PEAK ROAD

A Jon Stanton Short Novel by

VICTOR METHOS

Copyright 2015 Victor Methos

Kindle Edition

License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy.

Please note that this is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All events in this work are purely from the imagination of the author and are not intended to signify, represent, or reenact any event in actual fact.

I’m not afraid of werewolves, vampires or haunted hotels. I’m afraid of what real human beings do to other real human beings . . .

― Walter Jon Williams

1

One of the primary traits of all sex offenders is an inability to admit to their crimes. And the worse the crime, the more defenses they put up—some of them actually block the crimes from their memory and believe they were wrongly accused. But more men are falsely accused of sex crimes than any other crime, and discerning the truly innocent from the delusional is sometimes impossible.

I stood in the observation room, watching Interrogation Room Three through a two-way mirror. The observation rooms were always dark, and I was alone. Though it was March, in Honolulu that only meant additional rain, so the room felt warm. Outside the precinct, we called these rooms “interview” rooms, but internally, they were known as “interrogation” rooms. A subtle shift in phrasing was all anybody needed to change how that person viewed something.

The man had been in Interrogation Three for over six hours. He stood and ran his hands through his shoulder-length hair before pacing the room like a bored child. Now was when I went in—the time when the suspect was teetering, off balance, almost angry at the police but not quite.

I left the darkened observation room and entered Interrogation Three. My eyes took a moment to get used to the harsh lighting, and a few spots clouded my vision. I moved to the table and sat down. “Hello, Frank. My name is Jon Stanton. I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if that’s okay.”

Frank thought for a moment then sat across from me. He had been reluctant to give a confession to two other detectives, and they’d asked that I come in.

Getting a confession was more art than science, and it depended heavily on the psychology of the offender. Because Frank was resistant, I decided to use the Reid technique—a method of interrogation banned in some European countries, particularly when used against children, because it risked a false confession. But it was effective against resistant suspects.

The technique involved an accusatory process where the interrogator does not give the offender a chance to deny the allegation. I would start with an assumption of his guilt.

“Frank, your wife has already given us everything we need. She said she came home and found her daughter in her bed. Thinking she was asleep, she left her there for a few hours. When she went to check on her, she found her unresponsive and called an ambulance. The forensic techs told me they found bits of cotton in her esophagus. They also found the underwear you used to suffocate her. The sex was obvious, and I have no doubt we’re going to find your semen inside of her.” I paused, staring into his eyes. “She was an amazingly beautiful sixteen-year-old. It’d be hard to control myself around her. Seeing her cuddle up to me, or get out of the shower, get into bed every night—it’d drive me crazy to have to look.”

He didn’t say anything, but I had his attention.

“You’re a man—no one can blame you for that. It must’ve just been so hard to resist. I can’t imagine what you went through. And I think any red-blooded male is gonna feel the same way.”

He stared down at the table without saying anything. I took his lack of objection as a positive response to my explanation of the crime. The next step was to give the offender a justification, to shift blame away from him.

“Any man in your spot would’ve done the same thing. I saw some pictures of her, and she was always wearing those skimpy outfits—tight shorts, tank tops, yoga pants… I couldn’t imagine being around her every day. I bet she flirted with you, too. She seemed like she’d be into you. Was she always flirting?”

I had to be careful. I couldn’t allow him to say something like “I didn’t do it.” Getting a confession would be much more difficult afterward. He opened his mouth, and I quickly added, “I’m sure it wasn’t rape, not like Detective Alamea is saying. She doesn’t get it. Doesn’t know what it’s like to be a man and have a beautiful girl flirting with you all the time. So you guys had sex. Tell me about it. Was it good?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly.

“I bet she was tight.”

He grinned. “Yeah, man. She was somethin’ else.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I blame the culture,” I said. “All these girls out there dress that way and act that way to get attention. And then when you give them that attention, they start screaming rape. It’s not rape if they wanted it. I don’t think they understand that.”

He shook his head. “Nah, man. I could never rape her. That’s some bullshit.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, we just, like, fuckin’ around. Ya know? And then she starts talkin’ bullshit like she gonna tell her mom.”

Now I had to reinforce my sincerity.

“It’s just women. They don’t get it, and they hold all the power. Do you know if a man and woman call about the same exact crime, the police are twice as likely to believe the woman? So if it’s a he-said-she-said, they’re gonna believe her. That’s why you’re here right now—because a woman detective thinks you raped this girl.”

“Nah, man, that’s bullshit. She was into it.”

“I know,” I said softly. “I know. I believe you, and I’m on your side, Frank. But we still got a dead body we need to explain. Now here’s what I think happened: you two were having sex, probably instigated by her, and then she wanted it rough. She liked it rough, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, man. Yeah, she did.”

“I bet. So she likes it rough, and you give it to her, but it went a little too far. Just was an accident, wasn’t it?”

He clammed up for a moment, then tears came to his eyes. “Yeah, man. Just an accident. I didn’t mean nothin’. We was just fuckin’ around, and it was just an accident.”

“When’d you put the underwear in her mouth? Before or after you started having sex?”

“After,” he said, wiping the tears away on the back of his hands. “After we started.”

I had to offer him the loaded alternative—provide two alternative explanations for what happened. The offender was bound to choose the more socially acceptable one, even though it still meant admitting to his guilt.

“So the way I see it,” I said, “either that woman detective is right, and you raped your stepdaughter and then killed her because it turned you on, or you two were having sex and you accidentally killed her because she liked it rough.”

“Yeah, man. It was an accident. We just havin’ sex, and I put the underwear in her mouth ’cause I knew she’d like it.”

“And you were still having sex with her when she died, weren’t you?”

He was crying now. “She was screamin’, and I just thought she was into it. I thought that’s all it was. I didn’t know she couldn’t breathe. It was an accident.”

I sat still for a moment. The ME would confirm whether or not the sex was consensual, but that ultimately didn’t matter. She was underage, and Frank would be charged with statutory rape even if the sex was consensual. But as for the killing, Frank Motta had admitted to putting the underwear in her mouth and watching her die. Hawaii didn’t have the death penalty, and his charges would be plea-bargained down a notch, but he would serve at least twenty in prison. By the time he got out, he would be an old man who wasn’t as likely to hurt anyone else.

I leaned forward, close enough to him that the camera couldn’t pick up what I said, and whispered, “Don’t go to hell, Frank. Pray every day and repent. For the next twenty or thirty years, while you sit in a cell, you repent.”

Then I rose and left the room.

2

I went out to the bullpen, where several desks and cubicles were shoved together. The building we were in sat across the street from an actual palace, the last palace standing on American soil, which had belonged to a Hawaiian queen. She was the last royalty the islands had seen before the United States annexed them.

The sugarcane conglomerate had fooled both the Hawaiian people and the United States government into the relationship. The islanders agreed that whites had taken the island by force, and the number of incidents of native Hawaiians attacking and beating whites ticked up slowly every year. Frustrated whites had begun to band together, taking the top government jobs, filing lawsuits, and fighting back. White-on-native crime was also on an upward trajectory. But the simmering chaos of the population was not visible in the natural terrain. The islands’ beauty and serenity transcended the petty squabbles of the people. That was the reason I’d stayed when I could’ve gone back to San Diego and started up a lucrative private investigation firm again.

Several detectives, including my partner, Laka, sipped coffee or tea from Styrofoam cups. As she did almost every day, Laka was wearing a sleeveless shirt that revealed the myriad of tribal tattoos covering her arms.

“Well?” she asked.

I had asked her not to watch. I didn’t perform as well when I knew people were watching an interrogation. The camera was enough. The footage would be the ultimate arbiter that the twelve men and women on the jury would rely on while deciding Frank Motta’s fate.

“It’s done. You have a confession.” I sat down at my desk and stared at the floating screensaver on my computer screen.

Laka kissed me on the cheek then ran back to the interrogation rooms. My muscles felt pulled in several different directions at once. I stretched as much as I could from one side to the other, but the movement didn’t help much. Checking my phone, it was past seven in the evening.

Laka and another officer returned with Frank. They led him around the corner to the cells, then Laka came back and sat on my desk.

“We might be able to put him away for life,” she said.

“No, it’ll plead out. I think at most he’ll do thirty years. Enough so he’s too old to hurt anyone.”

“Eighty-year-olds can hurt people, too.” She folded her arms. “I want life for the bastard. Revenge, Jon. Just good old revenge for that beautiful young girl.”

“Revenge doesn’t bring her back.”

“No, but it can bring her peace if she’s still watching.”

I turned back to my computer. Several of my files required follow up, and now that I had interrogated him, I was part of Frank’s case—and that would require writing up a narrative supplemental report. It would probably also require attending a preliminary hearing six months down the line. But I didn’t feel like diving into any of that right now.

“I’m taking off.” I rose and stretched my back.

“Thanks again.”

“No worries.”

I headed outside. Though the air was warm, rain had prevented me from surfing over the last few days. I got to drive by some of the most beautiful beaches in the world on the way home to the North Shore. The view wasn’t the same as being in the ocean, but it would hold me over until the rain stopped.

Tomorrow was Sunday. I worked one Saturday every month, but that was enough to make me hate working Saturdays. Working the weekends meant losing the main thing people look forward to during the week, and the job could turn into a grind for anyone who didn’t have a release.

When I got home, my neighbor Julie was out with my dog, Hanny, who ran up and jumped on my leg. She had her own business and didn’t need to go in every day, and she loved watching him. I let her, rather than putting him in a doggy daycare.

“Hey, boy.” I bent down and rubbed his head before wrestling with him for a few seconds. What is it about pets that makes us revert to children around them? I looked up at Julie. “How was he?”

“Fine. We went to the beach and he ran around in the water. Mostly, he slept. I don’t think he likes being apart from you.”

“I miss him, too.”

She hesitated. “Any dinner plans tonight?”

Julie was lovely. She looked as though she could’ve been in any black-and-white movie from the forties. She was always dressed modestly, avoiding the revealing styles women her age seemed to favor, and that actually made her more attractive.

We’d had similar conversations before—conversations that should’ve led to dates. But I never followed through. My job had destroyed every relationship I’d ever had. It was always the job. I had seen detectives—good, solid men—put bullets in their heads out of the blue, and I knew there was only so much depravity a man could see before he snapped. How much a person could stand varied. Some detectives and FBI agents could function for forty years on the job and not blink. Others became alcoholics and wife-abusers within a year. I didn’t know where I was on that spectrum, but if it ever became too much, I didn’t want anyone else around when I finally decided enough was enough. I hoped I would have the sense to get out of police work entirely, rely on my doctorate in psychology, and go back to teaching. But who knows? I’d seen too many cops crack to believe that I wouldn’t be the same.

“I’m just going to grab something quick and go to bed. I’m beat.”

“Oh.” She looked down at Hanny. “Well, if you need some company, like to watch a movie or something, shoot me a text.”

“I will. Thanks.”

She smiled and lightly touched my hand. “You’re welcome.”

I watched her walk back to her yard. How could this be so difficult? Why do I have to choose between affection and the job? Is every cop in the same boat, or do others manage it better than I do? It was hard to tell. Police work involved a real machismo culture, and no one ever quite knew what cops were thinking or feeling.

Hanny whined at my feet.

“Let’s go inside and make a couple burritos. What d’ya say?”

He made a grunting sound as if he approved, and we headed into the house.

3

My first call in the morning was to my sons. Jon Junior, a junior in high school, didn’t answer, but his older brother, Mathew, did.

“How are ya, buddy?” I said.

“Doin’ good. I got your gift card. Thanks.”

I knew he needed money while living in Boston and attending college, but I never liked sending him cash. So I sent him gift cards he could use to buy whatever he might need. I didn’t know if he appreciated it or not, but he always said thank you. “You’re welcome. So, you datin’ anybody these days?”

“Nah, not really. There’s a couple girls I’m hanging out with. I got so much work, it’s hard to do anything else.”

“Anthropology’s that hard, huh?”

“Not too bad, but I actually wanted to tell you that I’m doing a double major. I’m also pre-med.”

I hesitated. My father had been a physician, and he had planned for me to go to medical school after I completed my doctorate. Our relationship had never been the same after I’d chosen law enforcement instead.

“I think that’s… great, Matty. Being a doctor’s a noble profession. Any particular field you’re interested in?” Please don’t say psychiatry.

“Psychiatry.”

Of course. Everything he’d seen and everything he’d been through with me had had a profound impact on him. He could have wanted to heal, but I had a feeling he wanted to understand—understand how people could do the horrific things they did without knowing why.

“That’s great,” I said again. “Do me one favor, though: go intern somewhere. Somewhere you can see firsthand what you’ll be doing.”

“I’m going to. There’s a care center close to my apartment. I’m gonna put in an application to be a CNA there. They’re mostly people suffering from dementia, stuff like that, but it should be good experience.”

“I’m proud of you.” I hesitated. “How’s your mom?”

“Fine.” He paused, and the silence lasted a little too long.

“What is it, Matty?”

“She should tell you herself.”

“Tell me what? Just tell me.”

“Her and Tom. She’s pregnant, Dad.”

My heart sank. Our relationship had ended years ago, but we still had a bond—a deep bond—because of our children. Whatever else happened, wherever else we went in life, Matty and Jon Junior linked us forever. And now she was going to have that link with another man.

“Oh… are you excited to have a little brother or sister?”

“I mean, yeah. I’m not around that much to really see them, but, yeah. I think it’ll be fun.”

My throat felt dry, and I swallowed. “Well, tell her congratulations for me.”

“I will, Dad.”

“Matty, I love you.”

“I know. I love you, too.”

I hung up and stared at the phone. The news cut—and much deeper than I had thought it would. For a second, I thought about calling her and telling her congratulations, but she knew me, almost better than anyone had ever known me. She would see through that. She would hear the pain in my voice.

I changed and went for a run.

Nearly half an hour of sprinting, and Hanny was right there with me the whole time. By the end, I could hardly breathe, and my legs felt as though they were seizing up. I sat on the beach near my house and took off my Vibram shoes. I liked barefoot running, and the shoes were the closest I could get. I liked to feel every surface—every mound of sand, each rock, and every blade of grass—when I ran. To people who ran in shoes, the whole world felt like rubber.

I stuck my feet in the water and watched as the waves lapped the beach. Most of the serious young surfers came in early and were finished by the time the tourists arrived. A few lingered, floating on the surface of the water like birds lazily searching for fish. I lay back on the sand and let the sun warm my face. I had church in a couple of hours, and a Mormon service lasted three hours. After that, I could surf or sit in the house and watch movies. It suddenly hit me that without the job, my life was boring. Hanny came up and licked my face, and I tickled his belly to get him off me.

My phone buzzed, and I took it out of my pocket. The call was from a number I didn’t recognize. Wiping the sweat and dog slobber off my cheek with the back of my arm, I answered.

“This is Jon.”

After a slight hesitation, a man said, “Jon, this is Mickey.”

I hadn’t heard that voice in a long time. Mickey Parsons was a former special agent with the FBI. He had the most serial-murder collars in the Bureau’s history. I had met him at a seminar I was teaching, and our wives at the time had hit it off. Hearing his voice brought back visions of fishing trips and long hikes at Lake Tahoe, rock climbing in Yosemite, and a myriad of other outdoor things I never would’ve done if not for Mickey and my ex-wife.

“I heard you were laying around on some beach in the Virgin Islands, drunk by noon, like Hemingway,” I said.

“I was. I’m even writing a novel.”

“How is it?”

“It’s shit.”

I grinned. “How are you?”

“I’m doing good. I feel better than I have in a long time. It’s amazing how much rest and sunshine can do for your health.”

I looked out over the water. “You don’t need to tell me. Are you at the islands?”

“No, I’m actually stateside. I’m at your house.”

“My house?”

“It’s damn nice, Jon. How the hell did you afford it?”

I rose and started heading home. If Mickey had intended to visit an old friend, he would’ve called before turning up at my house. He’d come for something else—something he wanted to surprise me with.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’d like to talk to you about it in person, if that’s okay.”

“I’ll be home in twenty.”

“Okay, see you then. And Jon, it’s good to talk to you again.”

“Yeah,” I said, contemplating why a retired FBI agent would suddenly show up at my house, “good to hear you, too.”

4

When I got near my house, I saw Mickey sitting on my front porch. Hanny growled, and I grabbed his collar and said, “Easy.” I stepped in front of Hanny and went to shake Mickey’s hand, but I stopped, remembering that even a cold could be debilitating for him.

He looked the same. He had been living with HIV for years now, and somehow, I had imagined that he would look worse and worse every year, but he didn’t. His skin was deeply tanned, and the white hair was combed into the perfect part that FBI agents were expected to have. He had even gained some weight.

“We can shake hands,” Mickey said, sensing my trepidation. “You’re not going to give me the plague. Not yet, anyway.”

