Chapter 31
31
Seth Mays
I’m not going to be home until late.
Or maybe tomorrow.
Elliot Crane
Let me know when you’re done?
Do me a favor and stay at Henry’s?
I’d gotten summoned by Colfax to a crime scene somewhere outside of a tiny little town called Aniwa that was on the very edge of Shawano County. It was about as far from Shawano as I could get while staying in the county—not quite an hour drive. But it was the phrase Bring your kit that had me the most concerned.
The call had come a little after three-thirty, and since it would be almost five by the time I got there, I knew it was going to be late before we got anything done. Especially if I had to wait for the fire to cool.
I frowned down at my phone—Elliot hadn’t replied yet.
None of the dead animals had been accompanied by actual threats, and nobody had tried breaking in, at least as far as we knew. But that didn’t mean I was comfortable with Elliot staying alone in the house if I were gone half the night. Or maybe the whole night.
I was just about to text him again when the phone buzzed in my hand.
Elliot Crane
Going to Ma and Pop’s for dinner.
I’ll stay there.
Seth Mays
Okay.
I’ll text you when I’m done.
Thanks.
Be safe.
I love you.
I couldn’t help smiling when I saw his last text. The fact that Elliot Crane loved me was still new enough that I got this stupid grin on my face every time he said it. Even in text.
I love you.
You be safe, too.
I sighed, then pushed myself to my feet and went to sign out the truck. Colfax’s request for kit meant that I’d probably want more than just the bag that I kept in my car. That, and I’d be able to save my poor, ancient car a little mileage.
I pulled up the address Colfax had sent, then put the truck in gear and headed out to the highway.
The driveway was asphalt, but cracked, with the dead and brown remnants of weeds and grasses pushing through. There were massive wet tire tracks that told me at least one truck had been through, although my guess was that it was probably two.
The driveway was long—maybe a quarter mile—and it reminded me of the track out to the bonfire where I’d met Colfax the first time. I had no idea if this was related, or something completely different, but I felt better when I rounded a corner and found the end of the driveway.
I pulled into a gravel patch beside the house occupied by two fire trucks and a fire department SUV. I was driving the pickup from the Sheriff’s Office, so one of the uniforms holding the perimeter waved me through immediately. I parked next to the fire department’s SUV and got out, holding back the usual wince when I put weight on my right leg.
A figure in full fire kit came up to me, and I grinned when I realized it was Nathanial from my fire investigation course. “Nathaniel,” I greeted him, holding out a hand.
“Seth,” he came back with, gripping my arm. I returned the pressure, then snuck a look downwards to see how they did fire boots for fauns. They were hoof-shaped, thick rubber just like those the rest of us wore. Made sense, I supposed.
“Why did they call me ?” I asked him.
He grinned back at me. “After we found the first body, I might have mentioned you and pushed them to call Colfax and Ziemer.”
“Gee, thanks,” I told him, sarcastically.
“Hey, you’re logging scene hours, man,” he pointed out. As part of training, we all had to log a certain number of hours at fire scenes. This should count as hours, but I was technically supposed to do them under the supervision of a senior officer.
“Is Chief Ziemer or Lieutenant Colfax here?” I asked Nathaniel.
He turned and pointed to a bulky figure that was a little taller than the rest of the equally bulky figures. Fire gear essentially erases any sense of body proportions other than height.
I made my way across the lot, streaked liberally with both water and ash. As I approached, Colfax turned and I could see the orc’s face under the helmet, yellow-green-brown lips compressed over protruding fangs.
“Excuse me, lieutenant?”
“You’re going to need full gear,” Colfax told me in a voice that was gruff, but not unkind. “Shanahan!” the orc called, and another of the bulky forms turned. “Mays here needs gear.”
Somebody—I couldn’t tell if it was the person Colfax had called Shanahan or not—trotted over with an armload of gear a few minutes later. I wondered whether I was going to get a set of gear—and boots—that were too big or too small. Having already experienced too-small boots, I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than then inevitable blisters I’d get from boots that were too big.
I used the back of the Sheriff’s Department truck and changed boots—too small, again—then pulled on the gear over my clothes, leaving my hiking boots, parka, and mittens in the truck bed. It wasn’t just the boots that were too small, and I grimaced, the heavy gear restricting my arm movement. At least the boots went halfway up my shins, so that it didn’t matter that the pant legs were too short.
