Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  He crossed the floor. Ran his eyes over the lost pets. Daisy, Muffin, Oswald, Killer, Freddy. “Did you lose your cat?”

  “Look at all these animals,” she said. “What if we're wrong about the dogs that mutilated the vic? We just assumed they were strays. What if they actually belonged to someone?”

  “The perp?”

  “He used them to cover his tracks. Eat the evidence.”

  Gallagher scanned through the snapshots of lost dogs. He turned and hollered at his friend. “Pablo? You get complaints here, yeah? People calling about their neighbor's dogs and whatever?”

  Pablo came up, wiping his hands on a rag. “All the time.”

  “Any complaints about an asshole with a lot of dogs? Big ones. I mean, anything out of the ordinary?”

  “We get calls about pit fights, breeding pens. Offhand, I can't think of anything unusual.”

  Lara brightened at the prospect of a lead. Any lead. “Do you log those calls?”

  Pablo stuffed the rag into a back pocket. “We have to.”

  “Can we see them?”

  PABLO led them to his office and called up the complaint log on a lethargic desktop. The calls were logged as they came in: date, time, location and the name and number of the caller. Not everyone offered their name. Following those details were the nature of the complaint, notes on any call back and whether the complaint was investigated. If investigated, the name of the humane officer was listed along with their report.

  The log went back six months. And it was huge. Some days they logged as many as twenty calls, other days just a few. The log was chronological, with no way to narrow the search by animal type or location. No way to make it a quick job.

  “Christ.” Gallagher peered over Lara's shoulder. “We're gonna be here all day.”

  He's already looking for an excuse to leave, she thought. “I can do this if you need to be somewhere. But you'll have to pick me up later if you take the car.”

  “We got nothing else to push, let's do this.” He pulled up a chair. “You go through the list, I'll start calling anybody you red flag.”

  They were actually going to work together? She stopped and looked right at him. It caught him off guard. “What?”

  She got started, plowing through the catalogue of complaints. He made two calls into the precinct then put his phone away. Watched Mendes scroll down the call log but he couldn't sit still. He ducked out.

  Back in the kennels, walking the rows of cages, a pinscher barked at him and a collie slept. The crazed Dalmatian kept circling its pen. A long-eared bluetick hound thumped its tail on the floor as he passed. Gallagher kneeled down and the hound licked his fingers through the cage. He had wanted a dog for a long time but the timing was never right. Getting one when Amy was younger seemed a bad idea for a struggling single parent, and now that she was older, neither of them were home enough to look after one properly. The poor dog would die of loneliness or boredom. But maybe a dog like this would be better. An older dog who wouldn't tear the place apart the way a rambunctious puppy would.

  The teenaged volunteer was sweeping out a pen. He hollered at her. “Hey! What's the story on this old hound? Is he looking for a home?”

  “No,” she said. “Samson got lucky. We found his owners. They're picking him up today. Isn't that great?”

  When he got back to the little office Mendes was gone. The computer abandoned. A pad of paper lay next to the mouse, scribbled with notes. He skimmed through it. Names and addresses, a few scattered question marks.

  “Hey.” Lara swung back into the room, uncapping a bottle of water.

  “I thought you ran out on me.”

  “I needed some air. The smell in here…”

  “What is it with you and dogs anyway?”

  “I just don't like them. Never have.”

  He looked at her. “You keep yourself buttoned up tight, don't you?”

  “What do you want, a sob story?”

  “God no.” He wagged the notepad at her. “You find anything?”

  “You thought our tip line was bad? You wouldn't believe the nonsense this place gets. People call in to complain about dog crap on the sidewalk. Not once in a while, I mean nonstop. There must be a dozen calls about that alone, every day.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And here I am, complaining about the complainers. It's contagious.”

  He eased up a little. The kid made a funny, maybe she wasn't all bad. “So what'd you find?”

  “A couple of possibles popped up, may be worth a call back. Then this showed up.” She circled an entry at the bottom of the notepad. “A complaint about a pack of dogs running wild up near the industrial yards.”

