Sheriff Jordan asked Schuster if he considered vengeance upon Laufenberg, and Schuster assured him however much Laufenberg disgusted him and how much he hated Laufenberg’s action, he was not vengeful, and he would not violate Laufenberg’s civil rights.

“Can I ask why, sir?” Schuster asked, thinking he had done something wrong.

“I thought you’d like to read his charge sheet to him,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Really?”

“Around him, you can’t show weakness or panic, and you can’t act tougher than him. I’ve seen you react to some of the evidence, but you can’t in the interrogation room or a courtroom. Do you think you can do that?”

“I think so.”

Sheriff Jordan had Schuster watch interview footage until Schuster controlled his expressions.

“A short-sleeve shirt showing your scars will remind him he couldn’t win,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Okey-dokey.”

Laufenberg proceeded to deny his crimes as a böxenwolf, claim forgetfulness, or say, “I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.” He appeared to legitimately listen to the evidence, and Sheriff Jordan wondered if Laufenberg was imagining a grand explanation.

Schuster and Laufenberg had not been in the same room since March 12, and Schuster worried about seeing him again. But he followed Sheriff Jordan into the jail’s interrogation room.

Laufenberg glared, and the handcuffs and footcuffs caught him as he stood up. Sheriff Jordan and Schuster ignored him, though Schuster worried Laufenberg heard his heart rate speed up.

Laufenberg growled and vocalized similarly to a wolf. Schuster flinched but steadied himself.

A couple of minutes later, Schuster read the charge sheet. He almost said, “first degree homicide of a law enforcement officer, Zachary Foster,” in the same tone as the other victims.

In the hallway, Schuster leaned against the wall and almost cried.

“You did well,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“How can you be around him and be calm?”

“I’m not, but pretending to be calm keeps the situation calm. Pretending makes me calm.”

The fact that Dennis Laufenberg had been charged with his crimes relieved him; a jury would find him guilty of some.

Then Laufenberg hung himself in his cell, and Corey was happy. Although Schuster wished for a trial, his death relieved the worry that Laufenberg would leave prison and re-offend. Megan wanted Laufenberg to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Sheriff Jordan believed that Laufenberg committed the wolf attacks, but the District Attorney said that he needed more forensic evidence or a jury’s verdict before closing the cases. Because Corey witnessed Joel Block’s death, his case was solved, with Laufenberg identified as the murderer.

When the investigations ended, John officially researched the wolf aspects. His report gave no opinions about the existence of böxenwolves but pointed out the origin of the wolf straps and Wolftown’s fences. He mentioned all crimes against wolves.

Corey pled guilty, although Kevin thought Laufenberg coerced her to some extent, and she asked for the maximum sentence. She was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment.

The böxenwolf case stalled, but it remained open, passing from detective to detective. Throughout Sheriff Jordan’s three terms in office, every deputy reviewed at least one victim’s case.

Schuster became a detective in 2003.

Cassidy Brown and Mitchell Foster would eventually ask questions about their parents, and the victims’ families knew less than expected about the wolf attacks and Dennis Laufenberg. Megan, Kevin (with his clients’ consent), Miranda, John, and Tara Schuster compiled accounts and wrote short explanations. The compilation included contributions from Wayne, Schuster, Sheriff Jordan, Corey Brown, and other major figures. Kevin pointed out few people enjoyed reading statistics and court documents, and it could be difficult and confusing. They edited the work again.

For Mitchell’s first birthday, Wayne gave him a lifetime pass to Happy Howlers, worried he might fear or hate wolves.

Wayne and Schuster improvised exposure therapy to wolves, but he disliked them.

To hide his scars on duty and most of the time when in public, Schuster wore long-sleeve shirts year-round.

If people asked about the bite scars, he said either a wolf, a criminal, or böxenwolf bit him, depending on the audience and how much he felt like explaining. Megan sporadically added “monster” to the list, but cautiously around Mitchell when he was young. Schuster did not contradict her, but Sheriff Jordan thought “monster” dehumanized Laufenberg, Corey, and Tyler.

When Schuster became the lead detective on the böxenwolf cases, he promised the victims’ families he would work on the case until he solved it or became mentally or physically unable. Wayne jokingly called him Javert.

Mitchell noticed Schuster’s scars as a very young child. He poked them and said, “Why that?”

Schuster said, “A bad guy was biting me.”

“Ow.”

“Yeah, it hurt. Your dad fought the bad guy and saved my life.”

“Why?”

“Your daddy loved me. I’m sorry I couldn’t save your dad’s life.”

“Daddy love me. Love you.”

“We loved each other.”

“Me love.”

“I love you, too.”

In 2010, Sheriff Hayes was elected and he made the böxenwolf case a cold case. Still, Schuster worked on it, especially Sergio. He waited impatiently for DNA technology to improve.

In 2012, Corey moved to Texas, but Aunt Karen and Schuster knew her address, just in case something happened to Cassidy. Corey and Cassidy had little direct contact.

Psychiatrists considered Corey delusional, and she abandoned the idea of speaking with them. She remained sober and found a steady job.

On March 9, 2017, Corey attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills and alcohol, but after taking them, she called Schuster’s landline. She told him she attempted suicide at home, and on his cellphone, he called the Dallas non-emergency number and told them her address. Schuster had some trouble understanding Corey’s words.

“Did Dennis Laufenberg kill me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Schuster asked, but he thought, Not as far as I know.

“It’s because of him.”

“You committed suicide because of what he did to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Legally, he didn’t kill you, but I’d personally consider you another person who died because of him.”

Schuster remained on the phone until he heard the EMTs arrive. Corey survived. She never attempted suicide again, on the basis that if she committed suicide due to Dennis Laufenberg, he killed her indirectly.

A teenager howled at Schuster once, and others tittered; Mitchell heard and objected, but Schuster said, “Mitchell Zachary.” Mitchell cooperated against his wishes. Schuster explained that he ignored wolfish comments.

None of the law enforcement officers who investigated Sergio’s death determined why Laufenberg buried him alone or why he buried him differently than Joel. Some investigators seriously considered that Dennis Laufenberg delegated hiding the body to Tyler or possibly Corey, while he destroyed the Vasquezes’ campsite.

Probably, Dennis Laufenberg hid Sergio far from the new camp because finding two bodies killed within two weeks of each other and buried in the same county in the same manner would be connected. Different burial methods could slow down investigators. Laufenberg could have preferred burying one—Joel Block, judging from the direction—in another county, but found it impractical.

Other than the böxenwolf case, Schuster had an average rural Wisconsin career in the Sheriff’s Department, and through his promotions, he remained the lead investigator on the böxenwolf cases.

Schuster read about investigators extracting a murder victim’s DNA from ashes, or paleontologists finding DNA millions of years old. Experimenters who extracted DNA from washed clothing. One case was solved with 120 picograms of DNA, which was equivalent to less than fifteen human cells.

Joel Block had the least DNA evidence, and none was collected on Sergio’s clothes. Schuster knew the wolf bit and tore his clothes, leaving DNA evidence at some point.

In the woods, metal detectoring tourists dug up a metal cookie tin, and inside it, a journal and a pen waterproofed in two Ziplock bags. They read a few pages and reported to the police.

Schuster had them fingerprinted and he asked a few questions, but determined they were unconnected to the böxenwolf case. They only knew what the Wolftown Museum said.

The journal described the wolf attacks as they happened, and it matched Laufenberg’s fingerprints and handwriting. He wrote hastily and briefly, but disjointed.

Schuster organized a metal detector hunt along the wolf tracks and found another journal. It filled some gaps and made others.

Then he organized a metal detector search of every former campsite Corey could remember. In one, they found a camcorder, a Polaroid camera, photographs of the wolf hunt, and a journal. The journal filled the caps and Schuster thought Laufenberg had one camcorder for everyday life and one for incrimination materials.

Corey knew Laufenberg had the documents somewhere, but their location had flummoxed her.

John earned a master’s degree and a PhD in biology, then he studied cryptozoology. Laufenberg sparked his curiosity.

With any specific type of cryptid, John thought comparing the results of each sample would show consistencies and inconsistencies, and the samples could be considered connected or unconnected. To find the patterns, he used an AI program. The program worked well on animals known to exist.

Sheriff Hayes and Sheriff Jackson refused to send precious DNA evidence to a cryptozoologist, but when Schuster became sheriff, he asked John which samples he required.

John chose the victims with the most DNA evidence, which included Schuster, although Schuster generally avoided calling himself a victim. John asked for the wolf straps, Laufenberg’s DNA, the victim’s DNA, the victim's clothing that contained the suspect’s DNA, and the piece of fused flesh and wolf strap that the surgeon removed from Laufenberg.

Schuster sent samples from other victims, but he hesitated about Sergio and Joel Block. Such little DNA survived on the men’s clothing, and their victims’ decomposition obscured it.

After testing each sample, the AI program and John filtered through the inconclusive results.

The inconclusive samples had a great deal of similarities, except for the all-flesh and all-wolf strap samples. Schuster had seriously wondered if Sergio was connected to the other victims, but his sample had the same similarities. Where the flesh and wolf strap merged, John found an inconclusive sample with the same characteristics as the other inconclusive samples.

Finally, John determined that the suspect’s DNA was from two living things, similarly to how a human’s DNA showed a father's and a mother’s DNA. The two parts of the suspect’s DNA were Laufenberg and his Eurasian wolf strap.

The next set of samples Schuster sent showed Laufenberg’s DNA and the wolf’s DNA together. So, Schuster sent Sergio and Joel’s samples. They had the same results.

People debated the accuracy of John’s DNA methods, since it matched nothing found in recognized animals, but there was an identifiable suspect’s DNA on clothing that did not belong to him, and there was no innocent reason for the DNA evidence.

Schuster closed the cases: Laufenberg committed the murders.

Schuster called the families first, then released the statement.

John, Megan, and Miranda reworked their compilation as a book, giving thorough evidence, including details not released to the public. They edited one fat, complete version for the families and they and a Wolftown reporter rewrote the work into one concise version for publication.

Unknowingly, Schuster had accustomed himself to the stress of Laufenberg’s cases, and the stress vanished. He had memorized many details he wished he could scrub from his brain, and the case affected his home life. Although his stress lowered, the case continued to affect him personally. But because solving the case gave closure to the families and ensured justice was carried out, Schuster did not mind the effects on him.

Thanks for reading Wolftown!

Laufenberg’s böxenwolf journals recorded events as far back as the wolf-dog hunt in 1982. Dennis Laufenberg stole two wolf straps: the first that he wore in monstrous form made him half-female, and the second he wore in both monstrous and wolf form, which made him male.

During the Wolf Panic of 1982, Laufenberg stole the first wolf strap. In 1983, he transfigured into a wolf, but nearly died from thirst because he could not untie the string easily. The wolf strap made him half-female, which felt uncomfortable.

Laufenberg visited Wolfberg, Germany, in 1986, and studied böxenwolves.

Faulty wiring in the police evidence storage caused a fire in 1988, and Laufenberg stole another wolf strap during the fire.

Böxenwolves said that for a year or so, Laufenberg questioned them about the wolf straps and böxenwolves. He acted as if it were part of the wolf-dog hunt, but Sheriff Jordan found no files about his questioning, and he began from 1989-1990. Some people felt uneasy about Laufenberg’s attitude.

