Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel

by Steve R. Yeager

  The sheriff’s grin grew wider and even more fraudulent. He pursed his lips, smacking them together in a sucking sound as his weight shifted back onto his heels and his head began to pivot back and forth. “I’m afraid not, son. It’s time for you to pay your check and go. Now.”

  “What if I cannot pay?”

  While the sheriff continued to make the sucking noise with his teeth and tongue, the girl who called herself Melody widened her eyes at the challenge, as if it had been unexpected for her as well. As if she had the sudden realization that she had picked the wrong guy to sit and spill her troubles to.

  The sheriff asked, “Are you broke? No money?” Then he glanced both directions, emphasizing the deputies standing beside him.

  Wolf said nothing.

  “Goddammit, son. Are you a deadbeat? Some lowlife we gotta eject? We don’t run a charity here. But that bike of yours parked out there—” The sheriff jerked his thumb back at the front window. “—that might be worth something. Maybe we should confiscate it for…evidence.”

  Wolf stared the guy down. “I don’t have the check yet.”

  The sheriff smirked then tucked his thumb away and pointed an index finger at a spot on the table between the two red baskets and wiggled his dangling digit. “Then let’s just say twenty bucks will cover all this. That’ll leave a nice little tip. Tammy deserves it, you know. All that hard work she does.”

  Wolf waited another beat and then stood, raising his hands and keeping his palms angled downward. Even so, the sheriff and his deputies retreated a nervous step, letting Wolf come to his full height. He glared back at them, then dug in his pocket and drew out a wad of cash. Peeled off two ten-dollar bills and laid them on the white Formica tabletop and secured them with a water glass dripping with condensation. He narrowed his eyes at the sheriff and then turned to the girl who called herself Melody.

  “Safe travels,” he said with the hint of a nod.

  She stared coldly at him as if he’d somehow betrayed her. Her eyes then darted to her current threat—the sheriff. She was clearly afraid of him. But, what would happen to her next was probably for the best. Wolf had understood her true background the moment she had sat down across the table from him. He figured the sheriff would see through the same thin story she’d weave for him as well, and put her right back into the safe and protected cocoon of suburbia where she belonged. He only had to tuck tail, walk away, and allow it to happen.

  With slow, deliberate steps, he rounded the assembled local law enforcement of the township of Crow Canyon and made his way to the front door while everyone else who’d remained in the diner watched with barely restrained amazement, many probably wishing something exciting had happened to brighten their day, and then been disappointed when it had not.

  On his way past, he nodded once at Tammy the waitress, then pushed his way through the door, which jingled its please-come-again tune.

  Outside, the cross-country bus was parked half a block down the street, angled in against the curb. A smattering of people who had left the diner earlier were climbing the steps to get on the bus. Watching them, thankful for the forthcoming solitude of the open road and knowing he would soon be alone again, he pulled up beside his bike and tugged on the gloves he had left behind on the seat. He hit the starter button on the handlebars, and the bike sparked to life and dropped into a lumpy idle. With a final glance up and down the street, he threw a leg over the big Indian Chief, sank low into the seat, clunked it into gear, and eased off the clutch. Gave it a hint of throttle. The bike let out a low-pitched gurgle as it accelerated into the street.

  As he crossed the double yellow centerline, he straightened out and let the loping idle take him down the road at a pace no faster than if he were walking.

  The bike maintained its first-gear gait until he came to the four-way stop sign. He planted a booted foot down hard on the grit-covered asphalt. From here, he could go left, go right, or go straight. To his right, the road dead-ended at a white-boarded fence. To the left, the road stretched out as far as he could see. The waitress had said the namesake of the town lay a few miles in that direction. Or, if he decided to, he could simply go straight down the highway, which was probably the sensible route to take.

  Before easing up on the clutch, out of habit, he checked the side mirrors. Visible in the small round glass disk to his right was nothing in particular. But in the mirror to his left was the miniaturized image of the sheriff and his twin deputies emerging from the diner. They had the girl who called herself Melody between them, and they were walking her down the sidewalk together, almost arm and arm. The girl’s hands were not visible. They were behind her, and it was obvious from the way she was moving that she had been handcuffed and was being taken into custody.

