Apparently, no one picked up. He paces a few steps forward, and then back. We can see that he’s talking to himself.
“He doesn't look happy,” Marley says.
“He looks really upset,” I say.
We watch as the man dials the phone again. Again, he lifts it to his ear.
He waits, pacing.
No one answers. He stuffs the phone back into his pocket, and then starts running towards the inn’s front steps
He disappears inside.
Now there are two intruders in there.
“That’s it,” I say. “I’m going in. Call Neville and Dawn. Their apartment is in the back of the inn, so hopefully they’re staying out of the way. If they don’t answer, go knock on the back door.”
I push the van door open, and am running toward the inn, my gun drawn, when I hear sirens.
Within seconds, Chris’s cop car is screeching to a halt right in front of the inn.
I’ve just reached the front walkway. I keep moving.
“Penny!” I hear Chris shout out my name.
“Come on!” I shout. “Two other guys just ran in there!”
“Put your gun away!” Chris shouts. His voice is closer. I hear his footsteps behind me. “Officer McDougal and I will go in first,” he says. “Let us clear the scene. Ted!” he calls out.
Ted McDougal, an officer who I was in the police academy with, before I failed out, runs up behind us. He has his gun drawn.
I’m out of breath, probably because I’m so nervous. My heart is racing. I reach a hand up and point. “Marty left. About five minutes ago. Then these two other men—they came running down the street. One with white hair went in first.”
“Were they armed?” Chris asks. He’s lining up on one side of the doorway, and Ted is positioned on the other.
“Not that I could see, but the white-haired guy was wearing a big trench coat, so I couldn’t—” I feel like I might cry. Or puke.
Either way, I’m not doing well.
I’m worried sick about Dawn and Neville. What if they got up, because of sounds? What if they went to see what the commotion was, and got hurt?
I feel my stomach lurch.
“Stay out here,” Chris orders.
I know he’s trying to keep me safe, and I appreciate how he’s taken control of the situation. He is a cop, after all, with years of experience. At the same time, I resent his orders.
Not that I’d be much help in there, but at least I wouldn’t feel like a child being told to stay put.
Chris gives Ted a signal, and simultaneously they move through the doorway. Swift. Efficient. Professional. All of the things that I am most assuredly not.
I hear the van door slam, behind me. I turn and see Marley crossing the street.
She holds up her phone. “I just talked to Dawn,” she says. “Luckily, she and Neville managed to sleep through the commotion. They’re safe in their bedroom. I told them to stay put.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
Then, a thought strikes me. “What about Dawson?” I ask. “He lives with them too, do you think he’s out at the bar still?”
Marley nods. “Yeah. Dawn thinks that he’s still out at The O.P. She says he usually stays there ‘til closing time.”
“Whew!” I say.
I look towards the inn anxiously. From our position on the front walkway, we can see Raul’s bedroom. It’s still dimly lit.
I see an occasional shadow, move across the window. What is going on in there?
“No shots fired,” I say, half to myself, and half to Marley. “That’s good.”
Marley looks as freaked out as I feel. I think that both of us liked the idea of an exciting overnight surveillance operation more than we like the reality of it.
Now that we’ve gotten more than a fair share of excitement, I think both of us wish that the night had passed uneventfully.
Suddenly, movement catches my eye. It’s coming from Raul’s room. The window is opening.
I step back, away from the building. My fingers tense up around my gun, which I’m holding down at my side. My hand is shaking.
“Get behind me!” I say to Marley.
She hurries behind me.
The white-haired man dives, head first, out of the open window. Before his body touches the ground, he transforms, before my very eyes, into a wolf. The wolf is large, with snow-white fur. He touches down onto the ground, and then his muscles bunch as he springs forward.
In what looks like three bounding leaps, he clears the yard and is out into the open street.
Just as he reaches the street, a second figure dives through the open window. This time it’s the man with the grey hat. His body also transforms, magically, before he reaches the ground. He becomes a black wolf, with a long, lanky body. The second wolf tears after the first, running so fast that he becomes a blur in my vision.
My mouth is hanging open.
I feel Marley shaking.
“Did you just—” I stop abruptly. I feel like my brain is scrambled. I can barely comprehend what I just saw. “Did those men just—”
“Yes,” Marley says. I know that she saw what I saw.
“Werewolves,” I whisper.
Running after the two wolves doesn’t even cross my mind. If you saw how they were moving, you would understand. The way they could run made human running look like crawling. I can’t see either of them anymore. They have disappeared completely, leaving us only empty pavement to gawk at in awe.
“Penny!” Chris shouts. I turn and see him rushing out the inn’s front door. “Which way did they go?”
I shake my head. “They’re gone, Chris,” I say.
“Which way?” he demands again.
Because I don’t know what else to do, I point up the street, in the direction the two wolves ran.
Chris’s radio cackles. I hear muffled speaking through it, and then Chris tilts his chin down to respond. “I’m going to pursue the trespassers,” he says, into the radio. “Up Aspen Street. They’re on foot—shouldn’t get far.”
Oh, I wouldn’t say they’re on foot. Eight, furry paws is more like it.
