Hunger of the Wolf (15 page)

A
fter waiting for almost half an hour Amber was finally shown through to an office out the back. She filed
her complain
t
about
Chris
first to get it over with, and s
he was glad the woman assigned to take her
statement did not
make her feel as if she was blowing the incident out of proportion
.

“I really don’t know if I’m doing the right thing here,” she confided to her
after she had finished giving her statement
. “
Chris
has been my friend for years,
and I don’t want him to go to jail or to ruin his life, I just want him to take responsibility and never do it again.”
The policew
oman looked up from the keyboard
she had been tapping away at.

“So many women feel the same way you do, and as a result a lot of assaults go unreported. It’s very difficult to report someone you know and trust, but sadly most sexual assaults
are committed by people
known to the victim
s
. Protecting
them does no one any favo
rs, it just allows them to get away with it and do it again.”
She paused for a moment to read something on the screen. “I shouldn’t be telling you this
,
but it seems this is not the first time he has done this.
He has a history of violence against women.”

“
You’re not serious.”

“Yes
,
I am
. Six years ago
he was charged for assaulting
a female friend. The charges were
dropped
,
though
,
when she didn’t
show up in court to give evidence.” All of Amber’s doubts about whether she had done the right thing evaporated in an instant.
Chris
was a serial offender
,
and this ti
me she would make sure he faced up to what he had done
.

“Thank you for telling me. It’s so hard to believe
,
and if I hadn’t
experienced his Jekyll and Hyde personality
first
hand I don’t know what I’d think. I hope my friend believes me.”

“Your friend will know you wouldn’t make something like this up
. Is there anything
else I can help you with today?
”

             
Amber took a deep breath. “As a matter of fact there is. I know this is go
ing to seem really weird
after I just told you how great
Jesse
Davidson
was last
night when I needed help. I
t’s probably nothing, but when I got up to go to the bathroom
this morning
I was looking in a cupboard for a towel and I saw some women’s clothes.” The offic
er looked at her uncomprehendingly
. “When I pulled up
outside the station I saw the photo of
Tehya
Gordon
on the missing poster
and
I noticed what she was wearing. The clothes she had o
n when she disappeared looked the
same as the ones I saw in the cupboard at
Jesse
’s ho
use.
”

             
“Are you sure about this? You we
re pretty shaken up a
nd probably not thinking too clearly.”

             
“I’
m not really one hundred
per cent
sure
because it was dark in the cupboard
,
but the top and sandals looked very similar to
the ones in the photo and there was a pair of jeans with them.
”

             
“Thank yo
u.
Jesse
has never been a
suspect
,
despite some of the rum
ours you might have heard. W
e did do a thorough searc
h of
the
area surrounding his cabin
after she disappeared
to appease some of the locals
. He co-operated with us and has given us no reason to suspect him of any involvement. I’ll let my
supervisor know what you saw
,
and i
t may be enough
to get a
search warrant.
We
’ll keep you posted on both
situation
s
.
”

             
“Okay, I just thought I should let you know.” Amber stepped out of the police st
ation into the bright sunshine. T
he first person she saw across the street was
Sharon
.
She almost waved
out of habit,
but
Sharon
turned away quickly and kept walk
ing. Even though the rational part of her brain
believed it was
ludicrous to
suspect
Jesse
of such a vicious
crime,
the seeds
of doubt had been sown. I
t
really
was quite a coincidence. What if
Sharon
and Bob were right about him after all?

The absolute last
thing she wanted to do
was return to the cabin
, but she had no choice. She’d
tried to ring Kat on h
er cell phone
again
several times
with no luck. A
ll she could do
now
was go back and wait for her.
She hoped
Jesse
would not
come over to check
on
her. T
here was no way she could
act
normally around him
after
she had
just
reported him to the police.

