The guy behind the soldiers blocking his way forward was dressed in a white cotton thwab. The front was stained red with blood, and he had wiped his hands at his sides, leaving long finger-shaped streaks.
Wolf recognized the man. His unit had been after the guy for months, secretly, clandestinely. The guy’s full name was Abdullah al-Sayid, and he was an Iraqi businessman and now a general—a VIP, a very important person. The man had killed other young girls before, but no one had been able to get to him. Wolf’s unit had barely even been near him. The guy was untouchable, off-limits, and Wolf’s own government was responsible for allowing this monster to continue breathing and doing what he had been doing.
Typically, Wolf’s outfit did not go after criminals. That was the job for the MP investigators. But this time was different—because this was personal. This time, it would be done and kept strictly off the record.
He had orders. Maybe not legit orders, but they were still orders.
Their platoon’s leader, Major Clay, had first uncovered this sadistic monster, this sick bastard who got his thrills killing young women—teenage girls, mostly. The guy was no more than a piece of shit that deserved to wither and die in the most terrible way possible.
And when Major Clay had been killed in an ambush, Wolf and the few remaining members of his squad had taken up the duty and were working hard to hunt down the guy and put a bullet in him. After what they’d seen of the carnage the madman had left in his wake, it had been an easy task to agree to, even if that meant giving the middle finger to the layer of brass that kept trying to stop them from getting to the guy. But there was another layer that wanted the guy dead. Competing forces. Politically aligned forces. All Wolf saw as incompetent. He’d chosen his side. His side was righteous. His side was justice.
“Bring him here,” said a thin man with closely cropped hair. That man was a one-star U.S. general. He was standing next to the photographer who was snapping pictures of the naked, violated, and deceased girl.
Behind the cameraman, Abdullah al-Sayid had shifted to a small sofa of overstuffed pillows in the corner of the stiflingly hot room. He propped himself up on one elbow. His almost entirely black eyes specked with gold appeared calm and serene while he watched the general’s man photograph the dead girl and the rest of the scene in a smooth, efficient manner. In fact, he smiled once he saw Wolf, and how Wolf was not allowed to do anything other than stand in front of the general, arms at his side.
“It is good to see you again, my friend,” Sayid said as he adjusted himself on the pillows. “It is most unfortunately what has happened, is it not?”
“Why are you here, soldier?” the general grunted at Wolf before he could answer Sayid’s taunt.
“I am concerned,” Wolf replied to the general in a low growl. He even left the normally required ‘sir’ part out. Just talking to this general in such a caviler manner could get him in trouble, but Wolf didn’t really care about that right now. It was all he could do to constrain himself. He needed an opportunity. Just one.
The general eyed him and led him from the room by the elbow, signaling to his guards to make sure Wolf complied. Wolf and the general knew each other in passing, but neither wanted to admit it. They both played for the same team, yet were now on opposite sides.
“What do you think you are doing here, son?” the general asked.
“That man,” Wolf said. “This is not the first time he has killed like this. And you know it.”
The general nodded. “Yes, we know. It is regrettable.”
Wolf drew a breath through his nose. “And what is to be done with him now?”
The general put a hand on Wolf’s shoulder as if he were a father talking to a misguided child. He had to reach up to do so, but not too much.
“Do you want us to win, son?”
Wolf said nothing, but he bitterly felt the weight of the man’s hand on his shoulder. Much as Iraq had been a superb shithole for a whole host of reasons, he still thought he knew right from wrong in his heart. Often, though, he had found himself on the wrong side of right, and that had left him jaded by the whole ordeal. They had once called the people he had descended from ‘savages,’ but these people that controlled rural Iraq were a much lower form of life. Most were either incompetent to the core or filled with an unspeakable evil fueled by a warped ideology. A small few were worthy of saving and, of those few, the young women who lived under the oppressive fear were highest on his list.
But he’d failed to save any of them. And that weighed heavily on his soul.
“Well,” the general continued, “let me explain something to you, son. We were all sent here to bring a swift end to this conflict. And to keep the peace until enough can be trained to fend for themselves. Oftentimes that means we must make deals with the devil to do so. Mr. Sayid here—you must understand—is a very important man in this regard.”
“And a child killer,” Wolf added.
The general frowned and removed his hand. “I don’t think you are listening to me, son. One day soon this man will be judged by his god, and rest assured, he will pay for whatever crimes he’s committed. But for now, the U.S. government needs his help. Your country needs his help. So, I’m sure you can understand the situation, confusing as it is. Am I right?”
“And the girl?” Wolf asked. “What about her?”
The general looked at Wolf’s left shoulder, not daring to look into his eyes. He sucked a breath. “She was just an unfortunate casualty of war, son.”
Wolf sucked in a breath of his own—a deep one—and began slipping a K-BAR knife out from a sheath clipped at the small of his back. The knife was scuffed and well-used, but the edge was honed to razor-sharp perfection. As he fondled the handle of the blade behind him, he glared at the general, unblinking.
“Hey! You okay?” a voice said, interrupting what he was preparing to do.
The voice repeated.
