Wolf Killer (The Hammer Commission)

by John Van Stry

  Mark pulled out the photo of the woman from the video that Agent Woods had given them yesterday, the one that only showed her face.

  "Is this her?" He asked showing it to Janice, who perused it a moment.

  Janice looked up at him, "I think that's Ursula. Why is she wearing a mask? And where did you get that picture?"

  Mark turned to the other woman, "Could you take me to her desk please?"

  "Why?" She said looking up at him surprised.

  "Because I asked you nicely," Mark said. "Also, because I have a warrant to search the office."

  "I'll take you there," Janice said and led them to a cube that was on the next corridor over.

  "This is where she sits."

  "What's her home address?" Michael asked as Mark looked over her desk. There wasn't much of anything on it that stood out. A couple of stacks of documents, pencils, stapler, computer monitor, keyboard, headset.

  Mark picked the headset up and sniffed at it, then dropped it on the floor by the seat, taking a good sniff of that as he bent over to pick up the headset.

  It was the woman who attacked him last night alright!

  Mark looked at Michael who was writing down the address.

  "Get her phone number too, so we can run a trace on it," Mark told him.

  Janice rattled it off immediately and the other woman's eyes got wide.

  Mark looked around; they had attracted quite an audience.

  "Okay, listen up, we are the FBI and we can get all of your cell phone and desk phone records pulled in an instant. From this moment on, any of you call this Ursula, and you're going to jail for interfering with a murder investigation, understand?" Mark said looking at the small crowd of office workers who had come over to see what was going on.

  "You think she killed someone?" one of them asked.

  "No," Michael added without missing a beat, "but we think she may know someone who did, and her life may be in danger, so we don't want any of you accidentally warning the guy if he is indeed holding her. If this guy is holed up at her house, and you warn him we're on the way, he may just kill her. So no one says anything, right? Unless you want to be charged as an accessory after the fact."

  They all nodded and Mark led the way back to the SUV at a run.

  "Quick thinking," He said as Michael entered the address into the GPS unit in the SUV.

  "Eh, you learn a few tricks after a while," he grinned and started the engine as the GPS worked out a route.

  Mark nodded, "I'll call the others, let's go!"

  Ten minutes later they pulled to a stop in front of Ursula's house, Mark immediately ran around to the back of he SUV, opened the door and unracked one of the HK's, grabbing an extra magazine and sticking it in his pocket.

  "We don't have a warrant," Michael warned him.

  "Sure we do," Mark said and walked up to the front door, aimed the HK at it and blew the locks off, then kicked the door in, "FBI! On the ground or we will shoot!" He yelled and ran inside.

  "Mark! What are you doing!" Michael yelled.

  "Stay by the door, watch your back!" Mark called back as he swept the house. The scents inside weren't strong enough for anyone to be in there, but both of their scents were definitely there.

  He checked each of the rooms in the house, best he could tell, they'd left hours ago.

  "They're gone," He sighed and walked outside, "and Craig was here. His scent is everywhere. I guess we found his helper."

  "You should have waited; this could mess up the investigation, Mark." Michael sighed.

  Mark laughed, "Remember when I said some monsters you don't give a chance to surrender, you just kill?"

  Michael looked at him, "What? She's an admin at the college, Mark."

  "No, she's a werewolf that tried to assassinate a federal agent while helping a serial killer werewolf torture and kill college co-eds. She's on the kill list, Michael. They don't have a jail for monsters, and she's an evil one now."

  Mark watched as Michael took a step back and looked at Mark like he'd grown a second head. "We can't just kill her, Mark. We can't."

  "Welcome to my world, Michael. Yeah, it sucks. But that's the reality we have to deal with now. No one is going to build a case against her, because there won't be any case. She's not human anymore, Michael. They'll say that Craig killed her and just add her to his list. All we need to do is provide the body."

  Michael sighed and sat down on the steps, safing his weapon and setting it on the ground next to him.

