Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 26

  THE wolf came at him full bore. Gallagher wheeled the gun up and got off one round, punching a dark hole into the blue grey fur but the monster didn't stop. It slammed into him as he squeezed another round. Hurtled backwards into the dead leaves, he kicked out in a panic, pedaling mad to keep those snapping teeth at bay. He fired into its bulk, at the heart but the wolf roared in stronger, its maw widened and bit down over his ribs. He clubbed it between the eyes with the pistol butt and the thing shook him violently, whipsawing him through the dirt.

  He spun, thrown from the teeth and thudding hard into the ground. His hand was empty. He groped the dead leaves for the gun that wasn't there and still wasn't there. The great wolf stalked forward with no hurry, no rush. An easy kill.

  No gun but he wasn't weaponless. He remembered the blade bundled inside his jacket. He tore it free, pulled away the rag. He wanted the silver to flash clean and bright. Wanted the wolf to see it. The wolf lumbered in slow. Limping, one shoulder dipping as it trotted.

  Gallagher pleaded with God one more time. One clean shot, the eye or even the heart, the underbelly. Just one clean cut with the blade.

  The wolf stopped cold, as if stonewalled by the prayer, and swung its massive head south. Ears up at what was coming. The wolf heard it long before Gallagher but their eyes caught it at the same moment. Another wolf, big as this one, loping between the oak and ash on newborn legs. Hurtling at them both, this lobo was pale, the white coat mottled black and grey over the crest. The tail held high, lips curled back at the sight of the blue-grey wolf. Its intentions were clear.

  The grey wolf rose up to meet it. Two leviathans collided in a blur of teeth and chops. Eyes wide in aggression, clean with intent.

  Gallagher watched, useless. A bystander of no significance, the knife a toy in his fist. The question glared white hot but the answer was simply too hard to bear. His gut knew it was her but his head refuted that truth.

  The pale wolf roared up and the grey cowed, as if to submit but it was no more than a feint. It shot up fast and took the white down, jaws locked onto her throat. Pinning her down, forcing submission. The pale lobo twisted and snapped. The pack thundered in and the dogs raced round the warring monsters, yammering and howling. Insane, lost.

  The one clean shot Gallagher prayed for was suddenly there and he took it. He came up underneath it, the blade in both hands and slit its belly open. The monster howled and bucked but Gallagher drove the blade harder, arms to the elbows in its guts, sawing at it. Coring it hollow. Blood spackled hot in his face and the intestines spilled out of the wolf's belly, slick ropes of gore until he was tangled in it.

  The monster loped away from the pain. The pale wolf rolled to its feet and shook its head. Dark blood stained the ruff of its throat, its snout ripped and dripping. It chomped its teeth at him and Gallagher reared backwards, slipping in the coil of guts still on the ground. The ropey intestines slithered underneath him, snaking away in the dirt as the grey wolf ran.

  Gallagher snatched it up, wet and slick, and wound the intestine round and round his fist. Holding it fast like an anchor. The gut cord snapped taut, dragging Gallagher through the dirt. It slipped through his fingers but he clamped down, refusing to let go.

  The dogs charged the strange wolf in their territory, their fealty to the alpha intact. The lobo lunged for the Siberian, the beta, and took it down in its jaws. A bone snapped and the Siberian relented, rolling onto its back. The others slunk low, tails down. Rolling onto their backs before the pale wolf. They whined submission. The pale wolf leaped over them and bounded after the grey, following the twine of guts into the night.

  The dogs twisted up and shot after it. The Siberian took two steps and fell down. Its forepaw broken, dangling useless. It whined at being left behind and got up again and then dropped. Clinging to the slick rope, Gallagher watched the animal try a third time to get away. It hobbled in a pathetic jerk after its pack.

  The cloud cover melted off and the moon came out again, tinting everything blue. A metallic flash in the wet leaves, a familiar shape. The lost gun. He tightened his grip on the intestines and groped for it with his free hand, clawing the loam but it was still out of reach. He shifted his weight and reached again but the cord suddenly went slack in his fist. The tension gone.

