“Do you have a boyfriend Amy?”
“No,” he answered for her. “No boyfriends until she's seventeen.”
Amy shared a look with Lara. Dad was clearly clueless. She pointed a shard of papadam at Lara. “What about you? You got a boyfriend?”
Gallagher cringed. Why was his kid so nosy? He blamed her mother. Lara didn't seem to mind. “No,” she said. “Too busy for that stuff right now.”
“Enough already.” Gallagher got to his feet. “Everybody to the buffet. Before dad has a conniption.”
Lara didn't need to be told twice. She was starving and the long buffet table was right in front of them. Gallagher was already troweling food onto a plate.
Amy hung back, taking a pull off dad's Kingfisher when no one was looking. Her eyes stayed on Lara, watching her every move. An odd glimmer of apprehension on her pretty face.
“SO Dad’s got the guy in cuffs but he's late for the game. So what does he do? He brings the perp with him and sits in the front bleacher.”
Amy was telling the story. The table was littered with plates and small bowls. The wicker basket rested on the windowsill.
“Do you have to tell this story?” Gallagher reached for his beer but it was empty.
Amy ignored him. “This guy, he's higher than a kite. Starts yelling stuff to us on the court, rude stuff. Dad clocks him in the head to shut him up. All the other parents are looking, shocked. They can see the cuffs on the guy's wrists. I turned beet red. Blew the game. I was so embarrassed.”
Gallagher's face reddened. “I didn't want to miss the game.”
“Aw, that's cute.” Lara laughed, leaning forward on the table.
“That's not how the Lieutenant saw it.”
“How did you get away with that?” Lara asked. “Vogel must have had a fit.”
“I have compromising photos of the Lieutenant with a Shetland pony.” He winked at her.
Amy caught that. It was a nanosecond, that little wink, but she saw it. She saw everything. Everyone was loosened up, relaxed under a full belly. Amy liked Lara, thought it was cool that she was a homicide detective. All the other cops in dad's unit were men. They were nice, cracking jokes and acting the goofy uncle around her but Lara seemed different, a certain frankness about her Amy responded to. But then there was that look between Lara and dad. What was that about?
Gallagher took up his plate. “If you're finished embarrassing me, I'm going back for seconds.”
“You mean thirds,” Amy said.
“Go to your room.”
He lumbered back to the buffet table. Amy huddled toward Mendes. Girl talk. “So how come you're single?”
Lara leaned back from the question, unaccustomed to a teenager's tactlessness. “I broke up with someone not too long ago. So. I'm just not looking right now.”
“You're really pretty,” Amy said. “You must have guys buzzing around you all the time.”
“No. Not really.”
“You know Dad's single. But he's kinda clueless when it comes to women.”
Disquiet spilled over the table. Lara pushed her plate back. “Amy, you're not playing matchmaker, are you? Because, well...”
“I'm not. The opposite actually.”
Where was this going? Lara couldn't tell. So she listened. Amy filled in the silence. “Cops hook up all the time. Especially partners. Sort of a job hazard. But it always ends badly.”
“It happens,” Lara said. “But not to everybody.”
“I saw the way he looked at you. You're pretty, you're smart. And worse, you're considerate.”
“You're watching out for your dad.” Lara relaxed, understanding what the girl was trying to say. It was kind of endearing.
“It's happened before. That's how he and mom met.”
“Your mom is a police officer?”
“She was. But that ended badly. For everybody.”
Lara tilted her head. “You're warning me away. Right?”
“Yeah. I guess so. Just think it through.”
Gallagher came back with another plate and felt the chill. He looked at Amy, looked at Lara. “Who died?”
NIGHT shift at the Multnomah County Animal Shelter. Reben Bendwater worked security alongside one other staff member on the front desk from six till midnight. Staffing these two positions was a tough but necessary dent in the shelter's budget. All manner of people brought animals in once the sun went down. Sometimes there was trouble. Reuben's job was to keep the crazies at bay.
Ruben made his rounds through the basement level. He didn't mind the cold room where the carcasses were kept but the crematory always gave him the creeps. Like everyone at the shelter, Ruben was an animal lover and this room was both macabre and sad.
