Cry Wolf

by Charlie Adhara

  “Is that what you meant before about one of your keepers showing up on film days? Is he hoping to get discovered?” Cooper asked brightly. “Dreams of Hollywood?”

  Ryan laughed as they approached the sea lion exhibit. It was sort of an arena shaped exhibit with two levels: one where you could sit on cement benches and watch above ground, and the other where you could follow the trail into an artificial cave where a huge glass viewing window revealed a snippet of their underwater world. “Discovered? No, no, I don’t think so. But James is one of the most talented handlers I’ve ever known. Animals just listen to him and do whatever he says. I think Ms. Crane...appreciates his presence.”

  Cooper could hardly hear what Ryan had said as they walked up to the pool because the sea lions were barking so loudly. A cacophony of angry, sonorous yelps that reverberated in your throat.

  “Do they always do that?” Park asked, gesturing around them.

  “Or is this what you meant by getting grumpy if they’re not fed on time,” Cooper added.

  But Ryan wasn’t looking at him. He was frowning straight ahead, listening as they walked downhill into the artificial cave and below-water viewing area. Up ahead the bright blue glass was the only major source of light and Cooper’s eyes took a moment to adjust and take in the low fake rock ceilings and the stone steps directly across the cave that led back to ground level and presumably toward the back of the pool.

  “They’re raising an alarm. Something’s riled them up. In nature they use it to signal a predator is near, but—” Ryan stopped short and Cooper nearly walked into him.

  It took a second to see it. The man drifting with utter stillness at the top of the viewing window. His arms up around his head. The laces of dark gray running sneakers floating around his ankles.

  For a moment, Cooper was fixated on those sneakers. How strange it was to see shoes underwater. Then Park ran past him—through the cave and up the steps—and Cooper snapped to action.

  “Call an ambulance!” Cooper shouted at Ryan, running after Park. As he’d suspected, the steps led the other side of the pool, and at the top, Cooper was momentarily blinded by being back in the sunlight, the frantic barks ringing in his ears. After a second that felt like forever, he spotted the staff entrance at the back of the enclosure standing open and hurried in and across the slick, smooth rocks just in time to see Park dive into the water.

  “Oliver!” he shouted, and bit his tongue. Park had to go in. If that man was still alive...was drowning...they couldn’t wait. But Cooper didn’t know the first thing about sea lions. Did they bite? Could they kill?

  Cooper shuffled along the rocks, trying to find sight of Park, but couldn’t. It felt like a lot of time had passed, but he wasn’t sure if that was true. He wasn’t sure how much time Park would need to find the man and pull him to the surface either.

  The water seemed very blue. Because of the way the pool walls were painted, or in reflection of the sky, probably, though Cooper vaguely remembered it actually had something to do with the way light bends, how reds and oranges and yellows get lost in deep water. How lots of things do.

  A dark shape shot past too fast to be anything but an animal. Another, larger shape followed it, while rising closer and closer to the surface. A huge sea lion poked its head out of the water and snorted so loudly Cooper jumped, feet slipping beneath him. The creature disappeared briefly, then shot up again, heaving itself up onto the ground beside Cooper. Another smaller one quickly followed. Farther down the rocks, another three did the same. They were leaving the water, more scared of what was in there than being up here with him.

  Cooper was vaguely conscious of the crowd gathering across the exhibit, pointing at him and talking. A couple of people cheered rowdily, thinking they were about to see something amazing.

  Then, finally. Across the pool near the wall, Park broke the water’s surface, a man held to his chest, limp and unmoving. Bizarrely, Park’s jacket was wrapped around the man’s head, obscuring it entirely. It was...unsettling. Something about not being able to see his face, read his eyes, made Cooper feel like at any moment the man could jerk into motion and drag Park back below the surface. Their slow and awkward progress back to the rocks was torture.

