Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel

by Steve R. Yeager

  He had been looking out the window, watching the circling crows that were growing nearer and nearer as they closed in on the spot where he’d seen the top of another police cruiser off in the distance. A person was leaning against it, just a tiny stick figure now, but he could tell that figure was waiting for them to get there and wasn't going to do anything other than stand there until they did.

  As they drew closer, he identified the lone figure as the deputy that he’d first seen in the diner, the blonde, top-heavy one named Kristina.

  The car rolled to a stop, dropping off one last rock in the road with a heavy crash.

  “What do you suppose happened?” Pearson asked.

  Shaking his head side to side, Wolf stepped out of the car and into a patch of soft mud that sucked at his boots. Pearson did not fare much better when she stepped out. She immediately began struggling to not slip and fall as they both met up in front of the car and went to join Maggie and her two boys.

  “When did you find the body, Kris?” Maggie asked as she drew nearer to the deputy.

  “What’re they doing with you?” the deputy asked.

  “They are looking for a missing girl,” Maggie said, turning toward Pearson and Wolf and then back to her. “So, again, what happened here?”

  Deputy Kristina gave a cold appraisal before saying, “Some dirtbag got his head blown almost completely off.”

  And that much was indeed true.

  Wolf shifted so he could see the entire corpse. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The body was lying in the dirt chest side down, but the mangled head was turned sideways, or what was left of it. The guy had apparently been wearing mirrored sunglasses when he’d been shot, and the metal frames and glass lenses had been the only things that kept the guy’s right eyeball contained in the skull fragment that remained. The rest of his head was a sorry mess of ground-up meat and gray matter.

  He had seen worse, but he knew right away from the exit wound that the guy had been shot with something big and nasty. The back of the guy’s head had a caved-in appearance as if it were once a vortex leading into his brain, and his remaining thin, blond hair was caked with congealed blood and spattered patches of muddy earth.

  “Who was he?” Pearson asked.

  The deputy first looked to Maggie before answering, “His name was Rodney Pinnock. From Philadelphia, according to his driver’s license. Looks like he got mixed up with the wrong people and got himself shot for it. There are tire tracks back there that lead all the way to the highway. Some sort of large wheelbase car, I think.”

  “Any idea who might be in town and did this to him?” Maggie asked.

  “No,” Kristina said, “but I’m guessing whoever that is might be the one who also killed Eugene. I’m thinking now that it might be two killers instead on just one. There are multiple sets of footprints in the mud, and whoever shot Eugene also used the same hand cannon on this guy. Might even be that same big gun Eugene carried around with him.”

  “Hmmm,” Maggie said. “What’s Margaret say?”

  “She’s gone over to Lincoln. To the hospital, I think. Said she couldn’t take the stress anymore and needed something to bring her down. I just called this all in and County says they are going to send someone else down to oversee the investigation into this guy, but it will be an hour at least until they get here. Is it okay that they snoop around your property a bit?”

  “That would be okay,” Maggie said. “But you watch them closely, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Maggie put a hand on the deputy’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “How are you holding up? You doing okay?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “You sure you don’t want to marry one of my boys now that you’re soon gonna be sheriff and all?” Maggie asked with a touch of misplaced humor.

  Kristina chuckled and ran a finger through her hair and pulled a strand back over her ear. She shook her head no. Wolf checked with Pearson, who also seemed to share his suspicion, one eyebrow going up. It seemed a little too early to be discussing who would be sheriff, considering the man wasn’t even in the ground yet.

  “I figured as much,” Maggie said. “They are good boys, but tragic for them they all got their father’s looks.”

  Pearson’s phone rang. She dug it out and answered, holding up one finger to excuse herself as she walked out of earshot.

  “How about him?” Maggie continued, indicating Wolf. “He’s part Indian, he says, but with them eyes, he’s got some good Nordic stock in him, I figure. Shame a girl as pretty as you is not married off to a nice young man.”

  The corner of Kristina’s lips twitched and she glanced at Wolf, and then quickly looked back at the body in the field.

  Pearson returned and pulled him aside, whispered in his ear, “What do you think’s going on here? They seem a little too chatty. There’s a dead guy on their property and they’re all smiles and giggles. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd?”

  Wolf nodded.

  “The phone call I got was from my client in Chicago. It seems I’m now off the case. They found Rachael Stone—alive and well and on her way back home.”

  “That is good,” Wolf said. “But—?”

  “But that still leaves the other girl, or maybe girls, right? And all these dead bodies stacking up? Something nasty is going on. I can just feel it. Something, I think, we should get to the bottom of. Maybe Maggie and her boys can help us with that. She’s got the connections and the juice to help us track these guys down and find out who’s connected to the whole thing. Maybe we can even find out what happened to the girl you met and see where that leads. Are you still up for it?”

  “I said I was, and I mean to find her.”

  “Okay, then.”

  They returned to Maggie.

  “Seems the first girl—” Pearson started to say.

  Maggie cut her off to answer the phone ringing in her own pocket. She continued to stare at Pearson and Wolf while someone on the other side spoke. She occasionally nodded but said nothing back to the caller.

