Warwolf by T. R. Pearson

Author:T. R. Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barking Mad Press
Published: 2018-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Wayland’s Grant

1

Multiple homicides can be a public relations headache. We’d had three in a week in our homely little town, and even Verle couldn’t make them seem benign. Lord knows, he tried. He kept the details stoppered up and made out like people dying was just a natural kind of thing, but then somebody cultivated Fido or that boy from the IGA, and word got around that Rita hadn’t choked, in fact, on a bundt cake, gotten taken by a heart attack, or fallen off her porch. People got wind instead that an amateur surgeon had been at her. It was all over the place by the time me and Kate hit town the following day.

First we’d had to make arrangements for Rusty. I’d persuaded Everett to take him. His backyard was fenced in because he’d had a couple of dachshunds once. He’d had to tell us all about them -- Gunther and Heidi -- and he went on at some length on their unsavory dachshund decrepitude which, to hear Everett tell it, involved all sorts of leakage.

“Hard to want a dog after that,” he told me.

“Think of it as witness protection.”

“What’s he eat?”

“Any damn thing.”

“Well, all right then,” Everett said.

When we finally got to the station house, we found Verle handling things in his usual way. Folks would march in to tell him what they’d heard, ask him about the blood and the giblets and the pieces of Rita gone missing. They were keen to know was it true she’d been carved up by some bastard. “Now I wouldn’t,” Verle told them, “say that.”

Verle invited us to join him on the sidewalk where he cadged an Iroquois from Kate. Before that, I’m sure I’d never seen Verle smoke. He usually coped with stress by eating M&Ms and turtle clusters, but this was an entirely different category of upset.

We were standing there, me and Kate, listening to Verle’s account of his morning when the boy from channel nine rolled up in the channel nine Subaru. It was a regular Subaru, truth be told, with a magnetic 9 on the hood and a cameraman in the passenger seat about the size of a pulling guard.

Verle toked on his Iroquois so violently that he nearly swallowed it. He sucked in his gut and adjusted his pants.

“Here we go,” he said.

We had our lists and we had our angles, but we visited our situation room first. They were always making hay from this sort of thing on TV shows I’d seen, but looking at the photos and forensic reports didn’t do a lot for me except make me wonder about somebody who’d dedicate his life to taking organs out of people and putting them in jars.

Kate collected the forensic reports and slapped them in a file. “Chop shop boys?”

“Might as well. I’ll call Ronnie.”

We ran across Doug downstairs. He was looking a little anxious, especially for Doug who was new enough still to be on his best behavior. Any cop, however, worth his

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