“I think that’s doofusi,” he said. He sat down across from her and pointed at the photographs. “Why are you looking at those again? It’s not like the MO is going to change if you stare at them long enough.”
“I know.” She sat back and rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger. “How many have there been now? Twelve?”
“Thirteen,” he said grimly, “if you count that kid in Chickaloon, and I do.”
“Thirteen deaths by exsanguination over the past eleven months,” she said, “in each case caused by massive trauma to the throat.”
“As in they had their jugulars ripped out,” Lobison said. “Don’t pretty it up. The ME’s considered opinion is that each victim was attacked by an animal, perhaps a dog, maybe a wolf or a bear, possibly even a wolverine. That I might actually believe, wolverines are nasty little sons of bitches. But since most of the soft parts of the bodies are missing and presumed eaten, the ME hasn’t been able to get a good imprint of the teeth.”
She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, a quizzical look on her face. “You still don’t think it is an animal, do you?”
“Where is this alleged animal?” He waved a hand at the photographs. “We’ve got crime scenes ranging from Girdwood to Wasilla, including Bird Creek, Indian, Spenard, Muldoon, Mountain View, Eagle River, Peters Creek, Palmer. No one single sighting of the animal or animals in question reported by any of the witnesses interviewed. The attacks always occur at night, always on a full moon, and don’t those jackals in the media just love that.” He paused. “Tonight’s a full moon.”
She glanced at him. “Yeah? So?”
“Ask any EMT or any emergency room nurse, they’ll tell you. All the stats go up during a full moon, robbery, rapes, murder, drive-bys, domestic disturbances, you name it. People get squirrelly around the full moon.”
“You know that’s just a self-perpetuating prophecy,” she said in a singsong voice, as if she were reading out of a manual. “Because people say the full moon makes people squirrelly, people get squirrelly during the full moon. Ask any shrink.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He shifted uncomfortably, as if his jacket were suddenly too tight across the shoulders. Truth was, he was always twitchy during the full moon, and he didn’t like it. He was a cop, he dealt in the real, the tangible, what he could see and hear and touch. It was humiliating, especially in front of his partner, who also happened to be an attractive member of the opposite sex, to admit to a belief in what amounted to a fairy tale.
“It was even clear the night of the Eagle River attack,” he said, bringing them firmly back to the subject. “That and the full moon made visibility so good you could read a newspaper outside. The victim was found almost immediately by a couple who were camping up the trail and who heard the attack and came to investigate, and they didn’t see anything. We haven’t found any tracks, no one’s heard any howling or growling, there’s no scat or hair.” His mouth tightened into a grim line. “And they’re too much alike.”
“The bodies?”
“Yes. Same killing blow, or bite, at least so far as the ME is willing to commit himself. All the soft parts gone, face, throat, breasts on the women, belly, thighs. No dental impressions left in the bones. To me, that kind of similarity argues, I don’t know, an intelligence, if you will, behind the killings. Which makes them murders in my book.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow, but before she could reply the phone on her desk rang. “Detective Romanov. Yes. Yes.” She scribbled something down. “I’m sorry, and why should we go all the way out there?” Her eyes widened and she snapped her fingers at Lobison. Line two, she mouthed at him.
“Yes,” she said into the phone, “but you have to understand, these are horrific crimes. We would require serious proof before we could make an arrest. We can’t just show up and kick in the door. What makes you think these people are responsible?”
Lobison called for a trace and then as quietly as possible switched to line two. “It’s up to you now,” the man was saying, his voice rough-edged and a little garbled. “I’ve told you who they are and where they are. They’re sick, murderers, they’re cannibals is what they are! You have to stop them!”
“Yes, but sir, please, tell me your name! Sir!”
There was a click. She looked at Lobison, who switched lines again and spoke briefly. He hung up and shook his head. “Not long enough to find a location, other than in state. And he was using a voice disguiser, I’m betting. What did he give you?”
She ripped the note from the pad and handed it across the desk. “Get your boots and parka. He says the so-called Wolf Murders are the work of a family in the Valley named Vilkachek.”
The Vilkachek homestead was down a snow-covered, one-lane gravel road that wound back into the Chugach foothills. It was large, two stories, and old enough to be one of the houses built by one of the farm families who came to the Valley in 1936 as part of the WPA project to settle the territory. It had a wraparound porch with a broad set of steps leading up to it, and it was set in a grove of black spruce that had been encouraged to creep right up to the windows, obscuring the view within. Deliberately? This far out in the boonies, there was no need for a privacy screen. The nearest neighbor was five miles away.
Lobison spoke softly into the mike clipped to his vest. “Ferguson, all set around back?”
Two clicks replied in the affirmative. He drew his weapon and looked at Romanov. “Back me up?”
She already had the silver nine-millimeter automatic in a business-like grip. “Go,” she said.
The wind came up and the trees sighed and creaked in response, sifting through the light of the moon just cresting Pioneer Peak. Even on the crusty snow, Romanov moved so silently behind him that he was compelled to look around once to see if she was still there. Her face moved into the shadow as he turned, so that for a fanciful moment he thought he saw her eyes gleam and her hair coarsen from its usual sleek knot into a ruffled pelt, and then the wind moved the boughs aside and she was once again Romanov, the partner who had his back.
They approached the front of the house, the snow frozen hard underfoot so that there was no postholing to give them away. There was a light in one of the front rooms upstairs, and the reflected glow of another somewhere at the back of the first floor.
Lobison set one tentative foot on the bottom stair.
As if it were a signal, someone fired from the house, a shot he first felt as a burning past his cheek. Immediately afterward he heard the instantaneous report, so close it sounded like cannon fire.
Lobison fell into an instinctive dive and rolled, coming to his feet again behind the trunk of a tree, shaking snow from his eyes. Romanov shouted something, and almost simultaneously there was a crash of glass and breaking wood from the back of the house. There were yells and screams and more shots.
“Ben! Are you all right!”
“I’m okay, you?”
“I’m good!”
And that was all the time they had for conversation as another shot hit the tree he was standing behind. It tore away a chunk of bark and he flinched away, and in that same instant the house exploded with a thunderous roar, blowing out the walls and bursting into an immense ball of flame. The wind whipped up and fanned the flames higher and the heat was so intense that even from behind the tree the force of it pushed him into retreat, hands half raised in a futile effort to ward it off. His heel caught on a thick root and he fell hard and clumsily.
As he fell, the wind tossed the branches between him and the burning house. Shadows cast by the moon formed and broke and formed again. For just an instant he thought he saw a four-legged form, dark and somehow elegant, leaping through a top-floor window to the roof of the porch. From the porch it leapt in a dark, fluid continuation of movement to the ground, and melted into the trees as if it had never been.