Searchlight: An Unkind Death
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year. Older werewolves are stronger and able to control their new forms. Younger werewolves tend to become mindless monsters, thus requiring the control of an Alpha. Each pack is registered, except for the inner city pack, and regulated to ensure safety. This was a two way street. You keep your werewolves locked up or far away during full moons and we will keep our villagers from chasing them in to a windmill with torches and pitch forks. I wasn’t entirely sure it was worded that way, but it’s about right.
The cops and forensic experts on the scene had already compiled all the evidence they needed and the lab coats would send down a verdict on who the victim was and who did the slaying. I could offer voodoo witch doctor advice and then be back home in time for lunch. It wasn’t a bad gig.
I walked around, not really bothering to look at the police officers who kept busy with mindless tasks as I surveyed the scene. Upon further inspection I found a trail of combat. A few blood spatters here, a piece of greenery scrapped clean and some nice claw marks on the side of a trash can. It made for a nice scene. It was clearly a struggle. How the person managed to keep running in the middle of a werewolf attack was beyond me. I doubt the 150 pound man was much of a fighter. He had a beard that screamed art major, or perhaps outdoorsman. Maybe he was a really rugged guy. Weeks of camping in some hell hole might give you an edge when getting batted around by a werewolf. Not much of an edge though. It didn’t explain the bullet hole either.
I puzzled over the bullet hole. I couldn’t so much as breath on the corpse until I got the go ahead or was briefed. Don’t want crazy wizards messing with your bodies. Might make them dance or sing songs, which would certainly upset the villagers.
Our boss didn’t like it when I called people villagers but that is often times how I see them. Scared, superstitious and above all working a daily grind to appease their wallets. Our boss didn’t care much for philosophy though. He much preferred money and results. I was nothing if not results oriented, so I did what I did and he happened to be pleased by it. We both work contracting agency within a new government bureau called Searchlight. It has a very Nancy Drew ring to it. The big thing is that with so many “normal” people committing crimes the police departments are a little busy to be brushing up on their werewolf folk lore. That means they can’t tell you that a werewolf can’t change in and out of form at-will thus making the use of a gun impossible for many hours. This meant we must have two killers, or a killer and a sadistic corpse mutilator, that or a guy who got mauled by a werewolf after getting a nasty case of shot-in-the-face syndrome. I hear it affects one in ten Americans, I read it on a thing someplace.
So various precincts call us in to tell them things they already know so that they feel better arresting the biology teacher who swears he didn’t use magic on that cop to get out of a speeding ticket, happens more often than you would think. There are actually quite a few people who practice magic and are employed in law enforcement. Unfortunately given the mental strength involved in most forms of magic they are often quickly promoted simply through merits of their intelligence and taken out of the pool of useful people. The eternal curse of the brilliant is to be promoted to where they can do no good, and to keep them away from harm.
So our agency works closely with the police and people of interested parties. We deal with the bumps in the dark so you don’t have to. As a side effect of the job we often employ things that make those bumps. Heck, I was already making an inventory of the contents of the black car’s trunk for some spell components. That would make me the bad guy in a lot of cheap fiction.
All I could do at the moment was wait for forensics to get stumped and finally decide to let me do that voodoo that I do so very well. It was the same old waiting game. I walked back over to the trunk of the car and popped the latch. The large trunk was filled with boxes and bags all labeled. I felt around and grabbed a bag of salt, a few pieces of herbs and a small wooden plank. I walked back to the crime scene with Jekyll in tow holding my materials. A cop shouted over at me.
“Hey, the boss says he is all yours. Bullet was made of silver.” Two short sentences filled with all the necessary pieces of information. Got to love the local PD. If the bullet was silver that means it was meant to kill a were-thing. This meant that we had another player on the field and he was the kind of guy who had access to silver bullets. Not a whole lot of information, but more than we had a few short seconds ago. It also meant our John Doe might be a were-wolf. It was going to be a bitch if we had to explain to one of the pack Alphas why some nut job offed one of his ilk.
