The Wolf Hunt

Chapter 1: The Medallion

"Betrayal. That’s the first thing I feel, which is ludicrous. For there to be betrayal, there would have had to been trust first."
-Suzanne Collins

My heart starts throbbing violently against my chest as I enter the crime scene. This is my body’s reaction of what my mind is still trying to make sense of. I have been around crime scenes ever since I can remember even before I became a detective; but never have I seen such a horrendous sight. The walls are bleeding; the dim lighting doesn’t set the scene very well either. My nose registers the conflicting scents of blood and antiseptic.

I stand as motionless as the ground beneath me, aside from the beat of my heart no muscle in my body moves. The body of the victim is lying on its back facing the ceiling like a ghoulish mannequin. His body has been torn in four parallel slit’s; his throat cut and his esophagus and arteries sticking out like corrugated pipes through the clotted blood. The kind of scar
that has been left on victim reminds me of wolverine in X-men; but this is South Africa, there is no wolverine here. Or is there?

The room is alive with police officers, collecting evidence and taking pictures. There is a fleet of police cars outside and the residents of Soweto gather to witness the crime scene. I force myself to move and examine the dead body before me.
“There is no sign of forced entry, nothing taken,” says detective Scott.
“This was not a break-in,” I reply. 

As usual she is wearing perfectly creased black plants and a white
shirt; her jacket hangs on one the chairs. Her hair is an unbroken sheet of blonde that falls to her shoulders, it is so uniform and without a flaw, I guess it’s more of a metaphor for her life. She is my partner in the police station. We are the first females that have made a team and the entire station used to look down on us and some of them still do. We have solved a lot of difficult cases together but since we are female we are still treated a certain way.

I look up at detective Scott, our eyes lock and she immediately knows what I am asking. We have learned to work well together; silent, needing no words to communicate because here in a crime scene we move as two parts of one being. She pulls up the pants of the victim from his left leg; engraved on his foot is a big letter ‘W’. We simultaneously look at each other again. This can only mean one thing; The Wolf has attacked again.

‘The Wolf’ as we call him, is a serial killer worse than Jack the Ripper. He kills his victims, decorating the
crime scene with their blood. The victims always have multiple lacerations, almost like claws. He always uses the same weapon in each of his kills; this is a mystery weapon that is yet to be discovered, we have never seen anything like it. All of his victims are middle aged men, who are found lying like butchered animals in a waste of blood.

This case has been open since he made his first murder in 2009, ever since then he has killed one person every year. This year marks the tenth person he has killed. He is smart as
well, he knows how we operate. Every time we find a piece of evidence that might lead us to discovering who he might be, it always disappears or is somehow destroyed.

I have a strange hunch that he is working with someone from the inside. So after ten years we still have absolutely nothing, not a single clue on the supposed identity of this killer. He always leaves a mark to indicate it was his kill, a big letter ‘W’ on the left foot of each of his victims. This and the wolf-like nature of every kill, led us to nickname him as ‘The Wolf’.

I continue around the small four room house, taking in the murder scene. Reconstructing what might
have happened. I am busy looking around the dining room, which seems like it hasn’t changed much since the 90s, when my eyes catch a glint of light on the cement floor.

I walk over to examine the object, it is reflecting off a single ray of sunlight that has managed to shine through a tiny hole in the closed blinds. I find it is a gold medallion smeared in dry blood, as I pick it up an unsettling realization begins to grow. I know exactly who it belongs to; my brother-in-law Mike.