He held out his hand, and we shook.

I said, “You look good. Better than ten years ago, even.”

“I’ve been exercising every day and eating mostly fruit and vegetables. I, ah, actually got remarried.”

“You’re kidding! To who?”

“Gal I met on the islands, Camille. She’s a vegetarian. You would really like her, actually.”

I let go of his hand and watched his eyes. Now I was really concerned. He had left his wife to come see me. Something wasn’t right, and I knew he needed me for something. But I didn’t want to force it. He would tell me when he was ready.

“Drink?” I asked, making my way to the front door to unlock it.

“I’m guessing you don’t have beer.”

“No. Orange juice in a bottle is the closest.”

“I’ll take it.” He looked at Hanny, who was staring at him. “Who’s this little guy?”

“Hanny.”

Mickey bent down and held out his open palm. Hanny considered him for a minute then went over and sniffed then licked his hand. Mickey rubbed the dog’s head before turning and following me inside.

I’d left several windows open, so the house was the same temperature as the air outside. I crossed the living room and went into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of water for me and a bottle of orange juice for Mickey. I sat on the couch, and Mickey sat on the love seat across from me. Hanny sat at my feet, like some emperor’s guard dog. He liked Mickey, but he didn’t seem to fully trust anyone except me.

“How’re the kids?” he asked.

“Matt’s decided to go to medical school. He wants to be a psychiatrist.”

“Good for him. His grandfather was a shrink, wasn’t he?”

I nodded, twisting open my bottle of water. “That’s what my dad wanted for me, too. He wasn’t happy when I told him I was going to be a cop.”

“We’ve never really talked about your dad.”

The entire conversation was leading somewhere specific, and he wanted to throw me off. He knew speaking about my father dredged up memories I didn’t want to think about. My last conversation with my father had taken place right after my mother died, and we’d barely spoken even then. He wasn’t a man who shared anything.

Mickey was legendary in law enforcement circles for his abilities to persuade—and some might say manipulate—suspects. He’d once left the door open while interrogating a perp suspected of killing his girlfriend with the help of his cousin. The cousin wouldn’t talk, so Mickey had found someone who looked like the cousin. After dressing the doppelgänger in a wig and clothes from the cousin’s closet, he paraded the lookalike through the Bureau offices past the open door. When the lookalike pretended to pal around with some other agents, the perp was furious. He opened up about what had happened, laying the blame on the cousin. Once the cousin heard the confession, he also confessed, claiming the boyfriend was mostly responsible. Both ended up with life sentences.

“What is this about, Mickey?”

He exhaled and took a sip of juice. I could tell he wanted to set a hook then get me in a position where it would be more difficult to say no to whatever he was about to ask me. I had called him out on it.

“It’s something I need your help on,” he said. “A case.”

“You’re retired.”

He nodded. “I know. Kyle gave me a call. There’s an old case that I never got a collar on. It’s a small town in Nevada, Peak Road. Two families, the Wyatts and the Roths, were killed a month apart in an identical manner. It was really… brutal. They called him the Werewolf of Peak Road.

“I was new in Behavioral Science, maybe a couple of years in. Kyle was just a field agent, too. We worked the case together. Didn’t really have anything. A few minor bits of evidence here and there. But it was the early eighties. Forensics wasn’t what it is now. If it had happened in this day and age, maybe we would’ve gotten lucky.” He paused and took another sip of juice. “Kyle called me because they had another killing three weeks ago. A young family, the Noels: mother, father, and their two-year-old daughter. If it’s the same pattern, we have another week before he kills again.”

He slipped a photo out of his pocket and placed it on the table between us. I didn’t look down.

“Similar murders, twenty years apart in the same town. I don’t know why it took him twenty years, but he’s back. I’m flying out to Nevada tomorrow.”

“You and Kyle can handle it. You don’t need me.”

He shook his head. “Every investigator has that one case. That one that just doesn’t sit right. They keep copies of the file after they retire. This is mine, Jon. I feel like I failed the Wyatts and the Roths. I’m not going to fail the Noels, too.”

It wasn’t lost on me that he used the family’s name. I still hadn’t looked down at the picture. “I’m sorry, Mickey. I’m pretty swamped out here. I don’t think I can take the time off.”

“I heard you found out what happened to Elizabeth.”

The thought of my sister sent a shot of pain into my chest that jolted my system. “I did.”

“I bet it helped—knowing what happened.”

“I guess. I thought it would bring me closure. There’s no closure.”

“Well, these people had families, too. Families that would like to know what happened and why.”

“Insanity happened. Knowing that won’t bring them peace. It’ll make it hurt more.”

Mickey set his orange juice on the coffee table. “What is this really about, Jon?”

“I don’t think… I don’t think I want to get involved in that type of case right now. I just finished everything with my sister, and it’s taken me a couple of months to be able to work cases again. Mostly bank robberies and drug deals gone bad. I like those right now. I can understand those.”

“You can understand what happened in Peak Road, too.”

“Maybe. And that’s probably why I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I’m not myself yet. I need more time.”

He nodded slowly. “I understand. But I need you on this. I’m old and tired. I don’t know how much I can put into this case.” He rose. “If you change your mind, please call me. It really is good to see you again.” He bent down and petted Hanny before turning to leave.

I followed him to the door and saw him out. He put on his sunglasses then got into his rental car. I watched as he pulled out of the driveway.

I went back inside, where he had left the Noels’ photo on my coffee table. Between a young mother and a father sat a two-year-old girl with pink ribbons holding her blond pigtails in place.

I flipped the photo facedown and headed to the shower.

5

The church service went by quickly. I taught a lesson in Sunday school about the purpose of forgiveness in our lives, the power that’s unleashed with it, that allows people to move on after tragic events.

When it was over, I went home and changed into shorts. I took Hanny to the beach and let him run around. I always kept a leash on him because I knew that many people would always be afraid of a pit bull, especially one with no leash.

Though I tried to avoid it, I couldn’t help thinking of Peak Road. The killings themselves weren’t that unusual—although a killer who targets entire families was a little odd—but the massive lapse in time interested me. It was possible that the killer had left. Maybe he had been to prison or had moved then recently moved back… or he’d simply had enough self-control to fight off his fantasy for twenty years before engaging in it again.

I couldn’t go. Whenever I worked cases like that, they took a piece of me. And I didn’t know how many pieces I had left.

Julie came jogging up from the opposite direction, wearing a spandex top. She stopped in front of me, and Hanny jumped on her. They started playing, and it brought a grin to my face. She came over to me, taking out her earbuds.

“Something happen?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“You look sad.”

I shrugged. “Just a case I’ve been thinking about.”

“What case?”

This was the part of the job I didn’t like—the part where I wanted to discuss it with someone else but knew I couldn’t. If I told her the things I had seen and was thinking about, it would change the way she saw the world. It had happened with my ex-wife, my fiancée, and even my children.

“Nothing worth mentioning.”

She hesitated. “Jon, come over for dinner tonight.”

Part of me wanted nothing more than to go over to her house and begin what I knew would turn into something more. She was kind, attractive, and compassionate. She might even have understood the job in a way Melissa never could. But another part of me thought I didn’t belong there. I didn’t belong with anyone else.

“I’ll take a raincheck.”

She exhaled and placed her hand on my chest. “There are only so many rainchecks.”

I watched her jog away. Hanny began running after her, but his leash pulled taut and yanked him back. I turned toward the ocean, staring at the waves as he barked at her, thinking himself left behind.

That evening, after a dinner of beans and rice, I sat on the patio and sipped herbal tea. Black and green teas were forbidden by the Mormon faith, but herbs, if used appropriately, were encouraged. The faith also promoted vegetarianism, something I’d been trying out over the past months and had been enjoying. I was losing weight, and my migraines, which had once been frequent, were less prominent.

Beside me on the patio side table was the picture of the Noels. I picked it up and stared at it. The mother’s hand rested lightly on the child’s shoulder, and the father’s arm was wrapped around her. I saw something then: the other children the couple would never have. I saw them on either side of the parents as clearly as if they were there. I had to put the photo down and stare out over the ocean.

Just past my neighbor’s house, people were running. It was dark, but the moon and the setting sun provided enough illumination. A few tourists were standing on the beach, staring at the ocean in wonder. The water held that wonder for me, too, and every time I saw it was like the first time.

A child broke away from the crowd. He sprinted for the water, and a woman yelled after him. She caught up with him halfway down the beach and lifted him in the air, tickling him and feigning anger as he laughed uproariously. Watching them head back to the rest of the crowd, I grinned.

I picked up the photo again, my guts in tight knots that made me want to throw up. I swallowed then pulled my phone out of my pocket, still staring at the photo. I texted Mickey Parsons.

Get another ticket. I’m coming.

A moment later, he texted back, I bought one for you yesterday. See you in the morning.

I took in a deep breath and held it a moment, feeling my heart thump against my ribs, thirsty for oxygen. I held my breath for as long as I could then let it out in a slow hiss before I put the photo down and stood up.

The mother on the beach was still holding her son. They watched the waves together, and she pointed to the moon. He tilted his head up and stared at it. I went inside the house and left the patio doors open so I could hear the waves while I slept.

6

The next morning, I went to Julie’s house. When she answered the door, she didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come over yesterday.”

She nodded. “It’s okay.” She folded her arms.

“Could I impose on you for a bit? I need to go to Nevada for a little while. I was hoping you could take Hanny. If you can’t, I completely under—”

“No, I’d be happy to watch him.”

I nodded, never letting go of her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t know what the problem is, but we all have our demons, don’t we?”

“Yeah, we do.”

I left my keys with her then texted my captain, Kai, saying that I would need to use some leave. Laka didn’t have a problem covering my cases for a week, and I told her I would make it up to her. Luckily, the captain didn’t micromanage his team, and he trusted me when I told him I had a good reason to take time off.

The airport was bustling with tourists, as it always was. I took an Uber ride down, and the driver didn’t speak a word until we actually arrived at the airport.

“Where you goin’?” he asked.

“Nevada.”

“Las Vegas?”

“No, a town called Peak Road.”

“Never been.” He took out a pack of gum, shoved a piece into his mouth with the wrapper still on, then spit out the wrapper onto the passenger seat. “Don’t sound like much.”

“Probably isn’t much.”

“Why you goin’?”

I watched a plane lift off and rocket into the air. Its engines drowned out the sound of traffic for a few seconds. “I don’t actually know.”

“Weird thing to go someplace and not know why.”

“It is.”

I paid on my phone at the terminal and left a good tip. I’d brought only one gym bag full of clothes, and I slung it over my shoulder then headed in. The security agent had to call a supervisor because of my gun, then I was allowed through. Law enforcement officers were allowed to fly with firearms, but that didn’t mean the TSA gave us an easy time for it.

Mickey was sitting in one of the seats near our gate, one leg crossed over the other. He was wearing a suit and tie, and I was in my jeans and leather jacket. I suddenly felt underdressed.

“I didn’t know we were on a date. I would’ve worn a dress,” I said.

He grinned. “Old habits. The Bureau always had strict dress standards.”

“From Hoover, right? I remember something about him and a dress.” I loved teasing Mickey about J. Edgar Hoover. If ever there was a tyrant who hadn’t respected the Constitution, it was Hoover. He stood for everything the Founding Fathers were against: the ends justifying the means and the shredding of personal liberty.

“You know,” he said, leaning back in the seat, “I interviewed this old-timer down in Florida in the eighties. He was a capo in the Bonanno crime family. Worked with Luciano and Meyer Lansky personally. He swore to me he’d seen the photos of Hoover cross-dressing. That he was a transvestite and homosexual but knew he’d be run out of the director position if it ever came out. Obviously, I have to consider the source in that story—those guys can’t be trusted for anything. They’ll lie even when there’s no benefit to lying, but it made me wonder.”

“Would it make a difference to you if he was a cross-dresser?”

“No. It’d make me pity him more than anything. That he had to hide his true self his entire life.” I understood what Mickey meant—the idea of hiding one’s self gave me an uncomfortable tightness in my chest.

I turned to watch the planes landing and taking off. I was still impressed that humans had conquered flight. Of all the animals on the planet that have ever lived, we were the only ones who could fly without being born with the ability.

“How did you know I would come?” I asked.

“Because you’ve never been able to say no to this type of case.”

“What type is that?”

He held my gaze for a second. “Hopeless.”

Our flight was called, and we filed into the plane with the other passengers. The flight wasn’t packed, and we had a row of three seats to ourselves, so we sat with an empty seat between us. Mickey’s watch beeped; he took out an amber bottle of large pills and asked the flight attendant for some water. She brought a small bottle, and he popped the pills then swallowed them with the water. It looked almost painful.

“How is everything?”

“Good as can be. Most doctors didn’t predict I would live as long as I have, and now I’m out parasailing. You ever been parasailing?”

“No.”

“It’s quiet up there. You get high enough and come near the boat, you can’t see it anymore, and it looks like you’re flying. All you hear is the wind, the sunshine on your face… I do it at least three or four times a month.”

He paused for a second, and I could tell he was somewhere else—back home maybe, with his new wife. The case must’ve really pained him to pull him away from that.

“Tell me how they died,” I said.

“He came in through the basement window. Basement windows were shattered in both homes, and in the Noels’ home, too. Didn’t bother to slide it open or use a glass cutter. He crashed through.”

“Were you able to get any blood off the shards?”

He shook his head. “No. He must’ve been wearing something protective or maybe threw something against the window first. But once he got in, it was quick. He went to the first bedroom he could find. In the Wyatts’ home, that was their children’s room. They had bunk beds. Their throats were ripped out. Mr. Wyatt was killed next, in the same way. He spent most of his time with Mrs. Wyatt. There was evidence that he had attempted to rape her, but there was no evidence he succeeded.

“The Roths’ murders were nearly identical. They had four children, all killed in the same manner. One of the kids was found in the closet. We think the boy heard something and tried to hide, but the killer found him. Same thing with Mrs. Roth—an attempted rape, but no actual bruising or tears.”

“He was impotent.”

Mickey nodded. “That’s what I thought. This was before Viagra. Wasn’t much help a man could get back then. The Noels, I’m told, were the same thing. They found some evidence that he had attempted to rape Mrs. Noel, but no bruising or tears. Doesn’t look like Viagra made much of a difference to him.”

Now that everyone had boarded, the engines revved, and the captain made an announcement that the plane would be lifting off in two minutes and landing in McCarran Airport in Las Vegas around noon.

“Did you have anybody you were looking at?” I asked.

He shook his head, taking another sip of water, then replaced the cap and set the bottle down next to him. “The whole damn town was suspect. Despite being only a few hours away from Las Vegas, it’s actually a backward place. One sheriff for the whole town, one doctor, one school for pre-school through high school. It reminds me of a snapshot from a hundred years ago.” He paused. “There was one guy—Earl Kaiser, the town mechanic. Young kid, maybe twenty at the time. He had a lewdness charge and several assaults on his record. Those charges weren’t alarming, but everyone knew who the judge and sheriff were in that town. For them to actually convict one of their own, I’m guessing, took a lot. For every conviction, there were probably ten other offenses that got warnings.”

The plane lunged forward, and I felt the tires lift from the ground. My stomach twisted at the unusual sensation of becoming airborne. Mickey was staring out the window. A bruise on his right wrist wasn’t large, but it looked out of place on his tanned skin. I remembered Mickey then as the young, fiery special agent who wouldn’t take no for an answer—not from anybody. He was larger than life, but I’d always seen past that. Deep in his core, in a place that he refused to show anyone, he was lonely. Since his wife’s passing, a deep sense of solitude had descended on him and wouldn’t let go. I wondered if he saw the same thing in me.

“Do you talk to Melissa anymore?” he asked.

“No. She’s… having a baby with her new husband.”

He looked at me. “I guess that’s good news.”

“I suppose. I never really felt that I’d lost her until the moment I heard that.”

“When I heard about your divorce, honestly, I was surprised. You two seemed close.”

“People grow in different directions sometimes. If I’d known what was happening, though, I would’ve quit. The job was what got between us. The long hours, the inability to open up about what I saw during the day. My psychiatrist says I withdraw into myself when something traumatic happens.”

“You’re seeing a shrink?”

I nodded. “Several years now.” I paused then decided I wouldn’t tell him about the panic attacks. They didn’t seem relevant, and for some reason, I was embarrassed. “It helps to talk to someone.”

The plane ride was pleasant. The last flight I’d been on had given me a migraine. Maybe the difference was the number of people on the plane. Sartre had said that hell was other people. I thought of that often, even though I didn’t think I believed it.

The captain announced that we would be landing at McCarran in a few minutes. Mickey’s posture changed. He seemed agitated. He gripped both armrests and kept his eyes out the window as the glittering cityscape of Las Vegas came into view.

