Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 5

Once the miniwatu was secured inside the Fish and Wildlife minivan and sedated by a very unhappy game warden, we were able to get Rhino to the hospital. After much debate and questioning, the sheriff’s deputy directed us to a small, physician-owned hospital nearby in San Dimas that was practically brand new. I stayed behind with Kimpton while the others drove Rhino to the emergency room in our team lead’s van.

Agent Beesley smiled coldly as I approached. She was standing by her car, smoking a cigarette. Be professional, be professional, I continuously repeated the mantra in my head. It had been a long time since I had dealt with an MCB agent;, things might have changed since those days, and there was no reason to poison the well. Also, I had promised Earl and the Boss I’d make nice. That would be the best way to stay in business, after all.

“Do you have a PUFF number?” I asked Agent Beesley as politely as I could manage.

“We’ll give you credit for the assist,” she replied.

I stared at her, flabbergasted. “But we made the catch!”

“And I arranged its transportation up to North Dakota or wherever.” Agent Beesley flashed me that irritating smirk. The nagualii wanted to eat it off her face. “Well, Fish and Wildlife is. Unless you want to drive sixteen hundred miles and then file the paperwork.”

I was trying to be nice, but Kimpton, being part of that generation of young men who had grown up trusting the system only to get screwed over by them, seemed to be struggling with the concept. “How do you get away with robbing us like that, lady?”

“By the power of this.” Beesley opened her windbreaker to show the badge clipped on her belt. Not one of the fake ones for various other agencies the MCB hid behind, but her real one, with the two-headed eagle. “Do you know what this badge means?”

I couldn’t help it. “That you make less money than we do?”

Beesley glared at me as she closed her jacket. “Okay, funny girl, you want me to tell the fish cops to turn around and load that thing in your van?”

I sighed. “Fine, we’ll take the assist. Who’s the owner of the house, anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter.” The MCB agent’s voice had turned frosty. “Call this a win and walk away. You handled it without causing too much of a scene or burning the place down. That’s a positive in my book.”

I decided to get one last verbal jab in before we left. “Thankfully, nobody said anything about keeping the plumbing intact.”

Ignoring Agent Beesley’s sputtering confusion, because none of us knew where the water main was and the kitchen was still flooding, I pivoted and walked back to my car.

Kimpton was right behind me, and I could almost feel the unasked questions he had burrowing a small hole in the middle of my back. Even though he was obviously angry at the Fed, he was polite enough to remove his flak jacket and gloves before getting into my passenger seat. He was still soaking wet, but I’d bought this car knowing it would get used for work. Odds were the upholstery would end up seeing a lot worse in the coming months, so there was no reason to fret over it. Still, he made the effort, which was appreciated.

“Only an assist on that damned beaver?” he asked once the door was shut and we were no longer within earshot of the MCB agent. The look on his face told me he was clearly not okay with it but was at least attempting to keep his cool. “It damned near killed Rhino, gored me, trampled Alex, and tossed Justin through a sink, and we get a measly assist?”

“Think long term. We still have the contract with the locals. We’re getting paid by them. And the ones in the know will be happy and tell their friends. We knew going in the MCB might cramp our style.”

“Fine.” Kimpton took a deep breath, as there was obviously something else on his mind.

“Spit it out.”

“Look, I’m not one to rock the boat, but what are we going to do about Rhino?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew what he was talking about. I’d half expected the conversation to happen, though not so soon.

“He’s not exactly checking off too many boxes on the traditional good-leader checklist.” It was clear Kimpton was still thinking of me as a lady and trying to phrase that in a gentlemanly fashion.

“As in, he almost got us killed by something ridiculous because he didn’t give clear instructions beforehand and instead we rushed in like a bunch of clowns,” I clarified.

“Yeah.”

Earl said he saw leadership potential in Marco Moss, at least enough to give him a shot at running a team. I trusted Earl. He’d once seen enough potential in me to not gun me down in a dusty Mexican street. They’d described my job as NCO, and part of being a good noncom was running interference for your officer, even when they were being an idiot.

