Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  Christ, what a mess. Two families destroyed and for what? Because Troy Brakken couldn’t keep his hands off some girl twice his junior.

  The thought of the Arbuckle girl being pregnant sent a shiver down his spine. He couldn’t help but think of his own daughter and what he would do if caught in the same scenario. His gut response was that it simply wouldn’t happen. He and Amy talked about everything, the lines of communication were always open and Amy simply didn’t date. But doubts chipped away at that resolve. How would he know? No teenagers told their parents everything. And after last night, his daughter seemed determined to keep any communication to a minimum.

  She had barely spoken at breakfast, keeping her responses to yes or no before retreating back upstairs. He had wanted to ask what she thought about their discussion last night, what he had told her, but she had fled before he could broach it. How could he have been so stupid to blurt all of it out? She must be scared, thinking her old man was certifiably insane. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was gone when he got home, packing up her stuff to go back to her mom’s.

  Back at precinct, Gallagher finished up the statements and added it to the open file, sending copies to Detective Wade. Putting the sordid business away, he turned to the mess of open files on his desk. A back alley shooting in No Po and a John Doe fished out of the Willamette two weeks ago. Nothing to work with in either case, stone cold whodunits that only a lucky break or an act of God could crack open now.

  He pushed himself away from the desk and made for the stairs. Other cops, plainclothes detectives and uniforms chatted and joked all around him. No one said hello or even nodded. His ‘untouchable’ status remained firmly intact.

  Two floors down, he made his way into a dimly lit galley of empty work stations. The bureau’s servers hummed away, stacked up on shelves near the wall. Gallagher threaded through the tangle of dead monitors and stripped motherboards to the back where the room’s sole occupant sat with his feet propped on a desk. Taylor was one of the techs who maintained the bureau’s systems, a flabby mouth-breather who spent too many hours in sunless rooms. Gallagher disliked the kid, cringing at his nasal whine, but he had put him to work on what he deemed a ‘special investigation’. If nerdo knew it was bullshit, the kid never let on.

  “Detective Gallagher,” Taylor groaned. “Here I thought you’d forgotten this week.”

  “No such luck, Chuck.” Gallagher rolled up a chair, the castors crinkling through a mess of empty chip bags and candy bar wrappers. “Jesus, Taylor. You gotta get off this shit before you drop dead.”

  “What? I’m chained down here for the whole shift. Farthest I can get is the vending machine before something pops here.”

  “Then ask your mom to pack a lunch.” He flopped into the chair and chin-wagged the screen on the desk. “What do you got for me?”

  “Not much. Closest thing I got to a hit was this.” He punched the keys, bringing up a new screen. “Dog attack in Tacoma. Couple a pitbulls got loose and tore after some kids.”

  Gallagher read the details on the screen and dismissed it. The dog’s owner was found two blocks away. He had kept the dogs locked up and neglected in the garage. He was arrested. Just an idiot of a dog owner, not the kind of animal attack he was looking for.

  Taylor had set up a program to monitor all police and emergency bands throughout the northwest, from Washington State south to California and Nevada, east to Montana. There were even feeds from jurisdictions north of the border, police bandwidths from British Columbia and Alberta. The program filtered the data through certain criteria, pinging only incidents of animal attacks or homicides due to animals. Bears, coyotes or mountain lions, anything of that nature or suspected thereof. The primary criteria were dogs and wolves. When a hit came in, it was logged and Taylor checked it and emailed the results to Gallagher. Taylor preferred it as a way of keeping him off his back but Gallagher insisted on coming down to the dungeon once a week to rattle his cage and keep him honest.

