Synopsis
In Human Clothing
The truth. It is one thing above most others that most of humanity craves the most. It is what drives the entire scientific community as they search for all life’s answers. But all truths are not created equally, and some come at a cost. The question for those truths is, whom amongst the masses is prepared to pay the cost?
Jaida Martin was born a curious soul, and used a tough upbringing to drive her to shape her perfect life. A trained zoologist, veterinary technician, and world renowned specialist on wolves, Jaida never thought she would need to know one of these precious truths until one fateful night. In the blink of an eye, she finds herself with proof of a being that cannot exist and a whole host of questions that deep inside she needs to answer.
Searching for clues to what her mind tells her can’t be true, she finds a like-minded ally to help her hunt for the truth of what lurks in the deep forest. Following a series of animal attacks with similar scenes as the first one, the mystery doesn’t unravel; it deepens. Despite the continuing toll her quest takes on her life, she delves deeper into the darkness. And as she searches, Jaida begins to see that legend of the werewolf and reality are not one and the same. Truth is scarier than fiction, and the realization that wading through the herd of humanity is the perfect predator, a beast in disguise. A wolf in human clothing.
Chapter 1
Billings, Montana
She was late; no matter how hard she tried it was always that way. To those who knew her best, it was an accepted fact of life. And for those who sought out her expertise, it was a quirk that came with the whole package. A small quirk that was worth the frustration, after all she was the best in her field of study.
Jaida Martin was a free spirit, prone to being distracted by all the wonders of the world she grew up appreciating. A small-town girl from the coast of British Columbia, she was raised with her brother by a single mother; a childhood spent outdoors that fed her love and appreciation of nature. An avid outdoors enthusiast, Jaida could hunt, fish, and get dirty with the best of the boys, and most times do it better. But despite her tomboy tendencies, she also held a brilliant mind. Armed with a sharp and witty intellect, Jaida had no problem telling someone they were wrong; and even less of a problem telling them where to go if they persisted the argument.
It was her intelligence that was sought after by her clients. Her name had become synonymous with the best in the field of zoology, and she was in demand worldwide by nature preserves, zoos, and national park services. Her field of expertise was wolf behavior and biology; Jaida was an expert in all things lupine. From a young girl on, she had loved wolves with an unheralded passion. A passion that had yet to waiver at the age of thirty two. But even being the best in her field and being booked up for nine months ahead of time, she could always be counted on to be consistently late.
This time it was to catch a flight after guest speaking at a symposium in Billings. She had stopped to check on some new Grey Wolf pups at ZooMontana, and like usual lost track of time. Of course she had, but who could resist playing with nine month old wolf cubs that had lost their mother? It was like being let into a room with four hyper puppies, the wild instincts of the cubs were overridden with the excitement of play, and Jaida was more than happy to oblige. When she did realize how much time had passed, she knew despite the lack of traffic this evening that she was more than likely to miss her flight home. So with some silent cursing from the back of her cab, she dialed her assistant Michael and bit the bullet.
“You need a different flight, don’t you?” Michael sneered as he answered her without pleasantries.
“What gave it away?” she smiled to herself.
“This is the fifth time this year, Jaida,” he chided her. “It isn’t like we get a full refund on these.”
“Michael,” Jaida sighed, “I pay you to plan my schedule and adapt it to any changes that come up as the days go. What I don’t pay you for is to chastise me when I run behind. If I wanted that, I would have hired Mom. And it isn’t like you haven’t had your entire life to get used to this is the way I am.”
“Mom would tear you a new one for this, wouldn’t she, sis?” she could hear his smile in his voice.
Before Jaida could answer, her phone beeped, letting her know there was another call coming in for her. It was rare for anyone other than Michael to call her at this time of day, so her curiosity was heightened by it.
“Hold on a sec,” Jaida said to him, “I’ve got another call.”
She switched the lines before he could even speak, and answered the new call quickly on the second beep.
“Jaida Martin,” she said plainly to whomever was calling.
“Miss Martin, why you have to be the hardest person in Montana to track down,” the voice exclaimed. “Why, I think I have called nine numbers, talked to the convention organizer, the zoo curator, and airport security before finally getting this number from a booking agency.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaida said, mildly disturbed at the bit of revealed stalking, “Do I know you?”
“No ma’am, but when I asked someone at the park service for an expert, your name was first on the list,” the voice replied. “I’m Chief Andrew Larsen of the Montana State Police, and I believe I am in need of your services if it isn’t too late.”
Jaida sat up quickly in the back seat of the cab, her curiosity now fully engaged. She loved a good mystery, and the fact that a police chief was calling for her was something new in a life where surprises were usually mild ones.
