Doctor Dale Strangehold pulled his Packard to the curb away from the police line. He sat back in his seat. He wondered why he had been called. He imagined the scene must be out of the ordinary in some way. He checked his pocket watch. He had time before he had to meet his grandchildren.

Timmy and Tooty had afterschool activities at their school. And the school was far enough away from his house that he was obliged to pick them up.

He admitted that he had never considered having children living with him before he had met the siblings. He had kept an eye on his relatives from afar, and when their parents died, he offered to take them in as a relative so they didn’t have to go to an orphanage, or foster parents.

Sometimes he wondered if he made the right decision.

He got out of the car. He didn’t have time to regret decisions in the past. He had lived a few hundred years and had enough regrets to fill a stack of books. Now he had to be sharp. Later he could think about things over some port and trace back how he arrived at this point in his elderly life.

He straightened his jacket and frilly shirt cuffs and headed for the policemen keeping people away from whatever had happened. One of the patrolmen, Acuff, recognized him and waved him through.

He headed inside an apartment building of brick and concrete. He counted four rows of windows and figured at least four floors with two apartments on either side of the central staircase. He found another set of doors on the other side of the staircase when he looked at the front hall. So twelve apartments were in the building. He looked over to his left. A rack of mail slots confirmed twelve residences.

“Third floor,” said a patrolman on guard at the bottom of the staircase. “Three Bee.”

“Thank you,” said Strangehold. The police presence was more than he usually saw. He wondered what made this case stand out. He headed upstairs.

Three detectives stood in the hall. They had reams of notes in their hands. One noted Strangehold and waved him to their circle. The door to the crime scene blocked its contents from view.

“How’s it going, Doc?,” said Sergeant Roscoe Burly. He chewed on a small stogie as he looked down at his notes.

“It’s fine, Sergeant,” said Strangehold. He nodded at the younger detectives. He knew they didn’t want to call him. He could see it in their eyes. They wanted to solve this, and get the credit. Burly, on the force for twenty years, joining up right after the war, carrying a little bit more weight from that twenty years and a little less hair, didn’t care about credit at this point. He was never going to get promoted any higher so it was easier to call a consultant to get a leg up than flounder on a murder that might never get solved otherwise.

And certain experiences had made Burly swifter than other police to call when

something was weirder than usual.

“It’s a murder, Doc,” said Burly. “I need your impression of the crime scene, and anything you can give us.”

“All right,” said Strangehold. “Has your technicians already gone through

everything?”

“Yep,” said Burly. “We had to move the rest of the body out before you got here. You’ll understand when you see the scene.”

“All right,” said Strangehold. “I’ll have to look at it when I’m done here.”

“I got you clearance with Fern,” said Burly. “He’ll be waiting for you down at the morgue.”

Strangehold nodded. Fern was the head of the coroners that serviced the city and county. He would share whatever findings without comment.

Burly opened the door for his consultant to step into the crime scene. The doctor winced at the damage from the door before stepping in and taking a good look around. He shook his head at the wreck of an apartment.

He could see why the sergeant had called him. This looked like the work of a

monster. And he dealt with monsters as part of his advocation.

Strangehold looked everything over, careful not to step in any splashed blood. He expected the victim to be missing one limb at least. He examined the wrecked furniture and decided that the victim might have tried to fight back, but maybe was used as some kind of bludgeon.

Vampires and werewolves were neater than this for the most part.

He concentrated for a moment. Currents of life stroked the air. Pieces of goo floated around him. He watched as they assembled themselves into the last few visitors and went about their last acts in the apartment. Then he saw the beast ripping the place apart, and thought the victim never had a chance against the thing.

The thing went to the door and shrank into someone else that the victim had opened the door to admit. The image was a blur to the doctor.

He frowned. The murderer had knocked on the door and looked nonthreatening to the victim until the attack. Was it a planned attack, or something that had come through some casual encounter?

The obvious motive seemed like hunger. The problem was a hungry monster usually didn’t knock on the door of their victim’s home and attack before walking away. Something like that usually attacked more than one victim.

A vampire was capable of doing such a thing, but they left far less blood than this.

Matter of fact, the smarter ones rarely left a body anymore.

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He stepped out of the crime scene. He didn’t have much to go on. He should look at the body. He checked his pocket watch. He needed to pick up the kids pretty soon.

What did he tell Burly? The sergeant was going to try to track this person down. That would lead to a confrontation with the other half. Would silver bullets help in this case? It couldn’t hurt since a long line of monsters wouldn’t survive silver entering their body.

Would the monster think that the police had an expert on the scene?

He probably counted on his human disguise to protect him. No one suspected the small man of ripping a big man’s arm off. It defied nature.

He reviewed the scene one more time before checking his pocket watch. He had to get moving if he didn’t want to be late to pick up the kids.

He could talk to Fern after dropping them off at the house.

“Did you get anything?,” Burly asked when he stepped outside in the hall.

“The murderer knocked on the door, and appeared nonthreatening to the resident,” said Strangehold. “He commenced his attack as soon as the resident opened the door. The actual murder took place in the living room next to the door. The rest of the scene comes from the brawl and the eating.”

“Some kind of werewolf?,” asked Burly.

“I don’t know, but it could change its look almost immediately,” said Strangehold. “You don’t see that with most werewolves.”

“What do you think about the mask side of things?,” asked Burly.

