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Patrol Officer Sundance Fischer was not having a good day.
His day had begun with an accident on the 8/81 during his morning commute, making it take twice as long as usual. Then he'd spilled his first cup of coffee all over himself, so he'd had to change into his spare uniform, which always chafed at his underarms. Then, just as he and his partner had started up their patrols, the calls had started pouring in about Passage Night pranksters. Kids generally waited until at least the late afternoon or sunset to start up their mischief, but apparently the rainstorm forecast for that night had driven the hooligans out of their homes earlier than usual this year.
Passage Night. It was Sundance's least favorite holiday.
"It's just harmless fun," his partner, Officer Michel "Elfboy" Williams, insisted.
"Harmless? We had a dozen calls this morning alone! My hand hurts from filling out all those reports!"
They were standing in line beside the kebab cart near the station, taking their short lunch break before returning to the station to turn in their paperwork and check in. Sundance was massaging his sore hand -- it wasn't used to holding a pen for so many hours at once. Maybe he could borrow a better one from someone in the station... Not that anyone there would be any less busy.
The rest of the day was sure to be even more difficult, he realized with dread. Just then, the line moved on, and Sundance sighed and moved with it. May as well tackle the rest of the day with a full stomach.
It was barely past noon and already it was the busiest Passage Night Judit Minot had experienced during her time in the RCM. It felt strangely fitting, considering it was the first one since her being promoted to sergeant. She pulled at a sleeve of her new uniform, straightening it out with a quiet pride. That same subdued satisfaction was reflected in her eyes, only slightly obscured by the greasy sheen of the bathroom mirror.
She mused on her next tasks for the day. Her morning had been productive in spite of the usual Passage Night chaos: she had managed to get an interview with the smoke shop clerk as she had hoped – a vital step in her most pressing case – and was only distracted once by a Passage Night reveler, a crusty older teen who had tried to swipe a pack of cheap smokes while the clerk was distracted.
Next on the docket was… talking to Processing. They should have the autopsy report done by now.
Processing was in the vast expanse of the silk mill’s basement, which had originally been a great cavern for material storage but had since been partitioned off into several sections by unfinished breeze block walls. Because of this the lighting often left much to be desired, with plenty of dim corridors and dark corners that had once been lit by naked fluorescent light that were now on the other side of concrete walls. Half the space wasn’t even in active use, a surprising fact considering Jamrock’s penchant for producing dead bodies.
Judit did her best to ignore the smell of dank basement mingled with formaldehyde and the faintest whiff of decomposition. In and out. I just need that autopsy report and I can get out of here. She couldn’t understand how anyone could stand being down here, day in and day out, but the Processing folks were already a bit on the stange side. After a short walk down the main hall, she opened the first door on her left.
“Afternoon, Officer Beaufort,” she greeted the man who sat hunched over his desk, the desk lamp a bright contrast to the otherwise general dimness. When he didn’t respond, she repeated her greeting a bit louder.
“Oh, OH! Sorry I didn’t hear you… officer… officer…”
“Sergeant Minot,” she provided. Odd that he’d forgotten her new title so quickly, as they had talked about her promotion only yesterday, when she had initially put in the autopsy request. There were plenty in the precinct that would make a mistake like that intentionally, but Beaufort wasn’t really the type.
Beaufort took a deep drink from the coffee mug beside him.
“A long day already?”
“Hm? Oh. Yes. Drowsy all day. Plenty to do. Passage Night and all that.” He waved his empty hand limply side to side to punctuate his words. “Tiredness has given me a headache. Whole day’s a headache…” He trailed off, staring at the mug that was still at his lips.
“So do you have that autopsy report I asked for?” Judit broached after a long moment.
“Oh. Hm. Yes? Who was this for?”
Judit’s brows knit together. “For me. This was for the YELLOW-GOLD PIN case? Older fellow, multiple small puncture wounds?” Her patience was wearing thin quickly. A headache was forming in the back of her head from the relentless formaldehyde smell.
“OH! Oh, yes.” Beaufort shuffled in his drawer and pulled out a thin file, not without spilling a handful of other papers all over the shiny concrete floor. “Oh, damn,” he muttered.
Judit took the file from him, anxious to leave. She leafed through the pages.
“Page three is missing.”
“Oh? Matteo must’ve missed it,” Beaufort muttered to the floor, his body folded in half as he collected the dropped papers without leaving his seat. “Matteo! Do you have the sergeant’s autopsy details page over there?”
From beyond two metal doors on the far wall came a distant voice. “What sergeant?”
“Sergeant Minot,” Judit cut Beaufort off. The dimness, the smell, the conversation that felt like it was going nowhere… with each passing moment a deep, almost animal need to just get out of there continued to crawl up her chest.
Silence.
“Officer Beaumont, are you there?” she pushed, her need to get out of here trumping her desire to be polite.
A pause, and then: “Emeric, did you check in your inbound pile?”
Beaufort blinked slowly under Judit’s gaze and then shuffled through some papers. “Oh! Well. Here it is.” He chuckled under his breath, rubbing a thumb against his temple. “Long day, long day,” he muttered as he passed the page to Judit.
“Thank you” was all Judit could manage before turning heel and making her way back down the poorly-lit hallway and quickly back into the elevator.
The main floor was a glowing summer day compared to the basement, despite the weather outside quickly turning overcast. She took a deep breath, the smell of old silk dye, cold coffee and stale smoke a refreshing alternative to the stagnant air in Processing. She could feel her head become blissfully clear.
