FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Walking down the Lakeview district always makes me uneasy. You can tell the people here are well off, by the way they walk, the way they dress and the way they see right through you, without ever making eye contact. That's why I feel out of place the moment I cross 6th avenue. Within one block, the cars change from middle-class clunkers into imported luxuries that never age. Neither do their owners. They play by a different set of rules than the rest of us, but that don't mean they are less crooked than those who live in Lower East. They just have expensive lawyers who get paid by the minute, instead of goons who get paid by the job.

Dianne Walsh had an apartment above a florist; the kind that sell birds of paradise by the petal. Only, they call them Strelizia and charge you twelve bucks for the privilege, but they wrap them for nothing. I opened the first bottle of bourbon the moment I let myself into the charred remains of Walsh' living room. The cops had put boards over the windows, and scattered beams of sunlight cut through the cracks. I drank half a bottle in a few gulps and wandered around, waiting for the shadows to make the first move. Walsh had an entire section of her bookcase reserved for her own novels. I flipped through a copy of_The Heiress of Dunblaine,_ and a fistful of hundred dollar bills dropped out of the pages, fluttering to the floor like wing-shot birds.

She didn't even trust her own bank.

I finished the bottle, ignoring the complaints of my liver, and waited for the alcohol to trigger an episode. Walsh had hammered out all her novels on an old fashioned Olympia. A single page was still stuck on the roller. I tore it out of the typewriter and held it to the tiny stream of sunlight..

Kyell yawns and stretches out in the grass, soaking up the warmth of a June day. He watches the languid clouds make shifting patterns as they drift by, momentarily blocking out the summer sun.

"Here's to your promotion," says Rhania and raises her glass.

"I couldn't have done it without you by my side," says Kyell. "We have a pretty good life, the two of us."

Rhania smiles and takes Kyell's hand. She puts it gently to rest on her stomach and smiles.

"You mean, the THREE of us?"

I was halfway through the page when the words stopped making sense. The letters rearranged themselves to form new words of a kind you would never find in her books.

Finally,_I thought. _Now show me something the cops have overlooked.

I knew I was in for a hard time when Dianne Walsh's walls came alive. They were decorated with a flowery wallpaper, the kind you would expect in a Bronte novel. But the flowers had withered long ago, and bugs the size of a thumb with eight legs and metal backs moved in to feast on the remains. I tried to squeeze them dead, yet there was nothing to feel and the critters just kept moving.

_Not real,_I told myself.

They were gnawing at the paper and clawing the bare wall with their insect feet, exposing patches of gray concrete below.

What are you trying to tell me?

The insects made soft clicking noises as they scuttled along, eating away at the wallpaper. I blinked, trying to snap out of the hallucination but the wallpaper remained an intertwining mess of withering beauty and never-ending hunger.

Something died a long time ago? Or something withered?

Like the writer herself, we were definitely somewhere in the past.

I held my hand to the wall, and a beetle fell into my open palm. It was on its back, with all eight legs flailing.

You're not for real either, are you?

Without warning, the insect dug its mandibles into the flesh of my palm. I spat out a curse and shook my hand to get the creature off, but it clung to me like an insurance salesman.

Relax!_I told myself. _It's not real. It's all in your mind.

The insect ate away at my hand, exposing raw flesh and sinew below the skin. The insect gnawed and grew to the size of a cockroach, before spreading its wings and fluttering away. As if following an unspoken lead, every insect that occupied the wall took off like a swarm of ants. They spiraled around my head like green and golden fireflies before disappearing. Some flew through the ceiling, others vanished whenever I blinked. Within a minute, they were all gone and the darkness that had occupied the room lifted.

Intoxicated from the drink, I staggered across the room and collapsed into the ruined couch. The cheap bourbon had set my stomach on fire, and the taste of sour bile was in my mouth.

Is it worth it? I wondered.

I'm not getting ANY of this!

With the episode over, the alcohol hit me hard. I rolled off the couch and onto the floor, where I curled myself into fetal position, trying not to puke on the scorched rug, while the room spun and the shadows stopped moving.

I'll just rest here for a minute.

Moments later I was out cold.

