“You think I give a shit?”
Didn’t take long for Jimmy to fall back into his entitlement mind-set.
“You should,” Monty said quietly, “because there are beings in the Courtyard who are so powerful and dangerous that they can turn your brains to soup with just a look. Just a look, Jimmy. And now, because of this bit of stupidity, all the Others are going to be watching everything you do from now on.”
Monty walked out of the interrogation room and leaned against the wall, exhausted.
Four men had gone into the Courtyard last night. Only one had had time to let out a high-pitched, terrified scream.
The door of the observation room opened and Commander Louis Gresh stepped out.
“Captain Burke said I should drive your brother back to the apartment building,” Louis said.
When no one else came out of the observation room, Monty asked, “Where is the captain?”
“He’s kept Kowalski isolated in his office since your brother was brought in. He knew you’d get the truth out of Cyrus, or enough of it, and he figured watching Kowalski right now was more important.” Louis blew out a breath. “This shook up your boy something fierce.”
“It shook all of us.” Monty looked at the ceiling. “The terra indigene aren’t human, but they have studied us, and, gods, they know how to send a message.”
“Do you think your brother got that message?”
“No. He’ll go on believing he can work this just like he worked his schemes in Toland. Despite the evidence right in front of him, he’ll be like a lot of other people who still want to pretend, maybe need to pretend, that there aren’t lethal repercussions when they mess with the Others.”
Louis sighed. “It could have been worse.”
“How?”
“The Others could have waylaid Kowalski, made sure he wouldn’t cross paths with Cyrus. Then Cyrus would have brought the package home and opened it there. How much more shocking would it have been to cut the string, unwrap that package, and recognize the tattoo?”
And Jimmy would have bragged about it, made a big deal about snagging the last piece of special meat, just like he’d done when he saw Kowalski. But it would have been Sandee and the kids looking at a man’s forearm, unprepared for the harsh reality of what the terra indigene saw when they looked at humans. Most humans. He had to keep believing that Simon and Vlad and the rest of the Others no longer saw all humans as prey.
But the Others had known the theft was going to happen and hadn’t asked the police for help, so he had to wonder if Jimmy had created a wedge between himself and Simon Wolfgard, had cracked the trust that had been building.
And he had to wonder what that meant for the mixed communities that were being created and the people who were now living among the world’s dominant predators without even the pretense of a barrier between them.
Burke studied Kowalski, who sat in his office looking pale and still a bit shaky. But the officer’s dark eyes didn’t have the wild look anymore, so now it was time to talk.
“What happened?” Burke asked.
Kowalski shook his head. “I saw Cyrus waving that package and bragging about scoring a piece of special meat, and I lost it. I don’t remember taking him down. Things snapped into focus again when Jenni Crowgard asked if I needed help, if I wanted her to peck its eyes out. Its eyes, not his eyes. I knew I needed an excuse to get her away from him and I needed to get him out of the Courtyard, get him back on land where human laws did apply. I needed to arrest him and get him out of there because he was drawing attention to himself, to all of us, and . . .” He stopped, seemed to choke.
“It’s one thing to pick up a wallet that was dropped for you to find and know the person who owned it crossed some line and was killed and eaten because of it. It’s quite another thing to see the proof of it.”
“Whenever word got out that the Wolves had bitten off the hand of a shoplifter, Howling Good Reads would be packed with customers for days after,” Kowalski said.
Burke smiled. “The perversity of human nature. But a severed hand isn’t the same as a corpse. The terra indigene in the Courtyard are true to their nature, Karl, and that makes them very dangerous. But they’re still the only chance of survival that we have because no matter how dangerous Simon and Vlad and the rest of them are, they are nowhere near as much of a threat to us as the Others who live in the wild country.”
Kowalski sat back. “I know.” He sighed. “I know. What happens now?”
“I don’t want you out on the street, so you ride a desk for the rest of the day, give yourself time to settle. If the lieutenant needs a driver, Debany or Hilborn can handle it.”
Burke clasped and unclasped his fingers a couple of times, debating the wisdom of saying anything, even now. “When you’re a cop serving in a small human village within the wild country, sometimes you make hard choices that you wouldn’t—couldn’t—make in a human-controlled city. And you look the truth in the face when its fangs are bared and its fur is smeared with the blood of the prey you had gone out to talk to that morning. But you’d taken a walk beyond the village lights the night before, and you were mulling things over out loud about how to handle a difficult situation, about the nice woman who had a broken arm again, how her mate beat her but she was too frightened to say anything against him so there was nothing you could do, and that was a shame because she really was a nice woman who had shown a couple of terra indigene females how to mend clothes, which is what started the argument that ended with her arm being broken, along with a couple of fingers to keep her from doing any mending for a while. And when you go to talk to the man the next morning and discover he isn’t home, you follow the game trail behind his house and you come upon a savaged, partially eaten body and you look the truth in the face—not the truth that has fangs and fur but the hard truth about yourself, that you’re just as dangerous as the beings the rest of the people fear but you can’t afford to be as honest about it. You can’t tell those people that you’ll make deals with what they fear in order to keep them safe from the monsters who look just like them.”
Kowalski said nothing for a long minute. “You think I should have stepped aside?”
“No,” Burke said gently. “You interfered because you’ve been around the Others long enough to understand that it’s one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to look the truth in the face. The police? We’ve seen plenty of evidence of how the terra indigene respond when they’re angry with humans. But civilians like Ruthie and Merri Lee who are living so close to the Courtyard and working among the Others? They don’t need that much truth.”
“Protect the women?” Kowalski gave him a dry smile. “They might take exception to that.”
“Of course they would—and should—but I’ll deny I ever said it.”
The smile faded. “You’re giving me a lot of credit for a few seconds I don’t remember.”
“I recognized the look in your eyes when you got to the station. I saw it in a mirror once or twice when I was around your age.”
Burke’s phone rang. He glanced at it, then focused on Kowalski. “You steady enough?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get to work.” He picked up the receiver as Kowalski walked out of his office. “Burke.”