  As soon as Park swam close enough, Cooper got on his knees and pulled the man’s frigid, waterlogged dead weight up. It was harder than he’d expected. The man felt unexpectedly shaped in Cooper’s hands. His hips stayed stiffly bent, legs at a forty-five-degree angle, even when Cooper managed to wrestle him to his back on the rocks. An injury? Rigor mortis? The rest of his body didn’t feel stiff, though.

  The cheers of the crowd had changed to shouts and screams, barely audible over the terrified barks of the sea lions as they all rolled and dove into the water once more. Park hoisted himself gracefully onto the rocks, and Cooper reached out and touched his arm briefly, needing to feel him alive and safe, before checking the man for a pulse.

  Nothing. It wasn’t impossible to come back from a drowning, though. The cold of the water might actually be helpful. He reached for the jacket covering the man’s face, prepared to do CPR, but Park grabbed his shoulder, stopping him.

  “No. Look.” He tugged the man’s dark shirt up, revealing four long, open gashes through the gut. “He was dead before he hit the water.”

  Cooper swallowed the wave of nausea. He felt absurdly lightheaded, overheated, and worst of all, a little bit like he might cry. Stupid. He had seen countless dead bodies before, many of them worse than this. But just because these wounds were exactly like the four thick scars on his own gut, he was on the verge of fainting. He hated it.

  “Are you okay?” Park asked.

  “Yes, fine. What were you saying?” Cooper asked quickly, realizing too late Park hadn’t been saying anything.

  Thankfully Park didn’t push it. “Look at this.” He tugged the dead man’s sleeve up, revealing bright greens, pinks, oranges and purples of a garden tattooed on his forearm.

  Cooper blew out a long breath. “James, I presume.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “Why did you cover his face?”

  Park hesitated and glanced around as if judging how clear a view the gathering crowd had. “Something’s...wrong,” he murmured.

  He shuffled over slightly to block the man from view and carefully lifted the jacket, just a little. Cooper still had to duck his head to see. Then jerked back in surprise.

  “Jesus,” he said, glancing at Park, who looked grim. “What—?”

  He leaned back in to get a closer look. James’s face was not remotely human looking. Not a wolf-wolf either. But some stage in between that Cooper rarely saw, and never more than a glimpse as one form smoothly shifted into another. He would almost have thought someone was playing a bad joke with a particularly gruesome Halloween mask, except for the very real way the skin pulled painfully tight over the elongated, protruding face.

  “What’s—why?”

  Park shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’s bad, Cooper. Very, very bad.”

  Chapter Four

  “I understand... Yes, I’ll tell him... Of course.”

  Cooper stepped out of the bathroom and lingered in the bedroom door, toweling his hair dry. He watched Park talk to Cola on the phone. It had been a long afternoon of managing the crime scene, calming down the crowds, making sure the right people were called and then being questioned themselves, decontaminated, picked over for transferred evidence. James was a werewolf and had clearly been murdered, so of course the Trust was taking over his case.

  Not Cooper and Park, though. They were already too involved, according to Cola. She had showed up on scene along with the Trust agents taking over the case looking harried and annoyed. As director, she almost never went out into the field herself, and Cooper wondered if she’d come today because of them. She’d certainly seemed to want them as far away from this as possib
le. Their orders were to go home and not worry about it. No small ask, for Cooper.

  “No, no word yet,” Park was saying. “We didn’t see him.”

  That would be Eli they were talking about. Park had texted him the news and told him to stay put, but Eli hadn’t been here when they’d finally made it back home, and his phone was shut off now. Cooper was ready to call up the Trust right then and there to report another victim, but Park had found a note on the kitchen counter in Eli’s handwriting, promising them both that he was fine and that he was going to lie low until he could find some answers. The final line: I’m not going down for this.

  “...I see... Yes, all right... Let us know.” Park disconnected and sat on the bed with a sigh. He’d already showered thoroughly and was halfway dressed, a nice pair of slacks loose and undone on his hips and an expensively soft-looking dark green button-down shirt hanging open. It made Cooper, still naked from his own intense hour-long shower, feel slightly obscene.