“Rhino’s a good Hunter and one tough son of a bitch. He’s just new at being in charge. We’ll learn from this. He’ll figure it out. We all will.”

“The way his leg looked he’s gonna be figuring it out on crutches.”

I turned the key in the ignition and the beast of an engine roared to life. Alright, this Chevy Chevelle didn’t have that much raw power, but my idea when I’d picked it was that it wouldn’t need as much rationed and expensive gas to get us around the congested Southern California roads as Rhino’s big van. I backed up and the cops let us past the roadblock, and we headed down Badillo Street. A quick right had us heading north toward Foothill Boulevard. From there, it would be almost a straight shot back to our headquarters in Pasadena. Given the state of traffic, though, I figured it would take about an hour.

Kimpton fiddled with the radio until Badfinger’s “Day After Day” was playing over the car’s cheap speakers. I hadn’t bought the thing for its sound system.

After a few minutes of him stewing, I tried a different approach. “You guys might be newbies, but most of you are vets, right? Alex was Navy, you and Justin were over in Vietnam. You know no plan survives contact with the enemy, and that gets even worse when the enemy is a monster. This job is unpredictable.”

“‘Flexible minds.’” Kimpton supplied the Shackleford family’s answer to how best to survive in this business. “But that was just—”

“One of the reasons it’s hard to start up a new team is because there needs to be a certain chemistry between everyone before you’re effective. We don’t have that yet, so we’re going to have small missteps along the way.” A station wagon cut us off, so I extended my left hand in a universal greeting. Whoever the other driver was returned the gesture in kind. Ah, California . . . 

“We just got our asses kicked by a giant beaver. We hope we figure it the hell out before we run into something actually dangerous.”

So do I.

I didn’t say that out loud.

* * *

As soon as we pulled into the Gasparyans’ lot, Lizz came limping out to greet us, rifle case in hand and a serious look on her face. I didn’t bother turning the engine off, and instead popped the trunk and waited for her to load her gear in. Kimpton got out and moved his chair so Lizz could climb into the back seat.

“Rhino’s going to be okay,” Lizz said as soon as she was settled. “Clean break in the fibula. Cast and everything but no surgery. He’s probably going to be out of action for at least two months.”

Our first contract and we had suffered a casualty. Not off to the best of starts. “Where to, and what’re we hunting?”

“Got your map?”

Kimpton popped the glove box, took out the flipbook map, and passed it back to Lizz. She skimmed through the book rapidly before finding our next destination. “Ah, there you are. We’re headed for Lake Arrowhead. Get on Foothill and head east.”

“But that’s where the traffic is. We just came from that way too.”

“Covina is much closer than Lake Arrowhead is. It’s out in San Bernardino County, in the mountains.”

“Ugh,” Kimpton grunted. “These boots aren’t broken in yet. I hate hiking.”

“I waited for you guys. The others are on the way . . . I can’t believe you boys couldn’t handle a large, wet, angry beaver.”

“Shaddup, Lizz,” Kimpton said.

“What’s in Lake Arrowhead?” I interrupted Lizz’s teasing, figuring I’d let her dig her claws back into poor Kimpton after I knew what the deal was. Not because I was cruel, but it would be good to laugh after our near-death encounter with the miniwatu.

“There was a message on the answering machine. I know you thought it was really expensive, but I told you it would pay for itself.”

“Lizz . . . ”

“Officially, it was a mountain lion attack.” Her tone shifted into business mode. “Only mountain lions usually don’t eat half their victims, ya know, and last night was the first night of the full moon.”

So much for having a chance to get our act together before running into something really dangerous.

“Shit.” Kimpton looked skyward. Through the hazy smog we could see the sun just starting to set. “Traffic is a pain. How long do you think it’s going to take?”

“The map says it’s only about seventy miles or so.”

“So about two hours?” I asked.

