Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Read online

  “Dismissing him as crazy is too easy.” Lara caught the disappointment in Gallagher's eyes when he realized half his fries were gone. Oops. “He knows right from wrong. He's even tried to cure himself.”

  “Dude thinks he's the wolfman. That's as crazy as they come.”

  She shook her head. “No. He's misdiagnosed his own psychosis. Instead of seeing the real problem, he believes he's a wolf. It actually makes a weird kind of sense.”

  Crumbs flew from his teeth. “How does that make any sense?”

  “Prall was abused at this halfway house, like all the others. What happens to these kids when they grow up?”

  He shrugged. “Tough lives. Drugs, suicide, downward spirals. Some of them become abusers themselves.”

  “Right. Once subjected to it, the affliction or pathology or whatever it is, is passed on. The werewolf myth works the same way. If you're bitten by one, you become a wolf too.”

  Gallagher knocked the idea around. “That's real interesting and everything but, again, it doesn't help us with the practical.”

  “Well what do you have? You're scarfing burgers at an amusement park.”

  “Me? I'm just trying to find a crazy dude who likes dogs—” He sat up suddenly, wiped his hands on his jeans and reached for the ignition. “I gotta go.”

  Lara followed his eyes across the parking lot. A rotund man waddled through the cars and unlocked the door to a Land Rover. The man huffed in, the Rover tilting under his weight. The brake lights lit up.

  “See you at the office.” Gallagher started the truck, waiting for her to get out.

  Lara pulled the seatbelt around. “You're not ditching me again.”

  “You're not gonna like this, Mendes.”

  The Land Rover backed out of the spot and rolled to the exit.

  “Just go. Before you lose the guy.”

  15

  THE ROVER TURNED south on S.E. Seventeenth and merged onto the Milwaukee Expressway. Traffic wasn't bad yet, allowing Gallagher to lay back four car lengths behind the Rover.

  The takeout tray slid across the dashboard. Lara caught it, tucked it away under the seat. “So who is this guy?”

  “Eugene Shockton,” Gallagher said. “Douchebag I busted years ago. He's got a concession booth at the park and a lunch counter in NoPo. A coin laundry, too.”

  “And how is he a douchebag?”

  “Eugene likes to gamble. He got himself in hawk to some bad people a while ago. Now he launders money for them through his businesses.”

  Lara kept her eyes on the Rover. “Was he involved in a homicide?”

  “No. I busted him back working Burglary. Eugene's got his mitts in a lot of things. Sometimes if I'm stuck, Eugene's a good guy to talk to.”

  “Your informant.” She lost sight of the Rover and leaned her head against the glass to see around the ass-end of traffic.

  “A reluctant one. But he responds well to pain.”

  “So why are we following him? Just ask him if he knows anything about Ivan Prall.”

  “I'm not interested in what Eugene knows. It's his hobbies that interest me.”

  A blur of green up ahead, Lara's eyes tracked the Rover as it weaved to an exit ramp. “He's getting off the expressway.”

  Gallagher took the exit but there were no cars between them and the Rover now. He slowed, putting distance between them. A minivan rode up their tail, honking. Gallagher touched the brake, forcing the infuriated driver to pass and roar up behind the chase car.

  The Rover veered into an industrial strip, trawling past a carpet cleaner and a Japanese food importer. Gallagher swung into a parking slot and killed the engine. They watched the green truck roll behind the strip to a squat bunker of yellow brick.

  “What is this place?” Lara scanned the other vehicles lined alongside, blocking the roll-up doors. Eugene Shockton wobbled from his vehicle to a side door. “A gambling house?”

  “Sort of.” Gallagher crooked an arm over the wheel. “Eugene loves to gamble large. He plays the ponies, the cockfights. Whatever you got, he'll lay a wager on it. But his true love? Right yonder.”

  He waved at a pickup moving through the strip toward the bunker. Built into the box was a kennel with mesh windows. Behind the mesh were dogs, their noses pressed to the cage windows.

  “Dog fighting?”

  “Our perp likes dogs, right? Maybe he tests his mutts in the ring.” He reached behind the seat and dragged up a black hoodie. Tossed it into her lap. “Put that on.”