Okay, back to work.
“Minot! There you are!” Jules came striding across the bullpen from the radio room, a sheet of paper in his hand. He passed it to Judit. “You’ve been assigned a homicide in the tenements on Rue Casse-Cul,” he explained as she scanned the details. A weariness came over her. She had hoped to finish her shift early and spend Passage Night with her children, but that possibility was shrinking by the moment.
“Thanks,” she finally said. After a quick stop at her desk to drop off the autopsy report, she aimed for the garages. Maybe she could make this quick.
“C’mon Chester, Vic’s not even here.”
“Yeah, but he will be. Eventually,” McLaine added as he finished tying a knot on the confetti popper he was affixing to the inside of Jean Vicquemare’s desk drawer.
“It’s the last one, we shouldn’t waste it!” Torson argued.
“It’s not a waste if it gives Vic some holiday cheer,” McLaine said, sliding the drawer into place carefully.
“I doubt he’s even coming back tonight – it’s already five! He’s probably just going to go straight home after he finishes up out there.” Torson, meanwhile, was diligently pouring water into thirty or so paper cups placed in precise rows across another officer’s desk, filling them just to the brim from a plastic pitcher. It was a bit late in the day for this particular prank, but Torson was nothing if not dedicated to his craft.
“Where is he, anyway?” McLaine asked, trotting over to inspect the cups.
“I think he’s on a homicide call.”
“Careful, don’t spill it!”
“Thanks.”
“Didn’t Jude take that call?”
“No, that was a different one, hours ago.”
“Damn, today’s been busy, huh?”
Torson hummed his agreement and filled the last cup, then set the pitcher down to survey his handiwork.
“You know,” McLaine said approvingly, “the poppers are clever, subtle even… but this is a work of art.”
Torson was stashing the pitcher away in his own desk when he glanced up and suddenly called out, “Tillbrook!”
The junior officer froze across the bullpen, looking like a deer caught in headlights. “Uh, yeah?”
“Come over here!” Torson boomed, waving him over.
With significant hesitation, Chad Tillbrook crossed the room towards them. “What… are you doing over here?” he asked, eyeing the water cups suspiciously.
“It’s Passage Night, duh!” McLaine said, like it was obvious.
“You guys do the Pass? Aren’t you, uh, a little old for that?” He grinned sheepishly to take the sting off the insult.
“Nahh, you’re never too old for mischief and whimsy! That said…” Torson grinned toothily. “Maybe we need a more youthful perspective on things. What say you give us a hand with our last couple of pranks? We haven’t done anything to the captain yet.”
Horrified, Tillbrook squeaked, “The captain? No way, you’ll get fired for sure!”
“Not a chance. We do this every year. Besides, if Mullen wasn’t canned after all the shit he pulled, we’re certainly not getting kicked out over a couple of harmless jokes.”
“What, um… what were you thinking of doing?”
“Well, we’ve got these print-outs of all the asses of everyone in the precinct, and we’re going to put them around his office –”
“Guys, be quiet!” Tillbrook’s voice dropped dramatically as someone passed by their little gathering, clearly afraid of being overheard. Torson clapped him hard on the shoulder.
“Ah, it’s just Dupont from Processing, don’t worry about it!”
Dupont glanced up at the sound of his name. He was hunched pathetically around a mug of coffee, breathing in the fumes like they were his lifeline. “Who? ME? I’m sorry, what were you saying?” he asked blearily. He brought up a hand and rubbed the heel of it against his temple as if to rub away a headache.
McLaine chuckled. “Just wishing you a happy Passage Night!”
A sound rumbled in Dupont’s throat, somewhere between a groan and a whine. Without another word, he shuffled off towards the stairs to the basement.
Once he was out of earshot, Tillbrook asked under his breath, “ All the… butts? Where did you even get those?”
“We’re not at liberty to reveal our sources,” McLaine cut in. “So what do you say?”
Tillbrook thought about it for a moment. “Look, I’m not really comfortable… pranking my superior officers. I don’t want to lose this job.”
McLaine sighed dramatically. “Alright, Tilly. It’s no fun if we force you.”
Torson nodded. “Yeah, to each their own. Maybe next year, hey?”
Tillbrook waggled his head noncommittally, then waved and walked away.
Torson and McLaine smiled and waved back at him. Quietly, without changing his expression, McLaine asked from the side of his mouth, “We are definitely pranking his desk extra hard next year, right?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Suddenly a loud POP! echoed throughout the bullpen, and someone’s angry voice followed shortly after it.
“Damnit, Mack!”
The two men laughed and returned to their work.
From the second floor fire escape that doubled as a smoke spot, Harry could see much of the surrounding area… and the thick fog that was slowly eating it away. Rolling from the north, from the cold October sea, it was probably about a mile out from the precinct. It glowed with the light of all the streetlamps it had already consumed; a glowing thick grey fog. Harry shivered, the cold air already misty with its approach. He took a deep pull of his cigarette and let the smoke coil lazily out of his mouth, slowly rising to join with the mist.
“Fitting weather for Passage Night.” Behind him Kim was closing the fire escape door as quietly as he had opened it, his one cigarette of the day held carefully between two fingers. “It’s already eleven,” he replied sheepishly as Harry eyed the cigarette. “I don’t know when we’ll be able to go home, and this is the sort of day that needs one.” He leaned into the offered flame of Harry’s lighter.
