Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel

by Steve R. Yeager

  Everyone around Wolf was now dead or nearly dead. New enemies seemed to sense this and grow in number, boiling out of the dilapidated buildings surrounding him. Bullets whizzed past him or struck the dust near his feet, sending up puffs of brown. But the noise was barely registering. He almost welcomed being hit by one of the stray bullets. End it now. All his friends were dead, and he wasn’t. There was something wrong about that.

  Miraculously, though, nothing seemed to want to strike him, as if he were somehow blessed—or cursed.

  Just ahead, the Humvee they’d been following was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and exploded into a ball of flame and fire. Wolf raised a hand against the heat that was striking him across the face only because it was slightly uncomfortable. He was numb otherwise.

  Other soldiers came racing from around various buildings and were attempting to join the fight but were being cut down by heavy fire coming from the rooftops.

  How long Wolf was sitting there on the ground, he did not know. It was both an eternity and an instant, all wrapped in one singular moment in time. Through the haze of battle, he found a lone spot of clarity when his eyes landed on the kitchen knife the crazed woman had dropped in the dirt. It lay less than a yard away from him.

  I can’t—

  But you must…

  He was the sole survivor from his vehicle, covered in the lifeblood of his brother soldiers. But now they were all dead because he had not reacted quickly enough. From the filthy dirt in front of him, he picked up the knife and tested the edge.

  And then he went to work.

  Back at the ravine’s edge, he was still on his knees. It had all been so clear. He’d relived this same memory over and over, wishing he’d somehow reacted quicker. And regretting what he had done when he had finally reacted.

  If only…

  Sweat beaded his brow, and he was finding it difficult to regain his breath. He kept gulping air as if it were running out. Then, much like a coiled spring, he rose to his feet and threw a fist-sized rock against the opposite side of the ravine and watched it dig deep and tear off a big chunk of the soft farmland soil. The dirt clods knocked free broke apart into even smaller pieces as they went sliding down into the crevasse, taking more and more of the brown earth along as they went.

  Recovering, still breathing hard, he stood at the edge, wondering if fate would allow the area beneath him to break free and let him tumble onto the pile of junk below. Then he could join the remains of some dumb animal that had been unfortunate enough to have come too close to the edge—then slipped and fallen to its death.

  - 10 -

  GONE GIRL

  IT WAS THREE hours later when Wolf made a right at the intersection instead of a left and rode his Indian Chief motorcycle back into the tiny downtown strip that was Crow Canyon proper. The streets were again deserted, and the same blue pickup truck with the rust marks was still against the curb in front of the diner.

  He backed his bike against the curbside outside the diner and glanced up and down the sidewalk, recalling the path he’d seen the sheriff and his two deputies take with the girl, then set off to locate where that path led. He found what he wanted a few hundred feet down the sidewalk from the diner. A sign with a seven-pointed star out front said—PIPER COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE. He pushed through the swinging door and halted just long enough in the small lobby beyond to examine the walls to either side of him. To his left was a bulletin board covered with mugshots and old crime statistics held in place by multicolored tacks. Most of the sheets were so out of date that brown curls and small rips in the paper had formed along the edges, probably from the wind coming in every time the door opened. To his right was a series of brushed silver mailboxes, each marked with a tiny embossed strip of black plastic tape, with the business name and office number in slightly offset letters. There was a bail bonds office, two lawyer offices, and a tax accountant office, all available on the first floor, just past the stairs leading up. The largest of the mailboxes had PIPER COUNTY SHERIFF embossed on it, written in the same white letters on black tape, and it contained a hand-drawn arrow on fading masking tape, which pointed to the second floor.

  He climbed the stairs and went through the already opened door. Inside was an attractive woman sitting on a bank of four chairs lined up against the right-hand wall. She smiled at him as he walked in, and he nodded back a hello in return. A divider with a half-height swinging door sat to his left. Behind that were a few cluttered desks with low walls between each.

