Chapter Three

“Looks like the beast is back,” Ajax said, whistling with perverse admiration as he studied the kaleidoscope of blood in the bedroom. “This is some messed-up scene, huh? Man, you really don’t want to piss off the Ursulina.”

Ajax was the nickname for Arthur Jackson, a deputy like me, but four years older. He was tall and extremely good-looking, which he would be the first to tell you. He had full black hair sprayed neatly in place, a long sharp nose and chiseled jaw, and bedroom-brown eyes that always felt like X-rays seeing you without your clothes. He also had an impressive ability to do two things at once. While he was analyzing the murder scene, he was also cupping my ass. When I went to shoo his hand away, he gave one of my butt cheeks a hard squeeze that made me stifle a yelp of pain.

“Knock it off with talk about the Ursulina,” my partner, Darrell, snapped from beside the bed, where he was studying Brink’s body. “We don’t need another three-ring TV circus in town. Last time we had hundreds of monster hunters combing the woods. I don’t want to go through that again.”

Ajax joined Darrell at the bed. I stayed where I was, on the far side of the room, with my arms tightly folded across my chest. I felt queasy, but I didn’t dare show it. Gordon Brink lay exactly as Erica and I had found him. His arms were over his head, his wrists tied together with rope. So were his ankles. He had a friar’s ring of reddish hair around a prominent bald spot, and he had the plump look of a well-fed lawyer. He’d been wearing a suit and tie before he was stripped and killed. We’d found his clothes in a pile on the other side of the bed.

“I don’t know,” Ajax commented with a chuckle. “Those sure look like claw marks to me.”

Darrell had no patience for jokes when we had a dead body in the room. “An animal didn’t do this. A human being did. Focus on the crime scene. This wasn’t done with a knife. We’re looking for a weapon that makes sharp, deep, even cuts.”

I cleared my throat and spoke up. “It could be meat shredders.”

“What?”

“Meat shredders. You know, like for pulled pork? My dad used to have a set like that. They were long and sharp, so you could dig them into the flesh. Half a dozen parallel spikes, just like we’ve got here. The wounds look like somebody dug into the body over and over with a ripping motion.”

Ajax shook his head. “Carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. That does not sound like a fun way to die. This had to be personal, right? Somebody must have really hated this guy to do that to him.”

“Or it was set up to make us think that,” Darrell replied. “Personal or not, this was a premeditated execution. If the murder weapon was something odd, then the killer came prepared. Plus, this was messy. Whoever did this must have been covered in blood, but other than the spatter Rebecca found in the office, they didn’t track any of it outside the bedroom. So they must have brought along a bag to carry away their clothes, and probably a change of clothes, too.”

I was impressed that Darrell had figured that all out so quickly. Then again, for a small-town cop, Darrell kept up to speed on criminal investigations the way they were done in the bigger cities. We didn’t get many murders in Black Wolf County, but I already told you Darrell’s philosophy.

You never know.

“We’ll search the grounds when it’s light for the murder weapon and anything else the killer may have left behind,” Darrell went on, mostly to himself, as if he were making a shopping list in his head. “The snow won’t make it easy. I also want a couple of deputies checking dumpsters behind Main Street.”

“Why?” I asked.

“In case the killer dumped the bloody clothes and the weapon and hoped it would all get hauled away. The ground’s frozen, so they couldn’t bury them. It’s a long shot, but worth a try.”

“Yes, okay.”

“Next thing is time of death,” Darrell said. “When did you say Brink’s wife last talked to him?”

“Sunday afternoon. Erica says she tried to reach her husband later that same night, but he didn’t answer the phone. She called first thing Monday morning before she left Minnesota. Still no answer.”

“All right, we’ll see what the coroner says, but we may be looking at the murder taking place sometime Sunday evening.”

“Half the town was at the 126 that night for Trading Places,” Ajax pointed out. “We’re only about ten minutes from the bar. Somebody could have slipped out without being noticed and snuck back in before the flick was over.”

“We’ll need to talk to everyone who was at the movie,” Darrell said. “Rebecca, I also want you to get contact information for Erica Brink’s family in Minnesota. See if she was where she says she was, okay? I want to make sure that she didn’t come home early. Let’s see if she has receipts from gas stations on the road, too.”

