Mercedes Lackey - Wintermoon

“This was in Ireland?” I didn’t mean to interrupt. It just popped out. Billy’s ears moved back with surprise.

“Yeah. What, you had some run-ins with the cops while you were there?”

“No, I just remember my mother talking about the Garda. She didn’t call them the Siochana.” I said the word carefully, SHE-a-CAWN-a . “I had to ask her what it meant.”

“It means police,” Billy said helpfully, then waved off my exasperated raspberry. “Yeah, you know that, right. Anyway, they weren’t able to find the guy, and for a while the woman was under suspicion, but she got off when the marks on the victims’ bodies had obviously been made by somebody a lot bigger than she was. They’re usually strangled into semiconsciousness before the horrible stuff begins.”

“Like being half-strangled isn’t horrible.” It had nothing on having your innards ripped out while you were still alive, and I lifted a hand to stop Billy’s protestation. “I know. So what was her name? Maybe we can talk to her, get some kind of information about this psycho that might help us.”

Billy leaned forward, chair shrieking protest again, to pull up a minimized screen. “That was my thought. She was from Mayo. I’ve got some people there looking to see if they can find her. Her name was—oops, wrong window.” He pulled up another one, scrolling down. “Her name was—”

“Sheila MacNamarra,” I finished, feeling light-headed.

The woman on the computer screen looked more like me than the one I’d known had. There was a ranginess to her that I shared, and our eyes were shaped more alike than I’d realized. I’d never seen a picture of my mother when she was young, and young she was: the photo showed her from the thighs up. She was obviously several months pregnant.

With me.

I closed my eyes, unable to think while looking at the photograph on the computer screen. “You won’t—” I cleared my throat, trying to wash away the break I’d heard in my voice. “You won’t find her. She’s dead.”

“Joanie?” Billy sounded bewildered. “You know this woman?”

“Yeah.” I wished I was wearing my glasses so I could pull them off. Instead my hand wandered around my face like a bird looking for a resting space: my fingers pressed against my mouth, then spread out to cover the lower half of my face before curling in again. I couldn’t stop the little actions, even when I tried. “She’s my mother.”

I wanted the next half hour or so to disappear into a jumble of confusion, but it adamantly refused to. It was all horribly clear, with an overwhelming babble of questions that I caught every syllable of and a host of concerned, confused, angry expressions that wouldn’t let me back up and take stock of the situation. No one had known my mother’s name, not any more than I knew Billy’s mom’s name. Everyone had known I’d gone to Ireland to meet her, and that she’d died, but nobody’d pried beyond that, which I’d been perfectly happy about.

Now, though, Morrison was standing over me—well, trying to. I was on my feet, too, unable to stay sitting while he demanded to know how it was I coincidentally had connections to this woman who’d been a suspect, albeit briefly, in a murder case that was nearly thirty years old. He went on for quite a while, during which Billy tried to be the voice of reason and I watched them both with growing incredulity. Finally I edged between them and said, “Captain,” which brought Morrison up short. I rarely resorted to using his actual title.

“Look.” This was my reasonable voice. I didn’t have a lot of hope for it working on Morrison, but I’d never tried it before, and anything was worth trying once. “My mother obviously didn’t kill those women. She wasn’t big enough. The police reports cover all that. I guess I am big enough.” I lifted one of my hands, with its long fingers, and shrugged. “And we have no idea when our women died, so—”

“Actually,” Billy said. I winced and looked at him. He grimaced back apologetically and shrugged. “The first body has a fair amount of degradation. They figured she died about three weeks before it started getting cold enough to snow so much, probably around Christmas.”

Morrison’s cheeks went a dangerous dark florid purple. “You’re telling me we had a body lying around Woodland Park for three weeks before it snowed and nobody noticed? ”

“The good news,” I said under his outrage, “is that I was in Ireland at a funeral on Christmas. Good alibi.”

“How the hell,” Morrison shouted, ignoring me, “did a body lie around in a public park for three weeks without anyone noticing?”

“I don’t—” Billy began.

Morrison roared, “Find out!” and stalked into his office, slamming the door behind him. Everyone within forty feet flinched. I sucked my lower lip into my mouth and watched the venetian blinds inside the captain’s office swing from the force of the door crashing shut.

“Do you think he does that for dramatic effect?” I didn’t realize that was my outside voice until nervous laughter broke around me, then rolled over into outright good humor. Someone smacked me on the shoulder and the audience that had gathered for the drama broke up. It never failed to astonish me how there were always people around to watch tense moments unfold. You’d think none of us had jobs to do.

I followed Billy back to his desk, since I still wasn’t on shift for another forty minutes. “I really hate to say this.”

He eyed me, wary. “But?”

“But I’m pretty sure nobody was supposed to see that body. I don’t think it was cosmic coincidence. I think there was…” My tongue seemed to be swelling up and choking my throat in order to prevent me from continuing my sentence. Part of me wished it would succeed. “Power.” Power was easier to say than that other word, the five-letter one that began with m and ended with agic. “Involved.”

“Yeah?” Billy’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Can you do that?”

“Billy, I can’t even pick my nose without using a finger.” Sometimes my mouth should stop and consult my brain before it says anything. Billy got this wide-eyed look of admiration that belonged on a nine-year-old boy. It said, Wow, that was really gross, and, more important, How come I didn’t think of it? My mouth consulted my brain this time, and I asked, “I don’t suppose you could just forget I said that?”

“No,” Billy said, in a tone that matched the admiration still in his eyes. “I don’t think I can. I’m going to have to tell that one to Robert.”

“Melinda will kill you.”

Billy’s grin turned beatific. “Yeah,” he said happily. “Girls don’t get stuff like that. Except you,” he added hastily. “But you’re sort of not like a girl.”

I stared at him. After a while he realized he might have said something wrong, and backed up hastily. “I mean, you are—of course, you’re a girl, it’s just, you know, you’re one of the guys.”

“Billy,” I said. “Bear in mind that what you’re saying is coming from a man who wears nail polish. I’m not sure it’s helping.”

“See, that’s what I’m saying. Have you ever worn nail polish?”

“No,” I said slowly. “I started to put some on once, but it made my fingers feel heavy and I hated it.”

“Okay then. So what I’m saying is I bet more of the guys here have worn fingernail polish than you have.”

“So I’m more like a guy than one of the guys.” My tone was flat and dangerous. Well, I thought it was. Billy didn’t seem to feel threatened.

“Kind of, yeah. You’re like an uberguy. You know everything about cars and you drink beer and shoot guns, only then you also clean up pretty good—”