by Bill Crider
It doesn’t take long, which is a good thing considering how painful it is, and before the moon had really gotten into the sky I was a wolf. Not a bad looking one, either, if I do say so myself. Big, black, and hairy, true, but not unattractive if you happened to be another wolf. Or even a Schnauzer.
The smells of the city came to me much more sharply after I Changed -- diesel oil, exhaust fumes, the hot pavement, and even the cool smell of the oak trees that I was sheltering among. I could feel the grass cool under my paws and hear a bird rustling in the branches over my head.
I waited until it was as dark as it was going to get and trotted off to Mrs. Grayson’s. I wasn’t really worried about being seen. I figured that anyone who happened to catch sight of me would think I was just a big black dog on his way home, and there were plenty of shadows to duck into if I had to escape the animal control officer.
I circled Mrs. Grayson’s block, sniffing around all the houses. A couple of times dogs penned in back yards barked in alarm, but the owners didn’t notice.
There were no new houses on the block. All of them were as old as Mrs. Grayson’s, and I was a bit disappointed. I’d hoped that finding the owner of the gloves might turn out to be easy. Oh, well.
Keeping myself in the shadows, I got a running start and jumped Mrs. Grayson’s fence. It was easy for a wolf, though I thought a man might have a problem.
I sniffed around the back yard but didn’t find anything unusual. A ‘possum had been there recently, and some squirrels were living in one of the trees, but that was all. No scent of man.
I could smell perfume, of course, but that was coming from inside the house. A back window glowed with light, and I wondered if it was Mrs. Grayson’s bedroom. I wondered if she knew I was out there. Or cared.
I circled the yard three or four times and lay down by a woodpile to wait. I stretched out my paws in front of me and rested my chin on them. I was sure it was going to be a long night, and there was nothing to entertain me except the squirrels, who were asleep, and the bugs in the woodpile, who didn’t interest me.
After only a few minutes, I got restless. I got up and sniffed around the woodpile, thinking that maybe bugs wouldn’t be such bad companions after all. I could hear them skittering around in there, and I sniffed at the logs.
I smelled something familiar almost at once, and I realized that I probably knew who had put those notes under Mrs. Grayson’s door. If I was right, he was even more dangerous than we’d thought. Several Houston women had been raped and murdered over the last few months, in ways that were remarkably similar, and the police were baffled. All the murders had occurred at the time of the full moon, which wasn’t unusual for that kind of killer. The women had no connection with one another as far as anyone had been able to figure out. Up until now, anyway. I thought I’d figured it out, and all I had to do was tell Mrs. Grayson.
But there was a slight problem with that idea. Wolves can’t tell anybody anything. We might look a little like Lassie, but the resemblance is purely physical. We don’t have her ability to communicate. Little Timmy would just have to drown in the well if things were left to us.
I was so excited that I didn’t think about that, however. I wanted to let Mrs. Grayson know that I’d solved her problem, and maybe I even had some idea that she’d be so grateful to me that she’d scratch me behind the ears. It’s possible that I was even thinking that she might be wearing some kind of filmy nightgown and that I might have a chance to nuzzle her here and there while she scratched my head.
I’m sure that if I hadn’t been muddled by thoughts of pleasurable rewards for my efforts, I would have heard someone coming over the fence, though he must have been awfully quiet.
And I’m sure I would have heard him sneaking up behind me if I hadn’t already been scratching frantically at the back door. I might even have heard him pick up a log from the woodpile.
Or maybe I would have smelled him if I hadn’t been a little too conscious of the odor of Chanel No. 5 that oozed out from under Mrs. Grayson’s back door.
I smelled him before I heard him, though, and I tried to turn. I heard him, too, but it was too late.
What I heard was his voice saying, “Good night, poochie.”
And then he slammed me in the head with the log.
5.
I don’t know how long I lay sprawled out by the back door, but I’m sure it wasn’t long, no more than a few seconds. We werewolves have pretty thick skulls, thicker than most dogs and humans, and that’s probably what saved me.
I was groggy, and my head was beating like a tympani, but I was alive. That was all that mattered, that and the fact that the door was slightly ajar. In his rush to get inside, the man who’d hit me hadn’t closed it all the way. I could hear noises from the house, as if someone were smashing furniture.
I was afraid that my legs might be too shaky to hold me up, but they worked more or less all right. I nosed the door farther open and staggered inside.
The noise was coming from the room where the light had been in the window, so I headed that way, wagging my head from side to side in an attempt to clear it. Drops of blood spattered on the tile floor of the kitchen. I was sure that wasn’t a good sign, but I kept going.
Soon enough I was at the door of a back bedroom. A tall man wearing jeans, scuffed boots, and a denim jacket was throwing himself against the closet door. He had on leather work gloves, too.
“You might’s well come on out of there, sweet mama,” he said.
There was no sound from inside the closet, and he braced himself before slamming his shoulder into the door. He had black, oily hair, and his teeth pulled back from his lips in a fierce grimace at the crack of the wood. He looked almost as much like a wolf as I did.