Geared up, I grabbed an evidence kit from the back of the truck and trudged painfully over to where Colfax was watching the fire team starting to pack up the hose.
“Ready?” the big orc asked me.
“As I ever will be,” I replied.
With a nod, Colfax led me out into the still-steaming ruin of what looked to have been a rather large cabin of some sort. In the dark, lit with harsh floods mounted on a tripod and most of the frame and contents blackened and falling apart, it was hard to tell whether the building had been dilapidated or newly built or somewhere in between.
Several hours of crouching, bending, squatting, and sniffing ended with calling Sheriff Mallet because the two bodies in the fire had definitely been shot and Aniwa wasn’t big enough for its own police department. My bet was on murder-suicide-arson, but that wasn’t my job. My job was to photograph the scene, investigate possible causes of arson (which I was confident was the case, and Colfax and Nathanial both agreed), and call in someone if I thought there was additional foul play, which I did and had.
Mallet himself had shown up with one of the new investigative deputies, dragging a very reluctant K9 with her.
Colfax and I had tromped out of the still warm fire site to brief Mallet and Deputy Ginny Gunderson, along with Francis, the dog, who was some sort of mixed breed that looked to have German Shepherd in him, along with something fluffier. Francis loved me.
Of course Francis loved me. I smell like a dog.
Gunderson was turning various shades of pink trying to get Francis to stop sniffing my ass, and I suppressed the urge to snark about it, not really wanting to out myself. I could see both Colfax and Nathaniel trying very, very hard not to laugh. Nathaniel was grinning from horn to curly horn, showing his enormous teeth. Colfax at least kept their face under stricter control, only one corner of their lips twitching.
“What’ve you got, Mays?” Mallet asked.
“Two victims, sir.”
“Cause is suspicious?” he wanted to know.
“Yes, sir. Both victims appear to have sustained gunshots to the head.”
“Jesus,” Gunderson muttered.
Francis gave up on my butt and moved around in a circle to stick his nose as close to my crotch as he could get it. Nathanial snickered. Colfax’s jaw twitched.
I ignored Francis. “Bullets and casings were located in predictable lines from both victims, consistent with an execution and a suicide.”
“You see a lot of those?” Mallet asked me.
“More than my fair share,” I replied. I didn’t actually know how many, which told me it was definitely too many.
“Jesus,” Gunderson repeated.
Francis shoved his nose into my thigh. I kept ignoring him.
“I guess they get more of that sort of thing in the big city, eh?” Mallet remarked.
“I expect so, sir,” I replied.
“Take us over, then,” he ordered.
I glanced at Colfax to make sure that was allowed, and at their nod, led the way.
A little ways into the house, Francis started barking, a funny half-bark, half-whine.
“Sorry!” Gunderson tried to hush the dog. “Sorry, he’s in training.”
“For what?” I asked her, trying to be friendly.
“Oh, um. Drugs, chemicals, that sort of thing.” Gunderson’s cheeks were pink as she tried to get Francis to hush.
“So things like accelerants?” I asked.
“What? Um. Yeah. Why?”
“Because he’s being a good dog,” I told her, then ruffled Francis’s ears. “Yes, you are. You did good. You found the accelerant. Good Francis.”
Francis began to wiggle around, thrashing his tail and dancing in a circle. I’d already taken samples from this particular area—since I could smell the same thing Francis was presumably smelling.
“That’s right, good Francis.”
“You paying attention, Gunderson?” Mallet asked from behind me where he’d been looking at the first victim—the one I assumed had been shot by the other.
“Sir?” She sounded nervous.
“Mays here understands dogs.”
I tried to smile at Gunderson in a way that seemed reassuring. “I have some experience,” I said, hedging. “And I encountered a few K9s in Richmond.”
I stood, giving Francis one last pat, and went to join Mallet. Gunderson took over petting the dog, then brought him over to join us. He gave another set of whine-barks, and Gunderson soothed him with praise and a treat from a pocket, which he delicately took from her fingers.
“Okay, Mays,” Mallet said. “Talk to me.”
