Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (5 page)

She grinned.
‘About her name? I’m afraid not,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Anyway, she’s
a sophomore at Buxton University.’

‘So is the Vic,
right?’

She frowned. ‘I
assume so, but we’ll have to confirm. She met Aaron during their philosophy
class at BU at the start of the semester. She said that Aaron overheard her
talking about going to “The Imp and Impaler” last week over lunch with a group
of her friends and asked to tag along.’

‘Okay.’

‘The thing she
found strange though was he’s not Goth.’

‘Could he have
been hiding it?’

Larissa shook
her head. ‘Cherry claims she knows all the Goths on campus and Aaron was
definitely not one of them.

‘So the kid was
faking to get laid,’ Vaile surmised.

‘Maybe,’ she
conceded. ‘She also mentioned Aaron was talking to a woman, but she couldn’t
give me any details about what she looked like other than she felt threatened
by her. And I quote “I thought she’d take my fucking head off.” End quote.’
Larissa blushed. She didn’t like cursing.

‘Cherry was
scared of this woman? If she couldn’t give us a good description of her, we can
assume that she never actually spoke to the woman. So how did she feel
threatened by her?’ Vaile asked.

‘She said she
just gave out that kind of vibe.’

‘Pancakes for
you,’ the waitress interrupted suddenly, placing the plate in front of Vaile.
‘And toast for you,’ the waitress smiled, walking away before either of them
could correct her.

‘Thank you,’
Larissa called out after her, more out of habit than anything.

She pushed
Vaile’s plate towards him. ‘I believe this is yours,’ she smiled. Vaile pushed
her plate over, pulling his to his side of the table while Larissa did the
same. Drowning the pancakes in syrup, her first mouthful was on her fork when
she stopped. ‘What?’ she asked Vaile, who was staring at her with an open
curiosity she hadn’t ever seen before.

‘That’s a lot of
food. Are you sure you’ll be able to finish it all?’

‘Guaranteed,’
she smiled, sliding the fork into her mouth and chewing. She groaned around the
mouthful, drawing Vaile’s eyes away from his toast.

‘What’s wrong?’
he asked with a frown.

With syrup
running from her lip, she replied, ‘They’re so good.’

He smiled a
little, but looked irritated almost immediately after. Larissa couldn’t figure
out whether that irritation was because of her, or could it have been something
else? Vaile picked up a slice of toast, and was about to take a bite when his
phone rang—vibrating on the table and shaking the cutlery. He frowned, put down
the slice and flipped open the phone.

‘Doc Lee? Please
tell me you have something … uh huh … no, we’re not far away … Okay, I’ll see
you in half an hour.’ Vaile snapped his phone shut and placed it back on the
table. ‘The doc says he’s got the cause of death, but he wants us down there.
He says we need to see something.’

Larissa
swallowed down on the lump that had formed in her throat, her appetite suddenly
disappearing. She stared down at her plate, hating that all that food was going
to waste.

‘You want a
doggy bag for those?’ Vaile asked, pointing the business end of his triangle of
toast at her plate.

She nodded.
‘Yeah.’

The coroner’s office was
new—purpose built only a couple of years before. Architecturally, it was
beautiful, but no matter how beautiful it was on the outside, it would always
have dead bodies inside. Larissa knew it was stupid to be so squeamish about
it—after all, death is the only certainty in life—but ever since that day three
years ago, she couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing another corpse laid out on
a metal slab.

As she stared up
at the building, she could see the warning signs of her panic attack clearly:
the racing heart, the dizziness. It wouldn’t be too long before the feeling of
impending doom took over her brain; scrambling her thoughts. It was coming and
there was nothing she could do about it.

‘Grey? Are you
alright?’ Vaile rumbled near her ear. Sucking in huge breaths of cool air, she
tried to pull it together. Vaile didn’t need to see her like this: falling
apart over a memory. She looked up to find him staring down at her, his eyes
swirling slowly from grey to blue and back again. ‘Grey?’ he asked again.

But she couldn’t
form any words. All she could do was shake her head, groaning inwardly when the
tears of her own fears rolled down her cheeks. There was a sudden pressure on
her shoulders, and she realised she was being guided down. She was sitting in
the passenger seat of Vaile’s car again, her legs hanging from the side,
dangling.

