Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [821]
One of the townsmen near the back of the church piped in. “If you ask me, makes me wonder about the boy, Teddy. Too damn quiet, that one. Seen him hanging around town a bit of late, but he wouldn’t even say hello when spoken to, just acted like he was too good to answer. Made me wonder what the kid was up to, and if maybe he had something to hide.”
“Oh, please,” Alex said, feeling obligated to defend Teddy since he wasn’t there to do it for himself. She pivoted on the pew and shot a disapproving glance to the area behind her, where dozens of faces had hardened with suspicion because of Big Dave Grant’s baseless accusation. “Teddy was shy around people he didn’t know well, that’s all. He never talked much because of the teasing he always took for his stutter. And to suggest that he could somehow have anything to do with the murder of his family when he’s lying right next to them on a cold slab is disgustingly callous. If any of you had seen the condition they were left in—”
Jenna’s hand came down softly on Alex’s wrist, but the warning was unnecessary. Alex had no intention of taking that train of thought any further. Bad enough she’d been reliving the gruesome discovery over and over in her mind since she’d stumbled upon Pop Toms, Teddy, and the rest of their kin. She wasn’t going to sit there and rehash for everyone how brutal their murders had been. How savage the wounds that had rent flesh to the bone and torn open throats as if some kind of hellish beast had come out of the cold night to feed on the living.
No, not a beast.
A being out of a nightmare.
A monster.
Alex closed her eyes against the vision of blood and death that began to rise from the darkest reaches of her memory. She didn’t want to go there, never again. It had taken years and thousands of miles, but she had outrun that dark reality. She had outlived it, even though it had robbed her of so very much along the way.
“Is it true there wasn’t no murder weapon found?” someone shouted from the middle of the gathering. “If they wasn’t shot or stabbed, then how exactly were they killed? I heard there was a hell of a lot of blood spilled out there in the bush.”
From his position behind the pulpit, Zach held up a hand to quell the ensuing barrage of similarly curious questions from the crowd. “Until the AST detachment arrives from Fairbanks, all I can tell you is that we are treating this as a multiple homicide. Being that I am one of the investigating officers, I am not at liberty to discuss the details of the case with anyone at this time, nor do I think it would be wise for me to speculate.”
“But what about the wounds, Zach?” This time it was Lanny Ham who spoke up, his reed-thin voice edged with slightly more than its normal level of nervous energy. “I heard the bodies look like they were attacked by animals. Big animals. Is that true?”
“What does Alex think, since she was the one who found the bodies?” someone else asked. “Do either of you believe it could have been animals that killed them?”
“Roger Bemis said he saw a pair of wolves prowling around near his property on the west side of town the other day,” interjected Fran Littlejohn, who ran the town’s small health clinic. Ordinarily she was a reasonable woman, but now there was a strong note of worry in her voice. “Been a hard winter already and it’s just started. What’s to say it wasn’t a hungry pack that decided to attack the Toms place?”
“That’s a damn good point. And if it was wolves, what’s to say they won’t come looking around here, now that they’ve gotten a taste for human prey?” came another paranoid suggestion.
“Now