AU Bigbang: Jackal (1/2)
Title: Jackal
Author: catystorm
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist/Supernatural
Pairing(s): Hints of Roy/Ed and Al/Mei
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Fusion!universe, violence, Ed's rather extensive and occasionally offensive vocabulary.
Word Count: 17,829
Summary: The curious case of a woman found dead with her liver missing catches the attention of the Elric brothers.
"Anyway." He held his left hand up like he was weighing the choices. "Long-dead serial killer, no new victims, trail colder than the bodies he's left behind." Then he raised his right hand up, higher. "Fresh body, uncertain cause of death, possibly right in the middle of whatever the hell's going on."
"Ed, please don't let go of the wheel while you're driving, you give me gray hairs as it is."
Follows Stormy May Day, no knowledge of the first fic is necessary to enjoy this one.
Jackal Fanmix by tortugax
Edward Elric was leaning with his back against his car, both hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was watching the traffic move past the parking lot at a steady clip; it was a little early for the rush hour traffic to get started. The afternoon was a heavy gray, the sort that threatened to rain but never quite managed it. Ed exhaled; his breath was visible in the cool air that was early spring in the north east.
They'd been on the road two days, heading east. They'd pulled off the highway at this truck stop to get something to eat and fill the car's tank, which was where Al got a bug in his ear about a local legend. Al was still mad and Ed was trying hard to stay mad right back. It was easy when he went to sulk at his car instead of staying inside where the wind wouldn't cut through his jacket like it was made of tissue paper.
Truth was, Al had every right to still be mad at Ed. Ed had kicked his reckless behavior up three notches lately and this time it was Al who nearly paid the price for it. Ed sighed, looked back up at the slate-colored sky and waited.
The door to the truck stop chimed as it opened, and Ed glanced over to see Al cross the parking lot at an easy lope. He only limped a little, the final vestiges of their most recent confrontation with an angry spirit. Al stopped beside the passenger side of the car for a moment, looking Ed in the eye before wordlessly opening the car door and getting inside.
Ed looked around the lot a final time before getting in the car as well. It was a habit he'd picked up in the last few years; he scanned for anyone watching them in particular. As he settled in the driver's seat, Ed glanced over at Al. "Find out anything useful?"
"Same old story," Al said. He leaned back in the passenger, his legs already tucked under the dashboard as comfortably as he could manage. "Nut with an ax goes Voorhees on a small town, starts carving out hearts and then after they're certain he's down for the count his body goes missing."
Ed let out a low whistle. "That's some serious horror-movie mojo going on there. Was the guy eating their hearts, or something?"
"I'm getting to it," Al said crossly. "Would you let me finish?" Ed glowered a little at Al but didn't say anything else. "Apparently, rumor has it that one of the people there for the final shoot-out thinks that this particular breed of psycho was possessed by a very dead older psycho."
"Days of our Undead Lives," Ed snorted, unable to help himself. "So, Psycho Ax-Killer Jr.'s body has gone missing. Do we think he's lying somewhere bled out, or still wandering around opening people up?"
"My money's on bled-out," Al said. "Outside of the big dust-up, there haven't been any more bodies."
"Or he could be hiding out somewhere, healing up and waiting for the right time to go off some more poor bastards."
"So do you want to go check this out?" Al asked as Ed drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
"How long has it been since this guy vanished?" Ed asked.
"A little over a year," Al said. "This all went down in February of last year."
Ed turned and looked at his brother. "This nut was carving out people's hearts around Valentine's Day? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Yeah, I know," Al said.
"And there have been no more deaths."
"Not that we know of."
"Al, the guy's probably dead in a ditch somewhere and the local wildlife would have picked his bones clean by now." Ed shook his head. "The trail's cold."
Al made that frowny face he did whenever he knew Ed was right but didn't want to admit it. "Well, I've got nothing else. You got anything?"
"As a matter of fact, I do." Ed started the car. Al raised his eyebrow when Ed glanced over at him. "Winry called while you were in there taking a piss."
"Oh she did, did she." Al said. "Haven't heard from her in a while."
"You are a lying sack of shit, Al, she told me she talked to you last week." Ed shot a look at his brother. "When were you going to tell me?"
"No, I talked to Mei and Winry was yelling in the background," Al corrected.
"Whatever. Anyway, her librarian-chick friend-"
"Sheska?"
Ed glanced over at Al. "Are you going to let ME finish, or do you know all this already?"
Al motioned for Ed to continue. "No, I haven't heard this one. Go on."
It was too late, Ed was already on a new tangent. "How do you know the librarian chick?"
"Mei's talked about her before. I met her once when I flew out to help Mei and Winry with that giant ghost bird."
"Giant ghost bird? When the hell was that, where was I?"
"I dunno, a few months ago? You were shacked up with Mustang at the time; I had to do SOMETHING to keep busy."
Ed and Al exchanged a glare and Ed cleared his throat. "Anyway," Ed continued. "Her librarian-chick friend said that a zookeeper had been found dead in an employee’s-only back room with her liver missing. No signs of forced entry, couldn't be an animal attack, nothing. The zoo hushed it all up."
"Harvesting livers," Al tapped his finger to his lips. "That's a new one. Although I'm sure there are several sorts of nasty beasties who just want to snack on a human liver. How recent was this?"
"Just about a week or so ago," Ed said.
"Any other deaths in the area?"
"Not that Sheska or Winry knew of, at least not human. But, apparently this zoo has had a heck of a time keeping its stock alive lately. They've had more animal deaths in the past six months than they have in the past six years."
Now Al looked intrigued. "Some kind of curse, you think?"
"Or it's your serial killer, shifting internal organs."
"Ed."
"Well, it's a thought. It's actually not too far from here, which is why Winry called us. She knew we were in the Midwest-"
"She thought you were at Mustang's," Al translated.
"For fuck's sake," Ed groaned. "They're in Colorado right now, there's no way in hell they're gonna get out here to deal with this, they're tied up in dealing with some sort of vampire cult at the moment. But it was enough to ping their radar, so she called us up."
"Vampire cult?"
"I didn't get the details," Ed said. "Anyway." He held his left hand up like he was weighing the choices. "Long-dead serial killer, no new victims, trail colder than the bodies he's left behind." Then he raised his right hand up, higher. "Fresh body, uncertain cause of death, possibly right in the middle of whatever the hell's going on."
"Ed, please don't let go of the wheel while you're driving, you give me gray hairs as it is."
Ed snorted and dropped both his hands back on the steering wheel. "So, which is it?"
"Okay, okay," Al caved. "This sounds like a better idea anyway."
"I wonder if Winry's librarian chick friend is hot," Ed said speculatively while Al popped open the glove box, rifling through their stash of maps before pulling one out for their current location. "Is she hot?"
"I didn't notice," Al said, unfolding the map.
"Figures, you were probably too busy making goo-goo eyes at Mei. Did she at least wear glasses?"
Al glanced back at Ed. "Why does it matter? No, wait, don't answer that. I know you." Ed grinned like a shark at Al, and Al rolled his eyes and flattened the old map of the state across the dashboard so he could mark out their route in pencil. "Let's go."
*
The next day arrived cheerier than the day before. The clouds had shed their murky gray color and were an off-white shade; vivid blue sky peeked between them. It had warmed up considerably as well; there were hints of summer in the spring breeze. The nicer weather had people out in droves and, despite their map; it took Ed and Al almost a full hour to locate the zoo. It was actually hidden in the middle of a residential area, something neither of them expected, driving up and down back streets and taking wrong turns. Ed only turned the wrong way down a one-way street once, and it was a short one. Al wasn't going to let him forget that in a hurry, though.
Eventually, the boys got their bearings and located the zoo. Ed parked on the street, far from the customer entrance, and got out of the Impala. He tugged a little at his tie as Al rifled through their ID box. "I can't believe this place is open," Ed said as a group of parents pushing kids in strollers passed on the sidewalk.
"It's a business," Al said, handing Ed his ID. Ed checked it, to be certain, then tucked it into the inner pocket of his suit coat. He tugged on the ends of his sleeves to straighten them. "I'm really not surprised. It's been over a week since the murder, and it was behind the scenes. The zoo has kept it quiet, remember?"
Ed wrinkled his nose as he looked around. All the kids and parents were heading up the hill to the customer entrance. It was loud and full of shrieking toddlers, and the smell of animals was heavy in the air.
They had parked near the employee entrance. After flashing their badges to the guard at the gate, he radioed someone on his walkie talkie. Occasionally they got caught in their lies, so a few tense moments passed before the guard nodded and let them through.
Ed and Al were met by an older man with dark hair shot through with gray. He was dressed in khakis with a polo shirt embroidered with the name of the zoo on it. He looked generally irritated at being interrupted in his day to meet with them, and glanced between the two of them once. "Good afternoon, gentlemen. What can I do for you today?"
"Tom Gallagher?" Al asked. When the man nodded, he extended his hand. "Special Agent Al Davis. This is my partner, Ed Martin." Ed shook Gallagher's hand as well, when offered. "We understand you've had a few strange deaths lately."
Gallagher looked puzzled. "Really, only Karen. The other deaths have been unfortunate but there is a bit of danger inherent in this job."
"Other deaths?" Al asked.
"We've had several trainers die on the job in the last several years," Gallagher explained. His face was suspicious. "But surely you knew that, being federal agents?"
"I wasn't aware that zookeeping had such a high mortality rate," Ed said dryly.
"According to official records you haven't had a human death in this zoo for two years," Al pointed out. "Why bring it up, Mr. Gallagher?"
"I thought that was what you meant?"
"Quite a few of your animals have met with strange deaths as well."
Gallagher looked between them again. "Who did you say you were with?"
"Just answer the questions, sir," Ed said sharply.
"Why do you need to know about the animals? Animals die all the time, it's the nature of a zoo."
"We're just being very thorough," Al said.
"Well, I've already been over all this with the police," Gallagher snapped. "I don't see what good it does for me to tell you all the same information."
"We like to get our information first-hand," Ed said, glancing around the standing area they were in. Several employees were filing in the gate and giving Ed and Al curious looks but a wide berth. "Who found Karen Lunn's body?"
"One of the janitors," Gallagher said. "It was late in the evening, and Ms. Lunn was supposed to have already clocked out for the night. She had a fondness for the penguins though, and often stayed late to make sure everything was in order for the opening shifts."
"And the door to the room she was found in, was it locked?"
"Yes. The door to that area is only locked by the last person who leaves when they go home for the night."