  “Not that far from our crime scene.”

  “A coincidence, maybe. But then I found this.” She flipped the page and circled another entry. “Two days earlier, someone called in about a vagrant squatting in that area. And the squatter has a bunch of pit bulls with him.”

  He took the pad from her. “Did Pablo send someone to check it out?”

  “Twice. No sign of the vagrant or the dogs.”

  Gallagher straightened at that. “What's the address?”

  11

  NORTH TERMINAL ROAD WINDS a path through industrial yards and scrub oak. Squat buildings and potholed gravel lots hemmed in by chain-link fence. Broken pavement thudded under their tires as they drove past empty structures and ghost industries, the ground hollowed out and poisoned.

  Lara slowed as they rumbled past a yard of sea crates. Gallagher rode shotgun, scanning the road. A few trucks passed them, then one car. No pedestrians.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Dunno. Dogs running loose. A squatter's camp.” He eyeballed his side of the road. Flat-topped bunkers of cinder block, a Quonset hut. “Slow down.”

  Lara coasted the car to a crawl and lowered her window.

  “There.”

  She pulled to the shoulder and leaned in to see what he was pointing at. A dog slunk out from the shadow of a tree, trotted across the road and vanished into shade again.

  “See where he goes.”

  The car rolled forward into a gravel lot, tires sloshing through potholes. The dog stepped into the sunlight again, ambling lazily through a patch of weeds. It stopped when it heard the car. Turned its head to them, tongue swinging. Gallagher couldn't make out the breed from here. It was ugly and big. The dog went on, moving northeast until it vanished into another shadow.

  Lara kept a slow momentum, careful not to spook the animal. They rolled under the shade trees but the dog was gone. Just the empty road. “We lost it.”

  “Keep going. Let's see what's back here.”

  Bleeding out from behind a stand of pines stood a small bungalow. Old and unused, the paint peeling and the porch listing badly. The windows were crossed with duct tape, a cartoonish appearance of dead eyes.

  Lara studied the house. “Cute.”

  Movement on the porch. A dog rose up out of nothing. Not the dog they trailed but some other dog. Some other bastard breed. The dog watched the car, mouth closed. It padded down the steps and stood in the crabgrass. Hair rising up its back.

  “He looks friendly.” Gallagher popped his door handle.

  Lara stopped him. “He looks rabid. Let's call animal control. They can take care of it.”

  “And what, sit here for an hour while they mosey on over?” He pushed the door open and stepped out. His right palm balancing over the butt of the service issue on his belt. When he straightened up, the dog was gone. “Where'd he go?”

  “Took off behind the house.”

  Gallagher closed the door and crossed the yard.

  Lara stayed under the wheel. Shit. The last thing she wanted was more dogs. Especially these big, ugly mothers here. But the cowboy stood on the bottom porch step, looking back her way. She bit down and got out.

  They clomped up the porch, stretching over the third step which had rotted clean through. Gallagher banged on the door. “Police! Open
the door!”

  No answer, no noise. Lara peered into the window. Dark.

  Noise spun their heads around in unison. The dogs were back, the one they'd followed and the one risen from its vigil on the porch. A third dog was with them, this one a pure pit bull. The dogs trotted back and forth across the yard, sniffing the air. One barked, then they all barked. Guttural snaps at intruders in their territory. The dogs paced, knocking into one another, but did not advance.

  “Bold buggers, aren't they?” Gallagher watched them from his vantage point.

  Lara unsnapped her holster. She fought back the urge to just unsheathe and start shooting.

  “Oh look,” Gallagher said. “The door's open.” He punched his elbow through the small plate-glass window. The glass snapped and he bashed out the remaining shards, knocking the frame free of glass.

  “Whoa,” she said. “We don't have a warrant.”

  “What warrant? The door just happened to be open, so we took a look.” He reached through the frame and groped for the lock.

