by Alex P. Berg
The guy was big—as tall as me and bulkier—but it was his enormous, fluffy mane that really stood out. Wavy brownish-blond hair poured from his scalp, over his shoulders, and down to the middle of his back. A beard of similar color and kingly proportions stretched down toward his belly. When he turned his head back and saw us, I noticed a pair of thin, dainty bifocals perched upon his wide nose.
He froze upon realizing his situation—the usual reaction when the brain struggles to decide if it’s worth making a break for it or giving in to the inevitable. Then he progressed through a series of motions I like to call the ‘playing it cool’ dance. He leaned against the wall, stood up and crossed his arms, then pulled them apart and clasped his hands near his lower abdomen, all the while hemming and hawing incomprehensible expressions of hesitation and doubt.
“Hi there,” I said.
Shaggy’s eyes drew down to the eighteen inch piece of steel gripped in my right hand and widened in response. I got the impression he wasn’t about to bolt, but I didn’t relax my grip in the slightest.
“Um…hi,” he said.
“Do you remember me, by any chance?” I asked.
“Have we met?” Shaggy asked.
“You bumped into me outside an apartment building a couple days ago,” I said. “You know, the apartment building where a guy by the name of Terrence Mann had just been murdered? And then I caught a glimpse of you near another apartment, one that happened to contain yet another guy who’d been murdered, Octavio Clapper. Funny to find you outside the apartment of a third murder victim, Ms. Cynthia Gladwell—especially considering all three of the people I’ve mentioned were murdered in surprisingly similar ways.”
“Now, hold on a minute,” said Shaggy as he shifted his weight between his feet. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “Because I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s supremely stupid for a criminal to return to the scene of a crime, let alone three, but I’ve met enough criminals who are dumber than rocks to know it happens all the time. And it especially happens in the case of sociopathic serial killers who like to see the response their murders effect on society at-large. And I don’t for a minute think you showing up at these crime scenes is in any way, shape, or form a coincidence.”
“Just wait a moment,” said Shaggy, hazarding a glance back at Rodgers and Quinto, who’d gotten close enough to breathe on his neck. “I’m on your side. I’m trying to find out what’s going on myself, same as you.”
I raised a dubious eyebrow. “You expect me to believe you’re a private eye? Those guys don’t do murder investigations, pal.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, sending tendrils of wild hair flying. “My apologies. I should’ve introduced myself first, but your…approach…caught me off guard. My name is Zebruder Coriander. I’m with the WPL.”
“The WPL? What the hell is that?” I asked. “Special forces? Secret police?”
Zebruder pushed up his glasses, which had started to slip. “No, no, nothing like that. The WPL is the Werewolf Protection League. We’re not particularly visible to the public, so I don’t blame you for being unfamiliar with us.”
I blinked. “Wait…what did you say?”
“I’m the head of the Werewolf Protection League, Detective. And to answer the question I see in your eyes—yes. All three individuals who’ve been murdered over the past few days were, in fact, werewolves. Though that fact was known to almost no one besides me and other members of the league.”
I stared at Shay. She stared back. We stared at Rodgers and Quinto. They joined us in a game of pass the incredulity.
“You’re serious,” I said.
“What? Of course I am,” said Zebruder. “Why would I make up such a thing? Werewolves have been a lifelong passion of mine. I’ve devoted myself to them completely. I even have a museum dedicated to their kind and culture. I could show it to you, if you’d like. To be quite honest, it might be a good idea to involve you officers in this. I’m a little out of my element when it comes to detective work.”
I stood there scratching my chin, trying to decipher the crazy from the bullcrap. Surprisingly, my mind didn’t seem to think there was as much of either as I’d initially thought.
Steele tapped my shoulder. “Daggers, can I speak with you a moment?”
I nodded and stepped out of earshot. Zebruder didn’t make any quick moves. As big as he was, Quinto still dwarfed him.
“You don’t actually believe this guy, do you?” said Shay. “He’s a total crackpot. We should get him back to the precinct and interrogate him, see what he knows about these murders.”