I don’t think Chris has any idea how far those two trespassers are capable of traveling.
“Chris!” I say, as he heads off towards his cop car. “Wait!”
He’s running, so I jog after him. I’m not moving too fast, because I need to give myself time to think.
Nope. There’s not enough time in the world that would allow me to think a way out of what I have to tell Chris right now.
I take a deep breath. He’s reached his car door. He pulls it open and half sits as he looks at me.
“What?” he says as he lowers himself into the driver’s seat. “Make it quick, Penny.”
“Chris—those guys. They aren’t normal.”
“Yeah. They’re no-good criminals,” Chris says.
“No—Chris! Listen to me. They’re not normal. I mean they’re not regular... humans. They’re werewolves.”
“Werewolves?”
“They’re men who turn into wolves. I don’t know how it works exactly, but I just saw it with my own eyes. They jumped out of that window, and by the time they reached ground their bodies had transformed. You don’t need to look for men. You need to look for two wolves. One was white and the other was—”
“Penny—” Chris shakes his head. “You sound crazy. I need to go. We’ll talk about this later.”
I’m standing right in the way of his door. He can’t shut it.
His radio cackles to life. “I need your position, 204” the voice on the other end says.
Chris looks at me. “That’s my chief. Move, please.”
“Chris,” I say, begging him with my eyes to listen to me. “I wouldn’t make something like this up.”
“You’re tired,” Chris says. “Your brain is playing tricks on you. It’s dark out, and —”
“No!” I shout, cutting him off.
I didn’t want to do
this, but he’s forcing me. I have to do this.
I lift my hand.
“Flamma,” I say, and just like that, a little ball of light emerges over my palm. It’s a little trick that I picked up from Azure, an Air Witch who lives in Hillcrest part time so that she can keep an eye on me and my coven sisters.
I bounce the flickering fireball up and down slowly, just with my thoughts. I watch Chris’s eyes move along with the ball of light, up and down.
“Are you tired and seeing things?” I ask. “Is your brain playing tricks on you?”
Chris shakes his head, as if trying to clear away a mental haze. He squeezes his eyes shut.
When he opens his eyes, I start turning the flames into different colors.
Purple. Blue. Red.
“Magic is real, Chris,” I say, while the little ball of light changes colors. “There’s lots of things out there that we don’t really understand, as humans. I’m just learning about it. I would never have believed in werewolves, before I started to learn about this kind of thing for myself. But now—”
Chris’s radio crackles again.
The voice on the other end of the radio speaks. “202 to 204. What’s your twenty. I repeat. I’m heading down main street towards Aspen. I need to know your exact location.”
Chris tears his eyes away from the ball of light in my hand. “I’m at the inn, Chief,” he says. “Leaving now.”
“Copy that.”
Chris releases the radio. He looks pale.
“Move,” he says. His tone is cold, almost robotic.
I don’t know what to make of it. Is he in denial about what he just saw?
I step back, and he pulls his door shut. He turns the siren on, and pulls out into the road, speeding up Aspen and then turning down main street.
As soon as the siren fades, I hear a new sound. It’s shouting.
I turn, and see that Marley is standing where I left her. The shouting is coming from inside the inn. If I’m not mistaken, it’s coming from Raul’s room.
This crazy night’s not over yet.
I run towards Marley. “I think that’s Dawn, yelling,” I say.
As I jog past Marley, she follows me. We both make our way up the inn’s front steps, through the door, and then down the hallway that leads to Raul’s room.
It’s definitely Dawn, yelling. Her shouts become louder as we near the room.
“Let him go!” Dawn is shouting. She sounds distressed, and urgent. “He didn’t do anything wrong. My baby! My baby...he’s a good boy.”
We reach the room.
When we enter, I see Dawn and Neville standing with their backs to me. They’re facing into the room, where I see a large empty bed, a nightstand, a small desk, and a chair. The lamp by the chair is on, but not the overhead lights. I see why the room had the subdued glow that it did.
While Dawn shouts, Neville stands slightly behind her. His hands are on her shoulders, as if he’s both comforting her and holding her in place.
Further into the room, next to the bed, I see Dawson. His pale face looks even more ashen than usual. He’s on his knees, and his hands are handcuffed.
Ted McDougal stands over him.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
All eyes turn to me.
“They’re going to arrest Dawson!” Dawn says, looking at me with wide eyes. “Do something Penny! Tell this police officer that Dawson didn’t do anything.”
“McDougal, why are you arresting Dawson?” I ask.
“For suspicion of murder,” Ted McDougal answers.
A look around the empty room again. “Murder?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
McDougal gestures with his head, towards the area just behind the large, empty bed.
I feel my stomach do a flip flop.
Uh oh. I have a feeling I’m not going to like what I’m going to see on the other side of that bed.
I take several slow steps into the room.
“Don’t touch anything,” Ted says. “This is a crime scene. But you might as well see for yourself.”
I take a few more steps forward. Slowly. Finally, I reach the edge of the bed, and I peer past it.
There, on the floor, is a body.
It’s lying face first against the floor. The carpet round the body is stained blood-red.
There's a knife, sticking out of his back.
