B008IFNJZM EBOK, page 2
In a single leap the werewolf was on the lowest tier of the light fixture as it swung toward the house and then back out toward the yard. From there, it made several more leaps upward until it was standing on the highest row of lights. Several of the bulbs were shattered by the creature’s leaps but the cut glass bases of the fixtures didn’t seem to cause the creature either pain or concern. The stress of its weight was causing cracks around the cable that held the chandelier to the ceiling. It continued to swing it back and forth and finally took a leap for the ceiling’s edge. It dug its claws into the roof just beyond the rain gutter but his claws kept ripping the shingles rather than providing a foothold for the next leap on to the roof. It made several attempts to hang on but fell to the ground below the main entrance to the estate’s main building. It landed without injury and kept studying the structure trying to think of a way to get up on the roof and enter the home.
It was about this time that the ‘Bigfoot’ creature found the gate and let the dog’s out. They now all seemed to growl and bark at the same time as if on command. The dogs all started running toward the front of the mansion and the werewolf. This startled the hideous creature and it bolted toward the front of mansion and leaped back up on the already weakened light fixture. Once it saw the puny excuse for guard dogs the creature realized there was nothing to fear and it was about to leap back down and drive what it considered to be a puny group of animals away. It was about this time that the chandelier over the front entrance lit up all the undamaged lights and that startled the creature. Lloyd had heard the noise and opened the study doors.
“Mr. Hart! We have a varmint outside!”
Hart shot up wide awake and rubbed his eyes only once.
“Where’s my double barrel?”
“I set it in your cabinet sir.”
William Hart got up and retrieved his gun and opened a box of shells.
“I’ll go outside with a broom and drive it into the lawn so you can get a clear shot.”
“Good I’ll be right out.”
The butler hurried through the dining room and grabbed a large push broom. He then hurried to the double doors and turned on all the rest of the outside lights. The werewolf was just on the other side of the doors. The creature jumped into the air and caught a tier of the chandelier breaking several more of the flame light bulbs and causing it to continue to swing wildly back and forth. Just then Lloyd came out with the broom and bolted out into the unseeded front lawn before realizing the lights behind him were moving and casting strange shadows and he had stepped on broken glass as he had charged past the light fixture and off the entrance way of the home. This is what the creature truly wanted, a victim. If he couldn’t kill Margaret, he would definitely satisfy his urge by killing this person. Lloyd turned around and looked up as the creature pounced and began to claw, bite, and tear the flesh of the servant. Lloyd was screaming and fighting back. It was then that Hart came out through the open doors and saw the attack in progress. The creature dropped the now bloody and dying butler and tuned his attention to Hart. The creature lunged through the air. Hart was shaking but his experience with guns came through and he still squeezed both triggers of the weapon. His skill with weapons was apparent and the dual blasts severed the head of the creature with the bloody body hitting his legs and knocking him backward. Hart immediately stood up and kicked the body and looked at the werewolf’s head in disbelief. He had heard of such creatures in books and movies and never considered the possibility that such monsters really existed. He snapped out of his trance and knelt at the mangled body of his servant. Blood was gushing and there might have been a weak pulse but it was not detectable to him.
Hart tore off his shirt and wrapped it around Lloyd’s neck to reduce the flow of blood. He realized that in his hurry, he had no cell phone and ran up to the double doors to get his butler some medical help. If only his daughter the doctor would have been out at the house. He pulled on the doors and realized he was locked out! As he tried to key in his entry code, the light from the swinging chandelier made it difficult for him to complete the entry code. He looked up at the fixture as it cracked and broke free from its wrought iron chain. The lights went out as sparks flew off of the ceiling and the fixture fell. As Hart covered his head, the force and weight of the light array knocked the man to the ground. He found himself pinned under the weight. One of the decorative iron spikes pierced his eye while other spikes penetrated his body. He was all alone with no one inside to come to his aid. The dogs became quiet after all three were dead and went back and roamed the yard near the kennel. The mysterious creature that let them out was gone.
Chapter 2 Breakfast
Margaret was up on time at five in the morning. She decided that since Lloyd told her the main dining room would be ready, she walked toward the back of the mansion planning to start preparing both bacon and sausages for her employer. Lloyd and Henry, the groundskeeper, usually arrived about six-thirty and sat in the kitchen booth area for the staff. As she entered her code key at the back door she thought it was unusual that Henry would let the dogs roam the grounds. She entered the kitchen and turned on the lights. She took out a package of bacon and set it on the counter. The first order of business was to make the initial pot of coffee.
It was six-thirty when she became curious that no one had joined her and that the dogs were still out. Henry would normally ‘water’ the dogs before coming up to the house. There was a loud hard knock at the door. She turned off the bacon and moved it to the side. With a towel in her hands, she went to see what all the yelling outside the back entrance was all about. She opened the door and Carl was standing there with a pale look on his face and a cell phone to his ear. He muffled the unit and tried to compose himself.