  “Stop. We're not cutting corners.“

  A roar from inside cut her off. Gallagher snapped his arm back. A snout shot through the window frame, teeth catching his sleeve. The dog inside the house shook its head savagely. Would not let go. Gallagher yanked his gun free and cracked the dog hard across the nose until it let go.

  Nails skittered across the floor and the dog was gone. Gallagher looked at his torn sleeve, checked his arm. No blood.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Are you alright?” She took his arm. “Let me see.”

  “He didn't break the skin.” He peered through the broken frame. Nothing moved within. He reached back inside, turned the lock and withdrew quickly. Pushed the door open.

  “Gallagher, we need to do this right or not at all.”

  “You want to stay out here with them?” He regarded the dogs pacing the front yard and went through. The dogs barked. She stepped over the threshold.

  It was dark. Curtains drawn, the windows yellow squares in the gloom. The air was stale and ripe with animal smells. A foyer that opened onto a living room on the left, a kitchen on the right. A hallway with doors, then stairs to the basement.

  Gallagher swept the living room. A torn up sofa, its padding bleeding out. Trash over the scuffed floors, more of it on the coffee table. Cartons of rotting takeout and crushed beer cans. A hockey stick propped up in the corner. Flies buzzed the room, dotting the window. The TV was on, flickering pale light over the filth. Grainy porn played onscreen.

  “This is rank.” She covered her nose.

  “Ten bucks says there's severed heads in the icebox.” He tried the light switch but the overhead stayed dark. Burned out or disconnected. “We need a flashlight.”

  “Gloves too.” She looked back to the front door. “In the car.”

  “Stay here.”

  A racket rose from the back of the house. Thuds. Clicking claws. Barking. Dogs roared up the back steps and charged into the narrow hallway. Three, maybe four vicious looking animals. Jaws popping.

  Lara drew her weapon. More goddamn dogs.

  Gallagher snatched up the hockey stick and charged, hollering and swinging the stick like some crazy person. “Get outta here! Get!”

  The dogs backpedaled, confused and cowed. Gallagher smacked the nearest hard across the snout. It scrambled for the back, the other two scampered through an open door. He pulled the door shut, trapping the dogs inside a bedroom. A clattering sound farther down as the others sailed through the back door.

  Lara swung the barrel down and held her breath. Muffled barking from the closed room but that was all. Her hand was shaky from gripping the pistol so tightly.

  “Those mutts come back,” he said, “just start shooting.”

  He went out the door, came back with two Maglites and latex gloves. They searched the house.

  She cleared the kitchen, finding more trash and flies. Bowls of dog food on the floor, kibble scattered across the linoleum. She couldn't step anywhere without crunching it underfoot. She sifted through the trash on the small table but found nothing useful. The dusty cupboards held a few dishes, a can of wasp killer. The fridge last. She gripped the chrome handle and scenes from a dozen horror movies flickered through her imagination. The surprise waiting in the refrigerator.

  The interior bulb was out. It stank but all it held was rancid leftovers and cloudy jars. Two cans of Pabst, still in the plastic ring.

  Gallagher checked the room off the hallway. Wire hangers on the floor. A crucifix on the wall, hung over a bed that was no longer there. He skipped the room where he had trapped the crazy dogs. They scratched at the wood, noses snorting at the crack under the door.

  He played the flashlight over the dark bathroom. The sink and backsplash were filthy with some dark stain. He touched it. Black and brittle, it flaked away under his fingertip.

  They reconnoitered at the back stairwell. “No heads in the fridge,” she said. “You owe me ten.”

  “Maybe he's got a meat freezer in the basement.”

  She tried the wall switch. Nothing. Wooden steps faded down into the darkness.

  The stairs creaked, a groove worn into the wood. Their beams didn't travel far, tubes of dust in the air. Lara swung her light up. Pipes and wires exposed between the joists. Her first thought was asbestos.

  They moved apart, splitting the search. The walls were damp, beads of moisture on the cinder block. Broken furniture crowded the floor space, a maze of chair spindles and chipped cabinets.

