Wolf Hour

43 Lobo, October 2016

‘Well, Superintendent,’ said Ted Springer as he stood next to Walker and picked up a slice of watermelon, ‘not hungry today? Not thirsty?’

Springer gestured with his free hand to the table in front of them and the coffee pots and bottles of water, the fruit along with a few simple sandwiches.

‘Thanks, I ate before I left,’ said Walker. He was watching Mayor Patterson as the mayor stood by the coffee pots talking with someone from the NRA. Someone important, judging by the body language and the facial expressions; two men who could be useful to each other. Walker glanced at his watch. Five minutes before Patterson stepped up onto the podium. The speech would last a maximum of ten minutes. Then it was job done and home to the family. There was still a lot of weekend left.

The phone in his pocket vibrated. It wasn’t Hanson this time either.

‘Yes, Rooble?’ said Walker.

‘Dante says that Gomez is Lobo.’

‘What?’

‘Tomás Gomez is Lobo.’ Rooble spoke clearly and calmly, so it wasn’t a case of Walker not hearing him, more that he just didn’t believe what he had heard.

‘The Lobo?’ said Walker.

‘Yes. The Wanted poster was still up on the wall when I started in Homicide. I remember the description referred to a star-shaped tattoo on the back of one hand. Hanson said it was a cartel thing from south of the border.’

Walker closed his eyes. Opened them again. Lobo. He turned to Springer, who was holding the slice of melon up in front of his face so it looked like he was grinning from ear to ear.

‘Bad news, Walker?’

‘Yes. We need to postpone the speech.’

‘Why?’ Springer took another mouthful of melon.

‘Gomez is almost certainly identical to a man called Lobo, a notorious serial killer.’

‘What difference does that make? We already know Gomez is a killer.’

Walker looked at Springer. He realised he had no good answer. That the unease he felt in the pit of his stomach at the news was not an argument. Walker heard Rooble’s voice and realised he was still on the line.

‘What?’ he said, putting the phone to his ear.

‘I said, Dante said there was something strange about Gomez’s hands.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘They had stitches along the sides, like seams. That the skin seemed to sort of move when he moved his hands. Like he was wearing gloves.’

44 Cat, October 2016

Bob turned into Erie Avenue in Chanhassen. Middle-class villas with plenty of room between them, trees and neatly trimmed lawns on both sides.

He stopped in front of the address Kari had provided.

Two floors. Big but standard family home with a yard in front, lawn with the grass cut short, double garage.

He didn’t see the Caprice, but of course it could be in the garage.

His phone vibrated. He was about to reject the call but changed his mind when he saw it came from Kay Myers.

‘Kay, thanks for the report. And the list.’

‘You’re welcome. Now it’s your turn to help me.’ It could have been just a poor signal, but it sounded like she was freezing.

‘Where are you?’

‘At a deserted house in a forest with no tracks. Listen, I broke in here without a search warrant. I found something.’

Bob didn’t respond. Cops called it an own goal when you found something that could have been used in a court of law, if only you’d followed the rules.

‘So what am I going to do?’ She sounded desperate. Bob had never heard Kay Myers like this before.

‘Get out of there the same way you went in,’ he said. ‘Cover your tracks and make out like you didn’t find anything. Get the search warrant then come back.’

Bob heard her trembling intake of breath. Were her teeth chattering? Or was she starting to cry?

‘I broke open the door, but if that’s “tripping up” then what’s the point of being a cop? Tell me that. I sent you those reports because it’s our job to protect people against... against monsters like this. I don’t need a bigger office, Bob, I just need to stop this... this sickness.’

‘Easy now, Kay, you hear me? You’re stressed out. What’s going on there? What have you found?’

Kay drew a breath and then let it out again. Saw it freeze and hang in the air a moment before disappearing.

‘A body,’ she answered.

‘We just lost the signal. Did you say a body?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whose body?’

‘I don’t know. I’m guessing one of Tomás Gomez’s victims. We got information that he was seen here.’

‘OK,’ said Bob. ‘You’re sure this is a murder?’ He spoke slowly, calm and quiet, as though he was talking to someone who was hysterical, not a colleague in the Homicide Division just doing her job. Normally she wouldn’t have tolerated it, but right now it was something she appreciated.

‘No,’ she said, feeling her pulse start to slow down. ‘But I think so.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t see how he died.’ She looked at the man in the chair and again lost control of her voice.

‘But?’ said Bob, calm but insistent.

‘But he couldn’t exactly have done it himself.’ Kay felt a sudden urge to laugh. There were no marks on the body of the naked man sitting bound to the chair. But the face had been skinned. The eyes glowed white in the frozen red flesh where the skin had been. Likewise the hands. He looked like he’d pulled on a pair of red rubber gloves that reached halfway up his forearms.