  "You know, I think it just hit me what I'm getting myself into," he sighed looking down the street as four more FBI vehicles, with their lights flashing, pulled up to join theirs in front of the house.

  "Yeah, well look on the bright side," Mark said and sat down next to him, as the others piled out of their vehicles.

  "Which is?"

  "My daughters really are smokin' hot!" Mark laughed and slapped him on the back.

  "Not helping," Michael sighed.

  "Gone?" Agent Woods said coming up to the two of them.

  Mark nodded, "Couple of hours ago at least. Probably left right after the failed attack last night."

  "You sure this is the right place?"

  "Yeah, Craig's scent is all over the place, and so is the scent of the female from last night. Also, we showed them the picture of the woman from his last snuff film. They ID'd her as Ursula."

  Agent Woods swore, "I had been hoping to catch him before he left town. I'll put out an alert on her car, and credit cards. Maybe we'll get a lead that way."

  "We need to go back to the college and pick up those records, Chief." Mark said standing up.

  "I'll get Walters and Timms to process the site," Agent Woods said. "We'll list her as a hostage for now; tell everyone she was kidnapped and that there were signs of a struggle inside. Hell of a lot easier than telling everyone she was an accomplice to a serial killer."

  "You are going to tell them though, eventually, right?" Michael asked looking at Agent Woods.

  Agent Woods sighed, "Yes, eventually we'll tell everyone just what she was doing, but right now we don't want to create a panic. Plus if the news reports she's a victim and she hears it, she's more likely to think she's still in the clear and turn herself in."

  "And if she does?" Michael asked. Mark could see the look in Michael's eyes and Agent Woods saw it too.

  "If you want off the team, Michael, no one will think any less of you, and it won't look bad on your record. This isn't a nice cut and dried law enforcement job; this is why we get subjected to a much stricter review by the administration and by Congress than the other groups.

  "We don't have the ability to keep a werewolf in jail, much less rehabilitate one. Her case will be presented to a special court later today, now that we're sure she's not a victim, we'll have a death warrant, all nice and legal before the day is done. We got one on Craig before we even raided his house. This is a harsh job, Michael, but the government doesn't want to keep relying on outsiders to do what we should be doing ourselves."

  "And just what are we doing?" Michael asked.

  "Protecting the innocent, and punishing the guilty," Agent Woods said. "Now go, get those records, and we'll meet up at the command post for lunch."

  "I'll drive," Mark said.

  Michael just nodded and tossed him the keys.

  15: Command Post, Blacksburg

  "So, the neighbors didn't see anything or hear anything. There were a number of ATM transactions at about four in the morning, and a gas station sale shortly after that," Agent Woods said. "So I think it's safe to say that our perp has flown."

  Agent Woods, Mark, and Michael were sitting at the command post, Mark and Michael had just delivered the records, and Woods was filling the two of them in on the most recent intelligence that had been developed.

  "We have, however, learned a few more things about him since this morning," Agent Woods continued. "We know his real name is Gregory Popov. He is an orphan; a couple of Russian immigrants adopt
ed him when he was five years old. They settled in the Midwest, which is where he grew up and went to school. Apparently they adopted him from an orphanage back in Russia just before they emigrated.

  "He wasn't a very popular kid in school; apparently he had some attitude problems and a rather large ego. However, he was big in sports, so when he got in trouble with the school a few times, they let it slide, as he was one of their star athletes. That was until a few months after he graduated, when he got in serious trouble for smacking around his girlfriend. He was released on his bail, but skipped town before the trial. His nickname around school was 'Craig Pope', so best we can figure is he just decided to go with that.

  "I'm going to see about getting a profiler assigned to him, if we can't find any leads as to his whereabouts. I'd rather not have one of them brought into the unit, because I honestly don't know if he has the same psychology as a human. But I think it's pretty clear to all of us that Craig has some serious issues."

  "I'd still like to go back to Marlington and interview those girls, Chief," Mark said. "Also, I want to see if I can find just what he was doing up there in the first place. It might help us track him down."