“Passage Night? What is that?”
Kim held the smoke in his lungs for another moment before exhaling, his smoke joining the mistiness the same way Harry’s had.
“Of course, you wouldn’t remember. Le Passage du Gris – Passage Night – is a Suresne harvest festival. With the advent of interisolary exploration, the holiday also became a night to mourn the past, lost loved ones and the like; apparently it gets as foggy there around this time of year as it does here in Revachol, very reminiscent of the Pale. Though…” He took another quick pull, “here it is more a night of revelry and scary stories.” A quick exhale to expend the remaining smoke, followed by a small disapproving frown. “Or, to cause all sorts of mischief and chaos, if you’re in a particular age range.”
That’s why the precinct was so empty, it occurred to Harry belatedly. His shift had started late in the day, and the majority of the officers had been either out of the precinct on patrols or cases, or swamped with paperwork and phone calls. He’d hardly spoken to anyone all day, but if they were all busy dealing with underage pranksters and the like, it made some amount of sense.
As they spoke, a drop of rain hit the grating over their heads, followed swiftly by another, and another. Harry and Kim rushed to finish their cigarettes and ducked back inside, fleeing from what was rapidly becoming a deluge. As they closed the door, a deep roll of thunder echoed around the area.
“Where the hell did this storm come from?” Harry wondered.
“I don’t know; did the forecast say anything about rain?” Kim frowned, brushing water from his hair. “Let’s make sure we left our office windows closed.”
Harry nodded, and trailed after him.
Sundance finally made his way back to the precinct just before midnight. It had been the longest day of his career with the RCM so far, and he was looking forward to clocking out and having the next day off to make up for it. He dutifully filled out the paperwork summarizing his last few calls – vandalism, mostly, but also one case where he’d had to break up a fight between two youngsters. He labeled the case files and stacked them neatly, then stood to take them to one of the filing rooms that extended off from the main hall that functioned as their bullpen.
The filing room was relatively large and not well lit, so the furthest corners were always somewhat in shadow. He looked across the rows of filing cabinets for the one he needed, then jumped at a sudden crash of thunder. He shook his head and crossed to the back of the room opening the correct drawer and rifling through the dividers to put his files away. Just then, there was another crash of thunder, and the lights went out.
A few shouts and cries of dismay echoed through the bullpen. One voice was calling for someone to check the breaker. Sundance waited impatiently in the filing room. He knew that if he tried to make his way out into the pitch-black bullpen that he would probably hurt himself, so he just put a hand on the filing cabinet to steady himself and did his best to tamp down the rising, irrational fear that was caught in his throat. He could hear other officers moving around the precinct, passing by the doorway on their way to solve the problem, their footsteps echoing in the filing room as though they were right beside Sundance.
Finally, there was a loud clunk , and the lights came back on. Sundance took a deep, relieved breath, feeling it all the way to his toes. He stooped to finish putting away the files and closed the drawer, turning around – only to see an unconscious body splayed out on the floor between him and the exit.
He took a few tentative steps towards the person – a man, he thought, judging from the clothes – before realizing that the man was not moving at all.
In fact, he realized as he got closer, the man on the floor was dead.
Kim was still blinking to acclimatize his eyes to the restored light when Officer Fischer came striding into the bullpen, his eyes empty of anything but dread and confusion. Around him the other officers milled about, too busy talking about the power outage to notice the dazed patrol officer, so Kim took the initiative:
“Something the matter, officer?”
Sundance stopped walking and blinked, his motions now strange enough to attract the attention of his partner. He opened his mouth wordlessly for a moment, before finally saying:
“In Filing Room B… there’s… there’s a dead body.”
It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room, or as if the Pale had actually encroached upon the precinct, stealing all sound. And then, like a snapped rubber band or a crack of lightning, there was a sudden rush to the filing rooms.
And there lay the body: male, early sixties, in a woven jumper and thick overalls. Durable rubber boots covered his feet, and his ruffled greasy hair suggested that the knit hat that lay a few feet away had originally covered his head. Fisherman’s gear. But why was there a dead fisherman lying across the entrance of one of the filing rooms of a police precinct?
“I told you: when the lights came back on I went to leave the room and he was just there! ” Officer Fischer was shouting, half out of panic and half out of frustration.
“Sundance, bodies don’t just appear out of nowhere ,” his partner countered.
“Elfboy, I swear he wasn’t there before the power went out! It went out, I waited for it to come back on, and when I got to the doorway he was just there on the floor.”
“Kim.” To Kim’s right Harry had leaned in conspiratorially, his voice low. “Do you think that this may be–”
“Detective, if you’re going to suggest that this has some sort of supranatural origin–”
“But it’s Passage Night! It couldn’t be a more fitting time!”
“You learned about Passage Night barely fifteen minutes ago. What would you have thought if I hadn’t told you?”
Harry responded with a soft huff, but said nothing else as Kim switched out his usual gloves for a pair of nitrile ones he had in his pockets and crouched down to inspect the body. First thing of note: the man’s hair wasn’t clumped with just grease, but with blood as well.
“Head wound, top of the head,” he said, loud enough to cut through the bickering of the surrounding officers. The shouting died down as everyone turned their attention to him.
“Shallow. Possibly the cause of death, but unlikely,” he continued. A quick glance up told him that at least two of the surrounding crowd had the wherewithal to start taking notes. He unclipped the overalls and noticed a small stain on the jumper.