---

I woke up hours later, with an aching head and still no clues. It was eight PM. With one hour till sunset, I searched the rest of the apartment and found an old photo album stacked between piles of memorabilia. The photos were at least twenty years old, some dating back even further. I didn't know what I was looking for. Heck, I didn't even know what Dianne Walsh looked like. The photos Quinn had shown me only showed a smoldering corpse with half of its face missing. I took a copy of her latest book from the book-case; a novel the size of a brick, but it had a snapshot of the author on the inside cover. Dianne had been a mousy woman in her mid-thirties with dark curly hair and a timid smile. Pretty, but not beautiful. She was someone you would pass in the line at Jay-mart, smile at, and forget all about, not knowing she was raking in more dough a month than the rest of us do in a year. But the killer wasn't interested in her money. He wanted her dead, and he had gone to great lengths to make sure it happened. Fragments of the exploded lamp were still embedded in the walls. I dug a sliver of solid brass out of the plaster. With a charge of C4, there was enough damage here to shoot metal through flesh, bone and wood.

Here was a photo of a young Dianne ... She must have been ten or eleven at the time, smiling and holding up a paper ornament she'd made for a Christmas tree. Something caught my eye in the background of the photo. It was a brass reading lamp with two light bulbs, just like the one that killed her.

The cursed thing had been with her for the past twenty years.

---

The desklight bomber had already claimed three victims: Dianne Walsh, Bernie Clemens and Sarah Lillison. Three people living separate lives in three separate areas of town. I reached for my smartphone and did a google search for the three people. It only returned a single hit:

A surgical Approach to Treat Patients with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, by Lillison J, LaSalle M, Walsh J and Clemens R.

They were all co-authors on a paper in a phychology journal dating back to the late eighties. I knew it was a long shot, but I didn't have much else to go by. The authors shared last names with three of the victims, leaving only a person by the name of Dr. Maurice LaSalle.

When I checked the phone registry, only one LaSalle was currently living in Oakfort: Bernard LaSalle, a pro racing driver.

With fifteen minutes to go, I floored the speed pedal and drove to his address, ignoring every stop sign, ran every red light and broke every speed limit. It was growing dark, but I kept the headlights off, in the vain superstition that this gesture would magically reach LaSalle before I did, and prevent him from turning on his own light. I screeched to a halt in front of his house .

"Hello?" said the race driver, carefully eying me over as he opened his front door.

"Daniel...Kent..." I panted. "Listen. Don't turn your lights on."

"Are you here for an autograph?" Asked LaSalle. "Did you bring a notepad?"

I shook my head, "Notepad? Fuck no."

LaSalle looked at me for a moment, bemused. Then he lit up in a smile. "Who needs one, anyway. I'll sign a napkin or something."

He turned around and left the doorway. With LaSalle out of the way I saw the source of light that had illuminated him. It was a brass lamp in the back of his living room, with two lightbulbs. Horrified I recognized it from the photo in Dianne Walsh's apartment.

"Screw the autograph!" I shouted. "Get the hell down."

I lunged at LaSalle, wrapping my arms around his chest. LaSalle let out a confused cry.

"Hey, what the..." He shook his body like a wet dog to throw me off.

"Hit the floor," I rasped. "It's going to blow."

Seconds later, the lamp exploded in an ear deafening roar. We were both thrown off balance and tumbled to the floor while brass and wood splinters screamed through the air.

"Far out!" gasped LaSalle.

"You saved my life. Who were you, again?"

I brushed soot and debris off the shoulders of my T-shirt, trying to save what little dignity I still possessed.

"Daniel Kent. Private investigator."

"That was the desklight bomber, wasn't it? They talk about him on the radio."

"He planned you to be the next victim in his spree of combustible crimes."

"But who wants me dead?," cried LaSalle. "Race driving is my life. It's what I do."

I shook two cigarettes from its pack, offering LaSalle one.

"You really oughtta dial 911 before your house catches on fire." I blew a smoke ring, biding my time and hoping he wouldn't ask for details about the investigation. But LaSalle wouldn't let me off the hook. He stared at me in almost childish anticipation.

"So..."

"So what?"

"Who is the desklight bomber? What is his secret identity?"

"No idea," I sighed. "Haven't got a clue."

"But you told me you were a detective?"