  "Sounds like a good plan of action, Mark. I'll send Steve and Mary up as well, once they're done tracking leads here, and whoever else is free. You're in charge of this one; I think we're going to need someone with your experience handling this now."

  "Thanks, Chief," Mark said and turned to Michael. "Let's find my wife and get on the road."

  An hour later they were on the road; Mark was still driving, as Michael seemed a little subdued.

  "So, what were you off getting, Hon?" Mark asked Helena, who was sitting in the back of the SUV.

  "Some things to help us when we run into this Craig guy again."

  "Oh? What?"

  Mark saw Helena nod at Michael as he looked at her in the rear view mirror, "It's one of those secrets I don't like to share," she said. "But if you'd pass me your pistol, I've got something to treat the bullets with that might help."

  Mark shrugged and shifting in his seat a moment, he pulled out his handgun and passed it back to Helena.

  "Yours too, Michael."

  "Huh? Oh, yeah," Michael said and Mark watched as he drew his handgun as well and handed it back to Helena, who unloaded both handguns, then putting on a pair of rubber gloves emptied all of the bullets in the magazines into a bag. She then pulled out another small plastic bag. He couldn't get a good look at what she was doing, as he had to keep his eyes on the road, but she was obviously doing something to the ammunition before reloading it.

  Whatever it was, it looked like she'd be a while at it, so he turned to Michael.

  "So, care to talk about it, Michael?" he asked.

  "What's there to talk about?" Michael sighed, looking out the window.

  "Whatever it is that's bugging you, obviously."

  "Or you'll beat it out of me?" Michael said, smiling wanly.

  "'Spare the rod, spoil the child' is very much a werecougar maxim," Helena piped up from the back seat. "Though we tend to use two-by-fours, we're notoriously thick-headed."

  Mark just rolled his eyes and went back to watching the road, "Michael, if you don't ask any questions, you won't get any answers."

  "I'm not so sure I want to be a killer," Michael said looking back at Mark. "And that's what you are, you're killers."

  Mark sighed and shook his head. "Helena only kills animals, Michael. Most lycans only kill animals when they are hunting; they're not much different than anyone who goes hunting deer or duck, or anything else. They just don't use a gun."

  "What about you, Mark? What do you kill?"

  "I kill what needs to be killed, Michael. Have I killed people? Yes, I've killed quite a few of them, and demons, and even monsters. There's a war on, oh I know you don't believe all that much in religion, but there is a war on and its been going on since before God created man. Working for the Church as I was, I was on the front lines of that war for a good many years."

  "Well this isn't a war, Mark, the FBI isn't at war, the US isn't at war with anybody. Yet you're still going to kill these people," Michael said a little sourly.

  Mark nodded, "Yes, I'm going to kill them, if they don't kill me first of course. Or if the wolf clans in the mountains around here don't find them and kill them first. What other choice is there?"

  "What about due process? What about a trial?"

  Mark shrugged, "You heard what Woods said, they're getting, or already got, a trial. And will be found guilty and sentenced to death."

  "Sounds all kind of pat, doesn't it? Not much different than a kangaroo court if you ask me."

  "Would you have killed Hitler, before he rose to power, if you could have?" Helena piped up from the back seat.

  "Well yeah, of course! Who wouldn't?" Michael said, turning around in his seat to look at her.

  "We wouldn't have; in fact, we probably could have gotten to him a lot easier than anyone else, fairly early in the war."

  "Well, why didn't you then?" Michael asked looking back at her rather surprised.

  "Not our problem. It was a human issue. As they say: not our circus, not our monkeys."

  "That's cold!"

  Helena shook her head, eyes down and watching what she was doing with the bullets. "No, that's reality, Michael. Do you know why humans fear werewolves? Why there are all those nasty stories about them?"

  "No," Michael said, "I don't."

  "A thousand years ago, some bright werewolf got the idea of uniting all of Europe under his banner. He started turning humans; he used them to enforce his ways and his rules.