7

After renting a sedan, we drove through the Strip. Mickey asked if I was hungry, and I was. We stopped at a ribs restaurant in a hotel off the Strip. The valet took the car, and we wandered through the casino. The dings, beeps, rattles, and bright lights brought the tightness to my chest again. I had to close my eyes for a moment and just breathe. It didn’t help much because the air tasted and smelled like cigarettes.

When I opened my eyes, Mickey was watching me.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

I followed him to the restaurant on the south side of the casino. A black curtain separated it from the gambling floor. A host stood behind a podium, pressing buttons on a computer screen.

“Two, please. As far from the gambling as we can get,” Mickey said.

She led us to a seat against the back wall. I could still hear the sounds of the machines, but it wasn’t as pronounced.

“Diet Coke,” I told the server when he asked what we wanted to drink.

“Beer,” Mickey said. “Heineken if you got it.” He took a moment to glance at the menu. “Something threw you off, didn’t it?”

“Sounds and lights, particularly loud sounds.”

“Hyper-sensory?”

I nodded.

“It sometimes comes with ADHD and panic attacks, doesn’t it?”

I looked at him. Panic attacks shouldn’t have made a difference, but I knew he was asking whether or not he had to worry about me.

“I’m fine,” I said.

The waiter brought our drinks, and we ordered. I got a portobello mushroom sandwich, and Mickey got ribs. We sat in silence for a moment before I noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“No ring?”

“I keep it in my drawer at home. I don’t want to lose it. It was her grandfather’s.”

“Tell me about her.” He hadn’t even told me her name so far.

“She’s a doctor, or was. She retired when she tested positive. We met at a lounge in a hotel. What are the odds of that—to meet your soulmate, who lives with the same affliction you do, on some faraway island?”

“Astronomical.”

He nodded, playing with his ring finger as though the ring were there. “It’s funny the things you think about when you know the end is nearing. I’ve got maybe five or ten good years left, if that. I think about my father a lot. I saw him grow old. He would sit in a room by himself and watch television for hours. I used to think it was his way of passing the time with some entertainment, but I walked by once when I was a kid. It was turned to a channel with static, and he was still staring at the screen. I knew then that the television had always been on for my benefit. He was forgetting where he was and what he was doing and he wanted to cover it up. To save me the pain.” He paused. “My mother died when I was young, so he and my stepmother were all I had.”

“How is your stepmom?”

“She has dementia. The nurses told me she has some moments of clarity and asks for me, but by the time I get there, the moment’s passed. I see that a lot in old veterans when I volunteer.”

Mickey was one of only two Vietnam veterans I had ever met. The government had allowed him to join when he was seventeen, and he’d gotten in on the tail end of the war, but he’d seen combat. He didn’t talk about it much, and I’d never brought it up, but I wondered how much that war had shaped him.

The other Vietnam vet I’d known was a man who’d attacked a single mother in a grocery-store parking lot with a hunting knife. He’d just cut her, not killed her. We’d caught a glimpse of him on a grocery store’s video of the parking lot, but he was gone by the time police arrived. We thought he was a paranoid schizophrenic until the victim told me her attacker had called her a “gook” and told her to shut up. “Gook” was a racial slur American soldiers had used for the natives. I went to the VA hospital and sat in on the meetings for soldiers suffering from PTSD. Then a man who matched the description of the man on the video talked about “gooks” he had killed. He went peacefully and kept telling me that it didn’t matter what happened to him—he had already died in the jungles forty years ago.

“Why this case?” I said, leaning back in my chair and glancing around the restaurant. “Of everything you’ve done, why’d this get under your skin?”

Mickey sat there for a moment, seeming to think. “I think it was the second home, the Roths. The child that tried to get away. I told you he was found in the closet, but I didn’t tell you how he died. It wasn’t quick, like the rest of the family—one giant tear in the throat. The boy was torn limb from limb. It looked like a shark attack—that’s the only way I could describe it. I couldn’t imagine how frightened he must’ve been. I thought about him a lot. Sometimes I dream about him, see him crying in a dark closet.”

The food came. I lay my napkin across my lap and stared at the vegetable sandwich. I looked up at Mickey and said, “You know, a case like this, we might not be able to do anything.”

“I know. But at least I can know I tried.”

After eating, we got on the interstate and headed northwest. The scenery changed from desert to forest. The trees surrounded us, and after an hour, we had to stop so Mickey could use the bathroom. I sat in the car, watching the people, who were mostly crossing Nevada on their way to California. I saw a few hunters and even fewer locals.

We got off the interstate a little before four in the afternoon and took a winding road up a hill. We had to stop at a tollbooth and pay five dollars. I got the impression that Peak Road was a town that wanted to dissuade visitors as much as possible.

The town seemed like nothing but trees. The road turned to dirt, and we looped around a small mountain. The valley opened up as we went downhill, and on the bottom of the hill was the town. It was even smaller than I had expected, perhaps no more than a hundred buildings. It had one gas station along the road leading into town, and the dirt road turned to a paved one right as we passed it.

“I didn’t know towns like this existed anymore,” I said.

“It hasn’t changed one bit in twenty years. It would take effort to stay this isolated.”

We drove through town and didn’t see a single person until we got to the school, where children were playing in the yard. The girls wore dresses that came down far past their knees, and the boys wore long-sleeved shirts. A few of them looked our way then quickly went back to playing.

“There’s a motel up here. It’s the only place to stay in town. I have to warn you, it’s not exactly the Ritz.”

“I’m sure it’s fine, Mickey.”

We parked in front of the brown two-story motel. A cleaning woman came out of one of the rooms, and I smiled at her as I stepped out of the car. She turned away without reaction.

“I’ll check in,” Mickey said.

I sat on the hood of the car, watching the cars pass on the road. There weren’t many, maybe one every minute or so. The cars weren’t new. Several of them were easily twenty years old, models that took me back to my childhood: station wagons, Volkswagen Beetles, and Oldsmobiles so large they looked like boats. 

Mickey came out a while later to get his bag, and he gave me a key. Unlike the cards most modern hotels and motels used, it was an actual key.

“I need to sleep,” Mickey said. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

I could see the exhaustion etched across his face. This morning, he had looked vibrant and energetic, and now, after maybe six hours, he was worn down.

“I’m going to take a drive around the town,” I said.

“Probably best you don’t tell anyone you’re a cop. The residents weren’t exactly friendly last time.”

I got into the car and pulled away. I saw Mickey nod to the cleaning lady, and she didn’t acknowledge him, either.

8

The town was about five miles across. In the center was the municipal administration building, and next to that were the county sheriff’s office, the station house, the mayor’s office, and the jail. The jail looked like a small cabin and couldn’t have housed more than ten people at a time.

The only restaurant, as far as I could see, was the Peak Road Diner. Across the street was a bar, and small shops ran up and down both sides of the street. A single church sat nearby with a sign out front that listed the times for worship on Sunday. Other than that, the town consisted of family homes. No apartments, no strip malls, no movie theaters or libraries.

At first, it was disorienting, but after driving around, I could see the appeal of living someplace like this, the simplicity of it.

I drove up to the sheriff’s office and got out of the car. Though I was still in Nevada in the springtime, the air was noticeably cooler in Peak Road than it had been in Las Vegas. I strolled along the sidewalk, staring in the windows. A few people walked down hallways into offices, but for the most part, the building looked nearly abandoned.

I opened the door to the sheriff’s office—no metal detectors or security. The office was one large open space with two desks and another room off to the side. At the first desk sat a young girl, maybe nineteen, popping gum and listening to a country station on something I hadn’t seen in years: an actual radio, not a computer or smartphone.

“Help you?” she asked.

“Sheriff here?”

“Yeah, you want me to get her?”

I scanned some of the posters on the wall. “So is it just her in this department?”

“No, we got Will, her deputy. Who are you again?”

“Jon Stanton. I’m just visiting Peak Road.” I approached the desk. Despite Mickey’s warning, I felt I may have been in the one place where telling someone I was a cop meant something positive. “I’m actually a police officer, too. I’m here helping a friend on something. Have you heard anything about the Werewolf of Peak Road?”

She stared at me for a second. “I ain’t talkin’ ’bout that.”

Secretaries at police stations and sheriff’s offices had the best information on what had and hadn’t been done on a case. The case could pass through several detectives, but the secretaries were always there, always listening, and always watching. Many times, the secretary at my own station had information about a case before I did.

“I heard there was a new family about a week ago.”

She looked at me sternly. “I ain’t talkin’ ’bout that,” she repeated slowly.

“You know what? On second thought, can I see the sheriff?”

She popped her gum then said, “One second.”

Instead of calling back on the phone, she rose and went to the other office. She came out a half a minute later. “The sheriff’s on a call right now. She said to leave your name and number, and she’ll call you back.”

I took out my card, which had my cell phone number on it, and left it on the desk.

The woman picked it up and looked at it. “Hawaii, huh? What you doin’ way out here?”

“Like I said, just helping. Have the sheriff call me when she can.”

I left the sheriff’s office and sat in my car a few minutes. I hadn’t yet looked through the case files—what detectives informally called “murder books.” I was sure Mickey had them, but he hadn’t offered to show them to me. Maybe he thought if I’d seen the brutality, I wouldn’t have come.

The door to the sheriff’s office opened, and a woman wearing a beige uniform with a green sheriff’s jacket came out. She walked over to the car, and I rolled down my window.

She was about my age, late thirties, and had shoulder-length black hair. She was wearing little makeup other than lipstick, and a wide scar marked the back of her right hand. In her left hand, she held my card.

“You Jon Stanton?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Sheriff Dolly Briggs. Kristen told me this is about the Werewolf killings. That right?”

“It is.”

“What’s a cop from Honolulu doing out here lookin’ at those?”

“I came out with a friend, Mickey Parsons. He’s helping the FBI with the investigation, and I’m helping him.”

She stared down at the card. “They’re just sending everybody out here for these, ain’t they?”

I got the impression that the sheriff felt as though we were invading her territory. I hadn’t thought she would care, given the nature of the case, but clearly, she’d been burned by investigators in the past. The FBI had a way of steamrolling local law enforcement and making them feel insignificant. That drove detectives to withhold evidence, even sabotage investigations.

“Listen, I’m just a cop. That’s all. One of the feds thought I could add something to this, and that’s the only reason I’m here.”

She handed my card back to me. “The FBI couldn’t do anything twenty years ago, and I doubt they can do anything now. You’re wasting your time, Hawaii Five-0.”

She went back inside. I tapped my card against the steering wheel then tossed it on the passenger seat before pulling away.

9

I went to the diner. Tables were set up against the walls of the narrow space, and I chose one of the barstools at the counter. A waitress, an attractive young girl with a tattoo on her wrist, smiled at me.

“You’re new here,” she said.

“Just visiting.”

“I’m Jennifer.”

“Jon.”

She leaned forward in a way that showed her cleavage. “So what can I get for you?”

“Just an orange juice, please.”

She winked. “Comin’ right up, hon.”

She couldn’t have been older than nineteen, but she acted as if she were thirty. I had noticed that in small towns the girls became women much more quickly. When she came back with my juice, I asked, “How long have you lived in Peak Road?”

“I’m a lifer. How long you here for?”

“Probably just a week.” I took a sip of juice. “What’s it like growing up here?”

She chuckled. “It’s fucking boring is what it is. Never anything to do. Even if you wanna see a movie you have to go over to Baxter, down the freeway. Ain’t nothing to do here but get drunk and get high.”

“Lotta drugs here?”

“Yeah, meth and pot mostly. People here don’t have much money, so we don’t see too many coke heads, but there’s some. Kid in high school OD’d on the stuff. Stopped his heart right there at lunch.” She leaned forward again. “Why you care so much about the town? Most folks don’t wanna know nothin’ about us.”

“I’m helping with something and just trying to get a feel for things.”

“Whatchu helping with?”

“The Werewolf killings.”

Her face changed. The interest faded and was replaced by fear. “You shouldn’t be helping with those.”

“I heard he killed an entire family. Don’t you want to stop him?”

“You can’t stop him.”

“Why not?”

She hesitated for a second, as though she wanted to tell me something, then bit her lip. “Juice is on the house. Lemme know if you need anything else.”

I sat in the diner for a long time. Jennifer didn’t interact with me again. But I heard her tell the cook, a man who was clearly the owner, that she was taking her break. She pulled a package of cigarettes from a purse behind the counter and headed outside through a back door. I left a twenty on the counter for her underneath my glass and waited until the cook was busy before sneaking out the back door.

Jennifer leaned on the building, one foot up against it, as she blew out a puff of smoke.

“You old enough to be smoking?”

She grinned. “Twenty years old next week. Twenty years of life, and I ain’t done shit with it.”

I leaned against the brick wall of the building. “My grandpa used to say that any day above ground is a good day.”

“Yeah, well, your grandpa never lived in Peak Road.”

I grinned. “Why’d you get so uncomfortable when I asked about the killings?”

“We don’t talk about it. No one does.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t.”

“Seems like something you’d want to talk about so we can stop them.”

She inhaled another puff of smoke and blew it out of her nose. “You a cop or something?”

“I am.”

“Where from?”

“Honolulu.”

“Hawaii? I would do anything to go to Hawaii. I seen pictures online. It looks like the Garden’a Eden.”

“As close as we can come, I guess.” I stared out at the traffic passing us. Several drivers rubbernecked as they passed. “There’s this volcano on one of the islands. It’s inactive, so you can climb up to the lip. While you’re climbing, you pass every type of environment the earth has. You see desert, you see snow, jungle. Then when you get to the lip of the volcano, you look down, and it’s pure red and black. The heat just from there can singe your eyebrows off. It’s like you’re looking at the center of the earth, something people weren’t meant to look at.”

She thought for a second, rubbing her cheek with the back of her thumb. “So you’re takin’ me back with you when you go, right?”

I smiled. “Depends how much you help me.”

She exhaled, tossing her cigarette on the ground, then stepped on it. “You won’t find him.”

“Why not?”

“Because it ain’t a man you’re lookin’ for.”

10

I let Mickey sleep for several hours. After driving back toward Las Vegas, I found the town of Baxter about forty-five minutes away. At the movie theater, I bought a ticket to some science fiction movie, the only movie playing, and bought popcorn and a drink. The theater was dark and smelled stale. No one else was there, which was fine because that allowed me to think.

I thought, of all things, about Hanny and Julie, and I wondered what they were doing right now. Probably running around on the beach after dinner. The thought of her gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long while: butterflies.

I got a text from Mickey, saying he was up, and I left the theater and drove back to Peak Road. On the drive back through the thick woods, I stopped at the tollbooth, and a man stepped out and looked into my car. He had greasy hair that came down to his shoulders and a name tag that said Roger.

“You headed back in?” Roger asked.

“I am.”

“Ain’t talked to you and your friend. Where you guys from?”

“We’re just here helping out on something.”

“Them killings, ain’t it?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Damn sad. I knew the Noels. Good family. They moved here ’bout five years ago and fit right in. Just a damn shame the Lord would do somethin’ like that.”

“It is.” I paused. “How long have you lived here?”

He smiled. “My parents were born in the hospital in Baxter, and so was I. Don’t see no reason to go nowhere else. People is the same everywhere.”

“They certainly are.”

“Well,” he said, tapping the roof of the car, “don’t forget about the curfew, and have yourself a safe stay.”

“What curfew?”

“The booth. We close up at nine. No one in or out.”

“No one can come in or out of the town after nine?”

“No cars can. This is the only road in.” He walked back to the booth.

The room Mickey got was on the first floor, and he was lying on the bed watching television. He turned it off when I came in.

I sat in a chair by the window. “Did you know this town doesn’t let any cars in or out after nine?”

“I did. It’s actually illegal to do something like that, but I think the sheriff and mayor were the ones that instituted it. Why?”

“Just seems like an odd quirk. I’m sure there’s people in the town that work elsewhere. What do they do if they have to work late?”

He shrugged and rose from the bed. “I don’t know. Maybe the locals know another way in.” He stretched his back. “I’d like to go visit the sheriff and look at the murder book for the Noels.”

“I thought you’d already have it.”

“No.”

“No one from the Bureau made one?”

“There’s no one from the Bureau here, Jon. It’s just us. Kyle let me know about this as a courtesy, but he didn’t send anybody out. Said the feds had no business getting involved unless they were invited, and we weren’t invited. It’s a bullshit excuse. He didn’t want to waste the manpower when Las Vegas Metro is a couple hours away. He wants them to take care of it.”

“Are they going to?”

“Far as I know, the sheriff hasn’t requested any help.”

I looked out the window. “She thinks she and her one deputy can handle this?”

“Appears so. How’d you know she only has one deputy?”

“I went and visited her. Not exactly the friendliest encounter.”

“Well, friendly or not, she’s got all the evidence. I’ll drive.”

