Hierarchy by Madelaine Montague Page A

gives me the creeps. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man that was colder or less sympathetic to his fellow man.” He considered his partner’s question as he started the car. “I think he knows a lot more about it that we’ll ever pry out of him, but I doubt he was personally involved. Did you see that place? See him? Not a hair out of place, not a speck of lint on that thousand dollar suit he was wearing and the whole fucking place just as pristine. If he’d had anything to do with the murder, even to ordering it for some reason, there ain’t no way we’d’ve found the body … especially not lying on the damned sidewalk for anybody to trip over. Messy, that. I don’t know which murder was more gruesome, but I almost lost my breakfast!”
    Brown nodded. “I was thinkin’ the same thing. You think the coroner’s managed to figure out what was used to take his head off yet? Maybe it’ll give us a lead? This is obviously a dead end.”
    “What I’d like to know is who that other stiff is! Poor kid!” He turned to back down the drive. “Let’s head over to Westmoreland Media and interview some of that poor slob, Duncan’s, co-workers. We can talk to the coroner before we head back to the station.”
    * * * *
    49
    Curiosity slithered through Caleb as he stood at the window listening. Satisfy it?
    Or let it go? He turned from the window as the detectives disappeared down the drive and pinned his butler with a cool look. “Tell Moore to bring a car around—the sedan, I think,” he said coolly.
    “My lord,” Yancy said meekly after a moment. “Are you certain that’s wise?”
    He paled visibly when Caleb turned to him again.
    “What I mean to say is, don’t you think it’ll make the cops suspicious if you leave directly after they’ve been here?”
    Caleb considered it and shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of that. This could be …
    interesting. You’re right. Tell Moore to bring the red sporty one.”
    There was yellow crime tape all over everywhere. The crime scene was hard to miss even if he hadn’t already had a general idea of the location from the piece in the newspaper. Parking his sports car, he ignored the two detectives who’d been tailing him since he’d whipped around them and strode casually down the sidewalk, stopping to examine the first cordoned section of sidewalk. “Head,” he murmured to himself, studying the brown, dried blood for a moment before he stepped into the street and strolled down to the main site of the crime scene. “Body.” He sniffed. “Ah. Wolf.
    Nasty, low class creatures.” He waved a hand to bring the fading scent to his nose.
    “Lycan—not wolf,” he corrected himself. “True bloods—most of them, anyway.”
    Now why in the world would that fool, Duncan, decide to tangle with a pack of Lycans, he wondered?
    He almost missed the scent that answered the question. He excused himself on the grounds that the overpowering scent of beast and piss—Duncan’s—were enough to taint such a lovely, delicate scent.
    His mate, if he didn’t miss his guess.
    The flavor of magic and the paranormal were a surprise. He lingered for a few moments, trying to decide if they mingled with her scent because they belonged to her or if there’d been a magic user in the midst of the wild battle that had evidently been waged in the street the night before.
    Finally, he dismissed it as unanswerable at the moment.
    Following the scents, he made his way to the cemetery and to the site of the final crime scene. The scent of Lycan was much stronger here—no doubt most if not all of the pack. The taint of vampire hung about the area, though.
    “Curiouser and curiouser,” he murmured.
    Realizing once he’d surveyed the area that neither the churned up earth, the overturned grave stones, or the mingling of scents was going to take him any closer to unraveling the mystery, he left the cemetery, lifted his head to catch the multitude of scents and sort them, and finally crossed