In 1988, Laufenberg tried wrapping the wolf strap around his arm for a partial transfiguration, which did not work. He built a hook to assist in removing the wolf strap, but his idea failed.

So, to retain some bodily control, he transfigured into the monster form. It was a temporary measure until he built up strength for a wolf form, but the two forms differed so much, he found the experiment pointless.

Laufenberg hired a prostitute to remove the wolf strap after half an hour, but she untied it after two minutes and ran away. A few days later, he tried to make a second prostitute think that she was hallucinating by taking an unidentified drug.

An anonymous böxenwolf who Laufenberg identified as Dale Vandenheuvel said that because Laufenberg could not properly operate a wolf body, he needed a böxenwolf mentor to assist him. From approximately June through September 1990, the anonymous böxenwolf assisted him, just until he could untie the wolf strap alone. The böxenwolf avoided further contact.

Laufenberg began looking for other böxenwolves to socialize with in the woods, but people tended to exclude him. Disagreeing with the böxenwolves’ attitudes in general, he looked for people willing to become böxenwolves and spend some of their spare time living as wolves. He believed in the concept of alpha wolf, with himself as the alpha wolf and Corey as the beta wolf.

Lisa Marsh told Sheriff Jordan that Laufenberg attempted to recruit her as a wolf in 1996. He scared her to the extent, she moved to Michigan in 1997. Worried about seeming crazy, she refused to press charges against him. Laufenberg wrote detailed accounts of her in the journals, and he treated her similarly to Corey.

Through the 1990s, Laufenberg developed a deeper interest in wolves, böxenwolves, and other werewolves; he preferred böxenwolves. He made a wolf strap and a wolf fur coat.

Laufenberg sent the wolf strap to a German böxenwolf friend—his friend could not hunt a wolf himself. Wolfberg police investigated him and discovered the same types of ideas as Laufenberg had. Laufenberg had received dozens of graphic letters and photographs from him, but German authorities believed his friend destroyed the ones from Laufenberg. He and his friend visited each other twice. Until hearing of the wolf attacks, his friend was considering moving to Wolftown. Sheriff Jordan believed Laufenberg warned him about the investigation.

Sheriff Jordan sent Laufenberg’s wolf photographs to Wayne, who found photographs of Abel, Baker, and Charlie in wolf form. Camcorder footage showed Laufenberg, Corey, and Tyler transfiguring.

Laufenberg attempted to introduce three people to wolf straps, but he scared them. They avoided him.

A dairy farmer was fired at Laufenberg in 1994 for stalking his cow and calf. To Schuster’s relief, it was not his father, but the next second, he worried about the other farmer’s safety. Police records and the journals showed Laufenberg missed work for two days, waiting to recover. Laufenberg wrote that the bullet passed through him cleanly, and he survived two days alone in the woods, near the river, scared of dying. Schuster wished Laufenberg had died then, but Sheriff Jordan strongly disagreed on moral grounds rather than practical ones. Laufenberg’s more recent medical records showed no sign of the gunshot wound.

Since February 1997, Laufenberg had involved Corey in his böxenwolf activities. She originally used the first, female wolf strap.

In July 1996, Laufenberg and Corey met. She was 22 years old and pregnant with Cassidy. Schuster and Foster knew that she and Laufenberg had some sort of illicit romantic or sexual relationship. Corey told Sheriff Jordan that whatever law enforcement called their relationship, Dennis Laufenberg began it and trapped her in it, first in the standard, human ways and then with böxenwolves. The journals provided evidence, and Laufenberg’s friend wished he had someone like Corey.

Dennis Laufenberg’s involvement in Corey’s life led her to break up with Shane Greenbough, though they probably would have separated anyway. Laufenberg discovered she had collected evidence and destroyed it, and threatened to maul her. So, she cooperated with him.

In June 1997, he manipulated Corey into making a wolf strap from a female wolf they caught together. He abandoned the wolf’s pups, but Corey anonymously reported them to Wayne, who rescued them.

Wayne found no sign of a wolf killing at the den. If the wolf had been poached from the den by a person, somebody destroyed the evidence. He saw paw prints from one large, fat wolf, and one small, light wolf, a third wolf, and a scuffle, which he considered normal with pups’ lives at risk. When examining the Vasquezes’ campsite, he identified similarities, as if somebody had hidden human activity. However, at the time, Wayne thought the human elements came from the anonymous reporter, who felt delayed guilt about orphaning adorable little puppies.

Simply for safety reasons, Wayne doubted a poacher would transport a live wolf. According to the instructions Corey used, a wolf strap required an extremely fresh carcass, and so Laufenberg discovered that bringing a live wolf to the tanning area increased the chances of success.

Sheriff Jordan found no evidence that Dennis Laufenberg hunted or trapped animals in human form.

Corey said that Laufenberg contracted brucellosis from eating raw elk, and when she built a fire to cook her portion, he threatened her into eating raw elk. She refused to eat elk at all and almost passed out from hunger before reaching civilization. Dr. Paulsen explained that wolves survived on a feast-famine cycle, living for days between meals and then gorging themselves, but the cycle gave humans severe gastrointestinal distress. Böxenwolves burned more calories and could ingest more food than they would as humans, but they needed regular meals to control their blood sugar levels.

Laufenberg had contracted other diseases before, hence Corey’s insistence on fully-cooked meat. To treat the diseases, Laufenberg scheduled appointments hours away from Wolftown under the name Peter Angua.

Dennis Laufenberg began recruiting Tyler Wilson in November 1998, but waited for Tyler’s eighteenth birthday (March 1999) before taking him into the woods. Tyler quickly agreed to be a böxenwolf, but Corey privately discouraged him. He conversationally told Laufenberg, who mistreated Corey for her opinion. It annoyed Laufenberg that the only wolf strap they had made Tyler feminine, and that Tyler had to hunt his wolf as a human. A human and two wolves hunting together might alarm anybody who saw them. In July, the three of them caught a male wolf alive, and Tyler cut out its ear tag. Tyler borrowed Dennis Laufenberg’s wolf strap to kill him. They left the skinned wolf near a coyote den.

Corey successfully warned Dale Vandenheuvel that Laufenberg would attempt to blame him for the attacks and possibly kill him so that he could not give a true account. He and his family took a spontaneous vacation to Milwaukee the week of the wolf attacks, and Sheriff Jordan found credit card charges, security footage, and alibis for his trip. At the time, Dale Vandenheuvel was too scared to call the authorities. His account matched Corey’s, and he identified her as the woman who warned him.

The week before the wolf attacks, Joel Block and Dennis Laufenberg somehow met in the woods. Sheriff Jordan thought they had never had contact with each other before and that nobody had invited him to the böxenwolf campsite. According to the journals, Dennis Laufenberg saw Joel in the woods and town. He recognized that Joel was as close to a backwoodsman as Erica Block tolerated, but Laufenberg considered him too independent for joining the pack.

Corey said that by the time she was within hearing of the campsite, Joel Block and Dennis Laufenberg were arguing. Since she was in wolf form, she heard from several miles away. Tyler was also there but not participating in the argument. She thought it devolved from coherent arguing to fear and force.

Just as she saw them, Joel fired his shotgun, and Dennis Laufenberg transfigured into a human. Joel tried to run away, but seeing Corey in wolf form scared him, and he reloaded his shotgun. Corey dreaded transfiguring before people, and Tyler defended her opinion. Laufenberg untied the wolf strap to demonstrate that Joel did not need to shoot her.

Immediately, Corey transfigured into a wolf again, terrifying Joel. The situation escalated. He intended to warn other authorities about the wolf attacks. Dennis Laufenberg threatened to arrest him unless he dropped the shotgun; Tyler bit Joel’s leg to defend Corey.

Joel dropped his gun, and Tyler picked up the gun with his teeth and dragged it aside. Laufenberg turned into a wolf as Joel stood and ran. Then Laufenberg leaped at Joel. He knocked Joel forward, and Laufenberg bit his upper back near the spine.

As Joel begged for help, Corey thought the bite had paralyzed him. The medical examiner, Dr. Groves’ son, said that Joel would have been quadriplegic.

Tyler transfigured into a human.

After a few minutes of arguing between Corey and Laufenberg, who mainly ignored Tyler and Joel, Laufenberg rolled Joel onto his back and positioned the shotgun and Joel’s hands as if to shoot himself. Corey said Tyler kept her from stopping him. Laufenberg fired the shotgun, blowing off the front of Joel’s face. He said that carrion animals would disguise the wolf bite, and the medical examiner would call Joel’s death a suicide.

Corey thought Joel lived for a few minutes, while Laufenberg audibly plotted how to hide the body. Tyler vomited.

He wanted to drag Joel’s body to an animal den, but found one too far away to move Joel. Laufenberg and Corey took turns carrying him under the shoulders, and Tyler carried his feet. Tyler and Corey hardly managed to obey him, but Laufenberg tolerated the gore.

Laufenberg worried somebody would see them moving the body. When Tyler and Corey tired, Laufenberg forced them to cover Joel’s body with vegetation, and he hoped that scavengers would arrive quickly.

On their return home, Laufenberg changed his mind. He forced Tyler and Corey to return to Joel Block’s body and bring him to the campsite. They staged it to look like his campsite.

The next day, Laufenberg changed his mind again, and he forced Tyler and Corey to return to the campsite with shovels. Corey emphasized she would not hide the body for a fourth time; she already considered it too nasty and gruesome. Tyler probably would be incapable of a fourth plan.

A late winter-early spring cold snap and the half-frozen ground probably preserved Joel’s body.

Corey said that Laufenberg disposed of the shovels; nobody knew where. While he was gone, she and Tyler destroyed the camp according to his instructions and established a new camp, which happened to be six miles away from the Vasquez campsite, within hearing range of a böxenwolf in wolf form.

She thought Laufenberg heard the Vasquezes before Corey and Tyler arrived. Laufenberg sent her and Tyler home. Sheriff Jordan suspected the next time Corey saw him, Laufenberg had killed Sergio and thought Miranda would die.

Then Dennis Laufenberg, Corey Brown, and Tyler Wilson proceeded to attack Wolftown.

The District Attorney’s office thought the prosecution could prove that Laufenberg had control over a wolf that attacked people, despite the absence of a wolf. Criminals tended to dispose of things necessary for their crimes.

Sheriff Jordan wrote Dennis Laufenberg’s most recent charge sheet and re-read it carefully, and then again in the morning. It described the böxenwolf activity, but omitted Sergio.

Calmly and firmly, Sheriff Jordan informed Laufenberg that he had good evidence that Laufenberg transfigured into a wolf and committed six counts of homicide, two counts of attempted homicide, one count of assault with the intent to kill, two counts of improper disposal of a corpse, multiple counts of assault, and multiple counts of assault, trespass, public disturbance, conspiracy to commit a crime, and an assortment of other crimes.

“Is there anything you want to confess to?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

Dennis Laufenberg attempted to stand up, and the handcuffs and footcuffs pulled taut. Sheriff Jordan expected him to transfigure into a böxenwolf, though he understood the method well. He sat quietly and ignored the spittle.

A jail guard opened the interview room door. Laufenberg’s veins bulged, and he roared at the guard, who jumped and grabbed his baton.

“We’re fine. He does this once in a while. Ignore him long enough and he stops,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“We’ll be outside.” The guard shut the door.