When Mickey parked in front of the sheriff’s office, I turned to him and said, “We have somebody to visit tonight.”

“Who?”

“I met a girl who told me what the people here think about these killings. She says her mother would have more information.”

“What kind of information?”

“She says it’s a real werewolf, not a man. And that her mother has seen it.”

He didn’t say anything for a second. “Well, what else are they gonna think? It’s easier to explain it that way than one of their own doing this.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts and goblins, Mickey. I think few people in this town are going to open up to us, and this girl has offered to. We need to take her up on it.”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

We got out of the car and went inside. Kristen behind the desk had her coat on and was holding her purse.

“Sheriff here?” Mickey asked.

She sighed. “Hold on.”

This time, she called back on the phone, and Sheriff Briggs came out a second later.

“Sheriff, I’m Mickey Parsons. I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Yeah, I figured. I met Hawaii Five-0 here already.”

“Yeah,” he said, glancing at me, “well, we need a moment of your time.”

“Where’s your badge?” the sheriff said.

I was surprised Mickey had lied. He wouldn’t have been allowed to keep his badge after he retired, unless it was a special retirement badge. But I had heard that like local law enforcement retirees, the retired agents often obtained replicas. I was expecting him to pull one out when he said, “Can we talk in your office, please?”

We followed the sheriff back to her desk and sat down across from her. The cluttered office had only a small window, which looked out onto the parking lot. A motivational poster with a kitten hung on the far wall.

“I’m actually retired,” Mickey said. “I was the original special agent on the Werewolf killings twenty years ago. I worked with another Sheriff Briggs then. Your father.”

She leaned back in the seat. “That so?”

He nodded. “And I seem to remember something about his oldest child who had just gotten a driver’s license for the first time while I was out here. I thought it was his son, but I guess he was referring to you. Your father was stressed about that.”

She grinned. “Yeah, he hated the fact that I could drive. Thought I’d go racing up the streets and crash into somebody. We get few accidents here, so I don’t know why he would think that.”

“You were his oldest child. Only a parent could understand something like that.”

She swiveled slowly in her chair, going one way a few inches then the other. “I’m guessing you’re here because of the Noels.”

“Why didn’t you call the Bureau for help?”

“Because you guys did so much last time?”

I watched Mickey to see if that stung, but he didn’t show any reaction.

“I did all I could last time. So did your father. We worked night and day, but there just wasn’t anything there. Forensics wasn’t what it is now, and for how brutal the killings were, the killer left little evidence behind.”

She sighed. “I know. My daddy always said that was the case that kept him up at night. He told me he knew it’d happen again. That someone that could do somethin’ like that wouldn’t just stop.”

“Is your father still around?”

“He passed three years ago.” She looked at me then back at Mickey. “I put in a request for help from Las Vegas Metro, if that’s what you’re wondering. They said they’d get back to me, and it’s been four days. I haven’t heard anything. They’ll probably get around to sending someone up here eventually.”

Mickey hesitated for a moment, keeping eye contact with her. He maintained his relaxed and open posture, showing her he had nothing to hide and was trustworthy.

“We’d love to take a look at what you have and see if we can help. The two people that know this case best were your father and me. If you don’t want the help, tell me now—and we’ll leave.”

She stared at him. A moment of silence passed between the three of us. I stared at the scar on her hand and couldn’t tell what it was from, whether it was a burn or a laceration. She gave me a look and angled the scar away from me.

“No, I want your help,” she said. “I’ll have Kristen give you what we have so far. The funeral was last week, and I ain’t diggin’ up those bodies, just so you know.”

“I wouldn’t expect it,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Save your thanks. I don’t think you’re gonna like what you see.”

11

The sheriff gathered everything her department had on the Noels’ case: one large murder book, along with keys to the home, which I had asked for. Mickey looked through it at the station, then we took the book and left. Since there was nowhere else to eat, we went to the diner.

It seemed that once darkness had fallen, the people in the diner had simply moved to the bar across the street. We nearly had the place to ourselves. Jennifer was gone, and only the cook and one server remained. Mickey ordered toast and coffee.

He began going through the murder book in silence, and as a courtesy, I let him.  The case was his, regardless of whether or not he still wore a badge. So I read articles in the New York Times and the Honolulu Star. I texted Jon Junior to see how he was—he responded much more reliably to text than a phone call—and he texted back that he was good. I told him I missed him, and he said he missed me, too, and that he wanted to come out to Honolulu for the summer.

After half an hour, Mickey closed the book. He sat in silence for a moment then pushed it over to me. “It’s the same. Identical in almost every respect. The forensic tech was a borrow from the Baxter PD and was decent, but not great. They did find some fibers on Mrs. Noels, enough that it indicates she was smothered with something. Didn’t die from it but had something over her face and mouth while he tried to rape her. Neither one of the other two families had that.”

I sat looking at the murder book.

“You’re not going to read it?” he said.

“I’m going to read it tonight. Somewhere else.” I checked the clock on my phone. “You coming to Jennifer’s with me?”

He nodded, sipping his coffee. “Chasing werewolf stories wasn’t exactly how I pictured my retirement.”

“Better than shuffleboard.”

Jennifer’s home was a one-story rambler in a neighborhood without a single fence. When the town was built, they probably knew nothing would really happen there and hadn’t seen the need for precautions like fences. After the original killings, I bet at least some people put up fences, along with alarms on doors and windows if they could afford them.

We parked on the street then crossed the lawn up to the door. I knocked and waited a few seconds before knocking again. Jennifer answered and smiled at me.

“Come in,” she said.

“This is Mickey.”

“Hi,” she said.

She led us into the living room where the furniture was covered with transparent plastic. A velvet painting of Elvis Presley hung on the wall, so large the frame nearly blocked the window. I knew I’d seen something similar but didn’t remember where.

“My mom should be out in a sec.”

We sat down on the sofa, and Jennifer sat across from us on a futon. She lit a cigarette and watched us.

“You don’t look like a cop,” she said to me. “You look like a beach bum.”

I grinned. “I guess I’m both.”

Her mother came out, wearing a thick sweater though it wasn’t cold. Without offering to shake hands, she sat down, took a cigarette out of Jennifer’s pack, and lit it. She took a pull and let the smoke out through her nostrils, just as I’d seen Jennifer do.

“Thank you for speaking with us,” I said, realizing I didn’t know Jennifer’s last name or her mother’s first name.

“Jennifer said I should. Don’t mean I’m gonna,” the woman said.

“Did she tell you who we were?”

“Cops. Same as the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Cops and reporters. One reporter came out some years ago and said he was writin’ a book ’bout the killings and would I talk to him. I said hell no, I wouldn’t talk to him. I don’t want my name in some book with that sick son of a bitch still out there. He said the man was probably dead ’cause it’d been so long, but it turned out I was right.”

“Your name’s not going anywhere. I don’t even know your name, and I’m fine keeping it that way. I just want to know what you saw. Jennifer thinks you may have seen something that could help us.”

She blew out a puff of smoke. “Yeah, I seen somethin’ all right.”

“What?”

She thought for a moment. “I was drivin’ to the store late one night. This was ’bout five or six years ago. Jennifer was sick, and I needed to pick her up some Tylenol. To get to the grocery store, you go up this little path through the trees and around. That’s the fastest way. So I did that.” She paused, playing with her cigarette. “It was dark even though the moon was out. I was goin’ through, and I seen somethin’ movin’ off to the side. Thought it was an animal or somethin’. Then my lights hit it. It weren’t no animal.”

I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. “What was it?”

“It looked like a man but had fur. Brown-and-black fur. It was down on one knee and had a dead animal in its hands. A rabbit, I think. The rabbit had its throat bitten out. He dropped the rabbit and looked up at me… and I seen them eyes. I’ll never forget ’em. The eyes looked like a man’s eyes, but it weren’t a man. And they were so angry… just so angry.”

She seemed to zone out for a moment, then she blinked a few times and was back. She tapped her ashes onto a small plate on the coffee table. “Anyway, I hit the gas and flew past. I don’t think it followed me. But I ain’t never taken that path again. I go only on the roads now.”

Jennifer was staring down at the coffee table, a glazed-over look on her face.

“Could it have been a man wearing a suit?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It had blood on its mouth from the rabbit. Eatin’ it raw. I’m tellin’ you, it weren’t no man.”

“Have you ever seen it again?” Mickey asked.

She shook her head. “No. And I don’t want to, neither. I’ll tell you one thing though: they showed the photos in the newspaper of the Noels. Of Danny Noel, anyway. Looked the same as that rabbit.”

I glanced at Mickey, whose eyes were fixed on the woman telling the story.

Jennifer said, “I heard stories, too. People in school would talk about it. Couple of boys went hunting up there at the gorge, and they said they saw it, too.”

“Which boys?”

“Travis and Trent Erby. Travis lives in Vegas now, but Trent is still here. He lives with his parents.”

I made a mental note of the name, since I didn’t want to write anything down in front of them. “Can you think of anything else that could help us? Anyone we should talk to?”

Jennifer shook her head. “Most folks aren’t gonna talk to you about it.”

I took out my card, the one the sheriff had handed back, and put it on the coffee table. “If you think of anything, let us know. And thanks for speaking to us. I promise it stays in this room.”

Jennifer’s mother rose and said, “You ain’t gonna find it. And them families is dead. Ain’t nothin’ gonna bring them back. Revenge or justice, whatever, don’t do nothing for the dead.”

“No,” Mickey said, rising as well. “But maybe it does for the living.”

12

After leaving Jennifer’s home, I sat with Mickey in the car at the curb. Mickey turned on a classic rock station at a low volume. Pink Floyd came through the speakers. He didn’t start the engine.

“They were frightened,” Mickey said. “I think they know whoever did this still lives in town. Maybe he never left.”

“You think he stopped for twenty years?”

“I’ve seen it before. A trucker in Kansas, killed six prostitutes on his routes. Married, had four kids, volunteered for his kid’s soccer team… Stopped killing for fifteen years for his family, and then one day, just needed to do it again. He was sloppy by then, though, and someone spotted him dumping one of the bodies. Some of them can stop.”

“Not like this. This is disorganized killing like I’ve never seen it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an underlying mental illness like schizo-affective or paranoid schizophrenia. He has no control of himself.”

“He doesn’t leave anything behind. How many disorganized serial cases have you had where they don’t leave anything behind?”

He was right. Disorganized killers, as opposed to organized killers, were like random natural disasters. They struck, caused as much damage as they could, and didn’t know why. They left behind massive amounts of evidence, because much of the time they didn’t even know they were killing. Underlying severe mental illness coupled with a traumatic, violent childhood was often the root cause. Or so the textbooks said.

“Organized killers have a paraphilia they need to get aroused—some non-sexual object or body part that is sexual for them. The kind of random chaos in these killings shouldn’t appeal to an organized killer. There’s not enough time for him to live out the fantasy. It’s almost like he’s an organized killer acting like a disorganized killer… I haven’t seen this before.”

“Me, either. First time for everything, though.” He started the car. “You wanna see if we can find Trent?”

“Why don’t you do that? I need to go somewhere first.”

I dropped Mickey off at the motel. Within minutes, his contacts at the Bureau would find Trent’s address, his criminal history, his psychiatric history—something most people didn’t even know the government had access to—and every other bit of information about Trent’s life. We would go visit him knowing more about his life than most of the people closest to him did.

The FBI turned to the NSA data-mining service to gather information. Much of it was kept secret from the public and was only marginally legal, although the FISA court, the court in charge of monitoring the intelligence community, knew such data wasn’t exclusively used to conduct surveillance and research on terrorists.

I put the Noels’ address from the file into the GPS in my phone. Considering how small Peak Road actually was, finding the home took longer than I’d expected. The home was up a road on a small hill. Though they had neighbors, the houses were set far enough apart that they could see each other but not have to interact. I wondered if any of the neighbors had even heard the screaming.

I got out of the car then leaned against the door. The home appeared to be a cabin, with log siding and large windows with a view of the surrounding forest. It had no backyard, just the woods engulfing it. I tucked the murder book under my arm and slowly went up to the home.

A basement window off to the side was surrounded by yellow police tape. I was surprised how every police agency used yellow tape. It seemed other colors would’ve worked better. The yellow had become so commonplace that it was like background noise. In some places, people routinely ignored it.

I ducked underneath and went around to the side of the home. The window was shattered completely; only a few shards remained in the frame. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight app. The broken glass was sprinkled through the dirt and leaves, and the scattered bits on the patio shimmered in the moonlight.

I had to enter the house as he had. I brought along the keys only in case the victims’ families had fixed the window. I stepped down into the well before the window and crawled through.

13

The darkness consumed me, but I turned off my flashlight app. He wouldn’t have brought light with him. He was an animal that would rely on his instincts to find what he was looking for.

The basement smelled like mildew and was just as cool as the outside air. Rain had gotten in through the open window, and the carpet was still wet.

Slowly, I took a few steps into the basement. It was an open space with only a small hallway down to the side that led to a bathroom. I walked down the hallway because he would have. He would need to check the bathroom to see if anyone was in it.

Then he would take the stairs. I moved over to them. Moonlight was coming in through a window on the upper floor. I took the stairs as quietly as I could, like a predator stalking its prey, using moonlight as a guide.

At the top of the stairs were the kitchen and the backdoor. A potted plant sat on a side table next to the door. I ran the palm of my left hand across the leaves as I crossed the kitchen. According to the layout of the house, which the detectives had drawn during the investigation, the bedrooms were down the hallway to the right, away from the living room. I didn’t want to go in there yet.

I set the murder book down on the kitchen table and flipped the light switch. The power was still on. The house looked different in the yellow light of the kitchen, but it was just as silent. I expected noise, as though a family still lived there.

Sitting down at the table, I took a moment before opening the murder book. The first pages were the police reports and supplemental narratives. The killer had shattered the basement window then gone upstairs without waking anyone. The toddler’s room was the first bedroom he’d found. Her death was instant but brutal. He then moved to the master bedroom, where Mr. and Mrs. Noel were asleep. One of the detectives noted that the television was on but turned low. He hadn’t written down what station it was turned to. The couple probably routinely fell asleep with the television on. One of them would have to wake in the night to turn it off. I tried to turn the television on to see what the last station was that they were watching, but it wouldn’t turn on.

The killer had murdered Mr. Noel first. One massive wound to the throat had severed veins and arteries, and police had found a massive chunk of flesh covered in bite marks on the floor next to his side of the bed. Traces of vomit told me the killer had tried to eat it but couldn’t swallow it.

That had to have woken Mrs. Noel. She was found on the floor. She probably tried to get out of bed and head to her daughter’s room. She had bruising around her ribs and a rug burn on her back. Her toe was fractured. He had probably tackled her during her attempt to flee. Unlike Mr. Noel, she’d received only a small bite to the throat, enough to bleed but not enough to kill. That’s when he’d tried to rape her.

The autopsy report stated there was no tearing, bruising, semen or any other evidence of rape. The forensic pathologist who’d performed the rape kit thought that only an attempt was made because the fibers and hair found in Mrs. Noel’s mouth matched fibers and hair found in her pubic hair and labia. If he was covered in a fur suit, grinding against her would’ve left the fibers and hair behind.

Blood loss had been the cause of Mrs. Noel’s death. Unable to rape her, he had bitten her to death.

I see pure, white rage. Nothing else. You are nothing to me. You are materials for my rage, and I will show you the power of nature. I am nature. I am your god…

The house creaked and startled me, and only then did I realize my eyes had been closed. I looked down at the file and saw that I had flipped through the reports to the photos. The first photo was of the toddler.

Children don’t matter to me. I’m not here for the child.

That was just a consequence of his rage. I flipped through those photos quickly. I rose from the table when I got to the photos of Mr. and Mrs. Noel. I took the hallway slowly, as he would have. Every other part of the process would have been rushed but not the stalking. He would’ve wanted to feel the anticipation for as long as he could, feel the power he held over this family.

I opened the bedroom door. No one had cleaned up the blood. Most major cities had crime-scene cleaners to clean up the homes. Peak Road was too small for that. The relatives would have to clean it themselves.

I placed the largest photo of Mr. Noel on his side of the bed. Men had a tendency to take the side of the bed closest to the bedroom door, a subconscious mechanism to offer protection against an invader.

I took out the largest photo of Mrs. Noel and placed it on her side of the bed. Then I stepped back closer to the door, seeing them as he would’ve seen them.

The windows were closed, and they probably had been that night. It had been raining the night the family was killed. I stepped closer to the bed, staring at it.

You are mine. You have always been mine. You were born for this, for me. And I was born for you.

I went over to the right side of the bed and knelt. Then I moved over to the bloodstain on the floor near the bed—the spot where he’d killed Mrs. Noel. She’d gotten about four feet away.

