“They’re trying to determine if they have a homicide or not,” I answered. “There were bones in a fire pit, and they want me to tell them if they need to call in homicide.”
“Me, in other words.” He sounded resigned.
“Probably not,” I told him. “Unless you cover Gresham.”
“Sheriff’s Office covers them,” he replied. “So not me.”
“Have they replaced your partner yet?” I asked him. I hadn’t worked a homicide with anybody else, but maybe that was because the other detective called in Lacy or Roger. Shawano PD had two detectives and one vacancy—Smith was homicide, McKinley was special victims and missing persons, and the vacancy would cover anything they needed, from homicides to vice to cold cases. It had been a senior position, although nobody seemed to know if Smith would get promoted or they’d hire someone with experience.
“Applications are open,” he replied. “Whether they even bother to ask me about it or not, I have no idea.”
“Fingers crossed you get someone decent,” I said.
“Fingers crossed you find some dog bones,” he replied.
“Thanks.”
We both hung up, and after another turn, I found myself on a long gravel track heading into the woods. “Jesus,” I muttered, unnerved by the nearly impenetrable stretch of gravel and forest in front of me. Noah and I would go camping up in Shenandoah, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know that it got dark in the woods, but that had felt different than driving a rickety pickup down a track into God-only-knew what.
For all I knew, in fact, Colfax was setting me up—or maybe it wasn’t even the real Colfax at all, but someone pretending to be to lure me out into the middle of nowhere. I didn’t think I’d made any enemies in the few months I’d lived in Shawano… at least not bad enough that they’d want to kill me or kidnap me in the middle of the woods.
Another couple of minutes of stressful driving, and I found myself at a small gravel lot—the only other vehicle in itwasone of those EMT/fire department SUVs, so I parked next to it and got out. It was highly unlikely that someone would have stolen an official vehicle just to kill me out in the woods.
As I swung down, wincing as my knee jarred as my feet hit the ground, I heard the crunch of gravel under shoes.
I turned toward the sound and found myself staring up—pretty rare for me—at a yellow-olive skinned orc with dark hair that looked like it was growing out from a shorter cut, wearing a tight-fitting fire department uniform. It took me a second, but after staring for a half-minute or so I saw the resemblance between the orc in front of me and the profile I’d looked at on the computer screen.
“You Mays?” The orc asked me, and I recognized the voice from the phone.
“Lieutenant,” I replied, inclining my head. “You might want to update your official photo in the county records.”
Colfax let out a huff that might have been amused. Maybe. “Says the shifter,” the orc rumbled.
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to deny it. Orcs had strong enough senses of smell that they could tell who was a shifter and who wasn’t. “I registered,” I replied.
“Youwhat?”
“Registered.” Then I realized that Colfax genuinely didn’t know what I was talking about—the registry was for Virginia, and I wasn’t in Virginia anymore. I sighed. “In Virginia, shifters have to register with the state,” I explained.
“That’s—” Colfax appeared to be struggling for words.
Several came to mind.Bullshit. Bigoted. Sub-speciesist. Stupid.I probably shouldn’t say any of those to a fire department lieutenant who could easily make or break my impending fire investigation career.“It is what it is,” I replied. “Lieutenant.”
Colfax huffed again. “It’s that, too,” the orc replied. “You ready to see some bones?”
“Absolutely.”
Colfax led me down the trail a ways—maybe a quarter- to a half-mile—to a small makeshift campsite. There were a couple stones and a log worn in such a way that it was clear it had been used as a seat by several dozen or more butts over the years. They formed a semi-circle around a sizable fire pit, the blackened ashes and chunks of wood—and, apparently, bone—spreading beyond the lipped edges of where it had been dug out.
I crouched down beside it, looking into the burned detritus clustered in the center. Chunks of carbonized wood, blackened stones, charred pine cones, and what looked like a large femur-like bone. I pulled out my phone and pulled up OsteoID—we used it to make approximate species IDs on bones of unknown origin. It gave approximate length, width, and distal measurements for multiple species of animal, as well as human, bones.
A quick scroll through the list, comparing size and shape and proportions, told me that I was looking at an unusually large canid.
Which probably meant a shifter. Wolf or coyote, most likely.
I looked up at Colfax. “Well?” the orc asked.
“Canid, but much bigger than an animal canid should be,” I said.
