He got another surprise when he reached the backside of the landfill and saw only four vehicles parked on the side of the road. Typically, there’d be a frigging parking lot full of city, county, and state emergency vehicles at a scene like this. But other than the bulldozer sitting in the muddy field across the road, this part of the landfill was essentially deserted.
Trey climbed out of his truck, immediately spotting Connor, Trevor, Hale, and their other pack mate, Zane Kendrick, standing a few yards away staring at something on the ground behind a big pile of construction scraps. He’d only taken a few steps in their direction when he caught sight of two other people he definitely hadn’t expected to see here. For the first time, he began to think maybe there was something different going on.
“Corporal Duncan.” Deputy Chief Hal Mason stepped forward in the dim morning light to shake Trey’s hand. “I’m sorry for dragging you out of bed this early, but as you’ll soon see, this isn’t something that could wait.” Mason oversaw the SWAT team, along with several other specialty units within the DPD. And while he was fully aware that the entire team was composed of alpha werewolves, it was rare to see him in the field. The man was high enough up on the food chain that he didn’t go after bad guys himself, but low enough that he wasn’t expected to show up at crime scenes purely for publicity’s sake. “You already know Agent Carson,” he added, motioning toward Zane and the tall, slim woman with blond hair pulled back in a neat ponytail standing beside him.
Yeah, Trey knew her. And Alyssa, on the other hand, had no business being at any normal DPD crime scene—publicity or not. She was Zane’s mate and also an agent with STAT, aka Special Threat Assessment Team, the secretive joint FBI-CIA group that had the job of dealing with those things that went bump in the night. Things that very few humans ever had the opportunity to learn about until they were unfortunate enough to get eaten by one of them. If she was here, it couldn’t be good.
Or normal.
“I’m guessing this isn’t another Butcher body dump?” Trey asked as he and Mason moved over to join everyone else.
“No,” the deputy chief said. “At least we don’t think so.”
That sounded ominous.
Trey walked around the shoulder-high pile of construction debris, slowing at the sight of a black cat sitting there all prim and proper atop a pile of bricks. The cat looked back at him, impatience clear on her furry face. If the creature could talk, Trey was pretty sure she’d be asking what took him so long to get there.
Trey threw a glance in Mason’s direction to see what he thought about there being a pet at a crime scene. It said something about how jaded the deputy chief had become to the strange and unusual that he acted like the cat wasn’t even there.
Pulling his attention away from the cat, Trey turned to look at whatever was on the ground that had everyone’s attention, grunting when he finally caught sight of it.
“What the hell?” he murmured, stepping closer to the body lying among the rubble near a beat-up piece of plywood.
If Trey had to guess, the victim had to be in his nineties at least. Hell, for all Trey knew, the guy might even be a hundred years old. Then again, maybe the killer had left the body someplace really hot and really dry…like an oven. Because that was the only thing that might explain why the corpse looked like a mummy. The body was shirtless, the pants undone and shoved halfway down his legs to his knees. Other than being dried out and shriveled up like a raisin, the body appeared completely intact. Trey couldn’t even see any visible wounds on the man.
He definitely had to agree with the deputy chief. This didn’t seem like the Butcher’s MO.
Pulling a pair of rubber gloves out of a cargo pocket, he slid them on, then knelt down by the body, his medic instincts demanding he figure out how this guy had ended up like this. The moment he picked up the man’s wrist—and almost snapped off the hand—he realized the nearly weightless corpse wasn’t just dry. It was desiccated. Peeling one eyelid back revealed nearly empty sockets. The eyes were nothing more than pea-sized kernels of hardened goo. And everything that was supposed to be behind the eyes was dried up to the point of being little more than gray dust. It was hard to even look at it without being sick.
Trey glanced at Alyssa as he straightened up and took off his gloves. “Do you think it’s possible he was tortured? Like whoever did this took an old man from a retirement home and stuffed them in a ceramics kiln or something like that?”
Alyssa shook her head. “If this is like the last body we found this way, we’re going to find out the victim is probably in his midtwenties or early thirties at the most.”
Trey looked down at the body again, trying to understand how that could be possibly be true. He couldn’t see it. “There have been others like this you said?”
“Two of them, killed about a week apart, both in Dallas,” she said. “The first one was found in a garbage truck parked at the Fair Oaks Transfer Station and the second was found in the middle of the DFW landfill. Our working theory is that the killer murders them somewhere else, then uses the nearest convenient dumpster to get rid of the bodies. If that’s the case, who knows how many others there are? We wouldn’t have found this one if the truck hadn’t accidentally dropped off this load of construction scraps in the wrong place and someone had to come out here to move it.”
Trey exchanged looks with his teammates before turning his attention back to Alyssa. “If you’re involved, I’m assuming you think whoever did this is some kind of supernatural.”
She nodded. “Our medical examiners are still arguing over the actual cause of death. Some are going with heart failure due to rapid loss of fluids and electrolytes. Others are sticking with some vague concept that the killer sucked the life force out of these people, whatever the hell that means. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. We need to stop this thing.”
“STAT has officially asked for our help on this one,” Mason said.
“Unfortunately, San Antonio PD has some murders that look like ritual sacrifices that STAT wants me to take a look, and Zane is coming along for backup,” Alyssa said. “Which means you’ll be on your own for this.”
Trey could understand why Zane would be her first and only choice for backup. If you were heading into a freaky, unknown situation, it never hurt to have a werewolf around to help. If that werewolf was your soul mate, even better.
“You sure you don’t need a little more help?” Connor asked. “One of the other guys or I could go with you.”
Kat didn’t seem to think much of that idea if the way she jumped off the pile of bricks and sank her claws into the leg of Connor’s uniform pants was any indication. The glint in her green eyes suggested she’d shred him to pieces if he even considered going with Alyssa and Zane.