I took a few steps back to the light switch by the door then turned on the light. Blood hadn’t soaked just the sheets and the floor. Small droplets were spattered across the walls, too. Blood dotted the ceiling, the ceiling fan, the nightstand, the closet doors, and the television—on both sides of the room. Both Mr. and Mrs. Noel had tried to fight, possibly for their daughter. They hadn’t known she was already dead.

“What is it you need?” I whispered. “What do you see when you close your eyes?”

I turned off the light and stepped back out into the hallway. I had to look—to see what he was capable of. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath before opening the door to the child’s room. Inside were a crib and toys. Blood—arterial spray—coated the room.

I quickly shut the door, my heart pounding so hard that it deafened me. My breathing was shallow, and my vision blurred. My chest tightened; my fingers itched. I ran to the front door. I was moving so fast that I fumbled with the chain and couldn’t get it open. I pulled on the door so hard, the chain broke off, and I sprinted out into the night air.

I collapsed on the grass and dirt and put my head down. I felt as though someone were sitting on my chest. I took breaths as deep as I could and kept my eyes closed. I lay on my back, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. After a few minutes, my heart began to slow, and I caught my breath.

I sat up, watching the surrounding forest. The trees moved with a breeze, making a sound like human voices. I rose and walked back to the car.

14

At the motel, I sat in the parking lot for a moment, just breathing. I focused my mind on a single thought—the way the waves crackled against the sand on the beach near my house. I thought about this for a long time before I opened the door and headed inside.

I took out the key to put into the lock, then I noticed the door was open. I pushed it wider and didn’t see anyone inside. “Mickey?”

I could hear loud music a few doors down, but our room was completely silent. I could see Mickey’s bed from the door—he wasn’t in it. The rest of the room was dark. I reached back and put my hand on my gun but didn’t take it out of the holster. I scanned the parts of the room I could see, and saw no one.

I stepped inside, and something hit my ribs like a truck, flinging me out of the room and onto my back. A dark figure ran out of the room and sprinted into the night.

I got to my feet and drew my gun. I raced into the dark. The figure went toward the road. I could see a silhouette every time the person neared a light post. The sprinter was faster than I was, leaping over trashcans and dashing through bushes as though they weren’t there. I followed the figure onto the sidewalk. My legs were burning, and he was getting away.

I kept going for block after block until my chest seared as if someone had dumped acid in it. Finally, my legs wouldn’t go any farther. I stopped on the sidewalk, so off balance from the blow I’d taken that I nearly fell over, sucking air as if I’d been held underwater.

The figure disappeared around a corner.

I was searching the motel room when Mickey opened the door.

“He was here,” I said. “Where were you?”

Mickey froze. His eyes ran over the room. “I walked down to the all-night pharmacy. How do you know he was here?”

“Because he gave me this.” I lifted my shirt. A bruise matching the metal blade of the shovel lying on the floor crossed my ribs. “He caught me when I walked in.”

Mickey hurried into the bathroom and searched. I knew what he was looking for—a note or something purposely left behind. If this man had been so brazen as to come to the motel room of the investigators looking for him, there was a chance he was trying to stop but couldn’t. He would want us to make him stop—suicide by cop.

“Anything?” I asked.

“No. You?”

“Nothing.” I sat down in the recliner by the window, my hand over my ribs. “He ran so fast, I couldn’t keep up. And I think he ran barefoot.”

“Barefoot?”

I nodded. “I think so. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

Mickey sat on the edge of the bed for a moment. “It got back to him that we were here. And we haven’t talked to that many people.”

I put my feet up on the bed, trying to alleviate the pain radiating from the side of my body. “I think we need to pay Jennifer another visit.”

I resisted going to the hospital that night and barely slept. The next morning, I went back to Jennifer’s house, and I had Mickey wait for me outside. He tried to insist that he take me to a hospital, but I wouldn’t go. I had felt fractured ribs before, and mine were merely bruised now. Doctors couldn’t do anything for bruised ribs.

It was early but not early enough that Jennifer would be asleep. I knocked on her door and took a step back. Seconds later, she opened the door.

“Hi,” she said, a grin on her face. She wasn’t concerned, which meant she thought my visit was a social call.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure. You wanna come in?”

“How about we go for a walk?”

“Lemme get my shoes.”

I waited on the porch and looked out at the car. Mickey had his head leaned back against the seat. He had been the best investigator I’d ever met, full of boundless optimism that somehow, the good guys would always win. That had been ten years ago, though. Now, he looked like a tired old man. Instead of his usual energy, I had the sense that everything was a sheer act of will. Suddenly, I felt bad for him in a way I hadn’t before.

I’d never really considered that I would be attending his funeral one day. Even when he’d told me of his HIV diagnosis, I’d known that thanks to modern drugs, people could live meaningful, productive lives for decades. His imminent death just hadn’t hit home. But seeing him now, wearing the fatigue as clearly as a heavy coat, I felt the reality set in. I didn’t have many friends, and losing even one would be a real loss.

“You ready?” Jennifer asked, shutting the door behind her.

We strolled along the sidewalk. I don’t know why I’d said we should go for a walk because every step sent a sharp, shooting pain up my side. I ignored it. The sunlight came through the trees in fragments and lit our path, but huge swaths of sidewalk remained covered in shadow from the massive trees lining the street. Jennifer had her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

“I looked up some pictures of Hawaii,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about it since you told me all that stuff. I told my mama I’m gonna move there one day.”

“You should. I usually think running away doesn’t solve anything. That your problems just follow you. But I think I ran away there.”

“Are you happy?”

“I don’t know. I’m not miserable. Maybe that’s good enough?”

She grinned and reached out to take my hand. “You seem sad. Not like you’re sad now, but like you’ve always been sad. Like you have some secret that makes you like that.”

I wanted to let go of her hand. She was only nineteen. But somehow, I suspected she needed it more than I did, so I didn’t withdraw.

“Is your mother on her own?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. My daddy ran out on us when I was born. I’ve never even seen him. He called my mom once, like five years ago. I think he asked for money, but he didn’t want to talk to me, so I don’t know.”

I stayed silent as we turned a corner into a new neighborhood. A few cars were on the road now, and country music played through outdoor speakers at a convenience store. A person I guessed was the cashier sat on an empty plastic carton, smoking.

“Jennifer, I need to ask you something really important: did you tell anyone that we talked?”

“No.”

“You didn’t tell anyone that we were here looking into the death of the Noels?”

She shook her head. “No. Why would I?”

“What about your mom?”

“No, I don’t think so. She don’t really talk to no one. I can ask her if you want.”

“Please do.”

She was silent for a second. “Why?”

“He knows we’re here looking for him. Someone we talked to must’ve told someone else, and it eventually got back to him. He’s here, in the town.”

She stared down at the concrete. “You don’t believe my mom, do you? About what she saw?”

“I don’t think she’s lying, if that’s what you mean. I just think she’s mistaken. When visual images travel from our eyes to our brain, our brain has to interpret them. Sometimes, because of factors we can’t control, our brains interpret them badly, and we see things that aren’t really how they are in reality.”

“So what’d she see then?”

“I don’t know. My guess is an animal.”

“Have you talked to Trent yet?”

“We’re going later this morning to catch him at work. Jennifer, if anyone asks you anything about us—”

“I’ll let you know right away,” she said.

We stopped and looked at each other for a moment, then she leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t participate, but I didn’t fight it off. She pulled away, smiled, and we started walking back to her house.

15

Mickey changed our motel room. We asked the front desk clerk later that morning if anyone had asked about us, but he said no. That meant whoever had been in the room had followed us and watched to see what motel room we were in. It was unusual for either one of us to miss somebody tailing us.

We set out for Royal Lumber to interview Trent. The lumberyard was small but seemed to have a lot of employees. Many small towns had a central business that employed most of the town. When that business went bankrupt during an economic downturn, the entire town went under. I’d been to several towns in California where that had happened. The only people who stayed were the ones who didn’t have the means to leave, robbing each other of what little they had left.

We parked near the office, which was just a long trailer, and stepped out of the car. The sound of machines cutting lumber filled the air, which tasted of sawdust. Several men wearing hardhats walked around, and a few glanced at us.

I climbed the steps of the trailer. Inside, two men sat at a desk. One stared down at a stack of papers, his glasses perched on his nose. The other one was drinking something out of a Styrofoam cup.

“Excuse me.” I took the chance and flashed my badge. It said Honolulu PD on it, but I guessed they couldn’t see it from where they were sitting. “We’d like to speak with Trent Erby, please.”

The man sipping out of the cup put it down on the desk. “What do you want with him?”

“Need to ask him a few questions about a pending investigation. Is he here?”

The young man rose. “I’m Trent.”

We went outside and stood near the trailer. Some of the other men were watching us, and Trent said, “We can talk over there.” He pointed to a bench set up among a thicket of pine trees. It was far enough away that no one else could hear what we were discussing. Trent sat on one side of the bench, and I sat across from him. Mickey stood.

“We’re helping Sheriff Briggs with the investigation into the death of the Noel family.”

His face turned a light red, and his jaw muscles clenched. “I knew Danny real well. When I think about what happened to him… I just wanna…”

“I know.” I nodded. “That’s why we’re here. We’re gonna find who did this.” I let a beat pass in silence. “I wanted to talk to you about something else. You and your brother, Travis, were camping once, and you saw something… unusual. Is that right?”

He looked up at Mickey then back at me. “Who told you that?”

“Does it matter?” Mickey asked.

“No, I guess not. I just don’t talk about it. Some people know, but some people think I’m crazy.”

“Tell me what you saw, Trent,” I said.

He looked back at the men as though making sure none of them were paying attention to us. “We were up at Veil Falls. It used to be a waterfall, but the water dried up a long time ago. It’s a gorge now. If you camp up on the ridge, though, you can see the entire valley. We were camping there and sitting by the fire. I think I was talking about something, some girl we both knew, and we heard something.” He swallowed. “It sounded like a howl. We have coyotes here, so I didn’t think anything of it. Then I heard it again—closer. And I’ve heard coyotes, and that wasn’t a coyote.

“Just past us was the forest. We were camped out in a clearing, and we kept hearing the howls until they were right there. Then the thing growled at us. Travis grabbed the rifle, but we didn’t see anything. We just heard growling all night from the forest. Neither one of us slept. About two in the morning, I was dozing off, and in the trees, I saw it. It was watching us. Crouched down… it was just watching.” He tapped his finger against the table. “I haven’t gone into the woods at night since.”

Mickey said, “Could it have been a wolf or bear?”

“No. It was crouched, like it walked on two legs. It wasn’t a wolf, or a bear.”

“Did you ever see it again?”

He shook his head. “No. Like I said, I don’t go into the forests anymore. But when the Noels were killed… I thought maybe that’s what it was. In the photo in the paper, they were torn apart.” He looked from me to Mickey and back again. “I don’t know what I saw. But I know for sure it wasn’t a wolf, and it wasn’t a man.”

Jennifer was working, and after sitting us at a table near the counter, she brought out coffee and orange juice. We hadn’t eaten breakfast, and after spending a solid hour with Trent, going over everyone in the town we might need to speak with, I was hungry. I took a sip of the juice as Mickey drank his coffee and stared out the windows.

“I think she likes you,” he said.

“It’d be more appropriate for her to date my son in high school.”

“Does age really matter that much?”

“Would you be with a nineteen-year-old?”

“My grandfather once told me that you only get a few women that you love in your life. You don’t get to choose them—they’re already chosen for you. The trick is to recognize them and then hang on to them. Ruth was my first, and Camille is my third.”

“Who was the second?”

He grinned as he took another sip of coffee. “Gillian Hanks.”

“The director of Behavioral Science?”

He nodded.

“I’ve never met her,” I said.

“She reminds me a lot of you. Laser focus when she’s in an investigation. She’s an administrator in Washington now, but we still talk occasionally. She has a doctorate in psychology, too.”

“Why isn’t she Mrs. Mickey Parsons?”

“It didn’t work out between us. Neither one of us recognized what we had, and by the time we did, it was too late. We’d moved on. I was back from Vietnam only six years, still unable to really get a solid footing. I’ve been thinking about her a lot since we’ve been out here.”

I saw Jennifer smile and wink at me. I grinned and turned back to Mickey. “Why?”

“She was about as analytical a person as I’ve ever met. In college, she actually started a skeptics magazine debunking the paranormal and fringe-science claims. But our last conversation a few months ago was different.” He paused. “She told me psychic phenomena were real.”

“Why does she think that?”

“They had a psychic consultant on that Blood Dahlia case last year.”

“I remember reading something about that online. I thought the Bureau must’ve been pretty desperate to bring in a psychic.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But Gillian says the girl proved herself. Sarah King. Gillian thinks I should meet her for some reason.”

“And you’ve been thinking about Sarah because you’re wondering if maybe there’s some truth to werewolves.”

He hesitated. “I’m thinking about clinical lycanthropy. What do you know about it?”

“There’s some suggestion that King Nebuchadnezzar’s behavior in the Book of Daniel was actually a manifestation of clinical lycanthropy. It’s been recognized for thousands of years. It’s a type of psychosis. Many sufferers don’t even remember their transformations or how they behaved. I saw a video once in graduate school of someone with clinical lycanthropy who tore apart a bed with his teeth and then a few hours later asked what had happened to the bed.” I paused. “That’s what you thought twenty years ago. You’re not still thinking it now, are you?”

“I don’t know. If Gillian Hanks believes in psychics, who am I to question werewolves? You believe in God and the devil. Is this really so far out there from that?”

“It’s different.”

“Why? Thousands of people throughout time have said they’ve seen werewolves.”

“It’s a method of explaining something we can’t understand. They didn’t know about serial murder in the Middle Ages. Werewolves were used to explain the torn corpses the villagers sometimes found. You can’t seriously believe in this, Mickey.”

“I’m just doing thought experiments to cover every angle. I’m not saying we should go out and buy silver bullets. I think the guy already attacked us, so we know it’s a man. Whether the full moon does anything to him, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it would probably be psychological.”

We finished eating then decided we needed to see if Mickey’s original suspect still lived in the town. We ran a check on him, but his information ended in 1999. After that, there was nothing to indicate he was even alive—no address, phone number, place of employment, or even credit inquiries.

Mickey drove through town until he came to an old mechanic’s shop. A car was up on the lift, and a man in dirty overalls was working on it. We approached him. He ignored us and continued working on the car, even when we stood right in front of him.

“Hello, Earl,” Mickey said.

Earl Kaiser was a big man with a belly that tightened his overalls. His hands were caked in grease, and his fingernails were black. He put down his tools and grabbed a rag. Wiping his hands, he approached us.

“You again? I thought I was done with you.”

“Been a long time.”

He stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “What you want, Agent Parsons?”

“You still remember my name. I’m impressed.”

“Hard to forget the man that accused you of killin’ two families. What you want now? Come to blame the Noels on me, too?”

Mickey put his hands in his pockets. “You were the only sex offender in town. And the way you raped that girl, biting her cheek like that—you have to admit, you looked good for it.”

“Shit, that girl wanted it rough. And we were both drunk and high. Don’t mean nothin’. I actually seen her again few years back, and the stupid bitch said we should hang out sometime. You believe that? Ruined my life and thought I’d be happy to see her.”

Mickey looked over the shop. “You seem to be doing all right in life.”

“I am.”

“I couldn’t help but notice you’ve fallen off the grid. How’d that happen?”

He shook his head. “Government, man. They reading your texts and emails. They planting things in your house… I ain’t got nothing for you fuckers to find. No official address, I don’t get mail, and I don’t use the phone except here. I don’t have nothin’ for you to find. I’m off the registry now ’cause my charges was reduced. I ain’t got nothin’ for you.”

“Seems lonely, Earl. Being off the grid like that.”

He shrugged, spitting onto the concrete. “Is what it is. So I’m gonna ask you one more time, then I gotta get back to work. What you want?”

“I don’t suppose I need to ask you where you were when the Noels were killed.”

“No, you don’t. I was at home. My neighbors can tell you I rolled up after work, seven o’clock, and was home the entire night till I left the next mornin’. That’s the truth.”

Mickey nodded. “You know what would really help? If I could search your house. That would really help calm my mind, and you want me to be calm. Don’t you, Earl?”

“You ain’t searchin’ shit. You fucked me last time, and I ain’t lettin’ it happen again. I’m done.”

Earl went back to work on the car. Mickey grinned and turned away. I followed him back to our car and we got inside.

“He hates me because the whole town thought he did it,” Mickey said. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want anyone to know we had a person of interest, but someone let it out.”

“Odd that he’d stay in town.”

“People like what’s familiar. What was your sense?”

“I didn’t get anything. We should check with his neighbors, but he could’ve easily snuck out at night and gotten back while his neighbors slept.”