We’d been out there for a few more hours, my back and knee both aching, before Dr. Douglas Borde, the world’s most apathetic and annoying ME, made his anticlimactic appearance.
Colfax brought him over to join us—I was attempting to multi-task, collecting both crime scene and arson evidence, trying to keep the kits and evidence swabs all sorted into the right places while also taking pictures of everything because we didn’t have a dedicated crime scene photographer.
Borde’s expression was sour. “What do you expect me to tell you about them here?” he asked Mallet.
The Sheriff’s expression was thunderous.
I grabbed Gunderson’s elbow and, despite knowing I was going to pay for it with aching feet and blisters, dragged her away from the impending argument. “Come on, let’s see if Francis can catch anything Colfax and I missed.”
She came with me, her expression grateful.
Both of us winced when we heard Mallet start yelling. I made out a few things about irresponsibility and a lack of consideration for other people’s time and work before Francis started his funny whine-barking again, and Gunderson and I had to pay attention to him. She soothed and gave a treat while I took more swabs, since I hadn’t actually made it all the way over here yet.
Mallet had stopped yelling by the time we made our way back, although his face was flushed and Borde looked both infuriated and cowed. He was, however, doing more work than I’d seen him do at most crime scenes.
Gunderson went over to talk to Mallet, and I went back to my job, my knee aching and my feet killing me from being stuffed in too-small boots. If I was lucky, I might wrap up by dawn.
It was still dark, although it wouldn’t be for too much longer, when I pulled out of the driveway, headed back toward Shawano and looking forward to getting at least a few hours of sleep. I’d tried to text Lacy to ask about coming in late, but there wasn’t any cell service out at the burned-out house, so I’d have to wait and do it when I got back into range.
When I did, however, my phone lit up—buzzing and flashing notifications. I saw Elliot’s number, then Judy Hart’s, Elliot again, then Judy, then Hart?—
I pulled over to the side of the highway, my heart pounding in my throat.
Something happened . There was no other reason why that particular combination of people had been blowing up my phone for what looked like most of the night.
I had multiple voicemails.
I started with Elliot.
“Seth? I—I need help. Please.” Then he coughed, and it sounded pained. “Gonna call Ma .” Then he hung up.
“Don’t call Judy, you stubborn dumbass,” I hissed at the phone, even though there was no possible way he could hear me. “Call 9-1-1.”
There were no more calls from Elliot, but at least four from Judy. I tapped the most recent one.
“Hi, sweetie, just an update. ” She sounded tired and worried, but not panicked. “He’s in surgery, but the doctor says he’s doing great, considering. Might even be able to go home tomorrow. We’ll be here with him, so you just go ahead and give me a call when you get to the hospital.” Shawano only had one.
Fear gripping me, I pulled back on the highway, heading back toward Shawano faster than I should have. But not before I called Judy Hart on speaker.
“Oh, sweetie! I’m sorry to have bothered you at work.”
Only Judy Hart would apologize for calling me.
“Judy, what happened?” I knew I sounded scared.
Her tone was serious when she replied. “Elliot went out for a dig and was hit by an ATV,” she said, her voice tight. “He called us, and we sent an ambulance over, then came straight to the hospital.”
“Shit,” I hissed. “Sorry. Is he—” I wasn’t sure what to even ask.
“Still in surgery,” she told me. “For a broken arm and collarbone, thank God it’s nothing worse.” There was relief there. “He lost some blood, lots of scrapes and bruises, cracked ribs, but no concussion and no major internal damage, somehow. His father must be watching over him.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I ignored it. “Thank God,” I agreed with her, although I got the sense that she meant it more than I did—the God part, not the grateful part. My upbringing had left me rather disenchanted with religion in general. “I’ll be there as soon as I can—I’m up near Aniwa.”
“Don’t rush, sweetie,” she told me. “I’m sure you’re just desperate to see him, but he’ll be in for another few hours at least,” she said. “We’ll be here.”
I checked my texts—one from Judy, asking me to call her, and the one from Hart, also telling me to call his mother.
I forced myself to breathe deeply a couple times, then got back on the road. My eyes kept checking the notification bar, just in case Judy sent me a text.