"Is there anyone who could have possibly wanted Ms. Lunn dead?" Al asked.
Gallagher shrugged. "Not that I know of. I didn't know Ms. Lunn very well. We have quite a few employees here, Mr. Davis, I can't keep track of all their personal lives."
"Who would we need to talk to who knew her well?"
"Her coworkers in the Arctic exhibit, I imagine." Gallagher said. "Now, I'm very busy and the park is just opening up. Is there anything else I can answer for you?"
Ed smiled coldly. "No, I think that about covers it. Where can we find the Arctic exhibit?"
*
The crowds had only gotten worse while Ed and Al had been behind the scenes with Gallagher. Another security guard had escorted them out of the employee area; obviously Gallagher didn't want them roaming around unattended behind the exhibits. Ed had picked a map up from the main kiosk while they stood off to the side in the main pavilion. Al watched the people moving around the main area, souvenir-shopping, chasing after excited children and generally enjoying the nice spring day.
Al glanced over at his brother, who was concentrating on the colorful map he had picked up. "What did you think of Gallagher?"
"He didn't seem too concerned about the fact that one of his employees was clearly murdered," Ed said.
"Yeah." Al looked out over the zoo's visitors. "He knows something."
"The question is, of course, what." Ed circled something on the map. "Okay, so, we're in the main pavilion, so we need to go that way," Ed indicated up the sloping hill before them. "And then we hang a right past the big cat house."
The way that Ed had pointed led past the big cats exhibit, as well as the elephant house. Al rolled his eyes; Ed had been plotting the longest route around the zoo possible to get to the Arctic exhibit. "We're not here to sight-see, Ed. We're on a job."
"I know that," Ed argued. "This is the best way!" He waved the map, and Al plucked it out of his hands with ease. "Hey, give that back!"
Al glanced over it once, and then nodded to where the main path split off. "The Arctic exhibit is that way, Ed." Al attempted to fold the map back up but, failing that, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it in the nearest trash can.
"My route was better," Ed said; the pout in his voice as he capped his pen and tucked it into his pocket.
"God, you're five years old," Al complained. "We're supposed to be federal agents, Ed, stop fucking around. You can come back some other time to look at the animals."
"Excuse me?" A young woman dressed in cargo shorts and a blue polo shirt with "The Arctic Experience" emblazoned on it had stopped beside them. "Are you the federal agents Mr. Gallagher said would be around?"
Ed and Al exchanged a look of surprise. "Yes," Al said quickly. "I'm Special Agent Al Davis, and this is my partner-"
"Ed Martin," Ed interjected, smirk in place on his face. The employee missed Al's glare, because she was smiling openly back at Ed. "Sorry, we got a bit lost. It's a little crowded here today."
The employee nodded, looking back at the crowd. "Yeah," she said. "It got really pretty out this weekend, and that brings the first big rush of the season." Her smile was sad when she turned back to them. "Karen was looking forward to it, the penguins will be hatching chicks soon. We always get a lot of people for the zoo babies."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Al said sympathetically. "I didn't get your name, miss?"
"Oh! Sorry, I'm Robin Ellery," she said. "I work at the Arctic exhibit," she added unnecessarily.
"You were friends with Karen Lunn?"
"Yeah," Robin nodded. "We were really good friends, she'd been working here longer than I have." For a moment the grief passed over her face but just as quickly it was gone and she had a professional expression on her face once more. "Can we walk and talk? My break is almost up." As she spoke she withdrew a name badge from her pocket and pinned it on her polo.
"Sure," Ed started to say, but she was already off. Al hesitated a moment only because Ed did, and then Al realized Ed hesitated because he was watching her ass. He shoved Ed in the shoulder to get him moving, and they both quickly caught up with Robin. "Was she acting strangely at all before her death?"
Robin shook her head negatively. "Not any more than normal. I mean, she was always a little quirky, so we never paid much attention to it."
"Quirky how?" Al queried.
"It's hard to explain. You kinda have to be a little too much in love with animals for this job," Robin said with a smile. "I mean, she talked about her penguins like they were her babies and I guess, in a way, they were."
"Did Ms. Lunn have any enemies?" Ed asked. "Anyone who might want to see her dead?"
"No, not at all!" Robin shook her head emphatically. "We all loved Karen, she was quirky but she loved her job and the penguins, and you can't hate someone who loves animals like she did." Robin's voice got a little choked up and she shook her head again and sniffed, but kept composed. "Do you guys have any idea who did this to her?"
"Not yet," Al said.
"It's funny," Robin said after a beat. "Mr. Gallagher is always on top of the maintenance here, but the last month or so a lot of security cameras have shorted out and not been replaced." She stopped walking, then looked back at Ed. "Do you think Mr. Gallagher could have killed Karen?"
"Do you?" Ed responded.
"I don't know." Robin crossed her arms. "I've never liked him, but he's the boss, and... you know."
"Does he harass the employees?"
"What! No, no. God, no. If he pulled skeevy shit like that we would have reported him to the Board or something. It's more like, something's off about him, you know?" She waved her hand in the air. "It's weird; I don't know how to explain it." She looked over; they had stopped near the entrance to the Arctic exhibit. Fake blue tinted icebergs lined the nearest portion, a polar bear tank, and the crowd around the fence was a decent size. "I gotta clock back in. Are we done?"
Ed and Al looked at each other, and Al nodded. "Yes, thank you." Robin was looking at Ed, though, and she smiled coyly for him. Then she headed off at a perky walk, stopping to point some children in the right direction, before disappearing into the crowd around the polar bear tank.
"I think you made a friend," Al said, amused.
"Yeah," Ed was still watching where she had disappeared. "What an ass on her."
"Do you think Gallagher did it?"
Ed shook his head, snapping out of his reverie. "All signs point to him. I don't know if he's the instigator, but his dirty hands have got to be in it somehow."
"Yeah, I think so too," Al thought a moment. "Seems kinda cut and dried, though. A regular murder behind-the-scenes."
"Lunn could have been sleeping with Gallagher," Ed said. "Lover's quarrel would explain a lot."
"But still the missing liver."
"Yeah," Ed agreed. "Something really doesn't sit right." He turned about and looked around, it was really warm and he was beginning to swelter in his suit. "Let's at least check out the body before we cross this one off our list."
*
They had found a motel smack in the middle of the residential area, across the street from a few fast food shacks. Ed had immediately made for the bathroom once they got inside, and by the time Ed emerged Al had already set up shop across the old wood desk. The room hadn't come with a table, so Al had dragged the huge desk out from the wall. He was currently sitting at it the correct way, his laptop set up and several papers spread out over the desk. "I need a printer," Al said when Ed walked out of the bathroom. "Don't leave your suit on the floor in the bathroom, Ed, it'll wrinkle."
Ed hadn't even left the bathroom yet, and Al hadn't bothered to look up. Ed muttered and scooped up the trousers and suit coat, straightening them out and hanging them on one of those hangers that couldn't leave the pole in the closet. "What do you need with a printer? They're a pain in the ass to lug around."
"I'm sick of having to run to copy shops and hoping that the register jockey doesn't look too closely at what I'm printing out," Al said. "It would just be easier." He sighed and sat back in his chair. "Anyway, we're fucked."
That got Ed's attention. "What?"
"Karen Lunn's already been cremated."
"Fuck." Ed sat down on the bed closest to the door. "Did they autopsy her?"
"Yeah," Al said. "I'm trying to hack in to the morgue's servers to get a copy of the official report."
Ed was unimpressed by his little brother's feat of hacking. "So why doesn't Special Agent Davis go down to the morgue and just use his very-well-crafted credentials to get a copy of the autopsy report himself?"
"Seriously, Ed?" Al clicked a few times with his touchpad. "We're trying to stay under the radar, remember? This sort of town probably still has our wanted posters up, even if we're officially dead." A few more clicks, then Al started swearing angrily at his computer.
"So it'll be a while, huh?" Ed kicked back and grabbed the remote control off of the night stand between the two queen-sized beds. "Guess I'll see what's on TV."
"Not a chance," Al said. He gestured to the pile of papers in front of him. "Since I'm doing the hard work, you get to slog through this."
Ed eyed the stack of papers. "What is 'this'?"
"The complete report of deaths in the zoo for the past six months," Al said. "The zoo is required to keep a mortuary log of all the animal remains they have to dispose of."
"This stack has to be at least two inches thick," Ed looked over the first page. "Okay, funny joke Al, you got me. These are all flies and roaches and stuff."
"The zoo has an insect house, Ed. They keep very precise records."
Ed groaned and took the pile of papers back to the bed. "I just love the bed time reading material this job gives me."
"You and me both," Al muttered, typing quickly at his laptop.
The boys fell into silence as they worked. After the first ten or fifteen pages, Ed got up to rifle through Al's laptop bag. Al gave him a dirty look, but Ed emerged with a highlighter and went back to his pages upon pages of animal deaths.
Nearly an hour later, Al made a crowing noise of triumph. "Got it!" He typed a few more decisive letters and victoriously hit the enter key. "I broke their encryption!"
"My brother, the nerd," Ed muttered without looking up.
"Shut up, I got the autopsy video and notes." Al scanned through the notes and frowned. Ed didn't look up but kept highlighting away. "That's interesting."
"What is?"
"The body had no marks on it, except for the cuts where her liver was removed." Al clicked a few more times. "She was still alive when her liver was removed."
That made Ed look up. "Oh, please tell me we're not dealing with another patchwork monster like Benton."
"It's possible," Al said. "Benton kept his victims alive until he could remove their organs. I'm going to do a cross-search to see if any other bodies turn up with missing organs."
Ed looked down at the paper he was holding, and particularly the line he had just highlighted. "Uh, Al?"
Al made a noise of frustration when the results came back only listing Karen Lunn. "What?"
"I got one."
That made Al glance over at Ed. "You got one what?"
"I have a body with missing organs." Ed held up the paper. "A baboon, actually." Ed glanced back at the paper. "It was found dead in its enclosure, and according to the autopsy, its chest was sliced open and the lungs were missing." Ed frowned. "They do autopsies on baboons?"
"It's not called an autopsy for an animal, Ed, it's called a necropsy. Anyway, it wasn't killed by the other baboons?"
"Nope, this says very clearly that the cause of death was the removal of the baboon's lungs." Ed put the paper back down on top. "Still think this murder sounds cut and dried, little brother?"
"What would someone want with a baboon's lungs and a human liver?"
