Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  “Yeah,” Amy said. Her breakfast was made and waiting for her on the counter. “No news. Except for Vincent Medical. They left me on hold. I'll call back after breakfast.”

  Every morning for the past week, Gallagher and Amy had called all of the hospitals in the city asking about any Jane Does who'd been admitted. Hoping someone matched Lara's description.

  “Sit down and eat.” He cleared away the paperwork, making space for her. Amy took her fruit and toast to the table, munching as she looked over her dad's mess. A fresh stack of missing persons flyers and a map marred with scribbles. She watched him making notes on the map itself. The bruises on his face were slow to fade and he was still limping. He looked tired and he looked old and it scared her a little.

  “You want some OJ?” He got up and retrieved the carton and a glass, limped back to the table. “The forecast is calling for sunshine the next few days. Think I'll go see Pablo, get started on that backup plan.”

  She frowned. “Dad, you need to rest. Take it easy.”

  “I need to keep looking.”

  She crunched her toast and he skimmed through The Oregonian. A dry crackle from down the hall, the police scanner in his office was turned up loud so he could he hear it out in the kitchen.

  “Dad?”

  “Mmm.”

  “It's been a week.”

  That brought his eyes up. “And?”

  “I dunno.” Her shoulders went up in a shrug. “It's just— It's been a week. That's all. You've been going so hard on this and it's… “ She shrugged again without finishing.

  “You think I should give up? Face facts.”

  She let her spoon clink against the bowl. “No one's seen her. She hasn't been to her place, hasn't used her phone or touched her bank account. Do you honestly think she's, you know, still alive?”

  “I wouldn't be doing this if I thought she was dead.”

  “I know.” Amy chewed her lip, looking for the right words. “It's just, you're pushing yourself too hard. You need to recuperate. Look after yourself.”

  “And who's looking out for her?” His tone was too sharp and he regretted it immediately. “I know what you're saying, honey.” He patted the back of her hand. “And I appreciate it, I do, but I gotta keep looking.”

  “It's not your fault, you know.” As usual, she cut through the fog to stick a fork in the problem.

  “Finish your breakfast,” he said.

  THE Multnomah County Animal Shelter was back to its hectic pace since the break-in and Pablo was grateful for it. Reuben Bendwater's death still hung over the place but the grim atmosphere lifted bit by bit with the return of injured pets and stray animals. The staff had pooled some money together and framed a picture of Reuben for the lobby, the words In memoriam etched below.

  Pablo had spent the morning euthanizing an aging Australian Sheepdog named Boots. The family was in attendance, a father with his two sons. The boys smoothed their hands down Boots' ruff as Pablo administered a sedative and then the pentobarbital. The boys cried and the dad clenched his jaw to keep his own eyes dry and then he put his arms round his sons and led them out of the room. Pablo was washing his hands when Gallagher appeared in the doorframe.

  The kennel exploded in barking as they pushed through the swing doors and moved past the rows of cages. Kenneled dogs had simple reactions to strangers, they either liked them or they didn't. They definitely did not like Gallagher, Pablo concluded.

  They strode down the row of big dogs and little dogs and Pablo stopped at the last cage on the end. “Is that him?”

  “Yeah,” Gallagher said. “That's him.”

  The Siberian didn't even lift his head until the two men stood before his cage. The left foreleg was wrapped in gauze. He raised up on his elbows and let his tongue fall out of his chops. Waiting to see what would happen.

  Gallagher knelt and nickered at the dog. “Here boy,” he said.

  The dog backed away as far as the cage allowed.

  “Guess he don't like you,” Pablo said.

  “No shit. You got a muzzle for this beast?”

  Pablo rubbed his neck, unsure about the whole deal. “I don't know about this, G. I got court orders to destroy this dog come Friday.”

  “Don't sweat it, Pablo.” Gallagher rose up, hands on his hips. “I'll have him back by tomorrow. I just need a muzzle on this sonovabitch so he don't bite.”

  The dog let Pablo harness his snout with the leather muzzle and collar the lead. Pablo walked the dog out of the building before handing the lead to Gallagher. “Here,” he said. “Walk him a bit.”

  The Siberian jerked and recoiled the minute Gallagher took the leash. Gallagher cursed and dragged the mutt along but he needed Pablo's help getting the damn dog into the back of his Cherokee. The dog turned and tried to bite Gallagher through the muzzle. Gallagher smacked it across the nose. “Behave,” he snapped. “And don't even think about pissing back here.”

  He slammed the gate shut and saw Pablo laughing. Pablo handed Gallagher a plastic shopping bag. “Don't forget, if he goes, you gotta pick up his business.”

  Gallagher grunted out something like a thank you and climbed under the wheel. He checked the rearview. The Siberian panted and squeezed its snout out the crack in the window.

  THE dog whined and scratched at the door when they got close. He pulled off the main road onto a gravel spit and parked in the shade of a maple tree. He opened the gate slowly to keep the animal from bolting and reached in for the leash. The Siberian backed away, forcing him to crawl in after it. It fought him at first, tugging and digging in its heels. Gallagher yanked and pulled and kicked the animal along, traipsing through the uneven ground of the marshland.