“I don’t know what to believe right now,” I said. “But I do know one thing. He’s not our mystery murderer. Not if Octavio’s nephew can be trusted. This guy’s too tall, too wide, and that massive mane of his surely would’ve poured out of a cloak’s hood. But if what he says is true…”
“Come on, Daggers,” said Shay. “You can’t be serious?”
I shrugged. “Look, call it a hunch, but I don’t think he deliberately showed up at the crime scenes so he could lure us into a trap and stab us all with a hidden cache of frosty stilettos. Worst case scenario, he’s totally off his rocker and we cart him off to the precinct as soon as we know for sure. But what if there’s a kernel of truth to what he’s babbling about?”
Shay gave me one of her best-crafted looks of disbelief.
“You have to admit,” I said, “there’s a bunch of elements of these cases that are hard to explain. What if there’s a supernatural factor at play we’re not considering? I know I went a little crazy with the doppelganger theories, but werewolves? Some of it almost makes sense, don’t you think? I mean, there must be a reason why the murderer stabbed all our victims with cooled daggers. Maybe werewolves are susceptible to cold.
“And what about the apartments? Terry and Cynthia’s places were trashed, without anything having been taken. It’s almost as if a rabid beast attacked those places. And that would explain the nudity as well. When a werewolf transforms, it grows in size, right? Wouldn’t that result in torn clothes?”
Shay scratched her temple. “I don’t know, Daggers—”
I suffered a sudden epiphany. “Of course! Three nights ago—the night all of our victims were gone at their clandestine meeting. You know what was special about that night?”
She looked at me for a moment, then gritted her teeth and swore. She’d figured out the same thing I had. Three nights ago, there’d been a full moon.
“Ok, I’ll concede that point,” she said. “But Terrence, Octavio, and Cynthia were all gone every two weeks, and the moon cycles through its phases every four weeks.”
“So?” I said. “Maybe werewolves don’t behave quite the way we think they do. Maybe something happens to them on new moons as well as full moons. That would explain our victims’ biweekly schedules.”
Shay wiped a hand across her face. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this as a realistic possibility.”
“Why not?” I said. “You went to magic school, yet you don’t believe in the existence of creatures that go bump in the night?”
“First of all,” said Steele, “magic is tangible, repeatable, and it adheres to verifiable laws, even if we don’t understand them all. So yes, of course I believe in it. But werewolves are urban legends. Anything that goes bump in the night is more than likely to be a troll with a heavy foot or a goblin sewer repair crew.”
“You’re not open-minded enough,” I said. “And besides, you’re not focused on perhaps the most important part of this enticing revelation.”
“Which is?” Shay said.
I smiled. “That we’re about to get an exclusive sneak peek at a real-life werewolf museum.”
35
Burly Mr. Coriander wasn’t kidding. He did own a werewolf museum, and it wasn’t just some collection of curios and garbage he’d squirreled away in his basement. Admittedly, it wasn’t the Municipal Gallery of
Art, either, but the place filled a two-story building, with multiple rooms on each floor. Zebruder even charged admission to get in. He claimed he earned a living wage off the gate receipts, and as ludicrous as the idea might’ve sounded even an hour earlier, I believed him.
It wasn’t so much as the quality of the exhibits as the location that convinced me. The museum sat in a part of the city that drew hordes of loonies with coins burning holes in their pockets. Zebruder’s museum shared the block with no less than two palm readers, a freak show act, a tattoo parlor, a shop selling what it purported to be magic crystals, and a wax museum specializing exclusively in erotically-dressed elven lingerie models.
I leaned over an exhibit featuring what it claimed was a four-hundred-year-old relic from the Battle of Constance Mill, where, following the kidnapping of a young maiden, a group of valiant villagers had taken up pitchforks and stormed the lair of a vicious werewolf. As it turned out, the maiden hadn’t been kidnapped at all. The villagers found her with her skirt over her head enjoying the company of the miller’s son. They were, however, correct about the werewolf’s lair.
