The phone started again. She sighed and said she'd be just a moment.
I sipped my wine and turned to survey my surroundings. What I saw made me sputter, clapping my hand to my mouth before I sprayed my shirt. There, almost over my head, was a picture of me.
"Do you like wolves?"
I jumped. Lynn stood in the doorway.
"I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "I just asked if you liked wolves."
She pointed to the painting. It was me... as a wolf, in one of Jeremy's paintings. Nightfall, if I remembered right. It had been years since I'd seen this one. The public preferred Jeremy's more atmospheric pictures of wolves in city streets. This was the more natural style he liked better.
"It's a print," she said, as she sat. "I'd love an original, but I could never afford one. I must confess, wolves fascinate me, as they do many people these days."
"They are popular."
"From demonized to romanticized. No, my view of wolves is somewhat more realistic, I hope. True, they aren't the big bad beast of lore. But if I met one in the wild, I'd back away very slowly and get out of there as fast as I could."
"Not try to pet it?"
She laughed. "Exactly. But they do intrigue me more than other animals, which is why when those killings started, I took an interest--"
The phone rang.
Lynn sighed. "This time, I am letting the machine pick up." The answering machine clicked on, and we could hear that the caller was a young man who said he was in town on a logging contract and looking for a place to let.
"I'm getting a lot of interest," Lynn said when the message ended. "But not the sort I was hoping for."
"You're renting out a room?"
"Or two. My husband died a couple of years ago and I'm ready for some company. I was thinking of a stripper."
I can imagine my expression because she laughed. "That didn't come out right, did it? I meant I was hoping to rent rooms to girls on the exotic dance circuit. We get a lot of them through here and their living accommodations are less than ideal. I thought I could offer something nicer, more secure. A safe place to stay is hard to come by in that field."
"I heard a few girls have gone missing lately. They weren't strippers, though. At least, I didn't get that impression."
"No, they weren't. Not officially, that is. The first one was a part-time prostitute, though you won't see that in the articles. And rightly so, in my opinion. One whiff that those girls were less than saintly..."
"And they're dismissed as doped-up whores who took off with the first guy who promised them a new life in Seattle."
"Precisely. The second girl, now she was the type who should make headlines. Joy Sataa. An A student. Came from a fly-in community to attend college. But it's that 'fly-in community' part that moves her down the priority list."
"Native, as was the third girl, I think."
"Right again. Adine Aariak. Seventeen and living on the streets. Maybe turned a trick now and then, though no one on the police force recalls picking her up. Grew up with the three A's: alcohol, abuse and abandonment. She came to Anchorage hoping for a break, but we all know how that works out."
I sipped my wine, waiting for her to go on. When she didn't, I prompted her with "And you think... I heard something about aliens."
She grinned. "Ah, yes, my alien abduction theory." She leaned closer and lowered her voice. "It's bullshit."
I laughed.
"I don't believe in aliens. Well, no, I do, but not in alien abduction. Can you really imagine a recognizable alien race traveling thousands of light-years to impregnate humans? I just like to get folks going. They expect me to come up with outlandish theories, so I do, then have a good chuckle as they humor me and pretend to play along. A monster did get those girls--but one with a very human face. Again, an old story, too often told." She drained half her glass of wine. "Enough of that. You came to talk about other crimes. The ones in the woods."
"You don't think wolves are responsible."
"I will admit it is possible, but I very strongly doubt it. I've taken photos of the sites and the bodies, and while there is evidence of wolf activity, there's no proof that a wolf actually killed or even participated in eating the corpses. A wolf in winter won't kill something and leave it for scavengers. They can't afford to. My guess is that they visited the site, took a look, and left it alone. Wolves don't kill people. They just don't."
"Wolf attacks are rare. Deaths are rare to the point of being unheard of."