“One more time, honey,” he said. “And then you’re all mine. It might go easier for you if you just came on out.”
There was no answer from inside the closet, but I made a low noise in my throat. The man looked around. He seemed surprised to see me.
“Well if it ain’t the poochie. I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again.”
He started across the room toward me. I snarled, but not very impressively. I don’t suppose I was looking very wolfish. He wasn’t scared at all.
“I guess I’ll have to finish what I started,” he said, reaching behind his back.
When I could see his hand again, it was holding a little revolver, and it was aimed right between my eyes.
Big woop. He didn’t know who he was dealing with. Or what. He might be able to bash me to death with a log, though I doubted even that, and he certainly wasn’t going to be able to kill me with lead bullets. My head was already feeling better, and I thought it was beginning to heal itself.
He had no way of knowing all that, however, so he pulled the trigger.
The bullet knocked me backward, and I blacked out again. I was probably out a little longer this time, because I completely missed Marie’s entrance into the house. She must have come in through the garage, because she had a hatchet in her hand, and she was standing between me and the guy with the gun.
“Put the gun down,” she said. “Or you’ll be sorry.”
The guy laughed. I didn’t blame him. I almost laughed myself. But you had to hand it to Marie. She had guts.
“You’re the one who’s gonna be sorry,” he said. “Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll enjoy it. In fact, I might just leave old blondie in the closet while you and I have at it.”
I couldn’t let him talk to Marie like that. I stood up.
This time he was really surprised.
“I’ll be Goddamned,” he said.
He was probably right about that.
I was even shakier than I had been, but this time I didn’t let that bother me. I gathered what strength I had and jumped for his throat.
He shot me twice before I hit him, but not in any area as susceptible as my head. We hit the floor in a pile, and two more bullets jolted into me. That made five. I w
ondered if he carried one under the hammer.
He didn’t. I heard a couple of clicks, and then he began hitting me in the head with the butt of the gun while I tried to bite him with absolutely no success. He was jerking around too much.
The shots hardly affected me, but the blows from the pistol butt did. After all, I’d been shot in the head and hit with a log. It was a little tender.
I whined and rolled off him. He jumped up and started kicking me in the head. I howled. Maybe he could kill me by beating me to a pulp.
He didn’t, though, because Marie split him open with the hatchet.
She told the police later that it was an accident, and I believe that it was. She threw the hatchet at him, hoping he’d be distracted and stop hurting me. How was she to know that it would turn over just right and that the blade would meet his forehead just above the nose?
When she saw what she’d done, she got sick all over the rug, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, still heaving, when Mrs. Grayson came out of the closet.
6.
The newspapers got it all wrong, of course, or most of them did. The way they told it, Mrs. Grayson had been attacked by a vicious wolf, and a heroic handyman had tried to save her. His own death was a tragic accident, and the severely wounded wolf had escaped. Readers should beware of vicious sneak attacks.
Geez.
I didn’t escape, exactly. I must have looked dead when the cops got there, which was a lot sooner than you’d think. A neighbor had heard the shots and called them. I was still lying on the floor when they arrived, and they ignored me.
Marie told me later that she got me out of there and into the yard in all the confusion. Of course the fact that Mrs. Grayson was dressed in the scanty nightie that I’d imagined for her helped a lot. The cops couldn’t keep their eyes off her. I think they forgot about me for quite a while.
And then there was the dead man, another little distraction for them to worry about.
Marie told them that I’d jumped up and run out of the room on my own, and they didn’t doubt her. For weeks there were wolf sightings all over the city.
Nobody actually saw me, of course. I recovered in the yard and got out of there as soon as I figured out that I was no longer needed. I’d done my part about as well as I could.
I explained my theory to Marie later, and she confirmed that I was right. The guy was a handyman, and he also sold firewood by the cord. He cut it somewhere in the country and brought it into town in an old truck, which the police had found parked several blocks from the house.
The “new house” smell I’d noticed on the paper had been sawdust, of course, and my idea was that the guy would case houses where he sold the wood. If there was a woman living alone, and she had a fireplace that she liked to use a couple of times in the winter, she was in danger if she bought wood from the wrong guy.
Marie told the police the theory, saying it was her own, and they checked it out. Four of the five women who had been killed had bought wood from the guy, according to their neighbors, and the fifth might have. There was wood in her yard, but no one knew where it had come from. So the cops could close the books on the killer.
I was upset with Marie for having been at the house, even if she had pretty much saved my life.
“I can’t believe you’re so ungrateful,” she said.
“It’s not that. But you put yourself in danger.”
“I just wanted to see you change. But you cheated. You weren’t there.”
“I had a feeling you might be hiding around. And I didn’t want to Change there, anyway. Where did you get that hatchet, by the way?”
“I waited for you in the back yard for a long time before I decided that you weren’t coming. Then I went to my car and listened to the radio for a while, thinking that if you wouldn’t watch the house, I would. When I heard the shots, I came inside. I didn’t know where the front door key was, but I knew that my grandmother kept a key to the garage door in her washing machine in the garage. There was a hatchet on the old workbench that my grandfather used before he died, so I just grabbed it.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I’m not so sure that I am.”
