I took that to mean that he understood and handed him the box.
He unwrapped it, careful not to rip the paper. Then he opened the box and saw the little doll inside. He dropped the box on the floor, as if it had suddenly become hot, leapt out of his chair and scrambled away. “What is that thing?”
“It’s kind of like a voodoo doll,” I said in a tone that I hoped sounded calm and reassuring.
“Get it away from me.” He had backed all the way up against the wall again. His voice had gone up a register or two.
“That’s where Meredith here comes in. Would you like her to destroy it for you?” I asked, not making a move toward the doll yet.
“She can do that?” He turned terrified eyes to me and then to Meredith.
“She can,” I assured him.
“How?”
“She has, uh, special talents.” Bringing up witchcraft seemed like a bad idea at the moment. Littlefield was freaked enough already.
Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “Special talents like the person who made that thing has? Those kinds of talents?”
“Similar.”
He looked from one to another of us now, his breath coming faster and faster. Then he pointed at Meredith and screamed,
“Witch!”
See. I knew bringing up witchcraft was a bad idea. Meredith took a step back. Littlefield started to advance.
“Mr. Littlefield, John, Meredith is just here to help you.” I started toward him.
“Witch!” he screamed again and shoved me aside.
I heard a quiet growling noise behind me. It would be way better for everyone if I dealt with Littlefield rather than Paul. I shoved Littlefield back against the wall. I didn’t try to be gentle.
He stared at me. “What are you? Are you a witch, too?” My shove is significantly more powerful than most people would assume.
“Not exactly.” I relaxed my grip, trying to figure out how to explain what and who we were. Big mistake.
Littlefield slipped out of my grip and made a beeline for Meredith. He shoved her hard and screamed, “‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”
Meredith stumbled backward and went down hard. Littlefield was on top of her in an instant. My reflexes are quick. Cat quick. Even so, Paul beat me to him and plucked him off of Meredith like a pesky Chihuahua.
There are a lot of myths about how werewolves change and when they change. Most wolves don’t need a full moon, although the moon does call them. A new and inexperienced wolf will have an easier time changing the closer it is to the full moon. Even an experienced wolf will be more likely to change when it’s that time of the month.
Basically, though, a werewolf can change any time he or she wants to change and Paul was going to change right now. He hadn’t even taken off his clothes, which meant that they were going to rip and burst as his body transformed. The expense of constantly buying new wardrobes was just one of the reasons that most shapeshifters had absolutely no sense of modesty whatsoever.
The more emotional the reasons for a werewolf’s change, the more violent the change. Apparently threatening a werewolf’s woman was a pretty emotional reason for making the change, because even I cringed as Paul’s jaw line lengthened and his bones began to pop and snap. And I’d seen it before.
Paul shook Littlefield like a bad puppy and I was afraid he was going to break his neck.
“Paul, no. Set him down.” I grabbed his arm.
Paul glanced at me and growled a warning. I backed away. As much as I didn’t want him to kill Littlefield, I really, really didn’t want him to kill me.
Paul’s shirt ripped as his back began to arch.
Littlefield started screaming. “‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’”
Fabulous. This guy had a bible quote for everything, even werewolves.
Meredith grabbed Paul’s arm now. “Set him down, Paul. I’m okay. He didn’t hurt me. Set him down.”
Paul growled again, but Meredith is apparently way less of a chicken than I am. She didn’t back off.
“I’m fine, Paul. He didn’t touch me. I’m safe. Set him down,” she repeated.
That was when I heard the sirens in the distance. Fantastic. Someone must have heard the commotion and called the cops. We really needed to get out of here. I realized Meredith hadn’t heard the sirens yet. I wasn’t sure that Paul had either over his rage.
“Cops,” I said.
Everyone froze.
“Let’s go.” I headed toward the door.
Paul dropped Littlefield and followed me to the door, with Littlefield screaming after us, “‘Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.’”
“Look! We’re the good guys!” I protested.