Vaile came into
view in front of her, crouching down to meet her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ he
asked, voice still gruff, but not as tough as it could have been.

‘I-I’m sorry. I
just have this f-fear of m-m-morgues,’ she stammered uncontrollably.

Vaile frowned,
his blond brows throwing shadows over his eyes. ‘I’ll go in. You stay here.’

She reached for
him as he turned, and he stiffened under her hand. ‘Wait. I have to do this.
It’s my job,’ she said, trying to convince herself more than she was trying to
convince him. He turned, irises churning. She blinked the tears out of her
eyes, finding his eyes their usual grey again. Shaking her head, she figured
the lack of sleep and
now the lack of food was playing tricks on her.
‘Give me a minute?’ she asked, pulling a tissue from the travel pack in her
bag, and lowering the sun visor to look in the small mirror.

Her face was
blotchy, red, and horribly embarrassed. Dabbing the tissue under her eyes, she
cleared away most of the tears and blew her nose. She stared up at her
reflection, willing resolve to strengthen her and straighten her spine. Vaile
was leaning against the side of the car, waiting for her, and suddenly she
didn’t want to see disappointment in his eyes.

‘I’m ready.’ Her
voice was surprisingly steady. Vaile turned. His eyes studied her face before
he nodded and walked towards the glass doors of the coroner’s office.

‘It’s not like
before,’ she whispered to herself under her breath. ‘This is work. You’re a cop,
and a damn good one at that. You can do this Larissa.’

‘Did you say
something?’

Larissa looked
up. Vaile was staring at her, the irritation easy to see. ‘No,’ she replied
meekly. Vaile growled softly under his breath and pushed into the office. The
heating hummed gently in the reception area, the small area lush with potted
plants. The receptionist looked up at Vaile and smiled nervously. ‘Doctor Lee
is waiting for you.’

Larissa followed
in a daze, finding it much easier to just follow her partner around without
having to think about where she was, or what she was about to do. She stopped
abruptly when Vaile knocked on a door and waited. Doctor Lee answered the door
in a pair of surgical scrubs and a face mask. Sliding his gloves off, he tilted
his mask past his mouth and smiled.

‘Detective
Wolfe. I’m so glad you could make it so soon.’

‘No problem,
Doc.’

Lee walked into
the room, the invitation to follow clear. Larissa took in one last breath and
stepped into the room and closed the door. When she turned around, she was
faced with a room full of stainless steel. Along the east wall, there were
three rows of three drawers recessed into the wall. Chills chased up her spine,
forcing her to look away. She held back the whimper she could feel burning her
throat, her eyes falling on something so much worse than a bunch of
refrigerated body drawers. Aaron No Last Name was laid out on the slab, Lee and
Vaile bent over the body in interest.

‘He bled out?’

Larissa
swallowed thickly.

‘Yes … hit …
carotid … dead before … ’

She began seeing
black spots when she blinked.

‘… alcohol … his
system?’

‘Tox screen …
negative …’

Larissa only
caught snatches of conversation, her hearing coming and going like someone was
placing headphones over her ears every few seconds. But instead of hearing
music, all she could hear was static. 

Larissa forced
her feet into action even though her heart was pounding uncontrollably in her
chest, sending blood pouring too quickly around her body. Licking her
desert-dry lips, she blinked away the black spots and stepped up to the slab.

‘There are some
gloves over on the counter,’ Lee said without looking at her. She swallowed
thickly, her heart tripping over beats with much more frequency now. Vaile
glanced at her when she didn’t move. She shook her head minutely, and made a
show of placing her hands behind her back. Vaile looked back at the doc.

‘I’ve never seen
a pattern like this,’ the doctor said, running his fingers along the long edge
of one of the incisions she could see. Against her will, Larissa leaned forward
for a closer look.

Aaron’s body had
been washed clean, leaving the carvings in his chest easily visible. The
pattern was nothing like she’d seen before. It consisted of two shapes. The
first was a straight line around six inches long that started in the hollow
between his clavicles and ran down to the end of his sternum. The second was an
“x” in the centre of the vertical line. She glanced at Vaile. His jaw was
clenched tight; the muscles jumping every few seconds.  

