Wolfwraith

by John Bushore

  “No, nothing. All he ever talked about was NASCAR racing and women, and a bunch of bullshit stories about being a Seal. I didn’t know him any better than the rest of the rangers would, though. Why ask me? Is that why you were waiting around for me?”

  “Not really. I knew how worried you were, since, well, you were on the suspect list for a while there, and I wanted to let you know you’re off the hook.”

  “I really appreciate that.” He stuck out his hand. “And congratulations on catching the sorry bastard.”

  “Thanks. Besides, I wanted to say goodbye. Now that the task force is done, I won’t have any reason to come to the park, so I won’t be seeing you again. I enjoyed working with you the day you arrested that kid.”

  Shadow shook his head, but he had to grin. “You had to bring that up. Look, it was pretty embarrassing how I botched it. We don’t arrest a lot of people.”

  “I realized that. You did fine, for a park ranger. Tell you what, you need any more guys arrested, you call me and I’ll come give you a hand.”

  “That’d be great, but I don’t get to arrest people very often.”

  “I won’t be involved with the park anymore, but I live in Virginia Beach. Maybe we’ll see each other around?”

  Was that a hopeful look she was giving him? On any other day, Shadow would probably have kept timidly quiet, but today, with the elation at Jonesy’s killer being arrested and his male ego enhanced by a night with an attractive woman, he didn’t hesitate.

  “Sure, maybe we can go out sometime,” he said. “If you’d like to.” His mind raced, thinking of places she might like to go.

  “I’m not much for ‘going out,’” she said. His heart sank, but then rebounded as she continued. “But I wouldn’t mind if you showed me around the park, I haven’t had a chance to see it all. Do you kayak?”

  “Are you kidding? The Accomattoc invented the kayak.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I thought the Eskimo did that.”

  “They took the credit, somehow. Maybe they had better public relations people.”

  Chapter Twenty

  They eat the swans?

  A little over a week later, on a Saturday morning, Shadow was about to leave the house to pick up Lorene for their kayaking ‘date’ when the phone rang. He was off for the weekend, not expecting any calls, especially so early in the morning, so he assumed it was Lorene calling, perhaps running late. They had agreed to meet at the parking lot at Sandbridge beach, so he could bring her kayak south through the refuge in his truck. Chief Warden Moorcock, staying strictly to the rules, would not allow Lorene’s SUV through his territory, now that the investigation was over.

  He picked up the handset, hoping nothing had come up to cancel their outing. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Shadow.” The voice didn’t belong to Lorene. It was Helen. He hadn’t heard from her since the night they’d spent together at a beach hotel.

  “Uh, hi, Helen.” He began to worry about how to handle the upcoming conversation. She was pleasant enough but he didn’t want to end up in a relationship with her. If Lorene wasn’t around, perhaps...

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Helen asked. “I know you usually get up at the crack of dawn, so I figured it would be okay to call.”

  “No, it’s okay.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “I’ve been up for a while.” It was almost six. He and Lorene wanted to get out on the water early, before the heat and humidity became oppressive.

  “I need to talk to you,” Helen said. “I found out quite a bit, and now I know why they want to close the park.”

  “Oh?” Actually, he’d sort of given up on that angle. If the killings had nothing to do with it, it was probably something legitimate and there’d be no way to stop it.

  Helen continued. “A friend of mine found out Barnett contracted some surveying work in your park last year. He took one of the surveyor’s employees to lunch and liquored him up to loosen his tongue. Seems they were looking into the feasibility of building a causeway across Back Bay, like the one down south to Knott’s Island.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “Yeah.” Helen agreed. “That was enough to send me to the courthouse to check the real estate transactions. Someone—it’s a dummy corporation and it’ll take a few days to trace, but we can guess who—is buying up rights to property down there from the descendants of the former owners because—get this—it’s in the original charter for the park. The land will automatically revert to the prior landholders if the state stops using it. I’m coming down there so you can show me the names on the stones in that cemetery. It’ll take a while to dig back into the old records and having some of the names might make it easier.”

