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“So you work for a television show,” he said.
“Yes. I’m kind of the resident skeptic—the token voice of reason. I suspect Paul’s superiors hoped that by inviting me out they might put their department in the way of some free publicity.”
“The anthro department at OU wanted to get on something called Chasing History’s Monsters?”
She shrugged. “The hope of getting on TV can have a strange effect on people. Even intelligent, well-educated ones.”
He made a face, took off the glasses and looked at her. “Maybe the monster thing’s actually appropriate now. Is that what brings you to see me, Ms. Creed?”
“I want to learn everything I can about what happened to my friend,” she said. “Also his colleagues. And the poor man whose property the dig site was on.”
“Old Eric,” Ten Bears said. “Pretty righteous guy. Did well for himself and his family from leasing natural-gas rights on some of his land out there south of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Always quick to help out a fellow Nation member or crack a joke. Even if he did have lousy taste in ’em.”
“He was a friend of yours?”
Ten Bears nodded. “I know a lot of people in our region. Know a whole lot of Indian good old boys like me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Listen, it was a pretty ugly scene out there, Ms. Creed. I’ve worked a lot of homicides over the years. I’ve worked some pretty terrible accident scenes. Never saw anything like that anywhere. I can’t really tell you anything the department hasn’t already released to the media. Tell the truth, I’m sorta glad.”
He sat back, looking at her. He seemed not unfriendly. Not unkind, in fact. From the laugh lines bracketing his eyes and mouth she guessed he was by nature a pretty decent guy. She also knew that a seasoned homicide investigator wouldn’t hesitate to feign those emotions when he didn’t feel remotely kind or friendly, if it would help advance the case.
“What’d the decedent tell you?” he asked quietly.
“He said he was attacked by what, frankly, sounded more like a movie monster than anything in the real world.”
“You’ve had some experience investigating monsters, I guess,” he said. “What’s your take on that?”
“Are you serious? I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I’m not trying to be uncooperative. It just sounds like—a strange question for somebody who seems so no-nonsense to be asking.”
“I try not to close any possible avenues of inquiry. Especially in a case like this. I’m not giving away any confidential information when I tell you we don’t have a whole lot of ideas on this thing. Not ones that make any sense. So, hey, I’ll at least give a listen to ones that might not seem to make much sense. I don’t believe in werewolves. But if our perp really is a damn werewolf, I want to be there when they pump silver into his veins or whatever they’d use for an execution. Maybe you’d call it putting him to sleep.”
A strangled squeak of laughter escaped Annja’s lips before she could clap her hand over her mouth. She bent forward in her chair, then straightened.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m…not normally like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Ten Bears said. “Sometimes I’ve got pretty lousy taste in jokes, too. I can see you’re shaken up some. Anybody would be. Nice young woman like you isn’t used to having people up and die right in front of her.”
She managed to show no reaction to that statement. Unfortunately she was used to having people up and die in front of her. Poor Paul wasn’t even the first ex-lover and friend Annja Creed had seen die. Although she was sure she would never get used to that.
None of which she wanted to admit to the lead investigator on Comanche County’s most lurid multiple-murder case of modern times.
The thought helped her compose herself. “This has hit me hard, I must admit,” she said. “I have to ask you to believe me that I’m not going to pieces on you. And I’m determined to find out what happened to those people.”
“All right,” he said, nodding and drawing it out. His accent was a weird blend of Indian staccato and cowboy drawl, something she wouldn’t have thought was possible. “So, not to be boring or anything, what do you make of what Mr. Stavriakos told you?”
“I don’t believe in werewolves, either, Lieutenant. Yet I know Paul Stavriakos is—was—a trained scientist, and not what I’d call an impressionable man. Obviously, something terrible and…unusual happened out at the dig site this morning. The suddenness and speed of the attack, the shock of seeing his friends brutally murdered, the terrible emotional impact of having someone attack him in person, the physical injuries he took—none of those things leads to careful observation.