  She shook dust from it. “This smells.”

  “There aren't a lot of women at these things. Put it on, pull up the hood.” He grinned at her then climbed out. “Told ya you wouldn't like it.”

  She made no move to follow or even open her door. More dogs? Gallagher took her measure and strode toward the bunker. He didn't look back.

  Shit.

  THE wedge of sunlight thinned until the door clanged shut behind them. Lara barely made out Gallagher, quickly paying the brute manning the door and pulling her along after him. The doorman looked her up and down but said nothing. A riot of noise flooded out, dogs barking, people hollering overtop a heavy-bottomed beat thrumming the floor. The corridor opened into a warehouse space, bodies milling about in the dark. Lights fingered up from somewhere in the center.

  Lara kept her head down, eyes peering out under the dip of the hood. Too-tough black guys with masks of stone. Cracker whites with ball caps reversed on shaved heads. Asians in suits and cigarettes. Some with jailhouse tattoos and others with soft, manicured hands. Everyone peeling off twenties and laying down. Bikers, bankers and candlestick makers.

  The dogs brayed and barked, shut up behind grates or chained to poles. All of them alert and tensed. Teeth filed down to razors by their flabby owners, muscles pumped with steroids. The newbies patted their dogs, trying hard to look bored. The pros scrawled their dog's names onto fight cards. These men batted their animals in the snout to aggravate them, key them up to fight. Many held kits; scalpels and needles to stitch up their prize fighters after each bout. Hypodermics topped with pentobarbital to euthanize the losers too ripped up to save.

  Lara squeezed through the bodies toward the lights at the center. Up on her toes to peek over shoulders at the main event. Straw bales, packed three high, formed the arena where two dogs were killing each other. A Staffordshire bit down hard, its teeth ripping the snout from a Rottweiler mix. The Rotty whimpered as the Staffordshire sawed its head back and forth, peeling the face off the lost dog. The dog owners hollered foul from the hay bales and the gap-toothed referee leaned his hands on his knees but no one moved to stop the bloodshed. The Rottweiler's legs gave out and it dropped to the straw but the other dog didn't let up, given over to its mindless frenzy.

  Lara turned away, unable to stomach any more. God Almighty, is this what happened to Elizabeth Riley? Was she alive when she endured that? Without thinking she made the sign of the cross, something she hadn't done in a very long time.

  A man stepped over the bales, boxing the ears of the referee and chasing him from the ring. Clad in a leather butcher's apron that glistened with blood, no shirt beneath it. Thick arms inked to the wrists. He tried to haul the victor off but the Staffordshire would not relent. The butcher man snatched an ear in one hand and stabbed his fingers into the dog's anus with the other hand. The animal released and he hurled it into the bales.

  The Rottweiler lay wheezing in its own blood. It raised its head to its master, the snout all but sheared from the bone. It wagged its tail twice and lay back down. Someone threw a blanket over it. The owner carried his dog from the pit and laid it down near a wall. This man had no hypodermic to end the animal's suffering nor could he buy one from another contender, having lost so much money already. He didn't know what to do. The dog panted at his feet, unable to even whimper.

  In the pit, the man in the butcher's apron threw sawdust over the blood on the floor. The men leaning over the bales drank and settled their bets and wagered anew,
calling out for the next match.

  “Are you assholes ready for the next fight?” Butcher man turned around inside the pit, addressing all. “Entering the ring we have three time champion Popeye! Bitch killer of Multnomah County!” Two more dogs were walked into the pit and positioned at opposite ends of the ring. The onlookers cheered and cajoled and thumped each other like apes.

  Lara backpedaled from the horror, felt a hand grip her elbow. Gallagher asked if she was okay but she didn't answer.

  “Wipe it from your eyes, Mendes. Stay on point. We sweep the room and look for Prall. If he isn't here, we'll call this in and stop it. Okay?”

  “Agreed.” She looked over the crowd, their backs to them. “Where's your friend? If he spots you, we're sunk.”

  “He's probably leaning over the pit. Any luck, he'll fall in and get bit.”