  “Anything new?” Cooper asked.

  Park rubbed his eyes and made a frustrated gesture. “James Finnigan bled out from four deep lacerations to the lower abdomen. They’re still waiting on toxicology.”

  “Will the tox report explain the—” Cooper gestured at his own face.

  “It must. I can’t imagine any other explanation. It shouldn’t be possible at all.”

  “I don’t understand. He’s a wolf, right? Isn’t it just, ah, slipping?”

  Park looked surprised.

  “Eli told me about it,” Cooper explained. “Said he’s pretty good.”

  “He’s not just pretty good,” Park said. “He’s unbelievable. I’ve never heard of anyone who can do what he does. I wouldn’t even really call it slipping, it’s too precise. Individualized. James’s face, spine and hip girdle were more traditionally slipped because everything was progressing through the normal process of shifting.”

  “Why is that impossible then? I’ve seen you look, ah, slipped.”

  Park grimaced a bit and seemed to consider his words carefully. “It’s a lot like balancing on a tightrope. The body wants to fall one way or another. For most of us it’s horribly...disorienting and uncomfortable and takes serious focus and fine muscle control to hold an extreme slip like that. Muscle control you definitely don’t have when you’re dead.”

  “You think something was keeping him that way. Some kind of drug or toxin.”

  “Something strong. He was dead in the water about an hour before we found him.”

  “An hour? How did nobody notice him?”

  “They found the remains of a sandbag tied to his waist. Seems like someone kept him weighed down, before it either accidentally or intentionally ripped. Sand leaks out slowly, body floats up. Either way, the killer bought themselves enough time to get away while still ensuring James would be found today. As dramatically and publicly as possible.” He hesitated, then said with meaning, “Cola wants us to call if we hear anything from Eli.”

  Cooper blinked. “She can’t be serious. He didn’t do this.”

  “He was being blackmailed by the victim. He’s admitted to stalking the victim. We can’t account for his whereabouts at the time of death. We can’t account for his whereabouts now. None of this is a good look.”

  “You can’t possibly think he’s guilty,” Cooper protested.

  Park bit at the scar in his lip, contemplating that. Finally, he said, “I don’t think he’d get us involved if he’d planned to kill James all along.”

  “Nice,” Cooper said sarcastically. “I hope you stand up for me with that much conviction someday. You seriously have no idea where he might have gone?”

  “No. I mean, we did have that one conversation that if we turned forty and we’re both still single and one of us is on the run for murder, we’d—”

  “All right, all right, point taken. Cola give you anything else?”

  “Yes, his name popped up in a recent report. There was a fire at James Finnigan’s building four days ago.”

  “What?”

  “No casualties. They were able to contain it. But James’s apartment, the suspected origin of the blaze, was entirely gutted. There’s an open investigation, but they were leaning toward accidental grease fire. I imagine they’ll want to take a closer look now that he’s been murdered.”

  “It feels like too big a coincidence not to be arson. Would—would Eli do that?”

  Park frowned. “He already admitted to breaking into James’s place. If he thought burning it down was the only shot at destroying the recording, and he could be sure no one would get hurt or that the fire would spread, then yes. I think it’s possible he would. But not an apartment building like that. He wouldn’t put the neighbors at risk.”

  “Four days ago, you said? Where’s James been living since?”

  “A hotel. St. Regis.”

  Cooper raised an eyebrow. “Fancypants. Blackmail must be paying well.

  “I think most people’s finances benefit from multiple streams of income,” Park said carefully.

  “You think he was blackmailing someone besides Eli?”

  “Someone set that fire. And someone killed him. If not Eli, I’d say there’s a good chance he was blackmailing someone else as well. Otherwise you’re saying the blackmail and death are totally unrelated. What are the chances of that?” Park shook his head and started buttoning up his shirt.