“Slight staining on the jumper. Dark, possibly blood. Detective, help me.” Harry didn’t hesitate to take the gloves Kim offered him, before helping him pull up the jumper. Beneath, the dead man wore a plain blue shirt, discolored with age. Pulling the jumper up further revealed a clean hole, surrounded by a great spreading stain of blood, directly over the man’s heart.
“Well then,” said someone in the watching group. Junior Officer Tillbrook.
“The jumper was put on him after he was stabbed,” Kim mused as he pulled away the shirt, revealing the man’s discolored skin and the source of the blood stain. He frowned lightly. All of this seemed too strange. He continued his preliminary inspection of the body until he was satisfied. Finally he stood up, peeling off his gloves.
“I believe the cause of death to be a single stab wound to the heart. The rest of the wounds are superficial and seem to have been caused afterwards. Decomposition suggests the time of death to be…” He paused, calculating, “... between four and eight hours ago.”
“So Sundance didn’t kill him,” Officer Williams murmured.
“You thought I killed him?!”
Kim slipped on his usual gloves. “There is no shame in ruling out the immediate suspects,” he said. “You found him on your own. But no, I don’t think Officer Fischer killed this man. Besides the fact that he died hours ago, no one person could have put the jumper on him, and dragged him into the filing room.” He looked around the surrounding area. Even with the trampling about by the half-dozen or so surrounding officers, there was no sign of how the body had made its way to its current resting place, other than the knit hat that lay slightly closer to the door.
“The hat suggests that the body was brought through the doorway, but there are no signs of drag marks on the floor, or damage to the body to suggest that it was dragged. It was most likely carried.”
“But why would someone bring a random dead body into the filing room?” Tillbrook asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Kim replied, not unkindly. “And we cannot confirm that it was truly random.”
“Maybe it’s a Passage Night prank,” Torson suggested.
“To sneak a dead body into a police precinct? Unless,” Kim gave Torson and his partner a dangerous look, “either of you had anything to do with this?”
“No way, Lieutenant!” McLaine waved his hands in front of him, as if to chase away any further accusations. “Our pranks are cheeky and fun!”
“Yeah,” Torson added. “This prank is cruel and tragic.”
Kim held back a frustrated sigh. “Very well. Let’s look around and see if we can find any other obvious clues.” Without waiting for confirmation, Kim strode out of the room. The other officers followed, drawn by his authority, but the surrounding areas suggested nothing out of the ordinary either. The rain outside should have given away the walking pattern of anyone who had recently come in, but the floor in the filing room itself and the surrounding hallway – all the way out into the bullpen – was dry. There were no further clues that suggested the body came from any particular direction: no obvious blood marks, scuffed corners or dropped articles of clothing apart from the hat.
“Okay,” Kim concluded. “Torson, McLaine, go down to Processing and get a body bag. Fischer, Williams, please check the entrances for any unauthorized entry.” With that he strode back towards the filing room, turning the scant clues they had gathered around in his head. A dead fisherman, many hours dead already, suddenly appearing in the filing room, with no suggestion of how it got there or who brought it… his mind stuttered uselessly. It had been a long day, and he yearned for another cigarette. Beyond that, he knew he didn’t have the same creative mind that Harry had–
He stopped walking, suddenly realizing he was alone in the hallway. Where had Harry gone? He had joined the group as they scanned for clues on how the body was brought in, right? Kim broke into a brisk walk, a dim sick worry coiled in his gut.
“Detective, are you still here – Harry!”
Lying on the floor beside the fishman’s body, in an eerily similar pose, lay Harry, eyes closed and mouth slightly slack. Kim’s breath caught in his throat as he rushed to the detective’s prone body. “Harry!” He tentatively leaned down to touch his unresponsive form, looking for injury.
Harry’s eyes fluttered open. “Huh? What? Kim?”
“What happened? Are you ok?”
“Oh, me? Yeah, totally fine!” He sat up, careful not to disturb the body. “I was just trying to get into the headspace of this guy.” A quick motion to the dead fisherman.
Kim closed his eyes and steadied himself, determined not to get angry. “And?”
“And no such luck.”
Kim let out a controlled exhale. “Please get off the floor, officer,” he said, offering Harry a hand.
Harry took it, allowing himself to be hoisted to his feet. “Where did everyone else go?”
“Torson and McLaine went to get a body bag. Fischer and Williams are examining the entrances.”
“And Tillbrook?”
As if on cue, outside the thunder crackled directly above the silk mill. With a particularly angry crack the precinct lights flickered and went dead.
“Kim?!”
“I’m right here, detective.”
“Is everyone okay?” In the distance Tillbrook’s voice echoed against the distant dome of the silk mill.
“Kim and I are fine!” Harry’s voice boomed through the space. “Do you have a flashlight anywhere nearby?”
“Somewhere around here,” the junior officer replied, the slightest tremor wavering through his voice.
“Do not try to find it if it’s too far,” Kim added. “The lights will probably come back on soon.”
“I think I know where it is,” came the reply. “It was somewhere over here…”
Silence.
“Are you sure this can’t be something supranatural?” Harry’s disembodied voice whispered in the blackness.
“Detective, it’s been a very long day contending with juveniles and other rabble rousers,” Kim warned.
“Maybe some sort of cryptid. Lena lent me a book when we met up last month – ”
In the blackness there was a loud POP like a gunshot, followed quickly by a shout from Tillbrook and the crashing of furniture.
