The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Had he? How had that happened - with his attention to Susan Larson,s descriptions, and her account of the creature,s voice? He couldn,t even remember what he,d written now. But they were calling him the Man Wolf and that was a small score.

Billie was raving about what had just happened. She wanted him to talk to the Golden Gate Park witnesses and the neighbors on Buena Vista Hill.

Well, he had to go up north, he had no choice, he told her. He had to see the scene of the crime where he was almost killed.

"Well, of course, you,re looking for evidence of the Man Wolf up there, right? Get some pix of that hallway! You realize we never had any pix inside that house? Have you got your Nikon with you?"

"What,s happening with the kidnap?" he demanded.

"These kidnappers aren,t giving any assurance that the kids will be returned alive. It,s a standoff, with the FBI saying don,t transfer the money till the kidnappers come up with a plan. They aren,t telling us everything, but my contacts in the sheriff,s office say they,re dealing with real professionals here. And it doesn,t look good. If this damned San Francisco Man Wolf is so hot to bring superhero justice and vengeance to the world, why the hell doesn,t he go find those missing children?"

Reuben swallowed. "That,s a good question," he said.

And just maybe the Man Wolf hasn,t gotten his act together yet, and is gaining confidence night by night, ever think of that, Billie? But he didn,t say it.

A wave of sickness came over him. He thought of the bodies of those dead men in Golden Gate Park. He thought of the corpse of that woman on the pavement. Maybe Billie should visit the morgue, and take a look at the human wreckage "the superhero" was leaving behind. This was no series of capers.

His sickness was short-lived, however. He was keenly aware that he had no pity for any of those creatures. And just as keenly aware that he,d had no right to kill any of them. So what?

The traffic was moving. And the rain had picked up. He had to go. The noise of the traffic was muting the voices around himself somewhat, but he could still hear them, like a bubbling brew.

He started surfing the radio for news and talk, turning it up loud to seal every other sound out.

It was either the Goldenwood kidnapping or the Man Wolf, with all the predictable jokes and ridicule of the beast and his dubious witnesses. The name "Man Wolf" was a favorite, all right. But there was still plenty of talk of a Yeti, Bigfoot, or even a Gorilla Man. One caramel-voiced commentator on National Public Radio compared the rampages and their ambiguous physical evidence to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and speculated that this could be a beast manipulated by a human handler; or a powerful man dressed in furred costume.

In fact, the more Reuben listened, the more it came clear that the idea of a costumed perpetrator was gaining favor. People weren,t accepting evidence or testimony to the contrary. And certainly nobody thought or guessed that this creature had any special power to search out injustice; it was assumed he,d stumbled on the situations in which he,d intervened. And nobody suggested that he could or ought to catch the Goldenwood kidnappers. Billie had been way ahead on that one. And so was Reuben himself.

Why not try to find those children? Why not cancel this trip north and start driving the back roads of Marin County scanning for those children and those three adults?

Reuben couldn,t get that out of his mind. Didn,t it stand to reason that the kidnappers could not have transported those forty-five victims very far at all?

Some talk show hosts were thoroughly disgusted that anybody was focusing on anything other than the Goldenwood kidnapping. And one parent had broken with the FBI and the sheriff,s office to publicly condemn both for not paying the ransom on demand.

The power Reuben had enjoyed last night, and make no mistake, he had enjoyed it, was nothing when he thought of the missing children, and those parents sobbing behind closed doors at the Goldenwood Academy. What if? But how exactly? Should he simply drive the back roads in the vicinity of the kidnapping, listening with his new acute hearing for the victims, cries?

The trouble was, his hearing wasn,t very acute early in the day. It sharpened as night came on, and that would be hours from now.

The rain came down heavier as he pushed north. For long stretches, people drove with their headlamps on. When the traffic slowed to a crawl in Sonoma County, Reuben realized he,d never make it to Nideck Point and back before dark. Hell, it was twilight now at 2:00 p.m.

He pulled off in Santa Rosa, tapped his iPhone for the address of the nearest Big Man XL clothing store, and quickly bought two of the largest and longest raincoats they had, including a tolerable-looking brown trench coat that he actually liked, several pairs of superbig sweatpants, and three hooded sweatshirts, and then found a ski store for ski masks and the largest ski mittens they carried. He threw in five brown cashmere scarves that would be good for hiding his face right up to a pair of giant sunglasses, if the ski masks didn,t work or were too frightening, and the giant sunglasses he found in the drugstore.

Walmart had giant rain boots.

All this was powerfully exciting.

He went back to the news as soon as he was on the road again. The rain was almost torrential. The traffic moved sluggishly and sometimes not at all. He would definitely be spending the night in Mendocino County.

Around four o,clock, he reached the forest road leading directly to Marchent,s house - well, our house, that is. The news sang on.

On the Man Wolf front, the coroner,s office had now confirmed that the dead woman of Buena Vista Hill had been only distantly related to the old couple she,d been torturing. And the woman,s own mother had died in mysterious circumstances two years before. As for the dead men in Golden Gate Park, both were now linked by fingerprint evidence to two baseball bat murders of homeless men in the Los Angeles area. The victim in Golden Gate Park had been identified as a missing Fresno man, and his family had been overjoyed to be reunited with him. The would-be ra**st of North Beach was a convicted killer, just released from prison after serving less than ten years for a rape-murder.

"So whoever this mad avenger is," the police spokesman said, "he has an uncanny knack for intervening in the right situations and in the nick of time, and that,s all very commendable, but his methods have now made him the target of the largest manhunt in San Francisco history."

"Make no mistake," he went on to say when the frenzy of questions had been allowed to crest, "we are dealing here with a dangerous and obviously psychotic individual."

"Is he a man wearing some kind of animal costume?"