I walked up and stabbed my plank in to the ground, being very careful to place it close to the body, but not close enough to interfere with any tricks. I placed a few herbs on top of it for organizational purposes, but it also added an air of dramatization. I have to make sure to put on some flair. Otherwise the villagers stop fearing the scary wizard. I reached in to the Ziploc bag and pulled out a few pinches of salt and scattered it in to the air. With a few mutters of Germanic prose the salt drifted lazily towards the cuts and bullet wounds. They settled in to the abrasions and tears and holes in the man’s skin. With a swift movement I tossed one of the dried herbs in to the air swiftly dropping a few lines of hasty French as the herb fell through the air resting about a foot above the man’s chest. Hanging balanced above the man the little leaf spun with the slightest movement of air. The plank would serve as a decent barrier, and I went to stand behind it.
I spent a few minutes remembering and organizing all the languages and words I needed to throw together to get the right results. With a few grand gestures with my left hand I reached in to my Ziploc of salt and cast a hand full of salt in to the air with a quick chant. The salt hung in the air and spun and flew about organizing a white outline of a person. The person looked very similar to the man the only difference being he was kneeling and heaving for air instead of prone and dead. With a careful grace the salt parted and formed the silhouette of a new person who walked up and placed something against the head of the dead man before the man keeled over and the salted washed over his now prone form. That told me what I had already gathered from the ballistics team and my own observations. The gun was fired at nearly point blank range.
It also told me that the man was shot before he died which means he lived through all the other wounds before being shot. So where was his other attacker when he was executed? Why was this man shot? Why was he mauled? What happened to his clothes? All valid questions. My little leaf was still spinning dutifully in the air above the corpse, which was now covered in a fine salty powder.
The game was, officially, afoot. I walked over to the curb and sat down with Jekyll at my back. His ever looming presence cast a shadow over my own. I fiddled with my cane as I contemplated the course of events. A simple murder with a simple motive, it had to be. Where was the twist? Was it in the mauling, or the gun shot? Was the twist the man himself? There were a ton of questions and I am sure just as many answers, it was just a matter of finding them. I hobbled to my feet and paced around the corpse. I had a few final bits of show magic available.
I pulled a single paper clip from my pocket and with a mumbled bit of Russian the paper clip unfolded and began to extend in place. Little hairs sprouted from the end of the paper clip as it grew. Finally in my hand was a paint brush. This next bit rarely worked, but when it did it was always impressive.
“This old bit again?” Jekyll liked to heckle me almost as I liked to annoy him. I crouched down by the body. Dipping the brush in the man’s blood I raised it and let any excess fluid drip off. This trick always let me paint a better picture of a person, pun completely intended. I took the brush and skimmed it across the man’s forearm. It left a grotesque and splotchy trail. The blood circled and pooled with only a little guidance from myself. Soon words began to form. If a person has a strong enough sense of identity it carries through even in death.
Alpha. That was the only word that shone through. I stood up and leaned on my cane. The wheels went to work s
pinning as I processed the single cryptic clue. “Jekyll take a picture of this and send it to Searchlight. This guy might be a werewolf. We could be looking at an Alpha slaying, at which time we might need to call in the big guns.” He snapped up a phone and clicked a picture sending it off to one of the lab geeks.
Back to the waiting game. The cops lined up around the corpse were stuck here with us until we could get a proper I.D. on the guy. This would be really easy if T.V. shows were real. We would just plug his picture in to a big data base and have an I.D. and family down here in negative seconds. Too bad I am stuck in the real world. I went back to the car and pulled a pair of folding lawn chairs out of the back seat. I plucked a flask out of the center console. Jekyll gave me a disapproving look as I walked past struggling with the things. He didn’t bother to help, and I didn’t ask for him to.
I plopped the chairs down and unfolded them. With a long sigh I flopped back in to the lawn chair about five feet from the body. I unscrewed the lid of my drink and took a sniff. I love the smell of good rum. A few sips and recapped the flask and drifted in to