  The roar of wolves fighting in the dark. A godawful sound to bear witness to. The popping teeth and the monstrous snarling. Sharp and vicious, like nothing he'd ever heard. The baying of the pack as it circled the combatants.

  He snatched up the gun and got to his feet, never letting go of the slack gutrope. Trailing it up like cowrope, following it to the sound of that terrible scrap. The intestine ran out, severed at the end. He could still hear them fighting but could see no more than six feet. Shapes darting past in the weird light, no more. Groping forward slowly, gun out before him and then the racket of snarls and pops ended. He heard the dogs stop and become still. Then all hell broke loose as every dog barked mad and snarled, their pads running. The dogs tore in to finish off the wolf that went down.

  Twenty paces on and he could see them, swarming over the carcass like piranha. Their heads jerking this way and that, rending flesh from the bone. The lamed Siberian hobbled in on three legs, spent and clumsy until it dropped and simply watched the others tear the monster apart. Gallagher's bootheel cracked a twig and their heads turned to him, chops slathered with gore. He expected the pack to snarl and pop at him, like any feeding dog but they didn't. The animals slunk their heads low as if shamed and they sidled in confusion and finally trotted away from the dead thing.

  There was little left that resembled a wolf or werewolf or whatever the hell the thing was. Cords of stringy meat stretched like webbing. The innards hung between the cage of ribs and dark blood drenched everything. Steam vapored up from the carcass into the chill air. There were pieces of hide scattered about but all of it slaked with so much blood the color of the fur was unreadable. Was it a grey or pale coat?

  It has to be him. It can't be her. It can't.

  He tripped over the thing's skull. Crushed and rent, the lower jaw shorn clean away. A swath of pelage was yet dry, a tuft free of blood. A bluish grey. Through and through it was grey.

  Thank God.

  Wind riffled the leaves and cut cold across his face. His head whipped round north and then south. Where was the other wolf?

  Two pinpricks of amber fire flickered out in the dark and he realized they were eyes, watching him. The yellow fireflies hovered in until he could make out the form of the pale lobo. It trotted slowly to his left, keeping its distance and circled him counter-clockwise. She was limping bad, her hide dappled with blood. The snout was torn up badly. Round and round it slunk, sniffing the air of him.

  He pivoted as it went round and he spoke to it. Spoke her name.

  Lara.

  The wolf curled its lips, creasing the gored snout into a snarl.

  He spoke to it again, soft and low. Whispering her name. The lobo charged in, snapping its jaws then withdrew. It resumed its circuit, circling him just as the other wolf had done. Just before it went in for the kill.

  Why did he think he could speak to it? It wasn't Mendes, it wasn't even human. The gun came up and he drew a bead straight between the lobo's eyes. For a moment, he hoped that the sight of the gun would spook the thing back but it circled in closer and closer.

  “Please,” he said. “Don't.”

  The wolf stopped pacing. Bared all its teeth at him. It coiled back, ready to spring.

  “Lara, come back. Just come back.”

  His hands were steady, the sight true. At this range he could drop a slug right between its eyes but the eyes were the worst part. They were amber and lupine but there was something of her in them. Or maybe he just wanted to see her in them.

  The gun went down, resting against his lap. The beast's snout flared and then the pale lobo turned and loped away, bounding over the carcass. The pack followed it, their new alpha, but the wolf whipped back and chased them away
so they wouldn't follow. It swung its head once at Gallagher and then ran into the darkness of the trees and it was gone.

  The pack paced and whined, abandoned to the dark without the pack lead. The mastiff bolted south back towards the marsh and the others followed. Left behind, the Siberian tried to crawl after them, kicking at the dirt, but it gave up. Tongue dangling between teeth, it whined and turned to look at the man left behind.

  Gallagher knelt in the remains of the grey wolf. He looked at his hands, the gore slathered up his arms and let the gun fall away. He wiped his palms down his shirt but it too was foul with blood. He heard the lame Husky whining after its pack. It watched him and he watched it. A sudden urge to pick up the gun and shoot the dog dead but it passed and he hid his face in his hands.