  Seated at one of those desks was one of the twin, but not twins, deputies he had encountered earlier in the diner. Unfortunately, she was not the one he desired to see again. She was the one who had the constipated look. Her feet were propped up on a desk, and she was reading a magazine he did not recognize. A computer monitor partially obscured her from his view, but she’d obviously heard him come in and was leaning around the magazine and monitor enough to free up one eye to give him the once over. That lone eye widened a bit when she saw him stop at the counter and lean against it.

  Her tactical boots came down solidly against the linoleum floor, and she made her way over to the counter as if she were about to do him a huge favor that she didn’t necessarily want to do.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought—”

  He held up a hand. “The young girl from the diner. Is she safe?”

  The deputy half-sneered. “Who?”

  Wolf remained silent.

  The woman shifted uncomfortably and then drew a breath. “You mean that underage girl we picked up with you? The one who could have gotten you thrown in jail? Well, she’s none of your damn business, okay? I also seemed to recall Eugene telling you to leave, right? Or did you not understand him clearly the first time around?”

  “Where is the girl now?”

  “Again, none of your goddamned business.”

  “I am concerned for her safety.”

  “Sure you are, pal. Well, she’s not here.”

  “Where is she then?”

  She eyed him warily. “Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  Wolf waited a beat before asking, “I’d like to speak with the sheriff.”

  She continued to eye him with suspicion. The clock on the far wall clicked, and the minute hand jerked forward. “I’m sure you would, pal. But he’s out. Come back later.”

  “When will he return?”

  She checked her watch. “Tomorrow, I suspect.” She glanced with scorn at the woman seated against the interior wall and came back to meet his gaze.

  “Is he with the girl?”

  She watched him closely for a moment. “He’s on his way to Lincoln. The girl’s with him. He’ll hand her over to CPS.”

  “CPS?”

  “Child Protective Services. She’s underage. But you already knew that, didn’t you? If not, you should have.”

  He said nothing.

  She folded her arms over her chest and waited. He could almost hear her boot tapping on the floor. The clock on the wall jumped another tick forward. He nodded once, and she turned and showed him her back as she returned to her chair, picked up the magazine she’d been reading, and flipped forward a few pages. Shaking her head side to side, she lifted her polished black boots onto the desktop, put one leg over the other, and blocked him out with the magazine.

  He exhaled slowly. There was nothing else he could do right now. The girl was in the hands of the authorities. Government gears ground slowly, but at least the girl would be taken care of before she ended up in the wrong hands, foolish as she had been about it. Things could have ended very badly for her, and he was not so sure what he would have been able to do for her other than what had already been done by the sheriff. Still, something did not sit right with the entire situation. His gut told him that. He had learned to trust that feeling even more than logic might dictate.

  Right after pushing his way out through the street-level door, he sensed a presence at his back, the same one he’d hear
d get up and follow him down the stairs. He stopped short, and the woman who had been sitting in the sheriff’s office quietly circled him to stand in front of him, blocking his way forward.

  The woman stuck her hand out in offering. In it was a card. He took the card and read it—Olivia Pearson, Certified Investigator. The address below her name was somewhere in Chicago, Illinois, a place he had never been, nor had any reason to ever visit. The woman holding the card was in her early thirties. Reddish-brown hair, dark eyes, smooth olive skin, and a build that was not too big, not too small. Her hair was held up in a tight bun, but some of the strands had come loose and hung down over her eyes.

  Big as he was, it was still difficult to hold his ground in front of her. He wanted to take a step back and give himself a bit more space.

  She looked into his eyes, which was a long way up for her to go. “You said you were looking for a runaway girl?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied.

  “Why?” she asked. “What’s your connection to her?”

  “None.”

  She sized him up. “When I look at you, I’m honestly not sure what to think.” Her voice shook a bit. “But, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone walk into a police station asking about the welfare of an underage girl in police protection they have no connection to. They’d have to be crazy to do so. You’re not crazy—are you?”

  He said nothing.

  She gave him a questioning look and then smiled thinly.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “I could eat.”

