Paula Wren was unconscious, lying on the gravel, her arms duct-taped behind her back. My car skidded as we pulled up.
I flung my door open and jumped out, trying to look in every direction for any shadow that moved. I heard Rachel’s door slam behind me
Wren’s eyes flickered as I stumbled to her side, my heart pounding. “Are you all right?” Stupid question—she’d been kidnapped and beaten, but I had to say something.
She coughed. “Benning and—another security cop. Told me I had to come in for questioning. Then they drove me out here . . . How’d you get here?”
“I, uh—I poked the bear. Sorry. I’ll explain later.” I clawed at the duct tape for a moment, then reached for the Swiss Army knife in my jacket and started cutting. “I thought you were going out of town.”
“Jeannette had to work late. I thought—figured it was crazy anyway.” She shook her head. “What’s going on?”
Her ankles had duct tape around them too. “It’s Marston. He’s sending it after everyone in the department, I don’t know why—”
“Tom?” Rachel’s voice was higher pitched than usual. Not a good sign. “Maybe hurry up?”
I slashed the last of the tape and started pulling her up. “We’d better go before—”
“Now!” Rachel shrieked.
I turned. From the main trail, now shrouded in darkness, a tall shape stalked forward. Its thin bony knees were jointed backward, like a dog rearing up on its hind legs. The flesh on its bare torso was ripped, flapping as it walked. Horns jutted from the top of its skull, sharp as spiny spears in the yellow lamps glowing high overhead.
Wendigo.
I pulled on Wren’s arm. I heard Rachel curse, and then a thin highway flare burning at one end flew through the air toward the creature.
The wendigo flinched at the flame. Then it lurched forward again, big feet clomping in the dirt.
Rachel leaned back, yanking at the top of a flare inside a bundle of dozen more that she’d duct-taped together. She yelped as fire erupted from it, but she managed to start three more before the heat got too intense. She hurled the flares at the wendigo and darted toward the car.
I had the rear door open and pushed Wren into the back as the spinning bundle of flame tore through the darkness and hit the creature in the chest. It dropped to the gravel, but the wendigo staggered, a burn on its chest.
Then I was behind the wheel, and Rachel was beside me. “Go!”
We didn’t bother with doors or seatbelts. I threw the car into reverse and slammed down on the accelerator.
The wendigo stomped the ground, kicking dirt at the blaze and howling up into the night. Then the rest of the flares exploded in a ball of fire, leaping up and whirling in the night air like a swarm of flaming hornets.
It waved its arms, roaring with anger and pain, then plunged at us.
I twisted the wheel as we hurtled backward. I had to stop momentarily to shift into drive as the wendigo lunged for the car’s hood. “Tom, Tom, Tom!” Rachel shouted as I rammed the pedal and shot the car forward. The wendigo pounded a hairy fist on the rear windshield, cracking it in a spiderweb shape.
I reached the entrance gate and swung a hard right, fighting for control, praying no one else was stupid enough to be on the road at 1:30 a.m. The car skidded on the pavement, straightened out, and roared into the darkness.
My heart pounded like a jackhammer drilling into concrete. I heard Wren gasping in the back. Rachel cursed viciously next to me, probably restraining the urge to punch my arm as I was trying to escape.
In the rearview mirror I saw the wendigo chasing us. It galloped like a racehorse, bent down on all fours, and for a terrifying second I was sure it was gaining. So I floored the accelerator. The speedometer leaped up to 87, and Rachel shouted, “Curve! Left!” I had to slow to stay on the road, and then I kicked it up again to 91.
“Hey!” Wren bellowed. I saw it with just a split second to react—a truck pulling a long rig, heading toward us way too fast for the middle of the night, massive headlights almost blinding my eyes. I tromped on the brake, skidding onto the shoulder as the driver’s horn blared.