Mickey’s cell phone rang. “Hello?… Yes… No, email it to me. What’s it say, Gus?… You’re sure? How sure?… Okay. Thanks for getting it done so quickly.” He hung up and stared at his phone for a second.

“What?” I asked.

“I had the hair collected from Mrs. Noel sent to the labs in Quantico with a rush order. They have the preliminary report done. They’ve identified their origin.”

“What is it?”

He hesitated. “Wolf fur.”

16

By afternoon, we had talked to Earl’s neighbors. Most of them didn’t pay any attention to Earl. They said he was like a reliable clock. He got home at seven every night and left every morning at eight. On Saturdays, he ate at the diner, and other than that, he never went out.

I kept staring at Earl’s home. It seemed like something a grandmother would live in, and I guessed he was renting so he wouldn’t have to register a deed in his name. Dark curtains covered the windows, and the lawn had long since died.

“I’d love to be able to get in there,” I said.

“I know,” Mickey said, walking down to meet me on the sidewalk.

We stared at the home from across the street.

“You know,” I said, “you’re not technically a government agent. If you were to go in there—”

“A good defense attorney would tear me up on the stand. I was FBI for twenty-one years. No way a judge would consider me a civilian. Or you, even though you’re not a cop here. Anything we found would be considered part of an illegal search by law enforcement.” He looked over at a home half a block down. “Let’s try that one.”

The house was larger than the other ones on the block, and the lawn was well cared for. As we walked up the driveway, I looked inside the black sedan parked there. The interior was clean. The car had to have been twenty years old but looked brand new.

Mickey knocked, then we waited. Before long, an older woman answered the door. A cross dangled from a thin gold chain around her neck.

“Yes?”

“Ma’am, we’re investigators helping out Sheriff Briggs and just had a few questions if you have a moment.”

She stared at him for a second. “Yes.”

“On the night of April second, did you notice anything unusual in your neighborhood? Anyone leaving or coming home late in the night? Maybe on foot?”

“That would’ve been Friday, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mickey never called anybody ma’am. I’d noticed he patterned his approach based on who he was speaking with, and he’d even affected a slight southwestern drawl for this woman’s benefit.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “What is this about?”

“Just some follow-up we’re doing for the sheriff.”

She stared at me before turning back to Mickey. “Is it about the Noels?”

Mickey hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh. Okay, that makes sense. Come inside.”

Mickey glanced back at me before going in. That look said he had hit a vein and we needed to follow it as far as we could. I followed them in, and the home was decorated like a memorial to a single man—probably her husband, but possibly a son. I couldn’t tell because I saw only photos of him, none of them together.

She led us into the living room and sat us down on a sofa before she went into the kitchen. She returned a minute later with tea and cookies. Mickey took the tea, and I had a cookie as I ran my eyes over the photographs on the mantel.

“I suppose you’re here to ask me about the werewolf. I have seen him if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Mickey stared at her. “When?”

“Oh, some ten years ago, I think. We lived in Baxter. It was late one night. We were coming home from a trip. The roads weren’t as well taken care of as they are now. We had to take back roads to get to the far end of town. We were near a farm. We passed it when I looked over. Harold, my husband, was staring at the road, driving, but I got a good look.” She took a sip of tea and didn’t say anything for a while.

“What did you see?” Mickey said. I noticed he’d dropped his drawl.

“It was staring at me. Not out of curiosity, not like an animal. It was staring like it wanted to hurt me but wouldn’t get the chance. I think it growled, but I couldn’t hear it from inside the car. And we kept driving.”

I said, “Did you call the police?”

“And what would I say? I saw a werewolf? I don’t think they would take me very seriously.” She paused. “They take me seriously now, though. Don’t they?”

Mickey didn’t say anything for a long time, until the silence became awkward. She didn’t seem to mind.

“When these killings first started twenty years ago, I didn’t interview you. Did you know the Wyatts or the Roths?”

She nodded. “We lived in Baxter, but both towns were still small enough to know everyone. So, yes, I knew them.”

“So if you have to guess, who killed them? Who’s been around twenty years to do something like this?”

“I already told you.”

“But even a werewolf changes into a man.” Mickey leaned forward. “I want that man.”

The woman stiffened and stared Mickey down right in the pupils. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I haven’t a clue.” She was clearly lying.

Mickey looked up at the photos on the mantel and said, “Husband?”

“Son.”

“Where is he?”

Her jaw flexed as she ground her teeth. “Dead. Fifteen years now.”

“I’m sorry. How did he die?”

“He drank himself to death, like his father.”

Mickey nodded slowly then rose. “Thank you for your time.”

When we were back in the car, he said, “She knows who it is.”

17

Through a quick call to Mickey’s friend in the FBI, we found out the old woman’s name was Kathleen Harken. We went to the sheriff’s office, where Sheriff Briggs was talking with a man who was noticeably drunk. He was slowly tipping over to one side, and just when I thought he might fall over, he would catch himself and begin tipping the other way.

When she was finished with the man, she walked over and leaned against the front desk. “Got a complaint call on you two.”

“Earl, I’m guessing,” Mickey said.

She nodded. “Says you’re trying to blame the Noels’ killing on him.”

“Only if he did it.”

“He was the first person I looked at. My father told me about him. He’d warned me to stay away from him when I was in high school. Earl would try to pick up high-school girls in his Camaro. When I became a cop, I looked up his old rape file at the DA’s office. He bit off the woman’s cheek.”

Mickey’s watch beeped, and he turned it off. “Can I get a glass of water, please?”

The secretary got him one, and he excused himself to the bathroom.

“What’s wrong with him?” the sheriff asked.

“Small bladder. What do you know about Kathleen Harken?”

“The widow? Nothing. Why?”

“I think she knows more about these killings than she’d like to admit. Does she spend time with anyone else in town? Any male friends or relatives?”

She shook her head. “Since her son and husband died, she pretty much keeps to herself.”

“She has no relatives nearby?”

“None that I know.”

“She’s protecting somebody, and I don’t know who.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with her. She keeps to herself. I’d appreciate it if you kept away from her. She suffers from dementia. I don’t want her harassed.”

The secretary answered the phone then said it was for the sheriff. Sheriff Briggs took the call in her office, leaving me alone in the foyer. I stepped outside. Sitting on the front steps, I looked up at the sky, where gray-black clouds spread like pus. They would block the sunshine, release it, then block it again. It was disorienting, and I was glad when Mickey came outside. I rose and followed him to the car.

“I think we should look more into Kathleen Harken,” I said.

“What did you have in mind?”

“I want to pull up a list of relatives. I’m willing to bet Earl Kaiser is on that list, or close to someone on that list.”

Mickey got the list almost immediately. The only one left in the state was a niece in Baxter. Mickey looked exhausted, so I didn’t suggest we drive there. I told him I was feeling tired and wanted to get something to eat. He said he could use a nap, as well, and we went back to the motel room. I dropped him off then began the drive over to the next town. My ribs ached, and I stopped at a convenience store and got a Diet Coke and a packet of ibuprofen. The clerk reeked of marijuana, and his eyes were rimmed with red. He didn’t speak as he rang me up, and when I left, I heard him say, “Damn pigs,” under his breath.

At the tollbooth, Roger waved to me, and I waved back. But he had a stare that said he wasn’t happy to see me. Mickey had been right: no one in the town wanted us there. Maybe they felt embarrassed that something so terrible was going on in their town, or maybe everyone just hoped ignoring the killings would make them go away.

I got to Baxter as the sun was beginning to set. The address listed for Tamila Harken was in an apartment complex—two buildings with a pool in between. I parked on the street and wandered around for a minute before finding her apartment on the second floor. The doors seemed to have been numbered at random.

I knocked then turned to look at the pool, where a life vest floated lazily. I stared at it while I waited for her to answer the door.

I flashed the badge. “I’m Detective Jon Stanton.”

She hesitated and pulled the door closed a little more, revealing only her face. “That badge is from Honolulu.”

“It is. I’m a consultant. I’m helping the sheriff’s office in Peak Road with the deaths of the Noel family.”

She seemed to cower behind her door. “What do you want?”

“I was just hoping we could speak.”

“I don’t know anything. I haven’t been to Peak Road in ten years.”

“Just a few minutes, and then I’ll leave. We can talk out here if you’re more comfortable.”

She nodded and stepped outside, shutting the door behind her. I sat down on a step to give her height over me, hoping to make her feel at ease. She took a package of cigarettes from her back pocket. The package was wrinkled, and the cigarette she pulled out was bent. She lit it, and I let her take a pull before saying anything.

“Did you know the Noels?”

She shook her head. “I ain’t been back in ten years. I told you that. They moved in after I left.”

“Your aunt, Kathleen, did she know them?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know who she knows or doesn’t know.”

“You don’t talk?”

“No.”

I noticed a stain on the left knee of her jeans. Dark, almost black, it looked like blood. “You okay?” I said, pointing to her knee with my chin.

Before she could answer, my phone rang. I looked at the ID: it was my youngest son, Jon Junior. My thumb hovered over the answer button, but I pressed Ignore instead and put it back into my pocket.

“My knee’s fine,” she said.

“What made you leave Peak Road?”

She took a pull from her cigarette again then lowered it before turning away from me. She walked over to the railing and looked down at the parking lot. “It’s an evil place.”

The statement took me back. I sat in silence for a second before I realized she expected me to say something. “Evil how?”

“Stay there long enough, and you’ll find out.” She turned back around. The moment of honesty was over. She was defensive again. “Are we done?”

I stood up, staring down at the concrete littered with cigarette butts. “How did your cousin die?”

“Michael? Why you wanna know about him?”

“Just curious.”

“He killed himself.”

“How?”

“Shotgun. Kathleen was the one that found him.”

“He shot himself? He didn’t drink himself to death?”

She shook her head. “No. He hated booze. When we’d go to bars, he drank wine coolers.”

I nodded. Why would Kathleen lie to me about something like that? It couldn’t have been embarrassment or shame. It seemed more difficult for her to tell me he drank himself to death than it would’ve been to say he shot himself.

“I’d like to ask a few more questions about Kathleen if that’s all right.”

“I got things to do, Detective.”

“One more question then: if you were me, who would you be speaking with about the death of the Noels?”

She smirked. “Maybe you should be asking Sheriff Briggs that.”

With that, she shut the door, leaving me staring at it. I put my hands in my pockets and returned to the car, watching the moon coming up over the forests surrounding the city.

18

I drove back to Peak Road. I had forgotten that the tollbooth would be closed. Spikes extended across the road, but I spotted a small clearing off to the side. I drove into the clearing and through a thicket of trees, looping back to the road. Within a minute, I was back on the road and past the tollbooth. Clearly, the booth wasn’t meant to actually keep people from coming and going. It was meant for something else, but I didn’t know what.

I actually was hungry now, so I stopped at the diner. Jennifer was outside, smoking and laughing with a few boys. They hid joints behind their backs when they saw me. As I got out of the car, I heard her tell them that I was cool.

She came over to me. “I went to your motel, but you weren’t there.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to see you.”

I locked the car and headed into the diner. She followed.

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “They lock the tollbooth up at nine and put spikes on the road, but someone can easily drive around. Why do they bother with it?”

“Oh, it’s just, like, a reminder, I guess. That you shouldn’t be outside after dark. The sheriff told everyone that. But what the hell else we gonna do? There’s no malls or movie theaters here, no gyms, nothing. We gotta do something. Other than dream of escaping from this shithole, I guess.”

We went inside and sat down. Jennifer asked if I was hungry, and I said I was. She said she would have something special made just for me. She went to the back then came out and sat across from me.

She looked and acted older than nineteen. People who had tough lives aged quickly. They were forced to leave childhood behind to deal with the things in their lives that wouldn’t leave them alone, no matter where they ran or how hard they fought.

“I looked at more pictures of Hawaii,” she said, playing with a silver ring on her pinkie. “You know I would go with you right now if you asked me, right? Just pick up my clothes and go with you.”

I nodded. I had known that. But what would she have with a life built with me? Pain and eventually loneliness.

Still, it was a nice daydream. She was extraordinarily beautiful; that beauty would only grow as she entered her twenties. It would be quite something to wake up every morning and see her lying next to me.

“I know you would,” I said.

“So you gonna ask me?”

“You wouldn’t want to go with me. I have a string of broken relationships behind me.”

“So you gonna be alone your whole life?”

“I don’t know if that’s exactly our choice or not. It doesn’t seem to be.”

She thought for a moment, her teeth pinching her lower lip. “That’d be sad if I believed that. That we don’t get to choose if we’re alone or not.”

We sat in silence for ten or twenty seconds. She played with her ring, her eyes on the table. I knew she was dreaming of a life that could’ve been, one where I swooped in and took her away from this place. That wouldn’t happen. The majority of people died within fifty miles of where they were born.

“Can I ask you something, Jon?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

My mouth opened. Before anything came out, a man approached the table and stood next to us. It was the tollbooth attendant, Roger. He held a cap in his hands and was staring at the floor.

“I think we better talk, Detective.”

I leaned back in my seat. “Why’s that, Roger?”

“Because you gonna find out anyway, so may as well be now.” He paused and then swallowed. “I killed them families.”

19

I stared at Roger, and he stared back. Neither one of us said anything. I took a quick look at Jennifer. She hadn’t moved, though she didn’t look afraid. Slowly, I slipped my hand down to my firearm. I flipped off the safety strap and felt the grip against my palm.

“Roger,” I said calmly, “why don’t you go ahead and get down on the ground really slow.”

“Well, I turned myself in. If I meant you harm, I wouldn’t have done that. You don’t need to be scared. Not right now, anyway.”

“Just please do as I ask. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Roger nodded. He sighed as he got down to his knees then looked up at me as if waiting for further instructions. I got up from the table and realized I didn’t have any handcuffs.

“Get down on your stomach, please.”

“Why? It’s dirty down there.”

“Roger,” I said, my weapon out of the holster now, “do as I say. And do it very slowly.”

Roger swore under his breath then got down on his stomach. I sat on his back and held his hands flush against his body as I searched him for weapons. There was nothing. I texted Mickey, and he texted back that he and the sheriff would get there as quickly as they could.

Roger was calm. I could feel his heart beating against my knee. It wasn’t beating quickly, not as quickly as it should’ve been for someone who had just confessed to the murder of three families.

“What did you mean when you said you killed those families?”

“I meant I did it. I’m the one you’re lookin’ for. I just thought I’d make it easier on both of us. You’d come for me eventually.”

I took out my phone and started the recording app. My instinct told me to read him Miranda, but I wasn’t a cop here. It wouldn’t matter. But I did it anyway.

“Are you saying you killed the Noels?” I said after telling him his rights.

He nodded, though one side of his face was against the floor. “Yup.”

“How did you do it?”

“Just with my teeth. I’m the wolf, Detective.”

Jennifer was still sitting in the booth. Now she looked frightened. I didn’t want her near Roger. I didn’t know exactly what his plan was, but I didn’t think turning himself in was it. The killer wanted to stop, but he wouldn’t stop easily.

We sat there for what seemed like an eternity. Finally Mickey and Sheriff Briggs and her deputy ran into the diner. Briggs froze. “Roger?”

“Yes, ma’am, Sheriff. I’m him. I’m the wolf. I’m who you want.”

The deputy grabbed his wrists and slapped cuffs on him as I moved off. The deputy lifted Roger, and he stared at Mickey as he stood. Mickey’s face was like stone. He didn’t blink as he watched the man.

Without a word, Mickey stepped aside and let the deputy take Roger out to the cruiser.

Hands on her hips, the sheriff watched them leave. “I don’t believe it. He ain’t got no history.”

“The man we’re looking for probably wouldn’t have criminal history other than voyeurism,” I said. “He would get a thrill from watching families and knowing they couldn’t see him. Has he ever had anything like that?”

The sheriff hesitated. “One time, his neighbors that used to live here told me they caught him in the bushes staring into their daughter’s room. She was twelve, I think. He had his pants down. We never filed a report.”

“Why not?”

“Roger apologized, and the neighbors accepted his apology. Wasn’t no need.”

Mickey shook his head. “We would’ve interviewed him a long time ago if he had a voyeurism conviction. It would’ve been voyeurism of a child, which is a registrable offense in this state. He should’ve been on the sex offender registry.”

“Well, how could I know he’d do something like this? He was harmless.”

“The Noels might still be alive if you’d done your job.”

The sheriff’s face flushed pink, and her jaw clenched. But before Sheriff Briggs could respond, Jennifer said, “He didn’t do it.”

The three of us looked at her. She seemed to shrink away, as if our attention hurt her. She looked at me.

“He didn’t do it, Jon. Roger’s my cousin. I know him. I’ve known him my whole life. He couldn’t even go hunting with my uncle ’cause he’d nearly faint at the sight of blood. He’s really slow and had to be in special classes his whole life. He didn’t do this, I promise you.”