“Officer!” Kim shouted, at the same time that Harry called, “Tillbrook!”
Finally the lights flickered back on, allowing Harry and Kim to break out into a sprint back into the bullpen. From their angle they could see the top half of the junior officer sprawled on the floor, the other half of him obscured by a desk. A dark stain was spreading across his chest.
“Officer!” Kim dove into a crouch, ready to press down on any wound he may find.
“Was he shot?”
“I’m not sure what –”
“No,” Tillbrook groaned, sitting up. “I just knocked over an inkwell when I tripped.”
“This is why I told you not to go roaming about in the dark.”
“I know, sir,” Tillbrook responded, chastened. “I knew there was a flashlight in the desk drawer, but then the popper scared me and I tripped over something.” He paused, looking around. “What did I fall over, anyway?”
The three men turned together, to the confetti-strewn floorspace on the other end of the desk. Staring back were the milky unseeing eyes of a gaunt, elderly woman.
“FUCK!” Tillbrook yelped, scrambling to his feet, quickly followed by Harry and Kim. “H-how did she– when–”
“A second body,” Kim mused. He was never one for gut feelings and vibes – that was Harry’s job – but the appearance of this new body put him on edge.
“Oh, oh, it’s missing one of its hands,” Tillbrook pointed. Sure enough, the right arm ended halfway down the forearm, leaving a ragged nub. Harry bent down to look at it more closely.
“It’s been chewed off. Some sort of animal must have chewed off her hand.”
“Did you guys lose power in here?” From across the bullpen Torson and McLaine were coming out the elevator, body bag in tow.
“We did.” Kim stood.
“See I told you,” McLaine said. “The basement’s on different power. We should have taken the stairs; staying down there gave me a headache.”
“We also found another body,” Kim cut in.
“Wait, what?!” The pair came dashing over, the body bag inelegantly rustling after them.
The group circled around the woman’s corpse, shocked into silence. The quiet was broken by the shuffling of footsteps, and the men looked up to see Sundance and Williams returning. Both seemed to be in better spirits, but their expressions dropped as they caught the looks on everyone else’s faces.
“Another one?” Williams asked simply, but he didn’t need an answer as he and Fischer reached the edge of the circle. The small crowd of officers stared down at the body silently for a few seconds, before all bursting into chatter at once.
“ – what the fuck – ?”
“ – did you see anything – ?”
“ – where the hell did she come from – ?”
“ – we should probably check – ”
“ – nothing, there was nothing – !”
“ – how many times – ?”
“ – who even is that – ?”
“I have a hypothesis!” Harry cut into the surrounding chatter. Quietly standing at the fringe of the group of officers, Kim visibly braced himself. “It was…the Revacholian Loup-Garou!”
“The what?”
“It’s a rare cryptid, and a super dangerous one,” Harry explained. “It can hide as a normal human during the day, but at night it becomes a hideous monster.”
“I thought loup-garous only turn into wolves under a full moon?” Sundance countered.
“Don’t indulge him,” Kim implored quietly behind the patrol officer, mostly to himself.
“That’s what makes this one special! It likes to feast on several corpses at once, so it kills its victims and keeps the bodies in its lair.” Harry looked around, making sure everyone was watching before he delivered his revelation: “Clearly a loup-garou is using the precinct as its lair!”
“So, what? One of the officers here is a loogaroo?” McLaine asked, muddying the word somewhat.
“Officer, we’re not actually buying into this theory – ” Kim tried to insist, but was cut off by Torson, who had completely taken the bait.
“Not necessarily. They could have snuck in from outside.”
“Officers Williams and Fischer checked the entrances,” Kim pointed out. He turned the two. “Did you see any signs of entry?”
The two officers shook their heads in tandem.
“Maybe… maybe the loup-garou was already inside the precinct, and was just now bringing the bodies out to eat?” Tillbrook suggested.
Harry’s eyes lit up. “It would do that if it lived here – ”
Kim interrupted their speculation before it could get any more outlandish. “This is ridiculous. These are just normal murder victims. Look, can we please go back to the world where we are all responsible – adult – RCM officers?"
“But Kim, you saw the phasmid with your own eyes,” Harry insisted. “What’s saying that the loup-garou isn’t real as well?”
“ I’m saying,” Kim stressed. “And I’ll keep saying until there’s evidence that proves otherwise. Not – ” he cut Harry off when he noticed the other start to open his mouth, “including evidence that can be explained by more logical causes.” Seeing Harry finally cowed into silence, Kim turned to Torson and McLaine. “Please go back to Processing and get another body bag for this one.”
Chester threw his head back and groaned. “That place gives me such a headache!”
“That’s a direct order, officer.”
Grumbling, the two shuffled off to the staircase, electing not to risk another power outage while they were in the elevator.
“Now, the body,” Kim crouched down and was pleased to notice that Tillbrook had his notes out again, ready to write. “Female, elderly, probably late 70’s. Right hand and lower forearm missing, damage suggests it was… bitten or chewed off.” He rolled her to her side, pulling up the frayed cardigan and shirt. “Significant bruising on the left side, focused around the hip. Suggests internal bleeding. Left sleeve torn. Left knuckles scraped, damage suggests that happened before death.” He rolled the body to the other side. “No damage on the right side, lack of discoloration on the remains of the right forearm suggests the hand was removed after death…”
It wasn’t long after they had finished the preliminary examination of the body and packed it into the body bag that a scream echoed through the precinct, quickly followed by a second one. Kim had a hand on his holstered pistol, ready to jump into action, when Torson and McLaine came sprinting through the door from the stairs, panting and wild-eyed. They were shouting unintelligibly, and Torson, clutching an empty body bag, stopped inside to pull a chair over to block the doorway. The others came over, worry quickly edging into fear.
