Wolftown

The wolf response lacked a headquarters. Wayne needed to rest and review the gathered evidence, ideally in Wolftown for a fast response. Officer Zachary Foster suggested his house; he already had equipment to copy tapes. Although Megan Foster objected to turning their house into a police investigations unit, she allowed an exception. Because Foster owned a police scanner, Wayne would hear about wolf attacks before anybody called him.

Rebecca returned to Happy Howlers and left a marker board and box of markers, Post-it notes, and whatnot on the Fosters’ porch. Megan rolled the marker board into the house and went back to bed. Wayne set the box on the dining table.

He lay down on Foster’s couch, but, unable to sleep, he thought about the wolves and Suzanne. Wayne blamed himself for the attack, and changing her schedule led the list of his worst decisions. Realistically, if he and she kept their planned schedule, Wayne would have been somewhere other than the Old Wolftown Restaurant, but had he been in Suzanne’s place, he would have wanted the wolf to attack him.

Theoretically, the wolves could have attacked Jane or somebody else in the restaurant.

Wayne expected to find evidence somewhere if the wolves roamed Wolftown on March 10. Nobody reported them approaching the restaurant, and the wolves disappeared after the attack.

After a while, Wayne studied the wolves. He sat down, then stood up a minute later to stick a Post-it note on the wall. The house’s old floor warped just enough for markers to roll across the table.

Since Megan worried too much to sleep, she asked if Wayne needed assistance. Wayne felt physically exhausted. He thought sitting still in a chair would make him feel better, but he considered pregnant women delicate, especially if stressed. Light activity might harm the baby.

Megan assured him that writing on the marker board and sticking Post-it Notes to the wall would not overtax her, and the baby liked being rocked. She and Stephanie routinely copied and typed up the incriminating evidence Schuster and Foster gathered about Dennis Laufenberg, although they managed the more disturbing parts themselves. Talking aloud about issues helped Foster think; he enjoyed answering questions and explaining.

Wayne and his employees had recorded the wolves’ vocalizations. They sounded like wolves, but odd and creepy.

The wolves rarely communicated with each other.

The police refused to show Wayne their surveillance videos. However, without authorization, Schuster and Foster acquired the tapes, watched them, copied them, and took notes. They sent the unauthorized copies and notes to Wayne. John lacked authorization to view the tapes, but Wayne showed him the others.

According to Schuster, when people submitted tapes of a wolf to the Wolftown Police Department, the tape was returned or thrown out. Schuster, Foster, and Wayne interfered secretly: people sent tapes to Happy Howlers, and Rebecca copied and returned the originals when necessary.

Every Happy Howlers employee who saw the canines or their markings labeled them wolf. John agreed. Still, there was something odd about the wolves, like people required extensive proof to call them wolves.

Wayne and John paused the tape periodically to show the wolves confused gaits. John thought all animals had emotions, even as much as humans, depending on the species. Barker’s eyes seemed more humanlike than wolflike. Her ears never twitched, and her neck only moved when necessary. Her tail flopped and swung.

“I’m very uneasy about Barker and Charlie because I can’t read their body language,” Wayne said.

“What about Abel?” John asked.

“His body language matches what he was doing, but his expressions were stiff.”

Also, Wayne wondered if Abel resembled a Eurasian wolf more than a North American wolf. He said that North American and Eurasian wolves sounded different, but he expected difficulty analyzing the vocalizations. John felt too unfamiliar with global wolf vocalizations to form an opinion, but the fur’s coloring and length looked Eurasian. He and Wayne identified Barker and Charlie as North American wolves.

“Maybe they are only weird wolves,” Wayne said. “They adapted their hunting patterns to people. Hunting us is really hard and dangerous, but maybe the wolves need to try a few times before they figure it out.”

“Suzanne was attacked before someone shot the wolves, right?” John asked.

“Chief Laufenberg and another policeman shot at the wolves, but I’m pretty sure Billy Schuster was the first person to hit the wolf. I can’t explain the wolves’ behavior. I’ve read accounts of wolves attacking towns, but our wolves are different. We have more details than they did, but a lot of the accounts are at least a hundred years old. Maybe that makes the wolves look abnormal. Or it’s a werewolf.”

“Do people think that?” John asked.

“Some people joke about it. Some people in town believe in werewolves. No one has been taking it seriously. Or they have and they aren’t part of the wolf response. The closest thing I could call a discussion is an argument over how people become werewolves. One person said that it couldn’t be a werewolf because it’s the wrong phase.”

“It’s a waxing crescent? Maybe it’s the first quarter.”

“They argued about what phase it was. And no one who has been bitten has turned into a werewolf. The böxenwolf legend doesn’t have a moon phase or being bitten to become a werewolf!” The arguments’ inaccuracies annoyed Wayne. “Personally, I think it’s convenient that a böxenwolf looks like a regular wolf. I wouldn’t go up to a wolf and look for the strings.”

