First Born (8 page)

“That’s a start,” responded Seth.

“I believe that shapeshifter abilities run in families. Your ancestry determines form and skills. Look back into your family’s history and you may find stories to explain the how and why.”

“Fairy tales?”

“Perhaps,” Liu said. “Folklore indicates that the animal shape was based on your ancestry, lifestyle, spirit, and personality. Your needs at the time also determined your form. If you were a Native American fighting off an enemy at night in the woods, you would transform into a wolf in order to conquer your foe with the power of strength, speed and the pack.”

“And my father?”

“His shift was triggered by a traumatic event. A man pulled a knife on us when we were walking to the MARTA station. We were just two seventeen-year-old boys coming back from a Braves game planning to catch the train.” Seth noticed Li Liu look off to the fish tank; his eyes tracked the movements of the angelfish, his brow furrowed.

He turned back to Seth. “Your father shifted into a Belgian Malinois, a guard dog. We were in an urban setting and we needed protection. He saved our lives.”

Seth stared at him, wondering what happened to the man with the knife, but respecting that Mr. Liu, perhaps, didn’t want to discuss the details.

“Afterward, we shared a tremendous trust. We were inseparable, even attending the academy together. I felt responsible for your father and he felt protective of me.”

“You were a good friend.”

“I tried.”

“What did my mother think of all this?” Seth asked, feeling his anger flare again.

“She didn’t know.”

“Hard to believe.”

He nodded. “You know, your mother chooses to see only certain things. She acknowledges something only if it fits into her perfect world. That’s how she copes.”

And that’s why she no longer acknowledges me.
“How did Dad keep it from her?”

“Well, obviously it was easier after the divorce and they lived apart.”

“But they divorced when I was ten,” Seth said.

“Yes, before then, your father did his best to control his shifting. Some days he partnered with me in human form, but changed to Malinois if K-9 assistance was required.”

“How could he keep something that important from her?” Seth asked.

“He just did. He realized that she couldn’t handle it. Your mother is...delicate. Once they had you kids, Arthur couldn’t risk her reaction to the truth. He was terrified of losing you.”

“Why didn’t he tell
us
?” Seth asked.

“I think he planned to someday.” The two men didn’t discuss Arthur Moore’s shooting. Seth was relieved that Mr. Liu didn’t bring it up.

“What about Dad’s parents?”

“We learned early that his parents had no idea,” said Mr. Liu. “We asked funny questions trying to bait them into discussing the topic of people turning into creatures. They never showed the slightest indication they were aware of any such thing.”

Seth shook his head. People behaved badly quite often, himself included. But this was major. Lily was suffering. Dad had suffered. Waipo knew. Yet no one bothered to tell them. How did his Chinese grandmother know about Dad, but his mother was left in the dark? Lily’s current predicament may have been avoided if she had known.

He reined in his frustration and focused on gaining more insight. “How did he shift?”

“Initially, he could only transition at dark. After a while, he gained control through use of visualization and breathing techniques. It remained easier for him to shapeshift at night, but he mainly worked days so that he was available to you kids after school. He didn’t want to miss anything.”

Seth nodded. It really would have been okay if he had missed some of his football games. “How did he manage work?”

“The Captain knew. He assigned your dad to partner with me often. If a call required a K-9 unit, your dad shifted. Otherwise, he was a patrol officer. Overall, it worked. The days he took his own patrol car, I used my German Shepherd, Spike. The other officers knew that I worked with the two different dogs. They concluded that Barney was smarter than most people they knew, but Spike was more loveable.”

“Anyone look in the back of the unit while Dad was in human form in the front.”

“Windows were tinted, but we had some tricks we used, like a recording of a dog barking.” Liu smirked.

Seth laughed. He could totally see his father pulling some pranks with the situation. It was surreal to be discussing his father in this way. He regretted that Arthur Moore hadn’t confided in him. “Could he change into different creatures?”

“No, I’ve heard some legends tell of that, but have not personally known anyone that could.”

“You know others besides Dad?” Seth asked in a whisper.

“I know
of
others. Don’t necessarily know them.”

“Can it be suppressed? I mean can you choose to never change into an animal again,” he asked, leaning forward now.

