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  Silverlight

  Copyright 2014 Matt Joyce

  Cover Art by neon_eddy at Stock.XCHNG

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  Some murders are worse than others. It was something one of the instructors at the Academy had said over a round of beers one night and Ray Neville had never forgotten it. He was sitting at his desk reading over the case file, hoping against hope that something would jump out at him, something they’d missed. In fifteen minutes or so he’d have to head into the briefing room and an hour or so after that they’d be heading out into the night. Before he went in though, he had to make sure, to his mind at least, that he hadn’t missed anything. Some murders were worse than others and this one was a bitch. Not just because they were literally without a clue but because it could also be the one that brought his career to a grinding halt. So he sipped bad coffee and read through the case notes for the clue he hoped was in there somewhere.

  Lakeville park was located in the suburb of Lakeville (of course), an affluent suburb in Sydney’s inner west. It was a large, rambling area over two distinct levels that held five sporting fields, lots of large shady trees in-between and a cycling / pedestrian path around the outside. And three people had died there in the last three months.

  The first victim was Yasmeena al Alawi, a sixteen year old girl. She’d worked a part time job at a McDonalds located across the road from the park and after finishing her shift at 11pm on a Friday night had cut across the park on her way home. She’d never made it. Her parents had reported her missing to police at 1am. At 2am two constables from the local station, after talking to her co-workers at McDonalds (it was one of those open 24 hour affairs) attempted to retrace her path home. Ten minutes later they found her body, ripped to shreds and from what they could tell, partially devoured.

  Within the hour detectives and a forensic unit were onsite. Erecting a large tent over the scene they’d gone to work, illuminated by portable arc lights. It was immediately apparent that they were dealing with some sort of animal attack. The bite marks on the body...what was left of the body...were clear. Some of the larger bones had even been crushed to get to the marrow inside. While the ground was too dry for prints (human or animal), they managed to recover samples of saliva and a few grey-black hairs. By midday the work was done, equipment removed and the grass hosed free of blood. By mid-afternoon you couldn’t even tell someone had been killed there.

  While investigators waited for the lab results to be returned the usual procedures were followed. Detectives visited all the homes around the park and asked all the right questions, but nobody had seen anything. The only large dogs within a six block radius of the park that could be found didn’t have hair that matched those found at the scene. There was no CCTV or traffic cameras anywhere near the park, and the security footage from McDonalds could give them nothing except the exact time Yasmeena had left work. Animal Control officers from the local council armed with tranquilizer guns and local police patrolled the park for a week, both at day and night. They found nothing except for a pair of drunken teens who’d decided the middle of the park at midnight was the perfect place for a romantic interlude.

  After that first week results from the lab came back. All the samples were contaminated. They showed both human and animal DNA. When one of the detectives rang to verify the results, the tech would only say off the record (the detective wrote it down anyway) that the animal was probably canine not feline.

  The patrols dropped off after that, and no further information was forthcoming. Apart from posting notices asking people to stick to the lighted paths around the outside of the park nothing could be done. The detectives running the case (Ray had talked to them both, numerous times) had thought it was a dog attack. At the freakish end of the scale, but a dog attack none the less.

  Almost a month later there was a second attack. Richard Wilson, 19, a university student who’d been out drinking with his friends. He’d caught the last train at 12:15am and arrived at Lakeville station at 12:50am. His 20 minute walk home ran straight through the park. What was left of him (and it wasn’t all that much) was discovered by a jogger at 5:30am. The 000 dispatcher had to try to calm her down for fifteen minutes before he could finally understand what she was saying.

  What was thought to be a cold case suddenly became hot again. Casts of the bites were taken again, hair and saliva samples were recovered. Again the samples came back contaminated – the lab accused forensics for the contamination, they blamed the officers who’d arrived on the scene first and the officers blamed the lab for screwing the samples up in a giant merry-go-round of blame. The only thing different this time around was that they also discovered a single large paw print in a bare patch of earth about a hundred meters away.

  Once again arriving at a dead end, detectives had gone to talk to staff at Taronga Zoo. Their best lead came from a Zoologist named Catherine Weaver, who had an interest in predators and had studied both Lions and Wild Dogs in Africa. It didn’t amount to much. Looking at the casts of both the print and bite, she’d only been able to tell them that they were looking for “a large dog, probably something with a wide muzzle like a Rottweiler, but judging by the paw print almost of a freakishly large size”.

  Exactly a month after the second attack, there was a third. Exactly the same as the previous two except that the victim was almost untouched...except for having his throat torn out and a couple of bites taken out of his stomach. He was found by a group of ten friends heading to a neighbourhood party. They’d most likely startled the animal away from the kill when they approached. This time no saliva or hair samples were recovered, or so the forensics people working the case had said. Maybe they just got tired of the things coming back “contaminated”.

  A week after the third attack things had started to get interesting, and not in a good way. Somebody commenting on an article about the three killings on the SMH website with the unlikely nickname of UnoBruno had said that it was curious nobody had pointed out that all the attacks had happened during a full moon. He signed off “maybe we have an American Werewolf in Lakeville?”

  This kicked off a storm of commentary, journalists picked up on it and soon the local papers were running stories that suggested in a tongue-in-cheek fashion that maybe...just maybe...there might be a werewolf on the loose. TV reports followed on current affairs shows that dealt fast and loose with the truth, giving airtime to anyone with a screw loose who seriously believed that there could be a mythical creature killing people in a park in Sydney. The fact that all the samples from both crime scenes had come back contaminated with human DNA was given a new slant with one reporter stating “if a werewolf is both human and animal, doesn’t it seem right that the samples would have both human and animal DNA?”