“Absolutely.”

“We need to talk to the son. Jay. According to Brink’s wife, Jay said he was home this whole time?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Okay. Rebecca, you come with me. We’ll interview the boy together. Ajax, get started on fingerprints. I want the whole house dusted, but start with the bedroom and the office and the knobs on both sides of the front door.”

I watched Ajax’s face screw up with annoyance at the assignment. He wasn’t used to getting the grunt work.

“Why should I do the prints?” Ajax protested. “Let me interview the kid with you.”

Darrell shook his head. “I’ve seen you do interviews. You scare the crap out of witnesses, and they clam up. Rebecca has a better touch for these things. She knows how to get people to talk. Plus, maybe doing some real work will convince you to keep your hands off her ass. Got it?”

“Got it,” Ajax replied coldly.

Darrell stalked from the bedroom, leaving me alone with Ajax, whose face was beet red.

I already told you that Ajax was the county stud. His looks usually got him whatever he wanted, and that included women. He was married to a pretty redhead named Ruby, but he’d been coming on to me since I joined the sheriff’s office, even though he and my husband had been friends since grammar school. I kept telling Ricky that there was nothing between us, but when it came to Ajax, Ricky was toting around a big inferiority complex.

Ajax was as tall as anyone I’d ever met, at least six foot six, with a strong, wiry build. He had hands that were larger than my whole face, and he liked to brag that he was big all over. When CCR sang about the fortunate son, Ajax could have been their model. He’d led a charmed life. The draft ended right before he turned eighteen, so he didn’t have to go to Vietnam. He went to state college just as the new Division III opened up, so he became a basketball star. When he got back to Black Wolf County, he had a job waiting despite the tough times, because his uncle, Jerry, was the sheriff. Everyone assumed that whenever Jerry retired, Ajax would be elected to take his place, and that was probably true. It wasn’t that Ajax was such a great cop, but he had a way of being in the right place at the right time to make the most of opportunities.

“Must be nice to have your partner fight your battles,” Ajax commented sourly.

I didn’t take the bait by saying anything. In fact, I was a little annoyed that Darrell had felt it necessary to intervene on my behalf. Whenever he tried to get the other deputies to lay off me, the harassment only got worse as soon as his back was turned. But Darrell had three daughters, and I was the honorary fourth girl in the Curtis family. He felt a need to protect me.

“Darrell’s retiring next year,” Ajax reminded me. “Then you and me will be partners. I can’t wait for that.”

I still didn’t give him the satisfaction of showing any reaction, but he wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know. Once Darrell was gone, the sheriff would pair me with Ajax in a heartbeat. I wasn’t sure what I would do when that happened. The thought of being trapped in a car all day with Ajax was horrifying, and I knew the only way to make him back off was to give him what he wanted. I had no intention of doing that.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll stay here and look for paw prints.”

“Funny.”

“So what do you think? Did the Ursulina really do this?”

All I could say was something I knew to be a lie. “The Ursulina is a myth.”

“Yeah? Well, the myth says the Ursulina is a man who turns into a monster at night. It’s pretty hard to look at this crime scene and not think there’s something to it. Remember six years ago? Kip and Racer?”

“I remember.”

“Two men cut to ribbons, same message on the wall. I mean, there has to be a connection, right?”

“We don’t know that. Not yet.”

Ajax wiggled his fingernails at me like claws. “Well, you better be careful, Rebecca. If the Ursulina is back, you never know who he might be. And there’s a full moon outside.”

*

Six years ago. Yes, I remembered.

That summer changed everything, sweetheart. Nothing was ever the same for Black Wolf County after that. And not for me, either.

Until that July, most people thought of the Ursulina as one of those scary stories we whispered around the campfire to make kids scream. The legend told of a pioneer family who invited a starving fur trader into their cabin, only to have their mercy repaid with bloodshed. During the night, under the glow of the monster’s moon, the fur trader transformed into a giant beast who’d cut the entire family to pieces with its claws. Ever since then, the story of the Ursulina had been passed down from generation to generation.

