Wolftown

      For some reason, the wolf was not attacking the lady, but she might be unable to defend herself. If it was her trained wolf, it might attack him. He hoped that the only unusual thing was a wolf inside the lady’s restroom, with a lady. He assumed she was the one in distress because the distressed lady had indicated she hid alone in Happy Howlers.

Schuster crashed into a furniture barricade and fell on his wolf-bitten arm and the plastic bag tied to his belt. He regretted choosing the police force over dairy farming. The plastic bag held Kevin’s wife’s dress, her sweater, and a pair of socks and shoes.

Reluctantly, Schuster walked to the employee’s restroom door and knocked on it. He doubted he saw a wolf, but he asked, “Have you tied up your wolf?”

“I don’t have any rope,” the lady said.

You can improvise a chokepoint with office furniture but can’t find an appropriate wolf restraint inside a wolf sanctuary? Schuster thought.

“Did you bring Kevin?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where is he?”

“Outside.”

“What about Dennis?”

“We’re aware of the situation.”

“Yeah, right,” she said.

Waiting, Schuster thought, well, we would be if you said everything you knew, like “I have a functional wolf strap.” If she said, I’m a werewolf, Schuster would have asked if she joked, believed it without other signs of mental illness, or either took or should take medication, but he would have considered the statement important information.

“I’m going to show you what is going on.”

Schuster placed his finger on the trigger. “Okay.”

“I’m opening the door,” she said.

“Do it slowly.”

Schuster pushed the door further open. As her wolf face and head turned into a human’s, she had four ears and eyes. The transfiguration required less than thirty seconds (longer from Schuster’s perspective), quick enough for his brain to register a distressed female subject rather than a wolf within mauling distance.

He asked the only realistic question: “Where’s the wolf?”

“Don’t shoot me!” she said.

“Where’s the wolf?”

The two other transformations were too detailed for CGI, and he did not see mirrors or projections. When turning from wolf to human, the wolf’s head split and faded, and the lady’s head seemed to slide out of his mouth. The wolf bit its own side and tugged a strip of skin free, but bloodlessly. A transformation from human to wolf showed the opposite, like the wolf swallowed her whole.

“What are you doing it with?” Schuster asked.

“A wolf strap,” she said.

“Throw it over here.”

“I’m not going to reach under a blanket and throw something at a policeman pointing a gun at me.”

“A wolf strap looks like a big piece of fur, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Just do it slowly, like a person. I’ll see the difference and won’t shoot you.”

The wolf strap flopped at his feet, and he picked it up.

“Kevin’s wife said to borrow these.” He tossed her the plastic bag. “Holler when you’re dressed. Don’t go anywhere. And don’t turn into anything.”

“I can’t now,” she said.

The transformation distracted him from identifying the lady, but now he could think for several seconds, he believed he had seen her before. He wondered if he saw a tattoo; the sprouting and receding wolf fur overwhelmed most observations, and the lady had attempted to wrap herself in the blanket.

“You can open the door,” she said.

“Keep your hands up,” Schuster said. “I’m going to search you and handcuff you, but you aren’t under arrest.”

Holding the lady at gunpoint, Schuster patted the lady down. He holstered the gun barely long enough to handcuff her hands behind her back. Matted, muddy, brown, and light brown or blonde hair hung down her back and over her eyes. Peeled-off scabs, large dry skin flakes, and long chewed fingernails and toenails littered the floor.

Meanwhile, they talked:

“Are you the lady I’ve been talking to?”

“Yeah. Is Kevin standing outside or in a boat or what? Because if he can walk around on dry ground, it’ll be a lot easier for Dennis to find him.”

“I’ll get Mr. Miller in here as soon as I can. You are really familiar.”

“You’ve arrested me before.”

“What for?”

“Nothing related to this. You said I could be an anonymous tip.”

“I guess you don’t have ID with you.”

“No.”

“Is anyone or anything here with you?”

“You and whoever you brought.”

“No one else?”

“No.”

“Show me your teeth.”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“I don’t want to. Show me your teeth.”

A police hood meant nothing to wolf teeth, but it deterred humans. Her teeth were blunt. She also had an empty nose piercing.

“Thanks. Why didn’t you tell me about the wolf strap over the phone?” Schuster asked.

“You would’ve hung up,” she said.

“As a matter of fact, you wouldn’t be the first to call in a böxenwolf.”

“Yeah, you’d come right over.”

“It may be a delayed response, but we would get there sooner or later. Go over to the sink. Is the floor cold?”

“What do you think?”

“Okey-dokey, hang on.”

Schuster had the lady sit down, and because she could not reach the sink’s pipe, he re-handcuffed her with her hands in front.

“Is the floor cold?” Schuster asked.

“What do you think?”

Schuster spread out the blanket and she sat on it. “Stay here. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t do whatever you did before.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why?”

“You have the wolf strap.”

“Will it make me do something?”

“If you put it on.”

“Okay.” Schuster carefully unwrapped it from his hand and felt slightly better.