“Do you know anything about what happened last night?”
“No.”
She could tell from his end of the conversation with the party that something tragic had occurred. She covered her mouth with her hands as Carl led her back to the breakfast nook what Carl had discovered upon his arrival to pick up the limousine. For the first time since waking up, she was now aware that there were three bodies outside the front door. She began to cry upon learning the identities of the three dead men at the front of the mansion. Carl explained that once he knew all three were dead, he came immediately to the back door. It was a crime scene or accident scene and knew nothing was to be touched or moved. The pair began to call everyone they knew and inform them of the news. The first to arrive were two detectives and Carl was near the front of the house waiting for the police to arrive.
***
Doctor Elizabeth Hart turned off the route 64 exit pulling a rental trailer filled with her belongings. She had skipped breakfast because of her excitement over again seeing her father. The last time the family including her father was together was Christmas, but now in her mind that would all be over. She planned to move back home. Just then her cell phone rang. She pulled off the road to answer it. It was her father’s wish to never text or talk while driving.
“This is Doctor Hart…”
“Elizabeth…”
Elizabeth Hart knew the voice. It was one of her coworkers at the coroner’s office.
“I can’t just call you Ed today. I must refer to you as Doctor Hunsinger. You can’t already miss me. This is only my first day on vacation… Or are you going to gloat that now in my absence you are the head doctor of the coroner’s office?”
“Where are you Liz?”
“Just pulled off of 64 on my way to my dad’s new home… Why?”
“Oh… in that case never mind… I talk to you in a little while.”
The phone went dead and Elizabeth looked at it for a second and then set it back down on the front seat alongside of her. She thought it was a short strange call but decided that because she was on vacation it couldn’t be that important. Elizabeth checked the road behind her and put on her turn signal to once again merge with the traffic.
***
Thomas Hart was only a few miles behind his sister also pulling a trailer. Elizabeth’s brother as well, planned to move back home even though it would be a forty minute commute to the college where he was teaching. He had talked to his sister the night before and they agreed to leave their apartments and meet back at their father’s new estate early in the morning. He thought about calling her but decided against it. There was really no need. Anything he had to say to his devoted sister could surely wait until they were back together at their dad’s house. Tom always felt close to his sister, but her dedication to then her education, and now her new job, always seemed to split them apart. He loved her and he was curious if he would win a long standing bet. The bet was that his sister would marry before him. He always considered her to be a beautiful young woman. On the last visit to the coroner’s office he remembered teasing her about someday becoming Mrs. Edward Hunsinger. Ever since then, with almost every phone call, he would ask her if she and Edward had starting dating yet. His sister would return a tease with a tease and remind him that members of a university cannot date the students.
***
As soon as Elizabeth’s car broke into the clearing, she could feel her stomach drop. There were several squad cars and the large coroner’s transport vehicle. The large vehicle was only used for major accidents involving more than one fatality. Elizabeth gunned the vehicle and pulled up as close as the police would allow. She thought the worst and hoped for the best. She broke into a run when she saw her assistant Edward. She saw three body bags, and one of her father’s guns lying on the ground. The officers had called Talbot and used a portable crane device to move the chandelier off the porch entrance.
“Has my father….”
Edward hugged her and tried to turn her away from the scene.
“I am sorry Elizabeth, but your father is one of the ones who died. I didn’t tell you that on the phone because you were so close to being here and I was concerned you might be in an accident yourself.”
One of the detectives came over as she cried on her assistant’s shoulder.
“Can I see him?”
“Doctor Hart, can I have a few words with you?’
“How did this happen? Was it a break-in?”
“My name is Detective Wiggins and we are still trying to piece that together.”
“I want to see him.”
“Of course Doctor Hart …. We have his body back in your office’s transport.”
Doctor Elizabeth with tears in her eyes tried to be the professional she had trained all her life to be. Detective unzipped the black bag down to her father’s waist. She covered her mouth with her hands. There were two deep holes or puncture wounds in his upper body and a third through her father’s left eye.
“For the record, I officially identify this body of that of my father...”
“Carl the driver already went on record for all three… I know how much of a loss this is to you.”
“We are going to need a full work up on all three.”
She looked at the detective.
“You suspect a homicide?”
“We can’t be sure. It might have been an animal attack, or an accidental shooting, homicide or some combination of those three. It is too early in the investigation to know… It is going to take us quite a while to figure this all out. As of now, we don’t have any witnesses to what happened or any leads regarding others that could have been involved.”