“A small human,” Strangehold said. “I couldn’t tell the gender. There wasn’t enough in the air for that. I wouldn’t let anyone approach if I were you.”

“I’ll put the word out they shouldn’t approach,” said Burly. “That might make the beat patrolmen cautious enough to save their lives.”

“If this thing comes at them, they won’t have time to shoot before they get ripped up,” cautioned Strangehold. “We’ve seen the speed of these things. And if they are immune to regular bullets, a man has no chance.”

“Don’t worry,” said Burly. “The whole department will be aware that we are looking for a small murderer and to keep their distance.”

“I have to pick up my grandchildren,” said Strangehold. “I’ll talk to Fern afterwards. I can’t imagine he missed anything with a scene like this.”

“I have to get the machine running,” said Burly. “I’ll call if something shows up.”

“This might not be the last victim,” said Strangehold. “If he lives in the city, he might be looking for another victim right now. We have no idea how much time between kills we have.”

“That’s not great,” said Burly. “I’ll make sure you’re called when another scene is discovered.”

Strangehold nodded. There were bound to be other victims. That was what usually followed a scene like the one he had just examined. A panic would lead to accidental deaths, and murders disguised as what he had seen. There was nothing he could do about any of that until he amassed enough clues from the crime scenes to point them at one monster.

He hoped he could find out how the monster decided its victims with the next victim. That would allow him to spring some kind of trap eventually.

A dumb monster always picked a central ground to hunt. That made it easier to hunt back. A smart monster hunted according to what it wanted.

Strangehold walked back to his Packard. He had bought the car right before the second world war. It had carried him into battle for two decades. It would carry him another two decades if he was careful with it.

He got behind the wheel and drove to Timmy and Tooty’s school. He still had plenty of time, so avoided pushing his car to its limit. The rest of the night had been decided for him. He had to drop them off at home, then talk to Fern.

He might circle back to the crime scene and see if he could pick up anything else. That would allow him to throw a net out so he could grasp some kind of trail.

He doubted that would do anything but you never knew. Sometimes something was overlooked. And that gave you a trail to follow back to your monster.

He certainly was not going to call Burly if he did find the trail. They didn’t need to know what had happened until it was over. Letting them trail him around would just put them in danger while he was trying to deal with his adversary.

The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for was dead policemen.

He pulled to a stop in front of Middleton Middle School and checked his watch. He was a little bit early. That was fine.

He wondered what his grandchildren thought of him. They probably thought he was an old duffer that needed to do more than consult on medical and police mysteries. He smiled at that. He had thought the same about his own parents when he was learning medicine, and how to navigate the world on his own.

Tooty came out, waving at him. She had a duffel bag of school books and required material for her classes. She had decided to join the band for her extracurricular activity.

Strangehold got out and opened the trunk of the Packard. He placed the bag in and made strapped it down.

“What homework do you have to do?,” he asked.

“I have a lot of reading to do,” said Tooty. She climbed in the back. “Have you

thought of getting a new car?”

“No,” said Strangehold. “They don’t make them like this any more. A friend of mine made sure that it’s tougher than the cars that are on the road now.”

“I guess that’s okay,” said Tooty. “Why does it have to be tougher?”

“So I can ram monsters and kill them,” said Strangehold. “What kind of reading do you have to do?”

“Oliver Twist,” said Tooty.

“The orphan child that makes good and ends better than he started,” said Strangehold.

“Did you have to read when you were growing up?,” asked Tooty.

“Yes,” said Strangehold. “We had to read the Latin version of the Aeneid.”

“What’s that?,” asked Tooty.

“It’s the story of how survivors of Troy founded Rome,” said the doctor. He checked his pocket watch. “I have to do a visitation. Can you two look out for yourselves until I get home?”

“Sure,” said Tooty. “I’m teaching Tim how to cook.”

“That’s good,” said Strangehold. “How is he doing?”

“He could be way better,” said the granddaughter. “Still, he knows how to scramble eggs now.”

“All right,” said the doctor. “Here he comes. Let me take you two home, then I have to visit Doctor Fern.”

Strangehold went and opened the trunk for Tim’s much smaller bag. He made sure it was strapped down so it wouldn’t move. His grandson got in the back seat beside his sister.

Strangehold got behind the wheel and headed for home. Once, he had the kids situated, he still had to drive across town to the morgue.

He doubted that the coroner would be able to tell him something that he hadn’t already seen with his viewing. Still he wanted to be sure. Ectoplasm didn’t always duplicate everything as evidenced by the way the human side had blurred out before and after the attack.

There might have been some kind of physical evidence he could use to track his quarry down.

He might need to load his blunderbuss if he wanted to face this thing without police assistance. His ability helped him, but he doubted it would stand up to the type of onslaught he had been called in to investigate.

He might need to see if he had silver bullets laying around when he got home.

“Working for the cops again?,” asked Timmy. He leaned back in the backseat.

“Someone was murdered in a way that suggested I needed to be consulted,” said Strangehold. “I’m hoping Doctor Fern saw something I didn’t.”

“Do you need us to help out?,” asked Timmy.

“No,” said Strangehold. “Part of our agreement was for you not to get involved in what I do and have a normal life.”

“I know,” said Timmy. “But I still have the bat. It would be great for this.”

“I would rather you carry on the family name,” said Strangehold. “In a few years, we’ll talk about possible apprenticing, but monster hunting scars people. It’s not something you should do on a whim.”