“What the hell, Mack?” Harry said, putting a hand on the man’s arm to steady him.
“The looga-thing – he said – ”
“What?”
“I saw something down there!” McLaine was saying at the same time, babbling to a terrified Tillbrook. “Terrible, awful!”
Kim tried to place himself between McLaine and the junior officer. “Calm down, and tell us what you saw,” he said firmly.
McLaine took a shaky breath, calming only marginally. “There was something in the stairwell! I only saw its shadow, but it was definitely something big!”
“The loup-garou?” Williams asked, his eyes wide.
“It had to be!”
“Who was it? Was someone trying to mess with us?” Torson accused.
“Everyone was here, the entire time,” Kim said.
“Are you sure? Did you have eyes on them? The whole time?”
“I… No, I suppose not, but – “
“ Someone waited for us to go down there alone and tried to ambush us! Who was it?” McLaine glared around at the circle of officers frantically.
“Look, you’re obviously upset. Why don’t you go get some water or something from the break room to calm yourself down?” Kim suggested.
“I’m not going anywhere alone!”
“Take Tillbrook. He’ll scream nice and loud if anything happens,” Torson said, but his eyes were on Kim. Nervously, McLaine nodded. Tillbrook didn’t look happy about this plan, but he silently followed McLaine out of the main room.
Once they were gone, Kim took a deep breath. “In the meantime, perhaps we can get the first body bagged up, too.” He reached for the bag Torson still held tightly.
As if in response to this, Torson stepped towards Kim with crossed arms. “I don’t appreciate you throwing doubt on my partner’s story.
Harry stepped between them. “I’m sure Kim has his reasons. We can’t all fall to pieces. Right, Kim?” he asked, glancing back at the lieutenant.
“Absolutely. We have more important things to worry about right now than what you think you saw in a dark stairwell.”
“How can you not believe in this? Chester saw the loup-garou with his own eyes!”
“No, he didn’t! He saw a shadow , which could have been anything !” Kim reminded him with a growing sense of desperation. “This is all getting blown way out of proportion!”
Just then, with no thunder to warn them, the lights cut out yet again.
“No one move!” Kim called out immediately. The last thing they needed was another tripping incident. He strained his ears, but he couldn’t be sure if he was hearing anything over the roar of the rain on the roof.
“Kim?” Harry’s voice sounded small in the dark.
“I’m here,” Kim said, and he thought he heard Harry sigh with relief.
A few long moments later, with a bone-deep clunk, the lights came on again at last. Weary from a long day of work, followed up by whatever this was, Kim let a small exasperated breath escape his nose. “If another body has shown up…”
“Uh, guys?” Officer McLaine’s voice, echoing from the break room.
The officers all gathered – sure enough – around a third dead body. But this one… this one was different. The hairs on the back of Kim’s neck stood on end. Male, thirties. Three-piece suit, previously meticulously styled hair. An unusual victim for Jamrock. But stranger still were the four long gashes across his chest, all parallel to each other, cutting through the fine suit into the flesh in four ragged lines. They looked almost like… like…
“Like claw marks,” Harry breathed behind him.
Kim could only stare.
Kim attempted to consider things carefully, but it was hard to focus when the forefront of his thoughts were consumed with how much he could use a smoke right about now. Where were these corpses coming from? Why were their causes of death all different? Obviously Harry’s theory wasn’t the answer, but if not then what was? He willed his attention to focus.
“We need to get these bodies down to Processing. And a third bag for the one that just showed up.” He looked around, making sure everyone was paying attention. “After the bodies are stored, we’ll do an orderly sweep of the precinct. Understood?” Everyone nodded. The appearance of the last corpse seemed to have knocked the fight out of Torson and McLaine.
“Officer Tillbrook, please fetch the flashlight from your desk – and check the battery,” Kim added as an afterthought. “We’re not getting caught in the dark again.”
Tillbrook followed the instructions without a word. He tested the heavy light and gave the lieutenant a tentative smile – just in time for another roll of thunder, and another blackout.
“H-hold on, I got this!” With an industrial click Tillbrook had the flashlight on, the single beam of light in the entire bullpen. It cut a bright but underwhelming beam of light, a desperate contrast to the engulfing darkness that surrounded them.
“Well, at least we’re all together this time around – ”
With an angry groan the front door opened, then smacked into the wall with a crack, ripped open by the raging storm outside. The small gathering of officers jumped, and Tillbrook dropped his flashlight with a shout. The wind howled, bringing in cold wet air, and in the doorway hunched a dark figure, backlit only by the occasional flash of lightning and a distant streetlight. It stood there in the doorway, brooding, menacing.
“Dei help us! There it is!” someone shrieked. The dark figure moved forward.
“Kim, watch out!” Harry squeaked, pulling the Lieutenant bodily into his arms, defending him. The figure seemed to growl and continued to approach, arms out and shoulders hunched as if ready to attack.
“IT’S THE LOUP-GAROU!” Chester squealed, clinging to Mack.
