Lori Handeland - Blue Moon

"Ma’am," I tried again when she continued to stare at me without answering. "Are you all right? What’s your name?"

She raised her hand to her head. There was blood dripping down her arm. I frowned. No broken glass, except on the front of the car, which appeared to be more plastic than anything else. How had she cut herself?

I grabbed the flashlight from my belt and trained it on her arm. Something had taken a bite-sized chunk out of the skin between her thumb and her wrist.

"What did you hit, ma’am?"

"Karen." Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated; she was shocky. "Karen Larson."

Right answer, wrong question. The distant wail of a siren sliced through the cool night air, and I permitted myself a sigh of relief. Help was on the way.

Since the nearest hospital was a forty-minute drive, Miniwa made do with a small general practice clinic for everything but life-threatening crises. Even so, the clinic was on the other end of town, a good twenty minutes over dark, deserted roads. Brad could transport Miss Larson while I finished up here.

But first things first. I needed to move her vehicle out of the road before someone, if not Brad, plowed into us. Thank God Highway 199 at 3:00 a.m. was not a hotbed of traffic, or there’d be more glass and blood on the pavement.

"Ma’am? Miss Larson, we need to move. Slide over."

She did as I ordered, like a child, and I quickly parked her car near mine. Planning to retrieve my first-aid kit and do some minor cleaning and repairs—perhaps bandage her up just enough to keep the blood off the seats—I paused, half in and half out of the car, when she answered my third question as late as the second.

"Wolf. I hit a wolf."

A litany of Zee’s favorites ran through my head. The wolves were becoming a problem. They followed the food, and with the deer herds increasing in alarming numbers despite the generosity of the Department of Natural Resources with hunting licenses, the wolves had multiplied along with their prey. The wolves were not typically aggressive; however, if they were wounded or rabid, typical did not apply.

"Did it bite you, ma’am?"

I knew the answer, but I had to ask. For the record.

She nodded. "I-I thought it was a dog."

"Damn big dog," I muttered.

"Yes. Damn big," she repeated. "It ran right in front of my car. I couldn’t stop. Black like the night. Chasing, chasing—" She frowned, then moaned as if the effort of the thought was too much for her poor head.

"How did you get bitten?"

"I thought it was dead."

A good rule to remember when dealing with wild animals and soap opera villains? They usually aren’t dead—even when everyone thinks that they are.

"Ma’am, I’m just going to check your license and registration, okay?"

She nodded in the same zoned-out manner she’d had all along. I didn’t smell alcohol, but even so, she’d be checked for that and drugs at the clinic.

I quickly rifled her wallet. Yep, Karen Larson. The registration in the glove compartment proved she owned the car. All my ducks were in a row, just the way I liked them.

Brad arrived at last. Young, eager, he was one of the summer cops, which meant he wasn’t from here. Who knows what he did during the other nine months of the year. From the looks of him he lifted weights and worked on his tan beneath an artificial sun. Having dealt with Brad before, I was of the opinion he’d fried his brain along with his skin. But he was competent enough to take Miss Larson to the clinic.

I met him halfway between his car and hers. "We’ve got a wolf bite." I had no time for chitchat. Not that I would have bothered even if I did. "Get her to the clinic. I’m going to see if I can find the wolf."

He laughed. "Right, Jessie. You’re gonna catch a wolf, in the middle of the night, in these woods. And it’ll be the particular wolf you’re searching for."

That’s why Brad was a summer cop and I was an all-through-the-year cop. I had a brain and I wasn’t afraid to use it.

"Call me silly," I pointed at the blood, plastic, and fiberglass on the pavement, "but that’s gonna leave a mark. If I find a wolf with a fender-sized dent, I’ll just arrest him. Who knows, we might be able to avoid rabies shots for our victim."

Brad blinked. "Oh."

"Yeah. ‘Oh.’ Can you call Zee, tell her what happened, have her inform the DNR?"

"Why?"

I resisted the urge to thump him upside the head. Maybe I’d shake some sense loose, but I doubted it. "Standard procedure when dealing with wolves is to call the hunting and fishing police."

"Do we have to?"

Though I shared his sentiments—no one around here had much use for the Department of Natural Resources—rules were rules.

The wolf had been an endangered species in Wisconsin until 1999, when the classification was changed to threatened. Recently they had increased in number to the point where they were delisted. Which meant problems—like rabies—could be handled under certain conditions by certain people. If I had to shoot a wolf tonight. I wanted to do so with my butt already covered.

"Yes," I snapped. "We have to. Have Zee get someone else out here to secure, then measure this scene." I patted the walkie-talkie on my belt. "I’ll be in touch."

"But—Uh, I was thinking… Maybe, um, I should, uh, you know…" His uncertain gaze flicked toward the trees, then back to me.

"I know. And you shouldn’t."

Think. Ever . My mind mocked, but I had learned a few things in my twenty-six years, and one of them was to keep my smart-ass mind’s comments to myself. Mostly.

"I’ve lived here all my life, Brad. I’m the best hunter on the force."

A fact that did not endear me to many of the guys I worked with. I couldn’t recall the last time I hadn’t taken top prize in the Big Buck contests run by the taverns every fall. Still Brad appeared uneasy at letting me wander off alone into the darkness.

"Relax," I soothed. "I know these woods. You don’t."

Without waiting for further argument, I went in after the wolf.

I’d learned to follow a blood trail before I grew breasts.

Not from my father. No. He disappeared right about the time I uttered the word Da-da . I should have kept my mouth shut. But that was nothing new.

My mother was, make that is, a true girlie-girl. She never knew what to make of a daughter who preferred to play with boys, shoot guns, and get dirty. She still doesn’t.

I was a wild child. Not her fault, though she blames herself. I don’t think I turned out too bad. I’m a cop, not a delinquent. That has to be good for something.

Except my mother’s approval. I gave up on that a long time ago.

I don’t hear much from her these days. If she couldn’t have the perfect daughter, she’d hoped for perfect grandchildren—as if she’d get them from me. Marriage and family aren’t high on my list of priorities.

Oh, wait—they aren’t on the list at all.

I had no doubt Miss Larson’s wolf was long gone; still I couldn’t just give up without trying. It wasn’t in me.

Following a blood trail through the dark was a neat trick, one I’d picked up from my best friend in the sixth grade, Craig Simmons, who’d learned it from his best friend in the fifth grade, George Standwater.

The Indian kids didn’t mix much with the white kids, and vice versa, despite any smiley-faced propaganda to the contrary. Once in a while a few became friends, but it never lasted long. The adults, on both sides, took care of that.

I’ll never forget how awful Craig felt when his parents told him he couldn’t see George anymore. Kind of how I felt, I’m sure, when Craig decided he’d rather play with girls in the Biblical sense and he no longer had any need for a friend-girl like Jessie McQuade.