  The dog watched him and ceased its cries.

  THE road was blocked off by two cruisers, cherries flashing. Further up the pavement was an unmarked Cutlass and the ambulance.

  Detective Bingham sat in the cab and refused to get out. He hadn't moved from the floor of the boathouse until Latimer showed up and coaxed him outside. Sitting in the back of the unmarked car, he still hadn't spoken a word.

  Detective Rowe was treated for the gash on his head but shooed the paramedics away when they wanted to put him on the stretcher. His head was still a fog and he remembered very little after rushing into the boathouse with his gun drawn. And now he and Latimer trampled through the underbrush into the trees, their flashlights rippling over the scrub.

  Three uniforms were already on scene, marking the boundaries of the site. Gallagher had been walked out of the woods by two EMT's but he said nothing when Latimer spoke to him. The detective didn't push it, eyeballing the state the man was in and he watched Gallagher limp away towards the road.

  Rowe and Latimer looked over the mess on the ground, the blood and the offal and the torn carcass. The bones scattered about, the meat all but picked clean. Latimer hovered over the ribcage for a closer look while Rowe found the broken skull. The detective slid a pencil from his pocket and tilted the severed head to one side. The face was torn away, the eye sockets red and empty. The skull, along with the rest of the remains, were clearly human.

  “Christ on a stick.” Latimer turned away from the gore. “What did that?”

  Rowe shrugged. “Dogs must have got him.”

  Latimer threw his light over the ground, the trees. “What dogs?”

  A uniformed officer called out and the detectives came running. Lit up in the lightbeam was a dog. Its foreleg shattered but trying to crawl away to the treeline. The dog stopped as it was surrounded by men. Someone suggested they call animal control.

  39

  THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF detective Lara Mendes was lost in the long shadow cast by the death of a ranking police lieutenant. Lieutenant Mike Vogel had made the ultimate sacrifice, killed on duty, and was afforded honors befitting his rank. A full dress service was held on Tuesday, with almost every officer in the city turned out along with nine hundred officers from every state in the union. Delegations of police from Mexico, Canada and even the United Kingdom flew in for the procession. The widow Janet Vogel collapsed during the eulogy and was led out of the cathedral by her son.

  John Gallagher attended the funeral. In light of his recent suspension, he was requested to dress civilian and not in uniform. He turned out in his spit polish blue, drawing visible ire from the commissioner, a captain and two sergeants. His former colleagues in Homicide Detail were polite as the day demanded but Gallagher could hear loud and clear the suspicion in their tone, see the blame fired at him in the set of their eyes.

  Also in attendance was detective Adam Bingham but he looked pale, a wraith in his dress uniform. On leave since the incident, Bingham left halfway through the ceremony, unable to bear the crush of mourners. He had given a brief, sealed statement about the events of the night of September 26 and then cleared his desk and left. After consulting with his union representative, Bingham went home and spoke no further on the matter of the Lieutenant's death.

  The investigation of homicide suspect Ivan Prall continued with Detective James LaBayer coming onboard to replace detective Bingham. LayBayer and Latimer worked in conjunction with detectives Bauer and Varadero who were charged with separately investigating the death of Lieutenant Vogel.

  Detective Rowe gave his statement to both teams. Rowe remembered very little after hitting his head on a hull and Officer Grainge recalled the chaos when the dogs charged into the boathouse but little after that.

  Suspended homicide detective John Gallagher gave his statement and then was questioned twice by the LaBayer-Latimer team and three times by Bauer and Varadero. Under the rules of internal police investigations, he was required to give a written statement and no more but he agreed to the questioning. Gallagher stated that he and detective Lara Mendes knew that their suspect would attempt to kill prisoner Ronald Kovacks during the transfer to the hospital. Prall did just that, attacking the ambulance with his pack of dogs and dragging Kovacks into the woods where he turned the dogs loose on the prisoner. He and Mendes pursued the suspect into the marsh but became separated. He found the dogs on the north end of the marsh. They had turned on their master and torn him limb from limb. No, he didn't know why they did that.