  “Do you think it would help? I’ve pretty much got used to the idea I’ll be looking for a job.”

  “They won’t close the park if I can get enough proof of what the governor’s up to. If the landowners’ descendants verify they’ve been approached about selling their rights, I can damn sure trace the offer back to the source and my editor has agreed to go with the story if I do. I can smear mud all over the governor and his good-old-boy get-rich-quick scheme.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Bet on it. Our fair-haired governor has his eyes on a Senate seat and he’ll back away from anything with a stink on it faster than you can say ‘election campaign.’”

  Shadow pumped his fist as though he’d scored a touchdown. Virginia’s governors, he knew, were limited to one term of office and it was almost traditional for an outgoing governor to try for one of the state’s two Senate posts. Helen had found the key to saving the park.

  “Way to go,” he said.

  “Thanks. But I’d like you to fill me in on the cemetery, anything you know about the history of the area, things like that,” she said. “How about picking me up and hauling my sorry ass into the park? I’ve seen False Cape from atop a bicycle enough to last me a lifetime.”

  “Sure. When?”

  “How about this morning? That’s why I called so early.”

  “Well, uh, I can’t. I’ve got something I promised to do this morning.”

  “Damn, what’s a girl to do?” Her voice dropped and took on a sultry tone. “It’s not all that important for me to see the cemetery, you know. I have the day off and I was sort of hoping to spend some time with you. How about later in the day?”

  Now what? He’d like to cool things down a bit with Helen, but he wanted to know more about the governor’s scheme and how she planned to stop it. He and Lorene weren’t going to be out on the water all day, since she had something to do in the afternoon. They planned to drive out to the parking lot at Sandbridge, put Lorene’s kayak back atop her car and then Shadow would follow her to a fast food joint, since they’d be too grubby from kayaking for a regular restaurant. Let’s see, if he timed it right, he could pick up Helen on his way back into the park.

  “How about I give you a call later in the day? I could pick you up at the refuge headquarters.”

  “That’ll be great. I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Me, too,” he said. Was he? He didn’t know.

  “In the meantime,” Helen said, “I managed to get some of the old land records for False Cape. I’ll spend the morning looking them over.”

  They said goodbye and Shadow went out to his truck and drove north. Maybe, he thought, I’ll be able to figure things out, depending how this outing with Lorene goes.

  * * * *

  Two hours later, he paddled along behind Lorene’s kayak, enjoying the tranquility of the hot, sunny morning. The only sounds came from their paddles dipping lazily into the water. The water was dead calm and their light kayaks left ripples dancing along the surface of the brown water. Multi-hued dragonflies flitted about, occasionally alighting on one of the boats.

  Now that they’d caught the killer, the park had re-opened. Tourist visitation had increased because of the werewolf angle, apparently, and, Shadow had ruefully noticed, a lo
t of the newcomers were of the zombie-dressing Goth cult. They had discovered the spooky, ethereal quality of the outdoors at night, why primitive man had imagined spirits and monsters roaming about outside his shelter. It was no longer unusual for the rangers to see candlelight near the campsites as the new breed of campers performed their interpretations of witchcraft, voodoo and the like. Betty also said the phone was continuously ringing with young people trying to book campsites for the nights with a full moon.

  Why worry about it now? He had the weekend off and would be spending the morning with one pretty woman and the afternoon with another. Maybe the night.

  Suddenly, Lorene stopped paddling and turned her head back, raising a finger to her lips for silence. He put his double-ended paddle across his lap as he drifted behind her around a small point of land. Then he saw a pair of graceful white swans, gliding lazily along the water with a line of three nearly-grown cygnets trailing behind. The majestic birds ignored the humans and slowly moved away along the shoreline, allowing Shadow and Lorene to appreciate their beauty until the adults led the young ashore.