“I’m just pulling into the airport now,” she said after a moment.
“Good, I have a deputy at the front gate waiting for you,” Chief Larsen replied. “He will load your bags into the cruiser, and transport you to my location. That is, if you are willing to help?”
“Are you kidding me?” she cooed. “Nothing like this ever happens to me. Of course I’m in.”
“I realize you will be missing a flight, but the State Police will fully refund any costs incurred and set you up in a nice hotel room for the night.”
“I’m staying overnight?”
“Miss Martin,” the Chief sighed on the phone, “I’ve been doing this job for many a year, but I have yet to see what I’m seeing tonight. If paying for a hotel room for a night or more helps me clean this up fast, then it is a cost well worth my while. I will explain it all when you arrive.”
As she was about to probe for a bit more info, the line was disconnected. Apparently, Chief Larsen was not key in giving details over the phone. Her phone clicked back to her call with Michael automatically, yet it took Jaida a few seconds of comprehension to say anything.
“Helloooooo?” whined Michael. “Are you still there?”
“Don’t worry about the missed flight,” she mumbled to her brother. “And don’t bother getting me another one, at least not yet. It looks like I’m staying another day or so here.”
“And what is so urgent that would make you want to hang out in Montana for another night?” Michael grumbled.
“I’m not sure,” Jaida said as she looked upon the airport entrance highlighted by the red and blue flashing lights of the police cruiser waiting for her. “But as soon as I do, I will let you know.”
__
It was a quiet ride, and no matter what Jaida tried, she could not get any information out of the deputy about why she had been retrieved so urgently. Through the streets of mid evening Billings they drove, and despite the overcast night, the rain the weather channel on the cruise radio was calling for had yet to begin. She began to notice the neighborhoods looking less and less well lit, and as they pushed the outskirts of the city they began to be absorbed in the darkness of the early night.
Jaida wasn’t like a normal woman; the prospect of driving towards the unknown in the dark of night was not a scary proposition. Although she wasn’t physically imposing at five foot four inches, she had enough self-defense courses and gun safety training to fend for herself if the situation called for it. She had long dark brownish- black hair that rarely was out of a ponytail or braid, and sharp brown eyes that examined every detail of everything around her closely. Jaida was never one to underestimate her surroundings, but as they rounded the corner and were greeted by a myriad of flashing lights, she felt completely out of place.
Once the cruiser stopped, she sheepishly got out of the passenger side – thankfully the deputy let her ride up front like a regular person and not in the back like a criminal – and waited. The deputy exited the driver’s side of the cruiser, motioned for her to follow, and then led her past the caution tape and straight into what looked like a homicide scene from a TV show. A crowd had even began to form about the perimeter, and all of them examined the new arrival with keen interest. Making her way through the dozen different rescue vehicles, she came upon the reason for all this excitement, a body underneath a bright yellow bag at the side of the road.
Just beside the body, and leaning up against a police SUV, was an officer in his mid-fifties that was talking with a few firefighters. Once he saw her, he waved his hand and excused himself from his conversation, apparently, she was the bigger priority. He was just over six feet tall, African American, with a decent build but a slight pot belly beginning to form around his waist. His eyes were an odd green color, and his face was unshaven for a few days now as whiskers formed the beginnings of a partially grey beard.
“I see Deputy Davis got you here in one piece.” Chief Larsen greeted her with a smile. “We all had a hunch that he might try to sidetrack you with a coffee date first.”
“Why he was as quiet as a church mouse.” Jaida shot the young deputy a quick look over her shoulder which caught the young fellow off guard, then returned her attention to the Chief with a smile. “I guess I’m too intimidating for him.”
“Andrew Larsen,” the Chief extended his hand for a formal greeting. “Thanks for coming out here on such short notice.”
“Jaida Martin,” she replied while accepting the hand shake. “Now can I ask what the hell it is that you need ME for?”
“Believe it or not, it is because of all this,” Chief Larsen said motioning all about them. “And about that poor fellow, or rather what’s left of him.”
“You dragged me out here to help with a murder?”
“I asked you to come out here to provide expert help in a matter that simply doesn’t happen in these parts,” he responded quickly. “We haven’t had an animal attack in nearly sixty years that resulted in a death, and when one suspects a pack of wolves as the main suspect, well let’s say the list of experts is rather short.”
“A pack of wolves won’t attack a human this far out of the forest.” Jaida shifted into work mode the moment he mentioned wolves, and began to scan the ground for tracks. “It is like launching the army in the middle of the ocean, when off their turf they become defensive, not offensive. They hunt on their turf, on their terms.”
