Werewolf Cop (7 page)

“I better take that,” said Zach. He didn't bother to disguise the subtext:
Plus I've had enough of this crap.

Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell could only nod, pressing her fists to her hips, deflating with a long sigh.

“All right,” she said, and then added more or less pathetically: “We good?”

“Yeah,” said Zach, meaning
no
. “We're good.” Meaning:
You're on my shit list for certain.

He strode toward the face in the doorway. “Put it through to my cell,” he told her.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket as he stormed angrily down the hallway toward the elevators. He snapped it out.

“Agent Adams,” he said.

The voice on the line was an eccentric cocktail of qualities. It was deep, almost masculine, but vulnerable and womanly, tremulous like a damsel's in distress but at the same time somehow also strong, grimly determined. She spoke rapid-fire. A thick German accent but perfect English.

“Detective Adams. This is Professor Gretchen Dankl. I have received your e-mail.”

“Yes, Professor. Thank you for getting back. I wanted to—”

“It is Abend you are looking for. Dominic Abend. It is he who has butchered these people.”

Zach slowed to a stop, a live wire of excitement snaking in his belly. He was near the elevators but turned his back on them, narrowing his focus to the voice on the phone. “You know Abend?”

“I know him. I know everything about him, more than you do. He will do worse than this, much worse, before he is finished. You cannot understand how bad. You must come to Freiberg. You must come talk to me, listen to me, see what I have to show you. You must find Stumpf's dagger before Abend does. Otherwise all is lost.
All
is lost. Your city. Your country. All the world.”

5

THE WEREWOLF'S DAGGER

M
odern Europe began and ended in Germany, was born when Martin Luther shattered the unity of Christian truth, and died amidst the atrocities of the Third Reich. At the beginning and at the end, at the birth and at the death, was Stumpf's Baselard.

When the jet lifted off, Zach had just begun reading the translated article Professor Dankl had sent him: actual printed pages she had sent him by overnight mail, strangely enough. She had refused to e-mail him any kind of electronic file. He glanced up from the words, looked out the window, saw the Newark runway let go its hold on the 767's retracting gear, saw Manhattan's jagged density of soaring stone fill the twilit window, the scene distant and unsteady as an old silent movie—and he was startled by his feeling of relief, startled by its strength and sweetness—startled, but not entirely surprised. These last two days on the earth below had been nothing for him but round upon round of trouble and unease. He suspected he had argued so forcefully for this trip to Germany in part because of his eagerness to get away. He likewise suspected that Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell had freed the two grand from E.C.'s budget as a way to get back in his good graces after her accusations against Goulart. Well, fine. He was damned glad to be airborne whatever the reason, glad beyond telling that for the next eight hours—all night long—he would be out of reach by phone or e-mail, out of touch with the troublesome world.

He lowered his eyes to the pages again:

The man who would become known as Peter Stumpf was born Peter Griswold in the village of Epprath near the country town of Bedburg in the electorate of Cologne. Though records of his birth were lost during the chaotic bloodshed of the Thirty Years War, the date was doubtless some time in the mid 1500's.

The son of a well-to-do farming family, young Griswold was said to have devoted himself to sorcery and evil from an early age. After “acquainting himself with many infernal spirits and fiends” (according to his trial transcript), the necromancer managed to raise the Devil himself, who promised to give him “whatsoever his heart desired during his mortal life,” presumably in exchange for his soul. Griswold's request of Satan was that “at his pleasure he might work his malice on men, women, and children, in the shape of some beast, whereby he might live without dread or danger of life, and unknown to be the executor of any bloody enterprise which he meant to commit.” The Devil agreed, and gave him a magic belt which, when worn, transformed Griswold “into the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like brands of fire; a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth; a huge body and mighty paws.”