“The strings that tie the wolf strap to the person?”

“Right. Böxenwolf believers could join the wolf response if they wanted. Maybe they have and no one mentions it.”

Wayne sighed. “I got off-track.”

“It’s okay,” John said.

“You’re here, so you should know what happened if you want to.”

“When I called yesterday, the wolf attacks hadn’t escalated, or you didn’t know they had.”

“Maybe we would have noticed something if we had an organized response.”

“Coyotes normally don’t attack people, but they live in cities. Could coyote-wolf hybrids be involved?” John asked.

“Maybe some live around here. And the police have been grouping wolfdogs in with dogs and I think they could be grouped in with wolves. We didn’t make them a group because it would remind people of the wolfdog attacks. I want to send samples for DNA testing, but it’s expensive.”

“DNA testing is very important to conservation. Let me ask Paula if the Nature Protection Society can assist.”

“Thanks.”

“If you get any DNA from Ms. Vasquez and the police won’t test it, I’ll ask about it, too.”

“I’ll tell her. The sheriff’s department might have thought of it.”

At the time, Wayne thought the wolves entered Wolftown because of rabies or the inability to hunt normal prey, whether from low prey numbers or dental issues, like decayed teeth or an infected jaw. Wolves hunted people when provoked or as a last resort. Now he knew the wolves tested negative for rabies and they appeared healthy.

“Their bites are less powerful than most wolves, but I don’t notice a clear dental problem,” Wayne said.

Wayne and John hated thinking about people as prey, but from the wolves’ perspectives, they were.

Likely, the wolves carried out exploratory attacks on humans, which did not necessarily involve killing and eating. The wolves fed on Wolftown’s small animals.

Sometimes, wolves scavenged food. Closed dumpsters flummoxed the average canine, and the Old Wolftown Restaurant raccoon-proofed their dumpsters. The expired or uneaten meat could have attracted Abel, who decided to wait for humans to walk outdoors. But it was an unsatisfactory explanation.

Between approximately 1:00 to 3:00 AM, the wolves killed Shane Greenbough in Sugar Maple Park. Wolf patrollers found him around 10:00 AM, giving wolves plenty of opportunity to feed.

Shane carried marijuana, and the human footprints matched his tennis shoes. (Wayne told John what details he coincidentally noticed.) According to Officer Matthews, Shane served time in jail for various drug charges.

Wayne thought Abel bit Shane’s hamstring, his neck and shoulder area from behind, and his mid-back. Shane might have provoked an attack and turned away to run, but Wayne still could not explain why he felt skeptical about a provoked attack. The coroner might find defensive wounds Wayne overlooked. He hoped the Wolftown Police Department would request an autopsy. Flinching, stumbling, or looking behind him explained Shane’s twisting and crumpling. Abel could have bitten his neck first. Shane would have slumped off the bench, but then, why hamstring him? His body showed some signs Abel dragged him, but none that the wolf attempted to dismember and cache Shane.

Shane’s body showed little sign of feeding, but police found a chunk of liver nearby. Rainwater diluted the blood spatter and the unidentifiable but possibly wolf diarrhea and vomit. John correctly predicted that, without being asked, Wayne would tell him how to identify wolf bodily fluids. Wayne stored his double-bagged samples in the Happy Howlers’ fridge and sent others to Dr. Richardson, the vet.

“Why was Abel sick?” John asked.

“Maybe he caught something from a dog. Maybe he ate really expired meat, but wolves eat carrion. If it was Abel, I don’t want to call it food poisoning, but maybe he got something like that from Suzanne’s intestines. It’s hard to find papers about what diseases humans and wolves share because it isn’t an issue.”

Wayne thought Shane’s death was such a waste; he would have the same opinion if Abel killed Pablo Escobar or Nancy Reagan. Shane was involved with the wolf response, nothing indicated he provoked the attack, and from Officer Matthews’ reactions, Wayne doubted the police suspected him of committing murder or being murdered. In Wayne’s opinion, nobody had a smart reason to visit in Sugar Maple Park. Officer Matthews thought only an addict or, highly unlikely in Wolftown, somebody meeting with a cartel leader would sit outside in a wolf’s territory.

Wayne wondered if the marijuana buyer or seller saw Shane dead or being attacked and escaped. The other person would not tell anybody a wolf attacked him—police would wonder why he approached somebody carrying drugs. Similarly, the wolf response’s questions included, “What were you doing at the time?”

Again, Wayne found no trace of the wolves’ movements. The rain disturbed the trail and fresh paw prints blended with old ones.

On March 11, around 4:00 AM, the Wilde County Sheriff’s Office asked Wayne to examine the Vasquez’s campsite, racing the weather. Though the Wolftown Police Department encouraged Wayne to remain in town, he thought he had another opportunity to find the wolf.