  Then she stiffened, back going straight. “Yes. I’ll take care of it—right away.”

  - 32 -

  FULL ADMISSION

  WOLF HAD SEEN something go seriously wrong in Maggie’s eyes, right before she tucked away her phone. It had been a subtle shift, a choosing of sides, an assessment of motives and loyalties, and a series of quick, gut calculations—none of them good.

  He knew that shift well. He’d seen it happen before, and as he watched her, things in his own mind began to click into place. But, unfortunately, not quickly enough.

  Maggie drew a revolver from under her shirttail, stepped back, and pointed the gun at him. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to detain you two, which I’m hoping does not prove to be too much of an inconvenience.” She grinned wryly.

  “None at all,” Pearson said, blending an instant onset of anger with a brief hint of sarcasm.

  Wolf made another quick assessment. One he hoped would get him out of this mess. If he lunged for the gun in her hand, he could perhaps take her off guard and close the gap and knock it away before she could raise and fire it. But if he tried, her boys were near enough to her that they could get a quick grip on him, and he might not be able to break free of it before she recovered from the initial shock and fired. He was strong. He was big. And he was fast. But there were limiting angles and distances to consider.

  And what about the deputy? Where did she stand in all this? One peek at her told him which side she was on, and it did not align with his own.

  Then the odds suddenly changed again, and not for the better. The twin boys drew handguns from behind their backs and leveled them at Pearson.

  Maggie twirled the barrel of her revolver in a tiny circle. “I'm sure you will be pleased to note that I’ve been asked to keep you both alive and safe. For now.”

  Pearson scoffed. “How can we trust you on that?”

  “You are just going to have to,” she said.
r />   With a nod from Maggie, Kristina circled behind Wolf. “Hands behind your back,” the deputy said.

  “You are making a mistake,” Wolf said flatly.

  Maggie waggled the barrel of the snub-nose revolver she held at him like a nagging finger. “Let me be the judge of that.”

  He submitted and folded his hands behind his back. There would be other opportunities. There always were.

  He felt Kristina grasp his left wrist from behind. She pulled on it and twisted. The cold metal of the handcuffs touched his bare skin and pinched at his flesh, but they were not able to fully close around his thick wrists.

  “He’s too big for these,” she said past his shoulder. “I need something bigger.”

  Wolf heard the rattle of a small chain behind him, then something else entirely. He felt a thin band close around his wrists and heard the almost zipper-like noise it made as the plastic zip-tie was pulled taut. It dug into his skin and pinched his wrists together tight.

  He almost smiled.

  Deputy Kristina went to Pearson and cuffed her hands behind her back with the same metal handcuffs she’d tried on him. This time, it seemed, they fit just fine.

  Even with Wolf and Pearson bound so, Maggie did not dare to lower the gun. She was not that stupid, apparently. Instead, she used the gun to indicate toward her boys. “Go load them in the truck. We’ll haul them back home with us and keep them until they can be picked up. No harm is to come to them. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Ma,” Henry said. “What about their car?”

  “Otto can take it and park it in town. We need to clear out of here now and let our deputy do what she’s paid to do.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kristina said as she tossed the car keys she’d taken from Pearson to Otto.

  “Get JT while you are there,” Maggie added, directing it at Otto. He nodded.

  “Come by the house later, dear,” Maggie told the deputy. “I want to know what they are able to find out about this guy. Our benefactor is not pleased with the mess that’s been left behind. Careless work, he says.”

  Kristina acknowledged that she would stop by and returned to her cruiser to wait.

  They loaded Pearson and Wolf into the bed of the pickup truck, and Maggie drove while Henry remained in the back with a shotgun balanced in his lap.

  One guy. Wolf liked this.

  He was steadying himself on his knees as they climbed over a rise. The rough trail kept causing the truck to sway and bounce. Below him, he watched the distant farmhouse come into view. When the truck rattled after hitting another bump in the road, he used the motion to help lift himself and shift his weight off his knees and lean up against the side rail of the truck’s steel bed, feigning an ache in his side.

  “Stop that,” Henry said.

  “Rough road,” Pearson commented, to which the Crawford boy snorted.

  And now Wolf was positioned just how he wanted to be. The reason he had almost smiled earlier was due to the single plastic zip-tie he’d been bound with. It was one of the easiest of all restraints to get out of, and especially easy for someone of his size and strength. Almost anyone could do it if they knew the right trick. It was simply a matter of applying enough sheering force to the locking part of the tie, and that meant first positioning it for maximum leverage and weakness by centering it between his wrists. And that was something he had started working on the moment he had been loaded into the bed of the truck.

  The locking part was now positioned equally between the gap in his wrists, so it was simply a matter of finding the right opportunity to draw his arms away from his back, and to ram them hard against his spine while forcing his elbows apart. That sudden, sharp, shock was almost always enough to snap the plastic tie right at the lock.

  And that opportunity for sudden movement presented itself right on schedule when they hit another bump in the road, to which Henry rocked sideways and threw a hand out to steady himself while Wolf shifted onto his feet, using the truck’s motion as cover. The plastic tie snapped easily, freeing him, and immediately he lunged at the Crawford boy and shoved him backward over the side of the pickup truck.