  Wolf cocked his head to one side and reconsidered his limited options.

  Left or straight?

  It did not take long, and in that brief moment of consideration, and the application of all that he knew to be true, his mind did not change from the initial decision he had made.

  He let slip the clutch and went left toward the town’s namesake.

  - 9 -

  CROW CANYON RAVINE

  TAMMY THE WAITRESS had been right. The namesake for Crow Canyon was not much more than a deep gulch carved through a small plateau by some long dead river. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was wide enough that Wolf could toss a rock clear to the other side, which was something he had been doing for almost ten throws so far. Just tossing and watching the rocks arch above the void of the chasm and land on the opposite side, where they would skip and skitter in the dirt and weeds before finally coming to rest.

  But on one throw, he missed.

  That rock had been heavier than the others and had just barely missed making it to the other side. It had bounced off the sloped face, chunking out a divot from the soft dirt before tumbling to the ravine floor and landing with an echoing stone on stone crack. A murder of crows answered in kind by taking panicked flight, cawing as they climbed from the depths and broke for the sky. Wolf watched them go, listening to the wind as the cawing grew more and more faint.

  Those voices told him nothing. Nothing at all.

  The warm sun had gone past its afternoon zenith, and the floor of the canyon was no longer hidden by so many shadows. Still, there was not much to see below other than the splotchy growth of shrubs and the tan-colored rocky soil. It also became clear to him that the gulch had once been used as a dumping site. Nonorganic colors—reds, oranges, silvers, and blues—mixed with the organic greens and browns of the weeds and dirt.

  Curious over something shiny that had caught his eye, he got down on one knee close to the edge and scanned below for the spot where the crows had first taken flight. He couldn’t tell for sure where that had been, exactly, but there was something down there that didn’t belong. In addition, there was a faint reek of spoiled meat hanging in the air disturbed by the crows.

  And as he sniffed the air again—in an instant—he was back in Iraq.

  It was a blisteringly hot spring day in April, and the noontime temperature had already climbed well into the triple digits. He was riding shotgun in an HMMWV on his way to Fallujah as part of Operation Vigilant Resolve. The Humvee—as it was more commonly called—held the tail-end position of a six-unit convoy. They were not important enough to be in the middle of the pack, nor were they ranked low enough to be in the first third where most of the casualties usually occurred. Due to his size, he had to sit up front where there was a bit more legroom available. In the back, they were carrying a low-level VIP, a lanky major named Thomas Clay, who everyone just called TC. And sitting beside the major was his aide-de-camp, Corporal Jason Howe.

  Wolf liked both men, which was a rarity for him. Both men were good soldiers, as were the driver and gunner. They’d been together for nearly a full tour, and subsequently had become close—as close as he could get to any man who might suddenly die. Blood-brothers or not, he’d learned the hard way that ge
tting close to anyone could leave deep wounds if they were to go about doing something stupid, like getting themselves killed. And no matter how hard he tried not to, he had developed a certain comfort level with them, which now made the solitary guy walking with a limp along the edge of the road set his gut to tingling. That guy wasn’t one of the good guys. Something was off. The way the man walked appeared artificial and forced, not natural and smooth. The guy might have wanted to look old and worn, but he wasn’t old and worn.

  Wolf bumped the driver’s shoulder and pointed at the potential threat. The Humvee slowed to a crawl. Grayson, the gunner up top on the two-forty, called down into the cab.

  “What the fuck? Why the fuck we slowing?”

  Wolf looked at the old guy limping along again. What from a distance would appear to be just an old man hobbling along did not sit right with him.

  He kept watching the guy.

  The gunner shuffled his feet to pivot the barrel of the belt-fed meat-grinder left and right. “Come on. What’s the fucking grid, guys?”

  Wolf glanced at the major riding in the back seat and indicated toward the old guy outside by stabbing at the thick glass side window. Major Clay leaned closer to his own window and stared at the old man but said nothing.