He veered over, and I saw him glare at me, but I didn’t care how he felt right then. I peered into the rearview mirror, looking for the wendigo. They were fast, and they didn’t tire, according to what Rachel had read to me from her phone during the drive. A wendigo would just keep going and going until–
The truck hit it.
I saw the body fly up into the night sky and then fall into the woods beside the road. The truck’s brakes whined and the long trailer wobbled left and right, about to fall over for a second. Then, balance back, the truck snaked back onto the highway and after a slow moment hit the gas again and headed on its way.
My body shook. The car was still, and everything was silent for a moment.
“Should we go look?” I glanced at Rachel.
She punched my arm. “Drive.”
“What—what did you do?” Wren, in the back, was rubbing her wrists.
“Highway flares.” Rachel gulped in a deep breath. “You can kill them with fire, but you can’t rent a flamethrower. So we stopped at a Wal-Mart. I taped f them in a bunch.” She held up her phone. “Turns out there’s a few thousand answers on Google to ‘how to kill a wendigo.’”
Wren laughed. “Take me home.”
We actually took Wren back to our apartment, figuring home wasn’t safe for the night. She called her girlfriend Jeannette, drank some whiskey with us, then collapsed on the couch.
The next morning we all drove back to McKinnon. Wren got out at Jeannette’s house, thanked us, then said, “Please don’t get me in any more trouble, all right?” before she slammed her door.
“Can’t blame her,” Rachel said.
I nodded.
Then we went to the main administration building.
Philip Marston’s secretary peered at us over the rim of her glasses. “President Marston isn’t in today. I don’t—nobody knows where he is. I can take your name and—”
We left. “Now what?” Rachel asked in the elevator.
I thought for a moment, looking for an excuse not to go where we had to go next, and not thinking of one. “Wren said Chief Benning was at her place when they took her.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
Officer Brenda was at the front desk. “You again.”
“Is the chief available? We can wait. This is my associate Rachel, by the way.”
Rachel smiled at her. “Charmed.”
Two minutes later we were in front of Benning. He grunted a greeting. We sat without being asked. “Where’s president Marston this morning?”
Benning’s eyes were dark and droopy, as if he’d been up all night and didn’t quite have the energy to glare at us. “We haven’t released it yet, but—well, he’s dead.”
I nodded. In spite of what Rachel says, sometimes I can think fast. “Let me guess. His body was found by the side of the highway near the McKinnon Forest Preserve?”
Benning sat up, his eyes darting between Rachel and me. “What do you know about it?”
I sighed. “You and Marston tried to kill me last night.”
“And me.” Rachel raised a hand. “Remember? And Paula Wren.”
“You kidnapped Paula Wren, left her tied up in the forest preserve, then called me to come and get her. Then Marston sent the wendigo to kill us.” I stopped and shook my head. “Actually, Marston was the wendigo. He got hit by a truck chasing us down the highway.”
“I knew we should have gotten the license number.” Rachel smirked.
I expected Benning to snort and tell us we couldn’t prove anything. Instead his eyes got narrow. “It’s not legal to record me. If you’ve got your phone going in your pocket.”
“I do.” I dug it out.
Rachel lifted hers too. “Two’s better than one.”
Benning shifted in his chair. “Okay. What do you want?”
“Marston was president for eight years here, and before that he was head of the Classics department. He’s got a vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard, he spends—spent, I guess—a lot of time in Aspen, and had a bunch of fancy cars. And this place doesn’t pay Ivy League salaries.”
He crossed his arms. “What does that have to do with you and Paula Wren?”
I crossed my arms. “He was shutting down departments and appropriating money for new buildings and expansions, but they never went anywhere. The money is going someplace else, and someone knew it. Someone from the Classics department, where he used to work. So he decided to kill them off, one by one, sending the wendigo after them. And telling you to blame it on coyotes.”
“Was he sharing the money with you?” Rachel glanced around the office, as if looking for something too expensive to be there.
