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  Bozeman muttered and mumbled, cut, measured, recorded. When he was done, his hands hung at his sides as he shook his head.

  "I’ve never seen anything like this," he said. "Come here."

  I didn’t want to and I could tell Clyde was thinking of about a thousand other things he’d rather do, but we went. We looked and we listened. We learned.

  "The spinal column is altered. Twisted as if it were…" Bozeman’s voice trailed off. He appeared to be searching for a word but unable to find one.

  "What?" Clyde snapped.

  "Changing."

  Oh, boy , I thought. That doesn’t sound good.

  "Changing how?" Clyde asked.

  "I don’t know. He’s also got hair growing out of his back."

  "Some guys do," I murmured.

  "Not like Mel’s." Bozeman manipulated the body. He was right.

  The hair, long and blond, resembled fur, but how could that be?

  "What’s going on?" I asked.

  "I have to do more tests." Bozeman continued to stare at the body as he talked to me. "Maybe send out some samples. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover bizarre changes in his DNA."

  "From a wolf bite?"

  He started, blinked, glanced at me. "Hell if I know."

  Clyde had been amazingly quiet all along. He, too, was staring at the table. His expression was one of horror. I’d never known him to have such a weak stomach before. Clyde must have seen things in his years on the force that I’d only imagined. So what was the matter with him now?

  "Clyde?"

  I touched his arm and he jumped, yanked free, and spun away from the body. Any expression that had been on his face before was gone. Clyde was a good cop, a good guy. It probably just bothered him to see Mel this way.

  "Do whatever you need to do, Prescott, and get back to me. Jessie, I want you to go to the Clip and Curl."

  My hand went to my hair. The feminine nature of the gesture made Clyde scowl. "Yours is fine. And since when do you care?"

  I blushed. If I didn’t watch it, I’d be painting my nails and buying a dress.

  I lowered my hand and curled my treacherous ringers into a fist. "What for?"

  "Tina didn’t come home last night. I got the call just before you came in. You gonna check that out?"

  "I thought you didn’t want any overtime."

  "Looks like that idea is shot to hell." He sighed. "I gotta talk to Cherry. I don’t know what I’m going to tell her."

  Since I didn’t want that job, I took the one that had been given to me.

  However, on the way out of the hospital I ran into the ER doctor. He recognized me and paused. "The ME discover what was up with that guy?"

  I shook my head. Even if he had, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to tell. But I could ask…

  "Do you think that maybe this new strain of rabies needs a new strain of vaccine?"

  His forehead furrowed. "What new strain of rabies?"

  "The one that’s creating supersmart wolves very fast."

  He stared at me for a moment, then burst into laughter. "Right. You’ve been watching Tales from the Crypt reruns, haven’t you?"

  "I’m serious."

  "So am I. There’s no such thing as a new strain of rabies."

  "But—"

  "If there was, an ER doctor in the north woods would be the first to hear about it."

  The speaker right above our head blared, "Dr. Benson to the ER stat."

  "That’s me."

  I stood in the hallway and watched him go, but I didn’t really see him. I needed to talk to Mandenauer. But first…

  I pulled out my notebook and my cell phone, but I had no service. Sometimes being in buildings was worse than being in the forest. I found a pay phone, dialed the CDC, and asked for Dr. Hanover.

  "Who?" the receptionist asked.

  "Hanover. Dr. Elise Hanover."

  "Hold on." She clicked off, returning a few moments later. "There’s no Dr. Hanover here. Never has been."

  That should have surprised me. But it didn’t.

  I was also not surprised to discover that Mandenauer was unavailable. The man I talked to at the Eagle’s Nest said he’d been gone all day. Since Herr Spooky didn’t have a cell phone, I’d have to hold my questions until I could get my hands on him. I had no choice but to head for the Clip and Curl.

  By the time I returned to Miniwa it was nearing the supper hour—usually the least busy time of the day. Even tourists had to eat. Today the tourists appeared to be fleeing.