"Hell if I know," Ed said, flipping through the stack of papers. "That's the first curious death I've come across, although I still have a lot of pages to go."
"When did that baboon die?" Al was pulling up a browser window on his laptop.
"A little over four weeks ago," Ed said, confirming the date.
"A month before Karen Lunn."
Ed started flipping through the pages until he came to a month prior to the baboon's death and started skimming while Al searched. "A month before the baboon's death, the zoo's only jackal was found dead in its enclosure. It had been cut open and its stomach was missing."
"The zoo let its jackal keeper go as a result of the death," Al said, reading over a few articles.
"Revenge killings?" Ed wondered.
"Why kill a baboon? Or Lunn? It doesn't make any sense, check further back." Ed flipped obediently back while Al kept searching.
"Nothing," Ed said dejectedly, scanning over the deaths of that week. "Lots of bugs, a few fish and a hawk."
"A hawk," Al said, said, seizing on that. "How'd the hawk die?"
"Eviscerated by the other birds of prey in the enclosure," Ed said. "They couldn't find half his entrails, they figured that the viscera was devoured by the other carrion birds."
"Or it could have been killed by whatever killed the jackal, the baboon, and Karen Lunn."
"Interestingly enough," Ed said, flipping back further. "Prior to that there were a whole lot less deaths over all. That must be the start of it, the hawk's death."
"That puts the start of the cycle in December," Al said, typing quickly. "It syncs up with the moon phases, too. That reeks of a ritual."
"I think maybe I should go have another little chat with Gallagher," Ed said.
"No."
Ed paused. "Why not?"
Al closed his laptop decisively. "Because I'm going to have another little chat with Gallagher. You're going to go talk with Lunn's friend."
"What, the girl from today?"
"Yeah," Al said. "She was interested in you; she might tell you something we didn't get before."
Ed looked down at the papers spread before him. "Sure you're not gonna want backup with Gallagher?"
Al grinned at his brother. "I'm a big boy, Ed. I think I can take care of myself."
*
Ed woke with a snort, his head on the desk. He had taken Al's seat when Al had gotten up to stretch his legs and make some phone calls he didn't want Ed overhearing. Of course Ed couldn’t help being curious as to the content of those phone calls, but they were still trying to trust each other. Ed wouldn't help that all by badgering and besides, he had to hope Al would realize how pathetically hungry his older brother would be upon waking and have gone for burgers and beer.
However, it was now dark out and Ed had woken up to the pale glow of the screensaver on Al's laptop. Ed yawned and scratched his head, glancing at the clock across the room from him. Oddly enough, the red LED digits blinked 12:00 at him as if there had been a power loss. Al's laptop hadn't kicked off, and the general electronic hum of the room seemed intact, so whenever the power died it had since been restored.
Al wasn't back yet, though. Ed grabbed his cell phone from where it sat beside the laptop on the desk and frowned when it wouldn't power on. It couldn't possibly need charging, he just charged it. They hadn't run across any entities that would have drained the cell battery and not Al's more powerful laptop battery. Ed stood up and decided to check and see if Al had taken the Impala or not.
When Ed opened the door, he was confronted with a thousand violent eyes looking every which way but him. The sudden movement of the door made every single unblinking orb turn and focus on him.
Ed's stomach dropped. He slammed the door as the thick black hands lunged for him, forcing the door back into its frame and locking it. Several severed tentacle-like hands waved limply at him from the floor. Ed kicked at one, and when he looked back up the motel room was gone and the world was that white color with no definition. Ed took a step away from the door and spun. The motel room door was not the same as it was, it was those monumental black doors he had seen in that bastard's transmutation circle. The doors were blank, and that confused Ed. The last time he had seen these doors there were some kind of archaic symbols that crossed the doors. What was the difference?
But those doors had taken someone else. Ed had just witnessed it, these were his doors, and when they opened the hands were going to come for him....
Ed could sense someone behind him. As much as he didn't want to, Ed turned around and put his back to the doors. To his surprise, the figure standing behind him ... was himself.
It was him but ... not really. It was as if something else was wearing his face. His hair was long and dirty, tangled as if it hadn't seen a brush in months. His clothing was tattered and patched, and his eyes weren't right. They looked flat, like the lights were on but no one was home. This strange, not-quite doppelganger looked directly at Ed and said archly, "This changes things." He looked beyond Ed, to the doors behind him.
Ed glanced over his shoulder at the doors, but they hadn't moved. However, there was the faintest image on them now that he could make out, the symbol that was on the inside of his father's journal. He glanced back to his apparition but it was gone, replaced by Castiel.
Castiel wasn't looking at Ed at all, but at the doors behind him as well. "Most unexpected," the angel murmured, before looking back at Ed. His words echoed Ed's doppelganger’s. "This changes things."
This was beginning to get frustrating. Ed was losing patience with everyone, no matter how terrifying he found the giant doors and what hid behind them. "What does it change?" He started to say, taking a step toward Castiel. The grating sound of stone on stone distracted him, an Ed turned his head. The hands were pushing their way through the door, and they were coming for him. Ed turned back to Castiel, but the angel seemed further away than ever. He felt the hands grab at his clothing and hair, felt them wrap around his arms and legs as he tried to run for it, reaching for Castiel -
Al looked up as Ed thrashed himself to the floor, tangled in the sheets of his bed, the one closest to the door. Al had relocated to his bed with his laptop; he had been watching the autopsy video and doing a bit more research on the actual human deaths that had occurred at the zoo over the past ten years. Ed came up from the ground wild-eyed and hair tousled.
"Jeez, Ed, you okay?" Al asked, and Ed's head turned and he stared at Al for a long moment, like he didn't recognize him. Al opened his mouth again, and then closed it as Ed took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. "Another nightmare?"
"No," Ed said shakily, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Just, me and that Playboy bunny were getting a little too frisky in the hot tub." He pulled at the sheets still wrapped around his legs before freeing himself to stand. Ed levered himself up off the ground and stalked over to where the last of the beer he'd bought earlier sat.
"Was it the gate again?" Al asked. "Or hell?"
Ed felt a trill of fear in his gut that the warm beer did nothing to help. "Don't call it that," he said hoarsely.
Al bit his bottom lip, and then sighed. "Ed, I can't help if you won't talk to me," he said finally.
Ed slammed the beer can down on the dresser. "I told you already," he said angrily.
"Yeah," Al said. "Playboy bunny, right." He watched Ed with concern as Ed stormed off into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. After a few long seconds, the shower started running. Al sighed again and picked up his phone, pressing one of the numbers set on speed dial. If Ed wouldn't let Al help him, maybe he'd listen to someone else.
*
The next day dawned bright and sunny, with scarcely a cloud in the sky. Ed and Al parted ways at the zoo entrance, with Ed in plain clothes going through the customer entrance and paying for admission like a good tourist, and Al walking up to the employee entrance, again in his suit and this time with sunglasses.
The guard was the same one from yesterday, and recognized Al. "Mr. Gallagher isn't here today," he told Al gruffly, not even reaching for his walkie talkie to confirm.
"On a Monday?" Al wasn't impressed, especially since they had been sitting in the Impala for an hour waiting for the zoo to open. "I could have sworn I saw Mr. Gallagher's car come through the employee gate."
"You'd have been mistaken." The guard was one cool customer, Al was impressed. He didn't even flinch at Al as Al glowered at him.
"Okay then," Al said. "You're going to let me into the park to look around, do you know why?"
"I'm not going to let you in anywhere," the guard said, one hand on his radio.
"Oh yes you are," Al said. He pulled out his badge and put it against the guard's window. "This little badge says you're going to. Or else would you like to come with me and have a little chat about protocol regarding a federal agent's investigation?"
The guard glared sullenly at Al, and turned his back to him, holding his walkie talkie close to his mouth so Al couldn't overhear his words. Al didn't put away his badge until the guard pressed the button that would let Al through the employee entrance door. "Mr. Gallagher will see you in his office," he said shortly. Al smiled coldly at the man.
"Thank you."
Al walked through the doors and found himself unattended in the open employee entranceway. He glanced around, but Gallagher was nowhere to be seen. "I guess it would be too much to ask for someone to have told me where his office IS," Al muttered to himself, before picking a direction and heading that way.
After finding and talking to two different employees, Al got turned in the right direction. Apparently the offices were in a building just off the customer entrance, adjacent to one of the larger and nicer souvenir shops. Al looked very official and no one stopped him, and in fact directed him to where he needed to go with very few questions.
Gallagher was not in his office, but the door was open. He didn't have a secretary and his office was small, not nearly as opulent as Al had imagined. The desk was crammed into a tiny room, and the walls were lined with books and various knick knacks from the souvenir shop, relics of different exhibits long since closed. Papers were scattered all over his desk, and Al glanced casually at them.
"Agent Davis."
Al looked up. Gallagher was standing in the door, dressed more for business than he had been yesterday. He did not look happy to see Al, which didn't surprise Al at all. "Good morning, Mr. Gallagher," Al said.
"I can't say it's good to see you again so soon," Gallagher said. Al stepped aside so Gallagher could work his way around to the other side of the desk. "What can I help you with today?"
"You could start with why you instructed your guard not to let me in," Al said pleasantly.
"It's not personal, Agent Davis." Gallagher sat down and placed the files he had been carrying on his desk, intentionally obscuring some of the papers he had laying out. "I'm very busy right now, I had my guard simply discourage all visitors, not just you."
"Mmhm." Al didn't sit. "I have a few questions about some odd deaths you've had here in the last few months."
"Ms. Lunn is the only death we've had in a while," Gallagher said, clearly confused.
"I was referring to a baboon that was killed nearly a month prior. The lungs of this animal were missing."
"Probably consumed by another baboon in the enclosure," Gallagher said.
"Leaving the rest of the body intact?" Al didn't conceal his skepticism. "There was also the matter of a hawk and a jackal that were missing single organs as well."
"I don't understand," Gallagher said. "What do these animal deaths have to do with Karen Lunn?"
Al studied the wall of Gallagher's office. "Your security cameras in the Arctic exhibit were disabled or just entirely disconnected. Why?"
"We're in a recession right now; this zoo isn't doing so well." The skin around Gallagher's eyes was getting tight, he was clearly getting angry. "I am lucky to be able to maintain what I have. Did you have anything concrete, Agent Davis, or are you just here to interrogate me about the upkeep of my animals?"
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Gallagher," Al said. "You've been far more helpful than you know."