Benning scowled. “I know he was being blackmailed. He thought it was someone in Classics. I don’t know who. He said—he told me some story . . .”
He looked away from us, out the window. “He said he got bit. On a camping trip. It was big, faster than a wolf, with big horns everywhere. He tried to run, but it—got him. When he woke up, all of his friends were dead. The rangers blamed it on wolves, even though wolves don’t usually attack people.”
“Like coyotes,” Rachel said.
“Who was blackmailing him?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” Suddenly Benning was angry. “He told me—only part of it. He thought he owned everyone, including me. He thought . . .”
He shook his head again. “You can say anything you want. I’m retiring. Today. Wren can try to get me prosecuted if she wants. I’ll be long gone.”
Then Benning stood up. “That’s all. I don’t consent to being recorded, so you can’t use that in court at all. But like I said, I’m getting the hell out of here. You two do what you want.”
Out in the car, Rachel sighed. “Sort of anticlimactic.”
“I didn’t really expect a full confession, like Columbo or Perry Mason. I just wanted to confirm a few things.”
“Too bad we couldn’t talk to Marston.”
“Yeah.” I realized I’d never even met him. He’d tried to kill me, and I was at least indirectly responsible for his death, and it was weird to think we’d never even looked each other in the eye.
“Is that it? Can we go home?” She yawned. “I got about half an hour of sleep.”
“Me too.” I pulled out my phone and checked the recording. “Just . . .” I then looked up a number. “Let me make a call.”
She groaned and closed her eyes.
Thirty seconds later I had Hank Hinch on the line. “Yeah, what’s up?” He sounded cheerful.
“I think the thing is over,” I told him. “I hope so, anyway. I just wanted to ask you a question. Between you and me. Oh, and my associate Rachel. She’s right next to me.”
“Hi,” Rachel said sleepily.
“All right. I guess.” He sounded doubtful. “What question?”
“Did you maybe send Philip Marston an email accusing him of embezzlement?”
It was a hell of a question, but asking impertinent question is in my job description. I held my breath.
After a moment, Hinchcliff sighed. “I told you about my daughter, Wendy? I started a fund to publish that book I told you about. But the college—Philip, really—ruled that the KickFunder I started belonged to them, because I used my work computer and reached out to members of the faculty and the student body. It wasn’t that much money, but it pissed me off at the time. So I started poking around, and it looked like a lot of money was disappearing, money for the school. And Philip was buying cars and paintings and vacation houses.”
A pause. “Yeah, I sent him an email. I was pissed. I just wanted him to know somebody knew about it. I hoped it would make him stop, but I guess—I should have just stayed away from my keyboard.”
I didn’t trust myself to say anything. After a moment, he asked, “Is that it?”
“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “Thanks.”
We hung up. Rachel opened her eyes and looked at me. “So he started this?” She shook her head in disgust. “Over a book of poems?”
“I’d say Marston overreacted a little. Most people don’t try to hide their embezzlement by turning into a supernatural monster and eating people.” But she was right. I couldn’t just drop it. People needed to know. If they didn’t believe in the wendigo, at least they ought to know about Philip Marston.
I started the car. Down the street we passed the university bookstore. I’d noticed a sign on a door next to the entrance yesterday: “McKinnon Press—Student-Run Newspaper.”
I stopped the car. “Now what?” Rachel asked.
I opened the door. “Someone ought to know. Come on. Or wait here if you want.”
Up a flight of stairs we found an office with THE MCKINNON PRESS on the door. Inside a young woman sat at a computer, while other students walked around drinking coffee and talking on their phones.
The name on her desk read “Susan Brinn, Editor-in-Chief.” Rachel and I stood in front of her desk. “Excuse me?”
She looked up. “Yeah?” Skepticism in her eyes already. I knew the look. It felt comfortably familiar.
“My name’s Tom Jurgen. I used to be a reporter myself. On the Tribune.” I dropped a card on my desk. “I’ve got a story that might interest you.”
# # #
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