What she had said was that he was in surgery for his arm and shoulder. That he had no internal damage and no cranial trauma. I knew that was all good news. That he would almost certainly be fine—at least in the grand scheme of things.
But even with adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream, I understood that this probably wasn’t an accident. Accidental , maybe, in the sense that Elliot probably just decided to go out shifted and happened across the ATV, but I would have staked an awful lot on the ATV being there because it was being driven by the same asshole who was leaving dead animals at the house.
Because most of the time when he went out in badger form, he stuck to his own territory—Crane land. I knew—although I didn’t much like it—that Elliot, like his parents, allowed people to use the trails on their property for both hiking and ATVs, although they did have them marked as being private property. I’d argued with him about it after the badger had been left, and he’d shrugged it off.
Or maybe he just didn’t want to let these assholes rule his life.
I drew in another long, shaky breath, forcing myself to loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Clutching it like a lifeline wasn’t going to cause the truck to go any faster or help Elliot. The best thing I could do was to get there safely. And that meant not driving like a maniac. It was dark—the kind of dark it could only be early in the morning after the moon had set but before the sun rose—and while the adrenaline, fear, and worry were definitely keeping me awake, they weren’t doing me any favors in terms of paying attention to the mostly-empty road.
My mind just kept going in circles, hearing his pained and frightened voice on my voicemail. I’d failed him. I’d wanted to protect him— promised to protect him. And I’d failed. I’d left him alone, and he’d been attacked.
He could have been killed.
The next scene I could have been called to could literally have been him.
I sucked in a sob, a little shocked at how hard that hit me.
I reminded myself that Elliot would be okay. He wasn’t dying, and from what Judy had said, he wasn’t in danger of dying. Not from this, anyway.
I hadn’t asked Judy if they’d called the police—I hoped she had, but if not, I would have to. Elliot would probably argue with me but?—
I gulped in air, trying to get myself under enough control that I wouldn’t need to pull over. Because I wanted to get to Elliot as soon as I could.
I hadn’t felt like this—panicked, scared, angry—since Noah got sick. That had been hours of abject terror until I finally made it to the hospital, followed by days of fear and worry until he was able to tell me himself he was okay.
I’d had a full-on panic attack on the way to the hospital, lost on the side of a country road. I didn’t want to repeat that particular experience—any of it. No getting lost, no panic attacks, no walking along mostly-deserted country roads.
It got worse when I passed Elliot’s unobtrusive gravel driveway entrance. I almost stopped again, but the idea that I would get to his side any later than I had to was intolerable, and I hurriedly wiped a hand across my eyes, glad the highway was all but abandoned at this time in the morning.
I should have insisted Elliot go immediately to the Harts. I should have waited to go out to the fire—the dead weren’t going to get any deader, and I’d still have been there before Borde. I should have asked him to go to Henry’s for the day or made sure he wasn’t going to shift. He’d been restless for the past several days, and I knew he liked to shift when he was feeling restless.
There were a million different things I could have done or asked him to do or not do. And I hadn’t done any of them.
I thought about the fact that whoever had hit him almost certainly hadn’t stopped to see if he was okay—because if it was the same person who had left the dead animals, they knew how big a badger was, which meant they had to have realized that the badger they’d hit wasn’t an ordinary badger.
I did a lot of careful, deliberate breathing, trying to keep the panic at bay.
I mostly had myself under control by the time the highway turned into Main Street. And then I had to make a decision.
I could keep going south and go straight to the hospital, or I could trade out the truck for my car—and not take crime scene evidence out of the chain of custody.
“Fuck,” I muttered, then threw a hard right to pull into the Sheriff’s Department parking lot. If I was going to be actually responsible, that also meant I had to at least log in the evidence, even if I didn’t do anything else with it.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to just jump out of the truck and run to my Cruiser and go straight to the hospital.
But that wasn’t the responsible, adult thing to do.
“Fuck,” I repeated, then slammed the truck into park, then jumped out. “Fuck!” I snarled, much louder, as my knee buckled and I was forced to catch myself on the side of the truck. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the fresh pain as I stepped on my leg, hobbling toward the back of the truck and the bins of evidence and used-up kit that needed to be brought inside.
