63. Chapter 63
Using her whole body, Nicole propped the door open and kept a careful eye on the corridor ahead as the others moved inside. Even though it had opened for her easily enough, she didn’t trust that it wasn’t a trap that could separate them if she let go at the wrong time. Being stuck inside while they were outside didn’t bother her as much as the thought of the trap springing the other way around and Waverly, even a Waverly toting a shotgun, became trapped.
With the door open, the scent of blood, gore and fear was even stronger and more horrific. It spread from all corners and every floor of the building, seeping from under doors and down the stairwell. It grasped at Nicole’s throat and nose, prising its way in to try and choke her.
It was a scent that Nicole was all too familiar with.
It was one that made her feel like a child again. Watching on with childlike innocence, not knowing that what she was seeing was so very wrong for anyone to see as some nameless, faceless person begged for their life and then begged for their death.
Nicole didn’t realise she had become frozen in place, lost in the horror of memories until she felt the subtle, reassuring, brush of Waverly’s body against her side. Hazel eyes filled with concern and love met hers, letting her know that she was there for her even though Nicole could tell she was just as scared by what she was smelling. Nicole gave her a quick smile of thanks and straightened her shoulders resolutely.
As much as she wanted to rush straight to where the area the Sheriff’s Department was housed, Nicole restrained herself and followed procedures. Even though she couldn’t smell anything amiss or hear the beating of any hearts, she tried all the doors on the right, forcing them open with a quick twist of her hand when needed.
Every room had been turned upside down but it looked like the lateness of the day had helped keep their usual occupants alive as there was no one inside and no sign of any blood on the ground. The scent of it grew thicker though and Nicole knew where it was coming from. She edged reluctantly forwards towards the opening ahead on the left.
Artificial light cast in red flickered. The glow stretching out across the corridor to bounce off the wounds of bullet holes in the wall opposite, then pulling back. Stretching and shrinking as the source swung back and forth. Only… Nicole knew that the lights in the whole building were white or daylight… no reds. “Stay back,” she whispered softly.
Waverly bit back the urge to protest her Alpha going in alone. She could feel the rising dread in Nicole as her brown eyes tracked the motion of the light. She had promised though. So she held her ground and watched Nicole, and the corridor beyond, to make sure no one tried to get a jump on her.
Nicole had been witness to many crime scenes as a cop, on the job and mostly whilst training. Off the job, she had seen more in ways no one should ever have to see another human being. This…
She sagged, dropping to her knees on the edge of the spreading pool of blood in horror as her mind filled in the blanks of what she was seeing. Hearing Waverly’s distressed whimper, Nicole held up a hand to them all, begging, ordering them, to stay back and pushed herself back to her feet. Skirting the body, she quickly checked the rest of the P.S.D. offices to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows.
“Nicole?”
“It’s clear but it’s bad, Xavier. Real bad…” Out of the corner of her eye, Nicole watched as he and Doc moved closer and saw their steps falter at what they saw. “Would you mind checking out the rest of the place for me? I have the feeling this was the main target of whatever happened but best check if anyone is in hiding… or dead further in.”
“Sure thing,” Doc gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze of reassurance and shook his head sadly at what the young Officer was facing right then… and for what was to come. “Ladies, are you coming with us?”
“Go,” Waverly nodded at her sister to go join them. “Find someone alive for us, ‘Nonna.” Please let there be someone alive! “I’m staying to help, Nicole.”
Her sister had left it unspoken that she was going to protect her Alpha but Wynonna could see it in the determination in her hazel eyes and etched around the tightness of her mouth and her fierce grip on the shotgun in her hands. “Keep her safe,” she whispered against her temple.
“Always.”
Waverly steeled herself as Wynonna jogged to catch up with Doc and Xavier. She saw her sister’s eyes dart to the left. Saw the way her jaw tightened and her step faltered. Saw the concerned look that fell upon Nicole and herself. Waverly wasn’t about to let the woman she loved face whatever had all of them looking so terrified alone though. She moved closer, sliding into the curve of Nicole’s side to offer and get support as she raked her eyes along the ground.
It was…!
She blinked, her brain refusing to take in what her eyes were seeing.
There was so much. Blood on the ground, blood on everything. She started with that. Taking in the thick, dark stain pooled and spreading across the floor of the bullpen and wrapping around the legs of the table outside of Nedley’s office. Blood and hair clung to the edge of the long reception desk where… someone… had had their head smashed against it. It was smeared along the walls and the fluorescent lights in the main area and in Nedley’s office. She was only able to tell that because the windows were shattered, the blinds pulled down from their fixtures, allowing her an uninterrupted view into the smaller room.
A room that, apart from being in the usual place, bore no resemblance to the one Waverly had been in before. It looked like a giant fist had picked the whole room up and shaken it like a snow globe. Even the Sheriff’s, frankly hideous, display of mounted fish was dislodged from their usual places on the wall and torn apart.
Just thinking of the fish, the way they were pinned and mounted… had her eyes drifting to the worst horror in the room as Nicole moved towards it. Waverly swallowed hard as she watched Nicole step carefully around the pool of blood spread around the base of what looked like a huge stalagmite that had sprouted up from the middle of the floor. It was so perfectly flush to the floor it looked like it had been formed over thousands of years.
