“And me?” Graham asked, coming to a stop at my side.
“You can get your own coffee, Graves.”
I smiled as I accepted my cup. “Thanks, Detective Hightower.”
“Call me Caden. Or Cade, if you’d like.”
“Cade,” I echoed, testing it out. I liked the way it sounded coming out of my mouth. I liked the way his blue eyes flared when I said it even better.
“Can we get this over with?” Graham asked bluntly. “She’s not here to socialize.”
Detective Hightower — Cade — took a slow sip of his coffee, then turned and pulled open the glass door that led into the lobby of the station. I walked inside, eyes sweeping the space. It looked like every other police station I’d ever stepped foot in. A bit smaller than I’d expected, with low ceilings, fluorescent lighting, and a gray concrete floor. A long blue and gray reception desk sat opposite the doors, topped by a plexiglass barrier almost to the ceiling. A secretary was seated behind it, her neck cricked to cradle a phone handset to her ear as her fingers clacked rapidly across her keyboard. Her eyes shifted from her screen only long enough to see we were accompanied by Detective Hightower, then she went right back to whatever she was doing.
“This way,” Cade said, corralling me down a hallway with one hand on the small of my back. I could hear Graham stomping along behind us, his heavy motorcycle boots thudding with violence against the concrete. We passed several doors — a glass-walled holding cell that was not currently holding anyone, a conference room, a dingy kitchenette, a space with lockers and workout equipment that smelled vaguely like old socks — before we were ushered into a cluttered, closet-like office with a stained carpet, a very small window, and a dead houseplant withering on the sill.
Cade grabbed a thick manila folder off the top of a teetering stack of paperwork, then turned to where we were lingering just inside the door. There was nowhere for us to sit — his desk took up the majority of the tiny room, his file cabinets took up the rest. He seemed to realize this only when he turned around and nearly bumped noses with Graham. From his unfamiliarity with his own office, I immediately got the sense that Detective Hightower did not spend much time behind his desk.
“We’ll do this in the interview room,” he said, jerking his chin toward the hall. “Just across the way.”
The interview room was, in actuality, an interrogation room. It looked exactly like I’d imagined it would — stainless table at the center with a built-in bar for shackles, metal chairs bolted to the ground on either side, a camera in the upper right corner, and a mirror on the wall that I knew from every cop show I’d ever seen must be two-way. I took a seat, feeling a rush of nerves as the detective settled in across from me. Graham remained on his feet, leaning against the wall a few paces away. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but sitting there beneath the heavy gazes of two — as Hetti would say — bossy alpha males was enough to make me squirm against the cold metal of my seat. I took a sip of my coffee, thinking it would steady me, and instantly regretted it.
“Told you,” Cade said, laughing at the screwed-up look on my face. “Not a pumpkin-spice latte from your fancy machine.”
I unscrewed my expression and forced myself to swallow. “It’s not that bad.”
“It’s a criminal offense to lie to a detective, Gwendolyn.”
“Right,” I said weakly. “Well, in that case, that’s got to be the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever had. And I grew up on sticks of instant I stole from the local diner.”
“Gwendolyn…” Cade’s voice was strangled with laughter. “I feel the need to point out, it’s probably not wise to admit any past criminal offenses to a detective either.”
“Right,” I repeated, even more weakly. I contemplated taking another sip of coffee so my mouth had something to do besides self-implicate, but I still hadn’t recovered from my first sip. “I was just kidding. So, how ‘bout that slaughtered donkey?”
Graham shook his head and pressed his eyes closed.
Cade laughed full-out, but sobered quickly as he fingered file folder he’d brought from his office. “Okay, Gwendolyn. You may be wondering why we dragged you all the way down here. You may also be wondering why someone like Graves—” His eyes flickered briefly to Graham where he leaned against the wall. “—is involved in all this, when it’s not exactly standard operating procedure to bring in a consultant at such an early stage in an investigation.”
I shrugged. “No one’s ever killed a donkey in my alley before. I don’t really have any idea about procedure, standard or otherwise.”
“Right.” His lips twitched. “There’s no question this morning’s scene was outside the norm. But it’s not actually the first scene like that we’ve found.”
My eyes widened. I looked at Graham and he gave a shallow nod, confirming the detective’s statement.
“I want you to take a look at these…” Cade flipped open the folder and began to lay out a series of photographs on the table in front of me. Four, in total. What I saw on the glossy photo paper was enough to make all the air in my lungs seize. A series of massacred animals, all hacked methodically into parts, all arranged inside bloody pentagrams of various sizes.
“This was the first,” Cade said, tapping the first photograph in the row. “Or, at least the first one found. There may’ve been others before that we simply never discovered.”
I stared down at the photograph. It depicted a cat — what used to be a cat. Mainly, I saw a few clumps of fur and the remnants of a tail lying at the center of a circle of blood, smeared on what looked like an asphalt sidewalk. It lacked the the precise, ceremonial reverence paid to the donkey I’d seen this morning. Only the pentagram was similar — though smaller and with far fewer symbols smeared against the concrete around it.
“Some locals found it at that dog park near the river, up by Bridge Street,” Cade told me. “We figure, given the state of things, the canines found it before their owners did.”
That explained why there was so little of the cat left.
“This one was next.” Cade pushed the second photograph toward me. “Rooster. Down by Palmer Cove. There’s a community garden there, folks from the neighborhood mostly use it to grow vegetables and flowers. They came across this in early May — luckily, before too much wildlife got at it. It’s much better preserved.”
He was right. The rooster looked totally undisturbed, its positioning precise within the pentagram. Its head had been lopped off at the neck. The wings were clipped and spread to their full span. Two scaly legs, cleanly severed. The proud plume of its tail fanned prominently, a riot of blue-black feathers arching across the hard-packed earth.
I swallowed hard, steeling myself for what was to come as the photo was swapped out for a third.