  “Good. I’ll tell you what—if you listen to me, and to what I have to say about another runaway girl I’m looking for, I’ll buy your dinner.” She paused for a moment. “And I promise you—it will be interesting.”

  - 11 -

  RUNAWAYS

  OLIVIA PEARSON SAID, “Her name is Rachael Stone.”

  Wolf sipped his coffee. It was as good as before.

  “Rachael ran away from home about two weeks ago. Twelve days to be precise. The Illinois State Police put out an alert for her, but it didn’t cross state lines. And now that those alerts are so common, no one really seems to care anymore, which is too bad. And the cops—they treated it as a runaway teen, not an abduction, which I’m now fairly certain it was.” She stopped. “Is any of this making sense?”

  Wolf dipped his head.

  She cleared her throat and continued. “But the girl they brought in today—the one I saw—that girl was not her. But…do you have any idea who she might be? Or should I say, who she is and what she represents?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Oh?” She pulled back. “Yes, well, then maybe I’m going too fast with this, so let me start over from the beginning.” She extended a hand across the table. “Hi, I’m Olivia Pearson.”

  Wolf slowly reached across and took her hand, and gave it a light shake.

  “And you are?” she asked, leaning forward again.

  “Raymond.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Wolf.”

  She grinned, nodding. “And where are you from, Raymond Wolf?”

  He shrugged.

  “Not much of an answer,” she said.

  She pulled back once more and grabbed the small purse she had sitting next to her on the bench seat. “Will you excuse me for a moment? Nature calls. I’ll be right back.”

  She rose and waited at the end of the table for a moment. “I still plan to buy you dinner, so don’t think you are going to skip out on me. Okay?”

  He sipped his coffee again as she left. She’d said the girl he was interested in was not the same one she had been sent to look for. It was a different girl, which made him even more suspicious of the sheriff and his twin, but not twins, deputies. And the implied question of what could have happened to those runaways weighed heavily on his mind until she returned.

  She had a glowing cell phone in her hand, and while he was familiar with such devices, he’d never actually owned one. Not because they weren’t useful, but because someone might wish to call him on it, and then he would have to answer.

  He didn’t want to have to answer.

  On the screen was a jumble of text too small to read upside down, but one thing was clear—his name. And along with his name was a driver’s license photograph from years ago, before he’d gone to Iraq, which made him wonder where she had acquired it, and how she had done it so quickly.

  “Raymond Wolf,” she said. “There were two-hundred and forty-six different Raymond Wolf’s out there, but it wasn’t hard to narrow it down to you. Says here you are from the great state of Oklahoma. Says also that you were once a Marine.”

  She looked up at him. “Yeah, I can see that. Also says you had some trouble with the law when you were young. Doesn’t say what, though. Your record was sealed.”

  She grinned crookedly at him. “Were you a juvenile delinquent?”

  Wolf pushed his coffee two inches farther away from him on the table and started to scoot out of the bench seat. She thrust a hand out to stop him, then reconsidered and gestured for him to sit again.

  “No, stay. Please. I’m sorry. Yes, I admit it. I looked into your background.” She met his eyes. “But I had to know I wasn’t talking to a psycho killer bent on doing me harm now, didn’t I?”

  He settled back down on his side of the table.

  She continued, “Says here you were awarded a Silver Star for courage under fire in Iraq. You did a couple of tours there…great. Thanks for your service.” She stopped and looked up. “Hmmm… Here’s something a little strange.” She flicked the cell phone screen with her fingertip. “You were granted an early discharge, but it doesn’t say why.” She glanced up at him again. “That is odd. Were you also an adult delinquent?”

  Wolf crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, tilting his head to one side. He drew a breath, let it out.

  She scrolled again, stuck out her bottom lip, and began flicking it with her index finger. Then she looked up into his eyes. “Sorry if all this makes you uncomfortable. Can’t be too careful now with who I’m dealing with, right? Where was I with the case? Yes, yes, the girl. Rachael Stone. See…her parents hired me to find her. And, normally, I wouldn’t take a missing person case like this—I usually just do background research for clients. File recovery on computers, paper trails, divorces, finding lost money, that sort of stuff. But I made an exception this time because of my connection with the girl’s parents. They are old family friends.”