She’d get over it, but I didn’t say that. What I said was, “The moon’s not full tonight. We could go to a movie or something.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m still too upset about everything that’s happened.”
I could understand that. I’d been a little upset, too, and my mother had grounded me for a week when she saw my head. It looked fine now, however.
I was sorry that Marie didn’t want to go to a movie with me. Maybe she would later on and we could live happily ever after. Or maybe her curiosity about werewolves was wearing off. I was afraid that might be the case.
I wondered if her grandmother would like to see a movie, but I didn’t think I should ask. We hadn’t told her grandmother about my brave confrontation with the killer, and since she’d been in the closet she had no idea that I’d even been there. Even if she’d seen me she wouldn’t have known it was me. So I didn’t have much leverage with her.
Oh, well. That’s the way it is when you’re a werewolf. You hardly ever get credit for anything. Marie and I sort of drifted apart after that, and after graduation I didn’t see her again for years. We did meet again, however, but that’s another story, to be told another time.
The Nighttime is the Right Time
In case you were wondering what happens when the werewolf detective grows older (and even if you weren’t), here’s the answer.
It's not easy being a werewolf.
In the first place, no matter what the song says, your hair's not perfect. At least mine's not. It looks a lot like David Letterman's hair, and that's before the Change. When the Change happens, I look more like a white German Shepherd whose mother was scared by a Malamute with an incipient case of the mange.
I won't even mention the fleas except to say that anything you pick up while you're Changed, you keep when you resume your human form.
Look in your medicine cabinet. What do you see?
Never mind. That doesn't matter. Let me tell you what you don't see: You don't see a bottle of Dr. Glover's Mange Cure or a pump spray bottle of Hartz Mountain Flea Spray For Dogs, both of which are in my own medicine cabinet, although hidden pretty much out of sight.
But I don't want you to think I spend all my time feeling sorry for myself.
On the contrary, I have a pretty good life, ever since the time I saved Red Riding Hood's grandmother from that crazy axe murderer who'd been eking out a living as a woodchopper while on the dodge from the law in seven states.
You've probably heard the story, so I won't go into it here except to say that as usual the news media screwed it all up. Naturally they had to make the wolf the villain. We hardly ever get any good notices from the media.
Not that I really blame the press and the TV news reporters. It would have been pretty hard for anyone to believe the truth in this particular case. The Weekly World News might have printed it, but who would have believed it?
Red, however, knew the straight of it. I kept in touch with her over the years, and she looked me up much later to let me know that her grandmother had died a peaceful, natural death, leaving Red a tidy sum, not to mention setting aside a bit for me, too. After all, if it hadn't been for me, old Granny would have gone to her final reward about fifteen years sooner than she did. And I'm sure she realized that dying in her bed was a lot more pleasant than what that maniacal woodchopper had in mind for her.
So there we were, Red and me, at the lawyer's office for the reading of granny's will and renewing old acquaintances, which led us to stop in at a nice dark bar afterward for a wee drop of comfort.
Werewolves can handle alcohol all right, or at least I can, just as long as I don't drink it during the full moon. If I overdo it then, it's Katy bar the door. I remember this cute little female schnauzer one time . . . but that's another story.
Anyway, Red and I had a drink, and we talked about what we'd been doing since I saved old granny. Red had spent most of the time growing up and going to law school.
"Just what the world needs," I said, tipping up my glass to get the last of the gin and tonic. "Another lawyer."
"I'm not a lawyer," she said. "I'm a private eye."
Well, I was surprised. She didn't look like a private eye, at least not like the ones on TV. A Victoria's Secret model, maybe, but not a private eye. But then she didn't look like a lawyer, either.
For that matter, I probably don't look like a werewolf.
"You're kidding," I said.
"No, I'm not. I decided I didn't want to do litigation, and I didn't want to be cooped up in an office all day doing legal research or writing contracts. So I went into business for myself."
Our waitress came over and asked if we wanted another round. I looked at Red. She nodded, so I ordered another couple of gin and tonics. Got to be careful of malaria when you live in a subtropical climate like Houston's. Or that was the way my reasoning went.
"What do private eyes do?" I asked when the waitress was gone. "I guess it's not like in the movies."
She shrugged. "Sometimes it is. But mostly it's pretty dull. I do a lot of skip-tracing, and you can do that by phone and computer."
"So most of the time you're cooped up in an office."
"That's right. But there's a job I'm working on now that's different."
She gave me a speculative look. She had green eyes to go with her red hair, and I found myself looking away from her.
"As a matter of fact," she said, "I was thinking that you might be able to help me."
"Me?" I said.
The only reason I didn't laugh out loud was that the waitress brought our drinks. She set them on the table with a couple of dinky napkins and went away.
If there was ever a more unlikely prospect to help out a private eye than me, I didn't know who it could be. I like to keep to myself, out of the public eye. Sort of a lone wolf, so to speak.