“The thing is, there are no documented reports of wolf attacks on humans in North America. And I have a hard time imagining any North American animal, no matter how hungry or scared or angry or even rabid, attacking a group of six adult humans, much less being able to kill or mortally wound them all. So I’d have to imagine a very strong man, berserk even, probably wearing a wolf skin or even some kind of costume, was responsible for the attack.”
She shook her head. “It’s hard for me to imagine what happened no matter what.”
“I been doing some digging since I got back from interviewing Mr. Stavriakos at the hospital, before you got there,” Ten Bears said. “It turns out there are some pretty well-documented wolf attacks on people. Just a lot of people said there weren’t, and everybody got believing it. But there hasn’t been a wolf seen in Comanche County since the 1890s. And again I’m not giving away much when I tell you that’s how I got it sized up, too.”
“I understand from the news reports that there have been previous attacks under similar circumstances,” Annja said.
“Yeah. Two in New Mexico. One out near the Continental Divide between Gallup and Grants, one between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. All of them on archaeological digs, all of them nasty. Mr. Stavriakos’s passing brings the death toll to fifteen. In all three attacks at least one witness survived. They all gave similar details—including that their attacker was either a great big wolf or something that looked like a man-wolf hybrid, like the wolfman from the movie.”
He paused, frowning. “Along with what you said, the whole notion it’s a single animal with one helluva range, much less three separate animals that suddenly and simultaneously developed a serious taste for archaeologists, strikes me as a lot more far-fetched than it’s being a werewolf. We got evidence from all three attacks that tells us there was just the one perpetrator. To me he’s obviously got to be a crazy man in some kind of murder suit, like that old Zodiac killer gone Hollywood.”
He shifted in his swivel chair and sighed. “Public’s gonna be crawling straight up our…trouser legs on this one. I don’t even blame ’em. All we can do is try to keep calm, do good police work, let the forensics people do their thing, try to identify this killer and wrap him up before he can do this again. And barring that, hope that next time he tries, some good-old boy archaeologist will pull an octagonal-barrel Winchester lever action out the rifle rack of his pickup truck and let some badly needed sunlight into this bad boy’s skull. If you’ll pardon my speaking what you might call frankly.”
“Nothing I disagree with, Lieutenant,” she said. “One thing. Paul seemed very specific that the attacker was a skinwalker. A Navajo wolf—he called it that, too. Beyond the fact that there are legends of skinwalkers, I don’t know anything about that, or what might make Paul so positive that was what attacked him. Do you know anything about skinwalker myths?”
“Not much more than you. They’re a Navajo thing, just like he said. Not something us Numunu—Comanches—would get up to. Nor the Kiowa, either. Not even Plains Apache, far as I know. They still speak an Apache language, but they picked up Plains Indian culture since they joined up with the Comanche and the Kiowa a couple of centuries back.”
“I want to see the site, Lieutenant.”
He looked at her with frank appraisal. “Is this a personal thing? Or are you gonna go for journalistic status, try the power of the press routine?”
“Whatever it takes,” she said. “I want the killer caught. It is personal. Of course it is. I’ve consulted with investigative agencies before—I know enough to keep out of the way of real forensic investigators. And as an archaeologist I certainly know how to avoid contaminating or disturbing a site. Also I may be able to infer something from the dig site that someone who isn’t a trained and experienced archaeologist would miss.”
His black eyes gazed at her for the space of several breaths. “I’m not proud, Ms. Creed,” he said. “Leastwise, not prouder than I am eager to save a whole bunch more poor folks from getting torn up like that. I could use any information I can get. So let’s go ahead and call you a consultant on this one. You need a contract?”
She shook her head. “Nor do I need any fees. Let me use your name, and back me up if I need it. I promise I won’t embarrass you.”
