Chapter 33: Werewolf (part II)
As the rain had stopped, we went to Crane's house. She wasn't feeling especially well, so she had missed work that Saturday. To tell you the truth, the department itself had discharged her from duty.
But we were especially curious to know what she thought of the testimony of the two newly captured blokes, mainly because she was the only one who saw the three ones who robbed the plant close last week. So we agreed to stop by her house after work.
Crane lived between Cheawuld Garden and High Cheawuld Garden. It wasn't too far by car.
"Now I'm hungry. Does Emma have anything to eat?" Joey asked casually while he drove the station car.
"We're visiting to check how she's doing and you're gonna talk food? Why didn't you order that portion when we were at Marina's?"
"I think that thing's too greasy... There's too much fat on those portions."
"Yeah? I don't... It's one of the best cooks in the region... Do you mind if I light one in this car?"
"Suit yourself, Lieutenant."
I lit one. I opened the window to tblow the smoke. Although Joey left me be I ]doan't believe he likes smoke in the car.
"Speaking of too much fat... What was Jabes doing out there?"
"Jabes?"
"Yeah. He was there at the SAD when I arrived. He didn't come all this way just to talk about the werewolf, did he? Ewalyn was gonna break the news anyway. Or are you gonna tell me that he's also fighting to pass on the case to the DEA?"
No. He knows very well that Sanford is a special case. He's the only one who knows about what's going on. We count only on him because he's the DEA cop who knows the truth about paranormal beings. He's even helping keeping it a secret to the press.
"Good thing he knows about what's going on, because I have no idea."
"I don't mean he knows all about who the serial bite killer is, I just mean... He at least knows how to tell a paranormal being from a serial killer or something. But the reason he came there is another."
"What reason? And I believe you should have turned there, no?"
Joey hesitated between a slow brake and continued to follow while snorting regretfully.
"Pfft! Second time I get the way wrong."
"You can make the turn in the next block... What other reason?"
"He had a piece of iron with blood on it. He found it in McMiller's scene. You know? Where we both went to look for Sprohic that day."
"Joey... What are you doing?"
"Didn't you say to turn on the next one?"
"The one before... Now that's wrong-way. You're gonna have to take Howling St and make the turn..."
"Ah..."
I tilted my seat back because it looked like that was going to take a while.
"The McMiller place? A piece of iron? And what's so important about it?"
"It was covereed in blood. He said it was theoretically used to open the window. Do you remember we findind an iron in the scene?"
"Certainly not. It's not something would go unnoticed in an inspection... What are you trying to say? You think someone put it there afterwards just to make it look like the serial killer wasn't Sprohic?"
"It must be. It has to be. But I still don't understand what's in it for whoever did it."
"That's it, now turn right there." I instructed.
Joey followed it.
"I believe..." I continued, "it must've been someone related to last Friday's case. Or that black guy who beat you or someone related. Turns out he was trying to silence Sprohic. That means Sprohic knows something. The idea of drawing the DEA onto the wrong track is that they don't want them to interview Jeffrey Sprohic. If they had done that they probably would have known that his brother was still in Sproustown and would have gone after him? That must have been why... The DEA could have found Alexander before Friday if someone hadn't done something... Then that guy who knocked you down with a stick couldn't have kidnapped Sprohic on Friday. So everything must have been premeditated to keep him from revealing something he knows of."
'If someone hadn't done something heh...?' I mean, if 'someone' hadn't put that iron there... Fortunately Jabes was the one who found the iron so he must not have said anything to the DEA, but came to show it straight to us. Everything indicates there's someone who doesn't want the police to know something Alexander knows. I wonder what that thing is.
"Lieutenant... This is it, isn't it? The one with the yellow wall."
"Yeah." I unbuckled my belt.
Crane's house was small and she kept it all dark. She lived there alone, without any relatives, pets or even plants. It was only her and the furniture, locked in the eternally dark house, from which the curtains haven't been opened for long.
The door was open.
"Hi Crane. Hi Ewalyn."
"Oh, you guys are there?" Ewalyn asked surprised.
They were sitting on the couch in the living room.
"We came to see how you were doing." Joey told Crane.
