The Wolf at the Door

by Charlie Adhara

  Cooper jerked away from staring at Park’s lips back to his eyes. There was nothing subtle about the amusement in them now.

  “Still good?” Park said.

  “I didn’t schedule time for breaks, boys,” Christie said from up ahead. Park raised an eyebrow. There was no way Christie was older than either of them. Park looked at Cooper with an almost conspiratorial expression, inviting him to laugh with him. But Cooper, feeling overheated, annoyed and painfully reminded of their run-in that morning, was not interested in conspiring with wolves. He stalked past Park and hurried to catch up with the heavily panting Miller and Christie.

  He regretted it immediately. Now Park was behind him. Which, while it was good he was no longer looking at the wolf and getting...distracted, it was also bad because he could feel Park’s gaze on him now. A slight tingle on the back of his neck. The gaze of a predator. Cooper felt his pulse pick up and his breath caught slightly in his throat. He hoped Park couldn’t hear that. Smell that. Whatever “enhanced senses” meant.

  That was his problem—or one of his many problems—with the Trust. This cleaned-up, low-information, high-ambiguity version they spoon-fed the government, who in turn tube-fed BSI agents.

  The only difference between a wolf and a human is we can listen really well... Yeah, right.

  Cooper didn’t think all wolves were brutal monsters by any means. It was hard to look at someone like tiny, perky Trust Director Margaret Cola in those stupid informational videos and think she was returning to a cave of bones.

  No, wolves weren’t innately bad. Not any more or less than humans. But they all did have instantaneous access to lethal claws and teeth. They all did have intensely strict rules of dominance and hierarchies. And most tended to identify as belonging outside of society and society’s rules.

  Was it really unjust profiling to be wary of a guy who carried lethal concealed weapons on him at all times, had issues with authority and identified as a proud outsider? Hell no. It was just common fucking sense.

  The prickling between Cooper’s shoulders intensified and he resisted the urge to spin around and face Park.

  Stop looking at me, Cooper thought. Too bad telepathy wasn’t one of their enhanced senses.

  Cooper recalled some of the images that unwittingly passed through his mind when he was looking at Park’s tight ass and hastily retracted that wish.

  “Hikers found the bodies?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes,” Miller said, looking back over his shoulder and stepping right on a skunk cabbage. “A couple from Virginia. Amateur hikers enjoying their retirement. They check out.” A cloying sweet and rotten smell oozed through the air from the plant and followed them through the woods.

  “Why were they wandering off-trail?” Cooper asked.

  “They said they wanted to follow the brook for a while.” Miller gestured to their right. “You know, ‘really get away from it all.’” He snorted. “But eventually they confessed they were looking for somewhere secluded to hook up. Apparently the outdoors does it for them. They found John Doe and reported it. We found Bornestein nearby.”

  “Must have been quite a mood killer,” Park murmured, and Cooper coughed.

  He was embarrassed he hadn’t realized they were following a brook. Not that he could see it from here, but that did explain Christie’s confidence in their direction and all this goddamn skunk cabbage that Miller could not seem to avoid stepping on.

  “We’re here,” Christie said suddenly, stopping.

  Yellow crime scene tape was wrapped around a few trees ahead of them. It was surreal to see something so unnatural after an hour of hiking through the nearly undisturbed forest.

  Cooper moved around Christie and ducked under the tape. Nothing seemed special about the area. It wasn’t a clearing. There were no markers. The dead leaves and shrubbery appeared more crushed and scattered, but that was just as likely from the investigation than anything else.

  “The hikers stumbled over John Doe here,” Miller said, coming up behind Cooper. He pointed about ten feet away to freshly excavated ground. “CSI discovered Bornestein there.”

  “Bornestein was buried but John Doe was not?” Cooper asked, surprised.

  “Shallowly,” Miller said, and looked at Cooper intently. “Does that mean something, you think?”

