On Schuster’s day off, Wayne called Schuster to ask, “Is Tara Schuster your relative?”
“My aunt. What happened to her?”
“Nothing. Can you tell her to leave Happy Howlers alone?”
“I have no authority over her,” Schuster said.
“You caught a böxenwolf, but you can’t do anything about your own family?”
“I mean, I have legal authority, but it doesn’t work with this unless the judge issues a gag order or she violates a restraining order or trespasses or something. Is she there with you?”
“No. And I’m not calling the police about it.”
“I’m a police officer.”
“I meant 911. They have better things to do.”
“If it’s an issue, file a report.”
“That’s what she keeps doing.”
Schuster thought Zach would say, “Sometimes, I really hate the First Amendment.”
“We thought if the public knew the issues, there would be public pressure to investigate thoroughly.”
“I know you had to do that, but she’s asking me about wolves now.”
“Complain to her editor.”
“I just told her that Suzanne needs a liver lobe, and now she wants to know about her wolf attack.”
“Isn’t that what reporters do? Isn’t it a natural consequence of involving them?”
“Now you sound like Nancy.”
Sheriff Jordan had never investigated a murder, and his only other homicide had been a clear case of homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle. He knew and followed the proper procedures for a murder, while occasionally, the Wolftown Police Department defied common sense.
The Wolftown Police Department responded to the crime scenes for hours, but there was less evidence than Sheriff Jordan expected. Unfortunately, the floodwaters ruined Stephen Horn’s living room, where he died, and Ricky Hanson’s house had been professionally cleaned twenty-nine hours after his wife discovered his body. She returned home before the blood dried, but was playing bingo in Thurber during his murder.
Mrs. Hanson said that the day police responded to his house, Dennis Laufenberg gave her business cards to the cleaning services, specifically recommended one, and offered to make the appointment for her, giving her one less thing to worry about. She accepted the offer. He also said he would release Ricky Hanson’s body within two days. He asked which funeral home or crematorium she preferred, and with the injuries on his body, he suggested a crematorium.
The owner of a cleaning service said that two days before Ricky Hanson’s murder, a man asked too-detailed questions about their suicide clean-up services. He said that a relative cut her wrists, but regretted it, and splattered blood on various surfaces. The Sheriff’s Department traced the call to a Wilde County payphone and discovered that nobody had committed suicide in Wilde County or the neighboring county for months.
None of the Wolftown Police Department’s murder questioning satisfied Sheriff Jordan, and some evidence had been mishandled. He noticed that Jeff Klug’s alibi made sense and that the attacks continued while Jeff Klug was detained. The evidence for Jeff Klug’s involvement was that he owned wolfjägers, he had been at Ricky Hanson’s house the day of the murder, and he bowled with Stephen Horn.
Sheriff Jordan released Jeff Klug, but continued to investigate him. Corey and Jeff Klug could not identify each other, and Jeff Klug did not know Tyler Wilson or, except for his face and voice, Dennis Laufenberg.
Nobody saw Ricky Hanson’s house during his murder, but around the time of the murders, while walking her dog, Elizabeth Wiese saw Dennis Laufenberg in his police uniform and carrying a brown duffel bag. Laufenberg stopped to give Button a treat, but the dog growled at him. Everybody knew Dennis Laufenberg kept dog treats and children’s candy in his pockets.
Dennis Laufenberg declared Ricky Hanson and Jeff Klug’s deaths murders immediately, with little analysis, and dismissed suggestions otherwise. Sheriff Jordan thought murder might be reasonable with the second murder, but the first could be a freak animal attack.
Laufenberg bought a new brown duffel bag and a new police uniform days before the murders, which Sheriff Jordan considered normal behavior.
From the few photographs of the blood splatter and how little blood Brenda Groves found in Ricky Hanson’s veins, Sheriff Jordan thought that if Laufenberg bit Ricky Hanson to death, the blood would ruin his clothes. He attacked in daylight. If someone saw him walk back and forth from Ricky Hanson’s house in two sets of clothing, the person would notice the change of clothes. Sheriff Jordan sent the photographs for analysis.
