“Any update?” Storm asks.
“No sign of him. He hasn’t left his house. His curtains are still shut. It seems like he might still be sleeping. We’ve confirmed that all the people who have entered and exited the house are his tenants.”
“Okay. Stay on him. Let me know if anything changes.” Storm hangs up the phone.
Monroe knocks on Storm’s office door, and Storm calls for him to come in.
“Hey boss, about that information on the Wolf-Claw Killer case that you asked me to look up again. I’ve put together that list of lone wolves that Agency branches have been watching. I sent it to your email.”
Storm finds the email in his inbox and opens up the file. Monroe has created a neat spreadsheet with names and aliases, known addresses, historical whereabouts, images, notes on criminal history, known associates, and anything else that might be of interest. It is very detailed, exactly what Storm needs. He scans it for anything that might jump out at him.
Despite the presses claims, there had been no shred of evidence to indicate this case was linked to the Wolf-Claw Killer in any way. Now Storm has begun to wonder if there might be a less obvious link that has been missed.
Instead of looking at the case and seeing if it points to Wolf-Claw, he wants to look at the Wolf-Claw suspects and see if it points to this case. He’s seen this list of names before, almost committed it to memory in fact, but he wants to read it again in case anything pops into mind with all the fresh information on hand.
Monroe is hovering by the door. “Is there any reason you wanted that list?” he says curiously. “Is there a link with this case?”
“I’m not sure yet. On the surface it doesn’t look like it. The Wolf-Claw Killer has never abducted a girl before as far as we know. Certainly none of his victims have been werewolves. Plus Rachel Garrett’s a brunette, not blond, and she was attacked with a knife. All the Wolf-Claw victims were attacked with wolf claws and teeth. But something’s been nagging me and I don’t know what it is yet.”
“India and Rachel are a little older than his previous victims, aren’t they? In their twenties, not their teens.”
Storm nods, continuing to scan the list. He had asked for all known lone werewolves in the UK. He sees that Monroe has included ones from Europe too.
“Talk me through the timeline of the attacks again,” says Storm. He knows it, but he also knows it helps his brain think of things differently to hear someone else say it and to talk it over.
Monroe taps his tablet and pulls up the required information. “The first attack happened eleven weeks ago on a full moon at the end of May. The victim was blond, eighteen years old. The second attack happened on the next full moon towards the end of June. This time two victims, both blond. One fifteen years old and one eighteen years old. Sisters.”
“First one victim and then two,” says Storm. “He was escalating. After that second attack we had thought that the next attack would be on the July full moon which is due ten days from now, and that it might escalate by the number of girls he chose to attack. Instead it escalated by him beginning to attack outside of the full moon.”
“The first of those attacks was seven days after the full moon,” says Monroe. “One victim, blond, sixteen years old. And then four days after that came a second attack. One victim, blond, seventeen years old”
“Again escalating, possibly devolving,” says Storm. “The times between the attacks became shorter, the last attack was particularly frenzied. If he had followed that pattern his next attack should have happened already.”
“But it didn’t,” says Monroe. “It has now been nine days since the last attack.”
“Exactly,” says Storm. “He’s changed his pattern. Rachel was killed in the early hours of Saturday morning. That was five days after the last attack. What if the Wolf-Claw Killer not only changed his pattern but also changed his modus operandi? What would cause that change?”
“He clearly had a preference for blonds. That doesn’t just change. Rachel had black hair. Why would he pick her?”
“Maybe she wasn’t a random victim.”
“You think he knew her? Or you think it was a copycat trying to pin his personal murder on Wolf-Claw?”
“It would have had to be a forensically very naive copycat if he thought we would mistake knife slashes for werewolf bites, and the killer struck me as smarter than that.”
“Okay, so not a copycat,” says Monroe. “But someone who maybe knew Rachel.”
“We originally theorized that Wolf-Claw attacked because he couldn’t control his urge to kill,” says Storm. “We thought the fact that he began to attack outside of the full moon meant his compulsion to kill was overwhelming even when in his human form, so he resorted to using magic to transform into his wolf form during those last two attacks.”
“In Otherworld alpha werewolves and highly dominant wolves can transform at any time of the lunar cycle,” observes Monroe. “Do we think that there is some way that might have happened here in our world?”
“There have been no recorded instances of that ever happening in our world,” says Storm. “So logically we have to assume that if a werewolf did transform outside of the full moon in our world, he forced it through using magic. He chose to transform because he wanted to attack.”
“Why would he want to attack someone? He must have known that the Agency would hunt him down if he did that.”
“Which means he must’ve attacked out of sheer desperation. What if the attacks happened not because of a compulsion for killing but a compulsion for something else?”
“Like what?”