Eileen Wilks - Only Human

HE DIDN'T HAVE much face left. Lily stood back far enough to keep the tips of her new black heels out of the pool of blood that was dry at the edges, still gummy near the body. Mist hung in the warm air, spinning halos around the street lamps and police spotlights, turning her skin clammy. The smell of blood was thick in her nostrils.

The first victim, the one whose body she'd seen four days ago, hadn't had his face ripped off the way this one had. Just his throat.

Flashes went off nearby in a crisp one-two as the police photographer recorded the scene. "Hey, Yu," the man behind the camera lens called.

She grimaced. O'Brien was good at his work, but he never tired of a joke, no matter how stale. If they both lived to be a hundred and ran into each other in the nursing home, the first thing he'd say to her would be, "Hey, Yu!"

That is, assuming she kept her maiden name for the next seventy-two years. Considering the giddy whirl she laughingly called a social life, that seemed possible. "Yeah, Irish?"

"Looks like you had a hot date tonight."

"No, me and my dog always dress for dinner. He looks great in a tux."

O'Brien snorted and moved to get another angle. Lily tuned him out along with the rest of the crowd—the curious behind the chain-link fence, the uniforms, the lab boys and girls waiting with their tweezers and baggies and fingerprint gear.

They'd arrived almost as fast as she had, which said something about how nervous the brass was. That a crowd had assembled in this neighborhood said something about everyone else's nerves. Spilled blood often drew people the way spilled sugar draws flies, but not in this area. Here, people assumed that curiosity came with a price tag. They knew what a drive-by sounded like, and the look of a drug deal going down.

The victim lay on his back on the dirty pavement. There was a Big Gulp cup, smashed flat, by his feet, a section of newspaper under his butt, and a broken beer bottle by his foot. Defensive wounds on the right arm, she noted. Something had torn right through his jacket. There was blood on that hand, but she didn't see any wounds.

His other hand lay about ten feet from the body, up against the pole to the swing set.

A playground. Someone had ripped this guy's throat out in a playground, for God's sake. There was a hard ache in Lily's own throat, a tightness across her shoulders. She'd seen death often enough since she was promoted to Homicide. Her stomach no longer turned over, but the regret, the sorrow over the waste, never went away.

She crouched, careful of the way her dress rode up on her thighs, and studied the focus of all the activity.

He'd been young. Not young enough to have enjoyed those swings anytime recently, though. Twenty or less, she guessed, maybe five-foot-ten, weight around one-eighty. Weight-lifter's shoulders and arms, powerful thighs. He'd been strong, perhaps cocky in his strength—used to fighting, probably used to winning.

Strength hadn't done him much good tonight.

Whatever had torn out his throat and made a mess of his face had left the eye and cheekbone on the right side intact. One startled brown eye stared up at nothing from smooth young skin the color of the wicker chair in her living room.

He was wearing a red T-shirt, black hightops, black cargo pants, and a black jacket.

Gang colors. Not that she thought this was a gang killing. The bloody paw prints leading away from the body were a pretty good clue about that.

A pair of size eleven shoes, black and dusty, moved up beside her. They were connected to long, skinny legs encased in uniform trousers. "Careful, Detective. Don't want to get your pretty dress dirty."

Lily sighed. Officer Larry Phillips was half of the patrol unit that had been first on the scene. She hadn't run across him before—the San Diego PD was too big for her to know many beat cops. A few minutes spent taking his report had given her a pretty clear picture, though. He was pushing fifty, still on the streets and sour about it. She was female, twenty-eight, and already a detective.

In other words, he didn't like her. "This is your turf, Officer. You know him?"

"He's one of the Devils."

"Yeah, I got that much." She stood and glanced up at him. Way up—he was a long, stringy man, well over six feet. Of course, Lily had to look up to meet almost anyone's eyes. She'd persuaded herself that didn't irritate her anymore. "You think you could look at his face instead of his clothes and see if you can ID him?"

"Why? This wasn't a gang killing." He had a toothpick in his mouth. She found herself staring at it, waiting for it to drop, wondering if it was glued to his lip. "Not even murder, really."

Three years ago a case like this would have been handled by the X-Squad. Now it went to Homicide. "The courts say otherwise."

He snorted. The toothpick didn't budge. "Yeah, and we know how smart those bleeding heart judges are. According to them, we're supposed to treat the beasts like they were human. That mess at your feet proves what a great idea that is."

"I've seen uglier things done by men to other men. And to women. And I still need an ID."

Another cop joined them, this one young, short, with shiny black hair and a greenish cast to his complexion—Phillips's

partner, the other half of the responding unit. "I, uh, I think it's Carlos Fuentes."

Phillips raised one scornful eyebrow. "You basing that ID on his shoes? Not much else to go on."

"It looks like him around the eyes. I mean the eye. And the build is right. Fuentes is supposed to be good with his knife," he added. "Fast."

"Was he left-handed?" Lily asked.

"No. No, I'm sure he was right-handed. That fits—it's his right arm with the defensive wounds. If he were attacked by a dog—"

"Dog?" Phillips was incredulous. "You think a dog did this?"

"It could have been," Rodriguez insisted. "You always tell me not to jump to conclusions. Well, until they run the tests we won't know that this was done by a—by—"

"A lupus," Phillips drawled. "That's what we're supposed to call them now, right?"

"It could have been a rabid dog. Or one trained to attack. Maybe Fuentes was meeting someone, making some kind of deal. When it went sour the other guy sicced the dog on him."

Phillips made a disgusted sound.

She flicked a glance his way. Phillips wasn't much of a partner if he wouldn't take the time to educate the kid. Lily looked back at the younger officer. "Where's Fuentes's knife?"

"I don't..." His voice trailed off as he looked around. "He must not have had time to draw it."

"Right. Now look at the body, and think. You said he was good with a blade, and fast. He's right-handed, so when some animal comes at him out of the darkness, he uses his left arm for defense. Like this." She flung up her own arm. "He reaches for his knife at the same time. And the beast didn't pay any attention to the defensive arm. It knew he was reaching for a weapon. Went for his right hand, bit it off, and spat it out. Dogs don't do that."

His throat worked as he stared at the corpse. "If—if it had been trained to go for the right arm ..."

"It bit the hand off," she repeated patiently. "And flung it away. You can't train an animal to do that. What's more, Fuentes looks like he could have bench-pressed three-fifty or better, but he couldn't even slow the beast down."

"Where do you get that?"

"Observation. Aside from the blood and the body, you can't tell there's been any kind of fight here. The beast hit him quick and hard. He might not even have had time to know his hand was gone. He had good instincts, though. He tried to pull his head down, protect his neck. That's when he lost some of his face. Then it ripped out his throat."