He nodded. “Good enough. And thanks for not asking for any money—things are pretty tight, budgetarily speaking, even for a sensational case like this. I’ve worked with archaeologists before. Heck, I worked with Ted Watkins, the archaeologist who got killed out there this morning. So I know you understand about not trampling through a crime scene like a herd of buffalo. I wish half the law enforcement people who’ve been up through there already had half the sense about that kind of thing as you people do. I’ll give you the little speech, anyway. Stay out of the way of any cop types, whether they’re troopers, county mounties or, heaven help us, the Feds. If you encounter the suspect do not try to detain or interact with him, for God’s sake. Otherwise, knock yourself out. And I’ll put out the word you’re helping me on a discreet kinda basis.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“I’m not sure it’s a thanking matter, ma’am.”
They both stood. He was a good three inches shorter than her. Annja nodded at the beefy revolver holstered at his right hip. It was matte silver metal with contoured wooden grips. They looked well-worn.
“I couldn’t help noticing you carry a double-action revolver, Lieutenant,” she said. “Looking at the other troopers I thought the Oklahoma Highway Patrol issued Glock 22s.”
He looked as if her query surprised him. It clearly didn’t displease him.
“Smith & Wesson 657,” he said with unmistakable pride. “It’s a .41 Magnum, N-frame, stainless. Custom Hogue grips. Got me a special exemption from the department to carry it. Helps I’m a Comanche and all, plus I’ve been with the patrol since old Quanah Parker was a lance corporal. I got nothing against the Glocks—they’re pretty good guns, even if I can’t help feeling like they’re flimsy for being half made out of plastic and all. And there’s nothing wrong with .40 caliber. I just like the authority the .41 Mag gives you, without it having so much recoil it takes all day to haul it back down on target every time you shoot, like a .44 Magnum does. And maybe some of that cowboy wheel-gun mystique.”
He slapped the weapon affectionately. “This pup got me all the way through the fast drive to Kuwait City in ’91. Not much call to use it then, although it was a power of comfort to me. Been out of the holster a time or two since, though. And never once let me down.”
“Kuwait City, 1991? Wait, you were Force RECON?”
“That’s right, ma’am. You wouldn’t be former military yourself, would you? Or from a service family? You seem to know a fair amount about the forces.”
“I have a lot of friends in the military. But—you’re a Marine.” She already knew better than to say ex-Marine.
“Semper fi, ma’am!”
“The young man in the photos on your desk is Army.”
Ten Bears’ thin-lipped mouth tightened ever so slightly, and his eyes narrowed just a hair. “Boy always did know how to piss me off,” he muttered. “Even if he did make Ranger.”
“Well, thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll let you know if I find anything that I think you might be able to use.”
“You look like a woman who knows how to take care of herself,” he said.
“I like to think I can.”
“Well, this isn’t the time or the place to show how tough and independent you are.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“There’s a mass murderer on the loose,” he said. “You didn’t forget already?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I didn’t.”
“I’m just joshing you,” he said. “About the forgetting part. Not about the murderer. I don’t think this fella plays well with others.”
“I’ll try to stay away from him.”
“You be sure to do that. Let us professionals handle him. We do a bad enough job without any help.”
She wasn’t sure quite how to take that. He seemed like a man who, for all his cockeyed banter, took his job very seriously. She also didn’t think his tongue was more than halfway in his cheek, and wondered just who wasn’t doing their job quite so well.
She also knew better than to ask. Lieutenant Ten Bears clearly thought of himself as a stand-up cop. He’d never bad-mouth a fellow officer to an outsider. But he might not be above dropping some sidewise comments about his comrades who didn’t measure up.
“One more thing before you go,” he told her as she started for the door of his small office. “We got us some young South Plains braves here in western Oklahoma who don’t much like white-eyes. And they play rough. Tempers are extrashort right now since some of them don’t like it that we got us a great big new casino the Nation’s opening up in a few days.”
He laughed at her expression. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They can’t fire me for calling them braves. Any more than they can make us Indians call ourselves Native Americans. That fight we won, anyway. Maybe it’s a trend.”