  Wolf could just feel it, though. Deep down in his bones. Danger. The tingles. The soft whisper in his ear. The clinching of the guts. They had become all too familiar signs of late. Still, their orders from Command had been clear. Crystal clear. They were not to engage unless first engaged by the enemy—a stupid rule that had gotten a lot of good people killed. But Wolf also knew that gut feeling alone was not enough to condemn a guy on, or at least not good enough for the paperwork that would inevitably follow. Someone would have to get out and check to be sure of the old man’s intentions. However, that would be a dumb move—potentially, a very stupid, dangerous move. There were just too many others walking near the guy to weed him out and check him properly. And if the guy turned out to be a hostile, he would just fade in between the buildings or pick some kid from the crowd as a shield and fire back from behind.

  Or—maybe the old guy was just one of them? A civi. Someone normal. Someone trying to survive all the violence the crumbling country offered. Some old guy just going about his own, everyday, goddamned business. Maybe the guy was not a threat. Maybe he would turn back, fade away on his own.

  Wolf certainly hoped so.

  But the old man continued his shambling pace, separating from the others and coming closer and closer to the Humvee. And that’s when Wolf’s mind began to scream in alarm.

  Major Clay started yelling from the back seat. “Drive! Go! Go! Go!”

  But there was nowhere to go. They were blocked in by the vehicle ahead of them and by a woman who was about to pass directly in front of the Humvee. The driver jammed the brakes to keep from running her over and the big vehicle slid to a stop in the dust, skewing sideways. Then, as Wolf saw it playing out almost in slow motion, the old guy broke the act, sprinted the final couple of feet, and slapped something against the rear window next to Major Clay. Whatever it was the guy had put on the window, it stuck there. The old guy turned and ran away, stooping low, hands going up to cover his head and neck.

  Wolf instinctively ducked forward as the side window exploded inward with a thunderous boom. Flying glass and spinning bits of steel debris bounced about the interior, knocking him hard against his restraints. He whipsawed back toward his side window, with his helmet being the only thing that saved him from slamming face first into the steel side pillar.

  As the sudden violence cleared, he came to in his seat and tried to roll his neck and lift his head. No luck. Everything had gone numb.

  He tried again.

  Nothing.

  He was limp like a rag doll tossed in a corner.

  Finally, after what felt like minutes, but were probably only seconds, he was again capable of movement. A shrill sound was ringing steadily in his head, muffling all other noises. His eyes remained too blurry to pick out more than vague shapes and shifting shadows from the unfolding chaos.

  Recovering slightly more of his senses, he blindly sought to release himself from the restraints holding him in his seat. His hands felt like limp rubber, but he kept at it and was able to free himself. He twisted. Pain shot through his neck, but it still seemed to work so he turned a little more to check the status of the others with him as the world slowly came back into focus.

  The major’s aide was covered in blood and brains that did not appear to be his own. Red dripped from the bent rims of the guy’s glasses and dribbled onto the papers in his lap. A bone stuck out from his cheek, a jawbone. The teeth on the bone were almost countable along with a good number of silver fillings, and all Wolf could think of was the last time he’d been to the dentist and how the drill had felt on his teeth.

  He squinted his eyes shut, then opened them and realized it wasn’t the corporal’s jawbone that he was seeing sticking from the man’s mouth. The jawbone and teeth had once belonged to the major. Pulses of the corporal’s lifeblood streamed from the guy’s neck and soon slackened to a weak, dribbling flow, and his eyes widened suddenly with shock, and he twitched a few times, and then slumped forward in his seat, dead.

  The gunner’s shout from above brought Wolf back into the fight. The man was firing indiscriminately at targets as they scattered before him. The rattling of the two-forty meat-grinder seemed so very far away, so distant. Shell casings pinged against the metal rooftop. Occasionally, one would drop inside the cab and bounce around, still smoking. There were jagged rips in the fabric of the gunner’s BDUs and torn flesh beneath that. Blood was welling up on the man’s thick black leg hairs and forming rivulets that trickled down inside his socks. Still, the damage did not seem to faze the guy. It probably was not even registering.