He searched the restroom for a good wolf hiding place, to no avail, and told the lady he would bring Mr. Miller.

The lady reminded Schuster of Corey Brown, whom he arrested once for drug use, knew Dennis Laufenberg to some extent, and worried her aunt by disappearing during the floods.

Schuster locked the lady in the bathroom and looked at the strip of animal fur, which resembled wolf straps in the Wolftown museum. It smelled like Stephanie’s laundry after inspecting sewers and like the wolf that attacked him and Foster. He placed it in an evidence bag and set it on a chair.

Then Schuster searched the communal office and breakroom. Somebody had broken a window in a communal office, and there was blood on the glass. A dainty person had tracked muddy bare footprints onto the carpet. In the break room, somebody had foraged, smearing mud on the fridge handle and leaving a cabinet door open.

Schuster went outside, locked the front door, and looked through the windows. He thought somebody had entered the rooms from inside, pushed some furniture into the hall, barricaded the doors from the inside with additional furniture, crawled out the windows, shut them behind herself, and barricaded the doors from the hallway.

Instead of leaving the lady on the floor, Schuster could bring a chair into the restroom. Wayne’s desk’s drawers nearly reached the floor, but legcuffs could be handcuffed to the desk’s stubby legs.

           The storage shed and the wolf hospital’s entrance had two locks and a locking interior door. The storage shed and wolf hospital were unlocked, but from building a wolf pen as an Eagle Scout project, Schuster clearly remembered Wayne’s persnicketiness about locking doors and fences. A calendar marked 183 days elapsed since the last unlocked door or fence. Muddy footprints indicated the dainty person had entered it and Schuster thought he or she probably found the blanket and utility knife inside them.

The lady seemed like the most likely “somebody,” but he needed to question her further.

           He hurried past the wolf pens. At the moment, the wolves tended to sit on the higher ground and irritate each other, without showing any interest in Schuster. “You’d better be wolves. Real wolves,” he said.

           Wondering how to explain the lady to Kevin, Schuster returned to the Happy Howlers facility. He swiveled a thermostat to maximum heat. Severe hypothermia caused hallucinations, but he felt mentally competent.

Experimentally wearing a wolf strap seemed as stupid as taste-testing drugs for purity. Giving the lady the wolf strap was as stupid and risky, assuming the strap transfigured her. Either her demonstrations did not clearly show the wolf strap or the fur growth overwhelmed the other details.

           Wayne stocked leashes and muzzles for the rare occasions a wolf left the facilities or people approached them within biting distance, but Schuster could not restrain the lady like an animal. Also, the restraints would either fall off in wolf form or not fit in human form.

“Ma’am, I need to know I saw what I thought I saw, so put the wolf strap on again.”

“I did it three times,” she said. “Weren’t you watching?”

“I’m having trouble understanding it.”

“And I don’t want to be shot.”

“If I wanted to shoot people, I would’ve joined the Army. So, I won’t shoot you if you don’t attack me. Do you lose control or something if you turn into a werewolf?”

“No. And I don’t want to transfigure again.”

“It may help me understand what’s been going on.”

“You do it, then.”

“It’s against police procedure,” Schuster guessed—he had absolutely no idea.

“I’ll transfigure one more time if Kevin is here,” the lady said.

“Okay. I’ll get him.”

Schuster locked the restroom door, then the employees-only door, then the lobby door, and walked down the driveway in a drizzle, where Wayne, John, and Kevin waited for him.

“We were about to check on you,” Wayne said. “What’s wrong?”

“I had to search the premises. And the lady seems to be under the impression she is a böxenwolf,” Schuster said.

“Great,” Wayne said.

“How far under the impression?” Kevin asked.

“She had this wolf belt on.” He held up the evidence bag. “She wouldn’t tell us over the phone because it sounded crazy.”

“Another one?” John asked.

“What was she doing when she wore it?” Kevin asked.

“What were the other ones doing?” Wayne asked John.

“Let’s go. No one mess with anything inside. If it looks out of place, leave it alone. I have to document it. She was hiding in the lady’s employee restroom.”

“When she was wearing the wolf strap, was it functional?” Kevin asked.

“What?” Schuster and Wayne asked.

“Did the wolf strap have an effect on her? What condition was she in?” Kevin asked, as if asking, When you found her in the coffin, decapitated and with a stake in her heart, was she dead?

“I’m not positively sure how wolf straps work,” Schuster said.

“We were talking about it for a couple hours,” Wayne said.

“You were theorizing.”

“And it wouldn’t have an effect anyway.”

“Maybe sometimes the belts work and maybe they don’t always. Making one requires some attention.”

Tired of listening to them argue, Schuster said, “No one talk to her, except for Kevin. He has to.”

Schuster warned them about the defenses inside of Happy Howlers. He gave them permission to make a hot drink and change into dry clothes, but to restrict their movements.

Opening the door, Schuster said, “Watch out for the broken mug.”