"I never said I was a good one," I replied and left without his autograph.

In a case like this, you look for cold-blooded competitors, money trouble or an ex with a deadly grudge. LaSalle had competitors for sure, and Bernie Clemens was chroically in and out of money trouble. Maybe someone envied Dianne Walsh her success and killed her out of insane jealousy. Maybe Sarah Lillison had spilled hot coffee into the lap of a vengeful flight passenger, or she had a secret affair with a shop owner in the airport of Rangoon. In short, the four victims had nothing in common. The whole damn case was packed with too many maybes and too many loose ends that met in a single, untidy knot:

they all had a parent who co-wrote a single scientific paper.

---

The new shopkeeper froze at the changing sound of Eve's voice. It was still the voice of a child, yet full of rage and grim determination. Back in Brooklyn, he would have thrown his wallet and watch at the mere sound of a voice this full of menace.

But this was Oakfort for Chissakes; the city with the lowest crime rate in the whole state.

Without warning, Friend reached for a heavy glass jar filled with dark chocolate pralines and took a swing at the shopkeeper. Unprepared for the blow, he staggered backwards when the jar smashed into the side of his face, showering the counter with a sudden jet of milk chocolate and crimson blood.

"What the..." groaned the shopkeeper. "You little shitter! You just chipped my motherfuckin' molar."

Friend detected fear in the man's voice and leaped onto the counter, where she towered above the stunned shopkeeper.

"I...want...my...MONEY!" Friend bellowed, repeatedly smashing the jar against the shopkeeper's skull with every syllable. The first blow broke the right side of his jaw, the second dislocated an eye from its orbit, sending it rolling across the floor like a white gumball. The jar shattered by the eighth blow, leaving Friend empty-handed. But by then, the shopkeeper was no longer moving. Friend looked at the carnage, noted there was little material damage and went back to sleep in Eve's belly. Eve was happy the danger had passed. She stepped over the corpse, taking care not to cut herself on the shards of glass, and counted exactly five dollars from the cash register. After some hesitation, she returned 45 cents to buy herself a bar of Caramel Delight. She felt a momentary pang of guilt, because the caramel was a special treat she saved for Fridays.

And today was only Tuesday.

---

"Do you like rock music?" Agent Dakota was driving me to the outskirts of Oakfort, to a destination she was hesitant to reveal. Without waiting for an answer, Dakota slipped a CD into the radio and rock music blasted from the speakers. "REO Speedwagon," she said when I raised an eyebrow. "They were big in the eighties."

"I wasn't even born back then," I replied.

There was a moment of awkward silence between us. Over the past year, our relationship had grown from being enemies to reluctant collaborators. And now it seemed we would be partnering up for a case. A sense of mutual respect was slowly growing between us, but it had never crossed our minds that Dakota was fourteen years older than me.

"So," I observed to break the silence, "you drive a KIA."

"It's a rental," said Dakota. She seemed only happy to change the subject. "They might have bugged my car."

"THEY?" I asked. "That's the kind of stuff I say when I'm paranoid."

"We have enemies," Dakota said bluntly. "All branches of the Military Intelligence do. It pays to be paranoid."

"The KGB? The 610? DGSI?"

Evelyn shrugged. "Take a pick. The list is as long as..."

She looked at the road, I looked at her legs. We were on the road leading to the woods of Farvale. Dakota had picked me up at the Phantom Cat at nine in the morning, to discuss the case. I was confused and bruised from last night's explosion, and I had a headache the size of Wyoming from drinking in Walsh's apartment. I needed my goddamn coffee and Dakota kept rambling on about rock bands I knew only from Rock Gold at 105.3 MHZ.

"Can't we make a stop for coffee?" I asked.

"It's only another twenty minutes till we get there," said Dakota.

I eased back into the passenger seat and swallowed a handful of Tylenol. "About the case..."

"Ever heard of Manfred Wegener?" asked Dakota.

I shook my head, never having heard of the name.

"Wegener was head of Project Aquila, back in the eighties. A government project to investigate people with extraordinary abilities."

"Like ESP and telekinesis? I thought that was all bullshit."

"More like code-breakers, hackers, people with photographic memories... that kind of thing."