  The noise grew louder, the butcher man bellowing over the crack of the barking. The onlookers pressed in, jostling for a better view. Gallagher nodded at the crowd arcing around the pit. “Circle around, eyes peeled for Prall.”

  He went east, she west. Ducking through the flailing hands and spit-laced cries, Lara peered out from under the hoodie, searching every face. Lager sloshed from a can and spilled down her shoulder. A heel crunched her toes. Keep moving.

  The butcher man whistled to start the fight. The men holding the pit bulls let them slip. The dogs collided, each snapping for the other's throat. A roar went through the crowd.

  Lara was elbowed and shoved but kept moving, scanning every face. She caught sight of Gallagher on the other side, then a stray arm caught her in the ribs. She fought the urge to club the bastard over the head in return. The task at hand, she muttered to herself.

  Gallagher was waving crazily, drawing her gaze due north. She spotted him.

  A tall man at the far end of the crowd, his hood pulled up over his head. Mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes but his scraggly beard stuck out. Ivan Prall.

  Don't run. Too far away, too many people. Lara pushed forward, looking to flag her partner. Gallagher found her eyes and she signaled to him. Gallagher spotted her target.

  The man turned and slipped toward the exit sign.

  She bolted, shoving assholes out of her way. She heard Gallagher bellowing for the man to stop. He ran for the door but got sidelined hard into the bricks. Gallagher jackhammered his face before yanking the hood back.

  It wasn't Ivan Prall. Just some loser in a filthy beard. He struck Gallagher's chin, rabbit punches. Gallagher laughed like some crazed banshee and pummeled the man mercilessly, as if blaming him for not being their suspect. He kept hitting him, even as he crumpled to the floor and begged Gallagher to stop.

  Eugene Shockton looked up at the ruckus and clocked Detective John Gallagher beating the bejesus out of some poor bastard. He screamed. “COPS!”

  Everybody ran.

  Lara was swept back in the rush for the exit. Shouldered this way and elbowed that way, tripped up and kicked down. Someone yelled “bitch.” A boot stomped her knee and the man leered down at her, called her a bitch again. Lara struck hard, an uppercut to the groin. A blur of running legs all around her, pumping for the doors. Where the hell was Gallagher?

  The man in the butcher's apron marched upstream through the refugees clutching an enormous shillelagh in both hands. He arced it overhead and brought the mallet down cold on Gallagher's back. Gallagher flopped onto the hooded man, the air punched out of his lungs. The butcher man swung again, like a contender at a fairground trying to ring a bell. Gallagher rolled out of the way and the shillelagh broke two ribs of the hooded man.

  Onto his back, kicking the butcher's knee. The big man fell to the floor but didn't let go of the Irish bludgeon. Gallagher pulled his weapon and cracked the man's temple with it. He didn't see the biker coming up behind him but he felt the boot to his ribs. The biker raised his boot again, eager to trample the cop again but found a gun barrel in his face.

  “Get off him.” Lara aimed the Glock dead on the biker's face, keeping the butcher man in her periphery. She'd had enough. Everything had gone to hell so fast.

  The biker called her bluff. “Go fuck yourself.” Lara shoved the barrel up his nose and the man shut up after that. She looked to Gallagher, saw his knee pinned over the butcher's throat.

  The room had cleared. Three dogs remained chained to a post, abandoned by their owners. A wet twenty dollar bill was pasted to the floor. Gallagher watched Mendes cuff the biker. When she looked up at him again, he laughed. Like they had just stumbled off a roller coaster together.

  Her hands were shaking. “This is a mess,” she said.

  “Think of the overtime.” He straightened his tie but it remained mangled. “How do I look?”

  “Like a guy who got his guts kicked in.”

  “Perfect.”

  She took hold of his tie, tugged it straight and smoothed it flat.

  Her face up close. She had freckles, faint and not many. He'd never noticed that before. His grin went lopsided, forced.

  Lara stepped back, self-conscious. “We better call this in,” she said.

  16

  MOPPING UP OPERATIONS ate the rest of the day. The butcher and the biker were charged with assaulting police officers, a charge that would stick better than running a dog-fighting ring or animal cruelty. Both men had prior arrests and each knew how to carry themselves in the box. Gallagher and Mendes took turns questioning each man about their suspect. They were shown the self-portrait sketch, asked about any violent characters who owned a lot of dogs. Hints were dropped that their charges would be reduced if they knew anything about the man named Ivan Prall. The biker tried to play out some useless information but in the end neither man knew anything.

