“You’re doing your best,” I replied. I knew he hadn’t been neglecting the case—the evidence wasn’t there to point to anyone specific, and even if we had suspicions, he couldn’t just knock down doors based on what little there was. And I was sure it didn’t help that they were still shorthanded. And we werestilldealing with Borde, the world’s most apathetic ME.
Smith grimaced. “Why do I feel like that’s not even remotely good enough?” he asked, although I knew the question was largely rhetorical.
“Until you get the bad guys, it never is,” I replied. “What can I do to help?”
He sighed, then took a pull on the straw stuck in his frozen coffee extravaganza. I did not understand how he could drink anything cold when it was like twenty degrees outside, and this wasn’t just cold, it wasfrozen. “Not much,” came the response. “But I wanted to share what little I’ve been able to dig up with you.”
I set down my pen. I’d finish up the paperwork later. “Okay,” I said, not wanting to rush him, but also deeply curious.
“That the cabin up in Aniwa, or the barn where we found that shifter?” He nodded toward the papers I was working on.
“The cabin,” I replied, leaning over to grab the finished file on the barn and pass it to him. “Here’s the barn.”
He flipped through it, eyes skimming through a report he must have read at least a hundred times for something new, something that reframed the way it worked. That might help him to figure out a missing link.
“I think,” he said slowly, bright blue eyes still scanning the pages, “that this might actually be connected to what’s happening with Elliot.”
“Seriously? But some of those bodies are more than a decade old!”
Smith nodded. “There’s a group that call themselves the Northmen,” he replied, still speaking slowly and deliberately. “Been around for ages, pre-Arcana, even. I think back then they were likely your run of the mill white supremacists. Anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous. Your usual old-time, traditional bigotry.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I waited, sensing he wasn’t done yet.
“Arcana seems to have changed things, though. Gave them a new target for their hatred. A new set of people to blame for their problems.” He sighed heavily. “It’s not like they have a membership registry, of course. That would be too easy—and pretty stupid on their part.”
“The Northmen?” I repeated.
Smith nodded. “I asked the Feds in Green Bay, and they haven’t heard of them, and my research online hasn’t revealed anything specific, either.” Another sigh. “Lots of people calling themselves that, of course. Drawing on Norse and Viking traditions, that sort of thing.”
“How are they connected to Elliot?” I asked.
Smith sighed heavily. “That’s the part I don’t know about for certain. We have evidence linking the Northmen to some of the anti-Arcanid vandalism and protests around Shawano and Bonduel.”
“And Elliot?” I asked.
“Nothing definitive, annoyingly,” Smith replied. “Friends of friends—people with links to Buettner, others we know with social links to Lance Hasenfuss—” He broke off, an uncertain expression on his face. “Hasenfuss?—”
“Was one of the assholes who killed Elliot’s father,” I finished for him.
He nodded. “Hart filled you in on that, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got connections between them,” he said. “But nothing that will get me a warrant, because there are dozens of people, possibly more, who are friends-of-friends.”
“What do you need?” I asked him.
He kept flipping through the report. “A miracle,” he replied darkly.
I went backover every tiny little thing in the case. Every particulate. Every chemical signature. Every hair and grain of pollen and unknown smudge or print. Looking for a miracle.
I didn’t find one.
Not quite.
But I did find something that I’d missed—something that shouldn’t have been on a skinned dead dog.
Or a skinned dead badger.