  Classes of psychology and criminology said yes, it meant something. The killer may have felt more guilt and shame over Bornestein. It was more likely he or she had known him. But did the same thing hold true for wolf psychology?

  It also meant John Doe’s body had been more vulnerable to scavengers, making him unrecognizable and further impeding identification. Had that been the intention? But why conceal the identity of one victim and not the other?

  Cooper shrugged to answer Miller’s question. “Maybe,” he said, and turned away.

  Park was crouching at the edge of the crime scene and surveying the area. To Cooper’s annoyance he appeared to be actually figuring something out. Cooper looked around, too. Nope. Still just woods.

  He forced himself to walk over to Park and crouch near him. Close enough that they could speak quietly, but not too close. “Got anything?” he asked.

  “I smell death,” Park said quietly.

  “Well, this is a crime scene,” Cooper said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Park’s dramatic phrasing. To be fair, he was a Trust agent—whatever that meant, Cooper doubted it included solving murders, and this was probably his first real investigation. Cooper wondered if he was expected to teach Park things.

  “No. Something is still decaying. Not far from here.” Park’s eyes slid shut slowly and he tilted his head as if thinking.

  “Sure it’s not eau de la skunk cabbage? Miller’s certainly dosed us all with enough of it.”

  Park’s eyes twitched open and he smiled. “No.” He stood up suddenly and Cooper found himself eye-level with his crotch. He quickly scrambled to standing as well. “They weren’t killed here,” Park continued in a louder voice. “This is just a dump site.”

  “He’s right,” Christie said, and Cooper suppressed a twitch. He hadn’t heard the ranger approach. Christie was so quiet. Not that Park was a blabbermouth like Miller, but his presence was still louder, somehow. At least Cooper always seemed to feel acutely aware of where he was.

  “Techs found minimal blood on-site,” Miller added, joining them. “Definitely not the carnage you would expect from those wounds.”

  Park nodded politely, though he’d clearly already figured that out. He wandered around the edge of the crime scene, and then suddenly ducked out under the tape and stalked farther into the woods, away from where they’d come, without a word.

  “Where’s he going?” Miller asked, sounding concerned. Park had disappeared into the foliage eerily quickly. But that was more of a testament to the power of dense old forests than any inhuman speed on the wolf’s part.

  Cooper just shook his head. If that asshole assumed Cooper would go trotting after him like a dog to heel, he had another think coming.

  “Does he know what he’s doing?” Christie asked quietly. “I don’t want to have to put together another search party.”

  “We should all stick together. There’s no cell service out here and he doesn’t have a radio,” Miller added.

  Cooper sighed and walked in the direction Park had gone, with Miller and Christie following. Damn Park. Leading them around by their noses. With his nose.

  “Park?” Cooper called out.

  “Over here.”

  They found Park about one hundred feet away, crouching again. At his feet was a huge pile of matted dark fur.

  “Jesus,” Cooper murmured. “Is that...”

  “Bear,” Christie said, bending over Park and examining the carcass. “Juvenile.”

  Park tensed and shifted slightly away. Christie just seemed to take this
as an invitation to crouch down beside him and get even closer. His knee brushed Park’s, who twitched and froze.

  Cooper walked over and clapped Christie on the shoulder. “Mind if I get in here and take a look?”

  Christie had taken off his sunglasses. He had icy blue eyes that were startling in their sharpness, especially now, cold and annoyed at Cooper’s rudeness. But Christie said nothing, stood and moved back. Cooper took his place and put a respectful distance between him and Park. If there was one thing he’d figured out about wolves on his own, it was that they liked their personal space. But again, who didn’t?

  He glanced at Park, who was watching him with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Seems like a strange coincidence for this to be here,” Cooper said as Christie stood on the other side of the bear.

  “Not a coincidence,” Park said, taking a pen out of his pocket and prodding the body. “Can someone radio the station? I want to get a vehicle up here to transport this bear down. We need to find out what killed her.”