Holding her breath, Waverly backtracked along the path of a fresh trickle of blood as it shone in the light as it slid down to join the rest. She saw shoes first, those ridiculous clunky police issue ones that looked impossible to run in at the best of times let alone with snow on the ground. They hung there, limply at the end of blood-stained khaki pants. Waverly swallowed down the bile at the wave of relief that had washed through her knowing that they weren’t Nicole’s.
As penance, Waverly forced herself to take the rest of it in in one go.
Lonnie. Poor sweet, Lonnie. There was no one else it could be when the whole of P.S.D. consisted of Nicole, Nedley and Lonnie, and Waverly could tell that the body was taller than Nedley. That was about all she could tell though as his body had been speared clean through by the point of the stalagmite.
She studied his body coldly, clinically, rifling through all the information stored in her mind on anatomy to put names to things instead of focussing on the blood and gore.
The stalagmite had entered at the small of his back, somewhere around the L3 or L4 region and had emerged again between his clavicle bones… and then entered again underneath his jaw to pierce up and probably through his brain and...
“Waves, no,” Nicole held up a hand, gently warding Waverly back as she tried to move around to see behind Lonnie’s pinned body with a look of horror and morbid curiosity on her face as she looked up at his head. “Trust me, you don’t need to see any more.” Nicole knew she would be having nightmares enough for both of them.
“Hey… shit, I was kind of hoping I’d imagined how bad that was.” Wynonna shook her head sadly as she looked at Lonnie’s body. “Erm, we just finished the sweep through. Three more dead upstairs. Gunshots though, nothing like this. And we found eight alive holed up in the basement… including Chrissy Nedley.”
“Chrissy?”
“Yeah, she said she wants to see you, Nicole.”
“Could you take them out the back and over to Shorty’s? We’ll need statements from them eventually. I’m not going to be able to hold City P.D. off for long. I need their forensics team to go over this place and without Nedley’s authority, they’ll pull rank once they work out I’m a Rookie. Once that happens, I’ll either end up as a suspect or fetching coffee.”
“On it!”
“Waves… You know Chrissy right?”
“Yeah, we don’t get to talk often since she started college but we’re friends.”
“Could you go over and sit with her for me? Make sure she stays safe? I’ll be over soon,” she assured her. “I just want to take a look in Nedley’s office and grab a few things.”
“I’ll take care of her… just don’t get into any trouble without me.”
Nicole listened, tracking their progress through the building until she heard the door close behind them and the trudge of feet heading across the street towards the bar. In the distance on the edge of town, she could hear the whine of a siren and knew her time was running short.
Righting a filing cabinet, Nicole prised open one of the bent drawers and grabbed a digital camera from it. Quickly she snapped as many photographs as she could before switching out the SD card for another and took a couple on that card too. It was a trick a visiting Detective at the academy had told her class about as a way to piss off the Feds… a trick they had been told to forget about… but it had stuck. Now they would have something obvious for them to snatch off her to prove they were in charge and she would still have something more than her memory to work from.
And, assuming it was working and hadn’t been turned off, there was one other thing she needed.
Nicole paused on the threshold of Nedley’s office and looked around for a clear path through the chaos to a mounted fish the Sheriff had, for some inexplicable reason, nicknamed Bob.
Spotting it, she made her way over and looked at it. It was gaudy and horrible… and she decided she would have to ask Nedley just why in the hell he had called it Bob.
Right then though, Bob had secrets to spill. Hopefully anyway. Nicole tapped the unblinking glass eye and watched as the camera lens within shifted and refocused. Turning Bob over, she turned the hidden camera off and switched out the SD card in it.
Bob hadn’t had the best view of the office, mostly just Nedley’s desk. But it was a view, and fortunately, Nedley had splashed out on Bob too as it had sound recording too. Hell, Nedley’s desk had had better security than the whole of the Municipal Building as the Mayor had apparently refused to waste taxpayers money on that. Though ploughing his street out during a snowstorm instead of the hospital had apparently been an okay use of money.
Hearing the screech of tyres and catching the flashing blue and reds of lights through the street side windows, Nicole moved out of the Sheriff’s office as she slipped the SD card into her utility belt to join the other one. Snatching up the digital camera she snapped off a picture as she heard the slamming of doors.
“Put that camera down, Officer! We’re taking over this scene now!”
“You have no right!”
“Officer Haught, isn’t it? You need to take a step back. You have no resources and are too close to the people and the ‘events’ tooooo … Holy shit! Fuck!”
“Feel like you’ve got the resources to deal with something like this?” She could have almost felt sorry for them walking in on it like that if she hadn’t seen one of them pulling out his cell phone and snapping a photo of Lonnie. “You disrespectful piece of shit!” Nicole slapped the phone out of his hand and pushed him to the ground. “That was my friend!”
“That’s enough! Officer Haught, you will clear the scene now!”
Grabbing the cop by the front of his shirt, Nicole hauled him back to his feet. She leaned into him, growling in his face. “If I find one photo or mention of any of this online… I swear to god your body will never be found,” she gritted out in a voice filled with lethal promise.
The scent and sound of liquid splashing against his boots told her she’d made her point.
Pushing away from him, Nicole left him standing in a spreading pool of his own urine and glowered at the rest of them until every face was etched into her memory. Turning on her heel, she made her way towards the exit with the blood-soaked lights flickering and casting their glow behind her as pushed through the doors.
She sucked in a huge lungful of cold air, hands clenching at her side as she bit down on the desire to scream and let her wolf out. It felt like everything was falling apart and spiralling out of control quicker than she could keep up.