Wolf opened his eyes. There was a light. A bright light. He blinked. Blinked again. A face. He reached for it with his fingers spread, meaning to touch it. Then he remembered her name—Pearson. His arms dropped to the bed and he let out a long sigh.
He had been dreaming about Iraq again, one of the same dreams that haunted him often.
Far too often.
“Bad dream?” she asked.
She swept a long strand of hair over her ear as she hovered over him. Her breasts hung down, and one nipple brushed against his sweat-slicked chest. He shook his head to clear it and rolled to a seated position on the edge of the bed. Rubbed his face with his hands. “I should leave,” he said to the wall in front of him. “You are in danger if you stay with me.”
“No, please, don’t. I really do need your help. Please? Stay here with me? I’ll be okay. Judo champ, remember? I was just worried about you and what you were saying in your sleep.” She sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have woken you. That’s what they say, you know?”
He laid back down and she rested her head on top of him. Silvery moonlight poured in through the curtains. She looked up into his eyes and began tracing circles on his chest. Then she reached up with a finger and wiped under one of his eyes, then rubbed the wetness she found there between her thumb and forefinger—and frowned at it.
- 21 -
APPRECIATED CLOSENESS
THEY RETURNED TO the sheriff’s office in the morning. The upstairs door was locked and it was dark inside.
“It’s almost seven, shouldn’t someone be here?” Pearson said. “Seems a little odd not to have anyone here on a Tuesday. Maybe they’re on call?”
Wolf turned and went back down the stairs to the first floor. None of the other offices were open either.
“What now?” he asked.
Pearson rubbed her forearm against the morning chill. “I guess we go check it out on our own.”
“And if we find only what I told you was there…?”
“Aren’t you interested to know for sure? You could be wrong about what you saw.”
Pearson at first seemed annoyed, but soon her mouth twisted into a playful grin. “Okay, then humor me. I did buy you dinner, after all. ”
And he had paid two-hundred dollars for a hotel room plus the one-hundred to Tammy. It was probably best, he thought, not to mention that.
“You know,” she said, bumping up against him, “I usually don’t jump into bed with a guy I just met.”
“Neither do I,” he replied flatly.
She chuckled a little and bumped against him again. Then she threaded her arm through his.
He appreciated the closeness.
“It’s been a long time…” she started to say. “I…”
She let go of his arm and turned to look up at him. She had a question in her eyes: Would they have more than just one night together? He was certain that was what she was thinking. He put a finger to his lips. It had been a long time for him as well. Where it would go, he had no idea.
She smiled and wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight.
- 22 -
CROW CANYON REPEL
THEY STOPPED OUTSIDE Taylor’s Hardware, which was down the main drag a block. It was the final store before the stop sign, right before the town’s concrete sidewalk ended and the open space along the highway began. The sign on the storefront said it opened at 7am.
Ten minutes from now.
“I know you, Raymond,” Pearson said as she turned to him and looked up. “The way you carry yourself, your eyes, your—well, presence. You remind me in some ways of my father. He served in Vietnam before I was born and also had those same kind of bad dreams. I remember hearing him wake up screaming in the night. Scared me half to death.” Her head bowed low. “I’m sorry you are going through that. I really am. It was a lot for him to deal with.”
When Wolf said nothing, she nodded and continued, “I used to be a cop, you know. After I got out of the Academy, I got this job with the 12th in Chicago. It sucked big time being there, let me tell you. We dragged bodies from the river almost every day. Hookers, junkies, whatever. It was some really terrible shit we saw.” She shook her head. “And all the while we got spit on, yelled at, stabbed, and I was once attacked by a bunch of angry teens that thought it was cool to attack a cop. I ended up shooting one of them. And, you know, I’ll always see his face and remember that moment for the rest of my life. So, yeah, I kind of know what it’s like.”
She stopped and blew out through open lips and wet them with her tongue. “After the shooting inquiry—which I barely cleared—they moved me to traffic enforcement and left me to rot. So I quit. ‘Screw ‘em all,’ my dad would have said about it, had he been alive to see it, God rest his soul.”
Pearson sat on a stack of fertilizer bags and squirmed to adjust herself. “Sounds like a sob story in some terrible movie, I know. And you don’t really care about all that, do you now? So…I’m sorry, I never should have brought it up.”
Before he could say what he wanted to say, a noise coming from behind Pearson caused her to turn toward it. The CLOSED sign turned to OPEN, a bell rattled, and a man wearing a camouflage hat with ear muffs and a red flannel shirt unlocked and opened the door for them.
“Morning,” the guy said, looking them both over carefully.
“Morning,” Pearson replied, then smirked, glanced at Wolf and added, “saved by the bell,” and walked into the store.
They strode the cluttered isles and bought rope and gloves and carabineers and everything else that would be necessary to make the descent into the ravine, and then returned to the front counter.
“What y’all planning? Looks like you are going climbin’,” the guy in the cap asked as he rang up the items. “Ain’t got no places to go climbing around here.”
“We’re not climbing,” Pearson said.
The guy grunted and waited for her to say something else. When she didn’t, he finished ringing her up. Suspicion never left his eyes as they darted between her and Wolf.
