Wolf's Gambit

by W. D. Gagliani

“Okay, I’ll make some calls.” He nodded as Deputy Jonston finally arrived with the photographic kit. The kid lost his breakfast as soon as he saw the first body part.

  “Here we go again. Give me the camera. I’ll start.”

  Arnow handled the digital Canon like a professional, starting to layer the first taped-off area with carefully framed photography, missing nothing. When the pale-faced kid came back, looking as if everything he’d eaten in days had been purged, Arnow handed him the camera and gave him directions. Unsteady on his feet, the young deputy went to work.

  He took Jessie aside. “He’ll learn. Though I’d rather he didn’t have to.”

  Jessie nodded.

  He wondered why she had had been so quick to bow out of the investigation. Maybe it was hitting too close to home.

  Lupo

  The stakeout was low odds.

  Sitting in the unmarked squad car down the block from the only mom-and-pop jeweler left in the south side neighborhood, Nick Lupo thought they were just too obvious. A couple of straight-looking guys sipping out of cardboard cups staring at nothing in particu lar. How effective could they be?

  DiSanto played drums on the steering wheel, long rhythmic runs of muffled taps that followed a click track only he could hear.

  Lupo wanted to scream. Does he have to do that? DiSanto was no Bill Bruford. He wasn’t even a Ringo. It was driving him nuts. The assignment, the partner, the stakeout.

  Christ, the appointment he had later today.

  He felt the growl building in back of his throat. Involuntary, but the feeling of being trapped had a lot to do with it. How many hours to go?

  Part of him wanted action, while the other part wanted quiet and a quick end to the shift. No paperwork. Nothing.

  “Look at this,” DiSanto whispered, nudging Lupo hard enough to make him almost spill his tea. “The fuck is this shit?”

  Lupo grunted. DiSanto liked to model his speech on premium cable TV cop and mob shows. At least, that’s what it sounded like to Lupo. He’d never heard a cop swear quite as much as his partner, the saintly named one.

  “Come to papa, baby,” DiSanto said. His hand went for his Glock.

  Lupo stared into his visor’s rectangular mirror.

  Dammit. Looked like DiSanto was right.

  A sky blue late-model Kawasaki Ninja ZX had cruised down the line of parked cars like a spider stalking its kill. Now it was almost parallel with their Impala. Two dark forms hunched over the handlebar nacelle, two black helmets.

  “Shit, it’s going down.” Lupo heard the shock in his own voice. The task force’s other four cars were wasting their time. He speed-dialed Munson.

  “Unit Twenty-nine on National. We’ve got a bite here. Looks like one of the three bikes. Two riders, black helmets. Black leather gear with red gloves as described. Approaching Manny’s Gold and Diamond Exchange. DiSanto and I are engaging…”

  “Hold up, Lupo,” Munson growled in his ear. “We got a strike here, too. Red bike. Same deal, otherwise.”

  “What the—”

  Lupo clicked off Munson and took a call from Glinn. Her voice was excited. “We’ve got a gold one here!”

  He switched to walky-talky mode.

  “Looks like they’re hitting in threes. We got one, and Munson and Glinn. Rest of you, converge on us. Requesting backup. DiSanto and I are approaching on foot. Use caution. These guys like to hurt people.”

  He cut out, unholstered his Glock and racked the slide. “Let’s do it.”

  DiSanto nodded.

  In the next few seconds, all hell broke loose.

  The Ninja’s passenger tossed a brick through Manny’s plate-glass window, then leaped through the gap, his leather armor taking the brunt of the remaining glass shards. The old-fashioned alarm went off with a blaring horn. Lupo imagined the invader smashing displays, holding the owner at gunpoint, stuffing a trash bag with gold and jewelry. It was brazen daylight work.

  He hit the sidewalk and kept low next to the Impala and the other cars parked between them and the idling Ninja now on the sidewalk in front of the store. The driver’s black helmet was angled so he could watch for his partner’s return. He didn’t see Lupo approaching from behind at a fast crouch. DiSanto had disappeared around the building, heading for the side door as arranged.