*
When Robin Ellery showed up for work that day, she was surprised to see the federal agent from the day before standing in the open pavilion, this time dressed in jeans and a button-down. The sun had come out bright and full today, there was no need for a jacket, and he had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, obviously underestimating how warm it was going to get.
The crowd was pretty robust for a Monday, but it was mostly schools bringing kids out for pre-spring break field trips. Robin waded through a mess of third graders to get to the agent, who hadn't seen her and was staring with an intense expression at a list of coffee.
"I like the Jungle Java," Robin offered up, and he turned to look at her, a little surprised. Then he paled and attempted to surreptitiously look for a clock. "Were you waiting for me, Agent Martin?"
"I, uh." He glanced around, and, realizing he was caught, rolled with it. "Yeah, I was. You're a little bit early."
"I like to wander around the zoo before my shift," she said with a smile. "You want some coffee? Hang on a moment." Robin moved up to the side of the line and motioned one of the workers over. After a quick whispered conversation, she returned, two cups of coffee in hand. "I hope you didn't have a preference."
"Why Ms Ellery, are you flirting with me?" He looked more tired than yesterday but was obviously trying to hide it. He accepted the coffee gratefully and Robin snorted in amusing. "Thanks."
"I thought you got all you needed yesterday, so why are you back here?" Robin queried as they moved out of the way of the line, standing back in the area with the picnic tables. "If you don't mind me asking, Agent Martin…"
"Please," the man groaned. "Call me Ed. It's too early to deal with special agent whatever crap." He nursed his coffee and squinted in the morning sun as a teacher chased after a group of elementary school kids who had decided to split off into three distinct packs.
"Ed," Robin said thoughtfully. "This isn't early at all, you should try a morning shift, they get here at four thirty."
"In the morning?" Ed said.
"The majority of the animals require around the clock care," Robin said. "There's usually at least one person on an overnight shift for every exhibit."
"Who was the night shift for the Arctic exhibit the night that Karen was killed?" Ed asked.
Robin sighed. "We didn't have anyone; we haven't had a night shift person in a few weeks." At Ed's disbelieving stare she shrugged. "Budget cuts. The night shift stays later and the day shift comes in earlier, cuts out having to pay for a night shift person."
"Awfully convenient," Ed murmured.
"You don't think that Gallagher fired the guy on purpose?" Robin said, wide-eyed.
"Can't say for certain." Ed tossed his empty coffee cup in the garbage. "There are a few things that don't seem to be lining up any which way. I thought I'd look around, ask a few people about Karen and see if I could find anything else out."
"The cops went over this place with a fine-tooth comb," Robin said with a sigh. "It was horrible. Two people quit." She took a small sip of coffee. "Karen was well-loved."
"I'd like to see where her body was found," Ed said suddenly, "if you don't mind to show me. I could go through the official channels again, but the less I have to deal with that Gallagher character the better off I think everyone will be."
Robin nodded. "I can show you, it's back in my prep area too. That won't be a problem. We’ll just have to watch out for the supervisor."
Robin led him through the back ways, to avoid the crowds of kids running from one exhibit to the other. Because Robin was already in her uniform with name tag, she got stopped several times between exhibits to answer questions. Instead of brushing them off, she answered each and every one. Most were kids with some sort of activity checklist they had to complete for their school projects. Ed snorted in amusement as they finally reached the safety of the back room of the Arctic exhibit. "You must like kids a lot."
"You have to, in this job," Robin said with a smile. "It reminds me of when I was little, and our school took us to the zoo."
Ed's face looked a little strained for a moment. "I was never in a school long enough to go on such field trips," he said after a moment. "And even when I was, my dad usually wouldn't let me."
"That's horrible, why not?"
"We moved around a lot when I was little." Ed nodded as they passed a few employees in green shirts and khakis headed to a different exhibit. "There are a whole lot of people who work here."
"Quite a few. There's about a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty people who work with the animals directly, and several hundred who staff the shops and work with the general public. And that's not even counting the volunteers who come every day to answer questions about the animals and do low maintenance work." Robin waved as someone called her name, and then directed Ed into a different area. "This is the back room area that we all worked in," she said, showing Ed a small concrete office. "I'm sorry, I'll be right back, the supervisor is hollering for me and I have to check on the seals before I clock in."
Ed nodded as Robin ran off, and then looked around the room. The floor was concrete, with a low drain set in the center. There was a faint brown stain near the drain that hadn't washed off yet, Ed could easily guess its source. The rest of the room looked undisturbed, but the police had already been through everything. Ed checked out the door, but no one was paying him any attention currently. He looked up at the security camera, but just like Robin said the little red light that indicated it was working was off, and the wires were out of the wall.
He pulled out his EMF detector and started sweeping it across the room. It had a reaction near one wall, but the reaction followed the wall from floor to ceiling, so it had to be some wires. As he swept the room, Ed noticed something weird on the floor where the brown stain washed over it. They almost looked like hieroglyphics, but they were too indistinct for Ed to be certain. He rubbed his finger over them, they weren't drawn into the floor but cut into it. Odd. Ed took his cell phone out, but the hieroglyphics barely showed up on camera. Not enough contrast.
Sitting on the table were some blank paper and pencils. Ed got up and tore a sheet with the zoo's header printed on it and used it to take a rough rubbing of the symbols etched into the ground beside the drain. Standing back up, he folded the paper carefully and was tucking it into his jeans pocket as Robin stuck her head back into the room.
"I'm so sorry," Robin said. "But my supervisor's having a fit that I let you back here without a warrant, federal agent or not."
"It's okay," Ed said. "I have to get going anyway." He smiled at Robin and she blushed a little. "Hey, if you think of anything else about Karen or anything suspicious, give me a call?" Ed wrote his cell number out on a piece of paper from the desk and gave it to her.
Robin looked down at the paper in her hand. "You know, now that you mention strange things, Karen's fiancé didn't show up for her funeral." She looked up at Ed. "Stuff like that?"
"Yeah," Ed said. "Stuff exactly like that."
*
"Karen Lunn had a fiancé?" Al's voice was tinny through the cell phone. Ed stood in the parking lot of the zoo, one hand over his ear so he could hear Al better. "How did we miss that?"
"Yeah, I know," Ed said. "And it gets better."
"Oh, how can it possibly get better than that?"
"According to Robin, Karen's fiancé has been missing since the day Karen died."
Al was silent on the other end of the phone. "Missing-missing, or just cut off all contact with Karen's friends missing?"
"The latter, it sounds like," Ed said. "Robin said she mentioned this to the police, but I don't think they listened."
"No, nothing showed up in the official police report about a fiancé," Al said angrily. "Is it just me, or is the police department in this town entirely incompetent?"
"It's not just you," Ed said. "But I've got something."
"Something?"
Ed fished the paper out of his pocket just to make sure it was still intact. The pencil was slightly smeared but it was still legible. "There were symbols carved into the concrete where Lunn died."
"A warding spell? Or something else?"
"Definitely something else." Ed leaned back against the car, and shaded his eyes with his hand. "Looks Egyptian to me, but I want you to take a second look at it for me."
"Egyptian?"
"Yeah, how weird is that?"
Ed could hear Al typing on the other end of the line. "What are you doing?"
"There's a big exhibit on Egypt at the local museum center," Al said. "And they're open until five today. Meet me back at the hotel in half an hour and we can check it out, at the very least we can get a specialist to translate the symbols you've found."
"You find out anything from Gallagher?"
"The zoo is losing a lot of money, both from the animal deaths and now the inevitable lawsuit from Lunn's family. He's got plenty of motives."
Ed nodded, and then realized that Al couldn't see him. "Right, well. Gallagher is moving right up the list of suspects. Did you find anything else out?"
"A little bit of digging let me know he's currently living out of a hotel not far from the zoo." The phone crackled a bit and Ed missed what Al said next. "-wn him out. Apparently death follows him wherever he goes. Did you get the name of Lunn's fiancé?"
"Yeah," Ed said. "Joseph Burne."
"I'll see what I can dig up on him in the meantime."
"See you back at the motel," Ed said, and closed his phone. He thought a moment, looking at his phone, and then back at the zoo. With a grin he headed back toward the entrance. He had a half an hour to kill, after all.
*
Al got into the Impala with a glare. Ed grinned at his little brother, who looked indignant. "I said half an hour," Al pointed out darkly. "What part of that was unclear?" Ed looked at the clock in the dashboard and raised an eyebrow.
"The exhibit's still gonna be open for a while, Al," Ed said.
"That's not the POINT, Ed! What in the hell took you so long?"
Ed smirked at Al, and Al rolled his eyes and groaned. "You look like the cat who ate the canary," Al snorted. He then thought about what he just said and gave Ed a look. "You didn't."
"I love it when you come up with your innuendo all on your own," Ed said. "It makes my job that much easier."
"At the ZOO?"
Ed waved his hand in the air, dismissing it. "Anyway," he said, pulling the now more-than-slightly crumpled paper out of his pocket. "This is what I found where Lunn's body was."
Al unfolded the paper and scowled at how smeared the pencil was, but it was still readable. It only took a glance to confirm what Ed had thought. "Yeah, these are definitely Egyptian."
"So, what. Is the liver sacred in Egypt? Who's going to go around and cut people's livers out and leave Egyptian hieroglyphics on the ground cut into solid concrete?"
"The liver was sacred in ancient times, Ed. You know that." Al flattened the paper on the dash so it couldn't smear against itself any more.
"In Egyptian lore specifically."
"I can't think of any off-hand that reference the liver in particular. I do have Bobby double-checking to be sure."
Ed scrubbed a hand over his face in mild irritation. "We're missing something, we've got to be. That liver is going to be used in some sort of weird arcane ritual and we need to stop it."
"No shit, Sherlock." Al drummed his fingers on the window frame as he stared out the passenger side window.
"Did you find anything on Burne?" Ed asked, trying to keep the conversation from falling into an awkward silence.
Al started to roll down the passenger's side window; the sun was bright and hot. "Just that the name is ridiculously common in this area. I came up with fifteen Joseph Burne's, seven Joey Burne's, three Joe Burne's and one Josephina Burne."
Ed snorted. "I vote we check out the last one first."
"Ha ha," Al said. "You would. C'mon, I want to get to the museum before they close for the night, we can check out the twenty some-odd addresses I have for Joseph Burne in this city later."
"Yeah," Ed said as they moved forward about ten feet before the traffic light changed again. "Tell that to the traffic around here."