“That was Suzanne’s mug,” Wayne snapped. “She broke in, ate our snacks, and broke Suzanne’s mug?”

“I broke her mug opening the door. Sorry about that. I’ll get her a new one.”

“Come on,” Wayne said to John. “You’re blue, and you need to dry your feet.”

“Thanks,” John said.

Schuster locked the doors and let himself and Kevin into the employee’s restroom.

“Finally,” the lady said.

Schuster interrupted Kevin, “Okay, you have a lawyer, so you’re going to put on the belt again, like you said.”

“Do I have to?” she asked.

“No, you don’t have to,” Kevin said.

“We don’t have a female officer or another lady here. I’m not sure who I could get,” Schuster said.

“I couldn’t care less right now,” she said.

“Okay, that helps for a while. I have to see the belt clearly while it is being used to determine if it does something, so I’m going to tie it on over your clothes.

“It works different over clothes. You won’t like it,” she said.

Kevin objected, which Schuster considered a normal reaction.

“I’ll get it off you as soon as I can. I’m going to unhandcuff you so no one can say you escaped.”

“It’s a bad idea,” the lady said.

Fairly certain a wolf could not easily keep its front paws up, Schuster said, “Don’t make sudden movements.”

He tied the wolf strap around her waist, although the lady warned him she would look much different than the previous times she transfigured, and she worried he would shoot her.

Slower than before, fur sprouted on the lady’s hands and feet, which shortened almost into paws and her thin wrists shrank. Her face elongated and she said something unintelligible. The baggy clothes hung oddly.

Schuster drew his gun and stepped in front of Kevin, saying, “That’s not what I saw.”

“This happens when the belt is worn over clothes. She warned you. It’s nothing to worry about. Don’t worry about it,” Kevin said.

Schuster knelt as far from the lady as possible and yanked the rawhide bow. As the belt unwrapped, the lady transfigured into a human form again.

Kevin said, “If she intended to attack you, she would have.”

The lady was telling Kevin to tell Schuster to stop aiming at her; Kevin continued defending her while Schuster roughly handcuffed her.

Wayne knocked on the door, startling everybody. “Everything okay in there?”

“No,” Schuster said, but Kevin said, “Yes, it’s fine.”

“It’s under control,” Schuster said, aiming at her again. “That wasn’t what I saw.”

“I told you!” she said.

“I saw a wolf the first time. Does the wolf strap work differently over clothes than over skin?”

“I told you so,” she said.

Kevin said, “She is being very cooperative and unaggressive. You’re threatening her.”

“It’s self-defense,” Schuster said.

“Has she done anything aggressive?”

“No.”

“And she has cooperated with you.”

“The way she looked before looked pretty threatening, and she could do it again.”

“You are worried because of what she looks like?”

“She looks like some kind of monster. She’s the same thing, but she looks different now.”

“You were raised better than that. You haven’t seen her do anything wrong,” Kevin said.

“It isn’t normal.”

“Looking non-human isn’t illegal. And I won’t let her cooperate with you if you continue threatening her.”

Schuster unloaded his gun and handed the magazine and round to Kevin, who flickered an alarmed expression.

To the lady, he said, “Turn into a werewolf like you did when I got here. Turn into the kind that looks like a real wolf.”

“I’m not doing it again,” the lady said.

“It might help him understand your case,” Kevin said.

“I showed you already.”

“I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

“Why not? Since when don’t you pay attention?”

“Someone will ask me to explain what I saw, and I have to process it before I can explain it,” Schuster said. “I have to compare it. And I have to see the belt being tied on over your skin. Can it be your arm or something?”

“No.”

“Sorry, ma’am. Do you want to wait for another lady?”

“Whatever. I’ll transfigure one more time, but that’s all.”

“It isn’t decent,” Kevin said.

“So, stand in the corner,” the lady said.

Kevin did.

Schuster unhandcuffed the lady again. Quickly and hunched, she undressed and tied on the wolf strap again, complaining under her breath. The complaints turned into huffs and growls.

In wolf form, she glared at Schuster. She did not have eyebrows and was not staring like a wolf would, but she had the same expression people adopted when cooperating with the police against their will.

“I don’t need to see you transform back because I get that the wolf strap does it,” Schuster said. And it is the creepiest part, he thought.

Wishing he did not need to bend over or crouch, and that he had a howitzer or a flame-thrower, Schuster held up the dress.

The wolf slid backward under the dress, keeping her front paws visible at all times. He dropped it over her and the lumps began shifting. A few seconds later, the huffing and growling developed into muttered complaints, and Schuster dropped the dress over her. A human arm poked through the neck hole, and she retracted it.

“Are you happy now?” The lady’s human head emerged from the dress’ neck hole.

No, he thought. “I got what I needed. Thanks for your cooperation, ma’am. I’m going to handcuff you again.”

“I have to pee.”

“Okey-dokey. Knock on the door when you’re done.”

Schuster pushed Kevin through the door first and he bumped into Wayne. John held a running tape recorder.