In her rented Chevy, they took the road leading to the ravine. The single-lane blacktop continued to march toward the horizon and became the same rutted dirt path Wolf had taken the day before.
Pearson parked the car close to the edge of the ravine, but not too close. Getting out, she said, “I hope to God it is not her we find down there.”
Wolf said nothing as he climbed out of the passenger’s side. He fetched the supplies from the trunk and tied off the rope to the tow hook under the front of the Chevy, then tossed the other end into the ravine.
“Careful,” he said as she hovered a bit too close the edge, trying to peer over it.
“I don’t see anything down there,” she said.
“It was the smell that I noticed.” He inhaled deeply. There were still faint traces lingering in the stilled air. Nothing else smelled like death. It was one of those fetid odors that, once experienced for the first time, was never forgotten.
She imitated him and her eyes widened. “Yeah, I do smell it. It’s faint, but it is there.”
Wolf blew warm air out through his nose, washing what he could of the foulness away.
She asked, “Can we get in from either end of this thing?”
“No,” he said.
“So you didn’t see what it was then? You don’t know if it was a body, or whatever?”
“No.”
“I guess I could have brought some binoculars.” She inched dangerously close to the edge. “But you’re right. I don’t see anything down there.”
“Back up,” he warned.
She did.
“So, how do we go about doing this?” she asked as she returned to the car and began to put on the extra-large gloves they had bought back in town, but he took them away from her before she could finish.
“I will go alone.” He pointed at the Chevy. “Stay away from the edge. It’ll collapse if you get too close to it.”
“Then how will I see you?”
“You will hear me.”
“Maybe you should let me go with you? I’m the one who dragged you here in the first place.”
“Have you ever done this before?”
“No,” she said.
He grabbed another length of the rope they had brought along and cut it out of its plastic packaging with his knife. He trimmed off a portion and made a harness, which he wrapped around himself and attached to a pair of carabineers to act as descent brakes. Finally, he took the end of the rope that was tied to the car, pulled it taut, and clipped onto it.
“I see you’ve done this before,” she said.
He nodded and backed his way over to the edge of the ravine. Shuffled left then right, deciding which was the best path to take for the descent, then stepped over the edge.
The rope stretched unexpectedly under his weight, and he dropped about three feet before he could get his feet planted against the weather-softened sides of the ravine. He had not made a descent like this in years, and had forgotten about that initial part, when the slack came out of the line.
He hung there while dirt and debris dropped past him.
“You okay?” she asked from above.
“I am fine.” He readjusted his weight in the makeshift harness. His size was working against him now, and every foot he planted against the ravine wall caused more and more dirt to break loose and tumble down below him. But, he soon figured out the right amount of rope to let slip to keep the descent going at a relatively smooth rate. When he reached the bottom, he let out a long sigh of relief, unhooked, and brushed his gloved hands against his thighs and wiped dirt from his face. He glanced around. There were bits of protruding remains everywhere, but they were all of the relatively benign variety.
Washing machine parts, old refrigerators, stoves, tires, crushed cans with faded labels, and musty old newspapers—all merged with the rain-eroded soil and tangled weeds. It smelled vaguely of rust and mold, which he figured was just like an old dumpsite should smell. But there was that other odor he had to contend
with—the sickening odor of decomposition.
The dirt underfoot was soft and pliant, and his boots sank deep with every step. But there were no footprints visible other than the small three-toed tracks of birds scattered everywhere. No one had been down there in years.
“See anything?” Pearson shouted at him.
“No,” he shouted back.
He couldn’t immediately tell what was causing the stench, so he followed his nose. As he crossed through a patch of tall weeds and split them with his hands, he found the source of the fetid odor, and he heard buzzing. He stared at the lumpy pile for a while before he realized just what it was.
Crouching on one knee, he picked up a broken sliver of wood and poked at the mound. It was covered with flies and was soft and squishy and had been bloated by the sun. It was, maybe, three feet long, maybe four. Within it he could see white traces of bone, ribcage bones perhaps, with small bits of dangling flesh still attached. Those bits of flesh had mostly desiccated and hardened in the sun. It was obvious that crows and other scavengers had been picking at the corpse for days now and had taken away much of the soft tissue that remained, leaving behind thin strips of leathery skin.
What he had found was making him a little sick to his stomach. But it was not the girl that Pearson had suspected. The remains were not even human. They were the remains of a large dog.
He looked back up the side of the ravine and followed the imaginary trail the poor creature must have taken when it slipped over the edge and fell. Maybe hunger had lured it, or maybe the crows had. His grandmother had spoken to him about what tricksters they could be.
“Found something,” he yelled up to Pearson. “But it is not her.”
“You sure?” came the response.
He was.
Methodically, he searched the entire bottom area of the ravine. He found some additional animal remains, but no signs of human remains, so he returned to start back up the rope.
Pearson was leaning against the Chevy when he cleared the top. He clawed his way over, rose to his feet, and dusted himself off. He was covered head to toe in brown soil that had fallen on him as he’d climbed.
Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel Page 10