Lizz must have missed the sarcasm, because she said, “Ayup, ’bout that.”

“It’s going to be dark when we get there,” Kimpton observed.

“I already called and got two rooms reserved at a lodge up there,” Lizz said. “One for the boys, one for the girls.”

I was glad Lizz had thought to do that. It beat sleeping in a tiny car. “It’s nice to have some experienced hands on a team full of newbies.”

“Eh, everyone has to start somewhere. I’m not about to walk through a forest in the middle of the night huntin’ a werewolf, though. I’ve done that before and don’t recommend it. I think we should check the body they got on ice at the sheriff’s station first to make sure we know what we’re dealing with, then go to the scene where they found him to search around.”

“Got anything that can help with a werewolf?” Kimpton asked. “Besides silver bullets, obviously?”

“I saw a couple boxes of silver .308 ammo in the trunk,” Lizz stated. “I’ve got my rifle in that caliber. There’s more in the van. Plus Rhino keeps a rack of shotguns in his van and a few boxes of silver-pellet buckshot.”

Ray had talked about how he someday wanted to get to the point where silver ammo was standard issue for MHI, but right now it was just too expensive to make. Still, we all kept some on hand because there were some creatures that nothing else worked on.

“Wolfsbane?” I looked in the rearview mirror questioningly.

“Ayup, I grabbed enough for everyone. Stuff it in all our pockets and it’ll mask our smell.”

“Assuming the phase of the moon isn’t a coincidence and this isn’t something else entirely.” Werewolves were pretty rare, and there hadn’t been an issue with them in Southern California recently as far as we knew. “Explosives?”

“Dynamite in the van,” Lizz answered happily. “This will be fun!”

“I’m starting to wonder if the Boss made the right person our team lead,” Kimpton muttered quietly as we continued to move our way through the sluggish rush-hour traffic. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t really disagree with him. Lizz had done more planning just now than Rhino had for our miniwatu problem. Granted, a werewolf was far more dangerous than an overgrown beaver with a horn.

Team Rhino was definitely off to a rocky start. Hopefully it wouldn’t get worse.

* * *

The two-hour trip eventually turned into three. While traveling up CA-60 we became hopelessly lost and ended up near Big Bear Lake. Once Lizz got everything sorted out we realized we’d actually missed the turnoff about fifteen minutes before. After swearing enough to make even Lizz blush, I found a gas station to refill the car and headed back down the winding mountain road in the dark. The radio turned to static but Lizz had brought a Creedence Clearwater Revival 8-track tape to keep us awake. As we turned into the wooded valley, the full moon began cresting over the ridge behind us.

“Look, another lake,” Kimpton said with a yawn. The adrenaline surge from earlier had long disappeared and the two of us were feeling the aches and pains of our previous call. Lizz, on the other hand, seemed to be reinvigorated after the long and mostly boring drive.

“It’s the shape of an arrowhead!” she exclaimed. With the moonlight reflecting off the surface, it really did resemble an arrowhead for a few moments until a new line of pine trees blocked our view. Lizz sat back and sighed happily. “Groovy.”

“Groovy?”

“The sixties were nifty,” Lizz said. “You kids wouldn’t understand.”

I almost laughed at that but shooting her down wasn’t worth giving up any family secrets. Personally, I struggled to keep up on the slang of the day. “Okay, Granny. Whatever you say.”

“Where’s this lodge you were talking about?” Kimpton asked. The headlights of my Chevelle were good but not great. I’d gotten used to the city lights. This was the darkest I’d seen it since we arrived in Southern California over a month before. If not for the full moon above us, we could have probably seen the Milky Way.

The Lake Arrowhead community was growing, with numerous houses being built near the water. Luxury homes, larger than most families would ever need, dotted the shore. I was a bit surprised as we drove closer to the lake. There were actual streetlights along this part. The oppressive darkness faded as modern technology fought back.

