Wolfwraith

by John Bushore

  “Did I tell you something that helped?” He took another swig.

  “First off, the knife. Your friend Jonesy was stabbed to death. He was slashed all over, apparently by an animal, but the killer used a knife to finish him off.”

  “Holy shit.” Shadow unthinkingly took a jellybean from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. “This whole thing is getting more bizarre by the minute—or maybe I should say ‘by the murder.’ What about the DNA?”

  “Nothing on that, so far, but I’m still digging. You did give me something else, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Henderson.” She lowered her voice. “Oscar O. Henderson is a multi-millionaire businessman from northern Virginia.”

  “How do you know he was the Henderson talking to Barnett?” Shadow asked, adopting her conspiratorial tone.

  She shrugged. “Double-Oh, as they call him, is married to the governor’s daughter. He’s only in his thirties but he’s made millions with a contracting business, mostly road development, usually state contracts. Recently, he’s been multiplying his money like rabbits, buying land all over the state and building houses. I’d say he’s the most logical...”

  She stopped as the waiter placed four drinks on the table, double what they had ordered. “With Mr. Danski’s compliments, Miss Parsons.”

  Shadow raised an eyebrow when the waiter had gone. “Mr. Danski?”

  “The owner,” said Helen. “I’m a bit of a regular here, like I said.”

  “Oh.” He glanced around. “Why are we being so secretive? Surely you don’t think this is such a big deal you’re being followed?”

  “No, but you might be.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a murder suspect, according to every cop I know. Do you really think they’re not keeping an eye on you?”

  “They’re following me?” He looked around. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I know a lot of cops around here. The word is out in the station houses that you’re the top, number-one suspect. At least until they’ve processed the DNA samples they took.”

  “Son of a bitch!” A couple across from them glanced his way and he realized he’d been too loud. Reining his anger in, he continued more softly, “I knew there were suspicions, since everything seems to be happening when I’m nearby, but that’s because of where I live, damn it.”

  “Shadow, they don’t have anyone else; that’s why they’re keyed in on you, at least for now. They’re sure to be keeping an eye on your movements.” She gave him a direct look. “Makes sense doesn’t it?”

  “But no one followed me.” Shadow looked around again. Somehow, it now seemed as though some of the bar’s patrons were purposefully not looking at him. “I’d have seen anyone following me, especially through the refuge.”

  “They didn’t have to follow you. They could have a tap on your phone, or maybe a listening device pointed at your house. I had to tell you where to meet me and they could have got here before you did. So I suggested here because it’s noisy and we could talk without being overheard.”

  Shadow remembered calling Alex and saying he’d be at The Raven, so she might be right. “Okay, maybe there are cops around. But so what? We’re not talking about anything they’d be interested in?”

  “How would they know that? You’re a possible serial killer; I might be your next victim. They’re keeping an eye on you to see what you do. I don’t want them to hear me, in any case. Not that the cops care about possible political shenanigans at this point, but if it looks like it might tie into the murders, they’ll swarm all over it. I’m only beginning to work out what they’re up to and where the money is flowing. Get the cops in on it and there goes any chance of my getting to the bottom of it.”

  “But...” Shadow wasn’t following her logic. “Wouldn’t the police be able to find out what’s going on, better than...” He stopped.

  She smiled and held up her drink in a mock toast. “Better than one lone-rangering female reporter? Oh, it’s all right, Shadow. I’m sure that’s what you were thinking. I’ve got contacts in Richmond who’ll talk to me, but they’ll clam up tighter than a nun’s pussy if cops start asking questions.”

  Shadow felt his face flush and took a long sip of his drink to hide it.

  “I do believe you’re blushing.” Helen grinned. “I thought you were an ex-marine, girl in every port, that sort of thing.”

  “Er, I...”

  “Shadow, you’re precious.” She laughed and waved her empty glass in the air. “You, sir, may order me another drink!”

