Wolftown

Corey came out of surgery first, and she convinced Kevin to at least ask if Sheriff Jordan would listen to her. He planned to question her the next day, when the anesthesia wore off. Because she worried he would release Dennis Laufenberg, Sheriff Jordan and Schuster went to her room. Kevin warned that anything she said could be attributed to post-operative loopiness.

Deputy Rice’s single gunshot passed through Corey’s abdomen cleanly, and her abdominal wall and perforated intestines clotted spontaneously, which confused the surgeon. He expected Corey to recover without complications.

Corey said, “Dennis burned the plans the night before the attacks began, but I photographed them the night before. I was going to mail them to somebody, but I got scared. They’re in the Walmart’s breakroom’s drop ceiling.”

“Which Walmart?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

She told him. “I work there. If Dennis Laufenberg finds out, he’ll kill me, and he’ll attack you.”

“We won’t let him attack you again,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“But he’ll try.”

“He won’t know you are here, and he will be restrained and under guard. You will be in protective custody for however long you need. How could he cause you to be attacked?”

“Escaping from the hospital or something.”

“What about the man in the sewers? The one who didn’t turn into a böxenwolf?”

“I don’t know where he is. He needed money for his kid’s medical bills. He was paid half before the attacks and would get half after. He backed out because he didn’t want to be involved with a murderer, so Dennis said he had to give the first half back. It was cash, so he could say he won it.”

“Was he dangerous?”

“No. Tyler was because he tried to imitate Dennis sometimes. He killed the animals and pets to make it look like they were hunting, but Dennis did the murders. I didn’t kill anything or anybody. Dennis will know where I am when he calls Vincent Phelps.”

Vincent Phelps was Wolftown’s Deputy Chief of Police.

“We’re monitoring the patient’s communications from the hospital. The Wilde County Sheriff’s Department might take over the wolf hunt,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Good, he’ll hate that,” Corey said. “But he will attack you again.”

“Now we have experience. Did he threaten anybody else?”

“He got Foster and Schuster to go to 405 4th Avenue, and he kept them there to kill them. Tyler and me had to keep the wolf hunt occupied, so he’d have time to kill them. And killing the other guy, not Ricky Hanson, was a diversion.”

“Why did Dennis Laufenberg want to kill Foster and Schuster?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“They got enough evidence against him, and you got elected instead of him.”

“That didn’t have anything to do with us, except we voted,” Schuster said.

“But Sheriff Jordan listened to you. If Dennis had a chance, he’d probably kill you, too.” She pointed at Sheriff Jordan. “The other guy’s kid has to stay in the hospital for cancer treatment, but the guy can’t afford it.”

“Who was Ricky Hanson?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“Dennis killed him because he was an accountant and found some corruption stuff.”

“Was he going to kill anybody else?”

“If he had a chance, but he knew he’d get caught if he killed too many. Ricky Hanson, Schuster, and Foster were the worst, but he couldn’t get away with Schuster and Foster. But he changed his mind and tried to kill them like a wolf would. He was too weak to transfigure, like he would’ve bled out if he tried, so I don’t know what happened.”

“Was he transfigured into a böxenwolf?” Schuster asked.

“Yeah.”

“So that’s why he wouldn’t die?”

“I guess. I was hoping you two would survive so you could stop him. How long will he be in prison?”

“Hopefully the rest of his life, if we can find enough evidence admissible in court,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“And I asked Shane Greenbough to help me escape, but he found out and killed him.”

“Who killed Shane Greenbough?”

“Dennis Laufenberg.”

“Did he kill anybody else?”

“Some trapper got out of hand, and somebody found our camp. We spent days in the woods since about May, 1998.”

How many people would he have killed if he thought he could get away with it? Schuster wondered.

Schuster and Foster struggled to investigate Dennis Laufenberg’s outdoor activities, but they knew that, contrary to expectations and appearances, he spent days alone deep in the woods. If he transfigured into a wolf, they could have easily overlooked him.

Once, he and Foster had a rather spooky feeling, but attributed it to unfamiliar surroundings. Schuster felt like somebody watched them. He and Foster left quickly, though, and stopped investigating the woods. During the wolf attacks on himself and Foster, Schuster had a similar feeling, but he assumed the same feeling applied to various situations.

“Who were they, the trapper and who found your camp?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“A Mexican man and a woman, but I don’t know anything else,” Corey Brown said.

“Who was the trapper?”

“Joel, but I forget his last name. And the Mexicans found the camp. Dennis says they found it. He panicked about it, and he wasn’t detailed. It’s backwards.”

“Why?”

“He’s specific until he has to hide something. Are you going to call my family?”

“We don’t have any phone numbers, but we can. Is there anybody you want to see?”

“No. I don’t want to see any of them. They wouldn’t understand, and they thought I was trying to get my life together. He said he would help me.”

“Who said who would help you?” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Excuse me, actually, your aunt reported you as a missing person to me,” Schuster said. “She says whatever you were doing, she wanted you to be safe, even if you were doing something illegal again.”

“It’s too much for her this time,” Corey said.

