Allyn and Ransom – 44

 

"Ready to leave?" Ransom asked.

 

"Let me take one more stroll around the exterior," Allyn replied. He had been brought in by Ransom—without the knowledge or permission of Ransom's superiors—to help track down a killer.

 

It was the third time in the last six months they had worked together this way. As Ransom put it, "It keeps you out of trouble when you're not off chasing down wolf hunters."

 

Allyn wasn't certain about that, but it had kept him out of the clubs. Of course that's because I don't find them fun anymore. I have better things to occupy me now. Like Ransom in our bed, or our kitchen while we fix supper, or our pool while he works off the tensions of his day.

 

Allyn knew Ransom had already done a walk around, looking for anything that said which way the killer, or possibly killers, had gone when exiting the small home on the edge of Marigny, after butchering a mother and her two young children. A neighbor had heard screams and called 9-1-1, but by the time the police arrived, they were too late.

 

"One thing I know for sure," Ransom had told Allyn in private, while waiting for the crime scene technicians to finish. "At least one killer isn't human."

 

It didn't take Allyn long to reach the same conclusion. The scent the male had left behind was definitely animal in nature. The reason Ransom enlisted Allyn's help in cases like this one had to do with Allyn's excellent tracking skills—honed by his work saving wolves from extinction at the hands of rabid hunters.

 

"Wolf-coyote shifter," Allyn stated.

 

"My thought as well," Ransom agreed. "Although I haven't heard of any rogues in the area."

 

"This could be a domestic situation." Allyn frowned. "If the kids are his and the woman's, and the coroner checks their blood…"

 

"Which he will. However, I doubt they are, from what a couple of neighbors I've interviewed said. She and her husband lived here for two years before the first child was born. The husband was killed in an auto accident six months ago. There's been no man in the picture since then."

 

"That they know of," Allyn pointed out.

 

Ransom chuckled dryly. "Believe me, one of the women is the type who knows everything about everybody on the street, down to the type of underwear they wear, if the women line-dry their clothes."

 

"Okay, so we're working with a stranger killing?"

 

"What stranger would butcher a family the way this one was?"

 

Allyn shot him a look. "You're asking me? You're the expert on things like that. I'm just your eyes and nose when it comes to figuring out where a killer disappeared to."

 

"Given that we think he's a shifter…" Ransom stopped talking when one of the CSI team came over to say they were finished, and that they'd have a report on Ransom's desk by morning. When the man left, Ransom said, "We know his scent, which will help us find him if he's anywhere in the city."

 

"Yeah. We'll just wander around, sniffing," Allyn replied with a tight grin before telling Ransom he was going to walk the perimeter of the yard one more time before it got too dark.

 

When he reached the fence at the back of the house, something caught his eye. Why did he leave on foot when he could have teleported away? he wondered, as he pulled a few hairs from the top of the fence. He sniffed them and nodded. These came from him. He returned to Ransom, giving him the hairs. Ransom put them in an evidence envelope—one he wouldn't turn over to the CSI people—then followed Allyn back to where he had found them.

 

"Why shift then go over the fence rather than teleport out?" Ransom asked, more to himself than expecting Allyn to reply.

 

Allyn replied anyway. "That's what I was thinking."

 

"Damn it. Hang on." Ransom headed out to the street. Allyn tagged along, wondering what had brought that on. Ransom knocked on the door of one of the neighbor's homes. He talked to the woman who answered, nodding a couple of times, then came back to where Allyn waited. "They had a dog. A scary brute of a thing, to quote the neighbor."

 

"Now that makes me wonder if the victim knew she was harboring a shifter, or if he was hiding out there and something went wrong."

 

"Guess we won't know until we find him."

 

"Then let's get started," Allyn said, heading to the backyard of the house again and through the gate in the fence. "He could have taken the easy way," he commented with a brief smile, while scanning the adjoining yard. Kneeling, he looked carefully at the dirt, still damp from an earlier rain shower.