  “Don’t you think we’ve had enough?” He was feeling a bit lightheaded. We haven’t had dinner yet.”

  “Just one more. Please?” Her blue eyes gleamed. “Or are you afraid I’ll talk dirty again?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Had anyone locked their doors, back then?

  Driving back through the refuge the next morning, Shadow suddenly found himself whistling. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman. Sure, he had a hangover, but it was a small price to pay. He felt great!

  During dinner at a table inside the restaurant, Helen had told him that the governor had been securing support among the state legislators for nearly a year but she didn’t know how the state would dispose of the property.

  “So, you think they’ll sell off the land?” Shadow had asked.

  “I don’t see any reason why not, if it’ll help the budget. If they did sell it, the governor’s son-in-law, old double-O, wouldn’t be allowed to buy it anyway.”

  “So how would they handle it?”

  “Maybe he would have a phony corporation buy it—you know, layers of holding companies. There’d never be a link. Remember, if you hadn’t overheard Barnett, we wouldn’t suspect anything.”

  “But even if the lawmakers vote to sell it,” Shadow said, “without access, that land is next to worthless.”

  “I’ve got a friend down in Currituck County. She’s checking whether North Carolina is planning any roads. There are already some homes down there, in Corolla Beach, even though they have to drive up along the beach. Couldn’t they build vacation homes where the park is now? There are a lot of wealthy people willing to put up with cost and inconvenience to get away from it all.”

  “I don’t know. The property would be worth a lot more if there was some easier way to reach it but what you say makes sense.”

  “See, maybe the enterprising female reporter has some ideas, after all,” she said, reaching under the table and squeezing his thigh. He reacted instantly.

  After dinner and coffee, they had walked along the misnamed boardwalk, which was actually a raised concrete walkway with steps down to the beach at intervals. They stopped in one bar, filled with partying vacationers, then another, then took a long walk on the beach, where they walked with their arms around each other in the camaraderie of sharing her discoveries, joking, until they were suddenly kissing in the darkness. Then Helen had taken him to a small hotel, where yet another of her many friends was behind the desk. She’d managed to get them a room, despite the summer crowd.

  Now, as he glanced at the bay, he saw a solitary osprey hovering in place as it prepared to stoop on prey. He grinned, feeling higher than the bird in the sky. It was a beautiful, cloudless summer day and he felt sure the black cloud hanging over the park would soon lift, as well.

  When he reached the turn-off to his house at Wash Woods, he noticed the crime-scene tape had been removed from around Jenny’s cottage. Suddenly his mood swung. Jonesy had been the best friend he had ever had, even though they had only known each other for a few months, and Shadow had been out getting himself laid instead of looking for his killer. Sure, it was a bright, spirit-lifting day, but Jonesy sure as hell wasn’t enjoying it.

  There was no cop watching the crime scene, either. Curious, Shadow stayed on the main path, driving to the E.E.C. building rather than driving home.

  There were no police cars parked there, either. In fact, the
re was no one around at all. He parked and went into the environmental center. It was deserted. The bunks had been stripped, bedding thrown in a pile, and the briefcases, laptops and overnight bags were gone. The task force had obviously moved on, but where? Had there been another killing somewhere else?

  Rather than getting back in his truck, Shadow walked toward his house, needing a few minutes of quiet to sort out his thoughts after an unexpected night of casual sex. Or had it been casual on Helen’s part? She’d asked a few more questions about the murders.

  The hushed atmosphere beneath the trees lowered his spirit even more. Once he had gotten away from the environmental center and boat dock, he could have dropped back in time half a century. His house, Jenny’s, even the trailer where Jonesy had lived, had been here long before False Cape Park had been established. Each of the structures was covered by green algae and moss on the northern side, with ivy and Virginia creeper on the sides where the sun reached down through the canopy of leaves. He imagined the once-populated village the way it had been back when residents had worked in the life-saving stations and hardscrabble farming had been the only other occupation. Or later, when the stations had been shut down, and locals guided rich Yankees who came south to hunt the abundant waterfowl.