Even now, airborne and all, Zach found it difficult to concentrate on the paper. Those accusations against Goulart were still on his mind, for one thing. Words that couldn't be unsaid, thoughts that couldn't be unthought, following him up into the stratosphere. Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell had motive to slander his partner, yes. But that didn't make her wrong. She was insecure and desperate to establish herself with her masters in Washington—who included, as near as Zach could tell, the Attorney General, the director of Homeland Security, some sort of FBI liaison, and about seven or eight congressional oversight committees—but that didn't make her wrong either. If Goulart's opinion of her got back to D.C., it could ruin her; if Goulart was dirty and she nailed him—well, that could make her name. But none of that made her wrong. Goulart had either gone over to the dark side or he hadn't. The truth was true, no matter who spoke it or why. So after his meeting with Rebecca A-H, Zach found himself watching his partner more closely, combing their conversations for clues, even giving Goulart opportunities to confess, to come clean—and hating himself for it, and hating Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell for getting him started.

He let out a long breath to clear his mind—to try to, at least. Returned his eyes to the pages in his hand.

For twenty-five years, Griswold the werewolf roamed the countryside around Bedburg, wreaking havoc and spreading terror. At first, he limited himself to taking revenge on anyone who displeased or defied him, but as his anonymity stoked his confidence, he felt freer to indulge his worst impulses. As a man, he would waylay maidens in the lonely meadows and deflower them—then devour them in the form of a wolf, escaping afterward undetected into the deep forests. At last, he descended into every kind of cruelty and depravity. He committed long-running incest with his daughter and enticed her into complicity in his murders. He seems truly to have loved his son and “yet so far his delight in murder exceeded the joy he took” in him that he slaughtered the boy and “ate the brains out of his head as a most savory and dainty delicious means to staunch his greedy appetite.”

In all this, he escaped detection—escaped even suspicion—by changing from a wolf back into the shape of a man when his crimes were done. So even as the countryside was gripped with terror, the killer remained incognito.

Enter a local executioner, whose full name has been lost to history, but who is sometimes referred to in later documents by the generic name of “Hans.” A dishonorable outcast because of his bloody profession, Hans longed to establish himself in the community as a respected hero and thereby win the love of Margarethe, a farmer's daughter. Convinced that the monster who had been terrorizing the countryside for so long was no mere wolf but some kind of demon, Hans devised a plan to catch him. He armed himself with a baselard—a short sword or dagger—which he had confiscated from one of the murderous highwaymen whom he had lately beheaded. This weapon he had now gotten blessed and anointed with holy water by a local priest. Hans believed these solemnities would redeem the dagger from its sinful history and transform it into an instrument of godly justice.

The executioner set up a blind near a local meadow where the werewolf was known to roam. He lay in wait for three consecutive days, spying on the maids who came here to do their washing in the river and then lingered to gossip as the daylight waned. At last, on the third day, just as sunset approached, Hans discerned his quarry: an enormous wolf prowling through the trees hard by, sniffing for the blood of innocents. Before the beast could launch an attack on the young women gathered at the riverbank, the executioner leapt from his hiding place and confronted him. Though the werewolf's claws tore across the executioner's chest, Hans nonetheless managed to strike back, slicing the creature's foot off with the sanctified dagger. The wolf swiftly limped away, howling in agony, and the wounded Hans followed its trail of blood until
it led him, lo and behold, to the home of Peter Griswold. There, it
was discovered that Griswold's left arm now ended in a bloody stump, so that he was known ever after as Peter Stump or Stumpf. On this evidence, Hans assembled the locals roundabout into a posse, and had Griswold bound and brought before the authorities.

It was Hans himself—now recovered from his wounds—who laid Peter Stumpf on the rack for interrogation. Fearful of torture, the werewolf confessed to everything, a whole lifetime of demonic crime. On All Hallow's Eve, 1589, in keeping with the sentence of the court, Hans brought Stumpf to the place of execution known as the Raven Stone. There, he pulled chunks of Stumpf's flesh off with red-hot pincers (a practice known as “nipping”), broke his legs and arms with a wooden axe, and finally cut off his head with a sword.

