It was past eleven-thirty by the time Officer Stanze drove past the last crime scene and brought Paige to the Police Station on Locust Street. The building was a typical government brick: fairly clean outside, more than a little cluttered inside, and filled with the ringing phones and muted conversations of any office.
Stanze grinned and paused with his hand resting upon the handle of a door. He’d led her down a few halls as if he was in a race, but now stopped to announce, “Here’s the final stop on our gruesome tour.” With that, he pushed open the door to reveal a stairwell. They only went down one floor, but the hallway on the other side of that door seemed to have led them into another building entirely. Unlike the bustling, somewhat organized upper floor, this one was obviously not meant for the public. It had the rumpled, lived-in quality of a break room except without as many vending machines.
Even though he was wearing a uniform, Stanze had to pause and sign in before getting all the way to the room at the end of the hall. “When I actually got a reply from those ghost guys, I thought it was a joke,” he said as he shouldered open a door that led back outside. “Half the calls I got after I posted those pictures were cranks, and the other half were from crazies. You don’t even wanna know what kind of people are bidding to buy the thing I found.”
“I can imagine,” Paige chuckled.
The door they’d just used had deposited them into something of a dugout. The main entrance was on the opposite side of the building, which had been built into the slope of a hill. That way, both the entrance and exit they used opened to ground level. Paige looked around to see a long row of metal tables, a few dirty basketballs lying around the perimeter of a patch of cracked concrete, and some water coolers. “So, that thing you found,” she said. “You keep it out here?”
“I brought it inside to stay out of the heat, but it got booted out here. It’s a good thing you came out today or it might’ve been gone altogether.” As he’d been talking, Stanze walked over to an upside-down cooler that was big enough to hold several pizza boxes, a few six-packs, and plenty of chips. Judging by the smell that filled the air at the moment, it wasn’t holding anything so inviting. “You ready?”
“And waiting.”
Reaching down to the cooler, Stanze pulled in a deep breath and then lifted it to reveal a large, dark green garbage bag. The odor Paige had smelled before was just a trickle. Once the garbage bag was open, the real flow began.
This wasn’t the first time she had been around a Half Breed carcass. Compared to how they smelled once they were cut open and salvaged for parts, this one wasn’t all that bad. Even so, she placed her hand over her mouth to at least play the part of a normal person.
“Ever seen anything like that before?” Stanze asked.
“No,” Paige lied. “Can I take some pictures?”
“Go right ahead. I took plenty already.”
The Half Breed carcass inside the bag was twisted up like a meaty, bony, rancid pretzel. Its head was turned around at an odd angle and all four of its legs were practically knotted into a bow. Its torso wasn’t much more than a mass of flesh marred by ribs jutting out at odd angles. Paige removed her cell phone and took a few pictures. “Has anyone tested it?” she asked while reaching in to push aside some of the wiry fur from its upper forepaw.
“Tested?” Stanze asked.
“You know, like its blood or hair. DNA? That sort of thing.”
Stanze laughed and swatted one of the dozens of flies that had found their way to the exotic carrion feast. “Oh, hell no. I wanted to, but it was all I could do to keep from having Animal Control cart it off with the rest of the road kill. Some more people were attacked after I hauled this one in, so they figure it isn’t the one we’re after. Even if this one did hurt someone, one science boy told me it’s just some big dead dog. I tried to call in a few favors, but I don’t know anyone who owes me enough to cover the cost of a DNA test.”
“Where did you find it?”
“I shot it,” Stanze corrected her proudly. Just then the door opened and a pair of cops in plainclothes stepped outside carrying bottles of water. They looked over at Stanze and immediately started to laugh. Before the comments could start to fly, Stanze muttered, “Well, I hit it with my car and then shot it. Damn thing messed up my vehicle so bad, I may be forced to cover the cost myself. I sure won’t hear the end of it from the rest of these clowns.”
“And where did you hit it?”
“Right across the ribs and the side of the head,” Stanze said without cracking a smile. He maintained his composure for another few seconds before removing his cap and nervously patting down a section of his hair. “Oh. I was on an access road off of westbound I-70. It was a few days after that first guy was declared missing. Rothbard was his name.”
“You think this thing hurt any of those other people?” Paige asked while carefully watching Stanze’s reaction.
The cop furrowed his brow and looked over to the other pair as if expecting them to jump in at any time. “Sure I do. I’ve heard of pit bulls attacking people and even trying to drag some little kids away, but nothing like what’s been going on lately. Now the press is saying the animals running wild are some sort of mixed-breed rottweiler. Does that look like a rottweiler to you?”
She looked down and shrugged. “It’s so mangled, it really doesn’t look like much of anything.”
“Yeah, I guess. Maybe I should have his stomach pumped.”
Paige’s smile was subtle but genuine. At least Officer Stanze was trying, while the rest of his department seemed content to make fun of him for it. To maintain her reporter act, she took a few more pictures.
“What do you think it is?” Stanze asked.
“It’s dead,” she told him before flashing him a little grin.
