Her eyes sparkled with mischief as her son's protests grew louder.

"Yes, dear, I promise to behave myself. But if something goes wrong, you will come visit me at the psychiatric hospital, won't you? Loosen the bindings on my straitjacket? Wipe the drool off my chin?"

She laughed at his reply, signed off, then turned to me.

"Do you have kids, Ms. Michaels?"

"Two."

"Well, eventually you reach the point where they aren't sure whether they're the children or the parents. One minute my son needs Mommy to arrange his wife's surprise party, the next he's trying to make sure I don't embarrass myself in front of strangers." She set down the cordless phone. "Coffee? Green tea? Red wine?"

I noticed an almost full wine glass on the kitchen counter behind her and said I'd have wine.

"So you work with Hope Adams?" she asked as she got down a glass.

"When she needs me. Otherwise, I freelance. Do you know Hope's work?"

"I'd be a poor paranormal fanatic if I didn't. With World Weekly News closing last year, True News-and Ms. Adams's column-is the only game in town for those of us who like the occasional vampire story with our daily doom and gloom. Not that World Weekly News was much competition. I stopped reading it back when they added a disclaimer that it was for entertainment only. Seemed like a license to give up even trying to uncover any truth."

She handed me a glass of wine. "Now, Ms. Adams? She's a professional. She doesn't take herself too seriously. After all-" She winked. "-we are talking about the paranormal, not world politics. But you get the feeling she really is looking for the truth. She strikes me as a young woman I could have a coffee with." She raised her glass to me and smiled. "Or a glass of wine."

The phone rang again. "The machine can get it," she said.

"No, go ahead."

It stopped ringing.

"Good. Now you wanted to know-"

The phone started again. She sighed and said she'd be just a moment.

I sipped my wine and turned to survey my surroundings. What I saw made me sputter, clapping my hand to my mouth before I sprayed my shirt. There, almost over my head, was a picture of me.

"Do you like wolves?"

I jumped. Lynn stood in the doorway.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "I just asked if you liked wolves."

She pointed to the painting. It was me… as a wolf, in one of Jeremy's paintings. Nightfall, if I remembered right. It had been years since I'd seen this one. The public preferred Jeremy's more atmospheric pictures of wolves in city streets. This was the more natural style he liked better.

"It's a print," she said, as she sat. "I'd love an original, but I could never afford one. I must confess, wolves fascinate me, as they do many people these days."

"They are popular."

"From demonized to romanticized. No, my view of wolves is somewhat more realistic, I hope. True, they aren't the big bad beast of lore. But if I met one in the wild, I'd back away very slowly and get out of there as fast as I could."

"Not try to pet it?"

She laughed. "Exactly. But they do intrigue me more than other animals, which is why when those killings started, I took an interest-"

The phone rang.

Lynn sighed. "This time, I am letting the machine pick up." The answering machine clicked on, and we could hear that the caller was a young man who said he was in town on a logging contract and looking for a place to let.

"I'm getting a lot of interest," Lynn said when the message ended. "But not the sort I was hoping for."

"You're renting out a room?"

"Or two. My husband died a couple of years ago and I'm ready for some company. I was thinking of a stripper."

I can imagine my expression because she laughed. "That didn't come out right, did it? I meant I was hoping to rent rooms to girls on the exotic dance circuit. We get a lot of them through here and their living accommodations are less than ideal. I thought I could offer something nicer, more secure. A safe place to stay is hard to come by in that field."

"I heard a few girls have gone missing lately. They weren't strippers, though. At least, I didn't get that impression."

"No, they weren't. Not officially, that is. The first one was a part-time prostitute, though you won't see that in the articles. And rightly so, in my opinion. One whiff that those girls were less than saintly… "

"And they're dismissed as doped-up whores who took off with the first guy who promised them a new life in Seattle."

"Precisely. The second girl, now she was the type who should make headlines. Joy Sataa. An A student. Came from a fly-in community to attend college. But it's that 'fly-in community' part that moves her down the priority list."

"Native, as was the third girl, I think."

"Right again. Adine Aariak. Seventeen and living on the streets. Maybe turned a trick now and then, though no one on the police force recalls picking her up. Grew up with the three A's: alcohol, abuse and abandonment. She came to Anchorage hoping for a break, but we all know how that works out."

I sipped my wine, waiting for her to go on. When she didn't, I prompted her with, "And you think… I heard something about aliens."

She grinned. "Ah, yes, my alien abduction theory." She leaned closer and lowered her voice. "It's bullshit."

I laughed.

"I don't believe in aliens. Well, no, I do, but not in alien abduction. Can you really imagine a recognizable alien race traveling thousands of light years to impregnate humans? I just like to get folks going. They expect me to come up with outlandish theories, so I do, then have a good chuckle as they humor me and pretend to play along. A monster did get those girls-but one with a very human face. Again, an old story, too often told." She drained half her glass of wine. "Enough of that. You came to talk about other crimes. The ones in the woods."

"You don't think wolves are responsible."

"I will admit it is possible, but I very strongly doubt it. I've taken photos of the sites and the bodies, and while there is evidence of wolf activity, there's no proof that a wolf actually killed or even participated in eating the corpses. A wolf in winter won't kill something and leave it for scavengers. They can't afford to. My guess is that they visited the site, took a look, and left it alone. Wolves don't kill people. They just don't."