“You’re not going to intimidate me,” Sheriff Jordan said, although Laufenberg alarmed him. “Instead of arresting somebody for a homicide without his confession, I’d rather arrest somebody for a homicide he willingly and freely confessed to. It’s hard to get the charges dropped afterward if I’m wrong. The accused can only be tried once. Is there anything you want to confess to?”

Laufenberg said, “I’m innocent,” with more profanities than Sheriff Jordan thought could fit in a two-word sentence.

As Sheriff Jordan reviewed the evidence, probably because the restraints pulled Laufenberg into an awkward, painful position, he sat again. He radiated fury, though.

“I haven’t had a straight answer from you about the cases, so I might be wrong about the charges. You lied or came up with a theory in every interview, and I couldn’t verify them. Is there anything that I can verify as true that will lessen the charges against you?”

Laufenberg denied committing any crime. “I’m not a wolf.”

“We call wolf teeth the murder weapon. Your wolf strap is in custody, so we know where you keep your wolf teeth.”

“The DA won’t allow it.”

“Böxenwolf evidence isn’t admissible in court, but we have circumstantial evidence of many of the crimes without mentioning böxenwolves. We have adequate proof of enough crimes to imprison you. It’s better for your case if you confess now.”

“I don’t have anything to confess.”

“Whoever committed the six homicides is either a spree killer or a serial killer, and the evidence points to you,” Sheriff Jordan said.

Because none of the DNA samples from the bite wounds returned conclusive results, Sheriff Jordan required a confession. He pressured Laufenberg without violating his civil rights.

Schuster had not told Stephanie or Megan about proof of böxenwolves, and Megan did not understand why Kevin switched from their side to Corey’s, who confessed to being Dennis Laufenberg’s accomplice. Wondering if their knowledge might affect the investigation, Schuster asked Sheriff Jordan for permission to tell them.

Sheriff Jordan said, “No, they won’t believe you, and it will just upset them. Footage and photographs can be faked, so they need to watch it through the two-way glass.”

“Will Ms. Brown even agree to transfigure again?” Schuster asked.

“Yeah, because she thinks she looks too crazy. She passed a polygraph test. I didn’t encourage her to be hypnotized, but she was anyway. In them, she gave the same account she gave me. A polygraph test and hypnosis can’t be used in court, so maybe she thinks a public transfiguration can. It probably won’t. Also, I want you to see her transfigure and say whether or not it is what you saw on March 12.”

“Okey-dokey.”

“Have you found another job yet?”

“No one in Wisconsin is hiring right now, but I’ll keep looking.”

“Deputy Terry says he is going to retire in July.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“We need another deputy with all the investigations, and Wolftown doesn’t have much to do on desk duty. You know Dennis Laufenberg, so you could be useful to his cases. You can apply now if you want.”

“I appreciate the offer.”

Stephanie told Schuster to apply, and the next day, Schuster quit the Wolftown Police Department and became a Wilde County Deputy. Within days, Stephanie relaxed.

“I’m still involved in the cases,” Schuster said.

“Yeah, but the deputies responded when you requested assistance, twice,” Stephanie said.

Schuster’s arms were healing, but they prevented him from patrolling. He completed some training.

Somewhat dubiously, because of the contents, Sheriff Jordan told Schuster to type up one of Peter Angua’s journals. He warned Schuster that Peter Angua wrote about him and Stephanie, but Schuster completed the work anyway. The journals disturbed him, which motivated him; sometimes in the worst passages, he typed out of hate or anger.

Sheriff Jordan told Schuster to ask his contacts about Stephen Horn’s connection to Laufenberg—sometimes people preferred speaking to him and Foster over other law enforcement officials. Schuster found one lead, but it resulted in nothing.

Although Corey confessed to serious crimes as Dennis Laufenberg’s accomplice, Sheriff Jordan considered her a victim of Dennis Laufenberg. He investigated her accusations. The journals provided evidence, but many of the crimes occurred in wolf form. Dennis Laufenberg denied participation, but long ago, he abandoned the red herring that Corey committed crimes against her.

Kevin wondered how to describe the crimes in court, and he assured Corey he would.

Finally, Schuster was allowed to patrol, his favorite aspect of law enforcement. He soon patrolled alone, which intimidated him, but he adjusted to it. He and another deputy in the same area were zone partners and, if necessary, responded to each other immediately. Their vehicles ran well, and Wilde County had enough vehicles for the number of patrolling deputies; Wolftown police officers partnered or walked because of a lack of functional vehicles.

Handwriting analysis of Peter Angua’s journals and Dennis Laufenberg’s known handwriting showed that he wrote the Peter Angua journals.

Schuster, Foster, Sheriff Jordan, and other people knew that Dennis Laufenberg journaled, but they found none about his human, unboxenwolf life. Sheriff Jordan suspected they contained incriminating information, and he burned them.

When Kevin noticed Sheriff Jordan considered böxenwolves a distinct possibility, he told Lang, and they alerted the böxenwolves. Some of Wolftown’s law-abiding böxenwolves offered their anonymous assistance to the investigation.

Officer Danny Lang suspected that Dennis Laufenberg owned a wolf strap, possibly stolen when böxenwolves turned them in during the Satan Panic. Through the wolf attacks, Lang monitored the problem as well as he could, although officially, the police did not investigate böxenwolves. The official stance conflicted with Corey’s idea that Laufenberg intended to blame the attacks on a böxenwolf. When she pointed out the contradiction to him, he objected to her objection and refused to elaborate.

Lang began surreptitiously gathering evidence about böxenwolves when Suzanne Giese brought in a wolf strap, which she found tangled deep in a boxwood bush. She had photographed the bush before removing the strap. Lang and Sheriff Jordan believed somebody placed it in the bush because boxwood bushes’ stiff, thick leaves prevented entanglement, but the wolf strap wrapped around the bushes, and one end was next to the trunk.

There was one man’s dress shoe under the bush, and it had a wolf bite mark in it, but nobody reported a shoe-related wolf or large dog incident. The marks matched Corey’s böxenwolf bite impressions, and DNA on the shoe matched Laufenberg. He had told her to plant the wolf's strap in the bush, but she hoped somebody would keep the shoe as evidence and identify it.

Vernon Luedtke refused to take the wolf strap as evidence and told Suzanne Giese the shoe was Happy Howlers’ problem. Wayne considered the shoe useful data, but Happy Howlers could not process it. He claimed law enforcement ignored the shoe.

Corey said that a supervisor asked Laufenberg if the shoe was important. He wondered where it came from and angrily suspected she had left it. Before Laufenberg seriously hurt Corey, Tyler Wilson said he had menaced somebody and stolen the shoe. Corey thought he saved her life.

Lang thought Laufenberg had motive to wreak havoc and kill, and that he could successfully disguise the attacks as wolf attacks or blame a böxenwolf, or muddle the case beyond a reasonable doubt, or possibly confuse the matters so much, the charges were dropped.

Every encounter with Abel, which Lang knew about from inside the police station and in a position to observe Dennis Laufenberg, occurred when Dennis Laufenberg was not in the police station and was unavailable.

So, Lang secretly requested böxenwolves to shelter in City Hall, under the condition nobody said he warned them; being inside a police station was the best alibi he could think of. Laufenberg hated their presence but did not evict them.

Lang and Kevin never told the böxenwolves knew who Lang suspected, and Kevin and Lang had not discussed it amongst themselves until Sheriff Jordan managed the wolf hunt.

The böxenwolves hesitated to assist Sheriff Jordan, but recent events in Wolftown concerned them. Kevin became the anonymous böxenwolves’ spokesmen, and Lang became an unofficial, secretive liaison between the Sheriff’s Department and the böxenwolves. Lang had never transfigured into an animal, but Kevin transfigured once into a wolf. They simply knew who to speak with.

The information from the böxenwolves made sense to Sheriff Jordan, but he struggled to verify it. From Peter Angua’s journals, Sheriff Jordan possibly learned the böxenwolves’ identities, but he did not mention it. Dr. Paulsen studied the details and considered them reasonable.

The böxenwolves Sheriff Jordan questioned stated that most people considered the monstrous böxenwolf form socially unacceptable.

Dr. Paulsen thought that the form could explain the Beast of Bray Road or the Michigan Dogman, to play a practical joke. Sheriff Jordan did not investigate whether or not Dennis Laufenberg was connected to them. Years later, John found no connection between them and Dennis Laufenberg, but also found nothing that ruled him out.

If the böxenwolf case failed, Schuster thought Laufenberg would spend years imprisoned on some charge. He considered it better than nothing, temporarily. Schuster worried he would re-offend.

Sheriff Jordan and Dr. Paulsen scraped together their own money for a trip to Wolftown; Dennis Laufenberg’s journal excerpts convinced them. Dr. Paulsen and a German-English interpreter stayed at Sheriff Jordan’s house.

Dr. Paulsen and Sheriff Jordan spent days in the sewers timing events of the wolf hunt, with Dr. Paulsen transfiguring between human and wolf forms. Their timings reasonably matched the wolf hunt.

Sheriff Jordan worried the böxenwolf theory would cause Megan, Miranda, and the family members of other victims to doubt the investigation. Of the relatives, Megan and Miranda already had more data about the attacks than the other relatives. Megan and Miranda would notice strange details or omitted information.

Schuster predicted that Megan required evidence—if she saw a böxenwolf transfigure, she would consider the idea that a person, instead of a wolf, killed Foster.

Sheriff Jordan thought Miranda might have seen a böxenwolf transfiguration and not reported it.

John returned to Wilde County to identify Corey, and Miranda visited for the first time. She stayed with seven-months-pregnant Megan, while John would drive hours home the same day.

A deputy sat behind Megan’s chair to catch her if she fainted, and Miranda sat in a wheelchair, and John and Schuster stood behind them. Again, Schuster looked tense.

Miranda shrieked. Between the shock of Corey’s transfiguration and Megan’s pregnancy acid reflux, she vomited. John looked for a trash can, and the deputy grabbed it, but Megan retrieved a motion sickness bag from her purse.

“Megan, I’m supposed to watch her,” Schuster said, but he gathered Megan’s hair back.

“It’s fine,” she coughed.

Corey transfigured into a human again, and staring at her, Miranda said, “I can’t watch.”

“Did you identify her?” Vice Deputy Swan asked John and Schuster.

“I didn’t see it all, but it’s what she did,” John said.

Schuster gave a more detailed answer, then knelt by Megan. “Sorry, I had to watch.”

“I know. It’s fine,” she said.

John thought Schuster had the same expression and body language as on March 10.

“She hates transfiguring into a böxenwolf, so I had to pay attention the first time.”

“That’s what it’s called?” Megan asked, as John coughed awkwardly and stared at his shoes.

Schuster nodded.

Miranda and Megan checked on each other, and Vice Deputy Swan left and re-entered the room.

“What’s it called?” Megan asked.

“Transfiguring into a böxenwolf,” Schuster said.

“She’ll do it again. Watch, please, sir,” Vice Deputy Swan said.

“Did you see that when Zach died?” Megan asked.

“Laufenberg had already transfigured into a wolf at the time. It makes him heal quickly. He healed before I could kill him. I tried.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Kevin needs to talk to you about the transfiguration into a böxenwolf.”

In the hall, Stephanie asked Schuster, “Did something happen to you?”

“Nothing. I’m okay. The evidence is just unpleasant to watch again,” he said, trying to smile. “You’ll see the photographs in a while.”