  Wolf then spun and grabbed Pearson, lifted her, and tossed her clear of the truck, before leaping over the side himself. He landed like a cat on all fours and sprang to his feet. The truck skidded to a halt and the driver’s side door flew open.

  But by that time, Pearson had also regained her feet and was running hard with her hands behind her and staying low, sprinting for the cover of an irrigation ditch about thirty feet from the truck.

  Henry had gotten over the initial shock of falling out and was already on his feet and closing fast on the dropped shotgun. But before he could reach it, Wolf grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him close, and bashed an elbow into the guy’s injured jaw, which elicited a woof of pain. He then locked up the man’s wrist and spun him around to use him as a meat-shield against the approaching Maggie.

  “Let him go.” Maggie raised the snub-nosed revolver in her hand. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Drop it,” Wolf commanded. “Or I will break his arm.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she said.

  Wolf pulled up hard on Henry’s arm until the guy was practically levitating on his own to keep the pain at bay.

  “No, Ma!” the guy cried.

  “Don’t you worry,” Maggie growled. “He hurts you again and your pain will be his pain, many times over. Let him go. Now!”

  Pearson had stopped running and was coming toward Maggie from the side at a jog. Her hands were still locked behind her. Wolf wanted to shake his head at her to wave her off, but he did not dare draw any attention to her.

  “You are going to let us walk out of here,” he said to Maggie. “And you are going to tell us who you are working with.”

  “Or?” she asked as she stepped closer, aim becoming rock-steady.

  “Or your boy will find himself a cripple with one arm after I get done tearing this one off.”

  That stopped her for the moment. She seemed to consider what he meant by that. Then she continued, slowly stepping towards him, closing the gap. He twisted Henry’s arm further. There was an audible pop as the shoulder joint dislocated. Henry screamed bloody murder and tried to pull away, but Wolf held him tight.

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” Maggie said. She raised the gun to fire. But she seemed to know that if she fired, she risked hitting her son instead. Her hand trembled, almost imperceptibly, but enough that Wolf saw it.

  “Back off,” he said, then pulled up hard on Henry’s wrist, doing further damage to muscles and tendons and causing the screaming to grow in intensity. Then he let off just enough for Henry to gasp and catch his breath, and also so he could hear what might be said next because it had been difficult to hear anything over the man’s cries of pain.

  “Okay, Mr. Wolf.” Maggie raised her hands to her shoulders. “You win. Let him go and we’ll talk.”

  Pearson had gotten even closer to the woman. Too close.

  “Give him the gun,” she said to Maggie. “It’s over.”

  While what happened next was within the realm of possibilities for Wolf, and something he had considered but not been able to act on for reasons of distance and time, it was obviously not something Pearson had been expecting to happen, or she would have never come running back to confront Maggie.

  The old woman pivoted, dropped her arms, and fired the snub-nosed revolver point blank. The bullet struck Pearson in the gut with a wet thwack. With a look of utter shock on her face, she covered the wound with a hand and sank to her knees.

  “Now let him go,” Maggie growled viciously. “Or the next one kills her.”

  - 33 -

  DELAYED JUSTICE

  WITHOUT ANY FURTHER hesitation, Wolf struck. He drew back and slammed his palms into Henry, shoving him hard toward his mother, which caused her to freeze for the barest fraction of a second.

  But it was all he needed.

  He rammed forward and
knocked them both to the ground and stepped on Maggie’s arm, pinning it to the soft dirt, and then he kicked the revolver free. He turned to check on Pearson. She was on her knees, still in shock, eyes wide, mouth drooping open.

  He bent for the pistol and came up with it and held it on the Crawfords while circling the truck to locate the dropped shotgun. Finding it, he exchanged the pistol for the shotgun and tested the weight of it as he returned. The heavy shotgun felt right, so he leveled it at Maggie and her boy and motioned them both back onto their feet.

  Then he checked on Pearson. She was bleeding, but not badly enough to bleed out anytime soon. He had seen gut-shot wounds before and had learned a surprising number of them were survivable, especially when made by a small caliber round. And going by what he saw, she had both an entrance and an exit wound and was still able to stand up, which were all points in her favor. Survivable, probably. But she would still need medical attention soon, or risk infection. He’d seen those gut-level infections happen far too often in Iraq. Fortunately, it had mostly been to the other guys. The bad guys. They’d often find them in their final stages right before death, holed up in some squalid safe-house, deliriously chanting while the life oozed out of them. And that did not particularly bother Wolf all that much, but even chancing to see Pearson going down that same route, did.

  “Stand over there,” he said, pointing at a dirt berm with the shotgun, which would hobble any thoughts of running they might have.

  Watching them closely, he went back and removed Pearson’s handcuffs. “You okay?”

  “I’ll live,” she breathed, but sank to her knees beside him.

  “Can you walk?”

  She shook her head no.

  With Maggie and Henry out front, Wolf picked up Pearson and cradled her in his arms while keeping the shotgun up underneath her and pointed at the two Crawfords.

  “What now?” Maggie asked.

  “You march.” Wolf nodded toward the house in the distance.

  “You can’t carry her all the way there on your own.”