WARNING: This chapter briefly describes a violent crime scene. It's more violent than my normal stuff, so I just wanted to let everyone know in case anyone is sensitive to violent images.
Chapter 2 - Death
Joss and Lionel got the call just as they finished up eating lunch and were walking back to their cruiser, discussing the latest apartment Finch had shown The Carter/Reese family. Finch wanted to give them a new apartment more suited for their growing family, but Finch's idea of a suitable family home was much different than Joss's, John's and even Taylor's. Finch kept showing them huge extravagant luxury apartments in fancy buildings. Joss wanted a cozy three bedroom. John wanted a building with the security of Fort Knox. Taylor wanted close to his school and friends. The search had been dragging on for months and Joss was beginning to wonder if they would find a place that satisfied the three of them before the baby came.
"Too BIG? How can an apartment be too big?" Lionel was amazed.
"Six bedrooms and two floors is too damn big, Lionel. I don't want to have run upstairs every time the baby cries! What am I going to do with SIX bedrooms?" Joss grumbled.
"I can think of few things," Lionel grinned at her over the car roof as they were getting in.
Joss shot him a dirty look, but was prevented from saying anything further by the police radio directing them to see Detective Reyes at a crime scene uptown. Joss swung the cruiser into traffic and headed for the scene.
Lionel and Joss pulled up to the building and got out. Reyes must have been waiting just inside the front door because he immediately came hurrying out of the building towards them.
"Well, well, if isn't Detective Carter and her attack pug. 'Bout time the Homicide Task Force showed up," Reyes greeted them jovially. "How's the pregnancy going, Carter? You're looking good there. Pregnancy agrees with you."
Carter smiled, "I'm fine; I have another month before I go out on leave, then another month after that before my due date."
"Reyes," Fusco nodded. "I hear ya got a fine mess out here and ya need our help."
Reyes rolled his eyes, "Yeah we got a doozy for you. I understand you know the vic, guy by the name of Bert Gore. He's a supervisor on the docks."
Carter could help but let her lip curl into a snarl, "Yeah, I know him."*
Reyes raised his eyebrows in surprise; Carter usually didn't show such contempt for anyone, "I see you weren't fond of him."
"Let's just say he's a jerk," Carter snapped, remembering the one time she'd met him.*
"WAS a jerk," Reyes corrected her. "Right now he's a corpse. A really messy one at that."
Fusco snorted. "Can't say I'm surprised by that turn of events. He certainly wasn't popular. What happened?"
Reyes jerked his thumb at the doorway. "You better go up and see for yourself; words just can't describe it."
Fusco looked at Carter and she shrugged. She turned and walked into the building followed closely by her partner.
Carter had been a soldier in a combat zone and a cop on the streets of New York. She'd been on the Homicide Task Force for several years now and had caught the worst of the worst. She'd been shot in the stomach, nearly bled out, and turned into a Wolf, all in one night. She was mated to a Wolf who was a former CIA operative and Special Forces soldier. In her off hours she worked with her mate and his employer, a billionaire genius who had designed and built a super-secret AI that spied on everyone on the planet and stopped terrorist attacks before they happened. So she thought she had seen just about everything by now that the city of New York could throw at her.
She was wrong.
Joss stopped dead in the doorway, completely stunned. Fusco came up behind her and he could see the scene over her shoulder. "Ho. Lee. SHIT!" he gasped.
From the first moment Joss had met Bert Gore, Alpha of a small pack of Wolves that consisted almost entirely of dock workers, she knew he would wind up as one her cases. Bert was a braggart, he was insecure, he was rude and he was a bully. In short he was a lousy Alpha. And because he was a lousy Alpha, he was an unpopular Alpha. The one time Joss had been in his presence, she had felt the flaming hatred of several of his pack mates festering like an infection in the pack. The tension in the dingy little diner that the pack used as a hangout was so thick she'd had trouble breathing. She had been extremely happy to leave that horrible place behind. She had told John as they left that Bert Gore would be in her inbox at the precinct before long.
But she had no idea it would be like this. Some days, she hated being right and this was one of those days.
From the amount of blood splattered round the room, Gore's body must have been completely drained. He was naked and had been strung up by his ankles, hanging from a light fixture like a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse. His throat had been cut, which was probably the cause of death, but he had been carefully and methodically tortured first. His body was so covered with small wounds and burns that Joss didn't even know where to look first. In death, Gore's face had frozen in an expression of pure horror. He had died slowly and painfully.
The walls were covered in writings, in what was probably blood, in a language that Joss did not recognize, along with a strange symbol that was repeated several times. On closer inspection Joss realized that it was a wolf drawn in a manner similar to the wolves on European heraldic shields, except this one had a sword in it's chest.
"See what I mean? " Reyes said as he came up behind them. "Our boy here really pissed someone off."
"Yeah, this ain't random," Fusco agreed as he looked around the room careful not to step on any evidence.
"Any idea what the language is?" Joss asked nodding towards the writing on the wall.
Reyes shook his head, "I speak both English and Spanish, that's neither."
Joss pursed her lips, "It doesn't look like any Arabic language either."
"It's not Italian," Fusco said.