  The sky was clear but little sunlight penetrated the canopy of trees inside the park. The trunks of the aspens were vibrant with moss and more moss carpeted the lengths of fallen timbers that crisscrossed the forest floor. Man and dog both limped, making an odd hobbling spectacle to see but they saw no other hikers.

  The Siberian kept fighting him and Gallagher sat down on a length of mossy deadfall and spoke to the animal. He blew off his frustration, speaking calm and even to the dog the way one does to a toddler. When he rose and continued on, the animal sidled in beside him and fought no more.

  Twenty minutes in and Gallagher worried he had taken the wrong path before spotting the strip of yellow tape on the ground. The animal became agitated, pulling on the lead again. He reigned it tight to his knees and patted its ribs. From his pocket, he pulled out a plastic freezer bag and opened the seal. Inside it was a T-shirt he had nicked from the laundry hamper in Lara's apartment. He put it to his nose and could smell her on it then he kneeled down to the dog's level and held it up. The Siberian was uninterested so he pushed the damp shirt into its nose.

  “This is her,” he spoke to the dog. “Find her for me. Show me which way she went.”

  The dog put its nose to the ground and pulled him a ways and then lifted a leg and marked a tree stump. It looked up at him and then watched a bird flitting over the pine needles. He tried again, putting the garment to the animal's nose, until the dog seemed to understand. Nose to the ground it meandered through the ferns and underbrush, tracking a scent. Gallagher ran out the slack on the leash and let the dog lead him where it would.

  They hobbled along, man and dog, until they crested a rise and disappeared into a thick of hemlocks.

  Copyright © 2011 Tim McGregor.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Perdido Pub

  Toronto

  Publisher’s
Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Copyright 2012 Tim McGregor

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are product's of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ONE

  IN HIS DREAMS, she came back.

  The nightmares too.

  John Gallagher sat up and wiped a forearm across his brow. The same thing almost every night, waking up with the sweats, heart banging in his chest. This night no different from the rest but this time, she came back.

  Lara Mendes had stepped warily from the trees into an open meadow. Gallagher’s former partner in the homicide detail, missing and presumed dead these last three months. In his dream, he searched the dense forest looking for her. Sometimes he found her, dead at the bottom of a ditch, her remains torn apart by wild dogs.

  This time was different. She came back. On her own.

  He was scrambling through the thicket, hands scratched raw from the brambles, knees dirty from crawling through the loam. He dropped to his knees in exhaustion, wanting to give up. He looked up and there she was, stumbling out of the trees. Her eyes wide with fear, her dark hair wet and plastered against her face. He ran to her. She startled at first, then hurried to meet him. There were tears in her eyes as she limped forward.

  He almost had her, almost touched her when the wolf took her. It slammed into her from behind like a freight train and dragged Lara back into the dark trees. Her eyes bald with terror, fingers clawing the dirt.

  And then she was gone.

  Gallagher heard her screams, cutting through the air to him from the inky darkness. All he could do was listen.

  And then the wolf came back. Enormous and powerful, a giant in its proportions. Its maw opened and the monster’s big, big teeth closed over his throat and there was a snap as his neck broke and then he woke.

  He rubbed his eyes until the numbers on the alarm clock came into focus. Almost five. No getting back to sleep now. He swung out of bed, pulled on the clothes left draped over a chair and headed downstairs. Stepping quietly past his daughter’s bedroom door.

  Gallagher sat with his feet propped on the desk in his small office next to the mud room. He clicked through all the police monitoring sites and RSS feeds for the fourth time this morning but there was nothing new. No reports of dog attacks, no wolf sightings, no unusual homicides under the parameters he had put in place. He reached for his cup but his coffee had gone cold.

  A thump overhead, the creak of the floor from the upstairs bedroom. His daughter was up.

  He was brewing a fresh pot when Amy came downstairs. A bleary-eyed seventeen-year old shuffling like the walking dead in ratty slippers. She flopped onto a stool at the kitchen counter and Gallagher slid a bowl of fruit and yogurt under her nose. “Morning sunshine. Sleep well?”

  Amy looked down at her breakfast then up at her dad. “Can I have some coffee?”

  “It’ll stunt your growth.”

  “I’m tall enough.” Amy tried a smile but it came out like a disturbed leer. Mornings were not her strong suit. “Please.”

  “Half a cup.” He slid the cup across the counter to her and watched her lace it with a lethal dose of sugar. “Do you need a lunch today?”

  “No. I’ll pick up something.” She sipped her cup, watching him clean up. “You must be tired. I heard you get up at four.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “The nightmare again?”

  He threaded a tie under his collar, ignoring the question. Code for ‘change the subject’. Amy didn’t pursue it, already knowing the answer. Her dad suffered nightmares, almost every night since the incident. He got by on three, maybefour hours of sleep. That it was affecting him was plain to see but he never acknowledged it, claiming he didn’t need much sleep anyway. “Don’t go with that tie,” she said.

