"I got out of the house earlier than usual tonight. Christine and I have some shit going on, and I didn't feel like dealing with it right now, so I left before she got up."
"Is she OK?" I sometimes wonder if Karl has some kind of a thing for Christine. I hope he doesn't, although I couldn't have said why, exactly.
"It's complicated, but, yeah, she's OK. I'll tell you about it sometime. Maybe you can even give me some advice, since you're uniquely qualified. But now you need to hear about the conversation I just–"
That was far as I got when McGuire came out of his office and yelled, "Markowski, Renfer – you got one." He didn't need to yell, since we were the only ones here, but I think it's just habit with him now.
I swiveled the chair around and stood up. "We've already got two cases going, boss," I said carefully. "If you count the snuff film thing, that is."
"And now you'll have three. You see anybody else around here to catch it?"
Karl was on his feet by now. "What and where, boss?"
"Looks like a dead werewolf in Nay Aug Park. Your buddy Scanlon is on the scene and asked for somebody from what he likes to call the spook squad."
"The park's a pretty big place," Karl said. "Got any info about where the scene is?"
"Yeah," McGuire said. "The tree house."
There's this company that goes around the country building enormous tree houses in parks and other public green spaces. They charge a lot, but the city was able to get a matching grant from some Federal agency a few years back, and I have to admit the final product was impressive.
It's basically just a big, open platform with a roof on it, but the thing is built in the middle of an immense oak tree. The trunk shoots up right through the middle of the thing, and the designers put holes in the roof where the branches go. The tree house overlooks Nay Aug Gorge and the Roaring Brook, which runs through the middle of it. If you were crazy enough to jump over the railing, you'd have a 150-foot drop straight down before you hit the water, and that creek isn't nearly deep enough to dive into with any hope for survival. The tree house is as steady as the Sphinx, but it might not be the best place to visit if you're nervous about heights.
There's been a couple of suicides over the years – lovelorn teenagers looking to make a romantic final exit. I'd seen the aftermath of one of those idiotic gestures when I worked Homicide, and the result didn't look romantic at all.
That hasn't been a problem in a long time, though, ever since they closed the park after sunset. If you're some emo determined to make a dramatic exit, I suppose you could sneak in there some night. But the odds are you'd run into a werewolf, and the results of that encounter might make the remains of a jumper look positively dainty by comparison.
The city lets the weres have the use of the park at night as a public service – both to the weres and the rest of the city's population. Wolves need to run, it's in their nature.
Back when the city council was composed of sentient beings, they realized that it would be better for everybody concerned if the weres had a big, open space to do their collective thing, instead of doing it in their backyards. Less risk to the neighbors that way – and to the weres as well. Every human knows about silver bullets, and although the cartridges tend to be pricey, they're not exactly hard to find. I'm pretty sure that I saw some for sale in Vlad-Mart last week.
To get to the park tree house, you walk up a gently sloping ramp that makes a sharp right turn about halfway up. I'm sure there's some principle of engineering that explains that, although nobody has ever bothered to enlighten me.
It was the usual homicide scene: flashing red and blue lights, yellow crime scene tape, obnoxious yelling reporters – and Scanlon. He was waiting for us at the base of the ramp, along with a couple of uniforms that I knew.
"I would've been inclined to call you guys anyway," Scanlon said, "considering that this place is Were Central after dark. But once I laid eyes on the vic, I was pretty damn sure it was something you'd be interested in."
"Where's the body – up there?" I nodded toward the tree house.
"Uh-huh."
"Then let's go have a look," I said.
Scanlon took the lead up the narrow ramp, with me behind him, followed by Karl.
"Who called it in?" I said to Scanlon's back.
Without stopping, he said over his shoulder, "Anonymous call to 911. They've traced it to within the park, but the number isn't getting us anywhere. Probably a disposable phone."
I wondered if Christine had been the operator to take the call, and if she'd known it would bring her old man to the scene. Then I decided that I'd better stop thinking about Christine.
There was more crime scene tape across the entrance to the tree house. Scanlon produced a pocket knife and cut it loose. Must have been a sharp blade – it went through the plastic tape without a snag.
The naked man lay on his side, what was left of his mouth frozen into a snarl. Weres have to undress before transforming, or they'd just have to fight their way out of the clothes with teeth and claws once the change is complete. And as everybody knows by now, a werewolf returns to human form post-mortem. So if you kill a were, you end up with a dead, naked human – like the one we were looking at now.
I heard Karl draw in his breath sharply – a good trick when you no longer need to breathe. He was reacting to the pool of blood under the corpse's head. There wasn't much of it, though, compared to some other crime scenes I've been at. Bullet wounds to the head often bring instantaneous death, and corpses don't bleed much. But there was another, larger pool of blood a few feet beyond the corpse.
"What do you make of the other blood pool?" I asked Scanlon.
"Don't know yet," he said. "It's not consistent with the head wound. Maybe the vic managed to hurt the killer before dying."
"With a bullet in his brain?"
"I mean before the perp got a shot off. Maybe some human idiot got into the park, the were attacked him, and the guy was defending himself. Could happen."
"Not unless the shooter was a goat," Karl said.
Scanlon and I looked at him. Karl was kneeling next to the second blood pool, and I saw that his index finger was dark from where he'd dipped it in the blood for a sniff, and maybe a taste.