  I rolled my patrol car in the opposite direction of all the other cars. Their backseats full of children and their roofs full of crap, everyone was leaving. Since most rentals were from Sunday to Sunday and no one would give up a day if they’d already paid for it, I couldn’t figure out what was up.

  I had no problem parking right in front of the Clip and Curl. I’d have no problem parking anywhere on Center Street right now.

  Tina’s partner, Lucy Kelso, stared out the window at the departing exodus. When she saw me, her relief was evident and she waved me inside.

  "Have you found her?" she asked before I even shut the door.

  "No." Her shoulders slumped. "Do you know what’s up with the tourists?"

  "They’re all scared of the mad wolf pack. There was a story on the news at noon."

  I cursed. It had been pure luck that we’d been able to keep things quiet as long as we had. Our luck appeared to have ended.

  Lucy sighed and glanced out of the window at the parking lot that was Center Street. "There goes the summer crowd."

  She was probably right, and as much as I loathed the tourist season, I would loathe being out of a job even more. So I’d better do my job while I still had one.

  "When was the last time you saw Tina?" I asked.

  "Yesterday. We both had late appointments. Perm for me, a color for her."

  "You left together?"

  "No. Tina had to do one of the Chicago ladies." Lucy lowered her voice as if imparting a state secret. "Black roots. Platinum hair with highlights."

  She shook her head, sympathy all over her face. I had no idea if she was sorry for the Chicago lady or Tina.

  "I left around six. Tina said she’d lock up. This morning she had a nine a.m. cut. I ended up doing it. I ended up doing all her people today." Lucy’s lip trembled. "This isn’t like her. She knows if you miss an appointment, customers don’t come back. There are too many other salons. People don’t have much loyalty these days."

  That I could agree with. "You called her house?"

  "Yep. And went up there, too." She pointed at the ceiling, which I took to mean Tina lived in the apartment over the Clip and Curl. "She wasn’t there.‘"

  "No note? No message?"

  "Nothing."

  "Family? Boyfriend?"

  She gave me a strange look. "You know she lived with her gramma, who died last year."

  I nearly said, "How would I know that?" before I remembered. Popular high school prima donnas believed everyone knew everything about them and cared.

  I nodded sagely and scribbled "Blah, blah, blah" in my notebook.

  "Her boyfriend is on the road," Lucy continued. "He’s a trucker. Karl Baldwin, remember him? He was the quarterback."

  "Uh-huh." I didn’t know Karl Baldwin from Karl Marx. I hadn’t had much occasion to attend football games in high school.

  "Could Tina have gone with him or met him somewhere? Little vacation?" I winked.

  Lucy was already shaking her head. "I called Karl on his cell. He hasn’t heard from her, either."

  I frowned. This was not going as well as I’d hoped.

  "All right. I’ll check into it. Let me know if you hear from her." I handed Lucy my card. "Do you have the key to her place?"

  She nodded. "And I found hers when I was in the apartment."

  "Her keys were there, but she wasn’t?" Lucy nodded. "What about her car?"

  "Still in the lot."

  "Her purse?"


  "On the kitchen table."

  That wasn’t good. In my experience, you have to pry a woman’s purse out of her cold, dead fingers. Women never left home without them.

  I could tell from Lucy’s expression she was having the same thought. She put the ring of keys into my hand and turned away blinking back tears.

  I stepped outside, planning to go directly to Tina’s and see what was up. But someone bumped into me, and when I turned around, all I saw was the gun.

  Chapter 24

  I grabbed the rifle right out of the guy’s hands.

  "Hey!"

  He tried to get it back, but I shoved him with one firm hand on his chest. I nearly passed out from the beer fumes, but I managed to stay upright and keep him from snatching the gun.

  Jerry Uber wasn’t the brightest star in the sky. His shaved head only proved my point. Jerry didn’t have the smoothest noggin or the best skin. Right now he looked like a lumpy egg with diaper rash.

  "You can’t carry a rifle without a case in the middle of town, Jerry. You know that."

  "How am I gonna shoot rabid wolves if my gun’s in the case?"

