Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  Raymond DeClerk was back on the streets, limping around in his parka and probably beating another woman senseless at this very moment. So to hell with it. Steal a gun out of the evidence room and blow a hole in the braindead son of a bitch. Toss the piece in the Willamette and go home. Sleep the sleep of the righteous.

  At least that was the plan. Instead, Gallagher spent the day haunting DeClerk. Watching him openly on the street and following him into stores. Eye-balling him every time until Parka Man got the sweats and ran home to his mother's house.

  Two hours sitting in the Cherokee watching the door but DeClerk didn't come out again. He went home and threw a pork loin on the barbecue while Amy made salad. They watched Pale Rider and munched popcorn. Amy spent half the movie texting her friends.

  Sipping coffee the next morning, Gallagher went over the DeClerk case in his head. Trying to uncover something he'd missed, some thin wedge he could split open and crucify the prick. Nothing came. Even on the drive to work, bumpering up on the Burnside bridge to the west side, nothing came to him. A sickening truth flapped into his guts and nested for the winter. The Rae Dawn Munroe homicide would remain unsolved. An open case poisoning Gallagher's desk until it was archived in the cold room.

  Turning a corner into his cubicle he damn near dropped the coffee in his hand. “What the hell is this?”

  Robertson's desk was awash in loose paper and unorganized files. Photos of the Elizabeth Riley crime scene were pinned to the cubicle wall, along with the police flyer. Lara Mendes was busy hanging up a large city map. “Morning,” she muttered through pushpins clenched in her teeth. “Nice of you to join us today, detective.”

  “Look at this mess.” Gallagher gathered up the stray paper that had migrated onto his pristine desk.

  “Yeah, sorry. It kind of got away from me.”

  “No shit.” He retrieved the paperwork waiting in his in-tray. Memos, policy changes, staff announcements. He tossed it wholesale into the bin and turned his eyes to the rudimentary evidence board she had created. “What's all this?”

  “Where have you been?” There was an edge to her tone.

  “Went fishing. You gonna tell me what you got or do I gotta guess?”

  “Couple of developments.” Lara leveled her tone. Still pissed but eager to share what she'd learned so far. “Our victim may as well be a Jane Doe. Two years ago, she legally changed her name to Elizabeth Riley. Unfortunately her old identity got lost somewhere in the process.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “I chewed out a couple of department heads over it. They promised to look harder but I'm pretty sure they just wanted to get off the phone. I did find a bartender who remembered our vic. According to her, Riley was divorced and bitter over it.”

  “Who's the ex-husband?” Gallagher sat on the edge of her desk, crumpling paper.

  “Again, the records were lost and the bartender doesn't remember Riley ever mentioning his name.”

  “Too bad. We need to talk to him. Even if this isn't a homicide, we need him.”

  “It is a homicide. The M.E. report confirmed it.”

  “Where's the report?”

  “Under your ass.”

  He straightened and rifled through the mess for the report. An envelope fell to the floor. He picked it up and looked at it. Sealed but unmarked. “What's this?”

  “Request for a new partner.”

  “Good.” He took a pushpin and fixed the envelope to the wall. Skimmed through the medical report, flipping pages quickly. An eyebrow went up. “Semen?”

  “Yeah. They're trying to pull the DNA from it.”

  “Anything else in here?” His eyes went back to the report.

  “Blood under the fingernails. The DNA will take a while but Caroline identified the blood types. It's in there.”

  “Type O blood, also canine blood and…what?”

  “Yet to be determined,” she said. “Blood sample that's neither human nor dog. She's working on it.”

  Gallagher scratched his chin, mulling it over. “So she's attacked, possibly raped. She fights the guy off, gets meat under her fingernails.”

  “But she's still alive when the dogs go at her,” Lara outlined the rest. “She fights them off, getting dog blood under her nails.”

  “So the dogs actually killed her, not her attacker.”

  “Possibly.”

  Gallagher looked over the photos on the wall, then down to her desk. Sitting atop loose paper was a yellow legal pad scribbled with notes. Books lying open, pages dog-eared. “What is all this stuff?”