  They’d tried before to ambush the smash-and-grab bandits, but they just weren’t quick enough. The bandits used their high-end frat-boy bikes to zip through narrow streets, weave through freeway traffic, and outpace all pursuit. Up to now the gang task force thought they’d been dealing with one bike and two individuals. Now it appeared the gang was at least six.

  He reached the last parked car, just behind the antsy rider on the bike. His helmet was still turned, looking for the returning partner. One glance in his mirror and he might spot Lupo.

  He considered shooting the guy off the damned bike. But he’d catch hell and an inquest, minimum. Internal Affairs was a looming presence since some improper arrests and confessions had given the department a black eye the previous year. The new chief was trying to appear eager to clean it up. And Lupo was still in IA’s crosshairs over the Eagle River deal he’d had to spin when he’d lost his foot.

  Now Lupo considered his options. He only had seconds.

  Three gunshots in quick succession came from inside the store.

  Lupo’s quarry, the driver, didn’t seem to hear them, due to the helmet perhaps. He was standing up, straddling the bike, craning his neck, oblivious to what was happening behind him.

  Two blue and white units squealed around the corner and blocked the road.

  At nearly the same time, the second helmeted robber burst from the store and hurled himself onto the bike, which the driver gunned. The passenger must have landed on the seat unbalanced, however, because he slid off the bike when it jumped the curb and headed for the alley. Lupo charged toward the passenger, who rolled and leaped to his feet, following the bike. Four uniforms rushed up, but the bike—now lighter with only the driver on board—maneuvered into the alley mouth before they could block its passage. They converged on the abandoned rider, who tried to evade and bring a pistol to bear, but was tackled by two uniforms.

  “Around!” Lupo shouted at the other two uniforms, wondering what had happened to DiSanto. “Check on my partner. He went in the side way.”

  Lupo raced into the alley. He could see the cyclist picking his way through Dumpsters and bins filled with refuse. Almost without thinking, he holstered his Glock and slid out of his clothes, taking precious seconds to stash them behind a clump of damp cardboard boxes.

  As he ran, he visualized himself as the Creature, galloping wildly through the pines…

  And then, it’s a fact, Jack, he was over. Four huge paws hit the cracked pavement and propelled the large black wolf’s body down the alley.

  Confusion rippled momentarily through his brain, a tug of war between the wolf side of his brain and the man side.

  And then the war was over. It was getting easier.

  His senses exploded with the intensity of the trash and rancid food smells of the alley, the exhaust fumes of the bike ahead of him, and the scent of the prey itself. His eyes picked out the prey, whose bike was becoming a hindrance as it stuttered while he attempted to muscle it over some obstacle, strips of wood from a demolished pallet.

  The Creature avoided debris, leaping over bins and trash bags with ease. His mind had split into the now-familiar separate consciousness that allowed Lupo the man to give everquickening commands to Lupo the Creature with almost complete understanding.

  It was Caroline Stewart’s theory, finally tested and proven, and put to use since the Martin Stewart case. One more way Caroline had affected his life, though it had taken years to make itself fully known.

  The robber managed to free the spokes of his front wheel and turned to check his rear wheel when he saw the giant animal bounding toward him. It was impossible to read his face behind the helmet’s blank reflective shield,
but his body language showed he was shocked to see the giant wolf. He redoubled his efforts to free his bike.

  With a growl deep in his throat, the wolf lunged through the air, paws smacking into the robber’s back and hurling him off the motorcycle and onto the alley floor. The motorcycle squirted past them both and toppled, its engine still revving, coming to rest almost upside down against a Dumpster.

  The Creature circled the helmeted robber warily, growling. When the robber’s hand disappeared under his jacket, the Creature pounced and his jaws clamped down on the biker’s wrist right as the hand was coming out with a cheap 9mm in its grip. Simultaneously, the rest of the Creature’s body landed on the robber’s chest. Jaws ripping through leather and skin and shaking hard enough to send the pistol flying and tearing the wrist to bloody shreds.

  The robber screamed and tried to roll away from the great wolf’s weight. But his struggles were to no avail. The snarling jaws tore into the arm above the useless wrist, once, twice, again.