“I think it is too powerful a force within you. Your father would get headaches if he didn’t shift every day. He learned about himself and adjusted so that he could have a happy, healthy life.”

Mr. Liu looked troubled. “Seth, it’s best not to fight nature. We must have balance. If we do not, we become very ill.”

Seth diverted his eyes.

“Your father coped with his condition in the most healthy, natural way he could.”

“I get it,” said Seth, not entirely understanding why he was telling him this.

Li Liu caught his gaze, his lips pressed in a tight line. “I am so sorry for these circumstances, but very glad for the opportunity to talk to you.”

Seth nodded, then looked at his watch. “Thanks for taking the time. I really should go or I’ll be late for work.”

“Yes, of course.” He hesitated. “I am forever indebted to your father. If you or Lily ever need my help, I am here. In fact, you should come by my studio some time. I will train you at no cost.”

“Thanks, Mr. Liu, I will consider it.” Seth balked when he heard the two German shepherds whining outside, waiting for him.

At the door, Mr. Liu grasped his shoulder in a paternal manner. “I’ll walk out with you.” The male shepherd whined and paced as Seth walked past.

“What is it, pengyou?” Mr. Liu asked the dog.

Seth shrugged. Who was he to judge if the guy called his dog “friend” and talked to him. He had been singing with a cat in the shower earlier.

The retired officer put the dogs in a down-stay position as Seth climbed into his truck.

Seth turned the truck around so he could drive forward down the long, winding driveway. Once headed in the right direction, he glanced in his rearview mirror, noting Mr. Liu sitting on the front porch stroking one of the shepherd’s behemoth heads while talking on his cell phone. As Seth exited the driveway, a dark SUV pulled away from the shoulder in front of Mr. Liu’s property, headed in the opposite direction.

Weird.

It wasn’t the hangover. Seth’s gut was telling him Mr. Liu knew things. He knew things that weren’t being said. Seth tried, but just couldn’t trust the fatherly warmth. It made him squirm, maybe because it had been so long since he had experienced it.

Caldwell set his soft drink on the edge of the table while Lake donned his reading glasses. They sat in Lake’s office on the third floor of the APD headquarters on Peachtree Street with the various agencies’ lab reports spread out before them.

Ms. Sinclair’s lab results suggested an overdose of Inderal, a beta-blocker used to address stage fright, high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.

Sinclair’s primary doctor had prescribed thirty-milligram tablets of Inderal to be taken twice daily to address her severe PTSD. He couldn’t explain the injectable form found at the home. Inderal was not typically injected. However, in an emergency such as during a surgical procedure, a medical team may administer it via an IV bolus or continuous drip. People didn’t inject it directly into a vein otherwise there was a chance they would suffer significant heart complications.

“Why would she procure the injectable form and from where?” Lake asked peering over his glasses.

Caldwell couldn’t resist, “I don’t know, professor. What’s your hypothesis?”

“Piss off Simms,” Lake said, adjusting the readers. “Generally Inderal is prescribed in oral tablets, capsules, or liquid. The sharps container indicates she was injecting herself frequently.”

“Taking the pills
and
injecting herself,” Caldwell added. “That’s overkill.”

“The number of pills missing from the container indicates she was taking the oral dose sporadically.”

“ME found only one injection site. If she was using the injectable regularly as the container suggests, wouldn’t she have track marks or some bruising?”

Lake shook his head. “Not adding up. She has no history of swallowing difficulty; there’s no logical reason for her to need the injectable.”

Caldwell drummed his fingers on the table. “If it was suicide, why not just toss back the whole container of pills?”

“Wanted to be certain she didn’t purge the drug,” Lake offered. “And she did not mix the oral and injectable the night she died. ME only found Inderal in her bloodstream, not her stomach.”

“But why have all those syringes if it was a one-shot attempt?”

“You said Sinclair’s sister didn’t shed any light on her situation. Neither did her literary agent, Susan Beck, who was the last person to have seen her?” Lake said.

“No. Beck flew in two days prior to Sinclair’s death to have lunch with her. They strategized about the development of her next book and the agent returned to her home in New York. I checked all of her records to substantiate her story. Beck mentioned that she’s never been in Sinclair’s home and admitted that Sinclair came across as a bit of a loner. The woman was not familiar with Sinclair’s medical history.”