Remembering he had given her his cell phone number she decided to text him and let him
know
she wanted to be alone when Kat turned up.
If he really was a psychopath
he was hardly going to be deterred by a text message
,
but she couldn’t afford to dwell on that right now.
Some clouds crossed the
sun as the headed back down
the
dirt road leading to the lake
,
and Amber
couldn’t shake the feeling that someth
ing terribl
e was about to happen
.

Cha
pter 10

             
There was no sign of Kat
at the cabin when she
pulled up.
A
mber felt relieved because i
t b
ought her a bit of time to work out exactly what she was going to say
to her friend
. She tried to relax by making herself some lunch
,
but she
couldn’t
eat a bite. Instead sh
e paced up and down
the porch
,
listening for the sound of
an approaching car
,
while also keeping an eye out for
Jesse
.
She
kept rehearsing
in her mind
how she was going to break
the terrible news
to Kat, but there was no point
trying to soften the blow.
It would be devastating no matter how she
put it
,
and she decided she just had
to
tell
her what had happened as
quickly
as possible
.

When an hour had passed and there was still no
sign of Kat
,
Amber
decided to make some chamomile tea to calm her nerves
. A
s she walked
past the coffee table she saw the copy of
Jesse
’s book
she had dropped there the night before when she came in with
Chris
.
S
he picked it up and took it
outside to the porch where she sat down and leafed through it in an attempt to distract herself. It was a collection of short stories and she glanced at them without much interest. There was one story called
Hunger of the Wolf
that caught her attention. S
he found the page number and began to read wh
ile
keeping an ear open
for Kat’s approach.

The story was about a young girl who disappeared from a deserted
mountain
road late at night. She was just one of a number of young girls who had vanished in
the area in mysterious circumstances over the years. No one knew what had happened to them
,
but there were rumours that a werewolf lived in the mountains a
nd prowled through the town
when the moon was full
,
hunting
for
female
victims. Most people in the town knew to avoid isolated roads on those nights and to never ventu
re out alone, but some of the teenagers
dismissed it as superstition. 
They became complacent
when no attacks had taken place for several years and refu
sed to listen to their parents. It was always when the young people stopped taking precautions that another girl disappeared.

The more she read
,
the more alarmed Amber
became. I
t seemed like
he was writing
directly
about the disappearance of
Tehya
Gordon
.
S
he turned to the front page to find out when the book was publish
ed and saw that is was over three
years earlier.
This had to
be the story the
Crow
’s had told her about.
She had no idea what it could mean
,
but she
was compelled to keep reading to find out what happened.

The young gir
l
in the story
had lied to her mother so she c
ould go to a party
she was forbidden from attending
.
She had told her mother she was spending the night at her grandmother’s house b
ecause she kn
ew her grandmother
w
ent to bed e
arly. As soon as the old lady
was asleep
,
she cha
nged into a red dress and climbed
out the window.
The last anyone saw of her she was walking alone back to her grandmother’s house on the edge of town.

The girl had
not felt worried at all as she made her way
home that night
. Her th
oughts were taken up with a
boy she had met at the party. W
hen a car pulle
d up next to her and a familiar face asked her if she w
ould like a lift
,
she did not
hesitate to get in. The man was a local who had lived in the area for many years and
he
was well known, but he had a terrible secret. He was a serial killer who believed he was a wolf
reincarnated. When he got his victims
back to his cab
in in the woods he donned a wolf p
elt before devouring them
in a gruesome way.
It was s
uitably descriptive
for a
horror story
,
and
even though she was repelled
,
Amber
could not stop
reading.
The killer liked to cover
himself in the victim
’s blood
while he was devouring them
,
and when he was finished with them he
kept their clothes as mementos of his crimes.

             
By t
he time she
finished
reading
Amber’s hand was shaking and her breathing was ragged. She
looked up quickly and scanned the
trees before going
inside and locking
the door
securely
. She
was overcome
with the distinct feeling that someone was watching her. She
regretted dismissing
Sharon’s
and Bob’s warnings
about
Jesse
Davidson
so easily
when they c
learly knew a lot more
about him
than she did.
No wonder they had become so angry with her.