“Today. At the crime scene. That’s not including the three in the morgue already.”
She’d had an idea this day wasn’t going to go well as soon as the chief called her into the office so early this morning.
Instinctively, she knew to bring some humor to the table when she was helping a witness recall everything she or he could about an assailant. A little levity could go a long way in helping the witness relax and recount details of his experience—or vent, whatever was necessary to help in the cognitive process. Often a witness would blank out the assailant’s face in their mind, terrified of the ordeal they’d gone through. They often wouldn’t remember seeing anything that would help. She’d just ask things like Was he smiling? And suddenly the witness had a description of his mouth. Was he frowning, eyes narrowed? Then she had the color of the eyes, the size of the eyes, the expression.
Sierra wasn’t sure she could manage when the victim was dead.
* * *
Adam knew Sierra was a terrific artist, but he wasn’t sure she would have the stomach to view dead bodies to do her work. Maybe she could work just from photos if being at the scene didn’t work out for her.
Sketches didn’t always mean a victim was identified or that a criminal was either. It could be hit or miss. That didn’t mean the sketch didn’t look like the person. Other factors came into account, like no one who knew the person seeing the bulletins or news or the person not being local. Or someone knew and wasn’t saying.
Sierra had a higher success rate than Willy at getting a better picture of the assailant while doing witness sketches, and Adam thought it was because she was so good at putting the witness at ease. He’d really enjoyed watching her work while he took notes about the description the witness gave.
She was easy to get along with and he liked working with her, so he didn’t want to see her fail and quit the job. He didn’t want to see anyone else take her place either.
Today, Sierra was wearing a black raincoat over a navy-blue jacket and skirt meant more for office work. He glanced at her shapely legs, her high heels way too spiked for the kind of terrain she would have to manage. He agreed it didn’t matter what she wore when she was doing witness sketches. She was often sitting down at a desk, drawing the sketch. Most of the time, they brought in the witness or had the witness come to see her. Sometimes she would go to the scene of the crime to speak to the witness, but it normally wasn’t in a muddy setting.
With all the traipsing through the grass in the rain where the body of the carjacker had landed when he went through the windshield, the area would be muddy. Adam hoped she didn’t slip and fall, but he would be right beside her every step of the way to catch her if she did.
He drove her out to the site, and she glanced down at her sandals in his Hummer that she’d left there when he’d picked her up during the storm last night. “Sorry about leaving my sandals in your car.”
He smiled. “Tori gave me a hard time about them when we went to a crime scene earlier this morning. She said here she’d considered asking me out, but if she was going to find a she-wolf’s clothes in my car, that was the end of that.”
Sierra laughed. “She didn’t.”
“Yeah, she has a great sense of humor.”
“What if she wasn’t kidding?”
“I told her why they were in the SUV. She said she suspected as much.”
“Oh, I bet. Hmm, as long as she doesn’t think there’s something going on between the two of us.”
“Only police business.”
“So is she dating anyone in the pack yet?”
“She went out with the coroner. Just once though. She told Leidolf to spread the word to the bachelor males that she wants to get settled first and meet everyone. It’s a lot to get used to—working with me, working a new job, working with a new boss. She took the job and started right away, but she has to move her household goods into her house this weekend.”
“Does she need some help with any of it?” Sierra asked.
“She has professional movers helping.”
Sierra let out her breath. “Right, but does she need some help? When I moved to Portland, even with professional movers, I had so many boxes to unpack it would have taken me forever. The movers just set the boxes and furniture in the rooms where I wanted things. After that, it was up to me to do what I needed to with the contents. It was really nice when my brother and others of the pack helped me to empty boxes and sort through things and break down boxes, then haul them away.”
“Uh, yeah, Josh and I were busy on a case that weekend. I remember that.” He’d regretted he hadn’t been able to help her back then and get to know her a little better. Then about a week later, he learned she had an out-of-state boyfriend, so that had put her off-limits with him and the other bachelor males of the pack.
“I can help her if we don’t have bodies to sketch all weekend. Oh shoot, if I’m going to be full-time, I won’t have as much free time to do things I like to do. I won’t be able to teach art to the kids in the pack on Tuesday and Thursday starting next week either. I was still supposed to be gone all this week, so I wasn’t scheduled.”
“You could do some classes on the weekend though, if you don’t have to work.” He’d forgotten that she was teaching art to the kids in the pack. Though next Monday, he was looking forward to her adult art class he was taking. “As to Tori, we can ask her when we get back to the office if she would like our help, if she’s there.”
“Sure. We could do it on Saturday. It would be a nice way to visit with her and get to know her while helping her out.”
Adam agreed.
When they arrived at the scene of the crash site, several police vehicles were there and some of the police officers glanced in their direction and waved. They looked a little surprised to see Sierra out there. Especially when she got out of the vehicle in her high heels.
She hadn’t grabbed the barf bag, so Adam did, just in case.
Being the wolf that he was, Adam wanted to carry Sierra through the muddy grass to where the man’s body rested. But he figured Sierra would want to sock him if he did that to her in front of all the police officers there. Instead, he stayed close to her in the event she fell. He hadn’t expected her to get stuck in the mud after they had barely left the roadway.
She grabbed his arm to steady herself and pull her heel out of the mud. The rain was coming down hard, but she had her hood up over her head and didn’t seem fazed by it at all. Four more steps and her heel was stuck in the mud again. This time, she grabbed his arm and yanked off one heel, then the other.
He smiled down at her. She released him, handed her heels to him, and squished through the mud in her bare feet. The police officers were all smiling at him and at her. This was a side of her none of them had seen before.