  Lara wound through the junk, working toward the front of the house. A card table and chair nestled under the cobwebbed window. On the table, a cracked lamp and a notebook. Cheap school supply with a flimsy black cover, a pen folded inside. She prodded the notebook open to where the pen held. Scribbled notes, cramped and difficult to decipher. She turned the pages. More fevered script, the dense blocks of text separated by a symbol-- a star inside a circle. There was a name for this symbol but it escaped her. Lara blinked, understanding what it was.

  The cheap little notebook was a journal.

  GALLAGHER scoured the south half of the cellar. Junk and little else. Then his light caught the chains. Heavy gauge link, suspended from the ceiling and trailing down about waist high. Two lengths of it, each chain ending in an iron cuff. Not slim like police bracelets but wide and thick, fastened together with a simple cotter pin.

  More chain on the floor, coiled up in a pile. Attached to something at the end. He lifted the chain and threw his light over a girth of tooled leather and metal chink. Some kind of harness or restraint.

  “Chains and leather, huh?” He let it fall to the floor. “How original.”

  The throw of light played into the deeper corners. An oil-stained workbench hugged the wall, tools scattered on top. Clamps and awls, cast-iron tongs and a bench vise. The whole stinking cellar felt like some kind of medieval torture chamber.

  Air blew in through a broken basement window, the breeze riffling pictures tacked to the wall. Pages torn from wank mags. Dull-eyed women cupping overflowing boobs. Scattered among these were pages from a children's book of bible stories. Soft focus illustrations of Mary and Jesus. John with the lambs and Daniel petting lions. The cheeseball sacred and the pedestrian profane.

  Gallagher leaned in for a better look. “Well, well, well. Aren't we complicated.”

  A slash of red picked up in the light. His first thought was blood but it was too shiny. Just paint. Pulling back, the slash became an arced line of graffiti. It was big, a red circle some four feet in diameter. Within the ring, a crude star with five points. The paint splashed on thick and careless, running in rivulets down the cinder block. It tripped a memory, something on a record cover when he was a kid. Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, stuff like that.

  Lara's voice called out from the far side of the basement. He squeezed past the upright tables and bed frames until he found her sitting at the little card table under the window. Reading something.
r />   “Look at this.” She held the notebook up for him to see. He shrugged, all Greek to him. “It's a journal,” she said.

  “Like a diary? Who are we looking for, a twelve-year-old girl?”

  “Look at this,” she said, impatient for him to understand. “Most of this is illegible but I could read bits here and there. This guy, whoever he is, he describes an affliction he can't control. One he's powerless to stop. He refers to it as a curse.”

  Suspended over the table was a crate nailed into the wall, a hack-job shelf. Filed onto it were more of the same cheap notebooks. He took one down, flipped through it. “There's more here.”

  “Six in all.” She glanced up from the pages, her brow creased. “This curse he describes? He fights it off and pushes it down, trying to control it. But it builds and builds until he can't fight it anymore. He explodes.”

  Antennae unfolded from Gallagher's brain. “Then what?”

  “He blacks out. Wakes up covered in blood. Then he's sick with shame and self-loathing.”

  “Get outta here.” This had to be bullshit. Dunkers like this don't exist. And they sure as hell don't just drop in your lap.

  “Look closer.” She laid the notebook on the table and turned the pages. “There are no dates anywhere but let's assume each block of text separated by this weird symbol is an entry. Let's also assume an entry a day. When was Elizabeth Riley killed? Best estimate.”

  “Seven to twelve days ago. Maybe more.”

  She turned to the last entry and flipped backwards, counting down the entries. “The last blackout period he describes was nine entries ago. Nine days, maybe ten if he takes Sundays off.”

  Lara straightened her back. Eat that. Gallagher riffled the pages, counting the entries himself. Impressed as hell at what she'd found but damned if he would let her see that. You gotta keep the young guns in line, otherwise they run giddy and trip over their six-shooters.