  Pearson stopped, took another breath. “And all this is irrelevant to you right now, I know. Probably completely useless. So let me get to the point. I tracked Rachael here, to Crow Canyon. The bus driver said she got off when they stopped for lunch—and did not get back on when they left. He figured she’d either reconsidered running away or hooked up with someone else or maybe even decided to strike out on her own. Yeah, I know, unlikely. And when I asked him if he noticed how young she was, and why he didn’t report her, he just shrugged it off and told me it wasn’t his damn business to care about such things.”

  Wolf unfolded his arms and reached out for his coffee. He sipped it. He could sense an unease in the woman in front of him. She was both confident and yet somehow undermining that appearance of confidence by how she spoke. She was saying far too much, which probably meant she wanted something from him. And she would ask for whatever that was, soon.

  Tammy the waitress returned to the table with her pad and pencil in hand. She faced him, and the corner of her lip flipped up slightly. “Like to order now, hon? Or should I get you the usual? Two cheeseburgers and two orders of fries. Though, it’s a bit early for dinner now, isn’t it?”

  Pearson shook her head. “What’s that mean?”

  Tammy huffed, but did not turn to look at her, instead waiting for him to speak. He indicated toward Pearson with a nod of his head, and Tammy swiveled to take her order first.

  Pearson set her phone down on the tabletop. “Just a salad for me. S
omething fresh. Goat cheese if you have it. Spinach, red onions, cranberries, a light Balsamic dressing.”

  Tammy’s grin widened and became wry. “Is farmer’s cheese okay?”

  “What’s farmer’s cheese?” Pearson asked, flipping her hands up at the question.

  Tammy huffed again. “It’s goat cheese that comes from cows.”

  “Oh?” Pearson said. “Yeah…I guess that will be okay. As long as it’s organic, and locally sourced.”

  Shaking her head with one lip scrunched high, Tammy turned to him. “And for you? Two more cheeseburgers?”

  “No, I will have the special,” he said, not sure if it was the same from lunch, but it didn’t really matter. He could always eat, and eat just about anything.

  Pearson waited until Tammy the waitress had left, watching her as she hustled back into the kitchen. “What’s up with her? Goat cheese? Cow cheese? Seriously…? Just because I happen to prefer goat cheese doesn’t make me some kind of city-dwelling snob now, does it?”

  He shrugged. It was not up to him to judge such things.

  She rubbed her jaw. “And the bruises on her face and around her eye. Husband, you think?”

  Wolf nodded just a hint.

  She held a palm out at him. “Okay, now that I don’t think you’re some kind of psychotic maniac—” She stopped to clear her throat. “I followed Rachael Stone’s trail here, to this town, and, specifically to this very diner. And, when Mrs. Sunshine over there wouldn’t tell me anything, I went to the sheriff, who was not all that helpful. He’s hiding something, that’s for sure. I just don’t know what that is yet, so I plan to stick around here until I can sort it out.”

  Wolf tilted his head in the opposite direction, watching Tammy as she reemerged from the kitchen and went to her customary place by the register.

  Pearson shook her head. “You have anything to add?”

  He said nothing.

  “Okay…I’ll take your silence as a no. So, just about lunchtime, while I was waiting, the sheriff showed up. He had another girl with him. I assume that was the girl you asked about. Well, he just marched her right past me without answering any of my questions, and that asshole left me sitting outside his office for almost an hour. Finally, after I started to get a little pissed because he had not returned, I showed that deputy of his a picture of Rachael, and there was zero recognition from her. Nothing, nada. Which was odd. And when I asked about the girl they had just brought in, I was told again that I’d have to wait for the sheriff, who I figured had just slipped out some back door to avoid me. What a bunch of bullshit, right?”