“How do I know that? How do I know you’re not emissaries of Satan sent here to tempt me?” he demanded.
“Because I’m pretty sure the ones who say they’re going to help you stay alive are always the good guys.” That seemed obvious to me.
“Then you don’t know a lot about heaven.” Littlefield glared.
He had a point. I didn’t. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in it. Or in hell. I did believe in staying alive, however. “Maybe not. I’m offering to help you not visit before you’re supposed to, though. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Not when you’re going to use witchcraft to help me. Get out, witch. Get out, both of you.”
We got.
I headed toward the Buick. “We can’t get him back in the car like this,” Meredith said, gesturing to Paul, who was halfway to full werewolf form.
“Then what?” I asked. The sirens were getting louder. We didn’t have long.
“I’m going to go with him to that field back there.” She gestured to an open area behind the apartment complex. “He can change the rest of the way and get home in wolf form.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll figure something out. Now go. Get out of here. Even I can hear the sirens now.” Meredith gave me a little shove toward the car.
“I’ll drive around and meet you on the other side of the field, okay?”
“Whatever. Just go.”
I ran to the Buick.
12
APPARENTLY I’M NOT SO GOOD AT RUNNING FROM THE LAW. I did manage to pull around to the other side of the field and pick up Meredith. She picked her way through the grass, carrying Paul’s wallet, keys and cell phone and the ripped up remnants of his shirt and jeans. I opted not to mention the lack of underpants. Leave it to a werewolf to go commando.
Meredith shoved the wallet, phone and keys into the glove box and the ripped clothing under the seat. I turned the Buick around to head back to 120 and get the hell out of Dodge without breaking the speed limit or running a stop sign, but the police pulled us over when we were still two blocks away from the highway and miles from home free.
“How do you want to play this?” Meredith asked, as I pulled to the curb.
“Dumb.” I really, really needed a new fallback position.
“Is that what you usually do?” she asked, brows arched.
“Yep.”
“And it works?” She looked like she was starting to laugh.
“Most of the time.” Not as much as it used to, though.
“You need a new fallback position.” She settled back in her seat.
“Tell me about it.”
Then the uniform was knocking at my window. I rolled it down and smiled. “What can I do for you, officer?”
He didn’t smile back. “Step out of the car, please.”
I stayed put. “Is there a problem?”
He stepped back from the door. His hand hovered over his weapon. “Step out of the car, please,” he repeated.
The hand near the gun was making me nervous. “Sure thing, officer.” I glanced at Meredith and got out of the car, hands to my sides and away from my body.
The uniform glanced in the car. “You, too, ma’am,” he said to Meredith.
Ooh. She wasn’t going to like that “ma’am,” although in all fairness the officer looked like he was barely out of high school. I glanced at her again and could see the start of static in her hair. I hoped he didn’t over-“ma’am” her. He’d be likely to get a good zap if he did and I wasn’t sure how we’d explain that.
“I’m going to have to ask you ladies to come with me,” he said.
“On what grounds?” I asked, looking for a loophole.
“We had a report of a disturbance,” he said, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“What kind of a disturbance?” I asked. More information in these situations was always better. Who knew what the person who had called this in had heard?
“We can discuss this down at the station.” He grabbed my arm and started to march me toward his car.
I could have run. It would have taken nothing to slip away from this guy and jump in the Buick. It wouldn’t have done me much good. Even I can’t outrun radio waves and I knew they had my license plate. Plus, I wasn’t sure if I could get Meredith in the car fast enough and I wasn’t going to leave her standing on a curb in Elmville with Officer Friendly when she was only there to do me a favor.
“Is it okay if my friend follows in the car?” I asked.
He looked confused for a second. “I can’t see why not,” he said, trying to sound gruff and not quite pulling it off.
“Keys are in the ignition,” I called to Meredith, as my new buddy put his hand on my head and shoved me into the back of the cop car.
I AM NOT NEARLY AS CLAUSTROPHOBIC AS PAUL AND I PRETTY much wanted to claw my way out of the back of the squad car.