  There hadn’t been a significant hit in over three weeks, every incident knocked out of contention by the subsequent police investigation. In October there had been one big hit that rang out to his ears as exactly what he was searching for. A hiker had been reported missing in the Mount Hood area. A park ranger found the body being sniffed over by three feral dogs. The details had spliced a finger of ice down his marrow, the incident bore so many resemblances to the Prall case that had haunted him since that September night. He had gone home, packed up his gear into the Cherokee. A few hours drive from Portland to the scene. He had arranged for Amy to go to her mom’s place that afternoon and planned his route when the whole thing fizzled to nothing. The subsequent police investigation found that the dogs were neither feral nor had they devoured any part of the remains. The coroner later determined that the hiker had fallen down a slope and died from an impact to the skull. Nothing mysterious or strange, just a sad calamity of circumstance. A brief spike of hope in his search, felled by the crushing tedium of banal happenstance.

  He’d almost given up after that. The manic way he had shuffled his daughter to safety and blew off work to go chase a hunch. Worse than a hunch, a wispy tendril of hope that faded to nothing in the cold light of the next morning.

  Almost.

  “Close but no Monte Cristo.” He swatted a palm across Taylor’s back, causing the young man to spit up a Dorito. “Keep at it.”

  EIGHT

  THE DOG LAY on the front porch waiting for him to come home. It stood and wagged its tail, heedless to the cold wind sweeping over the yard. Gallagher went up the steps and nuzzled the Husky and the dog leaned into his knees. Although wary of the animal when he’d plucked it from the shelter three months ago, he had come to love it now. Especially coming home. Dogs were always happy to see you, no matter how bad their day was or yours. The husky followed him inside, thumping its heavy tail along the wall.

  The smell of fried onions and garlic hit him when he entered the kitchen. Amy hovered over the stove, stirring something with the battered wooden spoon. He lingered in the doorway, speechless for a moment but grateful she was here. He had expected her to be locked away in her room, unwilling to come out. “Wow, look at you,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Just thought I’d get dinner started.” She didn’t seem angry or upset but she didn’t smile either.

  He dropped his stuff onto a chair. “Thanks, honey. I can take over if you want.”

  “This is almost ready. Grab some plates.”

  He quickly set the table, gauging the temperature in the room. Civil and polite but there was still tension in the air, things left unsaid. The awkward post-fight niceties. The dog padded around the kitchen, obliviously whacking its tail against the cupboards.

  He asked about her day, she said it was fine and then they ate in silence. He chewed over his thoughts too, grasping for a way to broach what he had stupidly blurted out the night before. Maybe he didn’t need to, both of them choosing to ignore it. Pretend it didn’t happen.

  Amy looked up from her plate. “Have you thought about what I said? About talking to a doctor?”

  “Doctor?”

  “To diagnose the PTSD. I think you have to start there, then they send you to a psychologist or whatever.”

  “Can’t do it. A doctor would report the PTSD to the bureau, then I’m out of a job.”

  “They wouldn’t fire you over it.”

  “They’d pull me out of the field, stick me in a cubicle. Same thing.”

  The dog whined, standing over its bowl and waiting for someone to fill it. Amy rose and took up the bowl. Scooped it into the kibble bag and set it back on the floor. The dog looked at it with disinterest, clearly wanting the wet stuff.

  Amy took up her fork. “Bottom line, you need help.”

  “I know,” he conceded. “I’m on the case.” He looked over at the dog then turned back to his daughter. “You haven’t said anything about what I told you last night.”

  “I d
on’t know what to think about it. If it was a joke, it wasn’t very funny.”

  “Wasn’t a joke.”

  Her eyes finally lifted from her plate and met his. “Then you’re worse off than I thought. And it scares me.”

  One of the things John Gallagher admired about his daughter was her knack for speaking directly. It might sting, it might ruffle feathers, but it was real. He used to wonder where she got it from until he realized it was a result of his divorce from her mother. Things got nasty, angry words shouted back and forth. That certain kind of insane, pointless bickering that failing couples give into. Amy had learned early on to cut through the noise and just get to the point. “Fair enough,” he said.

  The dog sighed again. Amy went to the fridge for the opened can of wet food and spooned some into its bowl.

  “Have you spoken to your mom?” He set his fork down, appetite waning. “I need to talk to her about the holidays.”