Sheriff Jordan practically begged for yet another search warrant, scrounged a bottle of luminol from the Department of Criminal Investigation, found the duffle bag and the shoes Laufenberg wore with his uniform, sprayed them and the crime scene with luminol, photographed them, and sent photographs for analysis.
Stephen Horn’s insomniac across-the-street neighbor, Diane Carey, said that she saw a heavyset man and a massive dog entering Stephen’s house. Dennis Laufenberg and Tyler Wilson had no alibi for the time of the murder; Corey did. Diane Carey’s report caused the theory that a man was murdered by a large dog or a wolf. She did not know if he carried a duffel bag or wore a uniform.
Ricky Hanson, an accountant, intended to testify against Laufenberg, but Stephen Horn seemed completely unconnected to Laufenberg, Ricky Hanson, Schuster, Foster, Corey Brown, and Tyler Wilson. In such a small town and a county with a population of 18,000 people, Stephen Horn probably knew somebody seriously involved with or affected by Wolftown’s problems, but Sheriff Jordan found no definite motive for murdering him.
Corey thought that Laufenberg murdered Stephen Horn as a diversion from Ricky Hanson’s murder. Judging from her receipts, she accurately predicted both murders.
The Wolftown Police Department did not send the bite injuries on Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn for analysis, although Wayne recommended it before the department accepted the wolf-murder-weapon hypothesis. The department also forbade his analysis, but considered him an expert, which made him uncomfortable.
At some point, the Wolftown Police Department misplaced the bite wound evidence. Sheriff Jordan asked the Hanson and Horn families for permission to exhume their relatives’ bodies, and they agreed.
In retrospect, Mrs. Hanson thought Dennis Laufenberg had almost pressured her into cremation.
Laufenberg attended Ricky Hanson’s funeral and guaranteed he would find the murderer, but his attention to their families ceased after the funerals. Consistently, he interacted less with the Horns than with the Hansons.
Embalming and decomposition distorted the bites, but they were as deep and powerful as victims of the wolf attacks. Bites on Foster’s body and Ricky Hanson’s body showed an equal amount of force, even scraping bones. Bites on Stephen Horn, Joel Block, and Shane Greenbough matched. Schuster’s bites fell somewhere between those and Foster and Ricky Hanson. Miranda’s, Suzanne’s, John Sutton’s (the patroller), and Barbara Luben’s bites were different from the men’s, but the patroller’s and Barbara Luben’s matched, and the wolf had ripped Miranda and Suzanne’s flesh. The wolf primarily bit people’s spines, necks, sides, and hamstrings. Wolves rarely hamstrung their prey, and the backs’ bites affected spinal cords.
If the wolf was a böxenwolf, Schuster thought he realized that Schuster would continue shooting unless the böxenwolf disabled his arms. The böxenwolf could not bite through his armor, and Schuster shielded his neck.
Because Corey said that Tyler killed two pets—Benjamin Bunny and Button—and tampered with the evidence and Benjamin Bunny’s scene of the crime, Sheriff Jordan asked if she knew where they were, but she had no idea. Because their bite injuries could be compared to Stephen Horn, despite feeling ridiculous, Sheriff Jordan asked members of the public to call the Sheriff’s Department if they had information about Benjamin Bunny or Button. Nobody did, and the matter upset Benjamin Bunny’s six-year-old owner, which bothered Sheriff Jordan.
The investigation waited weeks for the laboratory results; the testing placed Wilde County’s law enforcement budget in a deficit.
Few businesses and people in Wilde County owned surveillance cameras, and they tended to record over tapes. Deputies attempted to track down everybody within view of the payphones used by the suspects during the wolf attacks and murders. One person identified Dennis Laufenberg at the time he called the cleaning service.
