All was silent.
Joe was afraid to move. Beside him Kelly held her breath, stiff and still.
Silence. Not even the sound of crickets chirruping.
"This is weird," Kelly whispered.
The sound of Kelly's voice almost scared the shit out of Joe. He gulped, tried to calm himself, and nodded. "Yeah, it is," he whispered back.
"Where did he go?"
"I don't know."
"You don't think he'll come by here, do you?"
"I didn't see him come by us before."
"Well of course not. We were both pretty goddamned occupied with other things, weren't we?"
They paused, listening for any sounds. Aside from the gusts of wind, there was nothing.
"Think he went back into the woods?" Kelly asked in that same whisper.
I don't know," Joe replied. They were both talking in low whispers to each other. God forbid the guy hear them and come over and do to them what they had seen him do to the man by the lakeshore. "Guess he did."
"What the hell was that?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Kelly looked nervous. For the first time it seemed to occur to her that she was naked. She reached for the front seat of the Mustang for her jeans and panties. "Let's get the hell out of here."
"You got it, baby" Joe scrambled back in the front seat and didn't even wait for Kelly to put on her clothes. He inserted the keys in the ignition and fired up the car, peeling out of the remote area fast because now he could swear that whatever it was they had seen was watching them; it was watching them from the woods and now it was pursuing them, down the long winding road that led to their make-out spot. Joe put the pedal to the metal, and as they raced down the road toward the interstate he had no idea what he was going to say to the cops when he called them, but he didn't care. He had gotten a good look at the guy, even from far away. He could at least give them a description.
"What're we gonna do?" Kelly had slid back into her jeans and panties and had put her halter top back on, sans bra. She looked scared and worried.
"Fuck if I know, babe."
"We gonna go to the police?"
"Guess we should."
"What are we gonna tell them?"
Joe was at a loss for words. Hey officer, I just saw a werewolf kill a guy by the lake. He sighed. "Fuck if I know. But I guess we gotta tell them something."
Thirty minutes later a state patrol car was heading toward the cabin at precisely the same moment Mark Wiseman stepped into his hotel room for the night.
Chapter Ten
Mark Wiseman was at the appointed time at yet another public phone booth two days after the hit on David Samuels-this one on the corner of Ellis and Brookhurst-when the call came. He answered on the first ring. "Mark here."
"You were seen." Bernard's voice was low and ominous. Mark didn't know Bernard well enough to detect if there was anger in the tone, but that simple sentence-you were seen-was enough to set the butterflies loose in his stomach.
"What?"
"Two kids smoking dope and fucking in the woods saw you," Bernard said, and now Mark could hear the stress in his voice. He could picture the executive sitting behind his large desk chewing his fingernails down to the cuticles over this. "The boy gave a general description that loosely matched you."
Mark was at a loss for words. Part of him felt elated: Finally, it's over. Maybe now Bernard will see that this is stupid and risky. But another part of him felt a cold fear that washed over him suddenly, drying out his mouth and making his heart pound faster.
"Lucky for you, they were smoking dope," Bernard reiterated. "They admitted it, and the troopers attributed their pot smoking to what they saw."
"What did they say?" Mark heard himself asking.
"That they saw what looked to them to be a werewolf attacking and mauling David Samuels three nights ago at his private lakefront cabin."
Mark's heart raced and he dry swallowed. He could sense that Bernard was angry, but was drawing this out as a form of torture. Obviously this was amusing to him. "What else?"
"They said they watched you change back into a man and disappear into the woods. Then they got the hell out of there."
"And the cops don't believe them?"
Bernard chuckled dryly. "Are you kidding? They think they were stoned out of their minds. Apparently they were smoking some pretty potent stuff. I hear that the THC content of pot is higher now than when I was a teenager."