  Lara shrugged. “Desperation. I'm trying to puzzle out our attacker.”

  He glanced over her notes. “A psych profile? Don't waste your time.”

  “There's the semen, right? Whether he paid for it or raped her, he attacks her when he's done. That speaks volumes. It suggests someone who hates women.”

  “It's guesswork. Where does it get you?”

  She looked at him. Was he being funny? “It's an insight into our perp.”

  “It's flashy and the Lieutenant will love it but does it actually help us find the guy? No. Put your time elsewhere.”

  “Why be so narrow-minded?” She lifted her hands, palms out. “We have nothing.”

  “We have a ton of leads on the tip line.” He counted off the fingers of his left hand. “Two callers claim they did it and three more swear their neighbor did it. And you and I have to follow up every one of those concerned citizens.”

  Lara leaned back into the wall and crossed her arms. Going through the calls from the tip line was a tedious, hateful process. Like shoveling shit from a sitting position.

  Gallagher smiled, loving nothing more than bursting expectations. “I got one dude who says he's the devil himself and he wants to tell us why he did it.” He fished a quarter from his pocket. “Wanna flip for it?”

  THEY suffered through the messages on the tip line, each caller crazier than the last. Lara endured it, grinding her molars until her jaws ached. Half of the callers sounded drunk or strung out. What was wrong with these people? She understood having a beef with a neighbor or someone at work, but to call up a police info line and accuse them of murdering someone? She rubbed the bridge of her nose and went on to the next message. Three days into her inaugural homicide investigation and this was their only lead. These paranoid shut-ins with nothing better to do than watch the news and call Crime Stoppers hoping to make fifty bucks to rat out their serial-killer, baby-kidnapping, dog-kicking neighbors.

  Gallagher grinned through it all, knowing full well she hated every minute of it. When they had screened every excruciating nutbar message, he divided up the callers between them. Now she had to actually talk to these people. Looking through the list, she realized he had given her the number for the guy who claimed to be the devil.

  “Satan?” She held up the page to him. “Seriously? Can't you take this guy?”

  “You got a problem talking to Mister Satan?”

  “I'm Catholic.” She couldn't think of anything else.

  “All the more reason.” He just laughed. A sinister, grating chuckle like some vaudeville diablo.

  THE dogs came out at night, running as a pack along the banks of the river, through the empty industrial yards and over the loamy hillside ground. The alpha led them up the riverbank and onto the crushed stone of the railway line. Following the tracks into the city, they traveled unseen, unheard.

  The wolf made forays off the tracks and onto the dark streets, nose in the air, filtering the stench of the city for one particular stink among the many. The dogs grew restless and bored. Fights broke out, one ragged animal challenging another over its place in the pack order. When the sky turned gray in the predawn hours, the pack trotted back up the rail line to the river, retreating to their den to sleep and wait.

  RAIN pelted the streets into a soggy mire, an unending drizzle that crept into everyone's bones. The police flyers flapped in the wind and melted in the downpour, the photo of the dead w
oman shredding into a gray sludge down the creosote poles.

  Gallagher watched the rain run down the window, working his way through the tip line, each caller turning out to be a flake. Lonely or bored or just wanting attention. Something to break up the monotony of the day.

  When he had time he kept his vigil outside Raymond DeClerk's mother's house. He'd park right out front and watch the front windows. A curtain would fold back and he knew DeClerk saw him out here. The shitbag stayed inside and sent his mom limping out to the Kwiki-Mart for smokes. Small comfort though. The case had dissolved to nothing and there was little left to do. Add to that the stone-cold Riley homicide and Gallagher now had two open cases on his desk, ruining his run of six consecutive closures.

  His phone went off. Lieutenant Vogel wanted an update on “this dead woman and dog file” and he wanted it now. Gallagher groaned but wasn't in a position to piss off the big man any further. Said he was on his way.

  He took one last look at the house and then turned the ignition.