"Sounds harmless enough."

"Harmless and inefficient. The MI shut down his project when the cold war ended."

I tried to pay attention while Dakota filled me in, but the details were sketchy. I wasn't born when it happened, and Dakota was a fifteen year old teen at the time, with little more than boys and bands on her mind. Professor Wegener led the project, and while some subjects had shown potential, the people in charge lost patience with the project and pulled the plug when the Berlin wall crumbled. Now, twenty five years later, Wegener was given a second chance to form a counter terrorist unit, built around a team of skilled hackers and code-breakers.

Dakota pulled the KIA over and made a stop in a 7-11 parking lot. She reached into the glove compartment and took out a sealed Manila folder.

"This is where you fit into the picture."

The folder contained three photos: one black and white, two in color. They were lit and shot with professional equipment as if to emphasize their gruesome content.

"That's Dr. Vic Thompson and Dr. Helen Dwyer," said Dakota. "Or what's left of them."

The photos showed the bloated remains of two dead people. I couldn't tell which corpse belonged to whom, and judging by the state of their remains, neither could the MI-16. Both victims had been ripped open from neck to naval and left sprawling in their own insides until they bled out. The skin on their faces was missing, exposing round, staring eyeballs and rows of teeth framed by raw flesh. It gave the uncanny impression that the victims died with a defiant grin on their face.

"They were MI-16 agents?"

Dakota nodded. "Not officially. Thompson and Dwyer were researchers on project Aquila. Both were employees of Manfred Wegener."

"Maybe somebody's trying to kill the project?"

"Not somebody... but something. When we dusted for fingerprints, you know what we found?"

"Fibres from gloves?" I guessed.

"We found THIS." Dakota picked out the black-and white photo. It showed a row of black columns, ranked one through seventy-eight. Each was divided into short, horizontal lines on a white background. It could have been a military coding system or a work of modern art for all I knew.

"This is the DNA of the killer," Evelyn said. "We picked it up at the crime scene."

"Don't the feds keep some kind of database of DNA from criminals?"

"Humans don't have seventy-eight chromosomes." she replied. "Our people were torn to shreds by a canine - a wolf to be exact." Dakota pointed to one of the tiny horizontal lines.

"Here's the W24 gene. It tells us if we're dealing with a domestic dog or a wolf."

"That tiny line there?"

The W24 line looked just like the thousands of other tiny lines. From its looks, you couldn't tell whether it gave the animal the ability to run, drool or lick its own balls.

I laughed. "Wolves are shy creatures, They don't go around killing people in their own homes."

"Wolves don't open front doors either, or turn the lights off when they leave the scene. Our killer is a wolf who walks on two."

We both went uncomfortably quiet as Dakota returned the folder back to the glove compartment.

"What leads do you have?" I asked.

Dakota clenched the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. "The killer knows everything we know. That's how he gets to us. Somehow he predicts our every move," she said. "He knows who is on the project and where they live. He knew the victims were alone that night. He knew that Sgt Schorr was off duty. He knows where, and when to strike."

"Sounds like you have a double agent in your ranks."

"Damnit! The MI-16 hasn't had a traitor since the cold war...but now..." Dakota paused and looked around, checking we weren't being spied on.

"Daniel," she said. "I'm scared."

"You're a big girl," I said. "You can take care of yourself."

"I'm not concerned about myself," she replied. "I'm worried about Wegener."

For the first time, I saw the person behind the agent, if only for a second. Behind the business dress, the tough talk and the secret handshakes, Evelyn Dakota was just another person with an unusual job. Yet, this was the first time I had seen her caring for the well being of fellow person.

"Manfred Wegener is more than a friend," said Dakota. "He's like a father to my sister and me. When our own father died..." She paused momentarily as if to compose herself. "Wegener took us under his wing, and I don't want to see him get hurt.

I want you to find that leak..."

Dakota pulled the KIA over and it came to a full stop. She grabbed my hand with both of hers and looked me straight in the eyes. For a woman of forty, Dakota sure was a looker, but behind the professional curtain of emerald green, I saw a flame of determination. Here was a woman with an almost wolf-like urge to protect the ones she loved.

"I want you to sniff out that mole, before he gets to Wegener," she said. "Man or wolf, I want you to find him.

