Chapter 71: My Brother's Voice

I did not sleep that night. I sat in the room with the bars on the window and looked out at the square and the snow and the lantern on the pack house porch, and I went over the night of the twenty-second of June the way I had gone over it a thousand times since.

Owen had come home at six o'clock. He had eaten two bowls of stew. He had said he was going out to the north fence and he had asked June if she wanted to come and she had said no because she had homework. He had put on his coat and his hat and he had gone out the door and I had heard the door shut and that was the last thing I had heard of my brother in my life.

I had not walked him out. I had not asked him why he was going out so late. I had not asked him what was wrong, because something had been wrong for a week and I had seen it and I had not asked.

And then at six in the morning Harold's boy had come up the road on his bicycle and said there was a body in the field and the sheriff was there and the body was Owen's.

I had gone down to the field. I had seen the crowd and the sheriff's car and the men standing around the wall, and I had not gone past them. Harlan had come and put his hand on my shoulder and said, do not go down there, Wren, and I had stopped and turned around and gone home and sat on the porch until June came out and put her arms around me.

I had never seen the body. I had never seen the field. I had never seen the wound.

I sat in the room with the bars on the window and I thought about that.

I had never seen the field.

And then I heard my brother's voice.

It came from somewhere behind my own thoughts, the way a voice comes in a dream, and it was not a dream. It was the thing my wolf had been keeping from me for four months, the thing she had put her body in front of and would not let me look at.

It was Owen's voice and he was saying a name.

He said it twice. And then he said my sister. And then he said the field.

And then he said a thing that I had never heard before and that the wolf had kept behind her back for four months.

He said: Tell Wren the second wolf is behind the wall.

I sat up.

The second wolf. Not the man with the lantern. The second wolf. I had been hearing Elias say there were two men in that field and I had been hearing Dale say he saw a lantern in the trees and I had been hearing the whole of it the way a woman hears a story, and I had never once gone back to my own brother's voice and listened to what he said.

He said the second wolf.

There was a wolf in that field. Not Dale and not Erik and not the man with the lantern. A wolf.

And Owen had seen it behind the wall.

I got up and put my hands on the bars and looked out at the square.

And then I remembered the county record.

Silas had read it. He had read the coroner's report and the sheriff's report and the church record and the county record, and he had said there was a thing in the coroner's report that did not fit. The body had been moved. The blood had settled in a way that did not match the position it was found in.

A body that has been moved is a body that was killed somewhere else.

And a body that was killed somewhere else and found in a field with a wolf behind the wall is a body that was killed in the trees and carried.

I turned around and went to the door and knocked.

"Guard," I said. "Guard. I need to see the Alpha."

The guard was one of the Kessler wolves and he opened the door and looked at me.

"It is midnight," he said.

"I know what time it is. I need to see Harlan."

"He is asleep."

"Then wake him."

He looked at me for a moment. Then he went down the hall and I heard him knocking on a door and Harlan's voice and boots.

Harlan came down the hall with his coat over his nightshirt and his beard flat on one side.

"Wren," he said. "What is it?"

"The county record," I said. "The coroner's report. Silas said the body had been moved. I need to see it."

"The county record is in the courthouse in town and the courthouse is locked at night."

"Then we get the key. Harlan, my brother said the second wolf was behind the wall. He said it in the field on the night he died and I have been hearing it for four months and I did not know what it was until tonight." I put my hand on the door. "There was a wolf in that field that night. A wolf that was behind the wall. And the body was moved. Which means my brother was not killed in the field. He was killed somewhere else and carried there, and the wolf behind the wall saw it happen and did not come forward."

Harlan looked at me for a long moment.

"Who?" he said.

"I do not know. But there is a record of the second wound in the county file and I need to see it." I looked at him. "Silas said there were two wounds. One in the chest and one somewhere else. The chest wound was Dale's and it was small and clean and it did not kill him. The second wound was Erik's and it was the one that killed him. But there was a third thing in the coroner's report that Silas did not say out loud. He said the blood had settled wrong. He said the body had been moved."

Harlan rubbed his face.

"Get your coat," he said.

We went into town at midnight with a lantern and Harlan's truck and the snow coming down again. The courthouse was a brick building on the corner of the main street with a flagpole and a stone step and a door with a brass handle. Harlan had a key because the Alpha of the territory had a key to the courthouse, and he opened it and we went in and down the hall to the room where the county kept its records.

The file was in a drawer with my brother's name on it.

Harlan put the lantern on the table and I opened the file.

The coroner's report was there and the sheriff's report was there and the church record was there and there was a page at the back that Silas had not told me about.

It was a second report. It was in a different hand and it was dated the twenty-fourth of June and it was signed by the county coroner and it said: the body of Owen Halloran was examined a second time on the request of the family. There is a wound on the left shoulder blade, curved, approximately three inches in length. There is a wound on the right side of the back, approximately six inches in length, running from the spine outward. Neither wound is consistent with an animal attack. Both wounds are consistent with a blade.

I sat down in the chair.

"Two wounds," I said. "One on the shoulder blade and one on the back."

Harlan read the page over my shoulder.

"Wren," he said. "Those are the same wounds that are on the wolf."

I looked up at him.

"The scars on Elias's back," Harlan said. "The curved one on the shoulder blade and the long one on the right side. The ones he took from your brother."

I put my hand on the page.

"Who requested the second examination?" I said. "It says on the request of the family. I did not request it. June did not request it. My mother was in bed and she did not request it."

Harlan turned the page over.

There was a name at the bottom.

It said: requested by Clara Renn.

I sat in the chair with the lantern and the file and the snow coming down outside.

"Clara Renn," I said.

"Clara Renn," Harlan said.

And then the door of the records room opened and a man came in with a lantern and a shotgun and said, "Put your hands where I can see them."

It was the thin man in the gray coat. It was Rourke. And behind him there were two men with rifles and a truck in the street with its engine running.