The Mountain's Shadow

by Cecilia Dominic

“What?”

  “I didn’t know it, but his senior partner took on the case as a pro bono one. Cleared the father and pegged the teacher. With my help.”

  I sat down at the table. My head hurt. “So he’s one of the good guys?”

  Lonna laughed. “Good at some things. Don’t worry, I won’t let him fool me.”

  “Like Robert fooled me.”

  “You have to stop being so sensitive. Look,” she said as she sat beside me and put a hand on my arm. “There’s something about being up here that’s creeping me out.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  “By the way, why is the den such a mess? There’s blood on the sofa.”

  I filled her in on Louise’s mysterious appearance. And death. But I didn’t tell her about the black wolf. In the light of day, I doubted my own perceptions.

  Rather than showing any sympathy for my part of the ordeal, she only asked, “Why didn’t you wake me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You were drugged asleep. Anyone else would’ve woken on their own.”

  “Joanie, how the hell am I supposed to do my job with you withholding information like that? With you not letting me be involved?”

  “Shit happens, Lonna. You can either be involved or not. If you’re going to keep yelling at me for seeing and hearing different things than you, it’s going to be not.”

  “Fine, be that way.”

  “Hey, you’ve got the first shot at the crime scene. The sheriff didn’t do much last night.”

  She bit the corner of her lip and narrowed her eyes. “All right. Just don’t get in my way.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I told her back as she went out the door. “He also said none of us could leave today until he comes back with the forensics team and gives us the all clear.”

  She mumbled something I chose not to hear. I fixed another cup of coffee and went through the other door into the dining room and out on the back porch. The Adirondack chairs were still damp with morning dew, but I sat anyway, the chill against my back and legs helping me ground myself in reality. This reality.

  Most of the back lawn was still in shadow, but I could see nothing out of the ordinary move. My heart still thudded against my chest, anger warring with unfulfilled sexual tension. Deep breath, Joanie. Cool morning air. Waves of green trees with traces of fall color. I had always loved the mountains in the summer but hadn’t seen them in the fall. My mother hadn’t allowed visits during the school year, and then in college and graduate school, I hadn’t had the time.

  I wished for my grandfather to be there. He had never looked upon me with judgment, had never given unsolicited advice. If he’d been there, he would’ve drawn my attention to the interesting aspects of the morning. Like the black wolf. And Gabriel’s transformation.

  It hit me, a lightning bolt of insight. The transformation. CLS intensified. I needed to talk to all the werewolves. And I needed to revisit that poor charred box. And see what data my grandfather had hidden in the house. Even though I hadn’t seen him in years, I knew he must have been looking into it from what Ron, Leo and Gabriel had said. Not that he’d made much headway, but maybe a fresh set of eyes—and more data—would help.

  I could go through the information without leaving the property, and something told me Ron and Leo would reappear today. With a plan in mind, I went back into the kitchen for a third cup of coffee.

  Gabriel was there eating a bowl of cereal while standing at the island. He had showered, and his hair hung in damp ringlets. Nothing like a shower to make one feel civilized. Had it been a cold one even after his morning dip in the stream?

  He looked up when he saw me enter, his gaze cautious, and my heart sank. It would be a while before this awkwardness subsided.

  “Breakfast, Madam?”

  “Just more coffee for now. I’ll be working in my bedroom if anyone needs me.”

  “If you would prefer, your grandfather left his study ready for you.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks. I’ll get dressed and be in there. Just let me know when the sheriff arrives.”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  Happy with my plans, I walked up to him and quickly stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

  “Madam, about this morning…”

  “I’m still figuring it out, Gabriel. We can talk later.”

  He nodded, and a smile played around his lips. “I look forward to it.”

  The study, the second room on the right after the library, was locked. I tried the smaller key that had been left by Galbraith, and it worked. The shades filtered the dim light, but even with such limited visibility, I could tell the room had not been opened in weeks. A stale smell hung in the air, and dust frosted every available surface.

  I opened my mouth to call Gabriel, but then decided not to. It was obvious my grandfather hadn’t even trusted his supposed confidant with access to this room, so I decided to respect his wishes. First things first, though. I opened the blinds.

  Dust motes swirled in the early morning light. An antique desk clock of polished wood and brass told me the time was seven twenty-five. I hadn’t been up that early since I’d gotten fired except for when Lonna woke me at the crack of dawn to come up here. If I’d known the trip would put such a strain on our friendship, I might have just slept in that day.

  I put my cup of coffee on a cork coaster and looked around. The large mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room. Behind it, two windows and between them a fireplace. That might be a nice start, I thought. The air was chilly. The desk was flanked by two small file cabinets, but I knew what I sought would not be in such an obvious place.

  Bookshelves lined the two walls. My grandfather had been an avid collector of rare, antique books and artifacts. One section caught my eye immediately. He’d collected books on werewolves, and along with more modern tomes was an early printing of Sabine Baring-Gould’s The Book of Werewolves, considered by many to be one of the definitive works on lycanthropy as far as the 1800s. The shelf also held works on related topics including doppelgangers, witches and vampires. In front of the books sat a small wooden figurine of a cat with emerald eyes. It winked at me in the morning light, but when I pulled out the books that sat behind it, there was nothing.