To Part 2
Author: catystorm
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist/Supernatural
Pairing(s): Hints of Roy/Ed and Al/Mei
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Fusion!universe, violence, Ed's rather extensive and occasionally offensive vocabulary.
Word Count: 17,829
Summary: The curious case of a woman found dead with her liver missing catches the attention of the Elric brothers.
"Anyway." He held his left hand up like he was weighing the choices. "Long-dead serial killer, no new victims, trail colder than the bodies he's left behind." Then he raised his right hand up, higher. "Fresh body, uncertain cause of death, possibly right in the middle of whatever the hell's going on."
"Ed, please don't let go of the wheel while you're driving, you give me gray hairs as it is."
Follows Stormy May Day, no knowledge of the first fic is necessary to enjoy this one.
Jackal Fanmix by tortugax
Edward Elric was leaning with his back against his car, both hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was watching the traffic move past the parking lot at a steady clip; it was a little early for the rush hour traffic to get started. The afternoon was a heavy gray, the sort that threatened to rain but never quite managed it. Ed exhaled; his breath was visible in the cool air that was early spring in the north east.
They'd been on the road two days, heading east. They'd pulled off the highway at this truck stop to get something to eat and fill the car's tank, which was where Al got a bug in his ear about a local legend. Al was still mad and Ed was trying hard to stay mad right back. It was easy when he went to sulk at his car instead of staying inside where the wind wouldn't cut through his jacket like it was made of tissue paper.
Truth was, Al had every right to still be mad at Ed. Ed had kicked his reckless behavior up three notches lately and this time it was Al who nearly paid the price for it. Ed sighed, looked back up at the slate-colored sky and waited.
The door to the truck stop chimed as it opened, and Ed glanced over to see Al cross the parking lot at an easy lope. He only limped a little, the final vestiges of their most recent confrontation with an angry spirit. Al stopped beside the passenger side of the car for a moment, looking Ed in the eye before wordlessly opening the car door and getting inside.
Ed looked around the lot a final time before getting in the car as well. It was a habit he'd picked up in the last few years; he scanned for anyone watching them in particular. As he settled in the driver's seat, Ed glanced over at Al. "Find out anything useful?"
"Same old story," Al said. He leaned back in the passenger, his legs already tucked under the dashboard as comfortably as he could manage. "Nut with an ax goes Voorhees on a small town, starts carving out hearts and then after they're certain he's down for the count his body goes missing."
Ed let out a low whistle. "That's some serious horror-movie mojo going on there. Was the guy eating their hearts, or something?"
"I'm getting to it," Al said crossly. "Would you let me finish?" Ed glowered a little at Al but didn't say anything else. "Apparently, rumor has it that one of the people there for the final shoot-out thinks that this particular breed of psycho was possessed by a very dead older psycho."
"Days of our Undead Lives," Ed snorted, unable to help himself. "So, Psycho Ax-Killer Jr.'s body has gone missing. Do we think he's lying somewhere bled out, or still wandering around opening people up?"
"My money's on bled-out," Al said. "Outside of the big dust-up, there haven't been any more bodies."
"Or he could be hiding out somewhere, healing up and waiting for the right time to go off some more poor bastards."
"So do you want to go check this out?" Al asked as Ed drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
"How long has it been since this guy vanished?" Ed asked.
"A little over a year," Al said. "This all went down in February of last year."
Ed turned and looked at his brother. "This nut was carving out people's hearts around Valentine's Day? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Yeah, I know," Al said.
"And there have been no more deaths."
"Not that we know of."
"Al, the guy's probably dead in a ditch somewhere and the local wildlife would have picked his bones clean by now." Ed shook his head. "The trail's cold."
Al made that frowny face he did whenever he knew Ed was right but didn't want to admit it. "Well, I've got nothing else. You got anything?"
"As a matter of fact, I do." Ed started the car. Al raised his eyebrow when Ed glanced over at him. "Winry called while you were in there taking a piss."
"Oh she did, did she." Al said. "Haven't heard from her in a while."
"You are a lying sack of shit, Al, she told me she talked to you last week." Ed shot a look at his brother. "When were you going to tell me?"
"No, I talked to Mei and Winry was yelling in the background," Al corrected.
"Whatever. Anyway, her librarian-chick friend-"
"Sheska?"
Ed glanced over at Al. "Are you going to let ME finish, or do you know all this already?"
Al motioned for Ed to continue. "No, I haven't heard this one. Go on."
It was too late, Ed was already on a new tangent. "How do you know the librarian chick?"
"Mei's talked about her before. I met her once when I flew out to help Mei and Winry with that giant ghost bird."
"Giant ghost bird? When the hell was that, where was I?"
"I dunno, a few months ago? You were shacked up with Mustang at the time; I had to do SOMETHING to keep busy."
Ed and Al exchanged a glare and Ed cleared his throat. "Anyway," Ed continued. "Her librarian-chick friend said that a zookeeper had been found dead in an employee’s-only back room with her liver missing. No signs of forced entry, couldn't be an animal attack, nothing. The zoo hushed it all up."
"Harvesting livers," Al tapped his finger to his lips. "That's a new one. Although I'm sure there are several sorts of nasty beasties who just want to snack on a human liver. How recent was this?"
"Just about a week or so ago," Ed said.
"Any other deaths in the area?"
"Not that Sheska or Winry knew of, at least not human. But, apparently this zoo has had a heck of a time keeping its stock alive lately. They've had more animal deaths in the past six months than they have in the past six years."
Now Al looked intrigued. "Some kind of curse, you think?"
"Or it's your serial killer, shifting internal organs."
"Ed."
"Well, it's a thought. It's actually not too far from here, which is why Winry called us. She knew we were in the Midwest-"
"She thought you were at Mustang's," Al translated.
"For fuck's sake," Ed groaned. "They're in Colorado right now, there's no way in hell they're gonna get out here to deal with this, they're tied up in dealing with some sort of vampire cult at the moment. But it was enough to ping their radar, so she called us up."
"Vampire cult?"
"I didn't get the details," Ed said. "Anyway." He held his left hand up like he was weighing the choices. "Long-dead serial killer, no new victims, trail colder than the bodies he's left behind." Then he raised his right hand up, higher. "Fresh body, uncertain cause of death, possibly right in the middle of whatever the hell's going on."
"Ed, please don't let go of the wheel while you're driving, you give me gray hairs as it is."
Ed snorted and dropped both his hands back on the steering wheel. "So, which is it?"
"Okay, okay," Al caved. "This sounds like a better idea anyway."
"I wonder if Winry's librarian chick friend is hot," Ed said speculatively while Al popped open the glove box, rifling through their stash of maps before pulling one out for their current location. "Is she hot?"
"I didn't notice," Al said, unfolding the map.
"Figures, you were probably too busy making goo-goo eyes at Mei. Did she at least wear glasses?"
Al glanced back at Ed. "Why does it matter? No, wait, don't answer that. I know you." Ed grinned like a shark at Al, and Al rolled his eyes and flattened the old map of the state across the dashboard so he could mark out their route in pencil. "Let's go."
*
The next day arrived cheerier than the day before. The clouds had shed their murky gray color and were an off-white shade; vivid blue sky peeked between them. It had warmed up considerably as well; there were hints of summer in the spring breeze. The nicer weather had people out in droves and, despite their map; it took Ed and Al almost a full hour to locate the zoo. It was actually hidden in the middle of a residential area, something neither of them expected, driving up and down back streets and taking wrong turns. Ed only turned the wrong way down a one-way street once, and it was a short one. Al wasn't going to let him forget that in a hurry, though.
Eventually, the boys got their bearings and located the zoo. Ed parked on the street, far from the customer entrance, and got out of the Impala. He tugged a little at his tie as Al rifled through their ID box. "I can't believe this place is open," Ed said as a group of parents pushing kids in strollers passed on the sidewalk.
"It's a business," Al said, handing Ed his ID. Ed checked it, to be certain, then tucked it into the inner pocket of his suit coat. He tugged on the ends of his sleeves to straighten them. "I'm really not surprised. It's been over a week since the murder, and it was behind the scenes. The zoo has kept it quiet, remember?"
Ed wrinkled his nose as he looked around. All the kids and parents were heading up the hill to the customer entrance. It was loud and full of shrieking toddlers, and the smell of animals was heavy in the air.
They had parked near the employee entrance. After flashing their badges to the guard at the gate, he radioed someone on his walkie talkie. Occasionally they got caught in their lies, so a few tense moments passed before the guard nodded and let them through.
Ed and Al were met by an older man with dark hair shot through with gray. He was dressed in khakis with a polo shirt embroidered with the name of the zoo on it. He looked generally irritated at being interrupted in his day to meet with them, and glanced between the two of them once. "Good afternoon, gentlemen. What can I do for you today?"
"Tom Gallagher?" Al asked. When the man nodded, he extended his hand. "Special Agent Al Davis. This is my partner, Ed Martin." Ed shook Gallagher's hand as well, when offered. "We understand you've had a few strange deaths lately."
Gallagher looked puzzled. "Really, only Karen. The other deaths have been unfortunate but there is a bit of danger inherent in this job."
"Other deaths?" Al asked.
"We've had several trainers die on the job in the last several years," Gallagher explained. His face was suspicious. "But surely you knew that, being federal agents?"
"I wasn't aware that zookeeping had such a high mortality rate," Ed said dryly.
"According to official records you haven't had a human death in this zoo for two years," Al pointed out. "Why bring it up, Mr. Gallagher?"
"I thought that was what you meant?"
"Quite a few of your animals have met with strange deaths as well."
Gallagher looked between them again. "Who did you say you were with?"
"Just answer the questions, sir," Ed said sharply.
"Why do you need to know about the animals? Animals die all the time, it's the nature of a zoo."
"We're just being very thorough," Al said.
"Well, I've already been over all this with the police," Gallagher snapped. "I don't see what good it does for me to tell you all the same information."
"We like to get our information first-hand," Ed said, glancing around the standing area they were in. Several employees were filing in the gate and giving Ed and Al curious looks but a wide berth. "Who found Karen Lunn's body?"
"One of the janitors," Gallagher said. "It was late in the evening, and Ms. Lunn was supposed to have already clocked out for the night. She had a fondness for the penguins though, and often stayed late to make sure everything was in order for the opening shifts."
"And the door to the room she was found in, was it locked?"
"Yes. The door to that area is only locked by the last person who leaves when they go home for the night."
