he set the picture back on the mantel and turned toward Ulrich Mason. A rookie cop fresh out of the marines, Luc had heard of Mason, though never met him before. As big as the San Francisco Police Department was, Luc knew very few officers outside his own precinct.
The huge man stood on the last step. His broad shoulders stooped, his entire body shouted exhaustion, grief…the misery of a strong man brought down.
All Luc’s fault. If only…
Ulrich straightened and was immediately the imposing, intimidating figure Luc recalled from the publicity photos, the standard shots of the young police captain whose beautiful wife had been tragically killed.
Mason’s demeanor and voice commanded attention. “You’re still a rookie, aren’t you? New to the force?”
“Yes, but…”
Ulrich stepped into the room. “I want you to tell me exactly what happened last Friday, exactly what you saw.”
Luc took a step back, challenged by the quiet threat in Mason’s voice. He fought an unexplainable urge to grovel at Mason’s feet. “It’s in the reports, sir. I’m sure you’ve seen them.”
“No. Not your official report. I’ve read it, the one that says you saw a naked African-American woman run out of the woods and thought she was a threat to a group of schoolkids. Tell me, Officer Stone, what really happened. Exactly the way you recall. What you saw that night. This is between you and me. It’s not for the police. It’s not for any court proceedings, nor any investigation. It’s for me. Camille Mason’s husband. I want the truth.”
The truth. Did he really believe anymore? Luc stared down at his hands, remembering. When he looked up, Mason was handing him a glass of brandy. A peace offering? The crystal goblet reflected the light from the overhead chandelier and felt warm in the palms of his hands. Luc took a deep breath and almost smiled at the stupidity of his next move.
He would tell Ulrich Mason exactly what he saw before he killed the captain’s wife.
First Luc took a long swallow of the brandy and blinked against his quick tears from the potent liquor. He cleared his throat and stared into the glass as he spoke.
“I was patrolling north of the park, close to the Presidio. There was an ‘all points’ out. Someone had spotted a wolf running near Fulton Way. It sounded absurd, but the orders were real and the dispatcher seemed serious. The caller said the animal snarled at a group of tourists and then disappeared into the bushes as though headed back into Golden Gate Park. Since I was close, I went for a quick look. I thought I heard screams coming from a wooded area near the Japanese Tea Garden. I drew my weapon and ran toward the sound.”
He paused here, at the point where the truth he told Mason differed from the official story in his report. “That’s when I saw it. Not a naked woman, definitely a wolf. Beautiful, alert, not at all like the pathetic creatures you see in a zoo. The animal turned and stared at me…. It wasn’t afraid but I was stopped cold by a sense of uncanny intelligence, of almost human understanding.” Luc paused, shook his head in denial, then whispered, “I had the strangest feeling, as if the wolf knew something about me, some great secret.”
He turned and looked at Mason, caught in the image, the sense of wonder, of disbelief he’d felt. A wolf in Golden Gate Park! Mason stared back at him, unblinking.
“Just then a group of five or six kids came racing around the bend in the walking trail. They were screaming their heads off. I couldn’t tell if they were scared or playing, but they headed right for the wolf. I shouted at them but I don’t think they heard me. The wolf turned and crouched down low. I could see its teeth and I thought it might attack. It looked threatening, ready to spring. The kids were coming closer and I just reacted. I shot it. There was a moment of silence, the recoil of the gun in my hand…. I’m amazed I was accurate at that distance.” Again, he shook his head.
“I swear the wolf understood exactly what I’d done. It looked right at me again, and the really odd thing was, I felt almost like it was trying to talk to me, somehow to communicate. I swear, if I didn’t know better, I…” Luc hung his head, feeling horribly sad, not a little bit foolish. He swallowed back the lump in his throat and looked up, directly into Mason’s eyes. “I thought, for the briefest of moments, that the wolf forgave me, that it understood why I had to shoot it, but I know that’s impossible.”
He shrugged away the image—those intelligent eyes, the beautiful creature he’d killed. If only…Shaking off the sense of disbelief, Luc slowly continued. “Before I could react, the animal dropped in its tracks. The kids scattered, still screaming. By the time I reached the clearing, they were gone. Detectives were able to locate a few of them. They all heard the gunshot, but not one of them saw the wolf. They thought I was shooting at them and that’s why they ran.”
Ulrich Mason sipped at his brandy. His eyes were so deep-set, it was hard to tell their color. Luc had the strange sense he was gazing into his own eyes.
“What happened next?
Once again Luc stared into the brandy, wishing there were some way to change time, to return to the man he’d been before. He took a deep breath, remembering, and had to clear his throat to speak.
“I radioed for backup. I didn’t say I’d shot a wolf. I mean, in Golden Gate Park? I couldn’t believe it. I reported I’d fired my weapon and might have hit a large dog. Then I went to check on the wolf, to make sure it was dead. Instead of a wolf, I found a woman lying in the grass, naked. She was young, African-American, very beautiful. I checked for a pulse but couldn’t find one. I’d aimed for the wolf’s shoulder, hoping to hit something vital. The bullet had gone through her chest. She was dead. It wasn’t until the next day I discovered the woman I killed was your wife.”
Luc sat down hard on the leather couch, the brandy snifter clutched in both hands. He still had no idea how it had happened. How his bullet, intended to protect a group of children, had killed a woman. “I swear, Captain. I saw a wolf. I did not shoot at your wife. I don’t know how the hell…”
Almost to himself, Mason whispered, “Always, you did it your way. Ah, Camille. I never dreamed…” Mason sighed. “Let me tell you about my wife, about Camille.”
Luc felt the sofa dip as Mason sat down next to him, but he continued staring into the amber depths of his brandy.
“First, though, difficult as this is, I must thank you. You’ve been truthful even though your mind disbelieves what your eyes have seen.”
Luc raised his head and stared at Mason. The older man looked back at him, his eyes the same odd shade of green and amber as Luc’s. Why, Luc wondered, did that seem so terribly important?
“As unbelievable as it sounds, when you saw the wolf, you saw Camille, my wife.” Mason looked away. He coughed, rubbed his hand across his eyes. Luc felt as if his own heart broke, mortally wounded by the fathomless pain in the other man’s voice.
“She was unique in many ways, a woman of the forest. A woman destined to be my mate, the perfect match for me…but she was not what she seemed. Camille was not merely of African-American descent. She was a member of a unique race, a separate species, actually, long forgotten, often misunderstood. A species that gave rise to fearful legends and fantasies, almost all of them false. Still, she was impetuous, often careless, but always beloved. She was Chanku.”
“What?” Luc leaned back to better see Ulrich. The man appeared lost in his own world of dreams and thought. “What do you mean…Chanku?”
“Chanku. A species of wolf native to the Himalayas.” Ulrich turned and looked straight into Luc’s eyes. “A species of wolf, but also human. Interchangeable, able to shift from one form to the other, with the intelligence of a human yet all the senses of its wild counterpart. The wolf you saw was my wife. The shift back to her human roots occurred at the time of her death. Camille, myself, our daughter…and, if I am not mistaken, you, Lucien Stone, are all Chanku.”
Chapter 1