The sheriff glared at her, and for a moment, so did Mickey. They’d forgotten they were arguing, and the sheriff just turned and left.

Jennifer grabbed my arm. “Jon, I promise you. Just talk to him. You’ll see he didn’t do this.”

20

The sheriff’s office seemed cold. I left my jacket on as we stood outside the holding cell. The department didn’t have interview rooms, so the officers did all the interviews either in the holding cell or the conference room in the back.

The sheriff had called in Las Vegas Metro, one of the largest police departments in the country. They would take over the investigation and officially handle both the arrest and the press conference tomorrow, which had apparently been set even before Roger had given an official confession. Police agencies did love their media attention whenever they got a win, even if the win walked through the door on his own.

“We have about two hours before Metro gets here,” Mickey said. “They’re taking him back to Vegas.”

The sheriff had told us we could speak to Roger, but our conversation had to be recorded. They didn’t have a camera, so Mickey took out his phone and got the video recording ready.

“You wanna do it?” he asked.

“No. This is your case.”

He nodded, hit the record button, and went inside the cell. I stood off to the side, where I could still hear them. Mickey’s voice was deadpan, as though he were speaking with an apparition he didn’t quite believe was there.

Roger went into detail about the murders. What we were specifically looking for was a detail someone outside the investigation wouldn’t have known. About twenty minutes into his confession, we got it.

“Mrs. Noel tried to get up and run. She slammed her foot into the nightstand damn hard, and she fell. That’s when I jumped on her.”

Mrs. Noel had fractured the big toe on her right foot. That fact was never released to the public. The ME didn’t know how she’d gotten it, but he’d guessed it had happened before her death, not after. I thought it must’ve happened during the attack, after she was already down, but her attacker had been focused on her from the genitals up. He wouldn’t have had a reason to break her toe.

Finally, after another half an hour of going through the details of what happened to all three families, Mickey asked the question I had been waiting for. “Why, Roger? Why would you do this?”

“It ain’t me. It’s the wolf.”

“You told me you’re the wolf.”

“I am, in a sense. But it takes over. I turn into him, and he comes out. I ain’t got no control. I feel horrible ’bout what happened to them people—I do—but I didn’t have no control.”

Mickey wrapped up the interview after a few more questions then stepped out of the room. We stared at each other without saying anything. Mickey’s face, usually worn like a shield so no one could see what he was thinking or feeling, broke into a grin.

I hung out at the sheriff’s office until Las Vegas Metro got there. Two detectives, both dressed in nice suits, sauntered in and interviewed the sheriff, me, Mickey and Jennifer. They then sat in the room with Roger for about an hour. When they came out, they said they had their confession, which Mickey had already given them. Then they were gone, with the original murder book for the Noels, Roths, and Wyatts.

Just like that, it was over.

Mickey sat next to me on the beat-up couch in the lobby. He leaned his head back on the cushion and stared at the ceiling for a while.

“Why would he just come in?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Sometimes they don’t want to keep going but they don’t want to die, either.”

“You don’t find that odd that we speak to Kathleen, someone we both thought was hiding something, and then the killer just happens to come in and confess?”

“He knew the detail about the toe. Only the ME, the sheriff, and we knew that.”

“But why now? Why did he come at just this moment when we were close to a real, workable lead?”

“I’m just as curious as you, and maybe the Metro guys will find out, but I’m tired. I’m tired of this case. I’m tired of chasing these sick bastards… I’m just tired.”

“Mickey, listen to me, the only reason I can think of for him to waltz in here and confess is that whoever killed those families is going to run. Roger is a diversion. They’ll probably find out he has alibis for the nights of the killings. But they won’t find that out until later, when the man who actually killed those people is already gone.”

Mickey looked pale and had dark circles under his eyes. He melted into the couch as though he couldn’t get up again even if he wanted to.

“Maybe. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it.”

Before I could say anything else, the sheriff, the deputy, and a man I didn’t recognize came out with a bottle of champagne. The sheriff said they were celebrating and introduced the second man as the mayor of Peak Road.

They popped the champagne and poured it into plastic cups. Someone turned on Fleetwood Mac somewhere, and a few other people came in. Mickey didn’t get up, but he seemed to enjoy the company and the congratulations.

I couldn’t celebrate. He’s going to run. I know it. I just didn’t know how much time I had before he was in the wind. My guess was probably no more than a day.

I stood by while they drank champagne and congratulated themselves. I wasn’t like them. For me, it was the chase—the catch meant nothing. I wondered why I had never seen that before.

This chase isn’t over.

When we got back to the motel, I waited until we were out of the car. I had to think about how I could convince Mickey to see this my way. Ten years ago, he would have believed me, but now he looked so tired that I knew he wanted nothing more than to go back to his wife and rest.

“Mickey,” I said as we walked through the parking lot, “he’s not done. He’s going to keep doing this until someone finds him.”

Mickey stopped and turned to me. “We have a confession with a detail only the killer would know. I don’t know what else you expect us to do.”

“Are you kidding? Mickey, you eat guys like this for breakfast. Ten years ago you wouldn’t have stopped until every stone was turned and every possible angle worked. Now you’re just giving up at the first sign of an easy out?”

“Do you have any plausible explanation as to why Roger knew about the toe? Because if you don’t, then he’s our guy. We got our collar, Jon. Sometimes knowing when to stop is more important than starting.”

“Hey, you asked me, remember? You came to me and asked me to help. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be out here. And you knew that by showing me the Noels, I would see the rest of them. The ones that don’t even know they’re dead yet. You got me into this, so you don’t get to back out.”

He watched me for a second. “I’m sorry, Jon. I’m on the next plane out in the morning. I suggest you go, too.”

21

I couldn’t sleep, so I drove. Though the town was small, every town looked the same at night—all the dark corners, shadows that raced across walls and pavement, and stares of people who didn’t want others to see them. I went to an all-night pharmacy. The lighting inside hurt my eyes and began to bother me right away. A single cashier was there but no pharmacist. I scoured the aisles for ibuprofen and found a small bottle of Advil. I took four right there and washed it down with a few sips of a Diet Coke I opened.

“You gonna have to pay for that,” the cashier said.

“I will.”

I was still hungry, but nothing sounded good. I went through the other aisles and got a bag of chips. When I paid for them, the cashier was staring at me like I was about to run off with them.

“Hey, wait a sec. You’re that cop, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“Yeah, you tryin’ to catch the werewolf, right? You got him yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

I drove around a little more. There was a park, of all things, near the edge of town. I don’t know why a town surrounded by forests would need a park, but there it was. I sat on a bench and stared out over the playground equipment. A swing moved gently back and forth with a breeze.

My cell phone buzzed. It was Laka.

“Miss me already?” I asked.

“Jon”—her tone told me this wasn’t a social call—“you have to come back.”

“Why?”

“The Meyer case. We got a collar on it, but no one can break him. I know this is the guy.”

I hadn’t thought about any of my open cases since coming to Peak Road. Bella Meyer had been killed in her apartment by a single stab wound to the abdomen. She was a student at the University of Hawaii and had lived on the island for only eight months before she was killed. I thought the boyfriend was good for it, but we’d never had enough to hold him.

“The boyfriend?”

“Yes. Got a friend that says he told him he did it. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer, but we can’t hold him much longer. How quickly can you get back here?”

“I don’t know if I can. I’m not done here.”

“Jon, this is your case. I need you here.”

“And I said I can’t do it,” I said angrily.

I wanted to shout into the phone and felt the flush of resentment in my face. Then I got embarrassed that I had allowed myself to get rattled so easily. “I’m sorry.”

She was silent for a few seconds. “I don’t know what could be more important than finding that girl’s killer, but I hope it’s worth it.”

She hung up without saying goodbye.

The morning light pierced my eyelids and lit the world a bright red. I put my hand over my eyes. I felt the hard bench underneath me and remembered deciding to sleep in the park. I’d wanted to sleep outside underneath the open sky. Maybe to prove to myself that there was nothing to fear; that there wasn’t a monster roaming around in this town.

I checked my phone. I had left the location services and Bluetooth on, and it had died sometime during the night. I stuffed it into my pocket and rose. Stretching my neck from side to side, I felt the weight of age. That’s what getting older always felt like to me. I hadn’t gained any physical weight in twenty years—my body never worked that way—but I felt a lot heavier, as though the world were pressing down on me. And those little old hunchbacked men always gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as though the world had pressed down on them so hard, it had broken them.

The chase. That’s what this is about. What it’s always been about. I knew I should let go and leave. Mickey had been living with this case for two decades. If he can let go, why can’t I? What is it about me that won’t let it go?

I got into the car and drove. My stomach growled, and I felt the dull ache of intense hunger. I stopped at the diner—a part of me was excited to see Jennifer. The way she smiled when she saw me gave me butterflies—the same feeling I got in junior high school when a pretty girl would speak to me in class for the first time or knew my name.

The diner was busy, and I had to wait by the entrance for a booth. Jennifer wasn’t there, but it was still early. Her shift might have started later in the morning.

I ordered a vegetarian omelet with salsa and an orange juice. I ate slowly, savoring the food. It was good, though a little greasy, but I could tell the ingredients were fresh, even the eggs. After breakfast, I sat on the hood of my car and stared up at the blue sky. The sky above me was cloudless, but I could see them farther out on the horizon. I would be gone before they got here.

I went back to the motel, expecting to say goodbye to Mickey, but he wasn’t there. I thought he had already headed to the airport, but his clothes were still in the room. I showered, shaved, then began to pack. A while later, I remembered that my phone had died, and I plugged it in. I let it charge for a few minutes before turning on. Then it dinged, indicating I had voicemails and text messages.

Mickey had texted and called several times. I called him back.

“Where are you?” he said as a greeting.

“The motel.”

A pause. “Jon, something’s happened to that girl. I’m down here with the sheriff and…”

He didn’t have to finish—I knew who he was talking about. I ran out of the motel room and to the car.

22

The first car I saw was the sheriff’s. She must’ve picked Mickey up from the motel. A forensic CSU van from Baxter was there, as well as a couple of police cruisers. Mickey was standing on the sidewalk, speaking with the sheriff, when I came up to them.

“I’m sorry,” Mickey said.

“How did you find out?”

“The mother called it in when she woke up this morning. Says she didn’t hear a thing last night.”

“I wanna see her.”

Mickey nodded, and the sheriff didn’t say anything. I brushed past them and went toward the house. I took the steps slowly, and the officer at the door looked to the sheriff, who nodded, before letting me past.

Jennifer’s home seemed untouched, no different than it was the last time I’d seen it, except for the energy. After a murder or suicide, the energy in a place was always different. I could never put my finger on it, but something just felt off. I heard the voices of two men upstairs. I took the stairs and found them in a bedroom. On the floor were Jennifer’s bloodied remains.

It wasn’t the brutal savagery that had descended on the Noels. One massive bite to the throat—almost surgical, directly over the jugular—had killed her. The carpet was wet with her blood, and it had soaked the blue booties the two forensic techs were wearing.

I didn’t go into the room, but I stared at her face. Her eyes were open. Next to her hand was her cell phone. She had been trying to call somebody for help.

“Can you please see what the last number she called was?”

One of the techs gave me a quizzical look, but then he checked. He picked up the phone with his gloved hands and said, “Just three numbers. Eight oh eight.”

That was a Honolulu area code. She had been trying to call me.

I walked down the hallway and into the other bedroom. Instead of her own room, she’d been killed in what looked like a spare bedroom. She’d probably fought him off and gotten all the way there before he caught up with her. Scratches on the door meant she had tried to close the door on him.

Jennifer’s room was bare, with the exception of a poster of Mauna Kea, a volcano in Hawaii, hanging behind her bed. I wondered if she’d printed it off herself from online.

I sat down on her bed. I had told her that she wouldn’t want to be with me because every woman who got close to me got hurt. I put my elbows on my thighs and brought my hands up under my chin. I stared at a spot on the carpet. It was dark brown, like spilt coffee.

I swallowed and gazed at that spot. Eventually, my eyes burned from not blinking, and I looked away. I rose and went over to her closet. She didn’t have a lot of clothes, but she definitely had a particular taste—revealing. I touched a blouse I’d seen her in at the diner. I reached up and pulled a notebook down from the shelf above her clothes. Dates and notes were scribbled inside—it was a journal.

I flipped through to the final entry, describing her shift at the diner and how her mother was bugging her to go to community college and learn a trade like cutting hair or massage. At the very end was a sentence that made my heart drop: “I don’t want to go to college. I want to move to Hawaii and marry Jon Stanton.”

The rest of the pages were blank—lots and lots of blank pages. Those pages should’ve been filled with a life of joy. Of a husband and children and old age. Of heartbreak and sadness. Of love. Everything she had learned through living. Instead, there was nothing but white paper.

I closed the journal and put it back on the shelf. I had to put my hand on the wall because my knees felt weak, as though I could pass out at any second.

On the way to her house, my thoughts had drifted. I’d thought about just crashing the car—then it would all be over. Without a seatbelt, one turn of the wheel into a tree or barrier would end everything. The reason I couldn’t leave Peak Road was the same reason I had destroyed everyone near me and why I wanted my kids to live thousands of miles away from me: my obsessiveness destroyed anyone I cared about.

“You okay?” Mickey was standing by the door. He leaned against the frame with his arms folded. He had an air of authority to him, real authority that I hadn’t seen in too many other people. People wanted to make him happy.

“No, not really.”

“You couldn’t have prevented this.”

“We both know that’s a lie. If I hadn’t come out here, she’d still be alive.”

“He could’ve targeted her months ago.”

Mickey was being generous to ease the sting, but we both knew that Jennifer’s death was a message. Jennifer was his way of telling me I wasn’t the one in control.

“He did this for me,” I said. “There’s no one else to blame. But we were leaving. If he would’ve waited a day, we both would’ve been gone and this case closed.”

Mickey thought for a moment. “Maybe he doesn’t want us to leave.” Mickey turned and began speaking with the forensic techs.

He was right. This didn’t make any sense to me, but that’s because I wasn’t thinking like him. I was thinking like me. He didn’t want us to leave. He wanted to stop but didn’t know how. He might have rationalized killing Jennifer by thinking he wanted to antagonize the police, who he likely viewed with contempt, but that wasn’t what he really wanted. Jennifer’s death was his effort to get caught. He was crying out to me to not give up.

I stepped out into the hall, and Mickey turned to face me. “Can you get a ride back with the sheriff?” I asked.

He nodded. “Where you going?”

“Las Vegas.”

“Jon,” he called from behind me.

I looked at him.

“Justice is one thing, but revenge is another. Revenge is empty. Don’t cross lines you can’t come back from for revenge.”

“Tell that to Jennifer.”

I hurried out to the car.

23

Vegas was nearly two hours away, but I got there in an hour and a half. I sped the entire time and had arguments prepared to give the highway patrol trooper if I got pulled over, but it never happened.

The sheriff had told me that Metro PD was keeping Roger in a precinct in North Las Vegas. I mapped it and got there quickly by taking back roads and avoiding the Strip. The precinct was nice, and I vaguely remembered being there before. I’d helped on a case years ago and knew several of the detectives. I had even, briefly, dated one.

I stepped out of the car and hurried inside to the front desk. A uniformed officer sat reading a magazine. He glanced up at me then returned to the magazine.

“Excuse me, is Alma Parr in this precinct?”

He flipped a page. “What do you need to see the captain for?”

Captain? That was better than I could’ve hoped for. “Can you please tell him Jon Stanton is here to see him?”

The man sighed as he put down his magazine and picked up the phone. I paced in front of the desk. Too much energy was flowing through me, and I couldn’t have sat down if I’d wanted to.

“You can go back,” the officer said. “Fourth door on the right.”

The walls of the long hallway held plaques bearing the names of officers who had died in the line of duty. I didn’t look at them. Every police station had those plaques, and I never looked at them.

Alma Parr was as big as I remembered. He had a smooth, bald head with muscles that bulged underneath a blue T-shirt. He looked up at me and smiled. “As I live and breathe. Jon Stanton back in the City of Sin.”

We shook hands, but I didn’t sit down. I stood behind the chair and placed my hands on it. “Captain, huh? I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. They owed me after I took a bullet last time. You here to apply for a gig? ’Cause I could always use a good gumshoe in Homicide.”

“No. I need a favor, Alma.”

I explained to him about Roger and Jennifer’s death. I told him I needed time with Roger to find out who had put him up to confessing for the Noels’ murders.

“Seems good for it, man,” Alma said.

“You’ll dig a little deeper and find some alibi that makes it impossible for him to have killed those families. And he certainly didn’t kill Jennifer. He was here. You’re gonna have to cut him loose sometime. I just want a few minutes with him first.”