"Is there anyone who could have possibly wanted Ms. Lunn dead?" Al asked.
Gallagher shrugged. "Not that I know of. I didn't know Ms. Lunn very well. We have quite a few employees here, Mr. Davis, I can't keep track of all their personal lives."
"Who would we need to talk to who knew her well?"
"Her coworkers in the Arctic exhibit, I imagine." Gallagher said. "Now, I'm very busy and the park is just opening up. Is there anything else I can answer for you?"
Ed smiled coldly. "No, I think that about covers it. Where can we find the Arctic exhibit?"
*
The crowds had only gotten worse while Ed and Al had been behind the scenes with Gallagher. Another security guard had escorted them out of the employee area; obviously Gallagher didn't want them roaming around unattended behind the exhibits. Ed had picked a map up from the main kiosk while they stood off to the side in the main pavilion. Al watched the people moving around the main area, souvenir-shopping, chasing after excited children and generally enjoying the nice spring day.
Al glanced over at his brother, who was concentrating on the colorful map he had picked up. "What did you think of Gallagher?"
"He didn't seem too concerned about the fact that one of his employees was clearly murdered," Ed said.
"Yeah." Al looked out over the zoo's visitors. "He knows something."
"The question is, of course, what." Ed circled something on the map. "Okay, so, we're in the main pavilion, so we need to go that way," Ed indicated up the sloping hill before them. "And then we hang a right past the big cat house."
The way that Ed had pointed led past the big cats exhibit, as well as the elephant house. Al rolled his eyes; Ed had been plotting the longest route around the zoo possible to get to the Arctic exhibit. "We're not here to sight-see, Ed. We're on a job."
"I know that," Ed argued. "This is the best way!" He waved the map, and Al plucked it out of his hands with ease. "Hey, give that back!"
Al glanced over it once, and then nodded to where the main path split off. "The Arctic exhibit is that way, Ed." Al attempted to fold the map back up but, failing that, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it in the nearest trash can.
"My route was better," Ed said; the pout in his voice as he capped his pen and tucked it into his pocket.
"God, you're five years old," Al complained. "We're supposed to be federal agents, Ed, stop fucking around. You can come back some other time to look at the animals."
"Excuse me?" A young woman dressed in cargo shorts and a blue polo shirt with "The Arctic Experience" emblazoned on it had stopped beside them. "Are you the federal agents Mr. Gallagher said would be around?"
Ed and Al exchanged a look of surprise. "Yes," Al said quickly. "I'm Special Agent Al Davis, and this is my partner-"
"Ed Martin," Ed interjected, smirk in place on his face. The employee missed Al's glare, because she was smiling openly back at Ed. "Sorry, we got a bit lost. It's a little crowded here today."
The employee nodded, looking back at the crowd. "Yeah," she said. "It got really pretty out this weekend, and that brings the first big rush of the season." Her smile was sad when she turned back to them. "Karen was looking forward to it, the penguins will be hatching chicks soon. We always get a lot of people for the zoo babies."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Al said sympathetically. "I didn't get your name, miss?"
"Oh! Sorry, I'm Robin Ellery," she said. "I work at the Arctic exhibit," she added unnecessarily.
"You were friends with Karen Lunn?"
"Yeah," Robin nodded. "We were really good friends, she'd been working here longer than I have." For a moment the grief passed over her face but just as quickly it was gone and she had a professional expression on her face once more. "Can we walk and talk? My break is almost up." As she spoke she withdrew a name badge from her pocket and pinned it on her polo.
"Sure," Ed started to say, but she was already off. Al hesitated a moment only because Ed did, and then Al realized Ed hesitated because he was watching her ass. He shoved Ed in the shoulder to get him moving, and they both quickly caught up with Robin. "Was she acting strangely at all before her death?"
Robin shook her head negatively. "Not any more than normal. I mean, she was always a little quirky, so we never paid much attention to it."
"Quirky how?" Al queried.
"It's hard to explain. You kinda have to be a little too much in love with animals for this job," Robin said with a smile. "I mean, she talked about her penguins like they were her babies and I guess, in a way, they were."
"Did Ms. Lunn have any enemies?" Ed asked. "Anyone who might want to see her dead?"
"No, not at all!" Robin shook her head emphatically. "We all loved Karen, she was quirky but she loved her job and the penguins, and you can't hate someone who loves animals like she did." Robin's voice got a little choked up and she shook her head again and sniffed, but kept composed. "Do you guys have any idea who did this to her?"
"Not yet," Al said.
"It's funny," Robin said after a beat. "Mr. Gallagher is always on top of the maintenance here, but the last month or so a lot of security cameras have shorted out and not been replaced." She stopped walking, then looked back at Ed. "Do you think Mr. Gallagher could have killed Karen?"
"Do you?" Ed responded.
"I don't know." Robin crossed her arms. "I've never liked him, but he's the boss, and... you know."
"Does he harass the employees?"
"What! No, no. God, no. If he pulled skeevy shit like that we would have reported him to the Board or something. It's more like, something's off about him, you know?" She waved her hand in the air. "It's weird; I don't know how to explain it." She looked over; they had stopped near the entrance to the Arctic exhibit. Fake blue tinted icebergs lined the nearest portion, a polar bear tank, and the crowd around the fence was a decent size. "I gotta clock back in. Are we done?"
Ed and Al looked at each other, and Al nodded. "Yes, thank you." Robin was looking at Ed, though, and she smiled coyly for him. Then she headed off at a perky walk, stopping to point some children in the right direction, before disappearing into the crowd around the polar bear tank.
"I think you made a friend," Al said, amused.
"Yeah," Ed was still watching where she had disappeared. "What an ass on her."
"Do you think Gallagher did it?"
Ed shook his head, snapping out of his reverie. "All signs point to him. I don't know if he's the instigator, but his dirty hands have got to be in it somehow."
"Yeah, I think so too," Al thought a moment. "Seems kinda cut and dried, though. A regular murder behind-the-scenes."
"Lunn could have been sleeping with Gallagher," Ed said. "Lover's quarrel would explain a lot."
"But still the missing liver."
"Yeah," Ed agreed. "Something really doesn't sit right." He turned about and looked around, it was really warm and he was beginning to swelter in his suit. "Let's at least check out the body before we cross this one off our list."
*
They had found a motel smack in the middle of the residential area, across the street from a few fast food shacks. Ed had immediately made for the bathroom once they got inside, and by the time Ed emerged Al had already set up shop across the old wood desk. The room hadn't come with a table, so Al had dragged the huge desk out from the wall. He was currently sitting at it the correct way, his laptop set up and several papers spread out over the desk. "I need a printer," Al said when Ed walked out of the bathroom. "Don't leave your suit on the floor in the bathroom, Ed, it'll wrinkle."
Ed hadn't even left the bathroom yet, and Al hadn't bothered to look up. Ed muttered and scooped up the trousers and suit coat, straightening them out and hanging them on one of those hangers that couldn't leave the pole in the closet. "What do you need with a printer? They're a pain in the ass to lug around."
"I'm sick of having to run to copy shops and hoping that the register jockey doesn't look too closely at what I'm printing out," Al said. "It would just be easier." He sighed and sat back in his chair. "Anyway, we're fucked."
That got Ed's attention. "What?"
"Karen Lunn's already been cremated."
"Fuck." Ed sat down on the bed closest to the door. "Did they autopsy her?"
"Yeah," Al said. "I'm trying to hack in to the morgue's servers to get a copy of the official report."
Ed was unimpressed by his little brother's feat of hacking. "So why doesn't Special Agent Davis go down to the morgue and just use his very-well-crafted credentials to get a copy of the autopsy report himself?"
"Seriously, Ed?" Al clicked a few times with his touchpad. "We're trying to stay under the radar, remember? This sort of town probably still has our wanted posters up, even if we're officially dead." A few more clicks, then Al started swearing angrily at his computer.
"So it'll be a while, huh?" Ed kicked back and grabbed the remote control off of the night stand between the two queen-sized beds. "Guess I'll see what's on TV."
"Not a chance," Al said. He gestured to the pile of papers in front of him. "Since I'm doing the hard work, you get to slog through this."
Ed eyed the stack of papers. "What is 'this'?"
"The complete report of deaths in the zoo for the past six months," Al said. "The zoo is required to keep a mortuary log of all the animal remains they have to dispose of."
"This stack has to be at least two inches thick," Ed looked over the first page. "Okay, funny joke Al, you got me. These are all flies and roaches and stuff."
"The zoo has an insect house, Ed. They keep very precise records."
Ed groaned and took the pile of papers back to the bed. "I just love the bed time reading material this job gives me."
"You and me both," Al muttered, typing quickly at his laptop.
The boys fell into silence as they worked. After the first ten or fifteen pages, Ed got up to rifle through Al's laptop bag. Al gave him a dirty look, but Ed emerged with a highlighter and went back to his pages upon pages of animal deaths.
Nearly an hour later, Al made a crowing noise of triumph. "Got it!" He typed a few more decisive letters and victoriously hit the enter key. "I broke their encryption!"
"My brother, the nerd," Ed muttered without looking up.
"Shut up, I got the autopsy video and notes." Al scanned through the notes and frowned. Ed didn't look up but kept highlighting away. "That's interesting."
"What is?"
"The body had no marks on it, except for the cuts where her liver was removed." Al clicked a few more times. "She was still alive when her liver was removed."
That made Ed look up. "Oh, please tell me we're not dealing with another patchwork monster like Benton."
"It's possible," Al said. "Benton kept his victims alive until he could remove their organs. I'm going to do a cross-search to see if any other bodies turn up with missing organs."
Ed looked down at the paper he was holding, and particularly the line he had just highlighted. "Uh, Al?"
Al made a noise of frustration when the results came back only listing Karen Lunn. "What?"
"I got one."
That made Al glance over at Ed. "You got one what?"
"I have a body with missing organs." Ed held up the paper. "A baboon, actually." Ed glanced back at the paper. "It was found dead in its enclosure, and according to the autopsy, its chest was sliced open and the lungs were missing." Ed frowned. "They do autopsies on baboons?"
"It's not called an autopsy for an animal, Ed, it's called a necropsy. Anyway, it wasn't killed by the other baboons?"
"Nope, this says very clearly that the cause of death was the removal of the baboon's lungs." Ed put the paper back down on top. "Still think this murder sounds cut and dried, little brother?"
"What would someone want with a baboon's lungs and a human liver?"