Stephanie fussed over Megan for several seconds, and she and Miranda made small talk until Megan returned from the restroom.

“Feel better?” Miranda asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” Megan said. “It’s the pregnancy.”

Sheriff Jordan asked Miranda into his office.

At Megan’s and Sheriff Jordan’s request, Schuster accompanied Megan to the discussion with Kevin. Sheriff Jordan hoped Kevin’s explanation would restore Megan’s respect for Kevin.

Kevin explained that he defended Corey because of his experience with böxenwolves and because he thought her testimony would convict Laufenberg. Megan compared it to the United States allying with the Soviet Union, but she accepted Kevin’s decision.

“What if it isn’t enough to convict him?” Megan asked.

“He won’t be charged until we have extremely strong evidence,” Sheriff Jordan said. “Unfortunately, there’s a chance we won’t be able to charge him for homicide, but I’m convinced he is guilty, and we will continue the investigation.”

Later, Miranda said, it was the same thing he had told her.

Unlike Megan, Schuster thought Stephanie required a warning before seeing a böxenwolf transfiguration; he accurately predicted a still photograph from the footage would disturb her too much to watch the video. Stephanie believed in Schuster due to her complete trust in him.

Soon after Laufenberg’s arrest, Schuster and Stephanie decided to wait one year to apply for adoption. They felt too busy and stressed, but tried to cope with it well.

Adoption agencies asked about Schuster and Stephanie’s jobs and interviewed coworkers. In theory, a deputy might be a good father, but Schuster’s overtime could indicate overwork and inattention to home life. Stephanie thought he would find another serious problem later and continue working.

Schuster and Stephanie worried that because of their opinions about böxenwolves, the foster parent process and adoption agencies would consider them unsuitable parents. However, they became foster parents, and across eighteen years, they adopted four children statistically less likely to be adopted and had two biological children.

Megan delivered her and Foster’s son on July 13, 2000, with Stephanie in the delivery room and Schuster on patrol or in the waiting room. She named her son Mitchell, a name she hated and Foster loved, with Zachary as a middle name. Other than the doctor, Megan asked Schuster to be the first man to hold him.

On August 24, 2000, the Department of Criminal Investigation filed its charge sheet of Laufenberg’s corruption. Megan heard the news on the radio, whooped, and startled Mitchell awake.

The reporter said, “Off-duty police work done by former Wolftown Police Department Officers Billy Schuster and Zachary Foster provided the initial information necessary to begin a formal investigation.”

Megan soothed Mitchell and told him to listen to the news about his father.

The report mentioned Zachary Foster’s death, but no connection to the böxenwolves; the media and public rarely connected them.

The lead investigator from the Department of Criminal Investigation, Captain Judy Beck, told Schuster that he and Foster followed most leads accurately, which surprised him. He felt like he and Foster normally guessed. Captain Beck considered their methods thorough and sensible, and their office verified most of the evidence Schuster and Foster collected.

“It’s because of Foster,” Schuster said.

“You held your ground, too. Be sure to tell his baby about him,” Captain Beck said.

“Okey-dokey.”

Waiting for laboratory results, Sheriff Jordan reminded Laufenberg that on March 2, Wilde County distributed a flyer showing Joel Block as a missing person.

“There is a flyer of Joel Block hanging up on the bulletin board. It has a Post-it note that tells the Wolftown Police Department not to participate in his missing persons search. It is your handwriting in a blue pen on a yellow Post-it note, with your partial fingerprint on the sticky part of the Post-it note. There is your fingerprint partly on the flyer and partly on the Post-it note. The handwriting matches samples of your handwriting. It’s signed C. P. V. L.”

“I don’t remember writing the Post-it note on March 2,” Laufenberg said.

“When did you write it?”

“If I wrote it, I forgot specifically that I wrote it. If I did, it would have been during the wolf attacks. I was planning how to distribute resources,” Laufenberg said.

“The police department was asked for assistance in the search, and it was refused.”

“When?”

“March 3. Derrick Charles asked every day until March 9 for assistance, and it was refused every time. You wouldn’t speak to him on March 8 or 9.”

“We were busy. I told you on the phone.”

“You were pretty defensive. Wolftown normally provides a lot of assistance for missing persons. If you’re a tourist town, you need the tourists to feel protected. Is there a reason you didn’t want to find Joel Block?”

“No. I don’t even know him.”

“He works at the BP Station, and you own a car, and live in town, and there is one gas station inside the city limits.”

“I couldn’t pick Joel Block out of a line-up.”

“He wears a coonskin hat in winter. He made it out of roadkill.”

“Disgusting.”

Knowing that Laufenberg assumed the Vasquezes were Mexican, and that he disapproved of Central and South American people’s existences, Sheriff Jordan said, “By the way, Miranda Vasquez is a third-generation American of Puerto Rican descent, and Sergio Vasquez was born in the U.S. to Peruvian immigrant parents.”

“Who are they?” Laufenberg asked.

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Phelps says that on March 8, you called him and told him if there were other missing persons cases, he needed to put a Post-it note on the flyers. You told him to copy the note on Joel Block’s flyer.”

“I was planning how to distribute resources.”

“What were the resources for?”

“The flood and the wolf hunt. What do you expect?”

“Floods cause people to go missing, but you didn’t want to search for people?”

“People would be in their homes.”

“But they weren’t. There were members of the Wolf Guard outside, and there were reports that Tyler Wilson, Corey Brown, the Vasquezes, Joel Block, and Nancy Holst were missing. At least Nancy Holst was found safe on Sunday.”

“We didn’t have the resources to search for people in the woods. I wasn’t referring to flood victims.” Laufenberg voiced his opinions about Sheriff Jordan questioning him when the Department of Criminal Investigation had already investigated him.

“I’m not calling it official documentation. I’m not judging you about whether or not you should have written the note.” In his head, Sheriff Jordan added, aloud. “I just want to know whether or not you had knowledge of the Vasquezes’ existences before today.”

“I’ve never heard of them before today.”

“Did you know of a Hispanic or Latino couple attacked in the woods before today?”

“No.”

“Did you know that a couple was attacked in the woods before today?”

“No.”

“Did you know that a couple was attacked before today?”

“Were you the authority that first received a report about an attacked couple?”

“No.”

“Did you tell somebody to wait 24 hours before reporting the attacked couple?”

“No.”

Sheriff Jordan repeated the questions, replacing couple with man and then with woman. Dennis Laufenberg answered no.

“So why did Deputy Phelps say that on March 9, you told him there would be a flyer faxed in about a couple attacked and separated in the woods?”

“I didn’t.”

“You called his home from your home. Nobody had reported the Vasquezes missing at that point. Miranda Vasquez was found on March 10 and reported Sergio missing on March 10. How did you know a couple was attacked and missing before it was reported to the authorities?”

“I didn’t. If they were missing in the woods after a wild animal attack in this weather, I’d start an investigation immediately.”

“How do you know who or what attacked them?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“We don’t have killers around here,” Laufenberg said. “The bears will be waking up soon, and we have coyotes, cougars, and wolves.”

“And since the 1900s, coyotes, bears, and cougars haven’t killed anybody or caused life-threatening bodily harm anybody in Wilde County. So you knew that there were wolves around here, and that the wolves weren’t afraid of people and were attacking them. You knew two people had been attacked in the woods. Wayne McDowell says that the wolves did go into the woods. Isn’t that enough reason to start an investigation immediately?”

“I didn’t know about the people who had been attacked.”

“With the wolf attacks, why didn’t you begin assisting the search for Joel Block?”

“Realistically, it’s a body recovery after a week.”

Not in his case, and not always with unprepared people, Sheriff Jordan thought. He asked, “How do you know, when you and other members of the police department never enquired about his case?”

“Because of the floods. The missing persons have nothing to do with the wolf attack.”

“How do you know?”

“Because all the wolf attacks occurred inside the city limits.”

Sheriff Jordan said, “Phelps said you told him to wait for somebody to send you the fax, and then he would write the Post-it note. We found a message pad page in Vincent’s home. It has an indentation from someone writing on a sheet above it. The sheet above it was torn out. The page has Vasquez’s name on it. It’s misspelled, but it’s phonetically the same name. Why does the note have the Vasquez’s name on it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it came from an upper page, or he wrote it after seeing the flyer.”

“The name was on the page found in the dump and as an indent at Phelp’s house.”

“I don’t know why. Maybe he had an anonymous tip.”

“Phelps didn’t want to talk about the phone call,” Sheriff Jordan said. “He denied any knowledge of the Vasquezes, and he says he didn’t even remember hanging up the flyer and the Post-it note.”

“Then he is telling the truth, and our stories corroborate.”

“Then he said he was so busy, or maybe he forgot.” Despite having a long phone conversation with me about them, Sheriff Jordan added to himself. “Did you forget?”

“No. I gave you plenty of reasons why I wouldn’t look for the Vasquezes and Joel Block.”

“People who know you forget things all of a sudden, and we have evidence that Phelps has covered for you before,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Maybe Corey and Tyler had something to do with Joel and the Vasquezes, and they planted evidence,” Laufenberg said.

Sheriff Jordan strategically mentioned Corey Brown, since her name tended to make Laufenberg less cooperative. “Corey Brown says you said, on March 6, that there were two Hispanic people near the camp. On March 7, Corey Brown says you said, I’m quoting, ’the Spics aren’t a problem anymore”

Dennis Laufenberg already seemed angry, but Sheriff Jordan heard him use various slurs and attributed his mood to Corey Brown betraying Laufenberg.

“I’m not quoting now. You killed or attempted to kill Miranda and Sergio Vasquez so they wouldn’t find your campsite. Corey Brown doesn’t know what exactly you meant, but I’m going to find out.”

Dennis argued for some time and ranted about Corey. “Why would I go from just calling people like them ‘Spics’ to killing them?” he asked.

“Officer Henry says that you called him at home on March 8. You asked if a woman had damaged calf muscles and no supplies in cold, rainy weather, how long would she survive in the woods?” Sheriff Jordan said.

“I didn’t call him on March 8, but I asked him earlier in March about Jo—people’s chances for survival.”

“So you did investigate missing persons cases?”

“No. I was asking a general question because people go missing during floods.”

“Why would a flood specifically injure a leg and not other body parts?”

“It was an example.”

“Why did you say, ‘She,’ not ‘he’?”

“Women are weaker.”

“This is what Miranda Vasquez’s leg looked like when she reached the hospital.” Sheriff Jordan showed him a color photograph.

Laufenberg glanced at the photograph and pushed it away. “I don’t recognize her leg.”

“And she did almost die because of the problems Officer Henry predicted. When he asked, ‘Is the artery bleeding?’ you said, ‘No.’” Sheriff Jordan pointed to Miranda’s leg. “That’s her artery, by the way. Why would you be that specific about a general question?”

“I was trying to understand the hypothetical scenario. Anyway, he was guessing. What does he know about hypothermia? He was in Vietnam treating battle wounds.”

And he has been the EMT-Police in a northern state since 1976, regardless of when the term EMT-police was first used, Sheriff Jordan thought.

“He’s probably getting senile,” Dennis Laufenberg said.

“Why didn’t you ask him about other hypothetical scenarios?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“I couldn’t think of others.”

“He suggested some, but you hung up.”

“I was busy.”