  "Shoot?" I put my finger in my ear and jiggled it. "What?"

  "Me and the other men." He puffed out his chest. His beer belly went with it. "We’re gonna do what you cops haven’t."

  I glanced up and down the street. The tourists were gone. Only the gun-toting citizens remained.

  Vigilantes . I hated these guys.

  "Yeah, well you’re gonna have a tough time without your gun." I headed for my car.

  "Huh?"

  Jerry danced around behind me as if the beer he’d already drunk today needed to be released right now. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d relieve himself on the street. Then I could arrest him and there’d be one less drunken idiot in the woods.

  "Thass my gun. You can’t do that."

  "Actually, I can." I unloaded the thing and pocketed the bullets, then laid it on the passenger seat of my car. "You can pick it up from Zee when you’re sober. Bring along your case."

  "Zelda?" He shook his head and put up his hands. "Aw, Jessie. You know, she scares the crap out of me."

  "You, me, and everyone else in town. That’s why she’s in charge of the guns."

  Since Jerry and I had had dealings before, he didn’t argue. He went home. No doubt to get another gun. I picked up my radio, not bothering to give my call sign, since I wasn’t technically working. "I need to talk to Clyde right now."

  "He isn’t here. Can I help you?"

  The voice was new—young, hopeful. She wouldn’t last.

  "Yeah, find him. Tell him we’ve got armed citizens all over town and the tourists are leaving."

  I spent the next hour confiscating weapons. When my car was full and my pockets weighted with bullets, I drove to the station.

  I knew I was fighting a losing battle. These guys all had more guns. They’d be out in the woods come nightfall. Someone was going to get shot. I could only hope that that someone wasn’t me.

  Clyde had never materialized, which was strange. For all his minor annoyances, he had always been on top of things.

  No Mandenauer, either. Not so strange—considering the source.

  After I’d tagged, recorded, then locked up all the guns, I did manage to find Zee. In the break room with a cup of coffee on her left, a lit cigarette on her right, and a roast beef sandwich the size of a small dog in the center.

  I swear she ate red meat at every meal. Zee’s longevity was a never-ending mystery, like so many others. I’d heard stories of Great-aunt Helga who smoked all her life and lived to be a hundred and four, contrasted with stories of jogging health-food fanatics who keeled over at forty-two. Go figure.

  Since Zee was enjoying herself, I backed out of the break room so she could continue.

  "Where you goin‘?"

  She didn’t even turn my way. The woman had ears like a bat. And she looked like one, too.

  "I need to find Clyde."

  "Sit."

  Zee indicated the chair to her right. With a glance at the smoldering cigarette, I took the one to her left.

  "Want half?" She pointed at the sandwich.

  The beef hung out of the bread—thick, red, and juicy. The scent, combined with that of horseradish, reminded me of the wolf pyre in the woods. I shook my head and swallowed hard.

  Zee shrugged. "More for me."

  She made short work of the sandwich. The woman could certainly eat. How she could be stick-thin was another of life’s little mysteries. Although now that I thought about it, Zee had a habit of gorging a day here, a day there, then existing on cigarettes and coffee in between.

  With a sigh and a pat for her distended belly, she sat back and lifted her cigarette. I made a face. She blew smoke rings at me.

  I waved them away. "You know I hate that."

  "Which is why I do it." She winked. "I hear some evidence has turned up missing."

  "Yeah."

  "Since I’m in charge of the evidence room, that upsets me."

  The sharp tap of her fingernail against the table punctuated Zee’s irritation. I braced myself for the explosion. Instead, she took another drag and blew it out slower than slow.

  "I didn’t exactly want to dance a jig when I heard."

  "Any clue where the stuff is?"

  "If I knew, then it wouldn’t be missing."

  She lifted one eyebrow. "Are you getting smart with me?"

  "No, ma’am. I need to find Clyde."

  "Good luck. He went ten-seven after he left the hospital."

  "Then I’ll call him at home." I shoved back my chair.

  Zee grabbed my arm. "Leave him be."

  Something in Zee’s voice made me stay where I was. "Why?"