  “You want us to do an autopsy on a bear?” Miller asked. He was standing a short distance away and looked vaguely nauseated.

  “Black bears don’t have any natural predators. Nothing would have had reason to kill a healthy young female. And less than a hundred feet away from our crime scene?”

  “Maybe Bornestein killed her in defense, but not before she injured him,” Miller suggested. “He stumbled away and died before making it back to the trail to call for help.”

  Park frowned and Cooper had to agree. Was it supposed to be a coincidence that John Doe then died a few feet away from Bornestein a couple days later? Was Doe supposed to have buried Bornestein? “Officer Miller, would you radio down for a transport, please?” He might not know much about bears, but even he felt it was weird to find a large predator like this.

  Miller took out the radio and walked away from them, murmuring a call to the station.

  Christie was running his hand over the fur, looking for something. He had a heavy white bandage around his palm. If Cooper had a healing wound he would not be touching mysteriously dead animals in the woods. “No hunting tags,” Christie said. “Even if this was an accident, it should have been reported. I’m not an expert, but these wounds look more pre-mortem than typical scavengers, and I’ve never known another animal to attack a bear. And win.”

  “What was that?” Park said, and ran his own hand over the bear. Cooper saw it too. Something in the fur. Park pinched a piece and held it up. They all leaned closer to see.

  “Dirt?” Cooper suggested doubtfully. It looked more like a tiny black insect egg or gritty fungus.

  “No. It’s synthetic,” Park said. He didn’t notice the curious look Christie shot at him.

  Christie combed his fingers through the fur. “Whatever it is, there’s a lot of it.” There was something vaguely familiar about it when all seen together. Something niggled at Cooper’s brain, an almost nostalgic feeling prompting the smell of crisp fall air in Maryland as a child, but the memory didn’t come into focus.

  “Found something!” Miller yelled from a short distance away. Park slipped the mystery grit into his jeans’ pocket and the three of them joined Miller.

  “ATV tracks,” Miller said, pointing at slight indentations in the mud and leaves.

  “Florence PD uses ATVs?”

  “Not like these,” Miller said, grinning, clearly proud. “We had some larger terrain vehicles come in south of the scene, but they had no reason to be over here.”

  “Nice work, Miller,” Cooper said, reevaluating the young officer. Even having them pointed out to him now, Cooper wasn’t sure he’d have recognized the ridged mud as tire tracks. Park, on the other hand, was following the tracks with apparent ease farther into the woods.

  “I’ll radio the coordinates down and get some techs up here to take casts as well,” Christie said.

  “I think one of us should stay on-scene, mark off the trail and wait for techs to get here,” Miller added. “I won’t be any good getting you back to the trail, so I can stay.”

  Cooper couldn’t be that much older than Miller, but he could hardly remember when he was that green and eager, volunteering to stay behind alone to protect the scene. Cooper hoped the officer would get the brownie points he so clearly wanted. Either that or the officer wanted a break before the return hike.

  “Are you armed?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Miller said, pulling his PD jacket back to reveal both his gun and a stun gun. “Not to mention the bear spray. Animals need to be more afraid of me.”

  Park returned shortly, his footsteps unnaturally quiet across the leaf litter and twigs of the forest floor.

  “Anything?” Cooper said.

  “Trail ends in the flood banks. Whoever dumped the bodies didn’t want to be tracked and knew exactly where to drive to make sure the brook took care of it.”

  Cooper glanced at Miller and Christie, but they were both preoccupied. He lowered his voice anyway. “Can you follow the scent or something?”

  Park was already shaking his head. “Vehicles are a challenge to begin with even fresh and this trail’s too compromised. I couldn’t follow it. Not like this anyway.” He gestured at himself vaguely.

  “Officer Miller is going to stay behind and mark off the scene.”

  Park nodded. “Make sure they bring back that bear.”

  “All right,” Christie said, rejoining them and buckling his radio back to his belt beside his own weapon. “You guys done here?”