Sheriff Jordan thought Dennis Laufenberg had returned to the Vasquez’s camp, but discovered Miranda Vasquez had left the tree. With limited time, Laufenberg debated whether or not to hunt her and kill her or allow nature to kill her. He probably changed his mind during his original plan.

Sheriff Jordan said, “We know Miranda survived, but Sergio’s body was gone. She says she heard him die. He was screaming and stopped screaming. She says a wolf attacked them, but the wolf didn’t eat Sergio. The wolf left before eating him. Killing and leaving meat is unusual for a carnivore. Miranda says his body was in the campsite when she left, but by the time we got there, it was gone.”

“It’s always the spouse,” Laufenberg said. “Maybe if it was a wolf attack, she was one of the people who trained a wolf.”

“And she ordered the wolf to bite her leg so badly she could not walk out of the woods?”

“It turned on her.”

“Miranda Vasquez says that Sergio tried to save her.”

“To draw attention away from her.”

“What attention and why?”

“She was trying to draw attention from the fact that she killed him by making him look like a good husband.”

“You said you didn’t know anything about the Vasquezes. Why do you say it’s a fact that she killed him?”

They continued for some time. After Laufenberg denied forcing Corey and Tyler to bury Joel Block, Sheriff Jordan asked where Dennis Laufenberg hid Sergio Vasquez’s body. He denied burying him. Sheriff Jordan asked about leaving Sergio near an animal den.

“All right. How else would you dispose of a body?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“I wouldn’t hide a body,” Dennis Laufenberg said.

“Then what instructions would you give somebody if you wanted the person to hide a body?”

“I wouldn’t give instructions to bury a body.”

“What would you do if you were in a situation where you had to dispose of a body?”

“I wouldn’t be in one.”

“What would you do if you were around a dead body?”

“I’d fulfill my duties as a police officer. I did while investigating the murders.”

“Would you use your position as a member of law enforcement to hide a body?”

“No.”

“Would you use your position as a member of law enforcement to conceal the fact that somebody died?”

“No.”

“Would you use your position as a member of law enforcement to conceal a crime?”

“No.”

“You have with crimes other than homicide, and I have circumstantial evidence that you used your position as a member of law enforcement to conceal three homicides.”

Dennis Laufenberg objected, and his volume and number of profanities increased, and Sheriff Jordan listened patiently, without reacting.

“You are a suspect in the homicides,” Sheriff Jordan said, in his same, calm, firm tone, and provoked Laufenberg. Sheriff Jordan waited between sentences, sometimes repeating them until he thought Laufenberg heard him. “I’d like to think it’s just an investigation conducted by law enforcement officers inexperienced with homicide. We live in a low-crime area. Sergio Vasquez and Joel Block were probably attacked by a wolf in the woods, and Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn were probably attacked by a wolf in their houses, and we know that Suzanne Giese, Zachary Foster, Barbara Lubens, and John Sutton were attacked by wolves.”

“I’m not a wolf,” Dennis Laufenberg said.

“You can turn into a wolf,” Sheriff Jordan said, and Dennis Laufenberg one-sidedly escalated the discussion. Between and over him, Sheriff Jordan said,

“I’m not talking about the monster form I saw in the hospital. You look like an actual wolf. You bit Officer Foster so many times and with enough variations in force that his body is being compared to the other victims. And murderers have been convicted on less evidence than we have.”

“You won’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” Laufenberg said.

“Does that mean you committed the homicides?”

Dennis Laufenberg denied it and berated the stupidity of the idea that a human could turn into a wolf.

On Schuster’s day off, Wayne called Schuster to ask, “Is Tara Schuster your relative?”

“My aunt. What happened to her?”

“Nothing. Can you tell her to leave Happy Howlers alone?”

“I have no authority over her,” Schuster said.

“You caught a böxenwolf, but you can’t do anything about your own family?”

“I mean, I have legal authority, but it doesn’t work with this unless the judge issues a gag order or she violates a restraining order or trespasses or something. Is she there with you?”

“No. And I’m not calling the police about it.”

“I’m a police officer.”

“I meant 911. They have better things to do.”

“If it’s an issue, file a report.”

“That’s what she keeps doing.”

Schuster thought Zach would say, “Sometimes, I really hate the First Amendment.”

“We thought if the public knew the issues, there would be public pressure to investigate thoroughly.”

“I know you had to do that, but she’s asking me about wolves now.”

“Complain to her editor.”

“I just told her that Suzanne needs a liver lobe, and now she wants to know about her wolf attack.”

“Isn’t that what reporters do? Isn’t it a natural consequence of involving them?”

“Now you sound like Nancy.”

Sheriff Jordan had never investigated a murder, and his only other homicide had been a clear case of homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle. He knew and followed the proper procedures for a murder, while occasionally, the Wolftown Police Department defied common sense.

The Wolftown Police Department responded to the crime scenes for hours, but there was less evidence than Sheriff Jordan expected. Unfortunately, the floodwaters ruined Stephen Horn’s living room, where he died, and Ricky Hanson’s house had been professionally cleaned twenty-nine hours after his wife discovered his body. She returned home before the blood dried, but was playing bingo in Thurber during his murder.

Mrs. Hanson said that the day police responded to his house, Dennis Laufenberg gave her business cards to the cleaning services, specifically recommended one, and offered to make the appointment for her, giving her one less thing to worry about. She accepted the offer. He also said he would release Ricky Hanson’s body within two days. He asked which funeral home or crematorium she preferred, and with the injuries on his body, he suggested a crematorium.

The owner of a cleaning service said that two days before Ricky Hanson’s murder, a man asked too-detailed questions about their suicide clean-up services. He said that a relative cut her wrists, but regretted it, and splattered blood on various surfaces. The Sheriff’s Department traced the call to a Wilde County payphone and discovered that nobody had committed suicide in Wilde County or the neighboring county for months.

None of the Wolftown Police Department’s murder questioning satisfied Sheriff Jordan, and some evidence had been mishandled. He noticed that Jeff Klug’s alibi made sense and that the attacks continued while Jeff Klug was detained. The evidence for Jeff Klug’s involvement was that he owned wolfjägers, he had been at Ricky Hanson’s house the day of the murder, and he bowled with Stephen Horn.

Sheriff Jordan released Jeff Klug, but continued to investigate him. Corey and Jeff Klug could not identify each other, and Jeff Klug did not know Tyler Wilson or, except for his face and voice, Dennis Laufenberg.

Nobody saw Ricky Hanson’s house during his murder, but around the time of the murders, while walking her dog, Elizabeth Wiese saw Dennis Laufenberg in his police uniform and carrying a brown duffel bag. Laufenberg stopped to give Button a treat, but the dog growled at him. Everybody knew Dennis Laufenberg kept dog treats and children’s candy in his pockets.

Dennis Laufenberg declared Ricky Hanson and Jeff Klug’s deaths murders immediately, with little analysis, and dismissed suggestions otherwise. Sheriff Jordan thought murder might be reasonable with the second murder, but the first could be a freak animal attack.

Laufenberg bought a new brown duffel bag and a new police uniform days before the murders, which Sheriff Jordan considered normal behavior.

From the few photographs of the blood splatter and how little blood Brenda Groves found in Ricky Hanson’s veins, Sheriff Jordan thought that if Laufenberg bit Ricky Hanson to death, the blood would ruin his clothes. He attacked in daylight. If someone saw him walk back and forth from Ricky Hanson’s house in two sets of clothing, the person would notice the change of clothes. Sheriff Jordan sent the photographs for analysis.

Sheriff Jordan practically begged for yet another search warrant, scrounged a bottle of luminol from the Department of Criminal Investigation, found the duffle bag and the shoes Laufenberg wore with his uniform, sprayed them and the crime scene with luminol, photographed them, and sent photographs for analysis.

Stephen Horn’s insomniac across-the-street neighbor, Diane Carey, said that she saw a heavyset man and a massive dog entering Stephen’s house. Dennis Laufenberg and Tyler Wilson had no alibi for the time of the murder; Corey did. Diane Carey’s report caused the theory that a man was murdered by a large dog or a wolf. She did not know if he carried a duffel bag or wore a uniform.

Ricky Hanson, an accountant, intended to testify against Laufenberg, but Stephen Horn seemed completely unconnected to Laufenberg, Ricky Hanson, Schuster, Foster, Corey Brown, and Tyler Wilson. In such a small town and a county with a population of 18,000 people, Stephen Horn probably knew somebody seriously involved with or affected by Wolftown’s problems, but Sheriff Jordan found no definite motive for murdering him.

Corey thought that Laufenberg murdered Stephen Horn as a diversion from Ricky Hanson’s murder. Judging from her receipts, she accurately predicted both murders.

The Wolftown Police Department did not send the bite injuries on Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn for analysis, although Wayne recommended it before the department accepted the wolf-murder-weapon hypothesis. The department also forbade his analysis, but considered him an expert, which made him uncomfortable.

At some point, the Wolftown Police Department misplaced the bite wound evidence. Sheriff Jordan asked the Hanson and Horn families for permission to exhume their relatives’ bodies, and they agreed.

In retrospect, Mrs. Hanson thought Dennis Laufenberg had almost pressured her into cremation.

Laufenberg attended Ricky Hanson’s funeral and guaranteed he would find the murderer, but his attention to their families ceased after the funerals. Consistently, he interacted less with the Horns than with the Hansons.

Embalming and decomposition distorted the bites, but they were as deep and powerful as victims of the wolf attacks. Bites on Foster’s body and Ricky Hanson’s body showed an equal amount of force, even scraping bones. Bites on Stephen Horn, Joel Block, and Shane Greenbough matched. Schuster’s bites fell somewhere between those and Foster and Ricky Hanson. Miranda’s, Suzanne’s, John Sutton’s (the patroller), and Barbara Luben’s bites were different from the men’s, but the patroller’s and Barbara Luben’s matched, and the wolf had ripped Miranda and Suzanne’s flesh. The wolf primarily bit people’s spines, necks, sides, and hamstrings. Wolves rarely hamstrung their prey, and the backs’ bites affected spinal cords.

If the wolf was a böxenwolf, Schuster thought he realized that Schuster would continue shooting unless the böxenwolf disabled his arms. The böxenwolf could not bite through his armor, and Schuster shielded his neck.

Because Corey said that Tyler killed two pets—Benjamin Bunny and Button—and tampered with the evidence and Benjamin Bunny’s scene of the crime, Sheriff Jordan asked if she knew where they were, but she had no idea. Because their bite injuries could be compared to Stephen Horn, despite feeling ridiculous, Sheriff Jordan asked members of the public to call the Sheriff’s Department if they had information about Benjamin Bunny or Button. Nobody did, and the matter upset Benjamin Bunny’s six-year-old owner, which bothered Sheriff Jordan.

The investigation waited weeks for the laboratory results; the testing placed Wilde County’s law enforcement budget in a deficit.

Few businesses and people in Wilde County owned surveillance cameras, and they tended to record over tapes. Deputies attempted to track down everybody within view of the payphones used by the suspects during the wolf attacks and murders. One person identified Dennis Laufenberg at the time he called the cleaning service.

Sheriff Jordan called every forensics lab and the University of Madison, asking if Peter Angua or Dennis Laufenberg asked for advice on hiding a body.

Sheriff Jordan investigated various leads in Joel Block and Sergio Vasquez’s cases, but Laufenberg seemed like the most likely suspect. He also investigated people completely separate from Wolftown and its problems, without result.