The pain in my knee slowed me down, and I swore under my breath the whole time it took me to load out the evidence, put the kit bag in the office with an apology note saying I’d do it when I got in next if nobody else wanted to, and then hastily filled out the filing paperwork for both evidence bins.
I kept compulsively checking my phone, looking for any messages or calls from Judy with updates about Elliot.
Nothing.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
I sent Judy a text from the parking lot at the hospital, which was rather alarmingly full for an extremely early Tuesday morning.
She told me that she would meet me by the front doors of Emergency.
I felt vaguely nauseous as I limped up to the automatic glass doors, my stomach in knots, my heart pounding in my chest in time to the pain in my knee. Or maybe it was my knee that was throbbing in time with my too-fast heart.
When I stepped through the doors, Judy Hart was waiting for me, and she immediately wrapped me in a surprisingly strong bear-hug, given how tiny and human a woman she was. I could feel myself shaking, struggling to keep the sobs from breaking loose.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said into my sternum. “Don’t you fuss. He’ll be alright. You’ll see.” I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince me more, or herself.
I was on my fourth or fifth cup of terrible machine coffee, my back a low burning ache and my knee swelling—I could feel my pants getting tight around the joint—by the time one of the nurses came back. Marsh was asleep, his head fallen back at an angle that would give him a horrible neck ache when he woke up. Judy was knitting furiously, her forehead furrowed.
She’d talked for a while, at first, but had lapsed into silence about a half-hour earlier because Marsh had fallen asleep, and I’d lost the ability to give her more than one- or two-word answers.
I was currently trying to alleviate some of my back pain by leaning forward, my elbows on my thighs, positioned to avoid causing too much extra pain to my knee. So instead I was slowly pinching off the circulation to both feet, and I was going to have to move sooner rather than later or risk falling flat on my face when I tried to stand up—although I wasn’t completely sure that wasn’t going to happen anyway.
I felt dizzy and sick with worry and fear, I hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunch, and all I’d put in my stomach was coffee that rivaled battery fluid for acidity since the machine didn’t have non-dairy creamer as an option.
A nurse came out and walked over to us. “Mrs. Hart?” She addressed Judy.
“Hello, Anna. I used to volunteer with your mom at the Red Cross. How’s she doing?”
The nurse flushed a little. “She’s doing okay, thanks, Mrs. Hart. Only a few treatments left, and things are looking good.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” Judy folded up her knitting and tucked it in the tote bag at her feet. “She’s such a lovely woman.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Anna-the-nurse said. “Elliot’s out of surgery, although he’s not really awake yet. He came through well, but it was a delicate repair.” She offered a small, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but only one person can come back to the recovery area.”
I didn’t move. Obviously Judy was going to go back. Elliot was practically her kid.
“Go on, sweetie,” she said to me gently. “He’ll want to see you first when he comes to.”
I looked up at her. “Are—are you sure?”
She nodded, a wistful smile on her lips as she picked up her knitting again. “Don’t keep Anna waiting, now.”
I followed the nurse back, and she took me to a curtained-off bed in a long hall-like room. “He should come around in the next thirty-to-forty-five minutes,” she told me. “He might be groggy or sick from the anesthesia, but both of those are normal and nothing to worry about.”
I nodded, because that seemed like the right way to respond. I didn’t really know much about post-surgical care.
She gestured to a chair that looked like it had come from the 1970s. “We ask our visitors to stay pretty still and quiet for the sake of the other patients,” she said, and I obediently sat in the chair. “But there’s open wifi if you want to use it, please just use headphones if you stream any music or videos.”
“Okay,” I told her. “Thanks.”
I didn’t think I’d have the ability to concentrate on anything, not with Elliot lying there, his chest and arm wrapped in thick bandaging, an IV in his other arm, thin blankets pulled up to his belly. There were scrapes and bruises on his un-bandaged arm, bruising on one side of his face.
I wanted to sit on the edge of the bed, to reach out and brush the loose hair from his face, to kiss his forehead. But I was also afraid of jarring him, of causing him pain or aggravating his injuries any further. So instead I scooted my 1970s chair closer. I wanted to take his hand, but one hand was bandaged and the other had the IV, so instead I just sat there and felt powerless, watching the heart monitor silently record his heart rate and blood pressure.
