Rebecca Flanders - Shadow Of The Wolf

Until now.

“Paul?” She glanced up as he opened the door, trying to keep her voice casual. “You don’t think…I mean, Devereaux couldn’t be right, could he? About us—about me—encouraging this guy?”

Paul scowled sharply in a mixture of annoyance and amusement. “Come on, babe, you know he’s just trying to torment you. If you ask me, he’s just jealous.”

Amy tried to relax. “Of my good looks, no doubt.”

“You better believe it. Hey, if I weren’t married…”

“In your dreams, sweet thing.” Grinning, Amy turned back to the editor. But her amusement faded as she watched the frames scroll by and she said again, “Hey, Paul.”

He looked back. “I’m on my dinner break,” he reminded her impatiently.

Amy said thoughtfully, “What was all that garbage about the forensic evidence, anyway? I never heard anyone declare those paw prints a hoax before. And he out-and-out lied about animal hair on the bodies. Until today, no one said anything about teeth and claw marks on the bodies. It was as though he was trying so hard to tell a lie, he tripped all over the truth.”

“And this is unusual? Devereaux wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him on the ankle.”

“But would we?” she wondered, only half to herself.

“Huh?”

“Did you ever hear the phrase, ‘Methinks he doth protest too much’?”

“Come on, Amy, I’m going into serious sugar deficit here.”

“It’s just that…maybe I’ve been going about this whole thing the wrong way. Maybe the truth has been staring us in the face the whole time.”

“What? That the killer really is a werewolf?”

Amy didn’t smile. “That the police really don’t know what he is.”

Paul looked confused.

“Think about it, Paul.” Amy’s expression was serious. “A serial killer in one of the most populous cities in the country evades detection for ten months. Fifteen people dead, and not a single witness. The FBI, local police, all the crime detection capabilities of the modern age are involved, and there’s still not so much as a computer sketch or a psychological profile of this guy. Devereaux aside, you don’t really believe for one minute the police are that incompetent, do you?”

Paul frowned. “So what are you saying? That they’re covering up something? Hardly a new theory, Ace.”

“Exactly.” Amy chewed a thumbnail thoughtfully. “Police and corruption. We’ve all been pursuing that angle. It’s politically motivated because all the victims are homeless and the police are heartless. The evidence is being tainted because the police are careless. Competition between law enforcement agencies is hampering the investigation. But, Paul—” she lifted eyes to him that were dark with worry “—what if the simple truth is that the police are doing their best, and they still can’t find him?”

Paul regarded her gravely. “Now, that,” he told her, “is damn scary.”

“Yeah.” She released a breath. “No kidding.”

They looked at each other for another long moment. Finally, Paul said, “I, uh, wouldn’t mention this theory of yours to anybody just yet.”

“Right.”

He turned toward the door again, then looked back. “I’d rather it be a real werewolf,” he said.

Amy smiled, though the expression was faint and empty of humor. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

“On the other hand, it’s not as though something like this has never happened before.”

Amy, who had started to turn back to the editor, glanced at him in confusion. “What?”

“That a serial killer eludes detection for months on end in one of the most populated cities in the country,” he explained. “No witnesses, no clean suspects, nothing.”

Amy was interested. “Oh, yeah? When was this?”

“London, 1888,” he told her. “They called him Jack the Ripper.”

“Great,” she muttered, pushing back her smooth blond hair with her hand. “I think I’ll put that in my story tonight. Citizens of New Orleans, there’s hope—London survived Jack the Ripper, we can survive the Werewolf Killer.”

He shrugged. “As long as we aren’t prostitutes or street people, that is. Say, do you have a date for that wingding tonight?”

“Don’t need one. This is business, not pleasure.”

“My tennis partner is getting a divorce, you know, and I’ll bet he’s available on short notice.”

Amy should have seen that one coming. Paul was always trying to fix her up, and his wife was no better. What was it about happily married people that made them incapable of letting their friends be happily single?

She said, “When he actually gets a divorce, let me know. Meanwhile, the party’s black-tie.”

“Oh.”

Paul sounded disappointed, and Amy guessed his friend did not have his own tux.

Then he cheered. “Anyway, Cindy says for you to come to dinner next week.”

“Is the tennis partner going to be there?”

“I guess not, if you’re going to take that attitude.”

“I’ll call Cindy.”

Still Paul hesitated. “You don’t, uh, need a camera for that interview tonight, do you?”

Amy looked up at him and grinned. “You big baby. No. I’m not going to drag you across town to the Governor’s Ball and no, I’m not going to make you put on a tux. Go home to your wife. You’re off duty.”

Paul returned her grin and kissed his fingers to her. “You’re a prince, Fortenoy, an absolute prince. I’ll name an offspring for you.”

“You’d better go before someone sees you hanging around and puts your name on the assignment board.”

“I’m out of here. And be careful crossing Canal to-night—you’ll be hitting the worst of the parade traffic.”

Amy waved him away, smiling, but she was deeply immersed in the editor now and did not look up.

Amy Fortenoy had spent her life laboring under two handicaps: her looks and her family name. Amy was blond, petite and cute in a business that valued tall, svelte and striking. Her shoulder-length hair was the sundrenched color of a three-year-old’s and the texture of satin, her nose a perfect button, her face round and ingenuous. Her eyes were large and fringed with thick dark lashes, and the only thing that kept them from being breathtaking was the fact that they were more hazel than green. She had flawless Fortenoy porcelain skin, and a perfect size-six figure, which was due as much to her own efforts and the demands of the camera as it was to the Fortenoy genes.

In a business that values physical attractiveness at least as much as it did ability, if not more—there were, after all, very few ugly news anchors—being a cute blonde might not be considered a disadvantage. But cute was the operative word, and Amy was a reporter. She was tough, ambitious, alert and perceptive. All she wanted was a chance to prove what she could do, yet she had spent her career fending off advances, fighting the stereotype and being offered jobs as the weather girl by station directors who took one look at her and wondered if she could read…or if it mattered.

But the prejudices she fought in the work force were nothing to the disapproval—indeed, the disappointment—with which she had to contend in her own family. The Fortenoys were a grand old Southern family who bred tradition, snobbery and intellectuals. Amy had two brothers and three sisters, all of whom had earned at least one Ph.D. in suitably exalted subjects like philosophy or mathematics. Two were university professors, one was a doctor like their father, one was a museum curator, one was the director of a major European symphony orchestra. Among her cousins, aunts and uncles were bank presidents, Supreme Court justices, research scientists and poet laureates. Not one of them worked in television. Most of them, in fact, did not even own television sets, and those who did, only brought them out on the occasion of a presidential election or a particularly compelling PBS special.