  Puzzled, I replaced the book and the cat. The figurines my eyes had passed over previously stood out now, the books fading into the background. I had the silver cat on a chain, and then there was the wooden cat on the shelf. I thought back to how my grandfather and I would talk about the elements. Wood was an Earth material; silver could be Earth but could also represent air. So that meant I needed fire and water.

  The scientist in me laughed at such a silly game. Elements? I hadn’t inhabited the world of fairies, elementals and magic since childhood. Nonetheless, I started at the window on the left and studied the contents of the shelves one by one. Although the next room was a large library, it was obvious my grandfather had kept many of his most beloved volumes here. There were books on herbs and plants, gardening, trees and other flora. The next shelf held the journals that had published my articles. It appeared as though my grandfather had found my work and subscribed to the journals hoping to read more. Galbraith had told me that he followed my career closely, and Gabriel that he’d done his own research as well, but this was concrete proof of his interest. At the moment, it was almost better than a hug.

  The third shelf was the one with the wooden cat and werewolf books. Some of the volumes were in different languages including French, German, and some sort of Scandinavian language. He had done his homework on werewolf history and legends. The fourth and final shelf before the door held legal briefs and medical and psychological texts. On this shelf I found a glass cat candle holder, again with emerald eyes. I made note of it and didn’t touch it.

  The shelves on the right side of the room held yet more books. Statistics, research methods… Even more than I’d gathered in my graduate school and research careers. There I found a cat statuette made completely of tiny seashells. It even held
a miniature plastic fish in its mouth.

  So those were my four… Mishka in the hollow of the tree. The wooden cat by the werewolf books. The candleholder cat with the psychology texts. The seashell cat with the research texts.

  I found a spool of tape and put a piece on the shelves where I’d found the three cats. Then I pulled the book or books if the cat had been positioned at the border of two texts off the shelves and put them on the desk. I reached with my fingers but didn’t find anything behind them, just the smooth wood of the shelves themselves.

  I sat in the large leather chair, dwarfed by its huge size. Charles Landover had been a tall man, about six and a half feet. Standing next to him, I’d always looked and felt younger than I was. Now, standing in his footsteps in the study, I had that feeling again, of missing something important because of being too short or not smart enough.

  “But you are smart enough, Joanie-cat,” he’d told me. “You just need to see what’s right in front of you.”

  I looked at the books I’d pulled off the shelves. Claude Lecouteaux’s Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages. Lycanthropy Case Studies and The Mysterious Disappearance of Hillary Baehr by a colleague of mine, Iain McPherson. Iain was a Scottish researcher who had devoted his life to seeking out and studying lycanthropes who developed CLS as children. We had met at an international conference, had immediately felt the connection of kindred spirits, and had kept in regular contact until I had lost my job. We had an agreement to share what we knew. I wondered what he would think about what I had discovered here at Crystal Pines: not just lycanthropes, but actual werewolves. The final books behind the seashell cat were Herbology by someone I’d never heard of and The Genetics of Lycanthropy and other Rare Psychological Disorders by—and it hurt to read his name—Robert Cannon.

  The first book made sense, as it presented a fascinating summary of the possible origin of werewolf legends in the Middle Ages. The ancient Scandinavian people had a different understanding of the soul. The spiritual part of a human had three parts: the fylgia, or psychic double, often seen as a female representation of the self that can act prophetically; the hamr, an aspect of the soul under the control of some people, which can take on a different form and travel when the individual is asleep; and the hugr, which can motivate the hamr or can represent universal principles of behavior. Some believed werewolves were actually the peoples’ hamrs, their spirits taking on another form after they left the body to carry on works that may or may not be diabolical.

  I had seen physical transformations, not just behavioral. The books on the table indicated my grandfather was also looking into the old legends, that a person didn’t physically transform, but rather their spirit did. Once in animal form, the person could then effect physical change on the environment such as carrying objects and wounding others. The problem was that whatever happened to them in that form also happened to their human body. Hence the stories of someone cutting off a werewolf’s paw and the person, usually a witch, waking with a severed hand.

  Iain’s books detailed modern cases. In one, a woman named Hillary Baehr had displayed lycanthropic symptoms but then had completely vanished from a locked padded cell in 1956. No sign of struggle or forced exit were evident, and investigators could never get any of the staff to admit to aiding her. It was one of the earliest cases of a psychic, in this case Hillary’s sister Bethany, being brought in to aid police. All Bethany could tell them was that Hillary’s energy had changed. The case so fascinated the psychiatric community that it was still used as an example of poor facility management. Iain had studied it from a different angle and put it in a context similar to that of Lecouteaux’s book. I had no idea how Herbology fit in. Robert’s book had posited the premise that certain ethnic histories predisposed individuals to psychological disorders, and he used lycanthropy as being present in people descended from the Scandinavians as his primary example. His argument was that, due to immigration and emigration and a host of other factors, these disorders were becoming rarer because they were dependent on a certain combination of genes: one to make them susceptible to the disorder, and another to make that first gene express. If both genes were recessive, it would take a multigenerational process for them to activate the syndrome. So far all he had was theoretical family charts and formulas. I had been working on a similar project to map out the factors associated with CLS when the lab had caught fire.

