Wolf in the Big City

Chapter 9 - Amulet

As the week rolled around again, I woke on Monday morning to the blaring of my alarm clock and stumbled out of bed onto my face. I'd tried getting used to sleeping as my wolf form and today I'd forgotten.

I untangled myself from my blankets and shifted back into human form, still groggy from sleep. I repeated my morning routine of a quick breakfast before I got dressed for work, pausing to look at myself in my bathroom mirror.

I felt the cool metal of my amulet hanging on the string around my neck, it felt unusual having something like that on me, but if I had to have it to maintain...this, I'd wear it. I walked the few minutes to the precinct, stopping to get a coffee from a bakery nearby, before heading up to our office where the rest of the team was convening for the morning briefing. I waved good morning to the rest of the team and sat down, trying to keep it together as I spotted Dylan entering the room. He took his seat at the front of the table and steepled his fingers.

"Alright, good morning guys, time to get back to work. First of all, welcome back Daniel from his few days off, he went down with a fever last week but he's back."

A few scattered claps echoed around the briefing room as I stood and did a cheesy smile and wave as if I was some sort of movie star. As I sat back down, Dylan gestured to the glass wall of our briefing room and brought up the familiar board of pictures that represented our case.

"Now, let's catch you up on the case, Daniel. We've gotten fibre and fingerprint results back from the lab, I'm sure you've already read them over the weekend. No matches on fingerprints or the face from the CCTV footage, but we now have a sketch from our artist of our suspect. We're going to bring some of our witnesses back today to show 'em the sketch and see if they recognise him. In other news, Doctor Beauregarde's finished up his written report of the autopsies of our victims, so I'm assigning detectives Daniel and Louis to go over them today. Go visit the doctor in the morgue and see if he's got anything notable to tell you."

I raised my hand to stop Dylan mid-briefing.

"Uh, LT, if I may?"

He cocked an eyebrow and gestured to me.

"Sure, detective. Got anything for us? Don't tell me you've been working at home."

I chuckled and stood as he sat. I withdrew my notepad from my pocket and flipped to the notes I'd written the day before.

"Read me like a book, LT. I went over my notes over the weekend that I spent, uh, sick, and I noticed some things. We didn't really examine the fire escape where our killer escaped down, we should also be looking for a set of missing clothes from the Princes' wardrobe, and our suspect is some form of worker."

Dylan smiled.

"Continue."

"Well, I know he's got to be some form of worker because he wears steel-toed shoes, judging from the bloody footprints in the apartment. And he had to have left the apartment with a clean set of clothes since he abandoned the bloody set in their wardrobe. He might've left some evidence on the fire escape when he, y'know, escaped."

"Good connections, detective. We did check out the fire escape while you were out sick and we did find fibres from a different type of fabric, we're letting the lab run those now. But the connection you made with the work shoes and the clothes, good eye. Glad to see you didn't spend your sick leave doing something less sensible like resting."

I made a theatrical wince and sat back down as he chuckled.

"Well, the order of the day is as follows: Daniel, Louis and I are heading downstairs to see Doctor Beauregarde for the post-mortem. Eddie, John and Evelyn, talk to our witnesses again, show the sketch around and see if they know if the Princes have a worker friend. Max is gonna continue trying to find stuff on our suspect but I doubt he's going to find much. After that, we'll gather up again for lunch, then go over our notes and see if we're missing anything."