  LaBayer and Latimer pressed him about a “giant dog” seen by one of the eyewitnesses. Gallagher guessed this witness to be Bingham but never knew for sure. The witness claimed that this giant dog had killed the Lieutenant. In fact, the witness had even sworn that this animal was a wolf. Gallagher shrugged it off, reminding them that Ivan Prall's dogs were all big and vicious strays. One of these dogs was a bull mastiff, a breed known for its height and mass. Gallagher could only assume that the “giant dog” seen by the witness was in fact this same bull mastiff. A monster of a dog to be sure but still, a dog.

  “And what about detective Mendes?” asked Rowe.

  Gallagher sat in the small room used for the Prall task force. LaBayer and Latimer had given him the courtesy of interviewing him here instead of the box where they grilled the smokehounds.

  “We got separated in the dark.” Gallagher tilted his head, working a kink out of his neck. “That was the last I saw of her.”

  Latimer rubbed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “That still doesn't help us. Why don't we go back to the beginning and start over.”

  A cord flexed in Gallagher's neck as he bit down the urge to reach across the table and throttle the fat son of a bitch.

  “No. That's enough for now.” LaBayer leaned forward and closed the open folder on the table like a referee blowing a whistle. “Thanks, John. You can go.”

  Gallagher nodded to the older detective and left the room. He marched through the cubicles of the homicide unit, enduring a gauntlet of accusatory eyes on the way. He bypassed the humiliation of waiting for an elevator and banged through the exit door, taking the stairs down to street level. He knew he would never be back. The only question now was how this was going to play out. They would either ask him to resign quietly or he'd be dismissed.

  If asked to resign, he could probably negotiate some portion of his pension but if they sacked him, he'd be screwed. With his pension, even a fraction of it, he could probably hang onto the house and he and Amy would be okay. Without it, they would both be screwed. He'd have to sell the house his daughter grew up in and find something cheaper. The thought of it, cobbled into some low rise piece of shit where the halls stank of fish fry and God knows what, was too much to bear. Amy would give up on him and move in with her mom for good.

  Under normal circumstances that would have been the worst fate possible, being alienated from his kid. But these days, normal was hard to come by.

  THE medical examiner filed her reports on the two separate remains found at the crime scene. The first set of remains were positively identified as Ronald P. Kovacks but the second remains could not be identified with any certainty. The hands were too mutilated to render fingerprints and no previous
DNA samples existed for Ivan Prall to match to. The remains were marked thus; PRALL, IVAN (TENTATIVE).

  With no next of kin to claim the remains, the bodies of both Kovacks and Prall were sent to the Prager Funeral Home, contracted to the Multnomah County Coroner's Office since 1982. There the remains would be cremated and the ashes shelved for one year. If unclaimed, the ashes would be dumped in a small hole along with the cremains of every other unclaimed soul collected by the county that year. A sign fixed into the ground would bear only the year of their collective deaths.

  With that, the file on Ivan Prall was closed. Detectives LaBayer and Latimer typed up the last of their reports, sent copies to the appropriate offices and sealed up the evidence boxes. The task force was disbanded and the equipment removed from the small meeting room. Latimer and LaBayer rotated back into their regular shifts.

  The only file remaining open was the disappearance of homicide detective Lara Mendes. Her apartment had been searched and found untouched since the night she went missing. No tossed drawers or hastily packed clothes. Her luggage remained undisturbed in a hall closet under a pile of folded sheets. The records provided by her cell service showed no calls after the night of the twenty-sixth and her bank accounts remained untouched.

  She was listed in the missing persons manifesto and flyers were printed up bearing her official police photo and physical description, details about her last known whereabouts. Gallagher helped distribute the flyers, handing them out to every door in the vicinity and papering every lamp post. Amy helped out too, volunteering to distribute flyers after school.

  There were no leads, no witnesses and no calls to the tip line.

  “DID you call the hospitals this morning?” Gallagher looked up from his newspaper when Amy padded into the kitchen, toweling her wet hair.