"I'm better now... I don't think it's gonna happen again. But I still can't remember anything..."
A copy of the Underground Citizen Report was open on the couch above Crane's lap. It was the page that said about the werewolf case. Crane caught me looking at the article with the corner of my eye.
"This? Ewalyn showed me... Another person was attacked..." Crane handed me the paper to read and laid in her seat. She still looked exhausted.
"Goddamnit... And I left the whole house locked up on that Thursday night..."
Some werewolves, when they are in a period of transformation, end up committing violent acts without realizing it. There are reports of cases where they satisfy their hunger and only then come to their senses, claiming they remember nothing of the period when they were transformed.
Most of the times a werewolf, however, doesn't feed on human flesh. A werewolf can feed on anything, yet it still commits unconscious acts in a state outside of itself during the time of metamorphosis. These unconsciously committed acts may be of a violent character or not, depending on the psychic state of the individual.
You must have already guessed it, but yahs... Emma Crane is one of them. Crane is a werewolf.
And during that particular month, her head should be a mess. She was attacked by those three aliens and got hospitalized, then she suffered attempted murder from poisoning, and last Friday she ended up letting Sprohic be captured.
I'm not saying letting the man get captured was a big flaw, I mean... It certainly was bad for our investigations, but the worst part of it was that she was beaten in a hand-to-hand combat and thrown to the ground. That must have contributed more to the stress. Imagine: That black guy, whoever he is, could have killed her once she was on the ground if he'd wanted to...
"Goodness... And it also says people got hurt.
"They're lying, Crane! Tell her it's a lie!"
Joey agreed complacently:
"Underground Citizen Report is a sensationalist journal, Emma..."
"Don't start it. You're all just saying that to make me feel better!"
Ewalyn and I looked each other without knowing exactly what to say. I could tell she was facing that kind of attitude from since who knows by what time she got there. On one hand she wanted Emma not to feel guilty for what she's not (since everything she did, she did unconsciously), but on the other hand Crane couldn't forgive herself.
Crane, however, was no longer in such a depressing state. She had past the state of depression and was moving into the state of conformity.
"Ah... Let's change the subject? You guys want something to drink? Something to eat?" Crane asked in an almost authoritarian tone as she got up.
Joey must have held himself over the invitation to a meal.
It was no news Crane became especially irritated before and after her transformed state, that is, around the period. Do you remember how Joey and I sometimes played with her about 'the period of the month'? When we do that we're talking about her werewolf state and not something else.
"Ahem... So since it's to talk about something else... We'd like to know about our newly captured blokes" I meant Pierre and Bad Boy, who we captured on Thursday.
"Henry..." Ewalyn wanted to say something about my lack of tact by going straight to the point while in Crane's situation, but she couldn't express himself in words in time.
Crane didn't seem to mind though:
"What about them?" She went to the refrigerator and took some kind of distilled and artificial flavored drink I don't know.
"You saw them... Talked to them in person, right?"
"Yes..." She brought the drink and glasses.
"And by any chance were any of them one of those other three?"
From the attack on Monday? No... I didn't recognize the appearance or the ductu. If I had, I would ve warned you by now. I think what they said must all be true. They seemed especially frightened of being taken to the Arena instead of Silverbay. Alexander Sprohic really was in the place they said and the description of the other paranormal being matched the description of that bastard on Friday," she uttered the pejorative word with more taste than the others, "so you'd think the rest of the story would be true: they really don't work for any of the three they named specifically and were hired by that man for the first time."
"Is that grape flavoured?" Joey asked in a mixture of amazement and curiosity.
"Why you ask?" Crane was addressing 'my' question.
"Don't know... Just curious."
Heck of an euphemism for someone who came there just to ask that. I was so anxious to get something linking Pierre and Bad Boy to the incident that day that I couldn't wait for Monday.
Unfortunately not everything is the way we want... Crane is right: probably nothing in these two events is related.
"Why are you two looking at me?" I addressed Joey and Ewalyn "Crane is right! All we can do is move on and change the subject. That only happened because of the sum of the circumstances. The peak of the month has passed. It's the kind of thing that happens... And it's not going to happen again."
