Boxes shouldn’t bleed. This one was. Gabriel and I stared at it, knowing that there was some sort of gruesome body part inside. My birthday was in two days. I didn’t need the card to know who had sent it.
It had been delivered to the gatehouse. Captain Yosh had removed the wrapping paper to discover wax paper, cellophane and blood.
This bloody present would be the first time The Butcher had actually sent proof of his crime. In some ways, I found that reassuring. In other ways, it proved that The Butcher was exactly what he said he was, which was terrifying, because we really didn’t have any more clues after nearly fifteen years than we did after the first birthday card.
Yosh, whose past was very colorful from what I had been told, was as reluctant as the rest of us about opening the oozing package. He was taking an exceptionally long time putting on gloves. Once those were on, he picked up very large tweezers.
The inside of the box was also lined in plastic. Yosh paled ever so slightly. He shook his head.
I peered over the edge of the box. It wasn’t a body part. It was a dead prairie dog. The thing had been decapitated.
“That’s,” Gabriel paused. “What is that?”
“That is a Plague carrier,” I told him. “Possibly infected.”
“What?” Yosh dropped the tweezers into the box.
“Well, if The Butcher is who he claims to be, then sending me an infected prairie dog would fit the bill,” I said.
“Damn,” Gabriel picked up Yosh’s radio. “We need to quarantine the entire neighborhood.”
“Especially pets,” I added, starting to check myself for flea bites.
“It’s dead, can it still spread a Plague?” Yosh asked.
“Not a Plague,” I said. “The Plague. The Bubonic Plague to be exact and I haven’t a clue what happens to the bacteria when the host dies. My guess is that the bacteria dies with it. However, I also think it very probable that any fleas that might have been in that container are now free and looking for a meal.”
“I thought you knew everything about the Plague,” Gabriel smirked.
“Nope, I’m not that kind of doctor,” I pointed out, hinting that another call might be necessary.
Gabriel called Xavier. Xavier’s voice sounded strained as he answered back. He didn’t seem to like the idea of coming to the possibly contaminated guard house.
However, it didn’t take him long to arrive. He and Lucas both walked through the door. Lucas shut it tight behind him and leaned against it.
“It’s a prairie dog, not a rat,” I told him.
“Good to know,” Lucas said, not moving.
“What am I looking for exactly?” Xavier peered into the box.
“Is it infected?” Yosh asked him.
“I’m a doctor not a vet,” Xavier said. “If you were infected, I could tell you, but symptoms take a few days to set in and some people have a-typical symptoms. Seeing as how it’s a dead prairie dog, I’d bet the fleas jumped ship long before it arrived here.”
“The box was well sealed,” I told him.
“Oh,” Xavier stood up. “We’ll need to do a necropsy and it will need an expert. I can tell you if rats died of arsenic poisoning, but I can’t tell you if a prairie dog was infected with a bacteria caring Bubonic Plague.”
“What’s your suggestion?” Gabriel asked.
“We treat it like it is,” Xavier put on some gloves. “Although, why The Butcher would send Ace a Plague carrying prairie dog is beyond me.”
“He wouldn’t,” Lucas said. “Plague is risky, at best. It might kill her. He doesn’t want her dead. He wants her to be tormented.”
With that thought in mind, I grabbed the card. On the front was my address in the federal neighborhood. There was no return address and the postage was actually twenty-seven “Forever Stamps” issued by the postal service.
Forever Stamps are self-adhesive, but there was a possibility we would get DNA off of them. We never had in the past, but there was always a first time.
The card read “Happy Birthday to My Favorite Girl.” I frowned. The Butcher sent cards, but they were flowery, love letter type cards. The ones with intimate sayings and rambling poems on the front with flowers and butterflies and all that female stuff that went with romance that I didn’t understand. This was more like a card for a kid. The front had a clown on it, which was creepy in its own right, holding onto a bunch of balloons. My mind instantly thought of John Wayne Gacy and dismissed it. He was dead and had died long before I had become popular. I couldn’t think of any killer clowns currently stalking me, but that didn’t mean much.
“Gloves,” Gabriel said as I went to open it.
“Good grief,” Xavier rolled his eyes. After nearly a year, I still forgot the gloves. I set down the card, put on the gloves while mentally explaining why they were a huge waste of time, and opened the card back up.
The handwriting was unfamiliar to me. It was definitely not the beautiful penmanship of The Butcher. The letters were strange and blocky. It was signed With Love.
“Um, yeah, not my stalker,” I said.
“Then who?” Gabriel asked.
“Beats the hell out of me,” the With Love part was creepier than the clown. I preferred notes from The Butcher.
“Who knows you have a Plague obsession?” Lucas asked.
“Everyone,” I said. “My degree is in the Medieval Europe. Sure, I focused on torture, but unless you intend to sleep through the 14th century, it was hard not to study the Black Death.” I thought for a moment. “That’s a line from a book.”
“What is?” Gabriel asked.
“Sleeping through the 14th century. I know I read that somewhere,” my brain continued racking itself for clues about the book.
“Is the book as important as figuring out who would want to send you a Plague infested prairie dog?” Yosh asked.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “However, if it’s from a book, the book might become important.”
“Only because you might want to read it again,” Lucas said. “Moving on from the book. Have you met any new people that raised your hackles?”
“Really?” I frowned at him. “Everyone raises my hackles. For example, a few weeks ago, I was forced to attend a barbecue at some asshole’s house with his asshole ex-brother-in-law. The ex-brother-in-law really raised my hackles. I would have gladly shoved him into a tumble dryer and turned it on high.”
“Ace,” Gabriel chided me. It had been his barbecue and then we’d been forced into the desert. Death Valley to be exact, chasing a serial killer who used mercury to kill and make works of art. After that we’d stuck around Las Vegas for a few days, taking in the sites, while Lucas had Trevor’s favorite painting removed from the house because it was by said artist. Trevor was still upset about it. He seemed to logically understand why they couldn’t own the painting, but was emotionally still stinging from the actual removal of it from the house.
“You’re thinking,” Lucas said.
“Did I meet anyone in Las Vegas?” I asked. “During the case or after the case, that might have been extra odd?”
“Extra odd?” Yosh asked. He had gotten used to some of my eccentricities, but not all of them. There were also things he didn’t know or need to know about me. I liked the man, I didn’t want him to die because we were buddies. “You don’t remember?”
“Well,” I shrugged. “Not so much.”
My brain was running through the faces I had seen, the names I had heard; there had been the lovely coroner. She was nice, didn’t really take a shine to me, but that was to be expected. I couldn’t see her sending me a prairie dog. However, there were probably others. I attracted psychopaths like honey attracted Winnie-the-Pooh.
We hadn’t worked any cases since coming back a little over a month ago. The Marshals Service had insisted on a vacation for the five of us. They had said something about psychological recovery time. Since none of us were exactly stable, I didn’t know how we were supposed to recover.
January had been busy and the months that followed had been just as hectic. Running from city to city. Dealing with extreme weather conditions. Enduring seriously gruesome cases that included beheadings, electrocutions, and disembowelings. So far we hadn’t had a good, ol’ fashioned shooting or stabbing serial killer this year. However, it was only July, there was still hope.
“We have a vet and a HAZMAT unit on their way,” Gabriel said.
“Great,” I took a seat at a small table. The room was barren, more like a security room or interrogation room than a place to hang out all day. I imagined the guards didn’t spend a lot of time in the room.