“Rrrrrrrrrrr,” the figure growled, approaching with long strides. “Rrrreally, guys?!”
Harry paused. He knew that angry Suresne accent anywhere. “Hold on. Jean?”
“Of course it’s fucking me,” the dark figure that was Jean snapped before he picked up the dropped flashlight. The light cut speckled shadows in his pitted face, and his pale eyes glowed with indignant anger. “What the hell are you fools doing in the dark, screaming like children?”
“We thought you were the Loup-Garou!” Chester argued.
“The what?! ” Jean’s accent thickened. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He turned his glare to Harry. “This was your doing, wasn’t it?”
“Why am I always Suspect Number One with you?”
“Because you’re the only one who would bring the supranatural into things! Now put down the Lieutenant! And tell me what the hell is going on in here!”
Harry blinked and looked down. In his panic he had managed to hoist Kim off his feet and cleanly into his arms, tight against his chest. The glare of the flashlight glowed in Kim’s glasses, obscuring his eyes. His face held a practiced neutral expression.
Harry’s face flushed. “Sorry, Kim,” he muttered as he placed him back on the ground.
“Khm, don’t worry about it.” The Lieutenant brushed his pants flat, the image of casualness. “Now, about these bodies…”
The story would have been quick to tell, if Harry and the others didn’t keep jumping in to fill the tale with ghastly details, and if the lights flashing back on hadn’t distracted them, but Kim was able to explain it in the end.
“So,” Jean started, his words slow and careful, as if he were talking to a bunch of children (and Kim). “You think some imaginary monster has been killing people.” A pause. “And leaving their bodies around the precinct.” He looked expectantly at Harry.
“Well when you say it like that–”
“ Khm , that’s the popular theory, at any rate,” Kim confirmed.
Jean sighed melodramatically, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please take me to them, lieutenant,” he said to Kim, pointedly ignoring the surrounding peanut gallery.
“Jean, do you actually think that it was a lo–”
“Take me to the bodies,” Jean cut Harry off cleanly, “so that I can help you investigate – and put an end to this stupidity.”
With Kim leading, the group returned to the closer body: the old woman.
They had barely unzipped the body bag past her face when Jean spoke: “This is my homicide, from this afternoon. I sent her to Processing just a few hours ago.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah. Injured left side, probably died from internal bleeding, bruising suggests a broken hip. Some petty theft that tipped her over, based on the scrapes on her remaining hand and the torn sleeve.”
“But – but what about her missing hand?” Tillbrook pushed.
An exhausted groan rumbled in Jean’s chest. “It was chewed off by a feral dog at the scene.”
"Are you sure ?” Harry insisted.
"I literally watched it happen, Shitkid! Damn thing didn't want to let it go. I had to chase it down three long blocks before I could retrieve the hand.” He seemed especially annoyed by this fact.
“Did you… did you shoot the dog?” Harry asked quietly.
Jean crossed his arms. “Do you want the truth?”
The image tingled at the back of Harry’s brain: Jean in a full sprint, hot in pursuit of a mangey, hand-wielding dog. Two blocks in Jean was becoming embarrassingly winded – he was never much of a long distance runner like Harry – but luckily the half-starved dog didn’t have much energy in it either. Frustrated, breath coming fast in icy plumes, he drew his Villiers; he wasn’t usually one to use his gun as a quick solution, but his patience was thin and he didn’t need the possibility of Passage Night hooligans seeing an officer of the RCM chasing down a street dog and losing. He took aim and shot, but his hand was shaky from the run and it went wide, leaving a small hole in the crumbling pavement by the dog’s feet. Luckily for all parties involved, the shot scared the dog into dropping his prize, and it loped away, leaving Jean to retrieve the hand.
“I guess not,” Harry finally replied. Jean gave him a dismissive snort.
“So that’s one mystery solved,” he concluded. “She was the second body you found? Where is the first?” With that the group moved to the filing room and unzipped the bag containing the fisherman.
Jean looked at the man within the open body bag, his chin resting in his fist. “Fucking strange,” he grumbled. “Well, they’re both packed up. May as well bring them down to Processing. They’ll have an intake log,” he gave Harry a sidelong glance. “If you don’t believe that I sent the old lady in hours ago. Besides,” he added as an afterthought, “you said there was a third body? We’ll need a bag for that one too.”
“Beaumont? Beaufort?” Jean called as he opened the door to the Processing receiving room. He always forgot which was which, but if he just said both names, he couldn’t be wrong. Behind him the group was slowly placing the two bagged bodies onto the concrete floor. “Dupont?” he added.
“Officers!” At his desk sat Officer Emeric Beaumont, hunched over paperwork he seemed only half aware he was filling out. His desk was littered with at least five empty paper cups, the dark rings on the inside of them suggesting they had all once been filled with coffee.
“Fucking gloomy in here,” Jean complained, looking around in the dim office space. The fluorescent tube closest to the metal double doors flickered twice as if it agreed.
“Maybe,” Beaumont replied, numbly knocking over two of the empty cups when he swiveled to face the group. “Was cold too, but they finally turned on the heat down here this morning.” He rubbed his upper arms. “We were as cold as the dead bodies for a bit there,” he added with a wavering laugh. He rubbed his temple as if the laugh had made a headache come back.
“Anyway. You have the intake log for today? I need to see it.”
Beaumont blinked slowly for a long moment, before turning back to his desk and shuffling about. “Yes, yes, the intake log….” Another paper cup tipped over, but he didn’t seem to notice. Meanwhile, another officer - Dupont - came through the metal double doors.