While disentangling the maiden and her lover, a rabid beast sprung from the shadows and slaughtered nearly all of the villagers, leaving only a couple of terrified peasants alive to spread the tale.
The relic in question looked like an old, moth-eaten bonnet to me, but hey—the story was good.
Quinto stood in front of a display containing a patch of reddish, matted fur taken from the pelt of the famed Redcoat, a werewolf of such great renown that Zebruder had been mildly offended none of us had ever heard of him.
“So,” said Quinto, poking at the fur with one of his enormous fingers, “how did you accumulate all this stuff, anyway?”
“Yeah,” said Rodgers. “I can’t imagine most of this stuff is available from Werewolf Surplus Emporium.”
“You jest, of course,” said Zebruder, “but it’s taken a lifetime of effort for me to accumulate these artifacts. Some I purchased from passionate collectors like myself. Many I’ve received as gifts or payment from werewolf friends of mine. And others I’ve unearthed myself. Werewolf archeology is my greatest passion. Nothing can compare to the thrill of uncovering a relic not seen by human eyes in decades or even centuries.”
“So, Zebruder, you’re the head of the Werewolf Protection League?” I asked.
“Please, Detective,” he said. “My friends call me Zeb.”
I eyed the dude. His wild hair and bushy beard didn’t even begin to encompass the personality of the man underneath. The guy was absolutely, totally, and completely obsessed with werewolves. He’d talked about nothing else on our hike over from Cynthia’s place. I doubted anyone could match his unbridled passion.
“You have friends?” I said.
Steele elbowed me in the ribs. “Be nice.”
“What?” I whispered. “You were right. This guy’s loonier than a barrel full of ducks.”
“No,” said Steele into my ear, “you were right. He’s not crazy, he’s passionate. That doesn’t mean he’s right about anything he’s talking about, but he’s worth listening to.”
“So, Zeb,” I said, poking the tattered old bonnet, “for a guy who loves werewolves so much, you don’t seem to paint them in a very positive light in your exhibits.”
He shrugged. “Sensationalism sells more tickets than sense, I’m afraid. People want to envision werewolves as bloodthirsty beasts, and they’ll only buy tickets to a show that portrays them as such. Perhaps some day my research into their condition will help dispel that myth, but for now—” He spread his arms wide. “—this is how it must be.”
“You’re a scientist?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “But I do dabble in scientific research. As I said, werewolves fascinate me, and that includes how and why they function the way they do.”
I turned away from the bonnet exhibit. “Alright, Zeb. I’m convinced you practice the religion you preach, even if I’m not necessarily a believer in it myself. So let’s operate on the assumption you’re right and werewolves do roam the streets at night—”
“A pretty big assumption…” mumbled Quinto.
“—but let’s ignore your passion for a moment and focus on the murders we’re investigating. You’re of the opinion that Terrence Mann, Octavio Clapper, and Cynthia Gladwell were all werewolves?”
The bushy-haired one stroked his beard. “It’s not my opinion, Detective. It’s a fact.”
I didn’t argue the point with him. It wouldn’t have been worth it. Besides, what the hell did I know? “Ok, fine. They were werewolves. So how did you know them?”
“I think that’d be obvious,” Zeb said. “I knew them for precisely that reason—because they’re werewolves.”
“So, what?” I said. “Am I to understand you operate a werewolf counseling clinic in your spare time, offering encouraging words of wisdom to the recently cursed? Or do you have a werewolf-exclusive bed-and-breakfast where you bond with the furry kind?”
“I think we have a misunderstanding here, Detective,” said Zeb. “You see, I’m quite well known in werewolf circles. They know who I am, they know I’m sympathetic to their cause, and they confide in me. My goal in life isn’t to vilify werewolves, but to show the world people needn’t fear them—contrary to what my museum might suggest, of course. But the lycanthropes trust me. Truly. They seek me out.”
“Are you a werewolf?” I asked.