Miranda, Megan, and Sheriff Jordan did everything possible to recover Sergio’s body, but Sheriff Jordan knew that the woods were too large of a search area. Megan, Wayne, Nancy, John, Stephanie, Mr. Marshall, Schuster, Lang, Karl Henry, most of the Wolf Guard, and other people volunteered for searches.

Corey, Tyler, and Laufenberg buried Joel block six feet underground, but Sheriff Jordan thought that if Laufenberg buried Sergio alone, he had dug a shallower grave. With the dirt still loose, he hoped the flood had eroded it, or maybe searchers could find bare dirt. However, Sheriff Jordan thought the search required cadaver dogs, which worked slowly and expensively.

Alternatively, Laufenberg could have left Sergio near a carnivorous animal’s den; Corey claimed Laufenberg considered scavenger predation one way to hide a body. He might have thought he only needed to move the body far from the campsite, and not necessarily to a den. Someone who found Sergio would believe an animal killed him.

Sheriff Jordan doubted Laufenberg lugged Sergio ten miles to Whitewater River, but it was deep and rapid enough to carry away a body. In spring, it rose high from snowmelt and flowed dangerously fast and rough. Nobody matching Sergio’s description was found downstream.

Laufenberg had limited time and energy, and somebody had cleaned up the Vasquezes’ campsite. If Laufenberg tampered with the campsite, Sheriff Jordan doubted he had enough time to also thoroughly dispose of Sergio’s body. The campsite could be more important because the joint human-and-wolf activity could be compared to Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn’s murders.

While average rain showers and snowmelt potentially destroyed more evidence, Sheriff Jordan hoped it eroded a shallow grave.

Finally, on March 29, the Sheriff’s Department found a body, approximately one mile from the Vasquezes’ campsite, and dumped in a hole barely large enough to cover the person.

The man decayed beyond determining the cause of death, but he had not been shot or burned, and his bones had not been broken. Holes and rips in his shirt and jeans indicated that an animal with sharp teeth bit the back of his thigh and his spine. The Sheriff’s Department found no identification or distinguishing marks.

Within a week, dental records identified him as Sergio. The Sheriff’s Department saved his clothes as evidence and released his body to Miranda.

Miranda regained 80% use of her leg, despite doctors' suggesting amputation.

She and Megan became friends, and they longed for Laufenberg’s trial: Miranda to convict him of murder and assault, and Megan would enjoy watching him tangle up in the evidence and convict himself while defending himself.

Megan insisted on raising Junior in the house she and Foster chose. Due to Corey’s arrest and Joel Block’s death, Megan applied to two full-time job openings. She felt guilty about applying for them, but for her and Junior to scrape by, she needed a full-time job, her part-time one, the police widow’s pension, and a few emergencies.

In the BP Station, within biking distance of her house, Megan knew she would see Joel Block’s wife, but Walmart was a thirty-seven-minute drive away, both directions, or almost one hour and forty-five minutes if the road flooded and she took the bridge. The BP station hired Megan.

Wayne resigned himself to cryptozoologists, conspiracy theorists, folklorists, and “true crime weirdos” (including Tara Schuster), but he only responded to questions from law enforcement. Much later, when John became a cryptozoologist, to John’s surprise, Wayne did not comment on it.

Schuster and Stephanie’s wedding stationery arrived the Tuesday after Foster’s death, and included his name as best man. Choosing another overwhelmed Schuster, and so would looking at his side of the wedding party. They debated discussing it with Megan, but Megan mentioned the problem to them and offered to help. Stephanie suggested, since choosing Foster over Schuster’s brother caused family drama, asking his brother, and having a cousin be a groomsman. It suited everybody well enough.

John saw Schuster smile for the first time at his and Stephanie’s wedding, although he and Schuster had not seen each other since March 10. Stephanie ensured he had vegan food; she objected to letting guests feel hungry. When asked why they had a seat, she said, “Some people found they weren’t able to make it at the last minute. No wolf or police talk.”

They had an enjoyable wedding, and Megan thought everybody needed a happy day.

Wayne hired a replacement biologist, and John returned to his usual work at the Nature Protection Society.

Sheriff Jordan waited impatiently for the laboratory results, and as a deputy typed up Peter Angua’s journals, he read the pages in the evenings and on his weekends. Soon, they disgusted him to the point he stopped bringing them home.

The journals’ detailed entries stopped approximately when Schuster and Foster’s investigation into Dennis Laufenberg showed results, but throughout the years, entries indicated Laufenberg surveilled people who might cause trouble for him. Sheriff Jordan wondered if Laufenberg wrote an incriminating journal about them, then burned it.

Wolf experts agreed that Happy Howlers documented North American or Eurasian wolves, but they attributed inconclusive DNA results to contaminated samples. A medical diagnosis for their odd movements stumped the experts. They thought the wolves could have been habituated to people.

Wilde County authorities ruled out the wild wolf hypotheses, and ruled out that wild wolves killed Ricky Hanson and Stephen Horn.

Dr. Paulsen reviewed tapes of Corey’s movements while wearing a wolf strap. He confirmed she was a highly-skilled böxenwolf, almost indistinguishable from an injured or sick wolf, and identified her as Baker. He considered Abel and Charlie other skilled böxenwolves; if ranked in order of skill, he listed Abel, Baker, and Charlie.

Luminol showed drops of blood on the left shoe, and the analyst thought they had been polished off the shoe. The left shoe’s side and part of the floor looked as if a puddle of blood had flowed against the shoe. The right shoe stepped in a puddle of blood, and the wearer slipped on the floor and walked to the kitchen sink. The tread pattern and shoe size matched Laufenberg’s shoes.

There was no evidence of a bloody footprint outside the house, but Mrs. Hanson said there was blood in the kitchen sink and on a kitchen towel. All fingerprints in the kitchen belonged to the Hansons.

In the duffle bag, the luminol showed a few drops of blood, a thin line of blood, and a fuzzy patch of blood, as if a bloody object had been wrapped in a towel but leaked through.

Sheriff Jordan could not find the bloody towel or uniform, nor a good reason for the blood. Laufenberg said someone stole his duffel bag, but Sheriff Jordan found no evidence of it.

Corey did not know anything about Laufenberg’s uniform, towel, or duffel bag.

Sheriff Jordan wondered why Dennis Laufenberg kept the bag instead of destroying it.

In Laufenberg’s house and garbage, Sheriff Jordan found no bloody clothes, but he thought they could be destroyed, and their absence could be attributed to decluttering or disposing of them in another location.

While Sheriff Jordan satisfied himself that Laufenberg killed Ricky Hanson and Jeff Klug, if he said “a human with a wolf mouth bit them to death,” the case would be thrown out.

Unfortunately, Sheriff Jordan lacked evidence to charge Laufenberg with the murder or manslaughter of Joel Block and Sergio Vasquez. He thought he had much better evidence about Ricky Hanson and Jeff Klug’s deaths. Sheriff Jordan knew that Laufenberg was Abel, and Abel was correctly identified as the wolf that attacked Officer Foster, and, therefore, that Laufenberg killed Officer Foster. But the charge of a law enforcement officer killing another, regardless of method, could be difficult for the justice system to believe.

Laufenberg could only be tried for homicide once per victim due to double jeopardy laws.

Corey provided most of the information, but with such an unusual scenario, Sheriff Jordan hoped for a corroborating confession from Laufenberg or another culprit.

On Monday, March 13, Miranda felt well enough to speak with Sheriff Jordan over the phone.

When the wolf had bitten Miranda’s leg, it tore her calf muscles and Achilles’ tendon and exposed an artery. She hobbled through the woods without flexing her foot. A surgeon operated on her over the weekend to remove dead tissue.

Peter approached the Vasquezes’ campsite the evening before the wolf attack. Miranda felt inexplicably uneasy, and Sergio discouraged company because he and she wanted to be alone. They intentionally chose a remote location for their honeymoon. Although Peter said that they camped in a dangerous area and pointed out a better location, Miranda and Sergio stayed in their campsite. He insisted on the location change, but Sergio ended the conversation. Grudgingly, Peter left.

In the night, the wolf attacked Miranda and Sergio, and during the scuffle, the campsite caught fire. Miranda scrambled into a tree, but Sergio died.

She shivered in the tree through the night and sometimes heard an animal or strange rustling. Miranda yelled for help, thinking somebody might hear her. Later, she wondered why she thought to call.

Miranda found a couple of layers of clothes and salvaged part of her and Sergio’s food, water, the outdoors knife, and a handful of other things. She crammed her pockets, made a small bundle, carried the water, and abandoned everything else in their camps.

Although Miranda thought she knew the general direction to the river, which she intended to follow downstream, she drifted away from it.

Miranda encountered Peter again, and he seemed alarmed. Peter said that the river lay in the opposite direction, and he knew a shorter route to civilization. Disorientated and unsure of another solution, Miranda followed him. When she began staggering, Miranda and Peter stopped; he said that the route took so long because she walked slowly.

Peter carried nothing necessary in the woods and wore light clothes, but apparently understood the woods. The day before, Peter said that he had camped for two or three days, but when he found her, he told Miranda that he had hiked into the woods early in the morning.

Eventually, Peter left Miranda in the woods to search for firewood or a better place to camp. She waited for hours.

Deciding he would not return, Miranda limped in his general direction until she collapsed. Derrick Charles and the wolf hunt discovered her.

By the time the Sheriff’s Department responded to the campsite, just before the flood began, somebody had scuffed up the burned ground and laid branches and leaves on top and disguised the footprints and pawprints. The unburned gear disappeared.

The Sheriff’s Department returned to the scene on Monday, checking for anything they missed that survived. They found nothing useful.

Sheriff Jordan and the County Executive had promised Miranda Vasquez that once the flood ended, they would continue searching for Sergio Vasquez, and made the same promise to Erica Block, since her husband, Joel, was missing in the woods. They had not expected Wolftown’s problems to escalate as much as they had—the Sheriff’s Department could not search and respond to the rest of Wolftown’s problems simultaneously. Wilde County (not Wolftown) assisted other places’ investigations as much as possible, and Wilde County crimes rarely resulted in asking for a favor.

Still, the searches restarted early Monday morning, conducted by Derrick Charles, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and police from towns inside Wilde County, other than Wolftown. They searched on Monday with their previous information.

Sheriff Jordan thought Sergio would be within a few miles of the Vasquezes’ campsite, but if necessary, the Sheriff’s Department would expand its search.

Corey described the location of Joel Block’s body on Tuesday. The campsite was so far into the woods, meeting there several nights per week seemed unlikely. Corey said that she, Laufenberg, and Tyler ran as fast as wolves with the endurance of humans and reached the campsite in a couple of hours.

The Sheriff’s Department found the general area, and the county fire department found a campfire that had been covered with dirt. The dirt and ashes contained pieces of black, rigid plastic, melted or warped metal fragments, and charred bone fragments. The Sheriff’s Department excavated the campfire as well as they could and thought they found the remains of Dennis Laufenberg’s hard drive and floppy disks.

Sheriff Jordan asked better-equipped law enforcement agencies if a cadaver dog team could search the campsite. On Friday, a Department of Criminal Investigation cadaver dog team discovered Joel Block’s body, buried six feet underground, in a rectangle almost long enough for him.

One of Corey’s hairs was inside Joel’s collar. As the rainwater soaked into the ground, it destroyed fingerprints and DNA.