“If I remember the map right, if we drive into the lake we’ve gone too far,” Lizz quipped. After nobody laughed, she tucked her chin to her chest and scowled. “It should be a two-story building on the left near the shore.”

“I think I see it.” Kimpton leaned forward in the seat. “Yeah, there it is.”

It was one of those cute resort places that were all the rage in the fifties, with a row of rooms looking out over the parking lot and the lake. It had a giant light-up arrowhead on top. It was meant to be a beacon for vacationers, but enough bulbs were burned out or flickering to make it sort of depressing. The lodge had clearly seen better days. Marco’s death van was parked out front.

Through the window I could see that Alex and Justin were already in the lobby, both looking the worse for wear. Alex had swapped out his shredded pants with new ones, but probably neither he nor Justin were too happy about reentering civilization smelling like miniwatu musk and poop-covered shag carpet. Justin was eyeing a stuffed mountain lion that had been posed near the front entrance. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the busty girl with the name tag on her tank top standing near him, talking about the taxidermy, must have been working the front desk when the incident occurred, and now she was attempting to flirt. Even if they smelled bad and were dressed funny, both Hunters were good-looking, physically fit young men.

Alex spotted us and waved when we came through the door. “Hi, Chloe, guys. Amanda here was just telling us about the hiker who got killed by the mountain lion last night.”

“Oh, you can just call me Mandy,” she corrected as she gave me that hostile, I’ve marked this man, now back off scowl of a woman on the prowl who had just had someone prettier than her show up. I could have challenged that but declined. There was no need to cause an incident with hotel staff. That meant Melanie must have already gone to her room, or was still in the van—which made sense since it was filled with weapons and dynamite—because if she were here Mandy would be extra grumpy at that level of perceived competition.

“How ya doin’?” Lizz asked as she limped forward. “I’m Lizz. I made the reservations.”

“Yes, I gave the keys to Justin,” Mandy answered, seemingly proud she was already on a first-name basis with the boys. “They were so nice I even waived the two-dollar deposit for the keys.”

“Two bucks?” I’d become a lot more sensitive about that kind of thing since Ray had put me in charge of the team’s budget. “You should waive that because it’s highway robbery. How much are the rooms a night?”

“Doncha worry ’bout it,” Lizz drawled, her strange accent growing stronger. It only became pronounced when she was irritated. “It’s either this or camping.”

Which was a terrible idea when there might be a werewolf in the area. I turned back to the desk clerk. “You know anything about the hiker who got killed?”

“He’s not a local, you dig?” she replied, tearing her eyes off of Justin for a second to respond. “He was from Los Angeles or something, I didn’t catch it. He was in Room 5. Nice enough guy.”

“He was staying here?” I asked.

Mandy nodded. “Yeah. The sheriff took his stuff down to the station to wait for his family to come and pick it all up.” She looked around conspiratorially. “Everybody in town is saying it was super awful, like they didn’t even find all of him! And there were pieces everywhere. Gross.”

“Anybody else checking him out?” Justin asked. “Maybe men in dark suits acting funny-like?”

“Nobody like that. Just you guys,” the girl said, before she went back to fluttering her eyelashes at Alex. “So, you were telling me you’re some kind of wildlife experts? Like on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?”

“Something like that,” Alex said, oblivious to how into him she was. Even though he had those surfer-boy good looks, he was such a nerd I doubted he’d had much experience with women.

While everybody else started moving bags to their rooms, Kimpton gestured me over to where he was studying the taxidermied mountain lion. It was an impressive specimen, and I had an affinity for cats. Hell, considering the bizarre proclivities of my father, we might even be distant cousins. Very distant.

“I grew up hunting these,” Kimpton whispered. “They rarely attack people. Maybe if it had been a kid or something, they’d eat one. A full-grown man, though? Maybe mauled, but not eaten, and especially not torn apart like she said.”

Lizz’s guess was probably correct, then, and if there was a werewolf here, time was of the essence. “After we clean up and change into normal clothes, let’s get down to the sheriff’s station tonight and see if we can examine the body.”