I tried to enlighten myself in the most casual way so that I could make Crane as comfortable as possible. Of course, we knew that although nothing happened very bad things could have happened during the morphosis. But it's not something you can control. When there's nothing to be done, the best thing to do is to do nothing.
"I just think..." Crane sighed as she filled her glass with that pinkish liquid "I seem to cause more trouble than help with that..."
"Of course not, Emma!" Ewalyn objected.
"Not really," I agreed, "without your skill you would be about as useful as an ordinary human guard. And if you stop to check... Every paranormal race has its weaknesses. Look on the bright side. At least you don't have to get hooked on SPP and self-mutilate regularly to maintain your strength." I took a quick look at my cell phone "By the way, It's about time I take mine again."
Escaping that hypocritical part of the conversation, I left the room and went to the side exit, which led to Crane's backyard. Even though there was plenty of room, she had nothing there. Not plants, not a garden, not even grass... Nothing.
I took the liberty of using that space for the grotesque scene that was the use of SPP. As I've already commented, it wasn't just taking the pill and taking it. You can only take it if it will act on any wound the body has, so we inflicted the wounds ourselves before swallowing the pill.
I rolled up my sleeves and faced my scars bitterly for a moment. A cluster of them, manifesting itself as in dégradée, some old, some new, all piled up in the same region.
I took my sterile knife and ripped another horizontal cut of about three centimeters. The pain, though customary, is burning and penetrating. The wound opened and began to bleed, dripping into the cement in Crane's backyard for five or six stripes that ran eagerly out of my arm. In the face of that pitiful scene, nothing makes up for the eretism, which I trained for so many years in beta training. God bless the eretism.
I not only went there for the SPP but also to enjoy and smoke a cigarette. Nothing like the cigarette to help with the pain of the injury.
Ewalyn appeared behind me. The first thing she did was reach out and ask her for a cigarette.
"Crane seems less of a guiltyball now that you've arrived."
"Oh, yeah? That's good." I said swallowing the pill.
"So that means you can handle her when you mean it. Better than expected. I was here since 6:30...
We both left the lobby and went down to the center of the yard.
"I'm used to it, I'd say. Crane is more rational than emotional. She's just like me. You'd think the words that have the most effect on her would make rational sense, not emotional effect."
Ewalyn kept silent.
"What I said there is no lie, though. The monthly chaos of a werewolf is a small price to pay compared to using drugs."
"You think? I never really cared."
"You probably never tried to stay clear of them for a while to see what happens."
"And why would I do that? We were instructed never to run out of SPP during the beta training."
"You wouldn't go as far as to do it of your own will, of course. But eventually the day comes when we're captured by the enemy and... Oh, I don't know. Anything could happen."
"It ever happened to you?"
I nodded affirmatively, kind of to my disgust.
"Already? Really? Why?"
Let's just say that... I wasn't exactly the man who thought the most before taking his actions a few years ago. I was the one who thought he could do whatever he wanted without facing consequences.
Ewalyn burst out laughing.
"What?"
"What was that? 'I wasn't exactly?' 'Years ago?' That's the exact impression I get from you now!"
"How so?"
"I mean... That man who doesn't think before he takes actions. That is so... current."
I blushed.
"C'mon... that's not true... I think I've matured, I just..."
" Henry... Such adult yet such a child..."
Ewalyn began to caress my shoulder friendly.
She stared at me again with her clear eyes as she did so. Every time I looked into her eyes by accident I remembered more and more of the late Betty
At the same instant Joey arrived from the other room.
"Huh...? Am I interrupting something?"
"No? What's up?"
"It's that it's about time. Me and the 'other me' have to sleep early..." I had promised to give Joey his ride back since I wanted to keep the police car to get to work tomorrow.
"And there you see yet another price to pay for being paranormal." I told Ewalyn.
"Price? I wish I had an excuse to sleep early." She joked.
We all went back inside and said goodbye to Crane. Ewalyn was with her car, and she lived in Glen Meadow, which was on the opposite side. I left with Joey in the police car.
He lived near the house, but for a reason I never really went to his house. He always tells me to leave him on the street, even more because his street is a dead-end, so it would be annoying to leave.
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