Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Read online

  After a while, he took his foot off the brake and rolled away.

  AMY lay in bed listening to the radio. She didn't want to get up but any minute now her dad would holler up the stairs for her to get her butt in gear. She slid out of bed and shivered, looked for her robe. Coming downstairs, the house was quiet. No clatter from the kitchen, no smell of just brewed coffee. The kitchen was empty, the lights still off. Was he still sleeping?

  “Dad?” she hollered up the stairs. She couldn't remember the last time she had to yell at him to get up. There was no note on the counter and the phone indicated no new messages. That was weird. There was always a note, a message explaining why he wasn't there. Don't panic, it's too early for that. He just forgot this time.

  The coffeemaker gurgled and Amy waited for the toaster to pop. She wanted the newspaper but with dad gone, it would still be on the porch. She cinched her robe tight and unlocked the front door.

  Dad was in the rocker, legs straight and crossed at the ankles. Asleep with his head down. Amy stopped, the porch cold under her bare feet. “Dad?”

  He jerked awake, the rocker creaking under him. Something slid from his lap and clunked the boards. A gun. Not the one he wore for work but the bigger one he kept locked in a cupboard in the basement. It was black, she didn't know the name of it.

  “Why are you out here?”

  “What time is it?” He flinched under a stiff neck. Eyes bloodshot. He picked up the gun and returned it to his lap.

  “Were you out here all night?” She folded her arms against the chill. She hated it when he blew off her questions. “Why do you have the gun?”

  “It's nothing.” He got up slowly, lightheaded. “Neighborhood watch stuff.” He went inside without looking at her. She got the rolled-up paper from the step and followed him in.

  28

  THE BUMPER WAS KNOCKED LOOSE, hanging down on the driver's side. The headlamp was crushed and the grill punched in. Gallagher slotted the Cherokee nose first into a spot in the parking garage. He preferred to back in but he didn't want anyone seeing the damaged front end, didn't need any questions about it. There was nothing he could do to hide the shattered window on the shotgun side. Clear the shards of glass away, that's all. The truck looked like hell and he walked away from it in disgust.

  He went to the desk sergeant, asked for all the incident reports from the night shift. There was nothing there. No reports of the dogs, no dog attacks, no 10-24's about a possible dead body. The desk sergeant went for coffee, letting Gallagher use the desktop to check the 911 calls. Again there was nothing here related to his case or what he encountered last night. When the sergeant returned, Gallagher asked if there were any outstanding reports waiting to be filed but the sergeant said no, everything was in. It had been a quiet night.

  In the bullpen, Gallagher found his desk occupied. A flabby kid with a beard sat in his chair, tapping away at his desktop. A flat of unmade banker's boxes leaned against the wall, like it was moving day.

  “What the hell're you doing?”

  The kid turned round, nodded. “Hey man. I'm gonna be a while.” He turned back to the screen.

  Gallagher gripped the chair and swung the kid around. “Who the hell are you and why are you messing with my work?”

  The kid leaned back, getting distance from the cop. “I'm transferring all the files, like I was told to. Excuse me.”

  “Told by who?”

  “My boss, Jim. Down in tech. He got orders to copy and transfer the open case files on this station and that one there.” He pointed at Mendes's desk.

  “Get outta my chair.”

  “Look man, I got to do this. Go talk to— “

  Gallagher snatched the kid's ear and hauled him to his feet. “Get the hell away from my desk.” The guy squealed as Gallagher propelled him out of the cubicle.

  “Eff you man!” The kid screamed but he kept walking. “You can't do that to me!” He bumped into Lara as she turned the corner.

  Lara watched the kid huff away then looked at Gallagher. “What was that?”

  “Someone told that creep to dump our case files.”

  “Who?”

  He shrugged, took a closer look at her. She looked tired and strung out. “You feeling better?”

  “Bad sleep.” Her eyes went to the unfolded boxes tilted against her evidence board. “What is going on?”

  “Lara, sit down.” The tone serious, his voice like gravel. “We need to talk.”