  “I’m done,” Cooper said, as if he had done shit-all since they’d got here. He glanced at Park, who was already looking at Cooper. His eyes seemed slightly lighter than before. An almost yellowish color in the rapidly fading light. Cooper was surprised more people didn’t suspect the truth about wolves. Here, deep in an ancient forest, there was something otherworldly about him, almost magical.

  Park blinked lazily and Cooper realized he’d been staring. He hastily looked away, feeling warm and prickly.

  Magical? Christ. How high an altitude were they at?

  The return to civilization felt quicker than the journey out. Perhaps because Christie, now less inclined to think he was babysitting a couple of yahoos, was a bit more talkative.

  He didn’t believe the search parties had a shot in hell of turning up anything. “White Mountain National Forest is almost eight hundred thousand acres in all. Bodies aren’t found for years around here,” Christie said, a little too cheerfully for Cooper’s taste. “This far from a trail it’s pure chance these two were found this soon, or really at all.” The implication that lightning wouldn’t strike twice for Gould hung in the air.

  “Chief Brown seems to think there’s hope,” Cooper said. “It’s a lot of ground, but a lot of people are pitching in.”

  Christie shrugged. “People like to feel like they’re doing something.”

  Cooper frowned. He wasn’t used to being the optimistic one. “Our vics weren’t killed here and they weren’t killed right away. Are there places that they could have been held without drawing attention in the forest?”

  “Definitely,” Christie said. “The mountains offer a lot of hiding places. I try to keep an eye on most of the abandoned properties. But there are tons of other places. Abandoned shelters set up by transients. Natural caves. Old gem mines.”

  “Gem mines?” Cooper asked. That’d be a first for him. For a brief moment Cooper entertained the fantasy that the murders were part of a cover-up diamond smuggling ring, 007-style. “What kind of gems?”

  Park looked back at him, smiling like he’d read his mind. “Not those kind of gems. Amethyst, tourmaline. Quartz. Beryl. Nothing too fancy. Some are still operative, but most have been shut down.”

  “That’s right,” Christie agreed with another approving glance at Park. “You seem to know a lot about our little forest as well as
being a strong hiker, Agent Park.”

  Park shrugged, the picture of modesty. Cooper rolled his eyes.

  They made it to the car and Cooper found himself in the back seat yet again while Christie and Park continued to talk about the geography of the forest and mostly ignore him. He felt like a kid on a ride-along.

  “I’d like to check out the homes of the victims,” Park was saying in the front. Cooper thought this was a good idea and had been considering doing so as well.

  Which was why he was perplexed when he heard himself say, “Negative. There’s only a couple hours of daylight left. I’d rather join the search party.”

  “Do you think two more men are going to make a difference?”

  “Do you think going to victims’ homes will?” Cooper countered. “Neither Gould nor Bornestein was taken from his own residence. Miller already took statements from family and established a timeline.”

  Park’s eyes met his in the mirror. “Is that what you’d prefer to do, Special Agent Dayton?”

  No. That’s not what his gut was saying. But it was good, solid procedure. And he couldn’t change his mind now without sounding like a total asshole. Cooper said, “That’s what I’d prefer both of us do. Let’s apply your strong hiker skills to the search party.”

  Park tilted his head. “As you wish.”

  Cooper looked out the window but could still feel Park’s gaze on him in the mirror, which he ignored.

  * * *

  Two and a half hours of hiking through the swampier parts of the forest with the search groups resulted in Cooper’s jeans being soaked up to the knees in the most foul-smelling mud he’d ever come across and no trace of Gould. Fortunately, Park had been put in a different group than Cooper and he could avoid any “told you so” looks. Not that Park seemed like a gloater. Or like someone who would gloat over not finding a missing young man, anyway. But Park’s perpetually unruffled attitude was just as aggravating.

  As the search parties returned to the base before sunset, there was some panic when one of the groups came up short a member. Vince Medes, a volunteering civilian, failed to check in.