“One would think that, but we have tracks all about the body.” Larsen led her over to the scene. “And the victim’s flesh was torn by teeth and claws, not by knife or human made tools.”
Her instincts took over, and she began to examine the muddled prints around the bagged body that were made from smeared blood on the pavement, then slowly backtracked them to the dirt. Chief Larsen handed her a set of rubber gloves which she slipped on without breaking her concentration. The tracks were canine in origin, but there was something that prevented her from labelling them as lupine, their enormous size.
A Grey Wolf has paws between three and four inches wide, and about the same long, excluding the claws. Grey Wolves were the largest in the wolf family, and they had been making a comeback in the Northwest States after being hunted to near extinction in the area in the early 1900s. Packs from Canada, Idaho, and Montana had begun to migrate to the fertile forests in the west. But at what she estimated at eight inches wide and close to ten long, these tracks quickly ruled out the Greys.
“Not a wolf,” she mumbled, “Maybe a big cat, mountain lion or a puma?”
“A puma?” Larsen scoffed. “You’re making that up! This ain’t no puma!”
“I’m not about to bullshit someone in the middle of a crime scene!” she bantered back at him. “You asked for my expert opinion and I’m giving it. These look canine, but they are way too big to be a wolf. Shit, even a St Bernard doesn’t leave tracks this freaking big.”
“One of the boys thinks it might be one of those Dire Wolves,” he muttered to her in a hushed voice, “Like in that show on HBO.”
“Really?” Jaida stood up and looked at him with an annoyed look. Her eyes began to dance with flecks of green. “Ever since that show hit TV, I keep getting questioned on horseshit like that. Chief Larsen, you can go over and tell your Netflix loving Deputies that unless someone invented time travel and went back ten thousand years and brought one back, it isn’t one of them. Besides, even if the Dire Wolf was still alive, it isn’t much different in size than the Grey Wolf, and that means it is too small to be your killer.”
“Ten thousand years?” He bent down to look at the deep imprint of a track in the mud at the edge of the road. “Well, I guess you learn something new every day.”
“Like I said, not a wolf,” she said confidently over his shoulder. “But whatever it was, it is was large enough to carry the body without dragging it to this point. The blood trail is small and seems to come from the tree line over there. I can tell you on the record that this isn’t where the kill was made; your murder scene is somewhere else.”
“That’s what I thought.” Larsen shook his head. “And because this is an animal attack, I risk compromising the scene by bringing in tracking dogs to find where it is.”
Jaida recognized the hint; it really wasn’t as subtle as the Chief intended it to be. Without tracking dogs, he would need an animal expert to track this animal, and she was that expert. She sighed, knowing that her curiosity in this matter wouldn’t allow her to leave even if it wasn’t her area of expertise. The first step in agreeing to help was admitting to herself that she needed to know the answer to what did this, the second was saying it aloud.
“Alright, Chief,” she smirked. “Let’s go for a hike in the woods, shall we?”
She was late; no matter how hard she tried it was always that way. To those who knew her best, it was an accepted fact of life. And for those who sought out her expertise, it was a quirk that came with the whole package. A small quirk that was worth the frustration, after all she was the best in her field of study.
Jaida Martin was a free spirit, prone to being distracted by all the wonders of the world she grew up appreciating. A small-town girl from the coast of British Columbia, she was raised with her brother by a single mother; a childhood spent outdoors that fed her love and appreciation of nature. An avid outdoors enthusiast, Jaida could hunt, fish, and get dirty with the best of the boys, and most times do it better. But despite her tomboy tendencies, she also held a brilliant mind. Armed with a sharp and witty intellect, Jaida had no problem telling someone they were wrong; and even less of a problem telling them where to go if they persisted the argument.
It was her intelligence that was sought after by her clients. Her name had become synonymous with the best in the field of zoology, and she was in demand worldwide by nature preserves, zoos, and national park services. Her field of expertise was wolf behavior and biology; Jaida was an expert in all things lupine. From a young girl on, she had loved wolves with an unheralded passion. A passion that had yet to waiver at the age of thirty two. But even being the best in her field and being booked up for nine months ahead of time, she could always be counted on to be consistently late.
This time it was to catch a flight after guest speaking at a symposium in Billings. She had stopped to check on some new Grey Wolf pups at ZooMontana, and like usual lost track of time. Of course she had, but who could resist playing with nine month old wolf cubs that had lost their mother? It was like being let into a room with four hyper puppies, the wild instincts of the cubs were overridden with the excitement of play, and Jaida was more than happy to oblige. When she did realize how much time had passed, she knew despite the lack of traffic this evening that she was more than likely to miss her flight home. So with some silent cursing from the back of her cab, she dialed her assistant Michael and bit the bullet.