  “I guess you’re right,” Cooper said, reaching for a pair of ratty sweatpants. Stopped. Took in what Park was wearing again. “Why are you all dressed up?”

  Park looked down at himself and, to Cooper’s astonishment, blushed. “I thought—did you not want to go to dinner, then?”

  “Oh.” Cooper blinked. He’d completely forgotten they’d planned to do that. “No, I mean, all right. Not like we’re doing anyone any good here. Where?”

  Park was still spending way too much time and attention on his buttons. “I thought we could go to that Burmese place you like. Maybe walk around after. Get a drink.”

  “That sounds nice,” Cooper said honestly. He put his sweatpants back and tossed his towel on the bench, unable to stop thinking about Eli. How he hadn’t been able to even look at Cooper when he spoke of James. How relaxed and safe he’d appeared sitting in front of the TV just that morning, with Boogie in his lap. And now he was out there somewhere, alone, frightened of being pinned for a murder he didn’t commit, and more than likely about to do something rash.

  I’m not going down for this. He understood Eli’s paranoia. At first glance, James’s death seemed good for Eli. But with the recording still MIA and the Trust now on the case and more likely to find it first, things were actually a lot more dire than even before...

  Instead of grabbing nicer clothes, he walked over to Park, still sitting on the bed.

  Park watched his naked approach with interest. “Unless you wanted to just stay in, tonight,” he suggested innocently.

  “That sounds nice, too.” Cooper ran his hands over Park’s shoulders, finding the tense spots and pressing them out, arching a little when Park placed a soft, loose kiss against his belly. “Or... I was thinking...maybe we could go somewhere downtown.”

  Park jerked back, looking briefly confused—it was not a neighborhood they normally chose to spend time in—before understanding hit. He sighed, a ghost of a whisper against Cooper’s skin. “Somewhere downtown like the Regis, maybe?”

  “Why, Mr. Park.” Cooper batted his eyelashes. “Are you suggesting some sort of rendezvous at a hotel? I’m a nearly married man, you know.”

  Park stood, dragging his hands over Cooper’s bare skin, and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Mmm, so am I. Let’s be bad this one last time and go snoop around a dead blackmailer’s room.”

  Cooper smiled. “You know, no one says sweet nothings quite like you.”

  * * *

&
nbsp; The woman at the front desk of the St. Regis Hotel didn’t even blink at their badges, just handed over James Finnigan’s room key with a bored expression. Either they weren’t the first Trust agents to come that day or the typical guest list this place attracted was no stranger to crime. Cooper bet both.

  “You know, they do weddings here,” Park said as they made their way through the lobby to the elevators.

  Cooper looked around the enormous room packed to the brim with red velvet, gold inlay, and animal skin footstools. “So?” he said.

  “So,” Park repeated, calling up the elevator, “if you see something you like here, we can make that happen.”

  “We can make that happen,” Cooper repeated. “I’m sorry, when is your audition for Glengarry Glen Ross again? Was it—was that it right there?”

  Park shook his head as the doors opened. They stepped into the elevator and he chose the floor. “I just want you to get the wedding you want. Whatever that may be.”

  “Okay,” Cooper said. “I appreciate it. And if I ever wake as an aging silent film star obsessed with her past, I might take you up on that. But in the meantime, I’m more likely to want to get married in the sea lion pool, corpse included, than here in this building.”

  “It’s your lack of hyperbole that really made me fall in love with you. Wrote half my vows about it.”

  Cooper started to shake his head with a smile, then froze. The elevator opened on James’s floor, and Park stepped out and had to turn around and catch the door from closing before Cooper noticed. He stepped out into the hall, a little dazed.

  “What’s wrong?” Park asked.

  “You haven’t actually written any vows, right?” Cooper asked. “I mean we—we haven’t even set a date.”

  Park’s cheeks turned a bit pink. “I was just doing some research. I really don’t know much about it. Some forums suggested getting started on the vows early if you weren’t going traditional,” he mumbled. “It’s only a rough draft.”