“Guy had a couple big dogs on his property, guard dogs gone rogue it looks like.” Hearing this was how I could tell the officer was very young. He seemed to be proud he was able to talk about his job to two random civilians. I wondered if the cop should be giving us this much information until I realized it was rather irrelevant. There was no murder mystery for the officers, no human suspects available to pursue detective work. The cop then said we should get a move on.
I pulled out of park and then continued down the road. I decided to go down the road we were originally traveling on. Simon sent me a questioning look, clearly wondering why I hadn’t turned around to head back home. “I don’t want the cops to think we were only headed down here to talk to Mr. Thompson.”
I watched enough crime procedure shows to know police might find that alone suspicious, animal attack or not. Although they wouldn’t be wrong in assuming we knew how Mr. Thompson died. Simon nodded but said nothing. My quiet words meant nothing. There was something far more important now weighing heavily on both of our minds.
“Why would the werewolves kill Mr. Thompson?” I wondered aloud. It was not lost upon me that just the day before I would have never believed there was pack of werewolves in the Wisconsin Dells. But I knew what I saw the night before. Monsters were quite real. I proceeded to drive down the main highway, fully intent on taking an alternative route to avoid seeing the scene of Mr. Thompson’s body being loaded into the ambulance.
“Isn’t it obvious?” wondered Simon aloud. “They killed him to keep him quiet.”
CHAPTER 12
Simon’s hypothesis seemed to be the most accurate. But his theory only brought more questions. What had Mr. Thompson known? Clearly the old man knew something important in order to be killed.
“Maybe he knew who the leader of the pack is?” I wondered aloud, staring at an open book beside me. Simon had gone to the library earlier in the week to borrow multiple books on werewolf lore and mythology. There was a lot of information on alphas. Maybe Mr. Thompson had information on who the alpha of the Wisconsin pack was.
“Maybe,” Simon allowed as he fiddled around on his keyboard. We had spent the rest of the day huddled up inside of his bedroom pouring over the mythology of werewolves online and in books. “But my money is still on Matt being the leader.”
“It’s not Matt.” But my defensive words caused Simon to shoot me a look. He stiffened and didn’t speak for a moment.
“Don’t forget he’s not human, Ev.”
His words caught me off guard. “What…?”
“You like him,” accused Simon softly. That wasn’t an accusation I was expecting from my little brother. I shook my head rapidly.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Are you gonna lie and say you don’t?” It was as if Simon could see through me. As if he could possibly see the chemistry Matt and I had been finding we had.
“No, I don’t,” I said with finality, avoiding eye contact. I stood and grabbed another book that was lying on his bed. It was avoiding looking at my brother that taught me something that I hadn’t thought to myself until that moment. He wasn’t wrong.
“Look,” I said, ignoring looking at him as he watched me. “He’s a monster, but he’s not the leader.”
These words Simon accepted, and it caused him to move on from the topic. He nodded before scanning his laptop screen some more. “But then who would be the pack leader? Your boss, Perry?”
My cell phone gave a loud beep from the next room, indicating a voicemail. I contemplated Simon’s question as he muttered something about doing a background check on my boss. I went to my room and grabbed my phone off my desk. I found there was a voicemail and two missed phone calls. There was also a bunch of text messages from Darren. The calls and voicemail were from him as well.
Darren: Family emergency, I was in the hospital last night.
I’m so sorry I didn’t call you, things were crazy.
There were five more texts going into heavy detail about what happened and how he had spent the night in the hospital after being in a minor car accident. With everything that had happened at the party, I had nearly forgot that we were supposed to meet up for a date at the party. That explained what happened to Darren. But I couldn’t think about that; my mind was still absorbed in what Simon had said. I went back to his room. “But if Perry is the leader, why would he allow me to transfer to his department? Wouldn’t having a human in a pack of werewolves be anti-productive?”
“Think of what the guys said when you first joined,” said Simon wryly. “No one ever lasts a full month in that department. Maybe Perry was betting you’d leave on your own by month’s end and that there was nothing to worry about.”
“Why not just say I can’t transfer to his department?” That would certainly be easier than allowing me to join to begin with. Safer, less messy.
“Maybe it would look too suspicious telling you no?” Simon begun to pace. “You could go to HR and they would investigate?” He looked annoyed. “None of it makes sense, okay? How the hell does a pack of werewolves all work in a popular resort and no one has taken notice until now?”
I sighed heavily. “If Perry really is the leader, why would he take the chance of me getting killed by the wolves? Isn’t it too risky keeping me around the guys?”
“I have no idea,” said Simon as he threw up his hands. “I’m literally just making this up as I go along. All we know for sure is that your coworkers are a pack of werewolves and they killed our neighbor ’cause he obviously knew something important. Why more people don’t realize the set-up department are a bunch of werewolves is beyond me.”
Maybe these words weren’t exactly true. Maybe people around the resort felt they were different even though they couldn’t prove it. “Everyone treats them differently,” I recalled, thinking of all the times different departments ignored my coworkers or purposely avoided them. It didn’t matter if it was other departments in the conference center or housekeeping; all employees regarded the set-up boys differently than they regarded each other, almost as if they purposely went out of their way to avoid them all.
“It’s fear,” I said in slow realization, thinking of all the times the boys said something deeply inappropriate or outrageous. They said and did whatever they wanted, and no one said anything about their atrocious behaviors. I assumed because the town of Wisconsin Dells was so small The Forest Resort couldn’t afford to fire everyone in the department. But perhaps it had been more than that this entire time. Simon picked up on what I was insinuating.
“People can sense they’re different,” he said with wide eyes. He started scanning the contents of the nearest book. “It’s a prey reaction. You wouldn’t antagonize a hungry lion.” My eyes widened as the pieces of the story started clicking together.
“Lotta-Volterra equation,” I murmured. Simon raised an eyebrow. I had clearly lost him. “I read a lot, okay? It’s a predator-prey equation. It’s when two species interact, one as predator and the other as prey. The populations change through time.”