“You need a different flight, don’t you?” Michael sneered as he answered her without pleasantries.
“What gave it away?” she smiled to herself.
“This is the fifth time this year, Jaida,” he chided her. “It isn’t like we get a full refund on these.”
“Michael,” Jaida sighed, “I pay you to plan my schedule and adapt it to any changes that come up as the days go. What I don’t pay you for is to chastise me when I run behind. If I wanted that, I would have hired Mom. And it isn’t like you haven’t had your entire life to get used to this is the way I am.”
“Mom would tear you a new one for this, wouldn’t she, sis?” she could hear his smile in his voice.
Before Jaida could answer, her phone beeped, letting her know there was another call coming in for her. It was rare for anyone other than Michael to call her at this time of day, so her curiosity was heightened by it.
“Hold on a sec,” Jaida said to him, “I’ve got another call.”
She switched the lines before he could even speak, and answered the new call quickly on the second beep.
“Jaida Martin,” she said plainly to whomever was calling.
“Miss Martin, why you have to be the hardest person in Montana to track down,” the voice exclaimed. “Why, I think I have called nine numbers, talked to the convention organizer, the zoo curator, and airport security before finally getting this number from a booking agency.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaida said, mildly disturbed at the bit of revealed stalking, “Do I know you?”
“No ma’am, but when I asked someone at the park service for an expert, your name was first on the list,” the voice replied. “I’m Chief Andrew Larsen of the Montana State Police, and I believe I am in need of your services if it isn’t too late.”
Jaida sat up quickly in the back seat of the cab, her curiosity now fully engaged. She loved a good mystery, and the fact that a police chief was calling for her was something new in a life where surprises were usually mild ones.
“I’m just pulling into the airport now,” she said after a moment.
“Good, I have a deputy at the front gate waiting for you,” Chief Larsen replied. “He will load your bags into the cruiser, and transport you to my location. That is, if you are willing to help?”
“Are you kidding me?” she cooed. “Nothing like this ever happens to me. Of course I’m in.”
“I realize you will be missing a flight, but the State Police will fully refund any costs incurred and set you up in a nice hotel room for the night.”
“I’m staying overnight?”
“Miss Martin,” the Chief sighed on the phone, “I’ve been doing this job for many a year, but I have yet to see what I’m seeing tonight. If paying for a hotel room for a night or more helps me clean this up fast, then it is a cost well worth my while. I will explain it all when you arrive.”
As she was about to probe for a bit more info, the line was disconnected. Apparently, Chief Larsen was not key in giving details over the phone. Her phone clicked back to her call with Michael automatically, yet it took Jaida a few seconds of comprehension to say anything.
“Helloooooo?” whined Michael. “Are you still there?”
“Don’t worry about the missed flight,” she mumbled to her brother. “And don’t bother getting me another one, at least not yet. It looks like I’m staying another day or so here.”
“And what is so urgent that would make you want to hang out in Montana for another night?” Michael grumbled.
“I’m not sure,” Jaida said as she looked upon the airport entrance highlighted by the red and blue flashing lights of the police cruiser waiting for her. “But as soon as I do, I will let you know.”
__
It was a quiet ride, and no matter what Jaida tried, she could not get any information out of the deputy about why she had been retrieved so urgently. Through the streets of mid evening Billings they drove, and despite the overcast night, the rain the weather channel on the cruise radio was calling for had yet to begin. She began to notice the neighborhoods looking less and less well lit, and as they pushed the outskirts of the city they began to be absorbed in the darkness of the early night.
Jaida wasn’t like a normal woman; the prospect of driving towards the unknown in the dark of night was not a scary proposition. Although she wasn’t physically imposing at five foot four inches, she had enough self-defense courses and gun safety training to fend for herself if the situation called for it. She had long dark brownish- black hair that rarely was out of a ponytail or braid, and sharp brown eyes that examined every detail of everything around her closely. Jaida was never one to underestimate her surroundings, but as they rounded the corner and were greeted by a myriad of flashing lights, she felt completely out of place.
Once the cruiser stopped, she sheepishly got out of the passenger side – thankfully the deputy let her ride up front like a regular person and not in the back like a criminal – and waited. The deputy exited the driver’s side of the cruiser, motioned for her to follow, and then led her past the caution tape and straight into what looked like a homicide scene from a TV show. A crowd had even began to form about the perimeter, and all of them examined the new arrival with keen interest. Making her way through the dozen different rescue vehicles, she came upon the reason for all this excitement, a body underneath a bright yellow bag at the side of the road.
