He held up a hand. "I know, you've heard all this before. Very well. We are agreed that action is necessary, are we not?"
There were nods from around the table. "We are also agreed that this pack is out of control. Reluctantly, we agree that the sole action left to us is elimination. Such a draconian decision is arrived at only after repeated attempts at remedial action, all resulting in failure of effect, and after extensive deliberation over what will benefit the greater good."
Again, no outward dissent.
Mannaro looked at Wulver. "But Wulver is also correct in that every time we propose controlling the population, there is a backlash of epic proportion, and as the controlling body we're left hanging out there all alone, the target of every rights group with an in-house attorney. And he makes a very good point in that the season will exacerbate reaction community-wide."
"But something has to be done," Lucas said. "Their actions have become too widespread to safely ignore. Any more publicity will result in full-scale vigilantism, putting the greater population at risk. It's not like it hasn't happened before."
"Indeed." Mannaro inclined his head in a graceful acceptance of the challenge that Lucas' near snarl had flung down. "What we need is to turn this action into a gift. So let me put it to you. Who will this action benefit, other than ourselves?"
He was looking at Neri as he spoke. "To whom," he said, "may we offer it as something befitting the season? As, say, the perfect gift?"
She met his eyes for a startled moment before comprehension came.
And then she laughed, a full-throated sound of amusement, with an underlying excitement sharp enough to cut.
Mannaro smiled, content.
The Alaska state troopers in Anchorage worked out of a five-story rectangular building with a dull gray exterior and an interior cut into matching gray cubicles. Littered surfaces of metal desks were lit by fluorescent tubes, every third or fourth one burned out.
Lobison thought it worked as a metaphor for the job, although it would have been as much as his life was worth to use a word like metaphor in here. He dumped four packets of creamer and six packets of sugar into his coffee mug and went to his desk, where the stack of case files had not miraculously diminished overnight.
His partner was already at work, sleek head bent over a series of crime scene photographs, the graphic nature of which made the human in him wince away and gave even the cop in him pause.
"Morning, Ben," she said.
"How do you do that?" he said. "I didn't make a sound. You must have ears like a cat."
She looked up and fluttered her eyelashes. "Maybe I just have a sixth sense for big good-looking doofuses."
They'd been partners for a year and their working relationship had evolved into a low-key flirtatious raillery that never overstepped the rule of no departmental fraternization. Romanov was so hot she sizzled, but Lobison had too much respect for the job to hit on his partner, or that's what he told himself whenever his imagination went into overdrive.
"I think that's doofusi," he said. He sat down across from her and pointed at the photographs. "Why are you looking at those again? It's not like the MO is going to change if you stare at them long enough."
"I know." She sat back and rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger. "How many have there been now? Twelve?"
"Thirteen," he said grimly, "if you count that kid in Chickaloon, and I do."
"Thirteen deaths by exsanguination over the past eleven months," she said, "in each case caused by massive trauma to the throat."
"As in they had their jugulars ripped out," Lobison said. "Don't pretty it up. The ME's considered opinion is that each victim was attacked by an animal, perhaps a dog, maybe a wolf or a bear, possibly even a wolverine. That I might actually believe, wolverines are nasty little sons of bitches. But since most of the soft parts of the bodies are missing and presumed eaten, the ME hasn't been able to get a good imprint of the teeth."
She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, a quizzical look on her face. "You still don't think it is an animal, do you?"
"Where is this alleged animal?" He waved a hand at the photographs. "We've got crime scenes ranging from Girdwood to Wasilla, including Bird Creek, Indian, Spenard, Muldoon, Mountain View, Eagle River, Peters Creek, Palmer. No one single sighting of the animal or animals in question reported by any of the witnesses interviewed. The attacks always occur at night, always on a full moon, and don't those jackals in the media just love that." He paused. "Tonight's a full moon."
She glanced at him. "Yeah? So?"
"Ask any EMT or any emergency room nurse, they'll tell you. All the stats go up during a full moon, robbery, rapes, murder, drive-bys, domestic disturbances, you name it. People get squirrelly around the full moon."
"You know that's just a self-perpetuating prophecy," she said in a singsong voice, as if she were reading out of a manual. "Because people say the full moon makes people squirrelly, people get squirrelly during the full moon. Ask any shrink."
"Yeah, yeah." He shifted uncomfortably, as if his jacket were suddenly too tight across the shoulders. Truth was, he was always twitchy during the full moon, and he didn't like it. He was a cop, he dealt in the real, the tangible, what he could see and hear and touch. It was humiliating, especially in front of his partner, who also happened to be an attractive member of the opposite sex, to admit to a belief in what amounted to a fairy tale.
"It was even clear the night of the Eagle River attack," he said, bringing them firmly back to the subject. "That and the full moon made visibility so good you could read a newspaper outside. The victim was found almost immediately by a couple who were camping up the trail and who heard the attack and came to investigate, and they didn't see anything. We haven't found any tracks, no one's heard any howling or growling, there's no scat or hair." His mouth tightened into a grim line. "And they're too much alike."
"The bodies?"
"Yes. Same killing blow, or bite, at least so far as the ME is willing to commit himself. All the soft parts gone, face, throat, br**sts on the women, belly, thighs. No dental impressions left in the bones. To me, that kind of similarity argues, I don't know, an intelligence, if you will, behind the killings. Which makes them murders in my book."
She raised a skeptical eyebrow, but before she could reply the phone on her desk rang. "Detective Romanov. Yes. Yes." She scribbled something down. "I'm sorry, and why should we go all the way out there?" Her eyes widened and she snapped her fingers at Lobison. Line two, she mouthed at him.