Upstairs in the kennel the dogs were quiet, even the feral ones brought in last week. One was a Belgian malamute mix and the other a bull mastiff with a tan hide and black mask. Ruben had tried to befriend these dogs as he did all the new arrivals but these animals were skittish and aggressive. Sometimes street dogs went that way, nothing you could do. The feral strays did not sleep but were quiet, chins on the floor. Their eyes watched everything.
Down the row of pens to a cage near the double swing-doors. A droopy-eyed hound stood up and wagged its tail. Ruben slipped a strip of beef jerky from his shirt pocket and fed it to the dog. He knew he shouldn't but it was just a small piece and the hound was old. No one adopted old dogs.
He scratched the hound's ears. “Here you go, buddy.”
Every dog woke at the same moment. On their feet and pacing their cage. Ears up. All barking in an ear-cracking cacophony. Scratching at the grates. The feral dogs stood, tails up, the only animals not howling.
Ruben jolted as if stung. The racket echoed off the painted cinderblock, amplified until the security guard covered his ears. He shouted and shushed but the dogs would not quiet. They barked and yowled and clawed their pens.
Something wrong materialized inside the kennel, down near the rear exit.
A man rose up out of the shadows, out of nothing, at the far end. All stringy hair and beard. A vagrant in a tattered jacket and bare chest. He squatted before the cages holding the latest arrivals, speaking softly to the wild dogs.
“Hey!” Ruben strode forward, his left hand finding the baton. “Get away from there!”
Homeless dudes and crackheads were no stranger to the shelter, wandering in after finding an unlocked door. They usually bolted when Ruben hollered at them. Not this guy, he didn't even look up. Instead, he slid back the bolt and opened the cage door.
“Hey! Stop!” The guy must be crazy. “That dog will bite, asshole!”
That big bull mastiff lumbered out of the cage, licked the man's hand and swung its squared head towards Ruben.
Reuben stopped, boots skidding on the linoleum.
The mastiff charged, nails clicking on the floor. Ruben ran for the doors. Instinct pumping his legs.
It slammed into his back, pitching him to the floor. Its jaws clamped his calf and the great dog whipped its head back and forth in violent jerks.
Ruben rolled, kicking out like he was on fire. It wouldn't let go. Something loomed into his field of vision, upside down. The stranger kneeling over him. His grime-encrusted hands ripped Reuben by the hair and bounced his skull off the floor. More teeth punctured his groin, the second brute ripping into him.
The other dogs barked and spun in their cages.
PABLO slung his bag over his shoulder, heading out the door. He stopped to go over a few things with Jenny at the front desk. Details that probably could wait but he couldn't help himself, car keys jangling in hand. What's another minute?
Then the clamor from the other side of the swing doors. The dogs going nuts like he had never heard before. Jenny shot out of her chair.
He pushed through the kennel doors with Jenny on his heels. Every dog was loose, running crazily. The door to each pen stood wide open.
Ruben Bendwater lay on the floor.
Pablo waded
through the bounding dogs and the animals buckled into his knees. The security guard's face was a mask of blood, the cheek torn loose in a wet flap. More blood seeped dark over his crotch and bloomed into a widening pool on the tiles. Ruben convulsed, going into shock.
Jenny sprinted back to the lobby to dial 911.
Pablo didn't know what to do. He folded the torn flesh back onto Ruben's face and told him to hang on. He looked up and saw someone else inside the kennel. The dogs raced back and forth, blurring his sightline but he saw it. A figure striding through the frenzied dogs, slamming the release bar on the rear door. Two dogs trotted at his heels, the feral canines collected at the crime scene.
The man led the two dogs out to the alley and disappeared behind the shutting door.
17
THE DOGS RAN crazily along the riverbank, tumbling together and nipping at each other's ruff. The mastiff and the malamute ran flat out, tongues flapping. The frustration and energy pent up inside the cages now pumped their legs through the weeds and they ran ahead of the others in a deranged glee. When the others caught up, the pack doubled back to find the man.
