“This is our newest CSI tech, Seth Mays. Seth, this is Fire Chief Craig Ziemer.”
Ziemer held out his rough palm. I quickly pulled off my gloves so that I could take it. “Nice to meet you, Mays,” he said, his voice warm and his grip strong as he smiled up at me.
“And you, sir,” I replied, feeling oddly nervous. Something told me that it was important for him to like me—at least to think of me as competent and capable. Maybe it was my shifter instincts, but it felt right to be deferential. Respectful.
He let go of my hand with a smile, then turned to Smith. “ME been here yet?”
“And gone,” came the response. “Took all of thirty seconds to pronounce the victim dead.”
Ziemer’s eyebrows—bushy and dark—went up. “Still Borde?” Douglas Borde, the current acting ME, who, in my admittedly very limited experience, did seem rather lazy. Or like he had another thousand things to do on any given day that he thought were far more important than working a crime scene.
“Yep,” Smith answered, and I could tell that there was a whole wealth of emotion behind the single word, even though I couldn’t quite tell what it meant.
Ziemer cocked his head, looking at me. “You a medical doctor?” he asked.
“No, sir. Biochemist.”
“Pity,” Ziemer remarked mildly. “We could use an ME with work ethic.”
I wanted to ask him what made him think I had a work ethic—or, at least, a stronger work ethic than Dr. Borde, but I didn’t.
Smith nodded. “I’d just like someone to settle here. But everybody wants to work in the big city. Not enough murders out here.”
I felt my eyebrows rise.
“Speaking of which,” Smith pushed on. “Seth thinks there might be something more than just an engine fire or spark and leaky gas tank to this one.”
“So I hear,” Ziemer replied, but he was looking at me. “What makes you think so?”
He was going to smell it the minute he got into the car, and it wasn’t like he didn’t already know what I was. And Smith had guessed, so there was no reason for me to be coy about it. “I smelled lighter fluid.”
“Through that?” Ziemer asked, gesturing toward my face.
“Faintly,” I replied. “I took it off and confirmed.”
He was studying me with the same expression Elliot had used the one time we’d gone grocery shopping together. Everybody in Shawano already knew he was a shifter, so he didn’t bother with a mask. I didn’t want to deal with the stares—people who either thought you were a virus-denier or people who (correctly) figured you were a shifter who didn’t need to wear one. In a depressing number of cases, it was a tossup whichwould get you the more hateful looks. I just wanted to be able to buy my chicken and pasta in peace.
I wasn’t sure if Elliot thought I was trying to pretend to be something I wasn’t (which I kind of was, but only kind of) or if he thought I was just a coward for not wanting to face reality, I didn’t know. But he didn’t approve.
I didn’t care.
Well, okay, Ididcare what he thought. Just not enough to not wear a mask. I wore one at work for other reasons—people have all sorts of icky communicable diseases, and dead people also stink on top of that, so masking at a crime scene was a good idea whether you were a Nid or a normie. It was more important for those of us handling the body and any bodily fluids—the CSI teams and the MEs—than for detectives or uniforms.
But despite the look, Ziemer didn’t actually say anything to me about it, and I didn’t offer any sort of explanation.
“Lead the way,” he said, instead. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Mays.”
I looked at Smith, and he gestured for me to go ahead—so I did. Smith and Ziemer chatted as they followed me back to the car, talking about how they thought next year’s football season was going to go for the Packers. I liked football well enough, although I had the feeling I was going to have to get to know the rules and players—at least the Packer players—a lot better now that I lived in Wisconsin.
It was weird to think that Ilivedhere now.
Sort of.
I had a job here, and I was working on the whole apartment thing. I had a couple options that would let me move in immediately and pay partial rent for August, and I’d set up appointments to see them and fill out applications. Assuming I didn’t have to work for the next three straight days, which was never a guarantee in our business.
Once I was able to save up the money, I was going to have to get Hart’s mom a really nice thank-you gift. I’d have to ask him what she’d like once I could afford it.
We arrived back at the car, and I gestured for Ziemer to do as he wished—search, sniff, whatever else. As many crime scenes as I had been at, in Richmond, we’d left anything involving fire to the arson investigators. We didn’t touch it.
