“We’ll need to talk to everyone who was at the movie,” Darrell said. “Rebecca, I also want you to get contact information for Erica Brink’s family in Minnesota. See if she was where she says she was, okay? I want to make sure that she didn’t come home early. Let’s see if she has receipts from gas stations on the road, too.”
“Absolutely.”
“We need to talk to the son. Jay. According to Brink’s wife, Jay said he was home this whole time?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Okay. Rebecca, you come with me. We’ll interview the boy together. Ajax, get started on fingerprints. I want the whole house dusted, but start with the bedroom and the office and the knobs on both sides of the front door.”
I watched Ajax’s face screw up with annoyance at the assignment. He wasn’t used to getting the grunt work.
“Why should I do the prints?” Ajax protested. “Let me interview the kid with you.”
Darrell shook his head. “I’ve seen you do interviews. You scare the crap out of witnesses, and they clam up. Rebecca has a better touch for these things. She knows how to get people to talk. Plus, maybe doing some real work will convince you to keep your hands off her ass. Got it?”
“Got it,” Ajax replied coldly.
Darrell stalked from the bedroom, leaving me alone with Ajax, whose face was beet red.
I already told you that Ajax was the county stud. His looks usually got him whatever he wanted, and that included women. He was married to a pretty redhead named Ruby, but he’d been coming on to me since I joined the sheriff’s office, even though he and my husband had been friends since grammar school. I kept telling Ricky that there was nothing between us, but when it came to Ajax, Ricky was toting around a big inferiority complex.
Ajax was as tall as anyone I’d ever met, at least six foot six, with a strong, wiry build. He had hands that were larger than my whole face, and he liked to brag that he was big all over. When CCR sang about the fortunate son, Ajax could have been their model. He’d led a charmed life. The draft ended right before he turned eighteen, so he didn’t have to go to Vietnam. He went to state college just as the new Division III opened up, so he became a basketball star. When he got back to Black Wolf County, he had a job waiting despite the tough times, because his uncle, Jerry, was the sheriff. Everyone assumed that whenever Jerry retired, Ajax would be elected to take his place, and that was probably true. It wasn’t that Ajax was such a great cop, but he had a way of being in the right place at the right time to make the most of opportunities.
“Must be nice to have your partner fight your battles,” Ajax commented sourly.
I didn’t take the bait by saying anything. In fact, I was a little annoyed that Darrell had felt it necessary to intervene on my behalf. Whenever he tried to get the other deputies to lay off me, the harassment only got worse as soon as his back was turned. But Darrell had three daughters, and I was the honorary fourth girl in the Curtis family. He felt a need to protect me.
“Darrell’s retiring next year,” Ajax reminded me. “Then you and me will be partners. I can’t wait for that.”
I still didn’t give him the satisfaction of showing any reaction, but he wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know. Once Darrell was gone, the sheriff would pair me with Ajax in a heartbeat. I wasn’t sure what I would do when that happened. The thought of being trapped in a car all day with Ajax was horrifying, and I knew the only way to make him back off was to give him what he wanted. I had no intention of doing that.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ll stay here and look for paw prints.”
“Funny.”
“So what do you think? Did the Ursulina really do this?”
All I could say was something I knew to be a lie. “The Ursulina is a myth.”
“Yeah? Well, the myth says the Ursulina is a man who turns into a monster at night. It’s pretty hard to look at this crime scene and not think there’s something to it. Remember six years ago? Kip and Racer?”
“I remember.”
“Two men cut to ribbons, same message on the wall. I mean, there has to be a connection, right?”
“We don’t know that. Not yet.”
Ajax wiggled his fingernails at me like claws. “Well, you better be careful, Rebecca. If the Ursulina is back, you never know who he might be. And there’s a full moon outside.”
Six years ago. Yes, I remembered.
That summer changed everything, sweetheart. Nothing was ever the same for Black Wolf County after that. And not for me, either.
Until that July, most people thought of the Ursulina as one of those scary stories we whispered around the campfire to make kids scream. The legend told of a pioneer family who invited a starving fur trader into their cabin, only to have their mercy repaid with bloodshed. During the night, under the glow of the monster’s moon, the fur trader transformed into a giant beast who’d cut the entire family to pieces with its claws. Ever since then, the story of the Ursulina had been passed down from generation to generation.
Did we actually believe it?
Well, I think a lot of people wanted to believe it, but there had never been evidence to convince the skeptics. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were others, like me, who knew the truth, but a part of me also hoped I was unique. The girl who’d seen it up close. The girl who’d survived the beast. I didn’t really want to share the Ursulina with anyone else.
Then came July six years earlier.
Two local men, Kip Wells and Racer Moritz, had been squatting in a trailer in the woods an hour outside Random. The trailer was owned by our local lawyer Norm Foltz, who was away at a trial in Stanton County on the far side of the state. Kip and Racer probably knew he was gone, which was why they’d felt comfortable trespassing. Based on the evidence found inside Norm’s trailer, the two men had spent several days emptying out vodka and whiskey bottles, roasting rabbits over a fire pit, and poaching endangered bald eagles.
And then something happened to them. Nobody knew exactly what it was.
When Norm got back to Random, he discovered the bodies of Kip and Racer in his Airstream. The two men had been hideously slashed to death, and just like the murder of Gordon Brink, the killer had left behind a message painted on the trailer wall in their blood:
I am the Ursulina
Darrell had been the investigating officer on the case. He’d told everyone that the wounds on the bodies had been made by repeated stabs from a common kitchen knife and that there was no mythical beast involved, just two particularly gruesome homicides — but it didn’t matter what he said. The fire had been lit. Everyone in town wanted to find the Ursulina.
Maybe the story would have stayed a local novelty, but a B-list sci-fi actor named Ben Malloy, who’d been born in Random, came home to exploit the crime. He turned the Ursulina killings into a lurid television special, complete with a search by hundreds of volunteers canvassing miles of the national forest for any sign of the beast. I was out there hunting, along with half the county. We didn’t find any clues, but Ben got what he wanted. Huge ratings. A profile in Time. And, soon after that, a weekly series about mysteries and myths called Ben Malloy Discovers.
After that, our area became known as Ursulina Country. People came from around the world to launch quests to find the monster. Hours away in Mittel County, the city fathers scooped us by launching a popular festival called Ursulina Days. It didn’t matter that the murders had taken place nowhere near there. They laid claim to the Ursulina by arguing that the pioneer family whose deaths started the legend had lived in Mittel County. Of course, they’d made that up, but there was nothing those of us in Black Wolf County could do about it.