Mandy had overheard that. “Examine the body? Are you with the government?”

“No.” I smiled. “We actually get things done.”

* * *

In hindsight, we should have asked for directions. The winding, narrow streets around Lake Arrowhead were a virtual maze and more than once we found ourselves going the wrong way. Our flipbook map was good for the valleys but out here it was terribly out of date. My method of finding our way by getting lost worked much better in the city than out in the wilderness, but eventually we found the sheriff’s station.

It was way past normal business hours, so the door was locked, but Deputy Kerr—“it’s pronounced like car”—Arnold let us in. He didn’t know who we were, just that his superiors had told him to help us out.

Deputy Arnold took us downstairs to a walk-out basement. The old, refurbished forestry service station had only been occupied by the San Bernardino sheriffs for a year or so. They had a new building under construction, but it wasn’t due to be completed until next year. In the meantime, the sheriff’s department had access to large chest freezers for body storage, courtesy of the national forestry service. Normally used for storing animal tissue samples, the largest of them now held the body of one Gerald Larson: avid hiker, photographer, and probable werewolf victim.

“Biggest damn cougar I’ve ever seen,” the deputy said as Kimpton opened the freezer, revealing the sheet-draped lump inside.

Justin looked at the deputy curiously. “You seen it?”

We waited as Arnold coughed and looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, no,” he admitted. “But wait until you see the claw marks. Bigger than a bear’s paw. If it’s a cougar, the thing is monstrous.”

I pulled the sheet off, and right away I knew his declaring it monstrous was more accurate than he knew.

“Damn.” Justin gave a low whistle. “That’s nasty.”

What was left of the body was a mess. Moving the tattered remains of the blood-caked flannel shirt aside, I leaned in and inspected the body. The wounds on the chest and abdomen, no mountain lion had ever had claws that far apart. There was too much damage to the ribs as well. Almost all of them appeared to be broken on his right side, giving him a very uneven look. That wasn’t just clawing, that was striking with each claw having meat-cleaver-level concentrated force. His Levi’s corduroy jeans were destroyed, and he was missing his hiking boots. The victim’s knuckles were scuffed and coated in dried blood, like he hadn’t gone down without a fight, which had probably just made the predator angry. A regular human being would never have a chance against a werewolf barehanded.

The poor guy’s face had been partially ripped off. His throat was simply gone. Only the back part of his neck held his head onto his shoulders. Melanie had gone really grey in the face and had to look away, but to her credit, she didn’t puke.

Vaya con dios. He’d died hard and if the killer hadn’t been supernatural in nature, it might have been one hell of a fight. As it was, our deceased hadn’t stood a chance. Werewolves were bastards like that. Tough, fast, regenerated like nobody’s business, and would eat you afterward for caloric intake, and Gerald here was probably missing a third of his soft tissue. I vowed right then and there to never, ever end up in a werewolf’s belly.

Me and Lizz shared a glance, and she gave me a grim nod. She’d dealt with werewolves before too, and we’d both come to the same conclusion about what we were dealing with here.

“Any missing persons cases around here recently?” I asked because random werewolf attacks didn’t just happen. There was always a pattern to them. Werewolves didn’t normally arrive in a new territory and immediately start killing lots of people. There would be killings corresponding to the cycle of the moon, mysterious deaths and disappearances, and even pets would be at risk.

Deputy Arnold seemed unsure why I was the one asking questions, but he answered, “Well, we’ve had a few hikers go missing over the years we never found, and a couple bear attacks here and there up on the peak—or at least that’s what we chalked them up to, considering the state of decomposition when we found the bodies.”

“Any unexplained murders?”

“We had a B&E turn into a double homicide about three years ago near Big Bear. It was pretty horrific. We backed up the substation in Big Bear for that one. There was blood everywhere. Never did find the perp.”