  “I wouldn’t have missed that for the world,” Lorene said. She was again dressed in a tee shirt and shorts, and Shadow had watched with interest when she’d applied sunscreen to her arms and legs before they’d left the pier. Her blond hair glistened in the morning light and her eyes shone with delight at observing the swans.

  “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” he commented, although it wasn’t the beauty of the swans he was thinking of. “Why don’t we take a break from paddling while we’re here? I’m thirsty and we might see more wildlife if we sit still.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Lorene reached down into the narrow hull of her kayak and retrieved a water bottle. “I see why you enjoy living out here,” she said, unsnapping the lid. “There aren’t a lot of places left in the world where you can get away from it all.”

  “Ah, but don’t forget; this is an isolated oasis, where swans are left to swim around and look pretty. Over on Knott’s Island, they think swan looks good on the table, full of stuffing.”

  “They eat the swans?” Her tone held horror.

  “Yep. Which presents a problem from the swan’s point of view. Both shores look like a safe haven, but things aren’t always the way they appear.” He pondered for a moment. “I thought this was my refuge, a place where no one would find out what my wife had accused me of.” His tone was bitter.

  “You can’t run away, Shadow.”

  “I know that now. I had a dirty little secret and now it’s out. You and a lot of other people suspect...” he held up his hand as Lorene began to interrupt, “...or maybe have lingering doubts, that I might have molested my daughter. I’ll probably end up losing my job here anyway. I’ve pissed Commissioner Barnett off a couple of times too many and my probation is up in a couple of weeks. But I’ve decided, no matter what, to hire a lawyer and challenge my ex-wife in court, so I can clear my name.” He suddenly realized it was the first time—even after all these months—he’d thought of her as his ex-wife rather than his wife.

  Again Lorene began to talk, but he overrode her by saying, “Enough of that! Listen to me go on.” He took a swig of water and then capped the bottle. “We came out here to enjoy the day. Let’s do it.”

  The silence seemed to hang over them as they paddled on again. Shadow regretted baring his feelings, even if only a little. He had lived in a companionless marriage for so long, he was unused to sharing his thoughts. To cover his awkwardness, he paddled up alongside Lorene.

  “So, allow me to obviously change the subject,” he said. “How’s the Jennings case going?” he asked.

  She grimaced. “Not well. We’ve got the DNA to link him to the Gordon murder, but nothing to connect him to any of the others. He says she had consensual sex with him. That’s not an unusual alibi to get around this type of evidence, but he’s sticking to it and we’ve got nothing else to shake him with.”

  “Nothing on the wolf hairs?”

  “Nada. Zip. Zilch. It’s like they fell into your friend’s hand from the sky.”

  “What about Jennings’s wolf tattoo?”

  She shrugged. “Not exactly evidence, is it?”

  “So you’re not sure he’s the killer?”

  “I’d lay odds on it. He had a prior sex conviction—and no, I’m not saying exactly what he did, so don’t ask. We’re still analyzing fiber evidence from his apartment though, scrapings from the cracks of his shoes, that sort of thing. I’m sure we’ll find more to incriminate him.”

  “But...” He began, but stopped. This was her specialty, investigating crimes. He would probably end up sounding stupid.

  “But what?”

  “Nothing. You F.B.I. guys and cops are handling this, I’m sure you’ll find out why in the end.”

  “Why?”

  “Why he did it.”

  “Sex, of course.”

  “But nobody was raped. Except the one you got DNA from and it could have been like he said—consensual sex.” It annoyed him that a man’s past could be used to make him a suspect in another crime, even if the man was Jennings. Shadow had once been guilty of statutory rape, technically, but marrying the underage girl after the fact had made it excusable in the eyes of the law.

  “Oh, sure. She goes for a jog, has sex with a man she has no known links to, then ends up buried with her throat torn out. The only reason the Ostrowski girl wasn’t raped was because your friend heard her cries.”