“You can always change your mind,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Dennis Laufenberg said he would help me. He did. I didn’t go to jail, and he paid some of my bills.”

Schuster and Foster discovered that Dennis Laufenberg gave large amounts of money in cash to somebody for an unconfirmed reason, and they suspected Corey Brown or another woman’s involvement. However, they had never absolutely identified the resident, how he knew the resident, or the address. Now, Schuster suspected the arrangements had happened in the woods.

“If I was going to fail a drug test, wearing the wolf strap wore off the drugs faster. But I’m clean for 302 days,” Corey said.

“That’s good,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“You’re doing a lot better,” Schuster said.

“And I’m not taking the real painkillers. The kind that work,” Corey said.

“Your aunt said she was really proud that you broke your record. She said she wouldn’t be disappointed by you if you relapsed,” Schuster said.

Corey briefly described actions done by Dennis Laufenberg against her that, if both people were in human form, would be prosecuted or be examples of his nefarious character. But Corey believed that nobody would prosecute him; Schuster and Sheriff Jordan understood why.

“The Sheriff’s Department will do our best to bring him to justice,” Sheriff Jordan said. “He will be incarcerated for something.”

Corey said that she and Shane Greenbough shared custody of their three-year-old daughter, Cassidy. They were no longer in a relationship, but Cassidy motivated them to stay sober and out of prison. Worried Dennis Laufenberg would make Cassidy become a böxenwolf, Corey distanced herself from Shane and Cassidy, which neither understood. She could not explain it before, and dreaded needing to. But she worried that Dennis Laufenberg somehow killed Cassidy, too. She did not think that the third man would harm Cassidy.

“I’ll make sure she and your aunt stay safe until we detain the third man. I’ll check on her now.” Sheriff Jordan left the room.

“She’s healthy,” Schuster said. “CPS took her to your aunt and your aunt took her to the emergency shelter in Holy Trinity.”

“Okay. Good. I didn’t want to abandon her.”

“When I arrested you, did Dennis Laufenberg have the charges dropped?”

“Yeah.”

“And it was after when you and he became involved?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Corey shrugged. “I didn’t know he was that bad.”

“If I knew there was something else going on, I would’ve done something else.”

“I didn’t know. And you had to arrest me. I was kinda upset about it, but I broke the law.”

The phone lines in Wolftown were still out of service, but CPS said that they had no reason to worry about Cassidy’s safety.

Sheriff Jordan placed Corey in protective custody, and they argued over the risks of checking out of the hospital against medical advice. He transferred her to the Wilde County Jail’s infirmary.

Post-surgery, but while the böxenwolf was under anesthesia, and awaiting bandaging, Schuster looked at him. He identified the patient as probably Dennis Laufenberg, judging from approximately one-third of his face; the lack of a nose confused him. Also, Schuster thought the patient or Dennis Laufenberg could be the naked man in the security footage. The surgeon verified that the patient had an appendectomy decades ago, like Schuster said that Dennis Laufenberg had. He knew it from a conversation; he and Foster had not managed to acquire Laufenberg’s medical records.

The patient’s mangled face resembled a survived gunshot suicide attempt after months of healing. He was thirty pounds lighter than Dennis Laufenberg, which could be from his most recent activities. But like Dennis Laufenberg, he had green eyes and the same height, age, bald spot, and appendectomy scar. His hair lengthened dramatically since Schuster saw him last, and Ms. Brown said that wolf straps grew hair, nails, and skin. His forehead, both eyebrows, and half of his receding jawline matched Dennis Laufenberg’s.

Although the surgeon expected to repair the damage from multiple gunshot wounds, he reduced complications when possible and removed bullets for evidence. The böxenwolf had stopped bleeding and damage from gunshot wounds had healed without medical treatment, meaning the flesh or scars regrew as lumps and baggy areas, filling in the holes’ tissue. Bullets caused severe damage to his lungs, and a bullet grazed his heart. The patient’s internal injuries confused the doctor, and he referred the patient to another surgeon. However, he found four gunshot entry wounds and four exit wounds and five entry wounds with the bullets inside his body.

To treat the patient’s face, the surgeon drained the pus from his abscess, repositioned his dislocated eyeball, removed fragments of bone and teeth from his face, stabilized his cheek and jaw, and removed the flesh from his nose and smoothed the bones. His nose was a black hole.

In addition to the gunshot wounds and destroyed face, the surgeon found: a set of pointy bite marks near his waist, a set near his armpit, a scarred laceration on the sole of his foot, one stab wound on his buttock, one on his thigh, one on his hip, and a slashed scar on his genitals.

Finally, the patient had fluid in his lungs and peritonitis.

Sheriff Jordan took Schuster’s Beretta and Glock as evidence, along with the deputies’ guns, and would require Danny Lang and Wayne’s guns.

“I understand why somebody would cut him, but when did somebody have opportunity? Was there an incident that nobody reported or was it during a wolf attack?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“When he was biting me, he had his back end close to Zach, and Zach was stabbing him. Zach had a Swiss Army knife. He did something painful to the wolf, but nobody else saw what, and I didn’t think to ask,” Schuster said.

