SEAL Wolf In Too Deep(33)

“Of course werewolves aren’t real. Sure, he believes this, but the ‘werewolf’ who came after him wasn’t really a werewolf. He probably was a relative or friend of someone else who was murdered by one of these men and was trying to take them down. So he got one of the purported werewolf hunters, but before he could locate and kill the other, the hunter murdered another supposed werewolf. The woman. Then the hunter killed two regular wolves by accident, thinking they were werewolves. But why would the killer of the werewolf hunter in Van Lake—if that’s what he turns out to be—not hide the evidence of killing him better?” she asked.

“Because he wants the other hunter to know that he’s onto him? If he’s an alpha, he wouldn’t be sneaky about it. Yes, to cover it up a bit for the police. But for the hunter? No.”

“Okay, wait. So you’re saying the murderer was alpha-like, not that he really was a werewolf. But just a take-charge kind of guy.”

“Yeah.”

“That makes sense. But then the werewolf hunter killer could get tripped up and sent up for murder.”

“Often criminals make mistakes. We see that all the time. The foolproof murder turns out not to be so foolproof after all.” But if the killer of the man in the submerged car was a lupus garou, Allan hoped he didn’t get caught. Their kind couldn’t go to prison.

“True.” Debbie leaned back comfortably against the seat, as if she felt they’d solved some of the mystery.

He was beginning to wonder if they had. “Paul and I were wondering if it was a role-play group and some of the members began to take the game seriously.”

“You mean like some were playing the roles of werewolves and others the hunters? In one of those live-action games?”

“Yeah, only it got out of hand.”

“Have you checked into it?”

“We have, but we couldn’t find anything for this area online. But if they began to do this for real, they probably would have taken the site down, if they had one.”

He was still pondering if he should take her with him to see the woman in charge of the LARP in Helena. He was trying to come up with a plausible reason for believing the murdered woman might be Sarah Engle and a member of the LARP there. He couldn’t tell Debbie the truth.

Debbie glanced out the side window. “Okay, so then we have the man driving the black sedan.”

“That we haven’t seen any sign of lately.”

“Right and no more murders or wolf killings. So that could mean the driver was the murderer of the woman and he found his hunter friend in the lake.”

“Exactly.”

“Or…he killed the man in the lake and the murderer of the woman left the area, and he’s after him.”

“Could be. Or he murdered both the man in the lake and the woman.”

“No, couldn’t be because the woman was supposed to be a werewolf, and the man in the lake, a werewolf hunter.”

“Okay.” Allan had hoped they’d find both men and learn the truth, because the hunter could definitely be after other wolf packs if he’d learned how to identify and locate which ones were lupus garous. The newly turned wolf scenario was as much of a problem as the other. Allan and his pack wouldn’t have any peace of mind until this was resolved. “Rose called me and told me about a woman who was going to stop in and see her about joining a LARP in Helena. But she never came to see her.”

“Why in the world would Rose want to join a group like that? That’s three hours from her home. And with triplets on the way?”

“This was before she met Everett. And she thought it would be a fun lark.”

“Oh, okay. So the woman never got in touch with Rose and…?”

“Rose was thinking about it and said what if Sarah Engle was playing a wolf, and she—”

“Ohmigod, and she’s the woman Lori and Rose found murdered?”

“Yeah. It might be a really far-out notion, but—”

“We don’t have any other leads.” Debbie glanced at her watch.

“I was planning on running down there and talking with the woman who runs the group in Helena.”

“Did Rose or you try calling Sarah?”

“Yeah. There’s no answer on her phone. I called Zeta Johansson, the moderator of the LARP group, and she said Sarah’s been missing.”

Debbie frowned at him. “It’s her then.”

“The far-out scenario began to look not so far-out when I learned that. She hadn’t lived there for all that long, and anything else could be possible.”

“Did Zeta call the police and report Sarah missing?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“And they said?”

“They didn’t believe she had enough evidence to prove the woman didn’t leave of her own free will with her lover.”

“Let me guess. He’s also missing.”

“Right. But it’s still a hunch and nothing more. There’s no real evidence of foul play. Sarah didn’t have a job yet, so no one reported she was not at work. She’d paid her rent up for two months, required by the management, so no alarm bells went off there.”

“And the lover?” Debbie asked.

“Lloyd Bates. I ran a check on him, but he didn’t come up in any databases.”