  The driver, Colby, banged a fist on the steering wheel. “I’m gonna kill all them motherfuckers!” He swung open his door and fell out of the cab, weapon in hand.

  Wolf tried to reach him to pull him back inside, but he was too late. Colby stumbled to his feet and ran in front of the Humvee, screaming wildly. Wolf found the door latch and climbed out to join the guy.

  Colby raised his weapon, spraying bullets in frenzied, three-round bursts. His shots ripped into the fleeing old man, and the guy twisted grotesquely and was suddenly exposed as the much younger man he actually was, who was now missing half his forearm and holding the bleeding stump clenched in his remaining hand. As the guy hit the dirt, his back arched, and he splayed out and started scratching at the dirt one handed. From above, Grayson angled the two-forty down on the guy and tore him into meaty chunks and shredded fabric.

  By the time Wolf had recovered his bearings, most of the civilians had scattered and found cover, but the woman who had walked in front of them came running directly at him. Her arms were flailing and her tongue was flapping wildly as she screamed unintelligible curses at him. She wore a long black hijab, stained red with blood. Wolf caught only brief hints of her wild-eyed face through the narrow slit exposing her eyes.

  And when he suddenly realized what was going to happen to her, he spun toward Grayson, thrust out a hand, and shouted, “No!”

  Grayson hesitated for a beat, just a beat, and then he swung the big gun onto another fleeing target and shot the guy dead. Fresh bullets continued to cut their way through the guy’s corpse and threw bloody streamers at the intersecting walls behind him as the penetrating lead jackhammered the concrete. Wolf couldn’t tell if the guy was armed or not, but it didn’t matter either way. The guy was no longer a threat.

  Fear fueling him, Wolf sprinted for Colby and shoved the guy’s weapon down before he could open fire on the screaming woman. She pulled up short and yelled something at him and raised both arms, waving them crazily. In her right hand was a long kitchen knife that hadn’t been there a second ago. The metal was gray and dull and scratched, and yet strangely familiar. Before he could respond to the impending threat, a y
oung boy ran into the road next to her. The kid was about ten years old, maybe eleven. From the corner of his eye, Wolf saw Colby raising his gun to fire at the boy. Wolf bumped the gun off target and Colby’s first shot missed. Then the boy raised a well-scuffed pistol, ran a few steps, and fired at Colby from only a few feet away. Wolf had zero time to react.

  Luckily, the first bullet missed.

  Then the slide cycled back into place, and the kid fired again, and the next bullet struck Colby in the neck, sending up a spray of flesh and blood.

  The Humvee’s driver glanced over at Wolf, shock and betrayal written clearly on his trembling face. He fell, reaching out and gripping Wolf by the untucked shirt, then belt, then trousers, pulling at them and the man they belonged to feebly, dragging them both toward the ground. But Wolf was big enough and strong enough to resist the pull and remained standing.

  The young boy took aim again. This time at Wolf, a much bigger target. The kid’s hands shook violently, but he managed to fire again.

  The next shot missed Wolf and instead hit the slumping Colby in the back of the head, tearing away a large portion of his skull. The kid then tried to take aim once more, raising the gun higher, centering it on Wolf’s chest.

  Wolf shoved Colby to the right and burst to the left, and the shot went wild. From behind him, came the clatter of machine gun fire from the two-forty. It crackled past and tore into the small boy, setting him dancing like a marionette on strings. Then, that same two-forty reaper of death came for the woman and tore her in to two entirely distinct pieces.

  Wolf slumped to his knees. His jaw fell open involuntarily, and he made his way over to Colby’s limp form and took the man’s ravaged head and set it in his own lap. He ran his fingertips over Colby’s eyes, closing them for the last time.

  A second or two later, the two-forty went silent and Wolf turned to look over his shoulder and up at it. Grayson was slumped on the smoking barrel, shot through the head by some distant threat.