  Ray put the file down with a sigh and rubbed a hand through his rapidly thinning hair. He knew the rest off by heart. He’d been taken off a gangland hit with his partner Jim and handed the case. At a meeting to discuss his reassignment the Chief Superintendant had been blunt. “Ray, you and Jim are guys who get results. We need results on this one, and bloody fast. I don’t care if you have to shoot every damned dog within a mile of that park or sign off on a truckload of overtime, just make sure this werewolf thing gets canned and nobody else dies in that park during a full moon.” Then he’d added “you know, unless they get a heart attack while jogging or some shit like that”.

  For a week, they gone back over everything that had been done before, looking at the scenes, talking to people who lived in the area as well as visiting various authorities at the zoo
and local universities, getting the samples re-run by a different lab (with the same results). And like those before them, they’d hit a brick wall.

  Then one morning when they’d been sitting in their office going over the same reports again, Ray had come up with a plan. “You know Jim, I think we’ve been looking at this the wrong way.” Jim had given him a non-committal grunt in reply and kept tapping away at his keyboard. “I think” and he added emphasis by screwing up a piece of paper and lobbing it as his friend’s head “that we shouldn’t be focussing on chasing whatever killed those people.” Jim had caught the piece of paper without even raising his eyes from the screen – you had to hand it to him Ray thought, the man had the reflexes of a mongoose – and turned a baleful stare on his partner. “Surely you jest, Raymond” was his only response, but Ray could see a flicker of interest in his eyes.

  “I never jest James, and don’t call me Shirley”. Normally the old joke from Airplane would have elicited a smile or a laugh, but not today. “You know that if someone else gets killed in that park, especially during a full moon, that they’re going to crucify us right?” Jim nodded his agreement and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples.

  “That’s the truth man. If there’s another killing we’ll both be hanging from the same tree. By the time they get done with us we’ll be busted down a rank and shipped off to Traffic for the next ten years. So how do you plan to save us from the noose this time mate?”

  Ray smiled. Just a little. “Have you ever seen The Ghost and The Darkness?” Jim looked confused for a moment before he placed it.

  “The one with Michael Douglas?” Ray nodded. “Wait, you want us to set a trap for it?”

  “Indubitably old chap, indubitably” Ray replied in what he thought was a fairly good Sherlock Holmes impersonation. “I actually read the book Patterson...the bloke Val Kilmer played...wrote on the whole thing. Boring as bat shit mostly, but one of the things he used popped into my head this morning and I’ve been thinking about it on and off all day. A high hide.”

  “You want us to sit up in a gum tree with a rifle?”

  “Not exactly. You don’t have to use a tree.” Ray was getting enthusiastic about the idea. He grabbed another piece of paper and started drawing a diagram of what he had in mind. It took him about a minute while Jim observed in silence. They’d both learned over the years not to interrupt ideas while still in the making. Eventually Jim held up a piece of paper that showed a box held high above the ground on wooden poles.

  “See? We get the council or whoever to build one of these on each corner of the park facing inwards. They can just tell anyone who asks that they’re for meteorological measurements or something like that. Leave a slit here” he drew it in on the diagram “that can be covered with plywood or something until we need to take it off. Then on the night or nights when the moon is full, we get people up in there with night vision and some high powered rifles and if this dog or werewolf or whatever the hell it is shows it’s head, we blow it off.”

  Jim thought about it for about ten seconds. “Maybe put up tape and signs around the park warning people to keep out?”

  “Nope, just in case some sick bastard has a wolf or something as a pet and lets it out to hunt or something on a full moon. Don’t want to tip him off.”

  “Hence the deception about the ‘meteorological measurements’ as well then?”

  “Exactly, Dr Watson.”

  “Use Special Ops Group snipers?”

  “Why not go the whole hog and see if we can get the army? They’ve probably got cooler toys than us cops, probably bigger rifles too.”

  “Unless we get some guy who gets flashbacks to Afghanistan or Iraq or something.”

  Ray picked up the phone. “Don’t be a hater Jim. If that’s all you can come up with I’m gonna kick it upstairs and see what they say. At least we have a plan.”

  It turned out that the brass was willing to grab hold of any plan, as long as they could be seen to be doing something. Wonder of wonders they even got the army to agree to lend them four snipers from 2nd Commando based right there in Sydney for the party. The Chief told Ray at one of the planning meetings “The Premier had the balls to ask them to send the SAS, but they said no.”

  A few changes had been made along the way. Someone had the idea to make sure the snipers put silencers on their weapons. Another person suggested that since these ‘huts’ were to be around the edges of the park that they should disable the closest lights on the walkway so it didn’t fool with the night vision. Neither the brass nor the army were happy with not warning people off, but Ray managed to win that fight by pointing out time and time again that with the current ‘Werewolf’ circus going on, a warning of police action on a full moon would probably draw out every journalist and half the crazies in the city who hoped to see a werewolf get shot.

  That brought up the media for discussion and it was decided to tell the papers and TV stations quietly that they’d better keep their reporters away from the park at night around the full moon, and anybody flaunting the order would be thrown in the slammer forthwith.

  So the ‘high hides’ had been built, the media forewarned, the army had arrived and today was the first day the moon could conceivably be called ‘full’. Ray closed the case file as Jim walked into the room dressed (as Ray himself was) in black pants and black pullover, with his gun mounted in a shoulder rig. “Come on big guy, let’s go shoot some werewolves.”

  Ray favoured him with the look he reserved for especially stupid people and checked his gun and spare magazines were all where they should be. “Don’t you start with that shit.”

  As they walked down to the briefing room he glanced at Jim out of the corner of his eye and added “if this does turn into an episode of the X-Files though, I get to be Mulder. You’d look better in a dress than me.” Jim threw back his head and laughed, the first genuine laugh Ray had heard out of him since they’d been put on the case.

  “You hitting on me Ray? You know they ended up together in the last movie.”

  -

  *****