  “She wants to go to Spokane, spend Christmas with Norm’s parents.”

  “You sound thrilled,” he said, grateful for the change in topic.

  “You haven’t met Norm’s parents.”

  “When did you speak to your mom?”

  “She called earlier. Right after the crank call. I almost didn’t pick up.”

  “What crank call?”

  “I dunno, some creep who didn’t say anything. A long distance ring too.”

  He scratched the stubble on his chin. Distracted, something buzzing through his head. “They didn’t say anything? Did you hear anything on the other end?”

  “Some noise. Sounded like traffic.”

  “What time was this? Precise as you can remember, what time?”

  “I dunno. I had just started making dinner so...five?”

  He got up, marched down the hall to his office. Amy looked up. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Finish your dinner.”

  It took five minutes to cut through the redirects but he finally got through to a live human being at the phone carrier he used for the house. Another few minutes explaining to a service agent that he was with the Portland Police Bureau and needed a call traced, if possible. After being passed off to another agent and explaining it all again, he gave the details as precisely as he could. This second agent warned that the trace would take a little time to complete, if it at all. Gallagher admonished the agent to call as soon as it was done and gave his cell number if there was no answer at the house.

  When he came back to the table, the dishes had been cleared and Amy was gone. He could hear her upstairs. She had left the dishes for him to do.

  The husky, curled up at the front door, was already asleep.

  When he arrived at Homicide Detail, Wade was already wiping the Arbuckle file off the big board. Divided into columns on a large whiteboard, every column topped with the name of active homicide detectives. Below each detective were the cases assigned, designated by a number and the victims names. Open files were marked in red, closed cases in black. Detective Wade cleaned the red marked name ‘Arbuckle’ from the big board and wrote it again in black marker. Closed.

  He spotted Gallagher coming in and, pointing to the board, gave a cheerful thumbs up. No one else even acknowledged his presence. Gallagher waved back and wound around the maze to his desk. With another glance at the board, he noted that Wade had not flipped the same name in his own column. Maybe Wade figured he wanted to do it himself. Or maybe he was marking his territory, reminding everyone he was primary on the case.

  What case? The whole thing was a slam dunk, the kind of file that required little real work but still padded your closure rate.

  With the Arbuckle mess cleared off his desk, Gallagher reached for his murder book and flipped to the two open files fouling up his closure rate. Hopeless whodunits that hadn’t had a shred of movement in weeks. Torture.

  “Santa came early for you guys.” Detective Jeff Kopzych leaned over Gallagher’s cubicle wall, thumbing at the big board. “Same day open and shut. Shit bro, I could use an easy-peasy like that.”

  Gallagher grumbled. Kopzych was a big chinned guy with too much product in his blonde hair. Your basic All-American who had made homicide two months ago. The lack of bodies in the homicide detail was so acute that even screwhead golden boys with a pathological need to groom every five seconds like Krapshoot Kopzych made the cut.

  And the kid didn’t know when to quit. “It’s gotta feel good though, huh? Flipping that so fast without working it,” Kopzych said. Two months on the homicide floor and the kid acted like he knew everything.

  “You tear yourself away from the mirror once in a while, you might just find some real work under your nose,” Gallagher shot back. “You never know, green-as-shit rookies do get lucky sometimes.”

  Kopzych bristled but put up bluff. “Luck seems to like you, Gallagher. You hiding a horseshoe in your cheeks somewhere?”

  “Krapshoot, go back to the play area. Let the grown-ups get some work done.”

  Charlene Farbre, another detective pinched from Assault to work homicide, laughed from one cubicle over. She despised Kopzych.

  Krapshoot stomped off but fired back over his shoulder. “You tired, man. Tired.”

  No fucking kidding, boyo.

  Back to the murder-book, flipping to the first open file. A street kid named Anton Levalle, lit up in a back alley with two gunshots to the head. Nine millimetre slugs, ballistics still pending. Anton was a homeless twenty-something who sometimes worked as a runner for local peddlers. No known family and no friends. The body was found by the garbage crew. Canvasses turned up zilch, nobody heard or saw a thing. Hell, no one admitted to even knowing who the guy was.