He scolded them to close ranks and stay away from the lights. They crossed one road and then another, slipping from shadow to shadow. Silent as cats. Off the asphalt road onto a service road of packed gravel to a driveway choked with raspberry bushes. Down a rutted track of mud that bent and curved until they saw the house.
Hidden behind the swaying branches of a weeping willow, a three-story clapboard with a porch wrapping the front and north side. The ground floor windows boarded over with plywood, the upper windows dark. The dogs bounded through the blackberry bushes growing wild on every side, lifting their legs to mark territory.
Ivan Prall slipped the duffel bag from his shoulder and looked up at the house. It looked smaller now and the elements had battered it senseless. Paint peeled from the clapboard in curls. The porch sagged this way, every angle tilted out of plumb.
No plywood blocked the back door but it was locked. He kicked it in, the dogs bottlenecking the door frame to get inside. The place smelled of damp rot and earth. Kids had been here, leaving behind their empty bottles and graffiti on the walls.
He dragged the duffel through the mouse droppings to the front of the house, the dogs banging his knees as they raced from room to room. The front room was big, originally a parlor, and some little moonlight fingered its way through the bare windows. The Rottweiler sniffed a corner and lifted a leg to spray. Prall booted the animal away, berating it.
A folding chair lay flat on the floor. He snapped it open and sat. Rummaged through the bag until he found the bottle of Jack. It spilled into his beard and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. More spray paint marred the walls in this room, the misspelled dirty words of juvenile boys. The knife unfolded with a snap and Ivan Prall carved into the old sheetrock, cutting through the painted glyphs of penises and breasts. The pentagram he carved was crude but it was big and it sanctified the room.
He went back to the chair and took up the bottle. In a while he would go upstairs to where the horrors had taken place and he would consecrate those rooms too.
THE monster on the television screen roared. Grainy 1970's Technicolor. A stuntman geared up in a hairy monster costume. Ears flopping crazily, the rubber mask unnatural and stiff. The scene was dark, hiding the poor production values and slim budget.
Lara sat on the couch, her feet tucked under her. On her lap was one of the black notebooks, a pen and notepad in her hand. Deciphering more of the illegible handwriting. Doing her homework in front of the idiot box, a habit formed in childhood. Flipping over to the news, she’d found this old monster movie and let it run. Italian, badly dubbed into English, the plot centered on a priest who had been mauled by a werewolf. Struggling to hide his curse, the priest administered mass during the day and transformed into a beast at night, slaughtering his own parishioners.
The climax unspooled and Lara put aside her work altogether. A young nun, secretly enamored of the cursed priest, had uncovered his secret and was now running for her life through a medieval graveyard. She had armed herself with a crossbow, the bolts blessed and sprinkled with holy water, hoping to end the priest's suffering. Hiding among the graves, she struggled to notch another bolt into the heavy weapon but didn't have the strength. The monster tracked her scent through the churchyard, stalking closer and closer. The beast sprang just as she locked her last bolt and fired. The blessed missile pierced the werewolf's heart and it thrashed in the leaves. With tears streaming, the young nun took up a torch and set the monster ablaze. The frame pulled back into a widening shot of the flames among the tombstones and the credits crawled up the screen.
Her cell buzzed, floating across the coffee table. The desk sergeant. There was an incident at the animal shelter and Detective Gallagher was already on scene. How soon could she be there?
DETECTIVE Mendes badged her way past the uniforms, saw Pablo sitting with Detective Rowe. Rowe waved hello and cocked a thumb toward the kennel area.
More dogs. Again the smell of urine and disinfectant. The dogs had been corralled back into the pens and they stood watching but still agitated.
Gallagher kneeled over a body on the floor, hands sheathed in latex as he peeled back a bloodied flap of shirt from the ribcage. Blood grouted the yellow ceramic tiles. Beyond that the floor was smeared with wide swathes of blood, telling of a violent assault. A plastic ID tag swam in the red stuff. Lara knelt down and read the name without touching it. Ruben Bendwater, security.
Gallagher nodded hello. “What do you think, chief? Heart attack or stroke? My first guess was spontaneous human combustion but I may have to revise that theory.”