That question caught him off guard. He waffled a little. “Um…no.”
“Really?” I asked. “Is your interest in werewolves purely academic?”
Zeb clenched his jaw and shifted his feet. “It’s…not that simple, Detective.”
I sensed we were about to dive head first into dark, cold waters, and I didn’t really have any interest in getting wet. I switched topics. “So tell me, Zeb, how do you kill a werewolf?”
“Excuse me?” he squawked.
“Come on, man.” I approached him. I couldn’t intimidate the guy with my size, so I tried to do so with a fierce scowl. “Where did you think this was going? We’ve found three dead bodies in three days. They’ve been murdered in bizarre fashion. You claim they’re werewolves. So I’ll ask you again—how do you kill one?”
The furry one chewed his lip. “Many of the things you’re asking aren’t common knowledge, you know. They’re tidbits of information I’ve gleaned through years of reading and research. And it’s not information I share readily. Some of it was shared with me by werewolves in confidence, with their trust that the knowledge wouldn’t spread into the wrong hands.”
“Look, Zeb,” I said. “If you’re right about this, your knowledge is already in the wrong hands. If you want to prevent more murders, it’s in your best interest to help us. Now, either you can be cooperative, or I can drag you back to the precinct, lock you up, get a warrant, and tear this place down to the studs looking for information while I have someone roast your feet over hot coals. Either way, I get what I want.”
Zeb swallowed. “No need to make threats, Detective. I’ll cooperate.”
“So then?” I asked.
Zeb glanced at me and the rest of my comrades. “There’s something I should show you. A room that’s not part of this exhibit, or the museum at all. A room that’ll help explain some of your questions. Follow me.”
36
Zeb herded us down to the main floor and through a door with a sign hanging over it that read ‘Private.’ Part of me wondered if he was leading us to his secret laboratory where he performed lobotomies on unsuspecting werewolf cubs, but instead the door led to a modestly furnished sitting room containing a set of well-loved sofa chairs and end tables.
“You live here?” I asked.
Zeb shrugged. “My museum is popular, Detective, but not that popular. One rent’s all I can handle.”
Subflooring at the side of the room squeaked under the weight of a foot.
“Hey dad, I’m heading out to—”
A young man in his late teens walked down the stairs—clean shaven, slighter than Mr. Coriander, and with a head of shoulder-length, wavy, honey blond hair. A worn, brown backpack hung askew from his right shoulder. Based on his facial structure and the fact that he’d addressed Zeb with the moniker of ‘dad,’ I astutely assumed he was Mr. Coriander’s son.
“Oh…sorry,” the young man said. “Didn’t realize you had company.”
“It’s ok, Milton,” said Zeb. “What’s going on?”
“Just wanted to let you know I’m heading out to the student union.” The young man hefted his backpack in emphasis. “I’ve got a class project I’m working on.”
“Will you be back for dinner?” asked Zeb.
“Should be.”
“All right,” said Zeb. “See you later, then.”
Milton gave us all a nod and headed out through the door at our backs.
“My son, Milton,” said Zeb once he’d left, as if we hadn’t already figured that out. “Sadly, he doesn’t share my same passion for werewolves. But he’s a good kid. Smart. Just started attending college. He’s working on a degree in biology. Even got a part-time job as an assistant in one of the university laboratories.”
“Is he your only one?” Shay asked.
Zeb nodded. “Yes. It’s just me and him. Has been for quite some time.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Your wife didn’t share the same passion for werewolves as you, either?”
“Not exactly,” said Zeb, tilting his head to the side. “Come on. This way.”
He led us down a corridor and past a locked door into a room I feared wouldn’t be large enough for the five of us. A small window on the far side of the space let in the midday sun, but other than that, every single inch of wall in the room was covered in bookshelves. Each shelf overflowed with books of all shapes and sizes—tall books, tiny books, books big enough to eat your face. Books with elaborate bindings, leather covers, and some tied together with gold twine. Books covered in dust with tattered edges and pages crumbling to powder.