Shadow Of The Wolf

The door behind him was still open. Ky considered turning and leaving. He wondered how far he would get.

Instead, he crossed the room to the kitchen area, opened the refrigerator and took out a beer. He turned, twisting off the cap. “I do divorce cases, insurance fraud and process serving. Which are you?”

“Homicide,” Sebastian St. Clare replied.

A fraction of a second’s pause in the movement of his hand, but no more. Ky lifted the bottle to his lips and drank. He did not take his eyes off the other man.

“I think we should talk.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Ky replied.

“But first…” St. Clare’s eyes moved past Ky, toward the open door. “Will you allow that pathetic creature to come inside? Please assure him that I won’t bite.” He said it with a perfectly straight face.

Voodoo poked his head around the corner of the door frame, ears flat, eyes wary. When Ky snapped his fingers, the dog crept inside, his tail low and his manner anxious, and went quickly to Ky’s side. He, too, never took his eyes off the stranger, and he made a wide circle around the carpet upon which St. Clare had trod.

“Might we sit down?”

Ky nodded. St. Clare took the lumpy plaid sofa, and Ky, with Voodoo clinging like a shadow to his side, sat cautiously in the reading chair across the room. Every sense, tangible and innate, was working overtime, assessing and observing, accumulating information and processing impressions, trying to make sense of what could not possibly be sitting on his sofa, lifting the satchel to his knee, opening it, showing the contents to Ky.

The satchel was filled with money. The cash was neatly stacked and wrapped with teller’s bands: tens, twenties and fifties. Ky’s eyes scanned the bundles quickly as he tried to keep his expression neutral. There must have been over…

“Fifty thousand dollars,” St. Clare said. “It represents half the amount we are willing to pay for your services. This is yours now, the remainder due when your assignment is completed.”

Ky took another sip of his beer. The dryness in his throat was only partially relieved. “And who was it,” he inquired carefully, “that you wanted me to kill?”

St. Clare closed the satchel and placed it on the table. He said, “You are aware of the man they call the Werewolf Killer.”

It was not a question, so Ky offered no reply. His thoughts were spinning, and there was no way he could predict what the old man was going to say next. None. How could he defend himself if he didn’t know the battlefield…or even if this was a battle?

“I represent a consortium that would like to see this reign of terror brought to an end,” St. Clare stated simply. “You have been chosen for the task.”

Ky could not quite prevent a lift of his eyebrow. “I’m flattered. But we have a very fine police department that specializes in this kind of thing. Maybe you should give them a call.”

“Yes,” murmured St. Clare, holding Ky in that steady blue gaze. “Your police department. The world has seen how effective they have been in dealing with this menace. Not that they are to be held at fault. They are incapable of stopping this killer, we both know that.”

I don’t know anything! Ky wanted to shout at him. This whole thing was insane. None of it could be happening, it all had to be some kind of colossal joke, none of it made sense.

He didn’t say any of that, of course. He didn’t raise his voice or tighten in muscles or even breathe hard; he did not in any way betray his agitation, but he wasn’t fooling himself, either—St. Clare knew what he was feeling. The old man could smell it.

Ky asked the only remaining relevant question. “Why me?”

St. Clare smiled. “Who else,” he demanded simply, “is there?”

“You,” returned Ky sharply. “If you want this killer brought to justice and you insist upon taking the law in your own hands, you go after him. Don’t come to me with your bag of money and expect me to risk my life for people I don’t even know.”

“But isn’t that what you did every day when you were a police officer? And for far less money than this.” He nodded toward the satchel.

Ky brought the bottle to his lips again. “Yeah, well, I’m not in that line of work any longer.”

“A story in itself, I’m sure,” replied St. Clare politely. “And to answer your question…I’m an old man, as you can see. I would be foolish to take on such a dangerous task at my age.”

Ky restrained a snort of disbelief. He suspected the old man could have taken on a dozen men half his age without even becoming winded.

“As for the others,” St. Clare went on, “I could send a squad of trained specialists down here, I suppose, but I’d rather not attract the attention, or to be frank, risk losing any of my top men. None of them know the city like you do, its people, its legal customs, its resources. None of them has as great a chance of going undetected by the killer as you do. Besides—” he glanced toward the window “—there is a great deal of water surrounding this city, which often makes it hard for us to track a moving target. I assume, to function as well as you have here, it doesn’t bother you?”

With Sebastian St. Clare’s first statement, Ky’s throat had seized. His breath stilled, his muscles froze and he didn’t hear anything after the word others. Others.

When his breath returned, it hurt his lungs. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. “Do you mean…there are more? Others like—”

“Us?” St. Clare inclined a regal nod. “Of course.”

It was one of those moments, and there are only one or two at best, where an entire life changes. Whatever happened from now on, Ky would be able to look back and effortlessly determine when everything crossed over, the point at which the life he once had lived became the life he could never go back to, and it was at that moment when Sebastian St. Clare looked at him with clear unsurprised eyes and said, “Of course.”

Ky’s heart raced. His thoughts scattered in a dozen different directions at once. Part of him wanted to shout “Liar!” and seize the man by the throat and shake the truth from him. Yet another part echoed quite calmly the truth he had always known. Of course.

St. Clare too easily read the struggle in Ky’s eyes and his expression grew sharp with interest. “So,” he murmured, “you didn’t know. I had wondered.”

“How many?” Ky asked, his voice oddly flat.

“Enough.”

Something inside Ky snapped. He flung the beer bottle against the wall. It exploded like a bomb, spewing suds and glass across the room. The dog ran to a corner and began to bark hysterically. Ky was out of his chair shouting, “Answer me, you son of a bitch! Tell me the truth or I’ll take you out, I swear I will! Answer me!”

Sebastian St. Clare was utterly unmoved. Like a patient father enduring the temper tantrum of a deprived child, he waited until Ky’s diatribe had worn itself out. Even Voodoo’s barking became less certain, slowed and finally ceased of its own accord.

Ky stood across from him, his fists bunched, his breathing hard, perspiration beading on his forehead. St. Clare’s calm silence should have infuriated him, and it did; it also made him feel foolish.

Finally, Sebastian St. Clare said gently, “All in good time, my boy. All in good time.”

Ky glared at him, muscles knotted and breath tight, for another moment. Then he swung away, feeling impotent and furious.

“I understand this must come as a shock to you,” St. Clare said. “I confess, it did to me, too, but I’ve had more time to adjust than you have. There are still a great many questions to be answered on both our parts, I think.”

Ky turned back to him slowly, his eyes narrowed. “How long have you known about me?”

“I had heard rumors, but until today I wasn’t sure of any of them. To be frank, it had occurred to me that you might actually be the renegade killer we’re trying to dispose of. The moment I entered your domicile, however, I knew that couldn’t be the case.”

Ky frowned sharply. “How?” he demanded. “How did you know?”

“Dog hair,” replied St. Clare simply. “It’s everywhere. Our killer would not live with a dog.”

Ky stared at him, letting the words roll around in his head. Then he said slowly, “So you’re telling me that this Werewolf Killer is—”

“Appropriately named,” replied St. Clare.

Ky refused to be surprised by anything further he heard. He would not be shocked, dismayed, disappointed or hopeful. Most of all, he would not let anything the man said from now on cause him to lose his temper.

“What makes you think I can do what the best law enforcement officials in this state—hell, in the nation—haven’t been able to do for the past ten months? And if I could, why wouldn’t I have done it by now?”