Patrick reflexively yanked his hand back and scowled at Jono, who only laughed in a way he refused to find sexy.
They left the building and retrieved the car. Despite the hour, a lot of other vehicles and taxis were on the streets, ferrying home late-night drunks and taking hard-core revelers to their next destination.
Patrick followed the GPS on his phone, taking a crosstown route before swinging a right onto Amsterdam Avenue. The address Casale had provided was in the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, right smack next to Columbia University. Which meant instant media coverage they couldn’t afford. People equated most college students with kids who didn’t know any better, and the public always had a bleeding-heart complex when it came to kids.
He parked behind an unmarked police car and grabbed his agency jacket from the back seat. Patrick pulled it on despite the still-muggy weather, making sure his badge hung prominently around his neck. He didn’t want to keep taking out the one in his pocket every time someone needed to check his ID.
Jono stuck close to his side, sunglasses on despite the hour. He looked ridiculous, but better to hide what he was within view of the media cameras than to give the impression the werecreature community might be linked to the murders when they weren’t involved.
“Stay close and do what I tell you,” Patrick said as he flashed his badge to a cop manning the perimeter. He ducked under the Police Line – Do Not Cross tape, then held it up for Jono to duck under. “And if you have to get sick, don’t get sick near the evidence.”
“Right. I’ll just ask for the loo,” Jono muttered. “Not my first time seeing a dead body.”
Considering how werecreatures sometimes handled territory disputes and other problems, Patrick wasn’t surprised to hear that. “I guarantee you’ve never seen one like this.”
Patrick and Jono entered the building, getting directed to the tenth floor where an apartment at the very end of the hallway was a hive of late-night activity. Recognition punched through his shields when they stepped off the elevator, sliding through the new damage in his soul.
What was it Casale said? Three bodies in a month and a half?Patrick thought to himself as they passed a pair of uniformed police officers.This brings the total up to nine.
This murder was far too close timing-wise to the last one. The perpetrator, whoever they were, was ramping up their killings. While Patrick had a pretty good idea why, he just didn’t know when anything would come of the attacks.
Casale was waiting for them in the living room, wearing a suit as if it were body armor. He nodded a greeting before pointing at Jono. “You stay out here and keep out of the way.”
Jono, who made a quiet gagging sound behind Patrick—most likely from the smell—was all for it. “Too right I will.”
“Bathroom is over there if you were stupid and ate breakfast.”
“At this hour it’d be more like a midnight snack,” Patrick said.
He approached one of the two bedrooms and paused in the entrance for a minute, taking in the crime scene with sharp eyes. Whoever she had once been, it was hard to see in the mutilated mess she’d become on her ruined bed. Her torso had been cracked open like a bloody butterfly, organs ripped out of the gaping hole and body chewed on like the last one.
Her left arm was missing up to her elbow with pieces of flesh scattered around the stump. Half her face had been eaten away, along with a good portion of her neck as well. Patrick could see the white vertebrae of her spine through the mess. Her legs were half-gone, stripped down to the bone in areas, as if the soultaker had peeled away flesh and muscle one layer at a time. Blood stained the bedding, having congealed beneath the body where it wasn’t splattered across the white wall and wooden frame of her bed.
CSU was already hard at work processing the scene. The room felt crowded even though only two of them were inside it. Patrick had a feeling it was the hellish taint pressing against his shields that made him uncomfortable.
Allison handed him a pair of latex gloves before he stepped inside the bedroom. She looked tired, and Patrick wondered if she’d even gone home last night. Dwayne appeared marginally better, but he had at least ten years on Allison of working shifts like this. He could probably power through on nothing more than a couple of coffees at this point in his career.
Patrick pulled on the gloves and carefully stepped around numbered evidence tags on the floor to reach the body. He prodded at the victim’s ruined face, pulling at her lashes to get a better look at the sign carved into her eyelids. Taurus this time, which called to Dionysus. Patrick had a feeling that god wouldn’t be playing poker in Atlantic City any time soon. If he was smart, Dionysus would have gotten the hell away from the Eastern Seaboard.
Wonder if Hermes has found the rest of the coins yet, Patrick thought.
“Time of death?” he asked.
“We’re still waiting on the ME,” Dwayne said.
“Who found her?”
“The roommate came home from a club and found the victim like this. She’s being seen to by EMS.”
“I’ll check her soul for any taint and let your on-call witch know. The residual is the same here as with the last body.”
Casale heaved out a sigh. “I’ll warn everyone they’re getting their souls scoured again.”
“Always fun,” Allison muttered from her spot by the door.
Patrick retreated from the body, carefully making his way out of the bedroom. He stripped off his gloves and deposited them in the portable biohazard bin CSU had put next to the door. “I’ll stick around until processing is done just in case.”
“You think the demon might make a reappearance?” Casale asked.