I recognize his stocky, muscular build. His sweatshirt. The dirt streaks on his pants, and his dark, spiky black hair.
Raul Rivera has been murdered.
Chapter Five
My eyes are wide. I look up from the body, and my gaze travels around the room. Marley is right behind me. She’s staring down at the body. Her usually caramel toned face is as pale as the cream colored carpets.
Dawn and Neville are huddled by the door, and they look as horrified as I feel. Dawson is whimpering, and McDougal looks extremely uncomfortable. I can tell that he doesn’t like being in charge of the scene. He’s used to having his captain, Chris, around.
A cold gust of air enters through the open window.
“How did this happen?” I ask, thinking aloud as I look back down at Raul’s dead body, and then up to the open window. “Who were those other two men?”
“Strangers to town,” McDougal says. “Cap Wagner and Chief will catch them.” He sounds confident.
“Maybe,” I say, not as confidently. “But really—how did this happen?” I turn to Dawson. “Did you do this?”
Dawson’s lower lip quivers. He shakes his head emphatically. “No! No, of course not! When I came into the room, he was already dead! I just got here—like thirty seconds before the cops came in! I was going to sell him my map of the wilderness around Hillcrest.”
“In the middle of the night... you were going to sell a map?” I ask.
“Raul asked me if I had one,” Dawson says. “Yesterday. He said he’d give me twenty bucks for it. I was just going to sell it to him...” His whimpering turns to crying.
McDougal scoffs. “Yeah, sure, buddy,” He says. “You just happened to be here to sell a map and saw the dead body, and you didn’t call anyone?”
“I didn’t have time to!” Dawson says. “I came home from the bar earlier than usual. Our Fantasy Fest game ended at quarter to twelve. I took the shortcut through the woods out back and was home by midnight... I thought I’d see if Raul was up.”
“So that you could sell him your map?” I ask.
Dawson nods. His nose is running. Tears stream down his face. I can tell he wants to wipe his face off, but he can’t because his hands are in cuffs.
He sounds desperate as he continues. “When he asked me yesterday if I had a map, and I said yes, he said he’d take cash out of the ATM today. We were going to meet up when I got home from the bar. I told him I’d be home late, but he said that wasn’t a problem. He said he usually stays up late and I should just... I saw his door was open a little... I didn’t expect this.”
“You see, Ted?” Dawn says. “He didn’t do anything!”
She retrieves a tissue from her bathrobe pocket and starts to move forward, perhaps to wipe her son’s face for him. Neville holds her back. Dawn resists slightly at first, but then gives in to her husband’s guidance. She pushes the tissue back into her pocket.
She eyes Ted. “What about those other men?” she asks him. “They must be the murderers!”
“Our son was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time,” Neville says. “That’s no reason to arrest him, Ted, surely.”
Now McDougal looks confused. “We’ve got probable cause... he’s on the scene of the crime—in the middle of the night.”
“Being a night owl doesn’t make him a criminal!” Dawn says.
Over the conversation, I start to hear the sound of ambulance sirens. They begin faintly, but grow and grow as Dawn, Neville and Ted talk.
“But Cap said to cuff him and take him into the station...” McDougal says. He looks from the leaky-eyed Dawson to protective
Dawn, to Neville, his brow furrowed with uncertainty.
The sirens reach a peak, and then stop. Red and white flashing lights become visible through the open window. The lights illuminate the room’s ceiling as they flash from red to white and then back to red again.
I’m not sure if it’s my place to speak up, but I can’t bite my tongue any longer. I have to ask Dawson a few questions while everything is still fresh for him—before the medics barge in and distract everyone.
“Dawson,” I say. “You said Raul’s door was ajar. What did you see when you walked in?”
“I —I don’t know. I knocked sort of, quietly I guess, and then pushed the door open. Two men I’d never seen before were standing in the middle of the room.”
Dawson sniffles loudly, then presses onwards, tears still sliding down his cheeks. “They looked—I don’t know—like they were about to fight, or something? They were standing facing each other, all tense. It looked like I interrupted them in the middle of something. The one with the black beard—the younger one... he was in the middle of speaking, but he stopped right when I walked into the room. I just kind of froze. I could see Raul’s feet, sticking out from behind the bed. I thought he was just lying down. Maybe passed out or something. Then, I heard the police sirens.”
His story sounds like it could be true.
Marley, who has been standing quietly at the very entrance to the room, now speaks up.
“I think the medics are here,” she says. Then she pokes her head out of the door and yells out, “We’re over here!”
The sound of footsteps and voices floats down the hallway, building with each passing second. Then two medics enter the room.
The next fifteen minutes are hectic, as the medics and officer try to preserve the crime scene and confirm Raul’s death at the same time. It becomes clear that Marley and I are no longer wanted and soon we find ourselves back out at the van. We’re too wound up to stay in one place any longer, so we fire up the van and start cruising up and down the streets of Hillcrest, searching for signs of Chris or the two wolves.
I’m disappointed when we don’t see any sign of the wolves, but not so disappointed when we don’t spot Chris.
A Hillcrest Witch Mystery Collection Page 22