During Corey’s daily interview, Sheriff Jordan said, “You’ve been confessing a lot, and it’s important you continue. You’re the only person we can connect to Joel Block’s dead body. Did you kill him?”

“No. Dennis killed him.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw Dennis bite him and shoot him, and Tyler and me buried him. I tried to be respectful about it, but Dennis was pretty upset, and I had to calm him down. I put one of my hairs in Joel Block’s collar.”

“Are you sure that you are the one who placed your hair on Joel Block’s body and in David Turner’s duffel bag?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“Yeah,” Corey said.

“Most people deny putting forensic evidence on people. People have put forensic evidence on victims to blame somebody else for the crimes.”

“I did it. Laufenberg threatened me to not leave evidence on them.”

“So, you wanted to be linked to potential homicide victims with who you had possibly criminal dealings at the time they were killed?”

“Yeah.”

“On purpose? Were you coerced? Was it a suggestion from somebody?”

“No, I did it so the police would talk to me first. Then I could tell them what happened and tell Dennis Laufenberg they forced it out of me.”

Sheriff Jordan always thanked Corey for her cooperation. Just before leaving, Sheriff Jordan turned to Kevin. “Is your client paying you well enough?”

“Pro bono, but there are more important things than money,” Kevin said.

“I don’t listen to him much about the police questionings,” Corey said. “Just about the courtroom stuff. I want Dennis Laufenberg to go to jail.”

“Well, you’re keeping us busy.”

Miranda’s injuries required hospitalization for weeks in Madison. On Thursday, a deputy drove to Madison and showed her a photo line-up. She identified a photograph of Dennis Laufenberg, taken before the wolf attacks.

If Miranda identified Laufenberg correctly, Sheriff Jordan thought he transfigured into a wolf and attacked her and Sergio, who accidentally approached the böxenwolf camp. Her survival surprised him. Pretending to be concerned, he lured her down a confusing path and abandoned her in the woods.

Sheriff Jordan thought Dennis Laufenberg could have intended to hide her body by making her die as an unfortunate hiker. If someone found her months later, a medical examiner might not find a cause of death.

Corey knew very little about Sergio and Miranda Vasquez, but comparing Laufenberg’s mood on March 7 to his mood after killing Joel Block, she believed he killed them. Miranda did not recognize Corey and Tyler, and, after a great deal of questioning and examining timelines, Sheriff Jordan doubted that Corey and Tyler participated in the killing or disposal of Sergio Vasquez. Dubiously, Corey guessed Sergio’s potential burial site, and the area overlapped with the location where the wolf hunt found Miranda.

After being re-arrested for violating his bail conditions, Laufenberg claimed to be on an undercover assignment, investigating Corey and Tyler. He accused them of kidnapping him, then added that David Turner assisted them, and reworked the story to fit him in.

Sheriff Jordan thoroughly investigated the claims but found nothing with which to charge Corey, except biting Dennis Laufenberg, who refused to admit he was a böxenwolf at any point and claimed that Corey and Tyler sicced a wolf on him weeks ago.

For weeks, the Sheriff’s Department investigated anything that remotely indicated his claims, but there was no evidence for them. Sheriff Jordan searched everywhere for his medical records, but Laufenberg said Corey and Tyler threatened to bite him again if he found medical attention. Nobody except Laufenberg thought he seemed injured.

The wolf response ruled out rabid wolves.

Deputy Zimmer and members of animal control and the Department of Fish and Wildlife took paw print, bite, fur, and DNA samples from the Happy Howlers wolves.

Happy Howlers’ data had been sent to wolf experts in America, asking if they thought the wolves could be trained, wild, or sick with something other than rabies.

Eventually, the wolf response ruled out Wayne’s wolves as suspects in the wolf attacks.

As the days passed, the wolves did not return, and on March 17, the County Executive and the Sheriff’s Department considered the wolf attacks over. However, they asked people to report wolf sightings. There were no more verified wolf sightings.

Sheriff Jordan noticed that during the wolf hunt, Happy Howlers collected more forensic-like evidence and witness statements than the police. The police rarely requested data; Wayne offered it, and he wasted his time in meetings, waiting for someone to listen to him. He briefed patrol officers occasionally.

“Then Phelps got impatient, but I told them it’s because they didn’t want information until the briefings,” Wayne said. “I could have spread it out through the day, but I didn’t have an opportunity.”

Wayne recommended second opinions since the beginning of his involvement, but Laufenberg and Mayor Dwyer said Happy Howlers was sufficient.

On March 8, the Sheriff’s Department received a non-emergency call from Glenn Malone. He said that a man called him and threatened him and his family unless Glenn stopped responding to the wolf attacks. His voice sounded familiar, but Glenn could not name the caller.

During Sheriff Jordan’s investigation of the wolf hunt, he spoke with all Happy Howlers employees and Calvin Kowalski, who quit. Calvin said that a man also threatened him, hence quitting his job. The man spoke a few words, and Rebecca Austin said, “You have a wrong number,” and hung up, then took the phone off the cradle for two hours. The man did not call again.

The three calls were collect from “Peter.”

A deputy traced the phone calls to payphones, although Sheriff Jordon wondered where a böxenwolf kept his quarters.

Corey did not know about the calls, but said that Dennis Laufenberg told the böxenwolves to pack quarters in their backpacks.

Dennis Laufenberg refused to give a sample of his voice.

Karl Henry identified Corey’s voice as the young woman who warned of a wolf attack on Suzanne Giese. Considering that three other members of law enforcement and one secretary could have answered the phone, and Karl Henry was preparing to leave the station, Sheriff Jordan and Suzanne Giese believed Karl Henry had miraculously saved her life.

Sheriff Jordan thought Wayne’s work ethic scared a human culprit behind the wolf attacks.

Since Calvin refused to return to work, Wayne temporarily asked to hire John, but he asked Paula if he could volunteer for two weeks. The Nature Protection Society provided volunteer labor in emergencies. Paula agreed, but worried more than John. He thought that without further wolf attacks, the danger ended.

Daily, Sheriff Jordan spoke with Corey Brown. He asked follow-up questions or listened to her elaborate on a particular crime.

“Do you know anything about the names Peter, Lupa, and Buck?”

“They’re from books, I think. Peter Stumpp is probably Peter, but he was real. Lupa is a Roman story about a wolf raising kids, and he uses it as a reason to form a wolf pack. Buck is in a modern book about discovering how to be a wolf. Tyler liked Buck better than White Fang. I didn’t have a choice.”

According to Miranda, Peter had not given his surname.

Sheriff Jordan called Happy Howlers and asked Wayne about wolf history, literature, or other media with Peter, Lupa, and Buck. Wayne hesitantly hummed Peter and the Wolf, but he firmly named Lupa in the founding of Rome and Buck in The Call of the Wild.

“In fiction about wolves, do wolves have names that can be used as a last name?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“Maybe. Akela and Fenris. Maybe someone from the Werewolf of London, but I haven’t seen it in years. I can look up my myths about wolves. Angua would be ironic, but he’d better not.”

“Why Angua?”

“Angua is a werewolf police officer in Discworld.” He spelled her name. “I have all the books. Maybe Laufenberg remembered it.”

Schuster returned to unpaid administrative leave on Thursday, March 16. With Laufenberg out of power and authorities investigating his corruption, Schuster’s stress lowered, in a way, and he knew it would continue. Sometimes he expected to see or hear Foster.

As much as Schuster disliked desk duty, he worried about patrolling again. Wolftown citizens generally committed minor crimes, and officers normally requested back-up preemptively or as a precaution and used minimal force. Sometimes, they encountered a dangerous citizen. Officers preferred patrolling in teams, but they often patrolled alone. Schuster knew four or five officers with whom he would feel uncomfortable patrolling, but everybody involved would be forced to cope with it. The idea that Schuster might not have a partner or backup concerned him.

Still, Schuster felt more content in his job and in some ways, happier at home. But before and after every shift, but less as the weeks passed, Stephanie behaved as if she would not see him alive again. She encouraged him to continue a career in law enforcement.

For evidence of Laufenberg’s involvement in the wolf attacks, Sheriff Jordan and deputies carried out another search warrant of his house, car, computer, and storage unit, and found nothing. Corey said that there would be evidence in his storage unit, although Laufenberg never let her or Tyler visit it.

A deputy asked all storage units in an expanding radius of Wolftown if any of the wolfish surnames rented units, and found Peter Angua in Oneida County. Sheriff Jordan returned with a warrant to search the locker.

It contained wolfish items, including an ID for Peter Angua and eleven journals detailing Peter Angua’s böxenwolf experiences. The handwriting matched Dennis Laufenberg’s.

Along with masses of dead flies and a complete wolf skeleton, deputies found a complete, tanned wolf hide processed according to the wolf strap instructions. He thought transfiguration with a complete hide would make him much more wolfy; he failed to transfigure. The locker contained paraphernalia for tanning hides and preserving skeletons.

An orderly shelf held copies of German, English, and Polish works about böxenwolves and Germanic werewolves.

“The unit smelled real bad once in a while, but he said it was dead rats,” the storage unit’s owner said. “He would be in there for hours sometimes. He said he couldn’t find any quiet at home, so he came here to tinker.”

The owner identified Dennis Laufenberg as Peter Angua, though with a photo taken before the wolf attacks.

The Sheriff’s Department found Dennis Laufenberg’s fingerprints on every surface suitable for fingerprinting. A few items also had partial fingerprints from Corey and Tyler, or the fingerprints were smudged, as if Dennis Laufenberg wiped them clean and missed a spot.

Dr. Paulsen thought Peter originated in Peter Stumpp, and his story unnerved Sheriff Jordan.

When Wayne heard Dennis Laufenberg’s alias, choosing Angua affronted Wayne.

It’s just a book, John thought.

On Sunday, March 12, Megan had asked matter-of-factly if Sheriff Jordan thought she should delay Foster’s funeral; he would want to assist their investigation, however long the investigators required him. The idea baffled her family and two-thirds of her in-laws. Sheriff Jordan told her to arrange his funeral whenever she thought best.

Megan scheduled the funeral for Saturday. The Wolftown Police Department was so small, Megan could not completely avoid the members of the police force who generally disliked Schuster and Foster. The Family Liaison Officer, Danny Lang, minimized the contact between them. Schuster had also overheard Lang preemptively scold one of them in the police station.

Megan dragged Schuster to her in-laws and proudly said, “This is Billy Schuster and his fiancée, Stephanie McCann. He was Zach’s partner. Zach saved his life during the wolf attack, and Billy wouldn’t hide from the wolf as long as it kept attacking Zach.”

By Saturday, Sheriff Jordan and the Division of Criminal Investigation found gaping holes in Dennis Laufenberg’s movements from March 5 through the afternoon of March 10, and no definite evidence that Laufenberg was in City Hall or Wolftown from the morning of March 10 through his arrest. Laufenberg rushed to urgent scenes, such as the wolves running around Holy Trinity’s playground, after the action ended. He particularly could not be placed confidently during the murder victims’ times of death, March 1-2, and when Miranda estimated she interacted with Peter.

People reported that Dennis Laufenberg seemed irritable on March 1, the date Corey said he killed Joel Block, and irritable and shaken on March 6-7. However, he could rapidly change moods without committing murder.