And I want you to kill him."

"And just how am I supposed to do that?" I asked. "Your people yell demon! and reach for their piece every time they see my face."

"I want you to join project Aquila and go undercover," Evelyn replied. "You're a special human being. You'll fit right in"

I laughed. "I'm hardly MI-16 material. I solve cases, but I'm sure your microphones have recorded how my brain and I don't get along."

"The records also show you have neutralized three of our top agents," said Evelyn. "That makes you one of a kind."

"I kill people," I said. "That's not the one-of-a-kind you want."

"Don't flatter yourself," Evelyn said bluntly." You may be special, but we've seen worse... much worse."

"Somehow I find that difficult to believe."

"Do you prefer garroting your enemies with piano wire to shooting them, like agent Tarkus? Do you smear the blood of your victims in your face for warpaint, like agent Honani? When it comes to protecting our country, the MI-16 values efficiency before personal shortcomings. Honani and Tarkus are as troubled as you - maybe even more, but priority one is to get the job done."

"We may have the same good intentions in mind," I said. "But your ways sure leave a mess."

Evelyn shrugged. "Reality is messy. We've learned to deal with it. Maybe it's time you do the same."

I sighed. What agent Dakota was telling me was almost a verbatim copy of what Quinn was always preaching.

Embrace your demons. They're what makes you special.

"How many know of the project?" I asked.

"Only Wegener and myself... and of course Agent Schorr. It was his duty to protect Thompson and Dwyer."

"Maybe Schorr failed on purpose. He could be spying for the enemy."

"He's in the clear," said Dakota. After some hesitation she added. "We've...bugged his place."

"You spy on your own people?" I was shocked.

Dakota shrugged, "You'll be surprised how easy it is to wire a place up

... any place."

In a sudden flash of clarity, I now understood why getting the rights to the nightclub had been such a pushover, and why the MI-16 had been so eager to redecorate the place before we moved in [*in Fallen Angels.]

Dakota nodded. "I issued the order to have your place fit with microphones."

"You've rigged the Phantom Cat. But HOW?"

She flashed me a slightly embarrassed smile. "The fire inspector who paid you a visit was agent Ted Warner -he's one of ours. You guys were so busy distracting Warner, he had ample opportunity to fit the devices."

"I should have guessed," I said. "He's not from Montreal either?"

"Not even close. We recruited him in LaFayette."

For the first time she looked up and our eyes locked.

"I'm sorry, Daniel. But I didn't know if we were on the same team."

"You KNEW I was already on a case," I fumed. "You knew Quinn was paying me pennies for taking on the desklight bomber, so you added a few extra zeros to the paycheck to lure me away."

"We also know your favorite album is Kind of Blue, because you play it every night. We know you have conversations with voices only you can hear... and you shout at chicken fillets."

I sighed. "That last part is a bit complicated."

"-and we also know your friend is a werewolf."

"Quinn?"

Dakota nodded. "Strange coincidence, don't you think?"

My cheeks began to burn and I snapped for air. I didn't like where this conversation was heading.

"Quinn is my friend," I said with as much conviction I could gather. As much as I wanted to call Quinn my friend, the simple truth was, we had something in common. We worked together, and he made sure I got paid. But we never spend time together or hung out talking about anything not crime-related. We were partners in crime-solving, and we were good at it. But an important piece of the friendship puzzle seemed to be missing.

"Quinn would never kill a government official," I insisted. "Not in his human form, neither in his wolf form."

"Have you ever seen him shift?" Asked Dakota. "Do you know what his kind is capable of?"

I didn't answer. I didn't know WHAT to answer. In all the time I had known Quinn I had never seen him in other form than his human one. Heck, I wasn't even sure his werewolf self was anything more than a spiritual thing.

"Just gimme the damn check," I sneered. "Man, beast or in-between. I'll find your killer."

Agent Dakota dangled the check in front of my face.

"You sure about this?"

I grabbed the check with both hands and stuffed it into my wallet.

"I'm sure," I grunted. With the payment from the MI-16 and Quinn, we could pay our way, and keep the nightclub.

"Just be careful, Danny. Remember... our killer might be closer than you like."

---