Mark wasn't listening to Bernard. His mind was racing. He could have sworn that there was nobody around that night. He hadn't smelled anybody within miles of the cabin. Of course, it had been pretty windy. They could have been on the north side of the cabin. The wind would have blown all trace of their scent north, away from Mark. An icy pit of dread settled in his stomach at the thought that he was seen; he had been intending to carry through and devour the man, but he had caught the vague sense that he was being watched. The minute he had felt it he had changed back to human form, but he couldn't get a scent on anything. For the first time in years he had actually gone against his primal instinct and had listened to his human, rational side; he had changed back and gotten the hell out of Dodge. "So what happened?"
Bernard's tone turned serious again. "You did a good job with Samuels. He was chewed to shit. The authorities think it was a wild animal, probably a bear. We got off scot-free."
Mark sighed in relief, the leaden feeling fading slightly.
"But you were seen," Bernard said, his tone serious again. "That's not good."
"You said yourself that the kids who saw me were high," Mark said, his mind racing to calm the executive's mind. "Obviously the police think they were hallucinating. It'll be fine."
"I agree." Bernard paused a moment, then continued. "But we can't have this again. I know that what these kids saw will get brushed under the rug; nobody believes them and I'm sure they're even questioning if what they saw that night was real or not. Either way, it still doesn't address the fact that in the future there could be other witnesses. You're going to have to be more careful about that."
"Yes, I guess I will." Mark gripped the receiver tight, the worst of his nervousness gone. "I'll be more careful."
"Good."
Mark swallowed another dry lump, then mustered up the courage to ask what he had been want ing to ask. "Hopefully this will be the last one. I mean, two dead in two months has got to fuck with their plans now, don't you think?"
"That is very far from the truth," Bernard said, his voice cold as steel. "If you're thinking of backing out now just because you think we've put a little scare into them, you can forget it. These guys are stubborn, and it looks like we're going to have to do some significant damage before we disrupt their plans."
"Oh." Mark was silent, hoping that Bernard would finish and he could go home.
"In the meantime, don't say anything to anybody. Lay low. I'll be in touch in another week or so with some updated information. Let's say ..." The rustle of calendar pages being turned coming across the line. "Next Thursday evening?"
"I'm working that night," Mark said.
"I'll call you at work."
Mark gave it to him.
"I'll talk to you next week then," Bernard said, and hung up.
Mark hung up the phone slowly. A cool offshore breeze was blowing in from the ocean. He turned and headed toward his car.
PART TWO
Chapter Eleven
When the job came in, Allen Frey had no idea it was going to involve murder.
He had sworn off handling murder investigations two years ago when he had been hired by the widow of a wealthy man to investigate the suicide of her husband. What he had uncovered had been far worse: The husband had been killed by the woman's boyfriend to cover up her involvement in a local child molestation ring in which the couple's own children were victims. The husband had found out and was in the process of turning over evidence-which she later destroyedto the police. The evidence Allen Fr
ey had dug up during his investigation had been so disgusting, so brutal, that he swore he would never handle another case involving violence or death again.
Yet when the well-dressed man stepped into the office of Frey Surveillance in Costa Mesa, California, he was taken with the man. For one, the potential client was not only a sharp dresser, he was polite and courteous too. He was also extremely personable and funny, cracking jokes and showing no signs of being condescending, which was so prevalent with men of his stature. Allen pegged the potential client as a banker, a lawyer, or a doctor, a financially secure man who, because of his finances, felt he could wield the world with the snap of his fingers. The minute Allen had the man pegged old prejudices sprang up; he hated rich people for their snobbiness.
Frederick Johansen possessed no such rich snob traits.
The meeting began with Frederick asking for Allen's credentials. As Allen presented them to him, the other man made small, witty anecdotes, which Allen thought were genuine and witty. Allen relaxed in the man's company, and in no time they were making small talk about the latest baseball season. It was Frederick who steered the conversation back to the business at hand.
