“Call me Lacy,” she said, holding out a hand.
I shook it, impressed by both her grip and the size of her hand. Smaller than mine, but I have big hands. “Seth, please.” Most people didn’t call me that, but if she was going to lead with a first name, I’d play along.
She smiled back. “Come on back, Seth.”
I followed as she led me through more grey-and-grey walls and grey linoleum, until we reached a set of offices that had—surprise!—grey walls and brown carpeting. The offices—there were several in a row that we passed before we got to hers—all had those odd interior windows with miniblinds. Very 1990s-police-department chic.
The office she led me into didn’t look appreciably different than the others we’d passed, although this door saidShawano County Crime Lab. “Have a seat,” Lacy said, gesturing to a slightly-above-bargain-basement chair, one of two, on the receiving side of the desk as she walked around to the other side where she sat in a standard issue office chair.
I sat. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Oh, please, don’t ma’am me. Lacy. Or just Krinke if you must.”
“Sorry—Southern habit.” The word had come out of me without me thinking about it.
Lacy smiled. “Better than some things you could call people, I guess,” she remarked with a little bit of sarcasm, although she also immediately looked as though she regretted saying it.
I grinned, liking her better for it. “In the South,” I told her, “we’ve made a habit of using niceties as insults. ‘Bless your heart,’ for instance, when said the right way, actually means something much, much ruder.”
She laughed, a sharp sound that seemed a little surprised at itself. “Oh, we’re going to get along fine, Seth,” she said, relaxing a little.
Which obviously relaxedmea little, because it meant I didn’t have to worry quite so much about putting one of my overly large and/or furry feet in my mouth.
“Now,” she continued. “Tell me about this business last year with Detective Smith.”
I’d gotten about halfway through explaining what I’d had Hart do with the snot on the window when her phone rang. She looked at it sharply, looked at me apologetically, and then picked it up.
“I told you I—Oh. Shit.” She looked guilty for a second. “But Roger’s already at the crash scene—” She looked back up at me, a little alarmed.
I felt my eyebrows rise.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to do a, ah, working interview?”
It was definitelythe first crime scene I had attended in a suit. I can’t say that I recommend it. For one thing, Shawano County did not use bunny suits. And dress shoes are slippery as hellinside booties. I now had blisters on my feet, and my suit was almost certainly ruined.
Lacy drove, loading me into the passenger side of a hard-top pickup that had definitely seen better days. I didn’t bother asking how you kept a covered pickup bed organized. The van we’d used in Richmond you could walk into, find everything that was hung on the walls or folded on shelves or in storage bins. You just couldn’t do that in a pickup bed.
On the way, Lacy had run through a bunch of very practical information mixed with questions about how I would handle particular things, usually following up with explanations about how we had to cut corners in Shawano because of budget or equipment or tradition or all of the above.
I had the feeling there was going to be a period of adjustment, assuming I didn’t accidentally flub this whole thing by being, in my opinion, anyway, too professional and competent.
Lacy pulled into a gravel driveway that led to a small house that had clearly seen better days. It had also clearly seen love. The siding might have been weathered, paint chipping off the trim, shingles covered with more moss than was good for them, but the flowerbeds were carefully tended, the bushes trimmed, and chalk drawings covered the sidewalk and driveway.
I didn’t want to be at this scene. Not one with kids.
But that was—or would be, hopefully—my job.
I got out of the truck, accepting the gloves and booties that Lacy brought to me, grimacing as my feet skidded a little in their new cloth coverings. Normally, I’d have worn shoes with treads that still gave me some amount of traction inside the booties. But that’s not what was happening today, so I had to go with what I had.
I stripped off the jacket before pulling on the gloves. Even if other parts of this suit were going to get ruined, I could at least save the jacket. Jackets were expensive.
Lacy led the way, and I followed after her, shuffling as I moved up the walkway and into the house, carrying one of the two kit bags Lacy had pulled out of the back of the truck. The bag was heavy, and four months ago it would have pulled at my shoulder joints and made my elbow ache. Now I could tell that it was heavy, but it didn’t pull on me the way it used to.
I’d finally discovered something about being a shifter that waslesspainful than being human.
Lacy moved through the doorway, shifting to the side so that I could see down the hallway. It was narrow and fairly dark, although some light came in through a few open doorways. The carpet was worn, but clean, with the exception of a clear bloody trail down the center, leading from just inside the doorway to a room at the far end of the hallway.
There was a uniform at the end, standing in a clean corner, looking uncomfortable and a little bored. He frowned when he saw me, the corners of his maskless mouth pulling down.