  The Creature’s bloodlust had begun to replace Nick Lupo’s still-tenuous control. The part of the wolf that was lucid Lupo attempted to rein in the Creature’s deadly anger, but it fought against that control, crazed with the taste of prey.

  Frightened prey, which was even better.

  Lupo tasted the flesh and blood of the robber and found himself giving in, letting the Creature exert his more aggressive control.

  Potentially harmful DNA passed from wolf to human, but it was too late for Lupo to worry about that.

  The wolf went for the robber’s throat.

  Protected by his helmet and a thick layer of leather, the robber fended off the wolf’s first lunge at his neck, but the wolf changed his angle of attack and snapped, tearing into the jacket’s lapels and the skin under them, the taste and smell of blood driving him further even as the robber screeched like a stuck pig.

  As the wolf’s jaws went for the now unprotected bloody flesh, Lupo tried desperately to induce the Creature’s head away from the morsel that would kill the terrified thief.

  Lupo tried focusing on a painful image—what he had done to Caroline Stewart in a lust-driven but nearly similar situation decades ago. Caroline’s shape and form had been barely recognizable afterward.

  The pain he still felt lanced through both Lupo’s brain and the Creature’s, and, with a whimper, it loosed its grip and leaped off the struggling thief.

  The Creature froze the man with its eyes. A warning passed between them.

  Then the wolf bounded away, leaving the thief in the stuttering, whimpering shape in which the approaching cops would find him, screaming incoherently about the dog with the satanic stare.

  Lupo rejoined the scene a minute later, his clothes soiled and a bruise rising on his face.

  One of the cops was reading the thief an abbreviated Miranda warning and cuffing the perp as punctuation.

  “Shut up, listen. Anything you say—” Cuff. “You’re entitled to a lawyer—” Cuff. “If you can’t afford one—”

  “Lupo, where the hell were you?” another cop said upon seeing him arrive.

  “Got tangled up in that mess.” Lupo pointed at the motorcycle and the remains of the pallet. A huge sliver of two-by-four protruded from one bloody sleeve.

  Then they were dragging the blubbering, bleeding thief up on his unsteady feet.

  “What happened to him?” Lupo asked.

  “Shit if I know. Found ‘im like this, screamin’ about some dog attacking him.” The cop’s brow furrowed. “You see anything?”

  “Yeah, I was seeing stars. But come to think of it, I did hear some growling.” He pointed at the thief’s mangled arm. “Looks like maybe a local guard dog got into the action.”

  The cop grunted. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter what happened to this scum.

  When they pulled off the helmet, they saw a tattooed, pierced white male in his midtwenties, his head shaved and a strange mark inked onto the back of his neck. He was crying like a baby now, though.

  Jesus, he’d forgotten about his partner! The three shots.

  “DiSanto?” he asked the nearest cop.

  “Got himself shot inside the store. And his pretty-boy face is all gashed up. Probably from the broken glass. He’ll be okay, though.”

  Lupo nodded. Thankful. This had been almost a fiasco. His control over the Creature had nearly evaporated at the worst possible time. And his partner had nearly been killed.

  “Damned frat-boy bikes,” one of the cops spit out as he kicked the downed Ninja. “Fuckin’ menace on the road!”

  “Got that right,” somebody agreed.

  Sirens approached. Lupo felt his hold on reality slipping.

  Was DiSanto doomed to die like Ben?

  Suddenly he started to shiver.

  Inside his head, he thought he heard the Creature howling.

  Mr. XYZ

  Later, Mr. XYZ made a call. The cell was a secure, unregistered TracFone. He waited for Tannhauser to pick up, then spat into the invisible mouthpiece.

  “You fool! I told you to pick a good place for the first one. I also told you to avoid the site itself. What the hell are you doing? Can’t you follow simple directions?”

  Tannhauser was silent, as if taken by surprise. Then he recovered. “Who is this?”

  “Goddamn it,” Mr. XYZ snarled into the voice-changer gizmo, “I wanted the attack to be visible but to lead away from the casino.”