Wayne arrived as the crime scene technicians tidied up, which mussed the ground. He recognized a few things Miranda mentioned in her statement. He gingerly explained the campsite; John had not yet requested authorization to view Wilde County’s police evidence. John thought Wayne noticed a weird thing.

The police said that they had not removed Sergio’s body. Wayne found neither signs that a wolf dragged Sergio away nor indications that the campsite was, “‘not where’ Sergio ‘eats but where he is eaten.’”

“Sorry, could you repeat it, please?” John asked.

“I’m tired of saying ‘the wolf ate whoever.’ Sergio wasn’t eaten by anything at the campsite, but I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“How long does that—being eat—carrion animal—last for a human?” John asked.

“Longer than a couple of days. Maybe someone will find him. Search-and-rescue already looked in the wrong place once and maybe they were wrong again. Maybe Sergio was alive when she left, and he wandered off.”

“Oh, no.”

“I didn’t tell her that, but it could happen. He probably hasn’t survived the weather, though.”

Wayne spoke with Miranda over the phone, near noon. She said that the police suspected her of killing Sergio or covering up an accident. Still, her injuries convinced them and Wayne that a wolf, coyote, or dog attacked her. He promised to search for the wolf since Miranda worried the police would rule it out while determining Sergio’s cause of death.

John believed people were good, but he imagined that a honeymooner could murder a spouse. He asked, “Because the murders looked like a person got a wolf or a large dog to kill people?”

“I don’t know if anybody thinks she is connected. I don’t think she is, and I don’t think she set a pack of wolves loose or trained wolves to kill somebody. I’m not convinced she murdered him. The wolves would have attacked her whether or not she murdered Sergio. The weird thing is how the wolf got inside the tent. I want to talk to her again in a few days. If the information changes, maybe the sheriff’s department won’t think she was changing a lie. It’s better to be investigated by Sheriff Jordan than by the ​Wolftown Police Department.”

“How is she now?”​

“She felt a lot better when she warmed up and rehydrated, but she still has a really bad infection. She needs a lot of surgery and rehab. And she thinks if she stayed in the woods overnight, she would have died.”

“If you and Glenn kept following the wolf trails on the 9th, the search might have covered a different area, and Eddie Miller wouldn’t have found Miranda,” John said.

“We found wolf signs around her, so maybe the trail would have led us to her anyway, and we would have caught the wolf, too.” Wayne yawned midway through a sigh. “I haven’t been going in chronological order.”

“I’m following it. How long have you been awake?”

“I took a nap. I’ll go back to the evening of March 11.”

“How? Today is the 11th.”

“March 10, then.”

Overnight, Dr. Groves and the nurses organized a blood drive, intending to send the donations to the blood bank if unused. Thanks to the annual blood drive, they had the necessary supplies. The drive began at 7:00 AM.

Wayne believed that Dr. Groves prepared for more victims in other ways, too, but discreetly, to avoid alarming people.

Glenn Malone’s family asked him to stop hunting for the killer wolves; Wayne understood their concerns and adjusted Glenn’s schedule. He lived on an often-flooded road. The route toward Wolftown filled before the one to the Happy Howlers facility. If possible, he would sleep on the Happy Howlers’ breakroom couch and tend to the penned wolves.

The killer wolves terrified Calvin Kowalski and he quit. Wayne offered to re-hire him again after the crisis, or else write him an excellent recommendation letter.

Wayne grudgingly admitted he should nap twice in the same day.

John thought Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and School might influence people’s opinions about the wolves. Wayne supported him despite thinking religion barely mattered to the wolf response. Wolftown congregants from other denominations’ churches likely participated in the wolf response, but the church and Pastor Mickelson joined the wolf response once Mayor Dwyer asked to use Holy Trinity’s gymnasium. Mayor Dwyer had forbidden the wolf responders to discuss matters with outsiders. Still, Wayne thought Pastor Mickelson would tell him about local Christians’ opinions and let him look at the school’s library.

“I don’t know how to ask something like that,” John said.

“I bet he’s heard it before,” Wayne said.

Pastor Mickelson answered questions and showed John to the library.

Among Christian wolf responders, Pastor Mickelson said their faith influenced them, and he prayed for God to guide everybody of any belief. He said that the leaders’ decisions probably did not come from a doctrine because Wolftown’s city government separated church and state. But Wolftown authorities debated whether they valued a wolf’s life or a human’s life more.

John followed Pastor Mickelson’s theological explanations of how to treat wolves, why the wolves attacked, and how God protected people from the killer wolves. He had absolutely no idea how to write it down.

Holy Trinity Lutheran School taught creationism as fact, but children also learned evolution’s tenets. The methods changed every so often during Pastor Mickelson’s tenure, and the school board regularly debated how to include creationism and evolution.