Hunting Death

Chapter 29

By the time Damien got back to his office, after helping his deputy with the door-to-door search around the neighborhood, Kimmy was already waiting for him.

"What took you so long?" She teased.

But Damien wasn't in the mood. "Officer Kershaw and I checked with the neighbors in the area to see if anyone had ever seen anything weird." He answered with annoyance.

"You mean like a giant red-eyed wolf?"

"You saw that too, huh?"

Kimmy nodded. "I've never seen anything like it, I almost thought that I'd imagined it after having spent the last hour in that enclosure until you said something about it. Whatever that thing was, it had to be huge and looked kind of scary, to be honest." Kimmy shivered, "Did you get anything from the neighbors?"

"No." He huffed with a sigh. "Nobody said anything. A few complaints about barking dogs and howling, but they've never seen anything."

"Tough luck." She mused. Damien rolled his eyes. "I'm afraid the news I have for you isn't much better."

"Nothing matches?"

Kimmy shook her head, "Not one. Even the biggest male was smaller than our female sample."

"Damn."

"Hey," Kimmy mused, standing as she got ready to leave. "You think that thing we saw was some kind of coywolf or something? I've heard about wolves and coyotes breeding, and lord knows we have plenty of coyotes around here."

"Probably not. I've never seen a coyote that big."

"I've never seen any canine that big, at least not outside of a monster movie." She joked, headed out the door.

"Wait, what did you just say?" Damien barked, racing to catch up with her.

"Oh, come on Crow, we're not dealing with some kind of monster here. It's not like it's a werewolf or something, it's probably a really big dog. Great Danes are big, hell, so are wolfhounds, which, you know, are used to hunt wolves."

"Right, right. Really big dog. I'll uh, I'll talk to Jaci about getting another warrant."

Kimmy gave him a strange sideways glance, "You do that, be sure to tell me if you need any more molds done."

But Damien had stopped listening, he nodded absently as she waved on her way out, and headed straight to his computer, opening up his email and downloading the video Madison had uploaded to him.

While he waited for it to load, Damien pulled up a search engine and looked at local folklore on werewolves. After reading the first couple of paragraphs, he rolled his eyes.

"I must be going crazy," he mumbled to himself out loud, thankful there was no one in earshot.

Switching tabs on his screen, Damien clicked on the video, fast forwarding it all the way to the end and freezing on the very last frame. He had noticed earlier how quick Madison was to stop the footage right there, and though he wondered why, he'd been more concerned at the time with the fact that his lead suspect had once again slipped through his grasp with an ironclad alibi.

It was obvious that the footage hadn't been doctored any since he'd watched while Madison did little more than pause the live feed and rewind it. That didn't mean Keith wasn't involved somehow, it only meant he didn't get his own hands dirty.

Of course, Damien had yet to come up with a plausible motive for why Keith would want the stripper, er, dancer, dead. A couple of deputies had been dispatched to the club where she worked, and the statements he got weren't out of the ordinary. Nor did the manager of the club, or any of his girls recognize Keith.