  “Yeah. About last night. Listen, John, I know—“

  “No. Not that.” He rubbed his chin, hesitating. Groping for a way to say it. “You were right about Prall. About what he is.”

  She wasn't sure she'd heard him. “What?”

  “It came after me last night. Not Prall, the thing.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “My truck's banged up pretty bad, but that's all. He baited me, with his dogs. I walked right into it.”

  “Jesus. Where?”

  “Not far from where we found Elizabeth Riley.”

  Lara sank into her chair, knocked down by what she heard. “You saw it? The wolf?”

  “Up close. I'm sorry I didn't believe you before. I should have.”

  Neither moved. Phones rang in the background, the photocopier chunk-a-chunked in the corner. Lara felt a tug inside her, a twisted knot loosened and eased off at this thin life-rope tossed her way. She wasn't alone, she wasn't losing her mind.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We talk to the Lieutenant. This is bigger than us. We need a SWAT team. Firepower. We can get Pablo's help. Maybe some wildlife experts.”

  “The Lieutenant is going to think we're both crazy.”

  “I know. You got a better idea, I'm all ears.”

  She didn't.

  They didn't have to wait long. The Lieutenant banged out of his office, calling for their heads.

  MENDES and Gallagher sat before the desk like truant school kids. Lieutenant Vogel brought the wrath of God down on their heads. Lara's gaze drifted to the picture of Vogel in his glory days of wrestling, the tights and tall boots. She wanted to laugh, the whole damn thing was so ridiculous. The Lieutenant's neck cabled up as he bellowed and they had yet to even mention Prall's name.

  “The warder at Rafton Correctional is livid. You two waltz in there and assault a prisoner? A guy dying of cancer!”

  It was about Ronald Kovacks. What they had done to him. Gallagher had meant to talk to Vogel about it, to ward off any trouble. In the shitstorm of the last two days, he had simply forgotten about it. Time to pay the piper.

  “It was just a little misunderstanding.” Gallagher spoke. Lara seemed fixated on the picture on the wall, like she couldn't care less.

  “A misunderstanding? Oh I see, I'm the asshole here.” Vogel's face bloomed red. “Not only do I have the prison hammering on me, detective Hammond is furious. This is his prisoner, his case, and you two just screwed him on it.”

  Gallagher clenched his teeth. Lara had yet to say anything and he could only carry this one so far. They'd crossed a line, simple as that.

  The Lieutenant caught his breath, amped up for another round. “You,” his finger squared at Gallagher, “I'd expect this from you. But the prisoner stated clearly it was detective Mendes.” He all but snarled at her. “What the hell did you do to him?”

  She pried her eyes from the picture. “The prisoner was uncooperative. I needed answers.”

  “Are you joking? I made you homicide so you could keep a leash on that sonovabitch.” Vogel chin-wagged at Gallagher and hammered on. “Not turn into him!”

  “Leash?” Gallagher spun to her. “The hell are you talking about?” She didn't return the gaze.

  “Do you clowns have any idea the kind of hell this makes for me? Internal Affairs will crawl so far up my ass I won't know whether to shit or wind my watch.” Vogel wiped the sweat from his lip. “As for you two, they're gonna drag you behind the sheds and burn you at the stake.”

  T
he rage burned off, leaving a vacuum in the room. Mendes and Gallagher looked at the floor. Vogel waited for some sign of contrition. The wall clock ticked away the seconds.

  Lara spoke up. “We need to talk about Ivan Prall.”

  “Who?” Vogel wasn't ready to change topics. “The dog guy?”

  Gallagher groaned. Not now, not with the Lieutenant looking for someone to hang. Lara looked him in the eye, serious as death. We have to do this.

  “What about him?” Vogel asked.

  Gallagher cut in before she could continue. “Ivan Prall is extremely dangerous. We need to throw everything we got at this guy. And I mean everything.”

  “What? Are you telling me you can't handle this?”

  “We need more bodies working this,” Gallagher said. “We need a task force and a SWAT unit ready to hit this guy as hard as possible.”

  Vogel wasn't buying any of it, that much was clear.