That was potentially very bad news. Newly created werewolves tended to be angry and incautious. They’d do stupid things and tempt fate until someone like us found them and eliminated them. Most werewolves get hunted down within a few full moons of being turned. But werewolves who made it a few years past the change tended to be more cunning and careful, keeping a lid on their bloodthirsty ways, while hiding in plain sight. If that three-year-old murder was our werewolf’s doing, then we were dealing with someone truly dangerous.

“Any missing pets?”

“You wouldn’t believe how many people bring their tiny little toy dogs up here and then act surprised when something gets it.” The deputy chuckled darkly. “We’ve got coyotes, bears, cougars, hawks, eagles, rattlers . . . all sorts of things which look at a chihuahua as nothing more than a midday snack.”

“Big dogs, horses, livestock?”

“Oh yeah, we get complaints all the time. Animals, we just file a report and forget about it. Missing hikers, we always do a search party, and even call-in aviation units to assist, but sometimes people just vanish. That’s how it is in the woods. Last month we had another cougar attack, but it wasn’t nearly this bad. Animal attacks chase away tourists, so we were ordered to put it down. A few trackers came up but couldn’t find anything. The dogs couldn’t follow the scent, so we gave up after a week. It’s been quiet until we found Mr. Larson here early this morning. He’d gone out to do a little midnight photography near the lake on the north shore. At least we know what happened to him. We’ve been having a string of bad luck with tourists getting lost and never found.”

“For how long?” Justin asked. It was getting absurd. How did nobody catch any of this?

“I’ve been stationed here four years, so at least that long.”

I tried not to sigh too heavily, because it sounded like there was a werewolf problem around Lake Arrowhead, one that had been brewing for years.

“The attack last month, what was the exact date?” I asked, wanting to know if it was during the full moon, because if a werewolf was transforming on other nights that was a bad sign it might be descending into insanity. “And how damaged was that corpse?”

“Well, on the date, I can’t really recall. I’ll have to go check the file. But there wasn’t a corpse. The girl got bitten a few times, but she managed to run away. She spent a day in the hospital, but then they sent her home.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried not to let my frustration show. “Where’s home, Deputy?”

“I’m not sure. It’ll be in the file.”

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to need those.” Not only did we have a live werewolf here in Lake Arrowhead, there was another potential one wandering around only God knew where. Were we dealing with a lone werewolf, as was the norm, or was this one trying to form a pack? That was a nightmare scenario. Nobody wanted to hunt down a pack of werewolves, especially when the leader was a wily older one. There was only one werewolf out there I knew of who wasn’t a psycho killer, but Earl was an anomaly. If this werewolf was purposefully infecting others, it was going to cause a bloodbath.

“I’ll get them for you.”

“We’ve seen enough,” I said, gesturing at the body. The sight disgusted me and pissed the nagualii off. It knew what had done this, and felt challenged.

Nodding, the Hunters carefully covered the dead man back up, trying to give him one last moment of dignity. The entire team remained silent until Alex gently closed the top of the chest freezer. I tried to not let my frustration bleed through onto the deputy. This was a death that could have been avoided, but it wasn’t his fault. This was the direct result of the MCB forcing those in the know to keep the existence of monsters a secret. I was getting better at sensing my team’s emotions, and all of them were agitated to varying degrees.

Back on the main floor of the sheriff’s station, it was quiet save for the hum of the lights above. I noticed a large map that had been set on a portable display board near the far wall and went over to look at it. It was a map of the area around Lake Arrowhead. There were colored pins stuck in the map at various spots.

“What’s this?”

“One of the other deputies is . . . well, he’s an interesting guy. He’s taken to tracking odd happenings around the area over the last few years. Deputy Black, Thomas Black. A bit of a nut, actually. Tinfoil-hat sort of guy, microwave brains and whatnot. Good cop, though. But he thinks this cougar has been stalking people and animals over the years. The same cougar, I mean. Like it’s the Zodiac Killer. He claims he saw it once, up at the head of Goliath Trail. Only a glimpse, but said it was weird. It was really big for a cat, and looked dark brown, almost black in color . . . and he said some other stuff too, but I figure that was shadows playing tricks with his eyes or something.”