  "Well, of course the humans resented being told what to do, and who to obey, especially by a bunch of monsters, which they outnumbered anyway. Also a lot of the humans he turned apparently weren't very reliable and a lot of them went crazy and did things that only provoked the humans he was trying to control even further. So the humans all banded together and started to slaughter all of the werewolves they could find.

  "They didn't stop with the ones this 'leader' had turned, they went after all the purebloods they could find, and they also started looking for the lycans of other races. Even after a bunch of werewolves slaughtered this leader and turned his dead body over to the humans, they were still hunted down and killed."

  "Well, he shouldn't have tried to take over then, should he?" Michael said.

  "He was trying to stop the ravages of the black plague, Michael. Something that we lycans are immune to. He was trying to stop all of the fear and the violence that accompanied it. The accusations of witchcraft, the burning of homes with families still in them. No, he was trying to help the humans with a problem that didn't affect us, and we all paid a horrendous price for his trying to help. Of course the humans didn't see it as help, they saw it as interference. Even if it would probably have helped them.

  "So the rule was made: We do not interfere in the affairs of humans. And we do not ever come to their attention publicly. We do not hunt them, we do not kill them. Those who violate this rule are to be hunted down and killed."

  Helena looked up from what she was doing, meeting his eyes. "The religions, the governments, they have agreed, tacitly if not actively, that they will stay out of the lycan's business as long as we stay out of the human's. People like my Mate; they exist in the gray area between your people and mine. They work to keep the peace, to keep the billions of humans on the planet from deciding to slaughter the millions of lycans out of fear.

  "If you don't think that is a job worth doing, then why did you join the FBI in the first place?"

  Michael sighed and shook his head, "It's not that simple."

  "Yes, it is that simple, Michael. For us. We have seen how willing humans are to slaughter other humans in massive numbers, over minor differences. So we know they'd be more than willing to wipe us out, if they ever became afraid of us."

  "You know why I do this, Michael?" Mark spoke up, glancing at Helena in the mirror
who met his eyes and nodded, going back to whatever it was she was doing.

  "I take it, it wasn't the money?" Michael said.

  "No, it wasn't the money. It was because I wanted to make sure that we were accepted by the church, so that if there ever was a pogrom to wipe out the lycans that my family would be protected by the church. That was the sole reason."

  Mark snorted, and shook his head, "And the reason I've stayed doing it so long was because I realized that humans really suck at dealing with the devils, demons, and monsters, and after having lost a lot of friends to a rather nasty monster back when I was human, that it was only fair I lent a hand for a while."

  "So it's all just good versus evil then?" Michael said, still looking rather unconvinced.

  Mark sighed, "Working for the church, yeah, it pretty much was. We only went after the bad guys; we left the good guys and the middle of the road or neutral parties alone for the most part."

  "This isn't the church though Mark, it's the FBI. We enforce laws; we're not in the good versus evil fight."

  "I know that. And that's something that you're going to have to find your own peace with, Michael. I can't help you. But these two? They broke the number one lycan law and there's only one penalty for that. The evidence is overwhelming and you don't get a trial. And as my wife pointed out, lycans enforce the lycan laws and the government is more than happy to let us do it."

  "Is that why Woods put you in charge?"

  Mark nodded, "Probably. Though I wouldn't be surprised to learn he was ordered to."

  Michael sighed and leaned back in his seat, "I just keep coming back to those young women, they never chose this, but some of them are going to die, aren't they?"

  "Probably," Mark agreed softly.

  "It's just not fair," Michael said shaking his head, "but then, what is these days."

  'And that's why we're here,' Mark thought to himself, to try and make it just a little bit more fair. Because with a monster like Craig on the loose, no one was safe.

  16: Somewhere west of Blacksburg

  Craig was angry. There really wasn't any better way to describe it. Where had that other cougar come from? Why hadn't he seen her before? He thought the government hated monsters? The sage had told him that the werewolves, that all lycans, maintained a separation from the government. That they feared the government, and that the government feared them!