“What did Clemens say about the scenario?” asked the lieutenant.

“She insisted that her sister would never intentionally overdose and she was floored by the syringes.” Caldwell shook his head. “Lady was genuinely shaken up. Thinks her sister’s anxiety disorder was getting worse which made her more forgetful.”

“Maybe it’s denial. She can’t accept suicide because that would mean somehow she ignored the warning signs,” Lake offered.

Caldwell shook his head. The crime scene revealed a busy woman who was in the middle of writing the next book in her bestselling children’s series. She had just started the promotion of the current book. “I’ll keep pouring through Sinclair’s internet history, email, and phone records trying to find any evidence of her getting her ‘affairs in order’ so to speak.”

Caldwell stretched his cramped legs and arched his back in the chair. He couldn’t decide if it was the case making him tired or the five miles he ran that morning. “Lieutenant, you know they’re related?”

Lake took a sip of his protein drink and winced before putting it back down. “Marx and Sinclair?”

“Yeah. I pulled out the Marx file. His research work with Dr. Hitomi was on PTSD. Inderal is one of their trial medications.”

Caldwell looked up at the timeline they had drawn on the board. Lake had organized photos of the victims on either side.

“That’s why I want a full victimology report on Moore, Miller, Sinclair, and Marx.

Finally.
“We’re looking at this as a homicide then?” Caldwell asked.

“No Simms, we’re sitting under these nasty vents in here just waiting for our hair to set.” Caldwell smirked.

Lake walked over to the board. “Tiny’s reviewing the Marx evidence to see if there are some similarities. Forensics submitted some hairs retrieved from Sinclair’s clothing to the GBI lab. Until those come back, we aren’t closing the Sinclair case. We’re keeping her place sealed. I can’t ignore the chain of events here.”

Caldwell got up to stand next to his boss. He stared at Lily Moore. Homicide continued to work in conjunction with the missing persons division, but Lily Moore’s trail was running cold. “Perhaps she wasn’t the paranoid basket case we thought she was.”

Lake’s whole body stiffened. “We found nothing in Marx’s car. No evidence of foul play. No fingerprints present other than Marx’s.”

A rap at the door interrupted the tension that was building between the two of them.

Ernie Gates entered, his jaw working overtime on a piece of nicotine gum.

“How’s that for timing?” asked Lake raising one eyebrow to Caldwell.

“S’up Gates?” Caldwell asked.

“How’s it going, Simms?” Gates chuckled at the officer and gave him a slap on the upper arm. Caldwell felt the jolt, but winced inside.

Gates took a seat while the two detectives wrote a few more notes on the board on the wall next to Lake’s desk. When they turned to sit down, Gates was rocking back in the chair while picking at his cuticles.

“Whatcha got?” Lake asked, leaning back against his desk. Simms went to sit across from Gates. The office was small. With the three men together, it was darn right uncomfortable.

“Lucy is frantic. Ricky is distracted, which isn’t that unusual for him. He’s a male bloodhound, they’re more inclined to be ADD,” he said.

It’s like he’s talking about his nine-year-old twins.
Caldwell refrained from teasing him; the man took his hounds seriously. Plus, even though Caldwell had two inches on him, Gates had more bulk. The fifty-year-old was six foot and fit. Gates had retired from the Decatur Police Department ten years ago and started his work with scent hounds. Now his partners were two bloodhounds, Ricky and Lucy. Having found his true calling, he contracted with the APD on a regular basis.

“They got a hot scent around the Ansley Park area on one particular street, but they keep doing a loop. We’ve gone door-to-door in this area. A Larry Jones, her co-worker, lives on that street. He was her manager so she dropped things off at his house all the time so it’s possible that Lucy is picking up an old scent,” Gates speculated. He rubbed his gray flat top.

“I interviewed both residents, Jones and Harding,” volunteered Caldwell. “They were at a charity event at the High Museum of Art the night of Ms. Moore’s abduction. They arrived home around one in the morning and went to sleep. Got up around 6:00 a.m. for work. Nothing unusual according to them or their neighbors other than some injured dog at their door in the middle of the night.”