Annja had to laugh. She found herself liking the lieutenant.
As she left she thought, I don’t believe in werewolves. But there are plenty of things I don’t believe in that have a nasty habit of turning up, anyway.
3
The site was a bust.
The sun was setting when Annja got there. The only people present in the mellow dusk light slanting beneath gray clouds were some gloved techs moving gingerly around inside the yellow-tape perimeter whipped constantly by the wind, and a pair of Comanche County deputies in cowboy hats. Both were lean young men, one with hair cut so painfully short it suggested a recent military discharge, the other with gleaming black braids hanging over the dark brown shoulders of his jacket. They both gave her a rock-hard look.
She told the deputies Lieutenant Ten Bears had sent her. Having seen more than her share of interdepartmental rivalry in law enforcement she wasn’t sure how they’d respond. But they both instantly broke into smiles. When she showed them her ID they readily allowed her access.
“I’ve seen you on TV, Ms. Creed,” the braided deputy said. He looked marginally older than his partner, and was clearly senior. “I know you’ll be careful. Not like some people we’ve had out here. And on a totally unrelated subject, the FBI just left.” He frowned. “I reckon we’re mainly out here to keep them federal boys takin’ over altogether.”
“I was surprised they didn’t offer to tip us on the way out,” his partner said. He reminded her slightly of the young man in the pictures on Ten Bears’ desk, only not so handsome.
Annja nodded, keeping her expression neutral. Like most local law-enforcement types, their regard for the self-billed world’s leading investigative agency tended to vary proportionally to their firsthand experience with them.
For her part Annja tried to keep on good terms with people. Especially the ones with guns and implied or explicit permission to use them.
She smiled and nodded in response to the deputies’ conversation, which wasn’t hard since they seemed to be pleasant and earnest young men. She was surprised and flattered when the junior deputy asked shyly for her autograph. He seemed way too impressed when she signed his notebook with a little note of thanks for his help.
Inside the tape the techs nodded brusquely toward her and went about their business. They kept studiously clear of the dig itself, marked off and gridded by string stretched between stakes. If she wasn’t supposed to be there, they clearly reasoned, the county boys would never have let her step over the tape. The evidence team had jobs to do and not much daylight left to do them. She guessed nobody wanted to be out there with a generator going and stand lights shining as the temperature dropped and the prairie wind came up.
She walked around with her arms crossed in front of her. The wind was indeed picking up as the sun fell toward the rumpled horizon in the west.
The geographic region lay in the Red Beds Plains, which ran all the way from Kansas down across the Red River into Texas. Unlike the true Great Plains farther north, this land was wide but rolling, dotted with small stands of trees. There weren’t any signs of cultivation in view. This particular part of the Red Beds was walled off to the north by the rough granite ramparts, built on a foundation of Cambrian sandstone beds, of the Wichita Mountains. Annja’s maps showed none of them got as high as twenty-five hundred feet, and the general elevation of the landscape was around a thousand. To Annja they were really just rugged hills by the standards of the ranges not far to the west in New Mexico and Colorado. Much less the Andes and the Himalayas, which she also knew firsthand. But the locals seemed adamant about their “mountain” status, so she felt disinclined to argue.
There really wasn’t much to see but some nasty dark splashes, now pretty dried out, on the short grass and the rocks. Where it was bare the red soil had sucked the blood down without much trace she could see, although the techs were taking samples and the spots where blood spatter had been found were marked with little plastic tabs. As were the places where the bodies had been found.
The dig team had been housed in a small RV, a trailer and a small camper pickup. If there was any sign the attacker had entered any of them Annja hadn’t been told. She decided to keep clear of them. She wasn’t looking for criminal evidence, and part of being a trained professional at site preservation meant minimizing the risk of messing anything up.