  LIEUTENANT Vogel propped an elbow on the cubicle wall, dwarfing everything around him. His mouth soured, unhappy with what he was hearing.

  Lara avoided her boss's eyes like a student with unfinished homework. Gallagher slouched in his chair, nonchalant as he explained how their case had turned to shit in their hands.

  “So you got nothing.” Lieutenant Vogel remained unfazed. Foremost among the cops in Homicide Detail, he was a magnet for bad news.

  “We searched the area, canvassed the neighborhood and followed up every wingnut on the tip line.” Gallagher shrugged in surrender. “Nothing.”

  “We're still waiting on DNA.” Lara spoke up, unwilling to let it be a complete disaster. “We might get a hit when it's put into the system.”

  “Yeah and I might win the lottery,” Vogel said. “You've gone three, four days? Any chance of solving this is evaporating fast.”

  Gallagher stretched out his legs. “Yup.”

  The Lieutenant looked over the chaos of Lara's workspace. “Do you always keep such a clean house, Mendes?”

  “Sorry.” Her cheeks turned red. “I'm trying to build a profile on our perp.”

  “Really?” Vogel perked up at that, glancing over her evidence board. When he spoke, he spoke to her but squared his eyes on her partner. “Now that shows initiative.”

  Gallagher beamed at his Lieutenant, as if proud of his own lack of initiative. It was his personal mission to drive Vogel batshit until the big man popped a blood vessel and keeled over. “Too bad it stalled out too. But there was one interesting development.” Gallagher shot to his feet and plucked the unmarked envelope off the wall. Her official request for a new partner. He crunched it into Lara's palm and folded her fingers around it. He smiled at her. “Detective?”

  Vogel straightened, hopeful for any fragile snowflake of good news.

  “It needs work.” Lara opened a drawer, tossed the envelope in and shut the drawer. She watched Gallagher's grin drop from his face. Vogel simply looked sad.

  The desk phone chimed. Lara picked it up.

  Lieutenant Vogel chin-wagged toward the aisle, waving at Gallagher to follow. They went to the kitchen where Vogel searched for a clean glass. “How's Detective Mendes working out?”

  “She's all right.”

  “Just all right?”

  “She's good. Thorough, persistent.” Gallagher rifled through the fridge, opening other cop's lunches. There was a banana with the name “Bingham” written on the skin in marker. “But there's a personality conflict. I'm no good mentoring these kids.”

  Vogel searched cupboard after cupboard but there was never clean glassware. “Make do.”

  Gallagher went on, a wad of banana bulging his cheek. “You know who's good at this? LaBayer. He loves teaching. He and Mendes would get along great.”

  “LaBayer's busy. Deal with what you got. Is there any water in there?”

  Gallagher fished out a bottle of water, also marked “Bingham” and tossed it to his boss. The big man said thanks and left.

  Gallagher looked out the window. The rain had stopped. He didn't hear Lara come in behind him.

  “The animal shelter called,” she said. “They finished with the dog.”

  “The carcass near the body?”

  “The same.” Lara jangled a set of keys. “I'm heading up there. Are you coming?”

  “Sure. Hold this.”

  He handed her the half-eaten banana and left the kitchen, passing Latimer and Bingham on their way in. Bingham looked at her.

  “Are you eating my lunch?”

  10

  TRAFFIC HAD STALLED on the highway so Lara shot over to Martin Luther King and headed north. Gallagher sat shotgun. Neither spoke, listening to the dispatcher call out the make and model of a stolen car.

  “We had an agreement.” Gallagher broke the ice.

  Lara swerved around a delivery truck. Said nothing.

  He went on. “You were going to request another partner. Remember? We agreed.”

  “Not with a case going cold. It will look like I'm giving up.”

  “What, you worried about your wunderkind status?”

  She gritted her teeth. “Why don't you ask for a new partner?”

  “Missing the point, chief. I don't want a partner.”

  “Right.” Lara took the Lombard exit. “You're the cowboy.”

