The Wolfman

With the proliferation of background checks and all the fancy computer stuff that the federales were coming up with, I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to reinvent myself again. A new identity, a new voice, a new home town. Maybe Steve Rogers wouldn’t have been such a sweet idea at that point. He was probably on file somewhere. Jerk Jerkenson had a nice ring to it.

But all this was wishful thinking. It assumed that I would be successful in taking out the Rose Killer. If I sent the wolf after him again and it failed again, Evelyn would be the last place I ever lived, because I would be dead. I’d find the balls to do the world a favor.

So the way I figured it, I had three weeks’ time to save my own life.

FOURTEEN

The following day I took the hunting knife that belonged to the trucker out from under the sink and inspected it. Since it had been in my possession I’d never closely inspected it. I had no reason to, but I had such a bad feeling about the guy that Alice’s mother had been shacking up with—the kind of feeling that used to mean something back when I could trust myself—I wasn’t sure if it had been a murder weapon or not.

I let the kitchen light shine off the knife’s edge. I was looking for blood, but didn’t see any. I knew the cops, with their liquids and fancy lighting, would be able to detect even the most minuscule speck of blood, but I didn’t have these gadgets at my disposal.

I washed the knife off, which might have been stupid if I was worried about evidence, but my fingerprints were on it. I couldn’t have that. Holding it with a paper towel, I wrapped it in a rag and dropped it in a manila envelope. With a marker, I wrote out the address of the Evelyn Police Department and left the space for a return address blank. After that I slapped on a bunch of stamps. I would drop it in a mailbox on the way to work with a note that stated I, a concerned citizen, had found the knife in Applegate Park. Hope it proves to be useful in your endeavors. With love, Jerk Jerkenson.

I got in the truck, cursed it to life, and headed out. The knife went into a mailbox three blocks south of where I bought my morning papers.

When I got to the newsstand, there was a crowd gathered around. This, I thought, is not a good sign. I pulled to the curb and left the engine running. I had the exact change for the two local papers and a copy of USA Today, so I broke through the milling people, dropped my nickels and dimes on the counter, and ran out with the three newspapers.

Behind the steering wheel, I looked at the front page of the Harbinger and gritted my teeth. “Another Woman Missing,” it read.

The sonofabitch was still close by.

I read the articles in the kitchen at work. Luckily, it had proved to be another slow and rainy day. It seemed to me that since Pearce died, the rains hadn’t stopped, just took a break every now and then to get people’s hopes up so they could be crushed again.

While the article in the Harbinger was quick to point out that this woman’s disappearance and the fact that there was a killer loose was merely coincidental, it couldn’t stop itself from sounding like she was already dead. Maybe if the missing woman hadn’t been a prostitute, they wouldn’t have been so quick to write her

off.

The thing with hookers going missing is that it happens more often than anyone cares to realize. The law would be quick to state that hookers are not the kind of people who develop deep ties to their communities, that they don’t have to worry about getting oodles of mail, and they usually don’t have a million house-plants and pets to take care of. That they tend to be transient by nature, going where the work is. But it cannot be denied, a hooker is easy to commit the perfect crime against. And if not for the Rose Killer, the story of a missing prostitute wouldn’t have even made the papers.

I could only thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t Alice. I was frayed enough as it was. If I had lost her too, I think it would have sent me over the edge. This, though, was a small consolation. I recognized the woman, and she sure as shit worked out of Mama Snow’s house. Her name was Josie Jones.

A “friend” of hers reported her missing the previous evening, though the last time she had been seen alive was the night of the twentieth. It occurred to me that the FBI show on the television aired the night of the twentieth.

Maybe the killer took her away in response to it. Maybe he was communicating by taking a hooker. Maybe he was saying something about his mother. Manson’s mother was a hooker. Maybe he just took a hooker because she was easy to get to, and he wanted the lawmen to look bad. On another page was a short article about a church break-in the previous night. Nothing taken. Weren’t they picking up on this? It had to mean something.

Abraham came through the double doors to steal some French fries. He must have seen me gritting my teeth over the paper.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You haven’t been the same lately. If you need to talk …”

“I feel like I need a drink, Abe.” It was the truth. Just then, I realized that my hands were shaking.

He came over and hit me in the arm. “I don’t want to hear it. Drinking is my deal, not yours. Besides, if you hit the sauce again it would be the excuse Frank has been waiting for to can your sorry ass. Don’t give him the satisfaction.” He hit me in the arm again. “Don’t fuck up,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“Because I love you.”

“Fuck you.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Get the fuck out of my kitchen,” I said.

Most of the time, I hated the bastard, but every so often, Abraham knew how to make me feel better.

That night I put the new articles up on the wall. There were getting to be too many. It shouldn’t have been that way. I was starting to feel that if another girl died, the blood would also be on my hands.

I went back to the living room and fiddled with the rabbit ears until I got a decent picture. Then I sat down with a can of tuna and watched the news late into the evening.

I was very much hoping for the joint task force to come through on their promise of catching the fucking guy. It would save me the trouble of doing it myself. After all, if they had him in custody, I would surely know who to kill when the time came. But what was still killing me was whether or not the wolf would still obey.

Another fucking question mark. The biggest one of the bunch.

I tried constantly to get the wolf to reveal any of its memories from the night Pearce died. If it did, I would at least know enough to come up with a theory as to what went wrong. I lit a cigarette, having forgotten that two were already burning in the naked-lady ashtray.

The phone rang at just about the stroke of midnight. I knew it was the prick who had been calling me lately. But it kind of worried me that I had been targeted for something at the same time all these other events were going on. It made me feel … involved, and I didn’t want anyone to make me feel that way. I had to know who it was, and what they thought they knew about me.

I picked up the phone. “Yes,” I said.

Silence. The sound of light traffic in the background.

“Mom?” I said.

“I know what you did,” the man’s voice said.

“What did I do?” I said softly.

“You know what you did, and I know too.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Pearce,” said the voice.

My blood ran cold in my veins. “Fuck you.”

“Do you miss me?”