  By the evening shift change, Detective Mendes and Detective Gallagher were still at their desks writing up incident reports and the charges against the two men. No new information was added to the investigation into the Riley homicide or the suspect Ivan Prall.

  They went down to the break room for coffee. Gallagher stole an apple from the fridge. When they came back, a black-and-white photo had materialized on the evidence board. The Wolfman. Lon Chaney Junior made up in yak hair and rubber fangs. Scrawled in Sharpie at the bottom of the picture were the words: Have you seen this man?

  “Cute.” Lara crumpled it into a ball and pitched it out over the bullpen of cubicles. It came sailing back a moment later, over the cubicles and bouncing onto Bingham's desk. The homicide detectives returned to their keyboards, hoping to finish up before sundown.

  “Hi Lara.”

  Amy stood at the cubicle entrance, giving a little wave. “Hey Dad.”

  “Hello Amy.” Lara smiled back. She hadn't seen Amy smile when they had met her in the hospital. Understandable. She had a beautiful smile. All girls do really, Lara thought. “How are you?”

  “Alright.” Amy dropped into her dad's chair, poked through the papers on his desk. Gallagher was flummoxed but he masked it with sternness. “What are you doing here?”

  Amy shrugged. “I tried to make a curry for tonight. It didn't go well.”

  “So use the phone. You know I don't want you coming down here.”

  “I know.” Amy's roving eye found the evidence board. Her jaw gaped at the crime scene photos. The remains of the dead woman. “Oh my God, is that real?”

  Gallagher crossed to block the worst of the photos. “Alright. Let's go. Out of here.”

  “But it was my turn to cook. I messed up.”

  Lara shifted in her chair, suddenly stuck in the middle of a family squabble.

  Gallagher took his daughter by the shoulders and turned her toward the exit. “Just call next time. I'll pick up something on the way home.”

  “Or,” she held up a finger, “there's that Indian place you always rave about. The one near here.”

  He sighed through his nose, the way he did to show his frustration. It meant no. Even Lara saw that coming, so she interrupted. “Go on. I'll finish this up.”
/>   His eyebrow shot up. Why was she being nice? “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Go on.”

  “Why don't you come with us, Lara?” Amy asked.

  “Honey,” he said, having none of it. “Detective Mendes has better things to do.”

  “I do have work to finish.” Lara was right in her initial assessment. She was a sweet kid. “But thanks.”

  “Aw, come on. Get your stuff.” Amy couldn't be bothered with either of their nonsense. She was hungry. “Paperwork can wait, dinner can't.”

  Amy marched to the elevator. Lara looked at Gallagher but he simply shrugged. What are you gonna do?

  THE Blue Ganesha was a closet sized eatery three blocks from Central Precinct. The decor was frugal. Mismatched chairs and a chipped statue of the blue elephant deity. Indian pop music squelching out over bad speakers. But the food? Outstanding.

  The three of them squeezed into a table near the window, one uneven leg stabilized under a wad of matchbooks. The waiter brought a cola and two Kingfishers.

  “So?” Amy tilted her head. “Anyone get hurt today?”

  Lara felt Gallagher's stare. “Just another day at the office.”

  “You're working the dead prostitute case, right?”

  “Amy,” Gallagher scolded.

  “What?” Amy rolled her eyes, then leaned in to Lara. “He never talks about work.”

  “That's probably a good idea. Ruin your appetite,” Lara said. “What about you? You play basketball, right?”

  She nodded. Gallagher beamed, said “We got a game tomorrow night. You ready?”

  “Always.” Amy turned back to Mendes. “How long have you worked homicide, Lara?”

  “Not long. Your dad's showing me the ropes.” Lara caught him wincing at the remark. Good.

  The waiter brought a basket of papadams and Amy tucked into it. “Is it true the prostitute was eaten by dogs?”

  “Stop already,” Gallagher ordered. The kid just didn't listen.