  BARKING dogs. Just the sound of it and Lara wanted to turn around and walk back out the door. When they pulled up to the Multnomah County Animal Services, Gallagher said he knew the head guy, Pablo somebody or other. The woman at the front desk waved them through and Gallagher was already opening the door to the kennels.

  It was loud in the lobby but inside the kennel it was deafening. A long galley of pens ran both sides of a big space where the noise bounced off the cinder block walls. Each pen had a metal grate door, snouts poking through the mesh. German shepherds barked and paced their pens. A dachshund and two Labs coiled up, sleeping through the racket. A pit bull, chin on the floor, watching everything. A Dalmatian limped round its pen in never-ending circles, unwilling to lie or sit.

  Lara winced at the crack of each bark, loathing every minute of it. Her revulsion of dogs was deep, maybe irrational, but there it was just the same. The smell wasn't helping matters, pungent with dog urine and disinfectant.

  A tall man with dreadlocks and a stained lab coat knelt before a cage at the far end of the hall. Beside him stood a teenage girl, a volunteer, listening intently to his instructions.

  “Pablo!” Gallagher hailed the guy but his voice was lost in the din. He walked over and waved when the man looked up. Pablo straightened up, said something to the volunteer then met Gallagher halfway.

  “Hey G.” Pablo shook the detective's hand. “How's business?”

  “Booming,” Gallagher yelled back. “How do you work in this noise?”

  Pablo pulled a spongy tube from his ear. “These. The kind musicians use.” He wagged his chin at something behind Gallagher. “Hey, is she okay?”

  Lara stayed near the double doors. Ramrod straight, trying to keep her cool around all of these crazed dogs.

  Gallagher grinned. “She's more of a cat person. Is there somewhere else we can talk?”

  They went back out to the lobby, where the air was cooler and considerably less rank. Lara shook off the gooseflesh, hating herself for being paralyzed like that. How could anyone work in all that chaos?

  “Do you want to see it?” Pablo turned to both of them.

  “The carcass? No. Just gimme the details.”

  Pablo stepped past Gallagher, extending his hand to Lara. “I'm Pablo, by the way. You working with this ill-mannered lout?”

  “Unfortunately,” she said. Charmed. “Detective Mendes. Did you perform the autopsy on the animal?”

  “No, Stella did. She's the expert in that department. But I have her report.” Pablo handed her a copy. “This was a Staffordshire boxer mix. Male, about three years old.”

&
nbsp; “What's that in dog years?” Lara didn't know from dogs. “Still a pup?”

  “More like a teenager. Aggressive, with a hell of a chomp. We checked the stomach contents and found human tissue. But if you need the DNA profile, you'll have to send it to the lab yourself.” Pablo shrugged. “We just don't have the budget for that kind of stuff.”

  “Was there anything wrong with this dog?” Gallagher asked. “Did it have rabies or something?”

  “No. No distemper either. There was no ID chip, so it was possibly a stray.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Lara looked up from the report. “A pack of dogs killing and eating someone?”

  “I've seen dogs and cats chew on their owners after death. You know, trapped in an apartment with their dead owners and starving. But this, dogs stalking and devouring a person? Never. That's something wild animals do. Wolves and coyotes, you know?”

  The doors swung open and the teenage volunteer came out leading a shorthaired terrier. Pablo excused himself and went to help return the dog to a mom and daughter. Gallagher watched the family coo over the animal.

  Lara stepped away, eyes drawn to a wall decorated with flyers for missing pets. A collie named Rocky and a cat named Mephisto. Photos and contact information. Some flyers offered rewards, others simply bargaining on the kindness of strangers. Typed up neatly or scrawled in marker, each bill pleading for their pets to come home. Hundreds of them, running the length of the wall.

  Lara read one after another, noting the sadness in some pleas, the perfunctoriness in others. Something about it all nagged at her. Where were all these dogs and cats now? Were they dead in a ditch somewhere or shivering and dehydrated far from home? Were they taken in by someone kind or snatched up as bait for a dog fighting pit? “Gallagher? Take a look at this.”