  She took another drag on her cigarette, blew the smoke out the corner of her mouth in a stream that shot away from me for a change. "He’s taking it hard."

  "What?"

  "Clyde went to school with Mel’s dad. He had to tell Tony what happened. Cherry’s a mess."

  "Oh." I didn’t know what else to say.

  "I told Clyde about the tourists and the gun freaks. He called in some extra help from Clearwater."

  I thought of the amount of citizenry with guns, the depth, darkness, and expanse of the woods. .

  "That’ll work."

  My sarcasm must have been showing, because Zee snorted. "Who knows, maybe the idiots will thin out the wolf population."

  "Or the other way around."

  "Either way, we win."

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

  "Heard from your mom lately?" Zee asked.

  "Who?"

  Zee lit another cigarette from the embers of the first. "Guess not."

  She took a deep drag and let the smoke drift out on a contented sigh. She and I hadn’t had a good talk in a long time. Considering our age difference, you wouldn’t think we could. But Zee was young at heart, despite the probable black tar therein. She was the best friend I’d ever had, and I loved her.

  "You gonna tell Mom about the guy?"

  "What guy?"

  "Don’t screw with me, girl. Cadotte. Is he as good as he looks?"

  "When did you see him? And how do you know…" I fumbled for a word. "Anything?"

  "I have my sources."

  She no doubt did. Sources she’d never reveal to me. The woman knew everything that went on in Miniwa. It was downright terrifying. And often quite handy. Unless it was me she knew everything about.

  I narrowed my eyes. "You didn’t tell Clyde, did you?"

  Zee shook her head. "Clyde’s got enough problems right now. He thinks of you as his daughter—or near enough. He’d kill Cadotte if he found out you were banging him."

  "Nice," I murmured. Though banging was probably a pretty good word, considering what we’d been doing.

  But I was more interested in Zee’s observation of Clyde’s feelings for me. "Clyde thinks of me like a daughter?" heard the hope in my voice and c
ursed myself. I’d never had a father. I didn’t need one now.

  Zee contemplated me a moment. "Sure. Just like I think of you as the granddaughter I’ll never have."

  "No gramma worth her salt would ever use the word banging."

  Zee cackled. "Aren’t you glad?"

  "Damn straight."

  Zee and I had talked about many things over the years, but mostly present tense. What we’d done today, what we’d like to do tomorrow, whose butt was better than Jimmy Smits’s.

  She’d told me once that her family was dead. She’d come to Miniwa because she had nowhere else to go and stayed because she liked the trees. Her expression had been so sad at the time, I never had the heart to ask her anything about her past again.

  "So what are you gonna tell Mummy Dearest about the guy?"

  "Uh, nothing?"

  "That would be my advice. She’d have a conniption."

  "You got that right."

  Zee had met my mother once. It had been hate at first sight—on both their parts. My mother said I clung to Zee like moss to a tree just to annoy her, and maybe she was right. But Zee had given me more affection and support in the years I had worked with her than my mother had given me all of my life. Pathetic but true.

  "Although I might have to agree with Mummy on this one."

  I gaped. "What?"

  Zee shrugged. "Unless you’re just doing him."

  He’d actually been doing me—quite often—but that was my business.

  "There’s nothing serious starting up with you and him, is there?" Zee was staring at me too closely. I began to sweat. "You haven’t mistaken sex for love or anything, have you?"

  "Of course not. Do I look stupid?"

  "Never said that you did. I just don’t want you to get hurt."

  "And that would happen because… ?"

  "Mixed relationships never work out."

  I knew Zee didn’t much care for the Indians, but I’d never expected her to be so blatant in her prejudice.

  "What are you trying to say, Zee?"

  "I went out with a beautiful man once." Her eyes went dreamy. "It was nice at first. But not for long. He actually thought I should be grateful." She snorted. "Women propositioned him right in front of me like I wasn’t even there."

  I blinked. "By mixed, you mean—"

  "Cadotte’s hot, Jessie. You’re…" She lifted one shoulder, then lowered it.