Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (Page 37)

"Yes," she said into the phone, "but you have to understand, these are horrific crimes. We would require serious proof before we could make an arrest. We can’t just show up and kick in the door. What makes you think these people are responsible?"

Lobison called for a trace and then as quietly as possible switched to line two. "It’s up to you now," the man was saying, his voice rough-edged and a little garbled. "I’ve told you who they are and where they are. They’re sick, murderers, they’re cannibals is what they are! You have to stop them!"

"Yes, but sir, please, tell me your name! Sir!"

There was a click. She looked at Lobison, who switched lines again and spoke briefly. He hung up and shook his head. "Not long enough to find a location, other than in state. And he was using a voice disguiser, I’m betting. What did he give you?"

She ripped the note from the pad and handed it across the desk. "Get your boots and parka. He says the so-called Wolf Murders are the work of a family in the Valley named Vilkachek."

The Vilkachek homestead was down a snow-covered, one-lane gravel road that wound back into the Chugach foothills. It was large, two stories, and old enough to be one of the houses built by one of the farm families who came to the Valley in 1936 as part of the WPA project to settle the territory. It had a wraparound porch with a broad set of steps leading up to it, and it was set in a grove of black spruce that had been encouraged to creep right up to the windows, obscuring the view within. Deliberately? This far out in the boonies, there was no need for a privacy screen. The nearest neighbor was five miles away.

Lobison spoke softly into the mike clipped to his vest. "Ferguson, all set around back?"

Two clicks replied in the affirmative. He drew his weapon and looked at Romanov. "Back me up?"

She already had the silver nine-millimeter automatic in a business-like grip. "Go," she said.

The wind came up and the trees sighed and creaked in response, sifting through the light of the moon just cresting Pioneer Peak. Even on the crusty snow, Romanov moved so silently behind him that he was compelled to look around once to see if she was still there. Her face moved into the shadow as he turned, so that for a fanciful moment he thought he saw her eyes gleam and her hair coarsen from its usual sleek knot into a ruffled pelt, and then the wind moved the boughs aside and she was once again Romanov, the partner who had his back.

They approached the front of the house, the snow frozen hard underfoot so that there was no postholing to give them away. There was a light in one of the front rooms upstairs, and the reflected glow of another somewhere at the back of the first floor.

Lobison set one tentative foot on the bottom stair.

As if it were a signal, someone fired from the house, a shot he first felt as a burning past his cheek. Immediately afterward he heard the instantaneous report, so close it sounded like cannon fire.

Lobison fell into an instinctive pe and rolled, coming to his feet again behind the trunk of a tree, shaking snow from his eyes. Romanov shouted something, and almost simultaneously there was a crash of glass and breaking wood from the back of the house. There were yells and screams and more shots.

"Ben! Are you all right!"

"I’m okay, you?"

"I’m good!"

And that was all the time they had for conversation as another shot hit the tree he was standing behind. It tore away a chunk of bark and he flinched away, and in that same instant the house exploded with a thunderous roar, blowing out the walls and bursting into an immense ball of flame. The wind whipped up and fanned the flames higher and the heat was so intense that even from behind the tree the force of it pushed him into retreat, hands half raised in a futile effort to ward it off. His heel caught on a thick root and he fell hard and clumsily.

As he fell, the wind tossed the branches between him and the burning house. Shadows cast by the moon formed and broke and formed again. For just an instant he thought he saw a four-legged form, dark and somehow elegant, leaping through a top-floor window to the roof of the porch. From the porch it leapt in a dark, fluid continuation of movement to the ground, and melted into the trees as if it had never been.

"A stray bullet hit the propane tank at the back of the house," the chief of detectives said. "Kaboom."

"Jesus," Lobison said. "Our bullet, or theirs?"

"Don’t know," the chief said firmly, "and don’t want to know, so don’t ask again."

Lobison felt dizzy, disoriented, and generally pissed off. It was, he felt, a reasonable response to nearly being blown up. Romanov, by contrast, looked barely ruffled, the moonlight giving her an ethereal, other-worldly glow. God, she was so gorgeous it made him want to bite.

Her eyes widened as if she could hear his thoughts, and he looked away and cleared his throat. "How many bodies?"

"Eight," the chief said, "but they’re still counting crispy critters in there, and they will be for a while. It was a pretty efficient explosion. If anyone was in the house, they’re dead."

Next to him Romanov said quietly, "The local cops say there were twenty-three family members spread over three generations, all residing at this address."

"Three generations?" Lobison said.

"No children," Romanov said, answering what he’d meant rather than what he’d said. "The youngest of them was twenty-three. They evidently . . ." She hesitated, seeming to search for the correct word. "It appears that each generation evidently married early and had children very young."

In some distant part of his brain Lobison was relieved at the news, but it felt as if he had received it at a distance, one step removed from himself. He shook his head again, not in disbelief but in an attempt to shake off his disorientation. His stomach growled, loud enough for Romanov and the chief both to hear. That was nuts, he’d had a Pop All-Dark at the Lucky Wishbone just before they’d headed out, he couldn’t possibly be hungry.

Romanov looked at him and he felt the weight of her considering gaze. He shook his head a third time, almost angrily. The scent of her perfume seemed to increase in intensity, so that he could smell nothing but her.

The chief took Lobison’s demeanor as remorse over the slaughter. "I wouldn’t weep any real tears one way or another," he said. "We found this." He held out a dented metal box. "Explosion blew it out one of the windows. Looks like trophies from all thirteen victims. Your partner’s already ID’d some of them."

Lobison took the box automatically, looking inside it, recognizing a ponytail holder, an earring, a pitiful jumble of personal objects that held no meaning except to the loved ones left behind.