyllgisamples. They also match as to the combination of longer guard hair on top and a shorter fleece hair used by some species as thermal protection,gwyllgiincluded.Gwyllgiguard hair can be varicolored, but the tip is always black. The fleece hair is also universally a buff color near the skin and black at the tips. Total match with today’s sample.”
“Thank you. May I send you a photo of what a missing teenager was wearing? For you to compare with the clothing found at the crime scene?”
“Sure, sure. Send me anything you got.”
“Okay. Pic on the way to this number. Can I hold while you compare?”
“Sure, sure. Hang on.” Horrible music came over the speaker.
Minutes seemed to drag by as the hideous music played on a loop that surely had been designed to make listeners hang up. That was likely a good psychology to help overworked techs and clinicians.