  Had anyone locked their doors, back then? Shadow doubted it. It had been the same when he had grown up on another Virginia peninsula. Today, the abandoned farming and fishing villages of Wash Woods and False Cape were no more, but the cape had still not joined the modern world. Like the inhabitants of days gone by, Shadow never locked his doors, yet two trusting people had been killed here.

  As he walked past the Taj Mahal, he began to feel watched. Nothing evil, nor threatening, but it made him uneasy, nonetheless. He looked up at the kitchen window of the trailer, but no one was inside, as far as he could tell, but someone could be watching him from a window in any of the houses. Suddenly Wash Woods felt like a ghost town—in the literal sense.

  He tried to act as though he were still strolling along, but began to take advantage of trees, sheds and other cover without being conspicuous about it. Stupid! He’d left his pistol behind when he’d left the park in civilian clothes, although state law empowered him to carry a weapon at all times. Jonesy, without a handgun, had been killed only a few feet away from here.

  He had almost reached his house when a figure rose from the rocking chair on his front porch. He stopped and tried to peer into the shade, but couldn’t see who it was.

  “Ho, Shadow,” came a female voice, instantly recognizable as Lorene Walker’s. “I’ve been waiting for you. I expected you to drive up, though.”

  “I parked over at the E.E.C.,” he answered. “I wondered where everyone had gone, so I walked over here. You scared the hell out of me. I had a feeling someone was around and I thought it might be the killer.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She came out of the shade with a mischievous grin on her face. “I didn’t think of that but you needn’t have worried. That’s why I was waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “To tell you that we got him—right here in the park.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  You’ve seen his wolf tattoo?

  Shadow knew his first reaction should have been elation, or maybe relief but, instead, he felt cheated. Somehow, although he knew it wasn’t likely, he had hoped to personally catch Jonesy’s killer and punish him.

  “You caught him? Here in the park?”

  “Well, actually, he was at home in Sandbridge when we arrested him, but he works here.” She left the gloom of the porch and walked over to him.

  “Who?” His belly shriveled. Steve Slocum was the only ranger who lived outside the park. Shadow didn’t really like the guy, but a murderer? It would be horrible if they had all worked alongside the man who had killed Jonesy and the others.

  “Tony Jennings,” Lorene said. “The mechanic.”

  Jennings! Shadow hadn’t thought of him because he wasn’t technically a False Cape Park employee; he was more of a contractor.

  “Are you sure? How...?”

  “He left DNA. In the Gordon woman. I guess he figured we wouldn’t find it, since he buried her. In a way, he was right; the samples had nearly decomposed too far for testing.”

  Jennings! Shadow was beginning to see how he could have done it. A strong man, he would have been able to stand up to Jonesy, especially if he’d taken the volunteer by surprise and DNA evidence didn’t lie.

  It was a good thing Shadow had found the body when he did, before it was too late. So, he had helped solve the case to some extent, even if he hadn’t actually figured out who the killer was.

  He grinned, but not with humor. “So my pig, the pig nobody believed in at first, led me to the body in time for you to nail the son of a bitch.” Jennings was an unlikable man anyway, but now Shadow could feel hatred emerge like an ugly cancer within him.

  “You and your pig! It was a bit unbelievable, you know,” Lorene admitted. “But speaking of animals, we still don’t know how the wolf hair ties in. It’s probable Jennings has some sort of thing about wolves. You’ve seen his wolf tattoo?”

  “Hard to miss. I don’t know much about him, but I can tell you, he and Jonesy didn’t get along. Not at all. Jennings is all swagger and bullshit, supposedly an ex-Navy Seal, always acts tough and mean.”

  “Well, you were right about the bullshit.” Lorene curled her lip as though she had tasted something unpleasant. “I’ve seen his record. He was in the army once, but he got thrown out. Hardly Seal material.”

