Пётр Левин – Blood Wolf’s Path (страница 1)
Blood Wolf’s Path
Chapter 1. A Werewolf at the Cemetery
That night I was walking through the woods toward the cemetery. In the distance, I heard a howl, but I paid it no mind—nature can be deceptive. The moon was full and the stars shone brightly. But even without them I would have found the way—I’d been here many times in the past two months. It was at this cemetery that I had buried my friend. His death was a mystery: the killer left absolutely no traces. Today I just wanted to sit quietly by his grave and think about the case.
I had barely walked a hundred steps down the forest trail when I heard branches snapping off to my right. It sounded as if something inhuman—a beast—was forcing its way through them. I stopped and shouted.
"Who’s there?"
The cracking intensified. Then I yelled:
"I'm a cop! I've got a gun! Enough joking around. I'll open fire, you bastards!"
The noise grew. I drew my Beretta from its holster and racked the slide.
"You sons of bitches, don't you dare mess with me—I'm not in the mood for fun." I cocked the hammer and prepared to shoot.
The head of a scrawny bear poked out of the bushes.
With surprising agility for such a scrawny thing, the bear lunged at me.
Dawn was breaking. I came to on the ground with a shallow wound on my chest. The bushes and earth were spattered with blood. Apparently I’d wounded the beast and it had wandered off into the thicket to die. Well, to hell with it—at least I was alive. But I should go see a doctor.
During my checkup, Dr. Muhammad shook his head disapprovingly and said:
"Mr. Harrison, why on earth would you go to a cemetery on a full moon? That’s a bad omen…"
After the hospital I swung by home to change clothes, then headed to the station.
I needed to find the killer of my partner, Hank Sullivan. Hank had saved me from bullets more than once and taught me how to track criminals. He used to say, "Think like a criminal—it helps." Oh, how I could use his advice right now!
I sat down at my desk and for the hundredth time began reviewing the case files. First I watched the gas station video that captured Hank alive for the last time. There he is, getting out of his truck, one hand resting on the gun in his holster. He looks around, inserts the pump nozzle, swipes a card at the pump terminal. Then he heads into the store, still keeping a hand on his gun. He gives the clerk $30 and walks back out.
Here’s the gas station attendant’s statement: “The man was clearly in a hurry. He gave me $30 and asked me to turn on pump number 1. Said his card didn’t go through.”
Half an hour later, Sheriff Montgomery Burns found Hank’s body five miles from the gas station on the Yankee Division Highway, about three miles from the bay. The pickup was parked on the side of the road with the engine running. One headlight was broken, the hood dented, the windshield cracked – as if the truck had hit a large animal. The body was lying nearby.
The coroner’s report stated that death resulted from the head being partially separated from the body, which severed the carotid artery and internal jugular vein, and also broke the 4th and 5th cervical vertebrae. The nature of the wounds indicated that the blow was delivered by a blunt, heavy object with significant force. No foreign fingerprints or DNA were found on the body or in the truck. Those were all the clues we had.
A mystery I had to solve. So who killed you, Hank? It was only recently we’d celebrated my birthday, when you gave me a revolver and five boxes of armor-piercing rounds (which I, incidentally, put to use just yesterday), and only two days later you were dead.
I spent the two months since my partner’s death going through all of his (which effectively meant our) case files. Maybe someone decided to take revenge? It was a working theory… But why the broken headlight and the dented hood? What the hell happened… And why such a bizarre way to die? If they wanted revenge, they could have just shot him. Killing him with an axe or a machete in one swing—that’s chancy, especially since Hank was always armed…
The perpetrators—if they’d planned an attack specifically on him—would have known all that, so a death under such strange circumstances just didn’t square with a revenge motive… So how did it happen? Hank ran over a perp with his truck, then the guy got up and killed him? Nonsense… Think, think. Maybe they tossed a corpse onto the hood, Hank stopped, and then they killed him… Also nonsense.
For two months I had been grasping at straws, running down every lead. Today I had a meeting scheduled at MCI Concord prison with Fred Johnson. That black son of a bitch was doing time for murdering a family of three—a husband, wife, and their three-year-old son. A total asshole high on drugs had broken into their home and shot all three with a shotgun. It wasn’t hard to nail him—there was a camera out front, and Fred’s face was caught on it. When we busted him five hours after the murders, he was furiously jerking his huge cock. Hank flipped Fred over onto the floor, snapping his dick. And the black bastard started screaming that he’d fuck us all and get revenge… Well, it was time to have a talk with him.
"Well, well, Jerry Harrison, we meet again," Fred Johnson began when I walked into the interrogation room. "Where’s your partner, Hank Sullivan? I heard he went a little wild—and got his head torn off."
"But at least he lived with his dick intact, not broken," I snapped.
"And how would you know—were you fucking him?" Fred shot back.
This exchange of verbal blows could have gone on forever. Fred Johnson was sitting in a chair, his hands chained to the table and his feet in shackles.
I sat down opposite the black bastard and got down to business.
"Do you know who killed him?" I asked.
"I know, I know," Fred Johnson guffawed, tilting his fleshy, double-chinned head back.
"Was it your doing?" I pressed.
"Well, how could I? I’m serving a life sentence," Johnson said with a smirk.
"That’s only because the state of Massachusetts has no death penalty, you filthy bastard," I shot back sharply.
"But I didn’t kill anyone! You know that’s true. And Hank knew it too, and now he’s dead…" Fred Johnson whispered, dripping with insinuation.
"Again with this innocence bullshit. Everyone’s sick of it. Let’s get to the point. Do you have information or not?" I asked, starting to get irritated.
"Yes, I do. But you won’t like it. Beware the full moon. Your hour is coming," Fred Johnson said.
I left the prison in a foul mood. That bastard hadn’t told me anything useful.
I didn’t go back to the station, heading straight home instead. I was exhausted—I could barely keep my eyes open; I didn’t even bother with a beer. I took a leak – my urine was red – and collapsed onto the couch without undressing.
The next day felt like some kind of delirium. I woke up in the bushes of a park two blocks from my house. And I was naked—no underwear, no socks. Good thing it was early morning and I managed to get home without incident.
The front door of my house had been smashed open. It looked like someone had broken it outward from inside. I went in and saw something strange. By the couch lay a shredded pair of jeans and a torn shirt; my boots had been pulled off and sliced up. My pistols were on the floor in their holsters with full magazines, their straps ripped.
All evidence pointed to me sleepwalking. Good thing I hadn’t been armed. Apparently my partner’s death had messed me up so badly I was starting to lose my mind.
The day passed as usual, spent searching for answers. I decided to send a trusted undercover agent into Fred Johnson’s prison to sniff out his possible involvement in my partner’s death. Some old connections with the prison warden helped – I’d once saved the warden’s ass from prison myself. That evening they were supposed to put my agent into his cell… Well, I would wait.
Evening came and once again I felt myself drifting off, as if I’d spent all day unloading boxcars. This time, just in case, I stripped naked and handcuffed myself to the leg of the sofa. The sofa’s legs had thick ends, so the cuffs locked on securely.
Imagine my surprise when early next morning I woke up naked in the park again, handcuffs still on my wrist. My arm didn’t even hurt. I ran back to the house and was stunned. The sofa leg had been torn off, and the couch was shredded like a pack of Mexicans had been tearing it apart looking for drugs.
I tried to break the remaining leg, but it was screwed on tight… Just how hard must one have pulled…
Because I had to clean up, I didn’t make it to work until 7:30. At noon I got a phone call from the prison. The agent they’d planted in Fred Johnson’s cell had been killed. Fred had shanked him in the throat.