Lara swept her gaze over the body. The wounds not dissimilar to her first homicide. “What happened?”
“Break and enter,” Gallagher said. “Security guard must have surprised the guy, got his skull crushed for his troubles.”
“But he's ripped up. Those wounds look like the ones on the Riley woman.”
“Yup.” Gallagher hollered to the uniform near the door. “Ask Pablo to come in here.”
The director returned but kept his eyes from the wreckage at their feet.
“Pablo,” Gallagher said, “tell Detective Mendes what you told me.”
Pablo folded his arms. “I was on my way out when I heard the dogs go crazy. All of them barking like the place was on fire. I ran back and the dogs were all out of their pens. And there's this guy. The son of a bitch sets all the dogs loose and just walks out the door with two of them at his heel. Like it was nothing.”
Lara looked up. “He stole some dogs?”
“Two. The ones from your crime scene. I ran after him but I tripped over—.” Pablo's eyes finally fell to the body. He turned away, one hand over his mouth, the other held up in surrender. “I'm sorry. I can't.”
“That's okay.” Lara waved at the uniform to lead him out. “Thank you, Pablo.” She watched him stagger out then spun back to Gallagher. “He came back for his dogs?”
“Ballsy prick just waltzes in, kills this poor guy and takes his dogs.” Gallagher wanted to spit but choked it back to avoid contaminating the scene. “He's laughing at us.”
“This isn't about us. He didn't do this to show off.”
“Then why? Why risk this?”
“He came for his wolf pack.”
Gallagher gritted his teeth. “What?”
“These animals aren't his pets,” she said. “They're his pack. His family.”
“Don't start with the Wolf-Man shit. Please.”
“Then why risk coming here? Think like him for a second, Gallagher. He's a wolf. The pack leader. But he's a wolf without his pack. So he busts in to get them back.”
A dog barked through the mesh. Lara looked over the pens, found the eyes of dogs staring back at her. “I should have seen this coming.”
“You can't anticipate a psycho, Mendes.”
“Yeah, you can. If you're willing
to crawl inside his head.”
The swing doors breezed open and the CSU techs entered. The one with the camera began snapping pictures right away.
Gallagher looked at Mendes. “Show me,” he said. “Soon as we're done here, show me.”
THERE wasn’t a lot to be gained at the crime scene. No workable prints were taken from the kennel, neither the cage nor the exit door. The shelter had no security video and the initial canvass of the area turned up nothing. Pablo had only gotten a glimpse of the suspect's back.
Four hours and two coffee runs later, they went back to the precinct, leaving the CSU crew to do their work. Gallagher grumbled the whole way back. It wasn't even their case, the call having come in on Rowe's shift, but because of the connection with the stolen dogs, Detectives Mendes and Gallagher would share the file. That meant three open cases on his desk.
“Alright detective,” he said when they found their desks. “The floor is yours.”
Lara looked over the riot of photos and notes on her evidence board, groping for a starting point. “Age ten,” she dove in, “Ivan Prall witnesses his father beat his mother to death in a drunken rage. The father goes to jail. With no other family around, the boy is moved into the foster system and shuffled through a number of homes. He gets into trouble as a teen, winds up in juvie jail for two years. After that he's placed in the Gethsemane halfway house where he's abused by the owner, Ronald Kovacks. He runs away and is found three days later on the side of a highway, wounded in some kind of animal attack.”
“Yeah.” Gallagher knew this part. “The doctor said it was probably a dog, not a wolf.”
“Bear with me. Prall is ordered back to the halfway house as soon as he's fit to be moved. But he slips the hospital and disappears.” Lara tapped a finger against her lips, gathering the notes in her head. “Clearly he didn't want to go back to the abuse that waited for him at the hands of this Kovacks guy. But now he's alone, scrambling to survive with absolutely nothing. God knows how he did it. No friends, no family and surviving what he did. No way to process what he's been through. Alone and on the run, his only companions are these stray dogs. They become his family. Prall develops this werewolf fantasy to cope with the abuse he suffered. And the violent rages he experiences.”
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 11