Just beside the body, and leaning up against a police SUV, was an officer in his mid-fifties that was talking with a few firefighters. Once he saw her, he waved his hand and excused himself from his conversation, apparently, she was the bigger priority. He was just over six feet tall, African American, with a decent build but a slight pot belly beginning to form around his waist. His eyes were an odd green color, and his face was unshaven for a few days now as whiskers formed the beginnings of a partially grey beard.
“I see Deputy Davis got you here in one piece.” Chief Larsen greeted her with a smile. “We all had a hunch that he might try to sidetrack you with a coffee date first.”
“Why he was as quiet as a church mouse.” Jaida shot the young deputy a quick look over her shoulder which caught the young fellow off guard, then returned her attention to the Chief with a smile. “I guess I’m too intimidating for him.”
“Andrew Larsen,” the Chief extended his hand for a formal greeting. “Thanks for coming out here on such short notice.”
“Jaida Martin,” she replied while accepting the hand shake. “Now can I ask what the hell it is that you need ME for?”
“Believe it or not, it is because of all this,” Chief Larsen said motioning all about them. “And about that poor fellow, or rather what’s left of him.”
“You dragged me out here to help with a murder?”
“I asked you to come out here to provide expert help in a matter that simply doesn’t happen in these parts,” he responded quickly. “We haven’t had an animal attack in nearly sixty years that resulted in a death, and when one suspects a pack of wolves as the main suspect, well let’s say the list of experts is rather short.”
“A pack of wolves won’t attack a human this far out of the forest.” Jaida shifted into work mode the moment he mentioned wolves, and began to scan the ground for tracks. “It is like launching the army in the middle of the ocean, when off their turf they become defensive, not offensive. They hunt on their turf, on their terms.”
“One would think that, but we have tracks all about the body.” Larsen led her over to the scene. “And the victim’s flesh was torn by teeth and claws, not by knife or human made tools.”
Her instincts took over, and she began to examine the muddled prints around the bagged body that were made from smeared blood on the pavement, then slowly backtracked them to the dirt. Chief Larsen handed her a set of rubber gloves which she slipped on without breaking her concentration. The tracks were canine in origin, but there was something that prevented her from labelling them as lupine, their enormous size.
A Grey Wolf has paws between three and four inches wide, and about the same long, excluding the claws. Grey Wolves were the largest in the wolf family, and they had been making a comeback in the Northwest States after being hunted to near extinction in the area in the early 1900s. Packs from Canada, Idaho, and Montana had begun to migrate to the fertile forests in the west. But at what she estimated at eight inches wide and close to ten long, these tracks quickly ruled out the Greys.
“Not a wolf,” she mumbled, “Maybe a big cat, mountain lion or a puma?”
“A puma?” Larsen scoffed. “You’re making that up! This ain’t no puma!”
“I’m not about to bullshit someone in the middle of a crime scene!” she bantered back at him. “You asked for my expert opinion and I’m giving it. These look canine, but they are way too big to be a wolf. Shit, even a St Bernard doesn’t leave tracks this freaking big.”
“One of the boys thinks it might be one of those Dire Wolves,” he muttered to her in a hushed voice, “Like in that show on HBO.”
“Really?” Jaida stood up and looked at him with an annoyed look. Her eyes began to dance with flecks of green. “Ever since that show hit TV, I keep getting questioned on horseshit like that. Chief Larsen, you can go over and tell your Netflix loving Deputies that unless someone invented time travel and went back ten thousand years and brought one back, it isn’t one of them. Besides, even if the Dire Wolf was still alive, it isn’t much different in size than the Grey Wolf, and that means it is too small to be your killer.”
“Ten thousand years?” He bent down to look at the deep imprint of a track in the mud at the edge of the road. “Well, I guess you learn something new every day.”
“Like I said, not a wolf,” she said confidently over his shoulder. “But whatever it was, it is was large enough to carry the body without dragging it to this point. The blood trail is small and seems to come from the tree line over there. I can tell you on the record that this isn’t where the kill was made; your murder scene is somewhere else.”
“That’s what I thought.” Larsen shook his head. “And because this is an animal attack, I risk compromising the scene by bringing in tracking dogs to find where it is.”
Jaida recognized the hint; it really wasn’t as subtle as the Chief intended it to be. Without tracking dogs, he would need an animal expert to track this animal, and she was that expert. She sighed, knowing that her curiosity in this matter wouldn’t allow her to leave even if it wasn’t her area of expertise. The first step in agreeing to help was admitting to herself that she needed to know the answer to what did this, the second was saying it aloud.
“Alright, Chief,” she smirked. “Let’s go for a hike in the woods, shall we?”