There were a lot of pins, all over the place, and they were obviously color coded, but I didn’t know what each color meant.

“Can we speak to Deputy Black?” Deputy Arnold seemed like an earnest enough fellow, but he struck me as kind of checked out. Most people simply weren’t wired to think of implausible explanations. This map was the work of somebody fixated. Black had actually seen the beast, and you didn’t put this much work into cataloging something if you really believed that thing had a reasonable explanation.

“I can call him,” the deputy said dubiously. “Only it’s his night off.”

“If he’s put this much work into tracking this thing,” Kimpton interjected, “he won’t mind getting called in the middle of the night to talk at us.”

“Tell him we can pay him a consulting fee if he’d like, for his time.” I’d make room in the budget for that.

“Hey, I helped consult too!” Deputy Arnold protested.

Lizz offered him a smile and patted his arm. “You’re on duty, Deputy. Otherwise, you’d probably get a few dollars tossed your way.”

“Well, that isn’t fair,” the deputy grumbled as he grabbed a phone from a nearby desk, then flipped through a Rolodex until he found the right number and began dialing.

“Tom? Hey, it’s Kerr at the substation. Yeah, sorry to wake you, but headquarters sent some . . . uh . . . wildlife biologists or something here about your cougar, and they wanted to speak with you about—Five minutes? Uh, okay. See y—”

Deputy Arnold put the handset back in the cradle, clearly confused by whatever the other deputy had said before hanging up on him.

“He’ll be right in?” I asked.

Deputy Arnold nodded slowly. “Yeah. He sounded . . . excited.”

Precisely five minutes later, an old, beat-up pickup fairly skidded to a stop near the front door of the station. A burly, muscular man in jeans and a flannel shirt got out and hurried to the door, a large ring of keys in hand. He was in his forties and had a fantastic handlebar mustache that was almost certainly against department grooming regulations. He fumbled with the front door of the station for a moment before he managed to get the lock open.

“You here about the cougar?” the newly arrived deputy said without preamble. He stuck his hand out at Kimpton. “Tom Black.”

“Kimpton Wall. Nice to meet you, but she’s in charge.” Kimpton sounded amused as he nodded in my direction after shaking the deputy’s hand. “That’s Chloe Mendoza.”

He blinked and looked way down at me. “Oh.”

I was unperturbed and used to it. Nobody ever expected the tiny woman who appeared to be in her twenties to be the boss. That came in handy sometimes. Others, not so much. “Nice map. Care to tell us about it?”

“Alright, Ms. Mendoza.” I had to give him credit, because Deputy Black adapted well to the idea of a woman in charge and got right down to business. “I’ve been cataloging every incident that might involve this particular animal.” He walked to the stand and began pointing to the pins stuck into it. “Blue ones are missing pets. Dogs, cats, stuff like that.”

“That’s a lot.” Most of the pins were blue, but if there was a pattern there, I wasn’t seeing it. “Yellow?”

“Those are the last known location of hikers and campers who’ve gone missing over the past five years.” Deputy Black frowned. “Before then, we only had two people go missing over ten years, total, which isn’t a bad ratio considering the number of people using the trails, our terrain, or the weather.”

Alex seemed to be tallying up the yellow pins, and there were a lot of those. “Ever find any bodies?”

“A few. The ones with a string from a yellow pin to a red one are last known location and where the body was discovered.”

“Cause of death on those?”

“Unknown. Lots of animals had been gnawing on them over the months before they were found, sometimes in places where they probably shouldn’t have been able to walk or climb into.”

“People do weird things under the effect of exposure,” Deputy Arnold pointed out.

“Exposure don’t make you lay down in streams, or climb through boulder fields wearing sandals, Kerr. And it sure don’t make men jump off cliffs because they’re more scared of what they’re running away from than the fall.”

