Sam led me through the convention center to a room marked “Video Surveillance.”

Sam showed his badge to the man inside. He left and Sam sat down at the controls in front of a big monitor.

“I’m pulling up the footage from when we saw the Werewolf,” Sam told me. “That’s going to take a minute or two.”

While I waited, I took out my journal and thought of everyone on the Chief’s list of suspects.

Lavenza. Me.

That right there was my problem: how was I going to get my name off that list and the real criminal’s name on it?

Of course, there was one easy way to do that. I took out my pen and wrote:

That didn’t really change anything. Well, not true — it did change one thing. It made me feel a little better. Just a little.

Sam saw what I had written.

“That should be Werewolf,” said Sam. “Not Wolfman.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“Well, for starters, a Wolfman is a man,” said Sam. “We don’t know if the Werewolf is a guy or a dame. Even if it is a he, he could be anybody.”

“Or anywhere,” I sighed.

“That’s what we are here to narrow down,” said Sam. “Take a look at these.”

Sam laid out a bunch of printouts from the convention center’s main surveillance camera.

They all looked pretty much the same to me: they each showed the entire convention floor crowded with sports mascots.

The only difference was the time printed on the bottom of the photos.

“This camera takes a photo of the entire convention floor every sixty seconds. These were taken from the time the Werewolf ran from us until now,” Sam explained. “If we can see which exit he ankled out of, it may give us a clue as to where he went.”

I nodded and took half of the stack of pictures to look through. Each one had dozens of furry costumed mascots.

Looking for the Werewolf in that crowd was like trying to find a needle in a furstack.

So I was pretty surprised when I spotted him (or maybe her?) right away!

“Aces!” Sam smiled. “You really do have the eye of a gumshoe! There’s the Werewolf, right there, going into that bathroom right in the middle of the convention center!

“What is it with the Werewolf and bathrooms?” Sam wondered, trying to figure out if it were some kind of clue.

“Maybe he isn’t housebroken?” I offered.

Sam didn’t answer. He was busy shuffling through the rest of the printouts.

“Look at this,” said Sam. “This is the picture taken a minute later. There’s the Chief already here, pretty close to where the Werewolf was in your photo. If the Werewolf had left the bathroom then, the Chief would have seen him for sure.”

Sam pulled out the rest of the photos and looked through them quickly. There was no sign of the Werewolf in any of them.

“Which means,” said Sam, “the Werewolf never came out of that bathroom!”

A minute later, Sam and I were standing outside of that bathroom.

“This could get pretty hairy,” Sam said. “Better let me go first.”

I didn’t argue with that.

Sam charged in. It was hairy, all right. Very hairy!

There was hair everywhere in the bathroom.

But there was no Werewolf. Or anyone else. The bathroom was empty, except for the fur everywhere.

And the disposable razor and can of shaving cream on the sink.

“Of course!” said Sam as he picked up the shaving cream. “We never saw the Werewolf come out of the bathroom because he shaved off all his hair!

“But that would leave him naked,” Sam continued, thinking it through. “Unless he had clothes somewhere . . .”

“He had clothes,” I said, thinking, “when he ran past me. Under all his hair he was wearing some kind of blue suit.”

“That answers that,” Sam nodded. “He’d still have his claws, though. But he could easily have hidden them in his pockets. Or in a pair of gloves.

“In which case,” Sam continued, “the Werewolf would have come out of here looking like he normally does. And since we don’t know what that looks like, this is a —”

“Dead end.” I sighed.