  How all this fit together with Charles Landover’s disappearance, I still needed to figure out. However, before I could begin to make notes, there was a beep. I hadn’t noticed the intercom on the desk.

  “Doctor Fisher?” Gabriel sounded like he was miles away.

  “Yes.” My exasperation and having been knocked out of my focus was evident in my voice. It wasn’t so much as a “yes” as a “leave me alone!”

  “The sheriff is here.”

  Chapter Nine

  I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth to ease my frustration. “I’ll be right out.”

  I put the books in the desk drawer to my right. Not that anyone would be able to tell with a glance what I had been working on, but one never knew how nosy the cops would get. I reminded myself that the sheriff had a legitimate reason for being there: a woman who had gone missing had died in my home. I couldn’t hide amongst my books if I was going to prove my innocence.

  I walked through the den and surprised a forensic team member in the act of wrapping the leather couch to be transported to their lab in Little Rock. I hated to lose it—it had been my grandfather’s, after all—but I decided I’d rather not be reminded someone had died on it. I made a mental note to talk to Gabriel about whether we should replace it with a different style of furnishing. When I walked into the kitchen, Lonna was pouring the sheriff a fresh cup of coffee.

  “Nice of you to join us, Doctor Fisher.”

  “Thank you for stopping back by, Sheriff.” Gads, I hated being fake, but it wouldn’t do to get the man riled up at this point.

  “Ms. Marconi was telling me she slept through all the excitement last night.”

  “She’d had a long day.”

  “She also can’t account for your whereabouts after approximately nine p.m.”

  “I can assure you I had my coffee on the balcony with Gabriel and went to bed.”

  He took notes as I talked. “When did you wake up?”

  “I don’t have a clock visible from the bed, but it was probably about two a.m., maybe a little later.”

  “What woke you up?”

  “I’d been sleeping fitfully, so it was one more awakening.”

  “Any idea what disturbed your sleep?”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “My life has just been turned upside down, Sheriff. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Yes, right.” His ears turned pink. “Did you hear anything?”

  “I heard a noise from outside, something moving the gravel on the driveway. Then footsteps downstairs, an exclamation, and then the front-door bolt being unlocked.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I wanted to see what was going on, so I went to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and put on a robe. The running water kept me from hearing anything else.”

  “And then what happened?”

  I filled him in from that point, but instead of mentioning the black wolf, I just told him Louise had been trying to warn me about something, but she’d not been able to articulate anything. He took notes. Finally, he asked me, “And what made you pass out in the kitchen?”

  “I’m not an M.D., Sheriff. I get a little squeamish at the sight of blood.”

  He shook his head with a superior smirk for the poor little woman who couldn’t take blood. “And you’re a doctor?”

  “A different kind.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “The boys’ll take the couch. Just in case, yo
u know.”

  Before I could ask, “Just in case of what?” Gabriel interrupted. “I would say it’s pretty obvious what happened. She appeared here on the lawn and died on the sofa.”

  “I don’t really think it’s necessary to take the furniture, Sheriff,” Lonna chimed in. “If you need to see it again, you can come back.”

  He hooked his thumbs in his belt and planted his feet. “These orders come from above me, people. I’m just doing my job.”

  “I’ll send you a bill,” I muttered.

  “I’ll, ah, also need those clothes you were wearing last night, Mr. Gabriel.”

  “My clothes?”

  “Evidence.”

  “They’re bloodstained from me carrying the woman in. I didn’t do anything to her.”

  “No one’s sayin’ you did. Just give me the clothes.”

  Gabriel raised one eyebrow but complied and left to fetch them. I could tell he was exasperated. We all were. At last, Knowles dismissed us, but with a command to call if we were going to leave the area.

  Gabriel appeared with the clothes, and we watched, helpless, as the forensics guys finished wrapping the couch in moving plastic and took it away. They also took the rug it sat on. I felt as though they took a part of my grandfather’s memory with them.

  “Look at this,” Lonna called. She had walked to the front window, and we saw more men were outside gathering up clumps of grass and gravel. First they would photograph them, then everything that could have been touched by Louise was gathered up and placed in a bucket.

  “Is this standard procedure?” I asked.

  “The photographing, yes,” Lonna told me. “The gravel and grass theft, no. I just don’t understand this.” Her arm brushed mine, and her skin felt clammy.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Just feeling a little washed out. Too much going on right now. And that sleeping pill was strong.”

  “Why don’t you go lay down? Sleep off the hangover.”

  “Can’t. I’ve got to go interview some more residents. And the mayor.”