"We'll get the department translators working on it," Joss said. "Tell me what you know so far."
Reyes flipped open his notebook and began reading. "As you already know, we are in the presence of the late Albert Gore, age 48. Lived alone after his wife bailed on him about a year ago. Last seen alive getting his mail around 2pm yesterday afternoon. No one heard or saw a thing. Neighbors I talked to all seemed to hate his guts and the rest of him too." Reyes rattled off the facts standing in the middle of the horrific scene in the impersonal manner of an experienced NYPD detective.
Joss grabbed her partner's arm and whispered so that Reyes wouldn't overhear, "Fusco, I'm going to call John. Gore was an Alpha, the other Alphas should be notified."
Fusco nodded his head, looking grim, "Yeah, you're right. Go ahead, I'll start working the room."
Joss stepped into the kitchen and called her mate.
"Hi sweetheart," Despite the horrific scene in the next room she couldn't help but smile softly when she heard John's sexy near-whisper.
"Are you working on a case? Because we have a problem," Joss said.
"No, I don't have a number right now. What's wrong?" Joss could feel John immediately go tense through their mating bond.
"Bert Gore is dead. Murdered. And it's the messiest murder I think I have ever seen."
John sucked in his breath sharply, the murder of an Alpha was bad enough, but Gore's pack was not a stable or well-run pack. The rest of the Alphas would have to be careful that the pack did not go rogue and become violent. Wolves already had a reputation for being unstable and violent; something the Wolf community at large was trying to change. A rogue pack that did not follow the Wolf Code was the last thing they needed.
"What happened?" He asked.
"Gore was tortured and his throat was slit. They strung him up like a piece of meat by his ankles and used his blood to write all sorts of stuff on the walls in a language none of us recognize."
Reese got very quiet and Carter felt the sudden shift in her mate's mood. He was now apprehensive and angry. Carter got the feeling he recognized the MO.
"Does this sound like some type of Wolf murder to you?" she asked him quietly.
"I don't think this is Wolf on Wolf violence," John growled deep in this throat. "Joss, listen to me very carefully, if this is what I think it is, it's going to be very dangerous for you to work this case. Stay right by Fusco, do not go anywhere by yourself, not even to the hot dog cart in the front of the precinct. Send Finch pictures of the writings on the wall as quickly as you can. I'll call you later." And John hung up abruptly.
Joss stared at her phone in confusion just as Fusco walked into the kitchen. He raised his eyebrows when he saw the look on her face, "Something wrong with Alpha Man?"
Joss snorted at the mental picture of John with a big red A on his chest. "Yeah, I was just telling him about Gore and something got him really upset."
Fusco shrugged, "Another Alpha just got offed and that's gotta to be upsetting for him."
Joss shook her head emphatically, "No, he hated Gore. There's more to it than that; I can feel it. I think he recognizes the MO and that is what has him upset."
"Well, crap, when Alpha's upset, our caseload doubles," Fusco grumbled.
Fusco's phone buzzed and he flipped it open to read the text message. He made a sour face and put his phone away. He saw Joss's questioning look and explained, "Just your dear mate, threatening me with the usual death threats if I let anything happen to you."
Joss's eyes opened wide in surprise, "Does he do that often?"
"Just when you're danger, which is pretty much every other day." Fusco shrugged, he was used to it. To tell the truth, he thought it was pretty sweet that John looked out for her the way he did, so it had long ago ceased to bother him.
Then Fusco got thoughtful, "The point is something's got the spook spooked. Jesus, Joss, what have we got here?"
"It's got to be some sort of ritualistic murder of a Wolf, but John said he didn't think it was Wolf on Wolf violence," Joss was grim. "Get pictures of the writings on the wall and send them to Finch." Fusco nodded and went out to the living room to begin taking photos.
The coroner arrived and began photographing the body before it was cut down. Once she was done with her pictures, it took several cops to get the victim down and lay him on the gurney
"You got prelim time of death for us, CeCe?" Fusco asked.
The coroner peered at her thermometer, "From the liver temp, looks like you are looking around midnight, 1am." She continued to examine the body, "I'll know more after the autopsy, but it looks like the only fatal wound is the sliced throat. Everything else is superficial. Painful, but not fatal….wait, what's this in his mouth?"
She gently moved the victim's jaw forward and removed a small green bundle of herbs from Gore's mouth. Joss glanced at it and her nose twitched, "It's Wolf's Bane. It's supposed to repel Wolves."
CeCe looked up in surprise, "Like garlic and vampires?"
"Wolves are real, vampires aren't, but that's the idea, except it doesn't work; it's an old wives' tale," Joss replied. She found the smell unpleasant but it was hardly enough to repel her.
CeCe carefully stuffed the bundle of herbs into the evidence bag that Joss held for her. "So I take it this guy is Wolf and someone didn't like him very much."
Joss carefully sealed the bag and labeled it. "If you had met him when he was alive you would understand. But I have a feeling it wasn't his charming personality that got him strung up like a chunk of beef."
"Any idea what did?"
"Not yet," Joss growled. "But we will find out."
*Joss met Gore in my story Wolves Mate for Life. It did not go well.