“A cut like that would make a person stop attacking.”

“But he turned around and bit Zach.”

“The suspect didn’t run away?”

“Not because of that. But Zach probably thought it would. I couldn’t make the wolf stop attacking him.”

“I’m sure a real wolf would have run away. And most people would,” Sheriff Jordan said. “But if Dennis Laufenberg knew he would be fine, why would he stop?”

“I tried to scare him away or something,” Schuster said.

“Do you know where the Swiss Army knife is?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“No, but I’ll look for it.”

“Tomorrow.”

“He had trouble holding it, so I think he dropped it. I hope it isn’t in the grass and Mr. Marshall’s kids stepped on it.”

“Were the blades like this one?”

Schuster examined Sheriff Jordan’s red Swiss Army knife. “I’m pretty sure it is.”

“Then it’s about the right size for the stab wounds,” Sheriff Jordan said.

Sheriff Jordan required permission or a warrant for the patient’s fingerprints, dental records, and DNA. Without them, he still thought the patient was Dennis Laufenberg. The patient refused permission.

Due to flooding, Schuster’s mother drove to Oneida Community Hospital on an indirect route, one hour longer than normal. She brought a quilt so that Schuster could sleep in the back of the truck, hiding his uniform. He survived three encounters with a böxenwolf; he refused to die because somebody opportunistically fired at a police officer sleeping in public. Also, he considered sleeping in uniform unprofessional.

Within two hours, Sheriff Jordan acquired a warrant for the forensic evidence. He, Murphy, and two security guards wrestled fingerprints and DNA from the patient, and Sheriff Jordan took it to the Wilde County Sheriff’s Department. He personally sent the DNA sample for testing, arranged the dental analysis, unusually hovered over the deputy matching the fingerprints, and returned with the fingerprint results.

Sheriff Jordan already had a warrant for Dennis Laufenberg’s arrest, but the wolf attacks and flood delayed serving it. Few members of law enforcement knew the warrant existed; otherwise, he would have escaped. It was the most difficult warrant Sheriff Jordan had acquired. Some judges and the county chief executive thought his arrest should wait until after the wolf attacks and flooding ended because people needed a reliable authority figure. Sheriff Jordan argued that Dennis Laufenberg was not one under normal circumstances, although he was a familiar authority figure. Then the road and bridge into Wolftown flooded.

Schuster suspected that other things also caused delays, including the Wolftown Police Department refusing assistance from the county or state police, when, during other severe weather, they would accept it. If the department had accepted the assistance, somebody could have been within arresting distance of Dennis Laufenberg or begun niggling at the homicide investigation and wolf hunt procedures.

To Dennis Laufenberg’s plain, vocal annoyance, Schuster watched Sheriff Jordan arrest him for bribery, tax evasion, drug use, police misconduct, and driving while under the influence, and crimes committed against three women. He was suspected of murder of a law enforcement officer, public exposure, destruction of property, and crimes committed against Corey Brown. Finally, Dennis Laufenberg was a person of interest in false imprisonment, miscarriage of justice, poaching, harming an endangered animal, possession of illegal fur, trespassing, disturbing the peace, coercion, menacing, battery on Maria Vasquez, Schuster, and Suzanne Giese, and the deaths of Joel Block, Sergio Vasquez, Shane Greenbough, Ricky Hanson, and Tyler Wilson.

Schuster added in his head, Death of Barbara Lubens. Assault on the patrollers. Attempted breaking and entering the Parker’s house. Menacing John Dalton and the mailman. Fleeing the scene of the crime and fleeing from police in multiple instances.

“And the Sheriff’s Department might be adding to the list during the course of the investigation,” Sheriff Jordan said.

Dennis Laufenberg explicitly gave his opinion, but Sheriff Jordan and Schuster left before he finished.

Schuster wanted to say, You got yourself into this snafu. You could’ve just gone to jail for six to forty years. Ideally, forty, but probably not. And less if they were concurrent sentences. Maybe you would’ve been on probation for part of the sentence.

Under constant guard, Dennis Laufenberg would be hospitalized in Oneida Community Hospital until the jail infirmary discharged Corey Brown. Next, he would be transferred to the jail’s infirmary or another surgeon. Normally, the Oneida County Sheriff automatically found resources to guard a suspected cop killer, but Sheriff Jordan had trouble explaining the situation. Still, the two counties found the resources.

“Do you think the delays meant people died?” Schuster asked.

“We acted on our interpretations of the available evidence at the time we had it. We did what we could with the evidence we had at the time we had it,” Sheriff Jordan said. “Nobody in America predicts a crime spree like this one.”

While Sheriff Jordan told Corey that he had arrested Dennis Laufenberg, Schuster called Stephanie and Megan’s motel room. Dennis Laufenberg’s arrest relieved all three, and Megan cheered for a minute and began crying.

“But Sheriff Jordan says not to tell anybody, especially people in Wolftown. If it is in the news, you can talk about it,” Schuster said.

They talked for a couple minutes, but because Schuster’s mother had already waited seven hours for him, they hung up.