  “Well, if it isn’t Mr. XYZ,” Tannhauser said with fake Southern charm. “I didn’t recognize your sweet girly voice.” Then his tone hardened. “Listen, boss, this guy lived at the casino site. We tried for almost a week to grab him somewhere else, but he was always there, making a fool and a nuisance of himself. You want the job done or don’t you?”

  Mr. XYZ breathed fast, almost hyperventilating. He slowed his words down. “Fine, fine. Just don’t make the next one so obvious, and so…dramatic.”

  Tannhauser chuckled, and this time his voice brought shivers to Mr. XYZ’s neck. “Once you’ve loosed the lightning, it will make its own path. Boss.”

  There was a click, and the TracFone went dead.

  Mr. XYZ tried to slow his panting. He’d just heard one of the first detailed reports, and the location of the murder had taken him right out of his wits.

  He had growled like a wounded bear, then let the blade slip a bit too far, finishing the woman way too early. The drain had taken care of the blood. Then he had barely touched himself and his orgasm had hit like an earthquake, and he had come all over her silent, bloodless body as he’d pictured in his mind from the moment he’d seen her.

  But his anger made it a less than satisfying thrill, and when he massaged the rest of his cum out of his softening penis he’d just made himself angry all over again.

  Talking to Tannhauser made his penis go flaccid and shrink, and Mr. XYZ was not pleased about that at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lupo

  Traffic in Oshkosh was thicker than it should have been, but the weekend drew people north and there was no getting away from it. He enjoyed the glint of late afternoon sunlight on Lake Butte de Mort and felt the confines of the city slipping away. The crowds on US 45 thinned out, and he settled in for the rest of the drive. They’d renumbered some highways and county roads in recent years, and they still looked strange on the map and on the new signposts. A short detour took him almost in a circle, but then he was on track again.

  He focused on the trees. He’d always loved the subtle shift from mostly deciduous to mostly coniferous. It reminded him of the great woods stretching northward past the border into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and then Canada. The evergreen smell began driving the Creature crazy—longing for the woods. If he didn’t catch himself, Lupo would start panting.

  Also in his mind was the image of who would be waiting for him.

  He smiled as he thought about Jessie.

  He’d tried calling her on her cell and at the clinic but only reached v
oice mail. No reason to worry, but it was unusual. Still, she’d marked her calendar as he marked his, so she would be waiting. There was time for them, and then the Creature would have his time.

  The moon would have him.

  Lupo focused on the trees. And on the music. He’d cranked up his iPod shortly after leaving, clicking on his “up North” playlist. Some old acoustic New Age from Narada, giving way to the Alan Parsons Project albums, carefully programmed to culminate with The Turn of a Friendly Card, his “arrival music”—driving up Circle Moon Drive to the last strains of Ian Bairnson’s guitar solo reiteration of the main theme. It was tradition.

  He whisked past some pastoral landscapes and missed his older Genesis albums. Newer Genesis was pleasant enough, but it didn’t move him. Maybe it happened when Banks gave up the Mellotron.

  He settled in with Ammonia Avenue and then Vulture Culture, at the end of which Eric Woolfson sang about the same old sun rising in the morning and the same bright eyes welcoming him home. Gave him shivers.

  The acerbic but upbeat compositions relaxed him, fitting his mood.

  The day had only worsened.

  DiSanto was okay, though having a hundred glass slivers tweezed out of his face, arms, and hands was no picnic. Lupo had been forced to repair his clothes as best he could, lest their disheveled appearance lead to questions.

  In the washroom, he stared at the mirror and tried to see the Creature in his own dark eyes. Was he there, sulking because he had been thwarted from finishing his prey in the way he was accustomed? Was he biding his time until he could be let out of his pen?

  These were questions whose answers changed almost weekly.

  Caroline Stewart had written extensively about her theories regarding Nick and the control he could exert over his wolf side. Lupo had managed to keep the journals after her death, hiding their existence from the ensuing investigation. He’d been reading through them recently and once again begun to explore his abilities. And his limitations.

  There was a bit of an undercurrent there of his instability. Was he unstable? It was hard to judge objectively.