"Hell if I know," Ed said, flipping through the stack of papers. "That's the first curious death I've come across, although I still have a lot of pages to go."
"When did that baboon die?" Al was pulling up a browser window on his laptop.
"A little over four weeks ago," Ed said, confirming the date.
"A month before Karen Lunn."
Ed started flipping through the pages until he came to a month prior to the baboon's death and started skimming while Al searched. "A month before the baboon's death, the zoo's only jackal was found dead in its enclosure. It had been cut open and its stomach was missing."
"The zoo let its jackal keeper go as a result of the death," Al said, reading over a few articles.
"Revenge killings?" Ed wondered.
"Why kill a baboon? Or Lunn? It doesn't make any sense, check further back." Ed flipped obediently back while Al kept searching.
"Nothing," Ed said dejectedly, scanning over the deaths of that week. "Lots of bugs, a few fish and a hawk."
"A hawk," Al said, said, seizing on that. "How'd the hawk die?"
"Eviscerated by the other birds of prey in the enclosure," Ed said. "They couldn't find half his entrails, they figured that the viscera was devoured by the other carrion birds."
"Or it could have been killed by whatever killed the jackal, the baboon, and Karen Lunn."
"Interestingly enough," Ed said, flipping back further. "Prior to that there were a whole lot less deaths over all. That must be the start of it, the hawk's death."
"That puts the start of the cycle in December," Al said, typing quickly. "It syncs up with the moon phases, too. That reeks of a ritual."
"I think maybe I should go have another little chat with Gallagher," Ed said.
"No."
Ed paused. "Why not?"
Al closed his laptop decisively. "Because I'm going to have another little chat with Gallagher. You're going to go talk with Lunn's friend."
"What, the girl from today?"
"Yeah," Al said. "She was interested in you; she might tell you something we didn't get before."
Ed looked down at the papers spread before him. "Sure you're not gonna want backup with Gallagher?"
Al grinned at his brother. "I'm a big boy, Ed. I think I can take care of myself."
*
Ed woke with a snort, his head on the desk. He had taken Al's seat when Al had gotten up to stretch his legs and make some phone calls he didn't want Ed overhearing. Of course Ed couldn’t help being curious as to the content of those phone calls, but they were still trying to trust each other. Ed wouldn't help that all by badgering and besides, he had to hope Al would realize how pathetically hungry his older brother would be upon waking and have gone for burgers and beer.
However, it was now dark out and Ed had woken up to the pale glow of the screensaver on Al's laptop. Ed yawned and scratched his head, glancing at the clock across the room from him. Oddly enough, the red LED digits blinked 12:00 at him as if there had been a power loss. Al's laptop hadn't kicked off, and the general electronic hum of the room seemed intact, so whenever the power died it had since been restored.
Al wasn't back yet, though. Ed grabbed his cell phone from where it sat beside the laptop on the desk and frowned when it wouldn't power on. It couldn't possibly need charging, he just charged it. They hadn't run across any entities that would have drained the cell battery and not Al's more powerful laptop battery. Ed stood up and decided to check and see if Al had taken the Impala or not.
When Ed opened the door, he was confronted with a thousand violent eyes looking every which way but him. The sudden movement of the door made every single unblinking orb turn and focus on him.
Ed's stomach dropped. He slammed the door as the thick black hands lunged for him, forcing the door back into its frame and locking it. Several severed tentacle-like hands waved limply at him from the floor. Ed kicked at one, and when he looked back up the motel room was gone and the world was that white color with no definition. Ed took a step away from the door and spun. The motel room door was not the same as it was, it was those monumental black doors he had seen in that bastard's transmutation circle. The doors were blank, and that confused Ed. The last time he had seen these doors there were some kind of archaic symbols that crossed the doors. What was the difference?
But those doors had taken someone else. Ed had just witnessed it, these were his doors, and when they opened the hands were going to come for him....
Ed could sense someone behind him. As much as he didn't want to, Ed turned around and put his back to the doors. To his surprise, the figure standing behind him ... was himself.
It was him but ... not really. It was as if something else was wearing his face. His hair was long and dirty, tangled as if it hadn't seen a brush in months. His clothing was tattered and patched, and his eyes weren't right. They looked flat, like the lights were on but no one was home. This strange, not-quite doppelganger looked directly at Ed and said archly, "This changes things." He looked beyond Ed, to the doors behind him.
Ed glanced over his shoulder at the doors, but they hadn't moved. However, there was the faintest image on them now that he could make out, the symbol that was on the inside of his father's journal. He glanced back to his apparition but it was gone, replaced by Castiel.
Castiel wasn't looking at Ed at all, but at the doors behind him as well. "Most unexpected," the angel murmured, before looking back at Ed. His words echoed Ed's doppelganger’s. "This changes things."
This was beginning to get frustrating. Ed was losing patience with everyone, no matter how terrifying he found the giant doors and what hid behind them. "What does it change?" He started to say, taking a step toward Castiel. The grating sound of stone on stone distracted him, an Ed turned his head. The hands were pushing their way through the door, and they were coming for him. Ed turned back to Castiel, but the angel seemed further away than ever. He felt the hands grab at his clothing and hair, felt them wrap around his arms and legs as he tried to run for it, reaching for Castiel -
Al looked up as Ed thrashed himself to the floor, tangled in the sheets of his bed, the one closest to the door. Al had relocated to his bed with his laptop; he had been watching the autopsy video and doing a bit more research on the actual human deaths that had occurred at the zoo over the past ten years. Ed came up from the ground wild-eyed and hair tousled.
"Jeez, Ed, you okay?" Al asked, and Ed's head turned and he stared at Al for a long moment, like he didn't recognize him. Al opened his mouth again, and then closed it as Ed took several deep breaths and closed his eyes. "Another nightmare?"
"No," Ed said shakily, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Just, me and that Playboy bunny were getting a little too frisky in the hot tub." He pulled at the sheets still wrapped around his legs before freeing himself to stand. Ed levered himself up off the ground and stalked over to where the last of the beer he'd bought earlier sat.
"Was it the gate again?" Al asked. "Or hell?"
Ed felt a trill of fear in his gut that the warm beer did nothing to help. "Don't call it that," he said hoarsely.
Al bit his bottom lip, and then sighed. "Ed, I can't help if you won't talk to me," he said finally.
Ed slammed the beer can down on the dresser. "I told you already," he said angrily.
"Yeah," Al said. "Playboy bunny, right." He watched Ed with concern as Ed stormed off into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. After a few long seconds, the shower started running. Al sighed again and picked up his phone, pressing one of the numbers set on speed dial. If Ed wouldn't let Al help him, maybe he'd listen to someone else.
*
The next day dawned bright and sunny, with scarcely a cloud in the sky. Ed and Al parted ways at the zoo entrance, with Ed in plain clothes going through the customer entrance and paying for admission like a good tourist, and Al walking up to the employee entrance, again in his suit and this time with sunglasses.
The guard was the same one from yesterday, and recognized Al. "Mr. Gallagher isn't here today," he told Al gruffly, not even reaching for his walkie talkie to confirm.
"On a Monday?" Al wasn't impressed, especially since they had been sitting in the Impala for an hour waiting for the zoo to open. "I could have sworn I saw Mr. Gallagher's car come through the employee gate."
"You'd have been mistaken." The guard was one cool customer, Al was impressed. He didn't even flinch at Al as Al glowered at him.
"Okay then," Al said. "You're going to let me into the park to look around, do you know why?"
"I'm not going to let you in anywhere," the guard said, one hand on his radio.
"Oh yes you are," Al said. He pulled out his badge and put it against the guard's window. "This little badge says you're going to. Or else would you like to come with me and have a little chat about protocol regarding a federal agent's investigation?"
The guard glared sullenly at Al, and turned his back to him, holding his walkie talkie close to his mouth so Al couldn't overhear his words. Al didn't put away his badge until the guard pressed the button that would let Al through the employee entrance door. "Mr. Gallagher will see you in his office," he said shortly. Al smiled coldly at the man.
"Thank you."
Al walked through the doors and found himself unattended in the open employee entranceway. He glanced around, but Gallagher was nowhere to be seen. "I guess it would be too much to ask for someone to have told me where his office IS," Al muttered to himself, before picking a direction and heading that way.
After finding and talking to two different employees, Al got turned in the right direction. Apparently the offices were in a building just off the customer entrance, adjacent to one of the larger and nicer souvenir shops. Al looked very official and no one stopped him, and in fact directed him to where he needed to go with very few questions.
Gallagher was not in his office, but the door was open. He didn't have a secretary and his office was small, not nearly as opulent as Al had imagined. The desk was crammed into a tiny room, and the walls were lined with books and various knick knacks from the souvenir shop, relics of different exhibits long since closed. Papers were scattered all over his desk, and Al glanced casually at them.
"Agent Davis."
Al looked up. Gallagher was standing in the door, dressed more for business than he had been yesterday. He did not look happy to see Al, which didn't surprise Al at all. "Good morning, Mr. Gallagher," Al said.
"I can't say it's good to see you again so soon," Gallagher said. Al stepped aside so Gallagher could work his way around to the other side of the desk. "What can I help you with today?"
"You could start with why you instructed your guard not to let me in," Al said pleasantly.
"It's not personal, Agent Davis." Gallagher sat down and placed the files he had been carrying on his desk, intentionally obscuring some of the papers he had laying out. "I'm very busy right now, I had my guard simply discourage all visitors, not just you."
"Mmhm." Al didn't sit. "I have a few questions about some odd deaths you've had here in the last few months."
"Ms. Lunn is the only death we've had in a while," Gallagher said, clearly confused.
"I was referring to a baboon that was killed nearly a month prior. The lungs of this animal were missing."
"Probably consumed by another baboon in the enclosure," Gallagher said.
"Leaving the rest of the body intact?" Al didn't conceal his skepticism. "There was also the matter of a hawk and a jackal that were missing single organs as well."
"I don't understand," Gallagher said. "What do these animal deaths have to do with Karen Lunn?"
Al studied the wall of Gallagher's office. "Your security cameras in the Arctic exhibit were disabled or just entirely disconnected. Why?"
"We're in a recession right now; this zoo isn't doing so well." The skin around Gallagher's eyes was getting tight, he was clearly getting angry. "I am lucky to be able to maintain what I have. Did you have anything concrete, Agent Davis, or are you just here to interrogate me about the upkeep of my animals?"
"Thank you for your time, Mr. Gallagher," Al said. "You've been far more helpful than you know."
