Rusty the werewolf had been surly before, and I doubted that being scalped had improved his disposition, but I had an obligation to my client. I’d solved his case, whether or not he liked the answer. Out of consideration, though, I told Sheyenne not to send him the final bill until after he had recuperated.
Rusty lived in a dilapidated row house in a run-down part of town, not because he couldn’t afford the rent elsewhere, but because the homeowners’ association rules were less strict here. His front windows were boarded up since plywood was cheaper than glass, and he didn’t like the view toward the street anyway. A chain-link fence surrounded his yard. A prominent warning sign on the fence said, “Beware of all my damn pets!” I had been here twice before, and I knew Rusty could be more fearsome than his guard animals.
In the neighbors’ front yard sat a rickety hearse on cinder blocks. Someone was burning trash in a rusty oil barrel. Dogs barked and howled incessantly because they had nothing else to do. Spiky dead weeds seemed to be the preferred form of landscaping.
When Rusty held weekend kegger parties for his rough-and-tumble Hairball gang members, he invited the neighbors, but they were afraid to come. His neighbors had their own dark secrets: coven rituals, lodge meetings, serial-killer boot camps, and quilting circles. Children didn’t generally come around here selling Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn.
I rapped on the screen door, and someone jerked it open with such force that the hinges didn’t have time to squeak. Awkward-looking Furguson stood there bristling, his yellow eyes wide. He held a double-barreled shotgun that wavered from side to side. I raised my hands, not so much terrified of the gun as I was of Furguson’s clumsiness. I didn’t want to spend hours using tweezers to pick buckshot out of my dead skin because of a klutzy Hairball.
“Whoa, Furguson! Put that thing down, or at least point the barrel at someone who deserves to be shot!”
He seemed mortally embarrassed. “Sorry, Mr. Chambeaux. Can’t be too careful after what happened to my uncle.” He let me into the house.
“That’s who I came to see.” I felt sorry for the kid, not sure how Rusty would punish his nephew, but I had been hired to solve a mystery, not to determine the consequences of the answers. “How’s he doing?”
“Recovering, and just as stubborn as ever. He drank a gallon of vinegar tonic, said it was good for his constitution.” Furguson was perspiring; sweaty werewolf fur smells like a wet cat under a low-powered hair dryer.
I didn’t want to wake up a recovering werewolf who was in pain. “Is he resting quietly?”
“Resting?” Furguson let out a chuffing laugh. “What do you think?”
“So, out by the coops, then?”
“He spends more time with the animals than with me, I think. He says they’re cuter.”
I went through the small kitchen and out the back door into the fenced-in backyard. A broken fishing boat sat on a trailer, covering part of what would have been the lawn if anything had grown there. The rest of the yard was crowded with six coops covered with chicken wire and tar paper. Rusty incubated the prize cockatrice eggs, raised the chicks, and nurtured the creatures into adulthood. Then he tried to get them to kill one another.
The big werewolf stood out in the yard now, wearing his overalls, carrying a bucket of slimy entrails, which he ladled into the feed bins. “Here chick chick chick!” He slopped more intestines into the next bin. Rustling and hissing creatures swarmed forward, scales glinting in the light, beaks clacking. They squabbled as they gorged themselves. I saw a flash of lemon-yellow scales, bronze-green ones, and bright scarlet.
When Rusty turned around, even I was startled at his appearance. His scalp was a raw scab, like a skin wig turned inside out and painted with dried blood. Thanks to his lycanthropic healing abilities, the top of his head had scabbed over, though I doubted the fur would ever grow back the way it had been.
“Rusty, it’s good to see you on your feet.”
“Someone didn’t ever want me on my feet again.” He touched his head and winced. Parts of the wound that covered his cranium continued to ooze yellowish pus that crusted over. “If you’re here to sell me shampoo, I won’t need much of it anymore.”
I laughed, because it was the polite thing to do.
Rusty growled. “Humor’s a coping mechanism to keep me going until I find and kill the bastard who did this.”
“Shouldn’t you let the police handle it?” I asked. “Officer McGoohan was there at the scene. He won’t ignore something like this.”
“Hah! The same cop that tried to break up our cockatrice fight?”
“About that … there was a misunderstanding. McGoo just came to ask you to keep the noise down because one of the neighbors complained.”
“Now you tell me. I knew I shouldn’t have used those old rave speakers. It was the Rocky theme, wasn’t it?”
“Among other things.”