And then, of course, there was the whole Margo fiasco, Zach thought. Which was even worse than the Goulart situation, much worse. Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell's charges against Goulart were sure to bring trouble down on the Task Force one way or another, but Zach could live with that. Margo, though. . . . She could lay his life waste. Break his wife's heart. Destroy his children's home. Condemn everyone he loved best to a grief he couldn't even bear to think about. And what other outcome—what good or even less-horrible outcome—could there possibly be? She had texted him again yesterday.
What do I have to do to get you to pay attention to me, darling?
He could practically hear the rising hysteria in her tone. A sizable part of his relief at wangling this trip to Germany derived from the fact that it enabled him to put a message on his phone and text and e-mail saying “I will be out of the country for the next few days and unable to receive communications.” Which would electronically make his excuses to Margo and maybe give her a chance to calm down or reconsider or be fatally hit by a car. It would give him a chance to think things through as well.

“Thank you,” he said with a brief smile as the stewardess handed him a double bourbon. Thirty thousand feet in the air with a drink—it was practically like being in paradise after these last few awful days. He hoped this jet would never land.

But what the hell was this crazy thing, this report he was reading, anyway? A 16th-century werewolf? A magic dagger? This better have something to do with Dominic Abend or he'd have two thousand dollars' worth of explaining to do when he got back to the office, along with his other troubles.

He sipped his drink, set the plastic receptacle down on the fold-out table, and read on.

After doing his duty in the torture and beheading of Stumpf, Hans the executioner all but disappears from history—although B. F.
Korchinski maintains that a reference is made to his memory in the fictional picaresque account of the Thirty Years War,
A Christian's Progress
, written shortly after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The sardonic narrator is describing the aftermath of a battle:

“The surviving women having been raped and disemboweled in the most Christian fashion imaginable, their still breathing bodies were tied with ropes and dangled from the branches of nearby trees so that the defenders of Our Most Gracious Lord could amuse themselves with their death throes. It was when I went out in the dark of night to see if I could bring relief to any of these poor creatures that I spotted the enormous wolf ranging among the dead and dying. Such a beast was he that had never been seen or even heard of in this region—twice the stature of a man, with flaming red eyes and teeth the size of daggers that glistened in the light of the full moon—so that I was certain I was witnessing a demon who had been summoned from hell by the wickedness that had been perpetrated here. After gorging itself on the bodies of the dying women, the thing retreated. My curiosity overcame my fear and, thinking I might witness some demonic marvel, I followed at a little distance. What then should I see as the full moon crossed the meridian, but the hideous beast transform itself into the likeness of a man! At first, I thought this must be the devil himself. But no. As I watched, this poor sinner, naked and covered in gore, sat himself down upon the grass atop a little ridge and, holding his face in his two hands, began weeping piteously and crying out, ‘My love! My love! It is for you I am become an abomination!' Father Jacob [a local priest] later explained to me that this was the wandering spirit of a medicine man, who had rescued his lady from a werewolf only to be himself transformed into such a beast by the creature's bite.”

Though the transformed wolf is referred to as a “medicine man,” Korchinski points out that many executioners doubled as healers, their medical skills enhanced by the anatomical knowledge they had acquired in the torture chamber and at the gallows. This and the fact that “poor sinner” was a common locution for referring to a victim of capital punishment indicates, according to. . . .

Zach was chewing on his ice at this point, his bourbon gone and he a damn sight more relaxed than he had been on takeoff—and he was thinking
What the hell is this? This Dankl dame must be crazier than a bull-bat!
, shaking his head at the pages on the fold-out table. He had to remind himself of Professor Dankl's phone message—how she'd known about Dominic Abend—her academic credentials—her tone of urgency—Mickey Paz with his “stoomp bassard”—in other words, all the stuff he'd brought to bear when arguing for this trip in the first place. He had to remind himself that there really was a good reason for him to be traveling four thousand-some-odd miles on the taxpayer's dime. Because otherwise, he'd be forced to admit that this thing—this paper or report or whatever it was that Dankl had sent him—was the screwiest and most irrelevant load of bull slop he'd ever read. Werewolves. Executioners. The Thirty Years War, whatever that was. What the hell did any of it have to do with a murdered New York fence and a German uber-gangster?