I don’t know how long it actually was, but the monitors changed before Elliot himself stirred.
It wasn’t like in the movies—when someone wakes up and immediately declares their undying love. His eyes slitted open, glassy and unfocused, and he dragged in a breath.
I leaned forward. “El?”
It took him several seconds to register the sound, then turn his head. “Seth?”
I wanted to grab his hand. Touch him. Do anything. But I didn’t know what I could touch without hurting him. “Hey,” I said, feeling stupid and inadequate. I should have said something like I love you or I’m sorry or I was so worried. But I said Hey .
I was about to apologize, my neck flaming, when a slow, crooked smile tugged on his lips. “Hi,” he mumbled, the syllable a little fuzzy. “Tried calling you.”
“I know,” I said miserably. “I’m sorry. The scene I was at was out of cell range. And by the time?—”
Elliot was frowning. “I didn’ listen,” he slurred. “You said t’ go Henry’s.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I said, feeling even worse. Elliot shouldn’t be the one feeling guilty. I’d left him alone, even knowing that there was an asshole out there who’d been threatening him. “I shouldn’t have?—”
I broke off when the hand with the IV reached weakly toward me. I gently took it in both of mine, careful not to touch the IV itself. “Don’.”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to not do, but I stopped talking, pressing my lips together and his fingers between mine. I tried to think of something to do, some excuse to direct Elliot’s attention somewhere other than me, because all I could feel was guilt and grief.
I was saved from the depths of self-recrimination by the arrival of the nurse, who went about asking Elliot questions about how he felt, his pain levels, if he had any nausea, and, finally, whether or not he wanted any ginger ale. By the time she left to get it, his speech was clearer and his eyes were a little less unfocused.
I’d let go of his hand and sat back when the nurse arrived, trying to stay out of the way, both physically and obtrusively.
Then Anna-the-nurse returned, getting Elliot situated with a cup of ginger ale and a straw. Then she turned to me. “Will you be staying with him while he recovers?”
I nodded. I’d take off work if I needed to. Or maybe I could get Henry or Judy and Marsh to take turns coming over to Elliot’s house. I was pretty sure all of them would be willing to help out. They all loved Elliot.
And I needed to call Henry. Shit.
Nurse Anna began to go through the drug and physical therapy rehab that Elliot had to follow, handing me a series of small packets describing potential signs of infection or clotting, the schedule for the anti-inflammatory and pain medications, and the exercises and their frequency.
Honestly, it seemed like a lot of work just to recover from surgery—and injury. While it had taken me a while to recover from Arcanavirus, I hadn’t had a schedule of physical therapy, compression, ice, medications, and so on to follow. When I hadn’t been at work, I’d slept—or tried to—and eaten, and nothing else. Noah had done everything else for me.
And I would do the same for Elliot. Even if that meant taking off work. Putting on hold the other things I wanted to do with my life. There was no resentment, no annoyance, although I wasn’t happy about why I was going to do it.
Elliot was more important than any other plans or schedule. If I had to wait longer to finish my fire training, to take the CFI exam, to save up enough money for the things I needed… Then that’s what I’d do.
I was pretty sure Lacy would let me take PTO for a few weeks to take care of Elliot, even though I think technically I wasn’t supposed to get vacation or anything until after I’d been employed for six months, and I hadn’t quite gotten there yet.
I just had to hope that I didn’t get fired for it. I didn’t think Lacy would want to, but state rules can be draconian, as I was fully aware after my bout with Arcanavirus led to me being encouraged to leave my job—aka, getting fired without getting fired.
But Elliot came first.
I had the distinct feeling that Elliot was always going to come first.
It was… weird, how something like that had just hit me. Maybe hit wasn’t the right word. It just… was. It was a new reality that just was there. As inextricable and unquestionable as the fact that Noah was my twin and best friend.
Or, maybe, he had been. He was still my twin, obviously. But maybe Noah wasn’t my best friend anymore. Maybe that was Elliot. And maybe I wasn’t his, either—maybe that was Lulu for Noah, now.
The weirdest part was the fact that this wasn’t some great revelation. It was just a fact.
“You don’t have to do any of that,” Elliot told me after Nurse Anna had left.
I shot him a look that said I absolutely did.