“Beau-oh,” he acknowledged the group. He gave them a dazed, limp wave before turning back to Beaumont. “The saw still won’t turn on,” he said.
“Never worked on femurs,” Beaumont slurred. “Is it broken?”
“May…maybe.”
“And… you reset the breaker?”
Dupont chuckled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah… I finally found the right one after… after maybe two tries? Three?”
“Two tries,” Kim mused. “What were the incorrect breakers for?”
“Hm? I don’t know. Labeled ‘Overhead Lights’... but nothing turned off.”
“That’s because it turned off the lights upstairs!” Sundance cried with sudden indignant realization.
“Oh? Oh!” A weak laugh from Dupont. “Oh, that makes sense.”
“Another mystery solved.” Jean took the intake log that Beaumont had finally found. “See? Here,” he pointed to a line of handwritten notes. “Elderly woman, hand separated, brought in by JV, from the Valley of the Dogs.” The others huddled around as if unable to believe that one of the found bodies could have such a mundane origin.
“The fisherman is here too,” Harry breathed, disappointed.
“Oh! You’re done with your examinations?” Dupont seemed to finally notice the two bodies that they had brought in.
“What?”
“Yeah, your examinations,” Beaumont agreed. “We brought up the bodies so you could examine them.”
“ You brought up the bodies?!”
“Well of course! You wanted to examine them.”
“Why the hell would we want to examine them? That’s your job.”
“Our…job…”
“Yes,” Williams pushed. A cloud of paranoia was gathering in the air like a miasma. “You know, Processing?”
“Huh, it is, isn’t it?” Beaumont leaned back into his chair, holding his forehead. “Dupont, did you know that?”
Dupont scratched his temple. “I guess I did.” He looked at the two body bags on the floor like he had just seen them for the first time. “Oh! Two new bodies for intake?”
“What are you talking about?” Fischer sputtered. “These are the same bodies as a minute ago! The ones that you said you brought upstairs!”
“Oh yeah! Yeah, Beaufort and I brought them up. So you’re done with your examinations?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jean muttered impatiently. “Are you two on something?
“I think they might be,” Kim started, somewhat hesitant. “I think we all might be, right now at any rate.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not on anything!” Jean rounded on him. He looked almost betrayed that Kim, his rational touchstone, was spouting this nonsense.
“You have been, from the moment you came downstairs. It takes some time to set in, but… don’t you feel that headache? The dizziness?” The group was silent, assessing. One by one, they nodded. Kim turned to the morticians. “When did you say they turned on the heating?”
Beaumont turned to him. “This morning,” he said dreamily.
“And it was the first time this season it’s been on?”
“Hm? Oh, yes.”
“What are you driving at, Kitsuragi?” Jean asked.
“I think there’s some sort of gas leak down here. Carbon monoxide or something. We need to get upstairs, and now. Especially you three,” he added to the morticians. “We’ll turn off the heat on the way, and get a fan going. And nobody had better light a match.”
The party shuffled up the stairs, muttering quietly to each other. They let the stairwell door swing shut behind them and gathered around automatically, mostly focusing on breathing the relatively clean air, many of them smiling in relief or embarrassment. Then the silence was broken:
“Damn this rain!” a voice from the entryway called, and they all looked up to see Judit Minot, soaked to the skin and shaking a useless umbrella out onto the doormat. She glanced up at the cluster of men. “What are you all still doing here? It’s past two in the morning. You can’t all be on the night shift.”
“Jude? What are you doing here so late?”
“I just finally finished up my last case of the night. I was hoping to dry off before heading home. Now why are you all still here?”
The men looked at each other, none wanting to share the story. Finally, Jean stepped up and explained things.
“A fisherman?” Judit interrupted. “That was the case I was looking into this afternoon. From the evidence on the scene, I’m fairly certain it was a drinking party gone wrong, unfortunately.”
“I see. Well, that just about wraps everything up,” Jean said, shaking his head.
“Wait, no it doesn’t,” Harry said, and Jean sighed heavily.
“Of course it does.”
“No. What about the third body?”
“What?”
“The third body – the one with the claw marks?”
“Claw marks? No one sent in a body with claw marks today.” It was clear that Jean was waiting for some sort of punchline, demanding it, even. Beside him Judit wore an expression of quiet concern.
Fischer motioned to the breakroom before striding off, leading the rest of the group. “The third body we found, guy in a three-piece suit, fancy-looking fellow, he’s right here – ” He froze in the entrance. The peeling linoleum of the breakroom was clear, distinctly lacking any bodies, with claw marks or otherwise.
“Ha ha, very funny,” Jean deadpanned, crossing his arms. He turned to Dupont. “Your head on straight enough now? Did you guys take in a body with claw marks today?”
Dupont shook his head. “You read the log. No guy in a suit. Besides, a guy in a three piece suit? In Jamrock?”
“B-but he was here!” Fischer insisted. “Elfboy, you saw him! McLaine? Torson? Lieutenant Kitsuragi?”
But Kim’s attention was on Harry, who was looking out across the bullpen, out through the entrance windows and the raging storm beyond. Kim could feel it against his skin, the chill reality that the third body had been there, but that they were not going to ever find it. Enraptured by the storm and his own thoughts, Harry whispered quietly, only audible to Kim:
“Loup-Garou.”