  “What about the first two girls?”

  “I told you. He might have raped only one—the one they found weeks later—because he found her more attractive, and left the other one alone. She was in the water too long to tell, remember. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Yeah. Perfect sense. But it still doesn’t feel right.”

  “There you go with your hunches again.” She smiled. “We got the killer. What’s wrong with you?”

  He shrugged. “I wish I knew. Both times—when I found the bodies—I had this strong feeling...okay, hunch.” He corrected himself when he saw her grinning. “There was something else involved—something, well, supernatural.”

  “I’ve never heard of a ghost arrested for rape or serial murder,” she said, still smiling. “So, if you’ll allow me to obviously change the subject, what’s the word about the park being shut down?”

  Shadow thought about telling her what Helen had said, but didn’t want to mention the other woman. Besides, he didn’t know what evidence Helen had and it might not be smart to mention the governor’s alleged plot. “Nothing new,” he said. “But the closing’s another thing that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t seem to tie into the killings, but I overheard...”

  Lorene snorted. “Okay, that’s it. You can’t let it go, can you? No more shop talk. We’ve only got the morning; let’s enjoy it.”

  Shadow realized she was right. He didn’t want to bore her. He planned to ask her for another date, a real date, before she left. She seemed to be having a good time, so far, and he wanted to keep it that way.

  They explored the coves south of Wash Woods for the rest of the morning. Lorene, not familiar with this part of the country, had never seen a great blue heron or osprey up close and asked him about everything.

  Then, about an hour before noon, he noticed dark clouds forming to the southwest.

  “We’d better head in,” he said. “We don’t want to be out on the bay if a storm comes up.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with the hurricane, does it?” asked Lorene. “I’m not used to this east coast weather.”

  Shadow had watched weather reports on Hurricane Adelaide. An odd storm, way early in the season, it was a threat but it was still far from the coast.

  “No,” he replied. “Adelaide won’t make landfall for a couple of days, if then. Besides, the Gulf Stream usually pushes them to the northeast when they hit Cape Hatteras. This is probably a summer storm brewing; they’re usually over quickly.”
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br />   Taking the lead, he headed directly east, toward the shore. “We’ll go straight in,” he told her. “Then we’ll head north along the shoreline, parallel to the wind. If it picks up too much, or at the first sign of lightning, we’ll run aground and walk back. I’ll fetch the kayaks later.”

  It seemed to take forever before they neared shore. They then turned north and paddled rapidly, the light craft skimming over the increasingly angry waves. They were close to the Wash Woods dock, near his house, when he heard the first roll of thunder. They reached the pier and were dragging the kayaks out of the water when a sheet of driving rain swept across the bay and pounded down on them. They were soaked to the skin by the time they had secured the kayaks. Shadow quickly unlocked the padlock, water dripping from his face, and opened the side door of the boathouse. They dashed in, Lorene carrying a small pack she’d had with her all morning.

  “Whoa,” Lorene said, shaking water from her hands. “Where did that downpour come from?”

  The interior of the boathouse was dim, so Shadow turned on the light. It smelled of mildew, with a hint of paint thinner.

  “Happens all the time,” he said, turning. “Mother Nature loves to mess with the tourists sunbathing up at Sandbridge Beach; she sends a lightning storm every day or so, just to let them know who’s boss.” His eyes dropped to her body and quickly shot away.

  “Oops.” Lorene looked down at her chest. “I guess I’ve entered a wet tee shirt contest. I’ll probably win, since the only other contestant is you.” She seemed amused with her disheveled state, her hair plastered to her head and water running down her arms and legs. “Good thing I’m wearing a bra.”

  “Uh, yeah, well...” Shadow didn’t know where to look. The sports bra was nearly as transparent as the wet tee shirt.

  “Take it easy,” she said. “Pretend I’m wearing a bathing suit.”

  “That would be better,” he replied. He forced himself to look at her, but avoided staring at her chest.