Grimshaw nodded. “I need to talk to you later, after I finish with Vicki and the Crows.” He started to turn away, then added, “Mini Munch. I think you should keep the name.”
Not waiting to hear Julian’s reply, he rounded up Vicki and the Crows before they managed to reach the library. Ignoring their grumbles, he herded them back to the dining room.
Ilya resumed his seat and said quietly, “Boris will let me know if Clara Crowgard shows up.”
Grimshaw took his seat and considered how to continue. Vicki and her employees did better with providing information when real police work could be referenced from the cop and crime shows they watched each week. He also figured he’d have the best chance of getting information from them if he started with the least scary and worked up to the most terrifying. He just hoped he’d guessed the correct order.
He took Adam Fewks’s student ID out of his shirt pocket and set it on the table. “Have you ever seen this man?”
“Is this where we say we haven’t even though we didn’t look at the picture and the police have to ask again?” Jozi asked Vicki.
“Those people don’t want to be helpful,” Vicki replied. “We do want to be helpful, so we’ll all take a careful look at the picture.”
They all leaned toward the student ID and stared.
Grimshaw counted off the seconds.
“I’m not sure,” Vicki said. “I might have seen him coming out of Pops Davies’s store the other day, but there wasn’t any reason to pay attention to him. I just remember seeing a young man who wasn’t familiar come out of Pops’s store at the same time I came out of the post office.”
He’d have to ask Pops if Fewks bought the bleach at the general store.
Aggie and Jozi gave him sorrowful looks and apologized for not recognizing the human.
Eddie said, “I recognize him. He was the younger human talking to Civil and Serious Crowgard.”
Score, Grimshaw thought. “Do you remember anything about the other human?”
Eddie shook his head. “I didn’t see his face. We’re good at remembering faces.”
“Yes, you are.” He thought for a moment. “There are other ways police can describe a human and narrow down a suspect list. Tall or short. Skinny or heavy. Hair color. What clothes he was wearing.”
“Clothes change,” Aggie said. “You can’t depend on recognizing an unfriendly human by the clothes.”
“That’s true, but we can ask if other people saw a human wearing that particular outfit, and someone might have heard a name or where he’s staying.” He waited while the Crows conferred among themselves and Vicki frowned at the table.
He looked at Ilya, who had been too quiet. “Your thoughts?”
Ilya didn’t reply before Eddie said, “A muddy green coat with the collar turned up. Hands in the coat’s pockets, so I couldn’t see if he wore any shinies. Brown . . . cap.”
“Muddy green is the color?” Ilya asked. “Not mud on a green coat?”
“Color.” Eddie sounded certain.
“It was a chilly night,” Vicki said slowly. “The humans who came to the party all wore coats. I piled up the outerwear on the dining room chairs so it would be out of the way but still accessible.”
“You saw that coat?” Grimshaw asked. “The other person talking to the Crows might have been an adult who was at the party?”
Vicki nodded. “I saw more than one coat of that particular color green. I thought the coat must be practical, because the color wasn’t appealing. A muddy green, like Eddie said. But other people were being helpful and carrying coats into the room, so I don’t know which coat belonged to which person.”
“It still gives us something to work with.” And narrowed their suspect pool to the people renting the Mill Creek Cabins and the guests at The Jumble. It was possible it had been an earth native who had hidden face and hands because they didn’t look sufficiently human, but he didn’t think a Crow would mistake one of the terra indigene for a human, regardless of form.
Grimshaw rested his forearms on the table. He wasn’t sure what was going on with Ilya, who was unnaturally still. “Now we’re getting to the scary part. Tell us about Crowbones.”
Feathers popped out everywhere.
“Maybe there is a Crowgard storyteller who could tell you?” Vicki suggested.
“No,” Aggie said, clinging to Vicki’s hand. “I can tell. I can.”
Grimshaw waited while Aggie, who looked like a human teenager, gathered herself—and wondered how much time it took for a Crow to reach that equivalent stage of maturity. Months? Years? He knew terra indigene aged differently than the animals whose form they had absorbed, so he had no idea what her chronological age might be.
“Crowbones wears a cape made out of the feathers of the fallen and carries a gourd filled with the bones of the taken,” Aggie said. “If you hear the rattle, rattle of the gourd, it’s a warning that Crowbones is coming to get you because you’ve been a bad Crow. Or you’re an enemy of the Crowgard.”
“Has anyone seen this being? Any idea what Crowbones looks like?”
Aggie’s mouth twisted in a smile. “Plenty have seen. None have lived.”
“Are feet used as a token of some kind?”
That was too much for Jozi, who shifted to her Crow form and hid under her clothes.
“Warning,” Eddie said, trembling. He looked at Aggie. “And . . . ?”
“Signature?” Vicki suggested when Aggie just shivered and sprouted more feathers.
“Connection,” Aggie whispered.
That’s what he’d been afraid of. Between Fewks being seen with Civil and Serious and this physical connection between the two mutilated bodies . . . Whatever was out there was telling him and the Sanguinati that the body in the compost bin and the remains that had been left outside the police station were connected.
Ilya finally stirred and reached into his briefcase. “This is a crime scene photo. It will frighten you. Chief Grimshaw needs you to be brave long enough to look at the photo and tell him if you know this Crow.”
“A Crow?” Aggie’s voice was whispered terror. “You found one of us?”
“Be brave long enough, and then there will be no more questions today.”
Grimshaw looked at Ilya but didn’t point out it wasn’t the Sanguinati’s place to decide if there would or wouldn’t be more questions. Of course, Ilya was the unofficial—or perhaps the official—attorney for the terra indigene around Lake Silence and could, therefore, make that call.