*
When Robin Ellery showed up for work that day, she was surprised to see the federal agent from the day before standing in the open pavilion, this time dressed in jeans and a button-down. The sun had come out bright and full today, there was no need for a jacket, and he had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, obviously underestimating how warm it was going to get.
The crowd was pretty robust for a Monday, but it was mostly schools bringing kids out for pre-spring break field trips. Robin waded through a mess of third graders to get to the agent, who hadn't seen her and was staring with an intense expression at a list of coffee.
"I like the Jungle Java," Robin offered up, and he turned to look at her, a little surprised. Then he paled and attempted to surreptitiously look for a clock. "Were you waiting for me, Agent Martin?"
"I, uh." He glanced around, and, realizing he was caught, rolled with it. "Yeah, I was. You're a little bit early."
"I like to wander around the zoo before my shift," she said with a smile. "You want some coffee? Hang on a moment." Robin moved up to the side of the line and motioned one of the workers over. After a quick whispered conversation, she returned, two cups of coffee in hand. "I hope you didn't have a preference."
"Why Ms Ellery, are you flirting with me?" He looked more tired than yesterday but was obviously trying to hide it. He accepted the coffee gratefully and Robin snorted in amusing. "Thanks."
"I thought you got all you needed yesterday, so why are you back here?" Robin queried as they moved out of the way of the line, standing back in the area with the picnic tables. "If you don't mind me asking, Agent Martin…"
"Please," the man groaned. "Call me Ed. It's too early to deal with special agent whatever crap." He nursed his coffee and squinted in the morning sun as a teacher chased after a group of elementary school kids who had decided to split off into three distinct packs.
"Ed," Robin said thoughtfully. "This isn't early at all, you should try a morning shift, they get here at four thirty."
"In the morning?" Ed said.
"The majority of the animals require around the clock care," Robin said. "There's usually at least one person on an overnight shift for every exhibit."
"Who was the night shift for the Arctic exhibit the night that Karen was killed?" Ed asked.
Robin sighed. "We didn't have anyone; we haven't had a night shift person in a few weeks." At Ed's disbelieving stare she shrugged. "Budget cuts. The night shift stays later and the day shift comes in earlier, cuts out having to pay for a night shift person."
"Awfully convenient," Ed murmured.
"You don't think that Gallagher fired the guy on purpose?" Robin said, wide-eyed.
"Can't say for certain." Ed tossed his empty coffee cup in the garbage. "There are a few things that don't seem to be lining up any which way. I thought I'd look around, ask a few people about Karen and see if I could find anything else out."
"The cops went over this place with a fine-tooth comb," Robin said with a sigh. "It was horrible. Two people quit." She took a small sip of coffee. "Karen was well-loved."
"I'd like to see where her body was found," Ed said suddenly, "if you don't mind to show me. I could go through the official channels again, but the less I have to deal with that Gallagher character the better off I think everyone will be."
Robin nodded. "I can show you, it's back in my prep area too. That won't be a problem. We’ll just have to watch out for the supervisor."
Robin led him through the back ways, to avoid the crowds of kids running from one exhibit to the other. Because Robin was already in her uniform with name tag, she got stopped several times between exhibits to answer questions. Instead of brushing them off, she answered each and every one. Most were kids with some sort of activity checklist they had to complete for their school projects. Ed snorted in amusement as they finally reached the safety of the back room of the Arctic exhibit. "You must like kids a lot."
"You have to, in this job," Robin said with a smile. "It reminds me of when I was little, and our school took us to the zoo."
Ed's face looked a little strained for a moment. "I was never in a school long enough to go on such field trips," he said after a moment. "And even when I was, my dad usually wouldn't let me."
"That's horrible, why not?"
"We moved around a lot when I was little." Ed nodded as they passed a few employees in green shirts and khakis headed to a different exhibit. "There are a whole lot of people who work here."
"Quite a few. There's about a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty people who work with the animals directly, and several hundred who staff the shops and work with the general public. And that's not even counting the volunteers who come every day to answer questions about the animals and do low maintenance work." Robin waved as someone called her name, and then directed Ed into a different area. "This is the back room area that we all worked in," she said, showing Ed a small concrete office. "I'm sorry, I'll be right back, the supervisor is hollering for me and I have to check on the seals before I clock in."
Ed nodded as Robin ran off, and then looked around the room. The floor was concrete, with a low drain set in the center. There was a faint brown stain near the drain that hadn't washed off yet, Ed could easily guess its source. The rest of the room looked undisturbed, but the police had already been through everything. Ed checked out the door, but no one was paying him any attention currently. He looked up at the security camera, but just like Robin said the little red light that indicated it was working was off, and the wires were out of the wall.
He pulled out his EMF detector and started sweeping it across the room. It had a reaction near one wall, but the reaction followed the wall from floor to ceiling, so it had to be some wires. As he swept the room, Ed noticed something weird on the floor where the brown stain washed over it. They almost looked like hieroglyphics, but they were too indistinct for Ed to be certain. He rubbed his finger over them, they weren't drawn into the floor but cut into it. Odd. Ed took his cell phone out, but the hieroglyphics barely showed up on camera. Not enough contrast.
Sitting on the table were some blank paper and pencils. Ed got up and tore a sheet with the zoo's header printed on it and used it to take a rough rubbing of the symbols etched into the ground beside the drain. Standing back up, he folded the paper carefully and was tucking it into his jeans pocket as Robin stuck her head back into the room.
"I'm so sorry," Robin said. "But my supervisor's having a fit that I let you back here without a warrant, federal agent or not."
"It's okay," Ed said. "I have to get going anyway." He smiled at Robin and she blushed a little. "Hey, if you think of anything else about Karen or anything suspicious, give me a call?" Ed wrote his cell number out on a piece of paper from the desk and gave it to her.
Robin looked down at the paper in her hand. "You know, now that you mention strange things, Karen's fiancé didn't show up for her funeral." She looked up at Ed. "Stuff like that?"
"Yeah," Ed said. "Stuff exactly like that."
*
"Karen Lunn had a fiancé?" Al's voice was tinny through the cell phone. Ed stood in the parking lot of the zoo, one hand over his ear so he could hear Al better. "How did we miss that?"
"Yeah, I know," Ed said. "And it gets better."
"Oh, how can it possibly get better than that?"
"According to Robin, Karen's fiancé has been missing since the day Karen died."
Al was silent on the other end of the phone. "Missing-missing, or just cut off all contact with Karen's friends missing?"
"The latter, it sounds like," Ed said. "Robin said she mentioned this to the police, but I don't think they listened."
"No, nothing showed up in the official police report about a fiancé," Al said angrily. "Is it just me, or is the police department in this town entirely incompetent?"
"It's not just you," Ed said. "But I've got something."
"Something?"
Ed fished the paper out of his pocket just to make sure it was still intact. The pencil was slightly smeared but it was still legible. "There were symbols carved into the concrete where Lunn died."
"A warding spell? Or something else?"
"Definitely something else." Ed leaned back against the car, and shaded his eyes with his hand. "Looks Egyptian to me, but I want you to take a second look at it for me."
"Egyptian?"
"Yeah, how weird is that?"
Ed could hear Al typing on the other end of the line. "What are you doing?"
"There's a big exhibit on Egypt at the local museum center," Al said. "And they're open until five today. Meet me back at the hotel in half an hour and we can check it out, at the very least we can get a specialist to translate the symbols you've found."
"You find out anything from Gallagher?"
"The zoo is losing a lot of money, both from the animal deaths and now the inevitable lawsuit from Lunn's family. He's got plenty of motives."
Ed nodded, and then realized that Al couldn't see him. "Right, well. Gallagher is moving right up the list of suspects. Did you find anything else out?"
"A little bit of digging let me know he's currently living out of a hotel not far from the zoo." The phone crackled a bit and Ed missed what Al said next. "-wn him out. Apparently death follows him wherever he goes. Did you get the name of Lunn's fiancé?"
"Yeah," Ed said. "Joseph Burne."
"I'll see what I can dig up on him in the meantime."
"See you back at the motel," Ed said, and closed his phone. He thought a moment, looking at his phone, and then back at the zoo. With a grin he headed back toward the entrance. He had a half an hour to kill, after all.
*
Al got into the Impala with a glare. Ed grinned at his little brother, who looked indignant. "I said half an hour," Al pointed out darkly. "What part of that was unclear?" Ed looked at the clock in the dashboard and raised an eyebrow.
"The exhibit's still gonna be open for a while, Al," Ed said.
"That's not the POINT, Ed! What in the hell took you so long?"
Ed smirked at Al, and Al rolled his eyes and groaned. "You look like the cat who ate the canary," Al snorted. He then thought about what he just said and gave Ed a look. "You didn't."
"I love it when you come up with your innuendo all on your own," Ed said. "It makes my job that much easier."
"At the ZOO?"
Ed waved his hand in the air, dismissing it. "Anyway," he said, pulling the now more-than-slightly crumpled paper out of his pocket. "This is what I found where Lunn's body was."
Al unfolded the paper and scowled at how smeared the pencil was, but it was still readable. It only took a glance to confirm what Ed had thought. "Yeah, these are definitely Egyptian."
"So, what. Is the liver sacred in Egypt? Who's going to go around and cut people's livers out and leave Egyptian hieroglyphics on the ground cut into solid concrete?"
"The liver was sacred in ancient times, Ed. You know that." Al flattened the paper on the dash so it couldn't smear against itself any more.
"In Egyptian lore specifically."
"I can't think of any off-hand that reference the liver in particular. I do have Bobby double-checking to be sure."
Ed scrubbed a hand over his face in mild irritation. "We're missing something, we've got to be. That liver is going to be used in some sort of weird arcane ritual and we need to stop it."
"No shit, Sherlock." Al drummed his fingers on the window frame as he stared out the passenger side window.
"Did you find anything on Burne?" Ed asked, trying to keep the conversation from falling into an awkward silence.
Al started to roll down the passenger's side window; the sun was bright and hot. "Just that the name is ridiculously common in this area. I came up with fifteen Joseph Burne's, seven Joey Burne's, three Joe Burne's and one Josephina Burne."
Ed snorted. "I vote we check out the last one first."
"Ha ha," Al said. "You would. C'mon, I want to get to the museum before they close for the night, we can check out the twenty some-odd addresses I have for Joseph Burne in this city later."
"Yeah," Ed said as they moved forward about ten feet before the traffic light changed again. "Tell that to the traffic around here."
To Part 2