‘Kay?’ said Bob. ‘This line is very bad. Are you...’

‘I’m still here. If this is Tomás Gomez’s work then he really is a sadistic bastard.’

‘The dead person — what about the age? The ethnicity?’

‘A lot of stuff is missing here, but I think maybe Latino,’ said Kay. She felt calmer now. Bob’s questions had helped her back into professional mode and now she was just annoyed with herself for briefly losing control like that. ‘Age is a guess too but I would think maybe forty or fifty.’

‘OK. Can you do something for me: can you take a look at his back?’

‘His back?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Try?’

‘He’s tied to a chair. I just need to loosen the strap round his chest.’

Bob said nothing.

Kay had to tighten the strap before she could loosen it. The frozen corpse creaked as she did so. She stood behind the wooden chair and pushed at the back. The body didn’t move. She pushed harder. She felt as though the corpse might snap in two if she used too much force. Then the buttocks and thighs seemed to lift from the seat of the chair and the whole body slid forward a few inches. Enough for her to see.

‘He has tattoos.’

‘What kind?’

‘Gang tattoos. X-11. And Black Wolves.’

‘I thought so.’

‘What did you think?’

‘Call the station and ask them to get out there.’

‘I told you, I didn’t have a search warrant. What did you think?’

‘You had reasonable grounds for suspicion. The smell of the corpse.’

‘There’s no corpse smell in here.’

‘No? He’s been dead five days at least, probably a good while longer.’

‘He’s frozen. He’s been refrigerated here in some kind of freezer. Bob, tell me, you thought what? What is it you know?’

‘I know it wasn’t Tomás Gomez who killed that person in the chair.’

‘How?’

‘Because the man in the chair is Tomás Gomez. Better known as Lobo. I have to do something here now, Kay, I’ll call you back later.’

‘Bob!’

But Bob Oz had already hung up. Kay’s whole body was shivering with cold now, and she knew it would be a while before she could get the heat back in her body. A long while. It wasn’t the flayed, frozen body that had caused her to freak out the way she did and drop the iron bar. It was the animal with yellow eyes in his lap. The stuffed cat.

Bob slipped the phone back into his coat pocket and stepped out of the car. It was strangely quiet, no one around. Did he wish right now that he was carrying a gun? The answer to that was straightforward. Yes he did.

Bob approached the house slowly, keeping his eyes on the windows. The silence was broken by the sound of a mower starting up somewhere. A ceramic nameplate hung by the door, clearly the work of a child, probably made in a handiwork class at school. Here, it said, live Sam, Anna, Monica and Mike Lunde. The same four names Bob had found on the net in the reports of the McDeath killings in 1986. Only the father survived. One report had printed a photo of the family, formally posing in smart clothing, obviously professionally taken at a photographer’s studio. Bob thought Mike Lunde looked happy in the picture. Happy, young and naive. One hand rested on the shoulder of his daughter Anna, sitting in front of him. Her long fair hair reached all the way down to the wheelchair, and her smile was radiant.

The mower stopped.

Bob pressed the doorbell. Heard it ring inside the house. Pressed again. Heard the ringing inside but no sound of approaching footsteps. He thought about the body Kay had described. Things were starting to fall into place now. Bob rang a third time. Then he walked round the house to the back, cupped his hands against the glass of the porch door and peered inside. Just then the mower started up again.

In the semi-darkness he saw a tidy room with furniture. It was slightly old-fashioned and conservative, as he had halfway expected. There was an open-plan kitchen with a worktop. A large painting of the family hung above the fireplace. It looked as though the painter had used the same photograph as the one in the report on the net. Bob’s eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dark and he now saw that what he had at first taken to be an ordinary chair, standing with its back to him on the far side of the room, was actually a wheelchair. There was someone sitting in it. The sun caught the glossy fair hair hanging down over the back of the wheelchair. Bob called out a ‘Hello!’ but the person in the wheelchair didn’t react. Thinking the shout might have been lost in the noise from the mower Bob knocked on the window. Still no reaction. The person sat there, quite motionless. Maybe she was just sleeping. He tried the porch door. It wasn’t locked.

Bob pushed the door open. The penetrating, insistent engine noise of the mower entered the room with him. Still the figure in the wheelchair didn’t move. Bob walked over to her. Swallowed. Recalled Mike’s words. My job is to freeze memories, preserve them in solid form. But there’s something unhealthy about that.

Hysterical violins sounded through his head as he reached out a hand and placed it on the shoulder of the person in the wheelchair. The figure slowly rotated and then — as in the movie — came the scream. The mouth of the figure, a woman, was open. That was where the scream came from. She pulled out the earbuds she was wearing, jerking so hard that the lead came out of the cell phone in her lap and fell to the floor. Bob heard the low buzzing of classical music.

‘Oh my God, you gave me such a fright!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Who are you?’