“Come on, Tom. You don’t want to get carried away about this again. You’ll catch another suspension. The LT doesn’t want to hear any more of your crazy talk.”

Only I wanted to hear crazy talk. It was my favorite kind. This argument had clearly been going on for a few months. “Hey, Deputy Arnold, you’ve been a great help. Deputy Black can take care of us from here. We’re sorry to have kept you from your regular duties.”

“I was just manning the phones, is all.”

“You should go back to doing that, then.”

Thankfully, he took the hint and left us alone. Some people are just naturally incurious like that and willing to shut up and go along. They make the MCB’s job easy.

“Deputy Arnold means well,” Deputy Black explained after his colleague left. “They all do. Only I know there’s something wrong in these woods now, and nobody wants to listen.”

“We’re listening now, Deputy,” I assured him.

“You might not like to hear what I have to say, Ms. Mendoza.”

“Just Chloe is fine.”

“Tom.” He extended his hand to shake, and it was so dry and calloused it was like picking up a leather boot.

Alex had begun tracing a pattern on the map with his fingertip. “Red pins are human remains, then?”

“That’s correct.” Tom nodded. “And who the hell are you people?”

“Consultants,” Melanie said. “We’re experts on wild animal attacks.”

That line worked on vapid hotel night clerks, but not suspicious cops. “And I’m Elvis Presley. What’re you? Eighteen?”

“Twenty-four.” Melanie sniffed.

“The young ones are my grad students,” Lizz said. “I’m Professor Yarborough.”

“Sure you are. I’ve talked to every so-called predator expert at every university and zoo in California over the last year on my own dime. How come I’ve never heard of you?”

“Uh . . . ” Lizz hadn’t been ready for that.

I liked the fact that this guy was that dedicated to have done that amount of research. “What made you ask around about this particular cat?”

His eyes narrowed. “Because it ain’t no cat. The thing I saw looked canine, not feline. Only there haven’t been wild wolves in this part of California for fifty years.”

“Level with me, Tom. The other deputy said when you saw it, you talked about it being abnormally large and the coloring being off, but that wasn’t the crazy part that got your goat, was it?”

He mulled over revealing his secret. This was an expression that I’d seen before, from people who knew if they told the truth they’d get written off as nuts, but they were compelled to tell the truth anyway.

“It was taller than I am and ran away on its hind legs.”

Well, that would certainly get someone’s attention. And when none of us reacted to his words incredulously, it was obvious his suspicions deepened that we weren’t normal wildlife experts.

“What’s the Pinnacles?” Alex tapped an area to the northwest of Lake Arrowhead.

“Mountaintop rock formation. Popular with the city tourists. Lots of people park and camp up there.”

“Pretty close to the Rock Camp Forest Station,” Alex pointed out, a frown on his face. “What do you say? Maybe two, three miles across the terrain?”

“It’s not impassable. There was a company which used to do hiking tours up that way. They’d start out at Route 173 and head north. Base camp there, then go hiking up to the Pinnacles. Not a long hike but it was good enough for the weekenders. They went out of business a few years back.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked Alex, but he shook his head slowly.

“Can’t explain it now,” he said before looking to the deputy. “Is there any way I can borrow your map and the files on these bodies? We’re staying at the lodge down by the lake.”

“Hell no.” He didn’t appear so happy about Alex’s request either. “This is my case.”

Alex probably wanted to save the deputy a visit from the MCB, but I figured he was way past that now, and probably overdue for a visit from them to intimidate him into silence. “We borrow the map and you come with us. We have a van. We won’t even have to disassemble the stand or anything. That way, you won’t lose your pins. You got a rifle?”

Tom scoffed. “I’m a rural sheriff’s deputy. What do you think?”

“Got anything chambered in .308?”

“That’s oddly specific. Why?”

“That’s the caliber we have for silver bullets.”

Deputy Black stared at me for a really long time before saying, “I knew there was something off about this fucking thing, but not that off.”


Back | Next
Framed