She searched for tactical evidence. How had the attack happened? How had the killer come so swiftly on the six people, whose attention, the transcript of Ten Bears’ interview with Paul indicated, had been innocently focused on coffee and doughnuts?
Some blurred tracks in the dirt suggested the killer had gotten close by using the trailer for concealment, before launching a blitz assault. If the tracks had given the investigators any clues as to the true nature of the monster—and whatever or whoever it was, there was no doubt it was a monster—they hadn’t shared them with her. She didn’t expect they would.
Following a few quiet words from Ten Bears the troopers at the Troop G HQ had also permitted Annja to see photos of the attack scene taken before the bodies were removed. They seemed surprised at how calmly she studied them.
They had affected her. But she was long past the point of breaking down from seeing butchery, no matter how horrific. Especially not mere images.
Now she tried to retrace the killer’s steps. He had worked incredibly fast, ripping or slashing open state archaeologist Dr. Watkins’s throat, then those of the two undergrads, Watts and Luttrell. Next it attacked Allison York, eviscerating her at a single blow.
All this occurred while Paul had his head turned, and apparently without his becoming aware of it. That was according to what he had told the trooper who rode with him in the helicopter when he was airlifted to Norman.
The killer then struck Paul. The landowner, Eric James, apparently tried to jump the killer when he was attacking Annja’s friend. The killer then knocked the Comanche man away, leaped on him and savaged him before turning back to further maul his other victims.
Even with the deadly advantages of surprise and shock, it had been a breathtakingly effective assault. Annja tried to envision what weapons the killer used. Did he carry knives, or wear Freddy Krueger-style knife gloves? Did he actually bite his victims? The highway patrol had declined to divulge to Annja any such particulars. She understood. She had no need to know, and those were the very kinds of things investigators always tried to hold back, on the theory that they could trap the killer, or authenticate any confession, on the basis that he knew details about the crime no one else had access to except detectives.
Also it spared the victims’ families reading about or, worse, seeing on TV too many titillatingly horrific details about their loved ones’ terrible last moments.
Annja couldn’t see the murderer in her mind. Just a blur, blood, people falling. In her mental movie there was no soundtrack. She felt grateful for that.
Having gotten what little she could from the murder scene Annja raised her face to the wind and looked around. The site was along an ancient dry streambed that ran from northwest to southeast. The trailer was parked on the north of the dig team’s camp, forming an upside-down U with the camper on the west side and the RV on the east. There was a pretty short line of approach to the humpback trailer from the natural cover provided by the northerly rise and some rocks and tall weeds.
The wind sighed and whispered, promising secrets it never delivered. Annja nodded politely to the evidence techs, then climbed carefully back over the flapping yellow tape and made her way up the little slope to the north.
She found another area marked off by yellow tape fluttering between plastic pickets. Tracks, blurred and indistinct. She realized they’d no doubt been broken down from having impressions taken.
She walked around, trying to survey with an attacker’s eye. It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar operation to her.
The approach and setup to the attack had been dead easy. The dig camp had been sited with no remote notion that defense could conceivably be necessary in a normal, orderly, law-abiding universe. The victims had not bothered keeping a lookout. Not even their genial host, secure in the midst of his own domain—unlike his ancestors of a century before, who had found themselves chivvied constantly from one ever-shrinking sanctuary to the next. The fact he’d carried his own Marlin lever-action carbine in a saddle scabbard on his horse, which had bolted back to the barn after the attacker spooked it, suggested nothing of paranoia or even wariness to Annja. It was just a Western thing. He did it because he could, and because it came naturally to him.
She began to walk around the camp, periodically coming across more recovered tracks. Using the brushy, rocky terrain, the killer had circled around and around. Scoping his target. That part, at least, had been painfully simple.
He’d stalked them like a cougar hunting sheep. Waited, in the strange, almost submarine predawn light, until he was sure all his prey had come out of their shelters and clumped into a nice compact group. Then he’d slipped down to his final line of departure, crept to the rear of the trailer and attacked.