Did we actually believe it?

Well, I think a lot of people wanted to believe it, but there had never been evidence to convince the skeptics. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were others, like me, who knew the truth, but a part of me also hoped I was unique. The girl who’d seen it up close. The girl who’d survived the beast. I didn’t really want to share the Ursulina with anyone else.

Then came July six years earlier.

Two local men, Kip Wells and Racer Moritz, had been squatting in a trailer in the woods an hour outside Random. The trailer was owned by our local lawyer Norm Foltz, who was away at a trial in Stanton County on the far side of the state. Kip and Racer probably knew he was gone, which was why they’d felt comfortable trespassing. Based on the evidence found inside Norm’s trailer, the two men had spent several days emptying out vodka and whiskey bottles, roasting rabbits over a fire pit, and poaching endangered bald eagles.

And then something happened to them. Nobody knew exactly what it was.

When Norm got back to Random, he discovered the bodies of Kip and Racer in his Airstream. The two men had been hideously slashed to death, and just like the murder of Gordon Brink, the killer had left behind a message painted on the trailer wall in their blood:

I am the Ursulina

Darrell had been the investigating officer on the case. He’d told everyone that the wounds on the bodies had been made by repeated stabs from a common kitchen knife and that there was no mythical beast involved, just two particularly gruesome homicides—but it didn’t matter what he said. The fire had been lit. Everyone in town wanted to find the Ursulina.

Maybe the story would have stayed a local novelty, but a B-list sci-fi actor named Ben Malloy, who’d been born in Random, came home to exploit the crime. He turned the Ursulina killings into a lurid television special, complete with a search by hundreds of volunteers canvassing miles of the national forest for any sign of the beast. I was out there hunting, along with half the county. We didn’t find any clues, but Ben got what he wanted. Huge ratings. A profile in Time. And, soon after that, a weekly series about mysteries and myths called Ben Malloy Discovers.

After that, our area became known as Ursulina Country. People came from around the world to launch quests to find the monster. Hours away in Mittel County, the city fathers scooped us by launching a popular festival called Ursulina Days. It didn’t matter that the murders had taken place nowhere near there. They laid claim to the Ursulina by arguing that the pioneer family whose deaths started the legend had lived in Mittel County. Of course, they’d made that up, but there was nothing those of us in Black Wolf County could do about it.

As for Kip and Racer, their murders went unsolved. Darrell was fighting an uphill battle to find evidence and witnesses, because no one really wanted the murderer to be caught. A human killer would spoil the myth, and local businesses saw dollar signs in the story of the Ursulina. Plus, nobody missed Kip and Racer. The consensus around town was that the monster had done us a favor by wiping them off the earth. Darrell was pretty much the only person who actually wanted to see the crimes solved. To him, it was a matter of principle. Murder was murder.

That was how the Ursulina legend took off.

That was also how I got a job in the sheriff’s office. I’d been on my own that summer. My father was away on the road, and my brother was hauling nets on an Alaskan fishing boat out of Seward. I had a freshly minted associate’s degree, but no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was young and restless. As the media besieged the sheriff’s department with Ursulina calls, Darrell needed someone to answer the phones, so I volunteered. Darrell was a neighbor, which meant I’d known him since I was a girl.

Eventually, my part-time role on the phone turned into a paid gig as the office secretary. I probably would have stayed in that job until I retired, but Darrell’s partner drowned in a boating accident right around the time that Ricky got fired from the mine. Darrell knew we needed more money, and he told me I had the makings of a great cop. He also had a niece on the county board who’d been riding the sheriff hard about hiring a woman for the force.

So I became Darrell’s partner. We’d been partners for almost two years.

I was about as welcome in that role as Sandra Thoreau was when she got her job at the mine. The other deputies made sure I knew it. They began filling my desk drawer with porno magazines and used condoms. When I didn’t lose my cool, they switched to dead rats instead.

Sooner or later, they figured I’d quit.

But I didn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere. I kept my head down, and I took it, and I never said a word. In my heart, I was still Rebecca Colder. A little bit stronger, a little bit bolder.