Sheriff Jordan called every forensics lab and the University of Madison, asking if Peter Angua or Dennis Laufenberg asked for advice on hiding a body.
Sheriff Jordan investigated various leads in Joel Block and Sergio Vasquez’s cases, but Laufenberg seemed like the most likely suspect. He also investigated people completely separate from Wolftown and its problems, without result.
Miranda, Megan, and Sheriff Jordan did everything possible to recover Sergio’s body, but Sheriff Jordan knew that the woods were too large of a search area. Megan, Wayne, Nancy, John, Stephanie, Mr. Marshall, Schuster, Lang, Karl Henry, most of the Wolf Guard, and other people volunteered for searches.
Corey, Tyler, and Laufenberg buried Joel block six feet underground, but Sheriff Jordan thought that if Laufenberg buried Sergio alone, he had dug a shallower grave. With the dirt still loose, he hoped the flood had eroded it, or maybe searchers could find bare dirt. However, Sheriff Jordan thought the search required cadaver dogs, which worked slowly and expensively.
Alternatively, Laufenberg could have left Sergio near a carnivorous animal’s den; Corey claimed Laufenberg considered scavenger predation one way to hide a body. He might have thought he only needed to move the body far from the campsite, and not necessarily to a den. Someone who found Sergio would believe an animal killed him.
Sheriff Jordan doubted Laufenberg lugged Sergio ten miles to Whitewater River, but it was deep and rapid enough to carry away a body. In spring, it rose high from snowmelt and flowed dangerously fast and rough. Nobody matching Sergio’s description was found downstream.
Laufenberg had limited time and energy, and somebody had cleaned up the Vasquezes’ campsite. If Laufenberg tampered with the campsite, Sheriff Jordan doubted he had enough time to also thoroughly dispose of Sergio’s body. The campsite could be more important because the joint human-and-wolf activity could be compared to Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn’s murders.
While average rain showers and snowmelt potentially destroyed more evidence, Sheriff Jordan hoped it eroded a shallow grave.
Finally, on March 29, the Sheriff’s Department found a body, approximately one mile from the Vasquezes’ campsite, and dumped in a hole barely large enough to cover the person.
The man decayed beyond determining the cause of death, but he had not been shot or burned, and his bones had not been broken. Holes and rips in his shirt and jeans indicated that an animal with sharp teeth bit the back of his thigh and his spine. The Sheriff’s Department found no identification or distinguishing marks.
Within a week, dental records identified him as Sergio. The Sheriff’s Department saved his clothes as evidence and released his body to Miranda.
Miranda regained 80% use of her leg, despite doctors' suggesting amputation.
She and Megan became friends, and they longed for Laufenberg’s trial: Miranda to convict him of murder and assault, and Megan would enjoy watching him tangle up in the evidence and convict himself while defending himself.
Megan insisted on raising Junior in the house she and Foster chose. Due to Corey’s arrest and Joel Block’s death, Megan applied to two full-time job openings. She felt guilty about applying for them, but for her and Junior to scrape by, she needed a full-time job, her part-time one, the police widow’s pension, and a few emergencies.
In the BP Station, within biking distance of her house, Megan knew she would see Joel Block’s wife, but Walmart was a thirty-seven-minute drive away, both directions, or almost one hour and forty-five minutes if the road flooded and she took the bridge. The BP station hired Megan.
Wayne resigned himself to cryptozoologists, conspiracy theorists, folklorists, and “true crime weirdos” (including Tara Schuster), but he only responded to questions from law enforcement. Much later, when John became a cryptozoologist, to John’s surprise, Wayne did not comment on it.
Schuster and Stephanie’s wedding stationery arrived the Tuesday after Foster’s death, and included his name as best man. Choosing another overwhelmed Schuster, and so would looking at his side of the wedding party. They debated discussing it with Megan, but Megan mentioned the problem to them and offered to help. Stephanie suggested, since choosing Foster over Schuster’s brother caused family drama, asking his brother, and having a cousin be a groomsman. It suited everybody well enough.