  “It’s my best one.”

  She pointed at it with her spoon. “It’s still got that stain on it.”

  He flipped up the end, saw the offending blemish. “Damn.” He stripped it off and tossed it onto the back of a chair. “Where’s the blue one?”

  Amy munched away then nodded in the direction of his office down the hall. “Anything new on the search front?”

  “Same. Big fat nada.”

  She offered a conciliatory smile. Maybe tomorrow. During the incident that had left her dad in the hospital with a shredded ear and two cracked ribs, his partner, Detective Lara Mendes, had disappeared without a trace. When he recovered, he began searching for her. Obsessively. She’d helped him those first two months, calling every hospital in Portland for the missing detective or any Jane Doe matching her description. Her zeal had waned when it became clear they were not going to find her. She’d started skipping days, calling hospitals every second day, then once a week until she stopped altogether. Her dad didn’t say anything about it, he just took on the calls himself. Part of his morning routine now. She had been conflicted about it at first, not wanting to let him down but, at the same time, not wanting to prolong his delusion that Lara would be found. It seemed cruel, like giving a drunk a drink. She had hoped that he’d pick up on her cue and start to accept the reality that his partner was, tragically and hopelessly, gone.

  It hadn’t.

  Gallagher fished his keys from the bowl and grabbed the holstered gun from the countertop. Clipped it to his belt and leaned in to kiss her goodbye. “Will you be home for dinner?”

  “No.” Amy wiped her chin. “Gabby and I going for dinner after work. Indian.”

  “Again?” He frowned. “How are you supposed to save money with the way you eat out?”

  “Dad? Unclench.”

  “Okay.” Another peck and then he leveled his eyes at hers. “Home before dark. Right?”

  Amy tried not to roll her eyes but couldn’t help it. “Sure,” she said. He left and she stifled a sigh. What part of ‘unclench’ didn’t he understand?

  The river was almost frozen over, forcing the woman to walk farther each day to find a break in the ice where she could toss a few lines in. She had set out three lines past the ice and hunkered down to wait for a bite. She had been here all day without a single tug on any of the lines.

  The sun was going down over the trees and unless she got lucky soon, it would be another day of going hungry.

  The river at her feet was wide, with sheet ice growing from each bank. Beyond that, a wall of dark forest and solitude and no sign of any other living person. She had chosen this spot for its seclusion. A modest hike back through the trees stood a small shack that she had been living in for over a month. Before the snow fell, the fishing had been good. The trout and steelhead she had pulled from the river provided plenty of meals for one person. She didn’t have to risk traveling into town for supplies. The spot had been ideal.

  Now she watched her lines trail into the dark water, still and undisturbed for hours.

  When the last of the sun fled behind the pines, she packed it in. Another day of rice and beans. Even those supplies were dwindling and she’d soon be forced to walk into town. She’d have to careful, the money was dwindling too.

  Threading her way back through the dense trees to her little hovel of a shelter, she tried to remember how many days it had been she’d suffered an attack from her particular affliction. Thirty days? On a wall in the shack, she had tallied the days with a nub of charcoal from the stove, like a prisoner marking time in a cell.

  Today would be thirty-one days. A personal record. The longest she had ever gone without an attack. A point of pride, for sure, but it might also mean that she was long overdue.

&nbs
p; TWO

  THERE WAS BLOOD everywhere. Splattered onto the scuffed walls and pooling out onto the grimy floor where it grouted the tiles. He couldn’t get close to the body without stepping in it. It was bad luck to step in a vic’s blood. You don’t want to track that stuff home. Detective John Gallagher, Homicide Detail, Portland Police Bureau, checked his gut and got to work.

  Gallagher tucked his tie into his shirt to keep it from dangling into anything nasty and knelt down at the edge of the blood pool. The vic was male, middle-aged and pale as snow from blood loss. Face down but with no visible wounds, which meant that the wounds were on his front. A neighbor had reported gunshots in the house. The patrol officers who responded found the front door wide open and a body on the kitchen floor.

  “I think I see the problem here,” Gallagher said, nodding to the detective on the opposite side of the body. “This guy’s got a slow leak.”

  “Damn. My money was on an aneurysm.” Detective Rueben Wade studied the body from his angle. Wade was primary here, Gallagher backing him up. Murder calls were rotated through the detail as they came in, every detective grabbing a call as the rotation dictated. Except Gallagher. They hadn’t allowed him primary on a body since the incident so here he was, backing up someone else’s file. “Maybe they can patch that up,” Wade said. “Dude can tell us who killed him.”

  “I dunno.” Gallagher moved around the body for a different angle. “He doesn’t look like the chatty type to me.”

  Gallagher didn’t care about being denied primary investigator. He would have once, but not any longer. He was grateful to simply have his job back, his pension in place. His daughter’s future. He’d been put on leave following the incident and, unable to satisfactorily answer questions about his lieutenant’s death, fully expected to be sacked. His pension would be snipped with a trim pair of scissors and his daughter’s future suddenly thrown into question.