  He pushed the mess away, deciding he needed coffee. Maybe a donut, something with lots of sprinkles. He stood, thinking he’d ask Charlene if she wants to take a walk, but his desk phone went off. Crap.

  It was a manager from his phone carrier, calling back with the results of the trace.

  Gallagher scrounged his desktop for a pen, oblivious to the fully functioning workstation right in front of him. Old habits, ink beat pixels any day. “Thanks for getting back to me. What do you got?”

  “Weepers, Oregon.”

  Gallagher had him spell it for him. “Where the hell is that?”

  “No idea,” the voice said. “But I’m guessing it’s pretty remote. Took me forever to trace it down the line.”

  “And where’d the call originate from? Residence or business?”

  “Payphone. Guess they still have those out in the boonies.”

  “Thanks. You’ve provided an invaluable service to the Portland Police Bureau.”

  “No prob. Is this for a big case or something?”

  “Oh yeah.” Gallagher rolled his eyes. Civilians always got so nosy. “The biggest.” He thanked him again and hung up.

  Typing the name into a map search, he leaned forward to see what would pop up. The guy wasn’t wrong in his guess at the boonies. Weepers Oregon was no more than a flyspeck on the Google map. Toggling the zoom revealed little more than a clutch of buildings flanking a road in the Ochoco mountains. A second general search spit up little more than a few hunting and fishing outfits. He couldn’t even find a population number for the tiny village.

  Toggling back the zoom on the map, he took in a wider view of the area. Mountains and forest ranges, a little farmland here and there. One main road that scrawled through the forest like a child’s scribble, the closest town outside of Weepers was more than an hour’s drive north.

  Isolated and remote. Closed off to the world by a mountain range and deep pines. It looked like a good place to hide.

  Jim McKlusky geared down as he hit the switchback on the dirt road. A light snow mottled the air, dotting and melting against the windshield of his truck. A dancing Elvis toy jiggled from the rearview mirror, shaking its hips as the truck barrelled over the rippled dirtwash road. McKlusky had been finishing up work when his phone rang. It was Jigsaw. He and Roy were out on Be
ar Lake road, looking at something nasty. “Better get out here,” Jigsaw had said. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

  Ten minutes outside of Weepers, the cut off for Bear Lake road was little more than a gap in the brush. Blink and you miss it. Another ten minutes down the winding road, slowing over the gravel wash and packed dirt, McKlusky wondered how far in his friends were. He glanced up at what little sky was visible through the trees. The sun was going down.

  Cresting a rise, Roy’s Jeep came into view, parked tight to the side of the narrow road. Roy himself was leaning against the box, smoking a cigarette. He waved as the truck pulled in behind.

  “What’s the emergency, Roy?” McKlusky said as he swung out of the truck. “I was shutting down for the night.”

  “It’s grim, Jim.” Roy laughed at his little rhyme. “Nasty stuff.”

  “Don’t tell me...”

  “Come on. Best you come see for yourself.”

  Roy led the way down a rutted track until the trees gave way to a clearing bordered by a rusty wire fence. Twenty paces beyond the fence, a man knelt over a dark lump of something prone in the weeds. “Jig!” Roy called out. “Jimbo’s here.”

  The man rose to his full height and nodded. Jigsaw Briggs was a big man with long hair and a scraggly beard. He always reminded McKlusky of a mountain man, half wild and all the way crazy. Jigsaw pointed down to the mass at his feet. “We got another one.”

  As he got closer, McKlusky could tell the lump was once an animal but exactly what kind he couldn’t tell. It was that bad. The thing’s entrails were spilled out and strewn over the snow. The animal’s trunk was torn completely open, the ribs stripped of meat. There were hooves but with the head missing, McKlusky honestly couldn’t tell if the carcass was horse or bovine. “Jesus. Who found it?”