  “Damn, I thought so. All show and no go.” Then he frowned. “How’d he kill Jonesy, though, and all the others? And why rip out their throats?”

  “Jones was killed with a knife. Stab wounds in his chest. Looked like he was running to help the girl and the killer got him as he came around the corner of the building.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m guessing.” She shrugged. “The Ostrowski girl had just been killed and Jones came around the corner. Jennings kills him and leaves without sexually assaulting the girl. He doesn’t mutilate Jones’s throat because he’s not into men. We still don’t know. There’s still a lot that doesn’t make sense, the wolf hair, the tooth marks. Here’s my guess: The girls were strangled. Have you ever heard of something called ‘Burking?’”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “A couple of centuries ago, when doctors bought cadavers to study, a guy named Burke figured out he could kill someone without a mark by sitting on their chest and covering their mouth and nose with his hands. He’d deliver the cadaver to the doctor with no sign of foul play. It’s called ‘Burking.’”

  “But...”

  She held up her hand. “Hear me out. Not exactly ‘Burking’, but I’m thinking the throat wounds were staged to cover up a crushed larynx; some guys get off on killing while they’re actually committing the rape.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve got a theory. What if Jennings wanted to cover up his crime by making us think an animal did it? He’s got a wolf thing, remember? So, he gets the jaws of a dead wolf and attaches them to a...well, a bolt cutter or some heavy-duty pruning shears. After he crushes a girl’s throat, he takes them...” She put her hands out and pantomimed closing handles, “and rips their throats out.”

  He laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  She gave him a look like she had taken a bite of a sour lemon and he was the lemon. Oops, he’d just stomped all over her prize theory.

  “For your information,” she said. “There are no such things as werewolves, so the mutilation had to have been done by a wolf or a human. But you probably believe in werewolves, don’t you?”

  “Not likely. No such animal. So actually, I guess that’s a pretty good possibility. How did you come up with that?”

  “Actually,” she grinned. “I got the idea from you.”

  He raised an eyebrow and she grinned even more, obviously trying not to laugh.

/>   “You promise not to be mad?” she asked.

  “I promise.”

  “Way back at the start, when I first met you...”

  “How could I ever forget?”

  “I wondered if you might have used your prosthetic hand to, well, you know. We’d already talked to Alex, your boss, and he mentioned you carve wood as a pastime. And I got the idea of you bolting a pair of...” She started to laugh. “...hand-carved,” more laughter, “wolf jaws to your...” She could barely get the words out, “...to your prosthesis.”

  He stared as the uncontrollable laughter wore itself down and then asked. “Okay, no big deal, I’m not offended. This thing on my wrist has less of a grip than a regular hand, though. And why is it so damn funny?”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes, her own eyes moist from laughing. “Only because it seems so incredible—now that I know you—that I once thought a nice guy like you could ever kill anyone.”

  Shadow grimaced. He wasn’t about to correct her, though. Luckily, the Marine Corps didn’t normally put enemy casualties into a marine’s personnel file. “Okay, what about the wolf hair, though?”

  “That made me even more sure.” She dropped her arm. “That someone would have gone to the trouble to get wolf hair from some furrier or something to blame it on a wolf. Jennings must have planted that, obviously.”

  “Hmm.” Shadow grimaced. “Okay, if you say so, but what about the sex angle? You said he might have strangled them as he raped them. According to the autopsy, the first girl I found hadn’t been touched, remember?”

  “But the Gordon woman died with semen inside her. There were two girls in the first crime remember, he could have raped the one found weeks later and left the other alone—and the latest incident had Jonesy involved. We don’t know at what point he interrupted the killer.”

  “What does Jennings say? Did he confess?”

  “No. Swears he’s innocent, of course. Morrow’s sitting in on the interrogation—local police get first shot—but they only nabbed Jennings this morning. They’re searching his house too. We should be getting some answers soon. Going back to his wolf thing, did he ever talk about wolves or anything that would give us an idea how his mind was working?”