“Doctor Edward Hunsinger will be assigned this case. You understand that this is my father and the law prohibits me from…”
“I understand Doctor. Your assistant will do all three and send off all tissue and hair samples to the FBI lab. At this point, no matter how unlikely, we must treat this as a multiple homicide.”
The detective zipped up the bag.
“Who are the other two?”
The detective looked at his notes.
“One is his butler Lloyd Gale and the other was the groundskeeper Henry Barton.”
The doctor looked at the other two sealed bags. She could tell something was not right with one of the victims because the body bag was tagged with a special code indicating the contents of that bag was to be considered and treated as a mutilated body and its contents would reflect multiple body parts.
“Excuse me Doctor, but I need to know something.”
“Yes?”
“There is an array of security cameras mounted on the roof. I need to see if any of this was captured by that system.
“Of course… The hardware is in my father’s study.”
The front entrance of the mansion was still being blocked by detectives and police with little signs indicating evidence gathering locations and photographs were still being taken in the morning light. The detective and Elizabeth went around to rear entrance of mansion. Within seconds of their departure, Tom her brother, arrived and Doctor Hunsinger would now be left to the same unpleasant task of informing him of the loss of his father and the investigation still in its early stages.
While that discussion was going on, another vehicle pulled into the area. This one contained a person every one referred to as ‘Junior’. He was a local veterinarian called to the scene to help with the identification of animal hair and to be later ordered to examine the claw wounds in an effort to determine what animal if any, was responsible for the mutilation of the butler’s body. He was always called ‘Junior’ to separate Doctor Bill Deckard from his father who was still working at the same clinic and having the same first and last name as his son who followed him into the business. Junior had attended college at the same time as Elizabeth and her brother and they were all acquainted back then.
Chapter 3 The Cameras
The detective grabbed one of his technicians and told him about the security system. The technician went out to his van and brought back a hardware bag. Elizabeth moved a sliding bookcase to reveal the security system. The technician came in and set his hardware bag down and began to examine the system.
“Bad news detective… the only cameras operational are the two on the kennel and two on the heliport. The only motion detection for recording was on the kennel cameras in the last twenty four hours.”
The detective looked up at the display monitor and only saw the dogs pacing back and forth in their enclosed area.
“Damn, I was hoping for a break… well make me a copy of everything on the system and mark it as evidence. I’ll initial your backup for the records. I don’t see any reason to pull the hard drive out at this time. Shut it off just in case, and tape it as evidence and not to be turned on.”
The detective looked at Elizabeth as her brother ran in and hugged her. He too, had tears in his eyes. Tom looked at the detective.
“Anything on the security system detective?”
“No. All we have are frames of your dogs in the kennel area. Sam here will remove the power cord and leave the unit in place. It will be tagged out of service and it will remain that way until we have completed our initial investigation. No one is to activate this system. If that is a problem, I will order my man here to remove the hard drive now.”
“No, we will make sure no one will use it. I think we are now the only ones who even know where the controller is located.”
“Backup is complete detective.”
Wiggins looked around the study.
“Okay Sam, pull the cord and close this panel back up. You can return to the scene just as soon as you pull Mr. Hart’s computer.”
The detective turned to the grieving children.
“We are going to have to take his computer and all his backups. It will eventually be returned.”
“I understand.”
“Does he have any other electronic equipment that could aid us in our investigation?”
“Yes. He also has a laptop and a cell phone.”
“Good I need the two of you to find those devices but don’t touch them. Just show my men where they are and they will bag them up. We will be fingerprinting and examining the contents of both.”
“They should be in my father’s bedroom.”
The detective turned to Sam.
“Could you go with Mr. Hart here and bag those items?”
“Yes sir.”
“And if the bedroom looks like it has been disturbed in anyway, stop and call the CSI folks.”
“Yes sir.”
The detective examined the contents of the desk wearing plastic gloves. The crime scene was outside but he had to be sure that whatever happened, didn’t originate in the house. Other members of his team entered and now all the rooms of the mansion were being examined. It would be a long day and his team would then examine both the servant quarters and the kennel before anyone left the house. Another detective went with the grieving children to the booth in the kitchen to take statements.
***
Junior has his hands full as he was given tagged fur and blood samples. He would utilize his father’s expertise and then forward the bags to the FBI crime lab in Washington. He was in the back of the corner’s van with the bodies. He examined the marks on the butler and picked a few pieces of animal hair that was quickly bagged and tagged. Doctor Edward Hunsinger supervised the few samples Junior was bagging.
“Given the claw marks what do you think?”
“Well we can go back to the kennels and check the dogs with your CSI people, but I can’t see anything to indicate that one of the dogs went rogue and caused these. If I was a betting man, I’d go with a wild animal… maybe a huge dog, wolf, bobcat or a mountain lion.”