  “Are you familiar with this suspect?” asked Lara. “The case file?”

  “He's the crazy guy with the dogs. Thinks he's a vampire or something.”

  “Werewolf.”

  “Whatever.”

  Lara sat up. Loud and clear with a straight face. “He isn't crazy. He is what he says he is.”

  Tick, tick, tick. It was like someone had passed wind in the room. Lieutenant Vogel just blinked stupidly at her, then Gallagher and back to her. “What?”

  “It's true.” Gallagher had never gone skydiving, never jumped out of an airplane, but he imagined this is what it felt like. A freefall with no turning back. “We both saw it. The… uh… werewolf. That's what attacked Lara, not the dogs.”

  The Lieutenant waited for one of them to crack, to start laughing at this bad joke but neither flinched. His detectives held faces of stone. Very well. “Collect your open case files, hand them over to Bingham and Latimer. Including the Prall case.”

  “Mike,” Gallagher leaned in, “don't do this. Not now.”

  The Lieutenant raised a hand, ending the matter. “Both of you are suspended until I clear this up. Surrender your firearms and tin to the desk. Then get out of my precinct.”

  There was nothing left to say.

  LARA went straight to her desk without looking back. What did she think was going to happen? Was the Lieutenant going to believe them? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  She took one of the empty boxes and placed it on the floor below her evidence board. She tore the photographs down, letting the pins fall around her. The pictures went into the box, no notations, no cataloguing. Next the sketches and journal entries photocopied from the notebooks. After that, the reports and notes. Pushpins tumbled and became lodged in the industrial pile.

  “You were supposed to be my leash?”

  Gallagher caught up. Lara kept her back to him, tossing pages into the box. “What the hell was that about?” he said.

  “I wanted to work homicide. That was the deal.”

  “You should of told me.”

  “How? When you were busy ditching me? It doesn't matter anymore.” She stepped past him to get another box. “Excuse me.”

  She scooped up the binders from the desk, one open case per, and dropped them in. He reached into a box and retrieved a sketch. Prall's self portrait. “We still have a problem.”

  “We have nothing.” She snatched it from him, balled it up and tossed it in. “We don't even have jobs anymore.”

  “To hell with the job.”

  “We blew it.” She took the box and marched past him. “You can go back to being a cowboy now.”

  DETECTIVE Bingham kept his ear to the ground all morning, sensing a change in the wind and an imminent internal shift within homicide detail. He'd heard the scuttlebutt about Gallagher bashing up a prisoner and even a blind man could see the Lieutenant had been pushed too far. He decided to move things along.

  Ten paces south of the cubicle he shared with Latimer were two meeting rooms. Not interview boxes but utilitarian rooms for procedural meetings or interviews with families. The smaller of the two rooms was closed off for repairs after a grieving father trashed the place in his rage. No serious damage, just patching the fist-sized holes in the sheetrock.

  Bingham had taken control of this room, intending to use it as an active workroom for his soon to be doubled workload. He had moved the contractor's material aside and set up the white board. By ten that morning, he'd been informed by Lieutenant Vogel that a team's workload would be dumped in his lap. One priority open case; the apprehension of Ivan Prall on two murder charges.

  He and Latimer moved materials in and had a tech from downstairs linking laptops over three workstations. They had recruited a uniform from rookie hall to help out and said rookie was busy humping boxes in and dashing out on coffee runs.

  Bingham stood before an enormous street map of Portland, circling crime scene coordinates in red marker. He turned to the tech hunched over one of the laptops. “How goes the battle, Jay? You about done?”

  Jay the tech nodded without taking his eyes from the screen. “Almost there.”

  “Good,” Bingham said. “When you're ready, I want these coordinates fed into the system. See what we got.”

  Bingham capped the marker and stepped back to view the big map. Pleased, he turned around to start on the files. Detective Mendes stood in the doorway. A box in her hands, watching the buzz of activity in the room. This was awkward. He nodded politely.”Detective”.

  “What is that?” Lara chin-cocked the big map.

  Bingham perked up. “Geographic profiling. We can analyze his hunting grounds and zero in on him.”