John saw Schuster smile for the first time at his and Stephanie’s wedding, although he and Schuster had not seen each other since March 10. Stephanie ensured he had vegan food; she objected to letting guests feel hungry. When asked why they had a seat, she said, “Some people found they weren’t able to make it at the last minute. No wolf or police talk.”
They had an enjoyable wedding, and Megan thought everybody needed a happy day.
Wayne hired a replacement biologist, and John returned to his usual work at the Nature Protection Society.
Sheriff Jordan waited impatiently for the laboratory results, and as a deputy typed up Peter Angua’s journals, he read the pages in the evenings and on his weekends. Soon, they disgusted him to the point he stopped bringing them home.
The journals’ detailed entries stopped approximately when Schuster and Foster’s investigation into Dennis Laufenberg showed results, but throughout the years, entries indicated Laufenberg surveilled people who might cause trouble for him. Sheriff Jordan wondered if Laufenberg wrote an incriminating journal about them, then burned it.
Wolf experts agreed that Happy Howlers documented North American or Eurasian wolves, but they attributed inconclusive DNA results to contaminated samples. A medical diagnosis for their odd movements stumped the experts. They thought the wolves could have been habituated to people.
Wilde County authorities ruled out the wild wolf hypotheses, and ruled out that wild wolves killed Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn.
Dr. Paulsen reviewed tapes of Corey’s movements while wearing a wolf strap. He confirmed she was a highly-skilled böxenwolf, almost indistinguishable from an injured or sick wolf, and identified her as Baker. He considered Abel and Charlie other skilled böxenwolves; if ranked in order of skill, he listed Abel, Baker, and Charlie.
Luminol showed drops of blood on the left shoe, and the analyst thought they had been polished off the shoe. The left shoe’s side and part of the floor looked as if a puddle of blood had flowed against the shoe. The right shoe stepped in a puddle of blood, and the wearer slipped on the floor and walked to the kitchen sink. The tread pattern and shoe size matched Laufenberg’s shoes.
There was no evidence of a bloody footprint outside the house, but Mrs. Hanson said there was blood in the kitchen sink and on a kitchen towel. All fingerprints in the kitchen belonged to the Hansons.
In the duffle bag, the luminol showed a few drops of blood, a thin line of blood, and a fuzzy patch of blood, as if a bloody object had been wrapped in a towel but leaked through.
Sheriff Jordan could not find the bloody towel or uniform, nor a good reason for the blood. Laufenberg said someone stole his duffel bag, but Sheriff Jordan found no evidence of it.
Corey did not know anything about Laufenberg’s uniform, towel, or duffel bag.
Sheriff Jordan wondered why Dennis Laufenberg kept the bag instead of destroying it.
In Laufenberg’s house and garbage, Sheriff Jordan found no bloody clothes, but he thought they could be destroyed, and their absence could be attributed to decluttering or disposing of them in another location.
While Sheriff Jordan satisfied himself that Laufenberg killed Ricky Hanson and Jeff Klug, if he said “a human with a wolf mouth bit them to death,” the case would be thrown out.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Jordan lacked evidence to charge Laufenberg with the murder or manslaughter of Joel Block and Sergio Vasquez. He thought he had much better evidence about Ricky Hanson and Jeff Klug’s deaths. Sheriff Jordan knew that Laufenberg was Abel, and Abel was correctly identified as the wolf that attacked Officer Foster, and, therefore, that Laufenberg killed Officer Foster. But the charge of a law enforcement officer killing another, regardless of method, could be difficult for the justice system to believe.
Laufenberg could only be tried for homicide once per victim due to double jeopardy laws.
Corey provided most of the information, but with such an unusual scenario, Sheriff Jordan hoped for a corroborating confession from Laufenberg or another culprit.
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