He thought for a moment, swiveling his chair one way then the other as he stared at me. “All right. No camera, and this stays between us.”

“You got it.”

He led me down the hall. Everyone said hello or cracked a joke with him. They not only respected him but liked him as well. I had never felt that camaraderie in any precinct. I was usually considered an outsider.

We got to the back holding cell, and Alma told an officer to bring Roger to Interview Room Two. He opened the door, and I sat down.

“Look familiar?” he asked.

On the case I had worked in Las Vegas, I had been a suspect in a crime, and Alma had interviewed me in this very room.

“I appreciate this.”

“No worries.”

He left me alone.

Roger was brought in ten minutes later, looking disheveled and frightened. I don’t think he had planned to be held in a cage for so long.

“You here to get me out?” he asked as he was sat down across from me.

I could see the desperation in his eyes. I remembered what Jennifer had said: that he was mentally slow. I took a deep breath, as though I had bad news to tell him, then placed my hands gently on the table. I gave him a sad grin. “I’m sorry, Roger. I just came to see if you needed anything before tomorrow. If you wanted me to say goodbye to anyone, like your cousin Jennifer or anyone like that.”

“Jen? Why would I want to say bye to Jen?”

As I’d figured, he didn’t know anything about her death. “Well, in preparation for tomorrow, it’s customary to get a last meal and to watch a last TV show. I thought I would set that up for you.”

His eyes, already filled with fear, shifted to absolute terror. “What do you mean last meal?”

“I thought the officers would’ve told you by now. Have they not talked to you about the death penalty?”

He shook his head. “Ain’t no one talked to me since yesterday.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, maybe I should let them explain it first.”

“No, please. What about a last meal? What’s going to happen tomorrow?”

I swallowed. “Roger, you killed multiple people. This has been certified a death penalty case. They’re going to kill you tomorrow.”

His eyes went wide, and his mouth opened a few inches. “Wha… but I ain’t got no lawyer or a… or a…” He looked as if he were about to hyperventilate.

“Sorry, Roger. You don’t get a lawyer in a death penalty case. Or a trial. That’s what makes death penalty cases so different. The judge reads over your file and decides whether there’s enough evidence. He did that yesterday. The execution’s been set for tomorrow at eight in the morning. I thought you knew.”

His lower lip was trembling. His handcuffs clanked against the table as he pointed at the door then dropped his hands back onto the table. “They never told me that! Ain’t no one told me nothin’. She said if I did this, I would be let out. That I wouldn’t have to spend the night, even.”

“Who told you?”

He hesitated, realizing he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Roger, you are about to die. If someone put you up to this, you need to tell me so I can stop this execution.”

He nodded furiously, his eyes darting around the room. Hands pressed hard against the side of his head, and he slowly rocked back and forth.

“It was Aunt Kathy. She said if I did this that I’d be out of jail right away. That she wasn’t gonna let no one do nothin’ to me. But I spent the night. She said I wouldn’t have to spend the night.”

“Aunt Kathy? You mean Kathleen Harken, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, she said nothin’ was gonna happen to me. That I’d be helping out everyone if I did it.”

“What did she mean by ‘everyone’?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know nothin’. She just said everyone. I’d be helping everyone, and I wouldn’t have to spend the night.”

The rocking was violent now, and he was pressing so hard against his head, his fingers were turning white.

“Roger, who really killed those people?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Aunt Kathy does.”

24

It was nearly afternoon when Mickey and I sped through the residential neighborhood. I checked my weapon and wondered when I’d last cleaned it. I was feeling too much adrenaline, and rushes of adrenaline affected both long- and short-term memory.

“You sure?” Mickey asked as he spun the wheel and took a hard left.

“I’m sure.”

“I think we should have backup.”

“The sheriff’s not answering her phone. They don’t have a SWAT team here, Mickey. Unless we want to wait for Las Vegas Metro, it’s just us.”

“You could’ve told Metro while you were there and asked for help. You wanted this to just be us.”

I didn’t respond as I holstered my weapon. “It’s gotta be her son,” I said, changing the subject. “Kathleen’s son is still alive, and I bet he’s Earl Kaiser. He’s the only one who’s been here for the original killings and these. And he’s raped before. That’s gotta be why they’re in the same neighborhood. He wants to be close to his mother.”

“Let’s at least get that deputy out here to have the semblance of legitimacy.”

I didn’t object, and Mickey called over to the sheriff’s office and told the receptionist we were on our way to Kathleen’s home. He asked that both the sheriff and the deputy get there ASAP. He also called the FBI field office in Las Vegas, but they couldn’t get anyone out for a few hours.

Mickey stopped the car just up the street from Kathleen’s house. He checked his weapon then said, “You know this is crazy to go in there like this, right? We’re not even cops here.”

“If you want to stay, I understand.”

He stared at me. At some point, the case had gone from his to mine. I knew my obsession had taken it away from him, and I wondered if that’s what he’d wanted all along. He had plenty of connections at the Bureau he could’ve asked for help. If he really wanted, the FBI would’ve taken this case and even put him back on some sort of temporary employment so he could work it legitimately. But that wasn’t what Mickey had done. He had come to me. I was unnerved to realize that he had known something about me that I hadn’t understood at the time.

“No,” he said. “I’m coming.”

We raced up to Kathleen’s house. The home I really wanted to get into was Earl’s, and that would come. But first, I needed to get Kathleen to someplace she couldn’t do any damage. We would cuff her, if we could find some cuffs, and place her in the back of the car. The town had a municipal court and a judge, so at least the deputy could apply for a warrant for Kathleen’s phones and Earl’s house without having to drive to a different city.

We drew our weapons, though I knew neither one of us wanted to use them on an elderly woman. Mickey looked down at his then holstered it. I debated for a second then did the same. Rather than kicking down the door or breaking a window—things we could have been prosecuted for—I just knocked. Then I pounded with the side of my fist. Even arresting Kathleen would be tricky. Most states had a citizen’s arrest statute, a part of the law that covered private citizens stopping someone during or after they had committed a crime. That might protect me and Mickey from a lawsuit. But it might not. I didn’t really care at this point.

No one answered, so I tried the door. It was open. Inside, the home was quiet. I slipped in, and Mickey followed.

“Hello?” I said. “Kathleen? This is Jon Stanton. We’d like to speak with you again.”

I stepped around the corner and looked into the living room. Searching a house felt too weird without my firearm, and I reached down for it. Then I stopped. If something did happen, if I killed this woman, it could be considered murder. I’d entered her home without her consent. Still, I felt naked.

Mickey moved ahead. He looped around the couch to have a look in the study. I took the stairs to the second floor. I couldn’t stop myself from taking out my weapon. I had to have something, but I left the safety on.

The second floor consisted of a few bedrooms. The home was large, meant for a family. One room hadn’t been touched in so long that I could see the thick layer of dust on everything from the hallway. Inside, the room smelled like a man’s cologne, just a faint fragrance that I could hardly pick up.

“Kathleen?” I said. “I know Earl’s your son. I just want to talk.”

I listened but didn’t hear a response. Back in the hallway, I noticed photos on the wall. The same ones were downstairs: her son in a military uniform, at the beach, and at the Las Vegas Strip. I glanced at each one before heading back downstairs.

On the top step, I heard a shot.

25

Gun first, I ran down the stairs. The shot had been loud. It had echoed through the house, and I couldn’t tell where it had come from. I ran through the living room and shouted, “Mickey!”

In the kitchen, I saw him facedown on the linoleum. Blood was coming out of his shoulder, and he groaned. I ran up to him—and heard the click: a gun’s hammer cocking.

I didn’t move.

“Kathleen, we just came here to talk.”

“Kathleen’s dead.”

I couldn’t place the voice at first, but when I did, my heart sank. Slowly, I turned around to find Sheriff Briggs pointing her weapon at my face. I swallowed. I had been wrong: Earl Kaiser wasn’t Kathleen’s son.

“Sit down, Jon.”

I took a step back from her. The dining table was right there, and I pulled out a chair. As slowly as I could, so as not to startle her, I sat down. She pulled out a chair, too, but sat about ten feet away from me, far enough that if I rushed her, she could probably get off four or five shots.

“I thought Earl was her son. I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

The sheriff leaned back. I still couldn’t see it. Not only did she look like a woman, but she was a beautiful one at that.

Transsexuals were generally passive and non-violent. A psychopath in the transgender community was rare. They tended to be strong introverts, escaping into their own world from the cruelty the outside world imposed on them.

“Your mother told us you were dead, Michael,” I said.

She lifted the gun. “That’s not my name anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. But you will be.”

I thought for a moment as the two of us stared at each other. “When you killed the first family, you must’ve been sixteen.”

“Fifteen, actually. See, Sheriff Briggs wasn’t my real father. Kathleen wasn’t my real mother, either. I was adopted. Though they didn’t ever tell me. I found out when I became a cop and could search my records. Odd thing, finding out something like that. You don’t know whether to be happy that you’ve got parents out there you haven’t met, or sad that you’ve been lied to your entire life.”

“Did your dad know?”

She nodded. “That’s why Mickey here could never find anything. Whatever evidence there was, my dad scooped it up and got rid of it. Can you imagine that? He was as honest a cop as you’d ever find, and he destroyed evidence of multiple murders to save his son. I mean, how excruciating must that have been, right?” She shook her head. “I was scared there for a second. When Mickey remembered Sheriff Briggs’s son getting his driver’s license. I thought you two might look a little more into me, but that one slipped past ya, didn’t it?”

We were silent for a long time.

“Give me the gun, Dolly. It’s over. You can rest now.”

She chuckled. “Detective, I’m about to blow your brains all over my mother’s table. Then I can rest.”

“If you were going to kill me, you would’ve done it that night you broke into our motel room. You don’t want me dead. You want to die, and you want me to do it for you. But you don’t need to die. I can help you.” I started getting up from my seat.

She jerked her arm straight. “Sit the fuck down!”

“No. I know you. I know you don’t want to kill me. Give me the gun, Dolly. Something’s wrong with you, and you don’t know what it is, so you want to die. But you don’t have to. I can help with the pain.”

Tears came to her eyes, but her face was like stone. “You can’t help. No one can. I go crazy. I’m possessed by demons. I just go crazy some nights, and people have to die. How you gonna fix that, Jon? Huh? You gonna put me on Prozac? Have me start exercising three times a week? I kill and eat people. There’s no cure for it.”

I took a step forward. “Yes there is. Everything has an explanation. Even evil can change. It’s just a choice, as easy as any other. You just have to choose not to do this anymore.”

The tears streamed down her face. “I’m sorry, but you have to die.”

I took another step toward her. “You won’t shoot me.”

“Don’t you fucking test me.”

“You won’t shoot me,” I said softly, taking another step. “I’m being protected. That’s why you chose me, isn’t it? You can sense it, too. I’m special.”

“No, nobody’s special.”

“I was sent here just for you.” I took another step and glanced at Mickey. He wasn’t moving. “I was sent to help you.”

“Stay away!”

She fired a shot, but it went wide. I knew it wasn’t meant to kill me. I took another step toward her, then another. I was within five feet of her.

“I can take all that pain away.” I took another step, and reached out slowly for the gun. “All of it will be gone. You can rest now, Dolly. You can have peace.”

Her hand was trembling as my fingers nearly reached the gun. It was pointed at my face. If she fired, I wouldn’t survive.

“You’re still a human being, Dolly. You don’t need to live like this. You can rest… you can rest.”

In a flash of movement, I grabbed the gun from her. I slammed my fist into her jaw, sending her back against the wall. Pressing my body against hers, I pushed the gun against her throat.

“Do it,” she whispered. “Do it, please. I can’t stop. Do it, do it, do it, do it…”

I saw Jennifer and the life we could’ve had. I saw the Noels, the Wyatts, and the Roths. I saw children, barbecues, and picnics… but I saw it through a hazy lens. I was looking at a video of something from a long time ago that didn’t exist anymore.

“Do it,” she said, closing her eyes.

I felt the trigger against my finger.

“Do it.”

I closed my eyes. So much rage writhed inside of me that it felt uncontrollable, as if the decision were out of my hands now. I pictured pulling the trigger and seeing her head explode—blood over the white walls, oozing down to the floor. She was a monster as real as any werewolf. She needed to die. Revenge was the only way Jennifer could have some peace. It was the only way.

I fired.

26

I sat outside as Las Vegas Metro took Dolly Briggs, whose previous name had been Michael Harken Briggs, out of her mother’s home. She walked out in cuffs with an officer on either side of her. I had fired six shots into the ceiling, and bits of plaster still stuck to her hair. She looked at me before getting into the police cruiser.

She had undergone a sex change after leaving Peak Road and had returned as Dolly Briggs, the former sheriff’s eldest daughter whom he never spoke of. No one in the town had ever questioned it—if they had, they didn’t tell us. In a small town with so many secrets, not a single person thought it was odd that the sheriff would have a daughter he hadn’t raised there and never talked about. I wondered if it was intentional blindness: that trait in humanity that makes us reluctant to get involved in other people’s problems.

We found Kathleen’s body in the basement of the home. She had died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Dolly had probably been nervous that her mother would reveal who she really was and had decided a bullet was easier than living with that uncertainty.

Mickey had been taken to the hospital. I was planning to head there after giving my statement.

One of the detectives came up to me. He was chewing gum, and he spit on the ground before shaking his head. “Damn crazy shit up here,” he said. “They found a mechanical mouth at the sheriff’s home. Metal teeth and everything.”

I looked out at the cruiser as it pulled away. Dolly was still staring at me.

I’d wanted to leave Peak Road immediately, but I had to stay for Mickey. He had been shot in the collarbone and needed surgery. His wife wasn’t scheduled to arrive until that night, and I didn’t want him to be alone until then. I sat next to his bed that second night and read A Tale of Two Cities to him. He stopped me once and said, “I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”

“No you’re not.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saw something in me. Something I didn’t acknowledge. You knew it’d get to the point that I would destroy myself or find who killed those families, and that’s what you wanted. Maybe not consciously—maybe you didn’t admit it to yourself—but that’s what you wanted. You wanted me to get obsessed, even if it killed me.”

He didn’t respond. He acted as though the massive amount of pain medication had affected his ability to talk, but I think he knew it was true. That monster had killed families, and Mickey felt like I was expendable in the face of that, or that maybe I would find who did it when no one else could.

I left Peak Road that night, after making one more stop. I stopped at Jennifer’s house, and her mother let me in. She had drunk herself into oblivion, and instead of speaking with me, she just went back to the couch in the living room and collapsed in front of the television.

I went up to Jennifer’s room. I stood there for a second and took in Jennifer’s scent. It was still there, just barely. I removed the thumbtacks from the volcano poster on the wall, rolled it up, and headed out. My flight back to the islands was scheduled to take off in a few hours, and I wouldn’t miss that plane for the world.

27

Back on the island, the first place I went was Julie’s. She answered wearing rubber gloves, and she had wet spots on her shirt. She smiled when she saw me and said, “Back already?”

I didn’t say anything. I grabbed her around the waist and kissed her. At first she was surprised, then she wrapped her arms around my waist.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away.

“No,” she said, blinking several times. “No, I’m glad you did it.”

I heard barking, and Hanny ran out of the other room. I bent down, and he jumped on me, nearly knocking me back.

“He would go to the window every morning and watch for you,” she said. “I don’t think you can leave him very often.”

I shook my head, rubbing the fur behind his ears. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving again.”

EPILOGUE

Nine months passed before I heard from Mickey again. He just sent a postcard, which I received on a Saturday before heading out to surf. On the front was a photo of a beautiful little alcove in the Virgin Islands. It said “Greetings from Paradise” on the corner.

I turned it over:

Jon,

If you’re interested, Dolly Briggs underwent a neuro-psychiatric evaluation, and a tumor the size of a quarter was pressing against her cerebellum. It was removed last month, and I hear her therapy is going better now. She claims the violent thoughts have left her. She’s more honest, too. She wore a wolf-fur suit when she killed, and told them where she hid it. She wasn’t attracted to women. That’s why there was no penetration with foreign objects or sexual torture. The psychiatrist thinks the tumor maybe caused her violence. Her lawyers are going for a mental health defense and hoping to get her into the state hospital.

I’m sorry for what I did to you. I mean that.

Your friend,

Mickey Parsons

I tossed the card into my trash. He didn’t need to ask for forgiveness. The truth was, in his spot, I would’ve done the same thing. For men like us, the obsession ran both ways: we could see it in others only because we had it in ourselves. Mickey and I weren’t much different.

Julie came into my kitchen and began making breakfast. I could see the engagement ring on her finger from here, and I hoped she genuinely loved it as much as she said she did.

“Be back in a bit,” I said.

“K, love you.”

I put on my sunglasses and headed to the beach. The sky was clear and blue. Today’s going to be a good day.