‘The only thing
I can’t figure out is why the hell he didn’t call for help?’ Vaile said.

Lee said, ‘He
couldn’t. See that slash there?’ he pointed out a gash in the front of Aaron’s
neck. ‘Whoever did this, cut his larynx first. He couldn’t scream for help.’

‘And the
markings? Were they post-mortem?’

Lee shook his
head. ‘He was still alive when he was being mutilated. A nasty way to go …’

‘Anything else
you can tell me about him?’

‘No. Sorry,’ Lee
shrugged.

Vaile nodded.
‘Thanks Doc.’ He turned and left the room, leaving Larissa to follow.

‘Thank you
Doctor Lee,’ she whispered before following her partner out into the warm
reception area. She didn’t mention the symbol to Vaile until they were in the
warm car again.

‘You recognised
that symbol in Aaron’s chest, didn’t you?’ she said after gathering up all her
courage. She sat forward in her seat, turning her body towards his.

He gave her a
cursory glance before his eyes were back on the road again. He was playing it
cool, but the muscle jumping violently in his jaw was telling a different
story. ‘No. I’ve never seen it before.’

‘You’re lying,’
she pressed. ‘You’ve seen it before, haven’t you? Why won’t you admit it?’

He took his eyes
off the road, staring at her for far too long without looking back at the road.
It felt like the temperature in the car had just dropped a few degrees and she
shivered in response. ‘Like I said, I’ve never seen it before.’

Larissa had
always picked her battles, and having one with Vaile now wasn’t the right thing
to do. She sat back into her seat, folding her arms across her chest. He was
lying to her, but the question was why.

Guilt. What a useless emotion. Yet
for Indi that was all she could feel when she looked at her best friend laying
in the hospital bed Indi was now sitting next to. Guilt was what had stopped
her from coming to visit Beth sooner than she had, because guilt was what was
eating her alive. Beth stirred then; her eyelids slowly creeping open despite
the sedatives they’d pumped her full of to keep most of the pain at bay. Warm
fingers flexed around Indi’s; the only sign that she was winning the battle
against unconsciousness.

‘Indi?’ Beth
asked groggily, her eyes opening a little wider.

Indi had to
force the smile onto her lips. ‘Yeah, it’s me Beth.’ She squeezed her best
friend’s hand carefully.

Beth cleared her
throat, wincing like it hurt. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘About half an
hour. I’ll have to go soon.’

Beth licked her
lips. ‘Can you get me some water, please?’ Indi looked back at the trolley
beside Beth’s bed and picked up the plastic cup.

While Beth was
drinking, Indi said, ‘Jerry only gave me an hour off. I have to go to work.’
Lie. Jerry had given her the entire morning off so she could visit Beth, but
Indi couldn’t stand seeing her like this. She couldn’t stand the knowledge that
she was the one responsible for letting Beth get broken, banged up and raped.
Indi just wished she’d got there before Beth was raped; before the bastard who
had done this to her was able to take away the one thing that Beth cherished so
much, the one thing that made her special. Her bones would heal, the bruises
would disappear, but her virginity was never coming back.

Beth passed Indi
back the cup. ‘But I haven’t seen you once since I was admitted. I’ve got so
many questions for you.’ It seemed as if the water had shaken off the last of
the drug stupor. Indi placed the empty cup back onto the trolley and met Beth’s
cobalt eyes again. She frowned at Indi. ‘What happened to your contacts?’

Indi shrugged.
‘I’ve stopped wearing them.’ Indi cleared her throat uncomfortably. ‘So, what
do you need to know?’ she asked quickly to stop Beth from asking any more
questions about it. It was out of necessity rather than want that she
relinquished the one thing in her life that she could control. The simple truth
of the matter was, since her transformation, the contacts had stung her eyes
like someone had poured acid into them.
 

Beth swallowed,
looking down her body then back at Indi. ‘I woke up at your apartment, right? I
didn’t dream that, did I?’

‘No, that
actually happened.’ Indi’s mind flashed back to that moment. She remembered how
tenuously she’d held onto her self-control while the EMTs looked Beth over.