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Craig Nybo

8

“The bite marks look similar,” Clay said.

“The bite marks we saw were on the bodies of sheep. Last time I checked, murder is a human condition.”

“Then why look into all this?” Clay pointed at the evidence scattered across Kurt’s desk.

“Because we are not dealing with murder; we are dealing with possible hysteria. I have to be prepared to defuse this absurd talk about monsters before we have a witch-hunt on our hands.”

“You have to admit, this looks like the work of a werewolf,” Clay said, picking up one of the terrible photographs.

“It is the work of this sick man.” Kurt tapped on the photo of Danny Slade. “He was a psychopath, not a werewolf. And let me remind you: what happened on Buren’s property wasn’t a crime; it was the circle of life.”

Kurt picked up the executive summary of the Danny Slade case. He held it high as if proving to Clay that the case was a tangible thing—a solved thing—a closed thing. “Danny was convicted of murder, nine people, some from DePalma Beach, some tourists. He was sentenced to death and put in the electric chair in 1952 at the age of 20. Case closed.”

“Who’s this with him?” Clay asked. A photo he hadn’t seen at first had caught Clay’s attention. He picked it out of the pile. The picture framed Danny Slade and another man. The other man, like Danny, had an excessive mane of facial hair. “They look like ZZ-top.”

“That’s Danny’s father, Artemus.”

“Are you sure?” Clay asked, a little critical.

“Yes.”

“You said Danny was executed in 1952; how old is Artemus?”

“Strange,” Kurt said and flipped the photograph of the two men over. On the back, someone had written Danny Slade, 19; Artemus Slade, 39. June 15th 1951.

“That can’t be.” Kurt said as he worked the calculation in his head. “If Artemus was 39 in 1951, that would put him at…”

“One-hundred-one years old,” Clay said.