  “You won't find him that way.”

  Now that's just rude, he thought. He motioned to the box in her hands. “You can toss that over there.”

  More boxes were stacked unevenly against the wall, the cardboard corners crushed and the whole tower threatening to timber. Her work, dismissed and shunted aside. She dropped the box on the table and left.

  TWO floors down, Lara Mendes placed her shield on the countertop. She slid the holster from her belt and withdrew her 9mm Glock service issue. The clip slid out and she placed it next to the shield. She racked the slide forward, double-checking that there was no round in the chamber and set it down. She pushed the shield and the gun across the counter to the desk sergeant. He scribbled details onto a form then spun the clipboard round for her to sign.

  Gallagher stood behind her, shield in hand, waiting to go through the same humiliating routine. Their eyes met briefly as she passed him but neither said a word.

  29

  THE PETTYGROVE WAS QUIET when Gallagher pushed through the door and slid his ass onto a bar stool. Two daytime drinkers at the other end of the bar and three occupied tables. Gallagher checked each face in the room and tagged all but one of them as either a cop or ex-cop.

  He needed to go home. Boozing down his shitty day in this place was just a bad idea. He had stormed out of the precinct, intent on going straight home when he remembered Amy was going to a friend's house for dinner. No need to rush home and fix a meal. So here he sat. Just one, to burn off the bad taste in his mouth. Was there anything more pathetic than anchoring his dumb ass at the bar to sulk a shitty day away? He didn't care. Country music spun out from two bashed up speakers, which didn't help matters. Like a license to get maudlin. He hated country music when he was a kid simply because his parents listened to it but had come around to it the older he got. Now he tortured his own kid with it and took no small pleasure watching her squirm when he sang along.

  The woman behind the bar came round and called him by name. She knew everyone's name. He asked for a beer in a bottle, not the swill in the taps. The Pettygrove never cleaned their draft lines and more than one glass from the tap was lethal.

  The ruckus with Kovacks was going to be a problem. He'd been down this route before, stomping heads when he should have kept his cool. He just couldn't help himself yet secretly relishing how much it drove Vogel up a wall. The funny part here was that
he hadn't even touched Kovacks. Ha ha. Not that it mattered. He had history, Mendes didn't. He was the one the Lieutenant was itching to jettison from the detail. So it goes. Investigations like this would take weeks, plenty of time to worry about it later.

  He tilted back half the bottle and let himself drift back to the real problem. The thing that came at him in the railyard. The thing that smashed his window and popped its teeth at him. It wasn't coincidence that had led him to it. The dog, the first one, had stood in the middle of the road waiting for him. How did it know where he was? He was driving, for Christ's sakes. The sonovabitch had waited for him to drive up and then lured him onto the tracks. It was a trap and he had walked right into it. Outsmarted by dogs.

  They had laid a trap and waited. That requires intelligence and patience. What the hell was he dealing with? Did wolves hunt like that?

  And then there was the thing itself. He could still see its teeth when he closed his eyes. The thing was huge. It didn't move the way dogs do. It didn't behave like a dog either. It didn't bark or posture. The damn thing had locked on him and closed in fast, with purpose and intent. Like it was personal. Was some part of Prall still conscious inside that thing?

  How the hell could something like that exist? How could it roam back alleys and riverbanks and no one know? He still couldn't utter the word, not even to himself. It was just too crazy.

  He killed off the beer and ordered another, along with a tumbler of Jamesons. He meant to nurse it but the whiskey went down too easy and he nodded for another. He'd just been given the axe. Didn't he deserve it? He studied the framed pictures behind the bar. Old black and white photographs of salty lawmen down the decades. Cops in stiff uniforms from the 1970's, all the way back to stone faced sheriffs in moustaches and waistcoats. His favorite picture showed two sheriffs in wide brimmed hats flanking a pineboard coffin propped vertically against a hitching post. Crammed inside the narrow box was a dead man with half-lidded eyes and a gaping mouth. Presumably some crazed outlaw that the lawmen had pursued and brought down with their gunblacked hands. Wagonyard justice.