It didn’t smell nice back there, plus it was stuffy. I figured making a list of demands starting with “Could I have some air back here?” would not make me more popular, so I practiced some deep-breathing exercises and tried to be calm.
Elmville is not that big, so it didn’t take long to get to the station. As we walked in, I saw Meredith pulling the Buick into the visitor parking area and breathed a little sigh of relief. At least somebody knew where I was.
I was marched in through the back, but at least no one had handcuffed me yet.
“What’s up, Lopez?” the desk sergeant asked, as we walked in.
Officer Friendly, as I’d christened him in my mind, said, “Chief wants to talk to her.”
The desk sergeant nodded at a bench and said, “Wait there.”
Lopez walked into a back room. I sat down and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. Before I could dial, the desk sergeant looked at me, shook his head and pointed at the sign that had a cell phone in a big red circle with a line through it. I sighed and stuffed it back into my pocket. At least he hadn’t taken it away from me.
About five minutes later, Lopez came out and said, “Chief’s ready now.” He gestured for me to follow.
I got up and walked in after him to the chief’s office.
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe Carroll O’Connor in
In the Heat of the Night
. Or Hal Linden from
Barney Miller
. Instead I got Susan Dey in a police uniform.
“Hello, Ms. Markowitz. I’m Chief Murdock.” She didn’t stand up from behind her desk. In fact, she didn’t look away from her computer screen at first.
I sat down in the chair across from her desk and waited until she swiveled in her office chair to look at me.
“So why am I here?” I asked, figuring I’d cut to the chase. I did it with a smile, though.
“We’ve had several reports of your car being in the area.” Chief Murdock smiled back at me. I didn’t feel like she meant it, though.
“And that’s a crime of some kind?” I asked, still smiley, as if I were just asking for information, which I suppose I was.
She leaned forward on her desk, bracing herself on her elbows. “Why would you think that? Did my officer put you under arrest?”
“No, but he did bring me to the police station in a squad car.”
That smelled really bad
, I added silently.
Chief Murdock steepled her fingers and watched me for a moment. I watched right back. “What exactly brings you to Elmville, Ms. Markowitz?”
“I’m thinking of moving here. I wanted to check it out.” I’d had a few minutes to come up with some reasonably plausible sounding stories in the back of the squad car while I was deep-breathing through my mouth.
“Do you have family here?” she inquired.
“No.” I kept that smile plastered firmly on my face.
“Friends?” She pressed.
“Not yet.” But I was making new ones every minute. I could tell by the look on Chief Murdock’s face that she was looking forward to watching the
Sex and the City
movie with me while we drank cosmos and ate low-fat popcorn.
“Why Elmville, then?” She leaned back in her desk chair.
“Why not?” I countered.
Murdock kept leaning back, eyeing me carefully. I didn’t say anything. It was her move, as far as I was concerned.
“The reports of your car have been in particular areas,” she finally said.
“Really? I feel like I’ve been all over town.” I had, too. Luckily, the Elmville Three hadn’t all been from the same socioeconomic bracket.
“I didn’t mean a particular geographic area. I meant areas associated with certain persons.”
I didn’t say anything to that. It wasn’t a question. I didn’t feel like I had to answer.
“Ms. Markowitz, certain people in this town did a terrible thing a few years back. What they did was wrong, but they have paid their dues. They did their time and took their punishment. Any further punishment would be considered harassment. I will not tolerate harassment in my town. Not of anyone. Even if they did do something bad.”
“I’m not sure what people you’re referring to.” I looked her right in the eyes. My heart didn’t flip-flop looking at her and it was way more easy to lie to her than it was to Ted.
“Let me cut the bullshit, then.” Murdock came out from behind her desk, walked around and perched right in front of me. “If I find out you had anything to do with those two boys’ suicides, I will be on you like ugly on an ape. And if anything—and I do mean anything—happens to John Littlefield, you will be my first person of interest. Do you understand?”