"I'm on the board of directors for a large, national insurance company," Frederick began, leaning back in his seat. He was a tall man, standing six foot one, with a lean build, salt and pepper hair, and a white beard. He reminded Allen a little bit of the actor Donald Sutherland, only he spoke with a slight southern accent. "You may have heard of us: Free State Insurance Corporation?"
Allen nodded, smiled in recognition. "Of course. I see your ads all over the place."
Frederick returned the smile. "We're the largest and the best. But enough of that ..." He leaned forward. "I'm going to give it to you straight and simple, Mr. Frey. I want to make sure that if I decide to hire you, and if you decide to take on this case, that we maintain a strict sense of confidentiality. I am acting alone in this. The rest of the board and the executive staff of Free State and Eastside Insurance Brokerage, with whom we are in negotiations, are not aware of our meeting today. Should you and I decide today to forge ahead with this business arrangement, I need your word that you will speak to no one about me or your investigation." He raised his eyebrows at Allen. "Agreed?"
Allen smiled and nodded. "You have my word." He began to relax even more. With the mention of a corporate merger and all the talk of secrecy, it sounded like Mr. Johansen wanted to retain Allen for some corporate snooping.
"Good." Frederick Johansen sat forward, regarding Allen pensively with gray eyes. He leaned forward and reached into a tan leather briefcase and flipped open the locks. "I'd like you to skim through the material in the briefs I have prepared for you, Mr. Frey, and tell me what you think." He extracted a file and handed it over to Allen, who began to leaf through it wordlessly.
Most of it appeared to be photocopies of internal corporate memos and manifestos. Allen recognized Frederick's name among a dozen or so others that were unfamiliar. He shrugged, wondering what to make of it. It would take him some time to get a handle on some corporate espionage and he didn't have time to pussyfoot around if Frederick was unwilling to give him the skinny right now. Frederick motioned to the file. "Flip to the papers in the back."
Allen flipped to the back. There were newspaper articles, the first culled from the Orange County Register two months ago, the second from the Houston Tribune last month, the third from the Los Angeles Times just two weeks ago. They all concerned the savage deaths of middle-aged men by wild animals: a coyote in the first, a bear in the second, a mountain lion in the third. "There is still some debate as to whether the beast that mauled William Krueger two weeks ago was a mountain lion or not," Mr. Johansen said. "That is the official verdict. Animal Control officers aren't so sure, and I seriously doubt it. Especially since wildcats haven't been spotted in the Hollywood Hills in, oh, forty or fifty years or so."
"You want me to find out what kind of animals killed these men?" Allen was confused.
"I want you to find out what these men were doing prior to their deaths," Frederick said. "I want you to retrace every waking moment of their lives. I want you to talk to the people that were close to them, people they may have come in contact with. I want to know if the people these men had come in contact with noticed anything unusual at any time."
Allen was flipping through the papers again. "You're intimating foul play?"
"I don't know," Frederick said, his expression dour. "But I do know that three deaths in three months, all at the hands of animals, all of the victims connected professionally to the same two firms-Free State and Eastside Insurance-is pretty goddamned weird."
Allen nodded, skimming over the newspaper articles again. "Yes, it is."
"This is important to me," Frederick said. "I realize that you may have other cases, but I would like you to direct your full attention to this case if you can. I can pay double your normal fee."
Allen felt his spirits lift. Double his normal surveillance fee was something he hadn't been expecting.
Frederick was reaching for his wallet, riffling through it. "Plus expenses, of course." He pulled out a wad of bills and slapped them down on the desk. "A deposit." He met Allen's eyes from across the desk.
Allen looked at the big wad of bills, then at Frederick, who held him with his steely gaze. He reached across the desk and picked up the cash, thumbing through the bills. The deposit amounted to ten thousand dollars. "I can start today."
Frederick beamed. "Wonderful!" He rose to his feet and Allen stood up, shaking his hand. He reached into his briefcase and handed Allen another file. "This is a complete dossier on the three men. Read it over and call me tonight at this number." He slipped Allen a business card. "It's a secure line."