“We won’t be doing the fights again for a while—I’ve got other priorities. Cockatrice fighting gets trumped by a blood vendetta any day. Did you find out anything about my missing money last night?”
“Afraid so,” I said. “I solved the case.”
Rusty growled. “Then why are you afraid?”
“Because you’re not going to like the answer.”
“I already don’t like it—I’ve been losing money! Was it Scratch and Sniff, like I thought?”
“It was … an accident.” I hesitated, and Rusty drew his own conclusions. He growled in disgust now instead of anger.
“You mean it was my nephew? He’s one big walking accident.”
I sighed and explained how, although Furguson had carefully recorded all the bets, he’d been sloppy stuffing the bills into his pockets.
“Damn that boy! When he tries to answer the call of the wild, all he gets is a busy signal! This is serious business. It’s not as if I can take him over my knee and spank him anymore.” He shook his scabby head. “My sister’s son. I promised her I’d watch out for the kid, although why she’d trust her only son to a full-time werewolf makes no sense at all.” He heaved a big sigh. “That kid is so clumsy, we don’t dare let him use anything but these little round-ended scissors. I can’t even let him trim his own facial fur.”
Grumbling, he continued to ladle entrails into the cockatrice feeding troughs. Scaly, fork-tongued chicks wobbled about, flapping their not-yet-developed dragon wings and pecking at one another. Another cage held several nests built out of bent nails, which cradled leathery-shelled eggs. In three of the nests, fat warty toads sat on the eggs; in two others, vipers coiled around the clutches.
A lemon-yellow cockatrice fought with a crimson one, and they tumbled around inside the cramped cage in an orange blur, spilling offal all over the place. While they fought for the last scraps, the other cockatrices in the cage ate the ignored meal, so that when the two squabblers finished beating each other up, nothing remained.
Rusty went from cage to cage, inspecting. “I’ve been doing a lot of crossbreeding. Cockatrices are magnificent beasts, beautiful colors, even make nice family pets if they’re raised right. I hear they’re good with kids.”
Two of the coops were entirely enclosed with tar paper, which blocked the view of the monsters within, but I could hear them rustling and hissing like a manifestation of intestinal distress. I figured that Rusty put some of his prized cockatrices in dark solitary confinement so they’d be hungry and angry for the next fight.
“So, I leave you to decide how to discuss the matter with your nephew,” I said. “I hope you’ve found our services satisfactory. Sheyenne will send you a customer comment card in your final bill.”
The cockatrice racket was deafening, but Rusty wasn’t bothered by it. He continued to brood, flexing and unflexing his clawed hands. Finally, he threw the empty entrail bucket across the yard in a gesture of uncontrolled anger. It banged against the tar-paper side of the solitary-confinement coop, eliciting a round of bone-chilling snarls and cackles. I silently reaffirmed my desire to not see what the coops contained.
Rusty’s eyes were fiery. “Oh, we’re not done, Mr. Shamble. I want to engage your services for a much more important matter, but I can’t think what it is, off the top of my head.” He tapped his raw scalpless skull, winced, then chuffed at his own joke and shook his head. “No, I don’t see that using humor makes it any better.” He extended his clawed hand. “I need a private detective. I want you to find out who did this to me and come up with proof.”
“I’ll take the case, but only if you tell me everything, especially the parts you didn’t tell the doctors or the police.”
“I didn’t see the bastard. It was a dark alley, full night, and I was busy trying to hold my cockatrice in the bag. Those things don’t like to be confined. Since I thought the fights were being raided, I was in a hurry to get out of there. Before I knew it, I got hit with two darts of full-strength animal tranquilizer laced with wolfsbane, and a Taser for good measure. Knocked me flat. Then some butcher took a knife and hacked off the top of my head.”
I forced myself to look closer, telling myself it couldn’t be any worse than the gutted vamp in the Motel Six Feet Under. Actually, it looked as if a neat, straight line had sliced away the scalp, causing no damage to the skull.
“I know damn well it was the Monthlies. I should have whacked Scratch and Sniff a few more times with that two-by-four. Shoulda used the end with the nails, too! But I’m a nice guy, Mr. Shamble—a pacifist at heart. Look what it got me.”
There was definitely bad blood between the two types of werewolves, a long-standing feud that went beyond mere rowdiness at a cockatrice fight. I guessed there would be a lot more to this case.
“You don’t know for certain it was them,” I cautioned.
“I know damn well for certain! I just can’t prove it.”
“So you’re asking me to get the Monthlies,” I said.
“Oh, yes—and blood will flow!”