Stanze ate it up, but quickly steered things back on course. “Yeah, but is it anything you or the other MEG guys have seen before? Maybe a really rare animal or some unknown species? Somethin’ like that’s gotta be worth something.” He leaned in a bit closer to her and lowered his voice. “Maybe I could just get some credit on your website or a mention on one of those cable shows? Some recognition would go a long way. I’m dyin’ here. Every cop in this building thinks I should be tossed into the loony bin.”
“I can arrange something along those lines,” Paige assured him. “But I don’t know about auctioning it off. Have you gotten any serious bids?”
“Like I told you, there’s been plenty of e-mails and offers.” Fidgeting from one foot to another, he added, “Most of the responses I got are cranks. I deal with enough of crazies to know that much.”
“Well, I’ve seen plenty of things like this alive and dead, so it’s sure not as rare as you might think.” After the time she’d spent with Officer Stanze, Paige was glad to be completely honest with him. “Let me get another look just to be sure.” She stuck both hands into the garbage bag so she could see the rest of the Half Breed.
Stanze had the beginnings of disappointment on his face, which was quickly replaced by disgust. He wasn’t quite ready to fill a barf bag, but he was more than a little surprised at how dirty Paige was willing to get. “What…uhhh…what’re you doing there?”
Flicking her head back to move a stray piece of hair from her face, she ran her hands along the dead thing’s sides and around the base of all four of its limbs. “Just checking its muscle mass.” Quickly, she added, “To make sure it’s not a coyote or stray dog.”
Obviously, Stanze had heard that comparison before. “It’s no coyote,” he said while looking over to the cops loitering near the building. “I looked it up, and coyotes don’t have snouts like that. They’re also not so big.”
Paige reached in a little farther to push aside a slick clump of fur on the creature’s abdomen. There was a dark green smudge on the Half Breed’s skin, which looked like a burn or possibly some sort of stain. Pressing her fingers on the perimeter of the smudge, she drew the skin together until it looked less like a stain and more like a shape with four curved lobes. She took a picture of the symbol, a few more of its teeth, and then pulled her hands out.
“Could you get me a description of those missing people?” she asked as she lifted her hands from the bag and held them in front of her. “Any stuff about distinguishing marks or tattoos would be helpful.”
“Why do you need that?”
“Oh, nothing to do with this critter. The MEG website gets a lot of hits every day, and I thought I could post some notices about those missing people. Might as well put all those amateur investigators to work looking for something other than glowing mists, right?”
Stanze blinked a few times and then nodded. “Yeah. That would be helpful. We’ve already got some notices and press releases printed up. I’ll get them for you.”
“Great, you do that. I’ll run to the ladies’ room to wash my hands and we can go get some lunch.”
“You still want to eat?”
“Yeah,” Paige said. “Your offer is still good, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. Follow me.”
As Paige walked toward the door of the building, one of the two plainclothes cops raised her voice. “Hey!” barked a tall blond woman with a face that had probably soaked up more than its share of cheap moisturizers. “What did Stanze tell you about that thing?”
Too far away from the door to get inside without obviously ignoring the question, Paige replied, “I’m just here to take some pictures.”
The other plainclothes cop was about Stanze’s age and had a clean-shaven face that made him look like a kid. “Hope you’re not some sucker he got to buy that freak show exhibit.”
“Don’t worry about it. I need to wash up.”
“It’s a fake, you know. Stanze doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
Paige stopped with her hand on the door. Even though she’d endured a lot worse, the condescending tone in the cop’s voice got under her skin. It went beyond confidence and into the realm where anyone who disagreed with the speaker was obviously an idiot.
“Maybe it’s fake, maybe it isn’t,” Paige said. “Have a good one.”
The two cops snickered to each other just loud enough to be overheard. Paige looked back at them and smiled. When she opened the door, she made certain to smear plenty of Half Breed juices onto the handle for them to enjoy when they decided to wrap up their break.
After washing her hands, she found Stanze in the hall. The two plainclothes cops were needling him on their way to the stairs that led up to the main floor, which left a sour look on Stanze’s face. By the time he walked back to Paige, all of the enthusiasm that had been there before was totally drained from his face.
“You said it’s some regular animal, right?” he muttered. “I’m just gonna dump the thing. If you want it, you can—”
“I’ll give you two grand for it,” Paige cut in.
Stanze blinked and then shook his head as if he’d heard disembodied voices. “If you want it, just haul it away.”
“Two grand is my final offer.” Seeing the confusion in Stanze’s eyes, Paige removed all the traveling money she had in her pocket. The funds came from a pool of donations from thankful civilians who owed Skinners their lives, as well as some winnings from lottery numbers picked with the help of a psychic independent contractor known as Prophet. “I’ll need some help getting it to my car, and you’re still treating for lunch, so don’t try talking your way out of that.”
“Let me write out a receipt,” Stanze said. “For the monster corpse and nothing else.” Dropping his voice to a mumble, he said, “It’s not a great idea for me to accept money inside the station like this.”
Paige tucked the money back into her pocket. “Write up whatever you need. Give me your address and I’ll have MEG send you a check,” she told him. “How’s that?”
“That,” Stanze said as his face lit up with a wide smile, “sounds great! Let’s get that ugly bastard wrapped up and find your partner so we can eat!”