Allen took the dossier and the business card and walked Frederick Johansen out. "I'll be in touch tonight," he said.
When Frederick Johansen was gone, Allen went back to his office and sat behind his desk. He looked over the newspaper articles, then at the business documents, then opened the thick manila folder that contained the dossier. Looked like this was going to be a juicy one. Allen smiled and extracted the first file from the folder, opened it up, and began to read.
Chapter Twelve
They had an eight o'clock rendezvous at the Huntington Beach Pier parking lot. Mark Wiseman waited in his beaten-up Ford Pinto, a Motley Criie song on the radio. The beach was practically deserted and Mark knew that in another thirty minutes the lifeguards would begin driving through the parking lots telling people they had to leave. In another week the beach would be closing a few hours earlier due to the change from summer to fall. It was already getting cooler in early September. As he sat in his car and waited he felt the wind pick up, blowing a scrap of paper along the ground.
The sound of a car pulling up flitted across his senses before he actually saw it. He looked in his rearview mirror and twin headlights appeared. A moment later a black Mercedes pulled up beside him and stopped. The driver killed the engine and turned off the headlights. Mark got out of his car, opened the passenger side door of the Mercedes and got in.
Bernard looked smug and confident behind the wheel. The interior of the car smelled like new. "I hope I'm not spoiling your night off," Bernard said and smirked. "I'm sure you'll be able to head right back to the nearest biker bar and score some pussy tonight."
"Maybe you should come with me," Mark remarked, going along with Bernard's sarcasm. "You might get lucky, too."
"Oh, I don't need to stoop that low to get laid. I got me a regular piece of ass already. Blonde hair, blue eyes, big tits, young all-American beauty. The girl can suck some mean cock and she swallows too. Every drop." He grinned.
Mark grinned back. I feel sorry for whoever it is you're fucking, you bastard.
"But enough of this male standard of seeing whose dick is bigger," Bernard said, waving his right hand in a dismissal of the current topic of conversation. "I wanted to talk to you face-to-face this time instead of o
ver the phone to personally congratulate you on a job well done."
"Thank you."
"The killing of William Krueger went perfectly, " Bernard continued. "No witnesses, no reports of animal sounds or screaming, and to top it off the body wasn't discovered for two whole days. Imagine what he must've smelled like." Bernard scrunched his face up in disgust. "Yuck."
Mark smiled and said nothing. Inside he was controlling the boiling anger that wanted him to leap out and annihilate Bernard. He could do it, too; he could will the change to occur now and lay Bernard's throat open with one well-placed swipe of his claws. What kept him from doing it was knowing that Bernard was armed; the minute the executive sensed something was wrong, the gun would come out. The minute Mark began the change-blam!
"Our plan is working, old buddy," Bernard continued, patting Mark on the shoulder. "The Board is running scared. Frankly, they're rather fucked up over these latest developments. Plus, there are other things developing for Free State Insurance." He grinned wide. "Our corporate profits rose this quarter by ten percent."
"Congratulations."
Bernard continued as if he hadn't heard Mark. "Because of the sudden rise in profits, we're starting to see things come around. For one, the Board is reconsidering its position to merge with Eastside."
Mark felt his hopes soar but tried not to let it show. "Really? That's good news."
Bernard grinned. "It is good news. Obviously they're reconsidering now because of the recent turn of events with the unfortunate, eh ... animal accidents that have occurred with other members of the Board." He chuckled, his eyes dark, his features a caricature of shrewd cunning. "Naturally, they're all rather shaken up by the coincidences. They've managed to find replacements, and just now the consensus for merging is at a low point. Especially thanks to the latest hit."
"Why's that?"
"Krueger's replacement is adamantly against the merger. And he won't budge. The other replacements have voted for it, mainly in respect for their predecessors, but not this new guy. He's against it all the way, and because of his opinions he's actually influenced a couple other members of the Board to rethink their positions."
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