There Wolf?

Art by Jered

 "Yes, I'm aware of the problem," I said into the phone. "And no, Mister Mayor, I don't have a solution."

I was met with a curse and a dead line - he'd hung up on me.

"So much for that," I muttered to myself. I don't know why I'm supposed to have the answers to the recent killing spree, but I kept getting the calls. It seemed to me this was more of a job for the sheriff or someone more senior in government. Why involve a lowly lumberjack like myself was beyond me, but I wasn't a lumberjack because of my brains.

The killings had shaken the village. They were gristly affairs - either the result of a wild animal or a wild man masquerading as such. The first death - the killing of a town drunk - had been excused as a man who'd stumbled into trouble. The second was an unfortunate coincidence - a farmer who'd probably been protecting his animals from an unknown assailant. It was the third killing, however, that had roused the community to action. Little Suzie had just turned ten the week before. Her body - or what was left of it - had been found by her seven year old brother.

A meeting had been called and search partied had been assembled. For the next three days we combed the woods trying to find the wolf or big cat or bear or whatever had caused such devastation in the community. After these three days of active searching we came up empty-handed. We promised vigilance.

Vigilance, however, cannot last forever. Someone always slips up or gets sloppy or does a thing they've done a thousand times before that isn't the way it should be done anymore. The fourth and fifth killings were in that vein - a man attempting a secret rendezvous with a lover who certainly thought he'd never be caught and a spinster who'd had a literal 'open door' policy for decades and must have forgotten to lock up as the new normal had demanded.

And so it was that the burlier men of the community had been 'voluntold' to patrol and search. We'd been deputized and partnered off to search for the killer. As often happens, however, the shit rolls down-hill. Where it once was the Mayor's job to deal with the threat, it  seemed more and more that it was entirely my fault the killer hadn't been caught. Or it was Jim - and auto mechanic by trade - who was to blame that there were no new leads. The whole situation was demoralizing.

As it was, I still felt I had a job to do. I had a shotgun, an axe, and a big flashlight. I hopped in my pickup and headed over to my partner's spot a few miles down the road to start our patrol.

We rode around in silence for most of it - eyes open as we checked houses and yards; ears alert as we waited for the radio to crackle to life with an emergency alert.

It was at the end of the shift that my partner asked a question that kept me up for the rest of the night.

"Has the mayor been asking you weird questions about silver?"