Also, Sheriff Jordan believed that Laufenberg balanced a role in the wolf attacks with a role defending the town from wolves. For instance, when Laufenberg fired his gun at a wolf, he intentionally missed—the bullet embedded in a house’s wall twelve feet from the ground, over three times higher than Corey’s height in wolf form. Corey said he promised to miss her, and she hardly believed him.

It was difficult to determine if the Wolftown Police Department mishandled the wolf hunt because the events were so unusual.

Sheriff Jordan thought that, during the wolf attacks, the Wolftown Police Department either knew of a human culprit and protected him or acted utterly incompetently. Wolftown was a larger catastrophe than he realized, and reasonably, the issues involved local government. He hoped the chaos would resolve law enforcement’s problems and lead to resolving the others.

The Wolftown Police Department also mishandled the two murders.

On Tuesday, March 14, Vice-Deputy Swan detained David Turner and Raymond Ness, both of whom had missed work at the sewer plant and had experience working inside the sewers. He questioned and released Raymond Ness.

David Turner was at home, wet to the shoulders.

His son, Ryan, had cancer, and his family could not pay for the treatment. His wife, Amber, said that David won $22,000 in cash at a poker game, which matched the cover story Corey said that Laufenberg thought up. Tracking down the origin of the money lasted weeks. Dennis Laufenberg withdrew $22,000 from an offshore bank account, but there was no record of what he spent it on.

David said that, during wolf attacks, he was at home trying to prevent flood damage, while his wife and child were in Children’s Wisconsin.

None of his friends visited his house, and his neighbors occasionally saw him.

The Turners owned a sump pump, but when it broke, they paid medical bills instead of repairing it. David said he fixed it himself, just before the flood, but it broke again.

The Sheriff’s Department was issued a warrant to search the Turners’ house for the duffel bag he carried in the sewers, but nothing else. The deputy found a small, empty, freshly washed blue duffel bag that matched Corey’s description. Corey said that she placed one of her hairs inside a pocket as a clue. A deputy found a long hair with brown roots and blonde ends, like Corey’s hair.

Incidentally, the Sheriff’s Department noticed that the Turners’ basement flooded. Amber said that their basement had not flooded, and when asked, David said, “I didn’t want to stress her out. I spent all weekend fixing it. It’ll be dry before she gets home.”

The Sheriff’s Department compared the hair to Amber Turner’s and Corey’s. It matched Corey’s, which bothered Amber. David said he had no idea who Corey Brown was, and he could not identify her. But he seemed extremely nervous when Sheriff Jordan questioned him about her and Tyler Wilson.

From Tuesday through Thursday, Deputies and Wolftown’s sewer workers searched the sewers for anything unusual, particularly human belongings rarely found inside sewers.

They found a manhole cover lifter, but the water washed away the fingerprints.

The search found one wet green camo backpack clipped around a ladder, as if to keep it dry in most conditions. It contained hand sanitizer, shelf-stable food, and a change of men’s clothes inside two layers of Ziploc bags. Fingerprints on the inner layer of Ziplock bags matched Laufenberg, and the clothes fit Laufenberg. One pocket contained another of Corey’s hairs. She remembered into which type of pocket she had stuck it, but forgotten which side.

Corey said the rising water in the sewers carried her backpack away. After the attacks, Dennis Laufenberg would make them throw the contents into the river and wash the backpacks.

Sheriff Jordan asked law enforcement downstream of the river if anybody had found a soggy, pink backpack in the river or on the banks. The backpack would have come from a sewer outlet, but Sheriff Jordan had absolutely no idea which outlet to expand the search around.

He asked the public to report an abandoned pink backpack near a river.

During the search, sewer workers also measured the amount of debris in the sewers. The Wolftown Police Department’s directive to not clean out the sewers before a heavy rainfall, contrary to normal procedures, flooded the town. Laufenberg and Mayor Dwyer issued the order.

On Thursday, March 16, without a manhole cover lifter, Sheriff Jordan struggled to stealthily lift a manhole cover and climb out alone. If a deputy lifted the manhole cover, he climbed in and out of the sewers in seconds.

Sheriff Jordan repeated the experiment with a weighted sack roughly the same shape and weight as a wolf, and hurt his back and dropped the sack, and landed on it.

“Ow,” he said.

“Are you okay?” Swan asked from above.

“Don’t you dare call the fire department.”

Sheriff Jordan forced himself up the ladder.

Vice Deputy Swan repeated the experiment without success, regardless of the sack’s configuration. They managed it if Vice Deputy Swan carried the sack up the ladder and Deputy Zimmer lifted it out.

Deputy Zimmer and Dr. Richardson experimented with Zimmer’s K9 partner, Blitz, replacing the sack. Conscious, Blitz resisted with Zimmer’s plan, but the sedation affected Blitz too much to think the plan would work on a wolf.

Deputies had typed up the photographed journal and inserted photocopies of the least intelligible sections. Sheriff Jordan read it through once, simply to learn what it generally said. Later, he read it again and took notes.

Corey had photographed every page of the plan to attack Wolftown, but some pictures were too blurry, shadowy, or off-center to fully decipher. Sheriff Jordan thought the cursive handwriting resembled Dennis Laufenberg’s.

On one page, the author wrote that the journal would be burned before the attacks began, to destroy evidence. Corey said that Laufenberg intended to burn it.

The author vaguely and cryptically referenced the murders, and some pages had been crossed out, as if he had changed his mind, or the sentences ended abruptly.

The orderly and detailed journal confirmed that Dennis Laufenberg carried out the attacks and that he intended for böxenwolves to mimic wolf attacks. He stated, “The böxenwolves will be wolves for all intents and purposes,” and then simply referred to the members by name: Peter, Lupa, and Buck.

Corey identified Dennis Laufenberg as Peter, Lupa as herself, and Buck as Tyler. Wayne identified the wolf Abel as Dennis Laufenberg and Barker as Corey, and he theorized that Charlie was Tyler.

The author wrote that, following the attacks, Peter, Lupa, and Buck would be “disposed of,” which Corey hoped meant hunting three new wolves. She suspected she and Tyler would burn their wolf straps and Laufenberg would feel nostalgic towards his and stash it somewhere. Sometimes, Corey wondered if Laufenberg intended to kill her and Tyler.

The journal explained why the böxenwolves moved via the sewers. The author thought Wolfberg, Germany, was built and then fortified irregularly and erratically, and dismantled its fortifications; in early history, he thought böxenwolves defended the town; in later history, it eradicated wolves, and warfare had changed drastically. Wolfberg gradually became vulnerable, which Wolftown’s founders considered a problem.

Wolftown’s founders expected violence from wolves and people (Laufenberg ignored the fact that no fort ever existed within Wilde County). Wolftown was designed for the chokepoints which the wolf-proof fences created, specifically to trap wolves in one sector or another and to spread out the Wolf Guard evenly.

The only way to bypass Wolftown’s defenses was in the sewers. The sewers gave Peter, Lupa, and Buck as much mobility as the streets offered. Because the Wolf Guard predicted wolves traveled on streets, and few people in world history attacked via the sewers, nobody would think of looking in them.

Dennis Laufenberg thought it was the correct explanation, but Schuster thought he misinterpreted historical geography on two continents. Years later, in twelve paragraphs and seven carefully traced and scanned maps, he vented his annoyance to John.

Schuster wrote, Wolftown has slots in the pavement to set up the fences, but the slots and fences were added in 1983 because of the Wolf Panic. Before that, the Wolf Guard would’ve made a protective ring around town, but they didn’t have fences or blockades. They just stood on the sidewalks and were ready to shoot. It didn’t work during the Wolf Panic because the wolfdogs came and went randomly, and the Wolf Guard had to go to work and stuff. Why didn’t Laufenberg know that? He was on duty during the damn Wolf Panic.

John emailed back, I got Ds and Cs in history.

Wolfberg, Germany, told Sheriff Jordan they had no modern crimes potentially useful for Wolftown’s problems.

The most internationally respected böxenwolf expert, Günter Paulsen, offered to assist the investigation, although he said only folklorists knew of him. Sheriff Jordan added him to the list of potentially knowledgeable people and asked if he had any papers written in English that might assist the investigation. Because Wolftown seemed like an excellent research opportunity, Dr. Paulsen offered to work for hardly any money if he had good access to the data for research purposes and interviewed the böxenwolves. Laufenberg denied an interview on the basis that he was not a böxenwolf, and Corey said she did not want to be experimented on.

Once he learned how serious the case was and that Corey said Laufenberg abused her while they were böxenwolves, he agreed to work without the interviews.

“I’m curious, why are you taking the böxenwolves seriously?” Dr. Paulsen asked.

“Even if we can’t use böxenwolf evidence in court, a böxenwolf might kill somebody again. I’d like to make that investigation a little easier if I can. Law enforcement shouldn’t dismiss a lead. Law enforcement shouldn’t ignore the explanation that the evidence provides.”

Sheriff Jordan visited David at work in the sewer plant again, and they walked outside to smoke a cigarette. After asking how Ryan felt and if the Turners’ basement dried out, Sheriff Jordan said, “If you saw something weird in the sewers, you can tell me.

“It’s just a sewer with normal stuff in it. Things look weird because they get clumped up or the light shines on them weird. But there’s nothing weird in our sewers. They’re fine sewers, just doing what they’re supposed to do, except this time. I guess. I wasn’t working last week.”

“Why weren’t they doing what they were supposed to do this time?”

“We weren’t allowed to clean them out. Debris blocked the outlets, and the water flooded the town. It happens, but it isn’t weird.”

“Do you know anybody named Peter, Lupa, or Buck?”

David shook his head by the time Sheriff Jordan reached pa. Instantly, he said, “Nope. I’d remember names like that, but I don’t know the names.”

“Have you ever heard anything about wolves in the sewers?”

“Don’t you mean alligators?”

“I heard it was wolves.”

“I think the urban legend goes alligators. Alligators are much more sewer-like animals than wolves…But it’s too cold to happen up here. Beavers, maybe, but not wolves.”

“You saw a beaver in the sewer?”

“No, but it’s more realistic than a wolf. Like it’s an environmental habitat thing. But I haven’t ever seen living things in the sewers. Nobod—nothing. It’s all microscopic, rats, or dead. Nothing weird or unrealistic. It’s everything you’d expect in a sewer. Maybe we’ve got sewer gas, though.”

“What does sewer gas do?”

“I guess it could cause hallucinations. It makes your thinking whoozy sometimes.”

Sheriff Jordan researched whether sewer gas caused hallucinations, but it did not. He pretended it did and hoped David Turner would reveal what he saw.

Corey identified David Turner in a police line-up. Laufenberg said David played poker with him and his friends, but none of Laufenberg’s friends identified David.

The investigation determined that Dennis Laufenberg influenced Ryan Turner’s transfer to Children’s Wisconsin and loaned the Turners money for his treatment. Sheriff Jordan asked David Turner if Laufenberg denied further assistance unless David participated in the wolf attacks; David might have needed to earn the $22,000.

David said, “I fixed his connection to the sewer lines, but it wasn’t very expensive. I don’t have a plumbing license, but if a friend asks me to fix something, I do it. I like helping people out. So, he paid me $22,000, but said if anybody asked, I won it in a poker game. So, I wouldn’t get into trouble for plumbing without a license. And while I was plumbing, I was in the sewers. If Chief Laufenberg said I was in the sewers, that’s why.”

“I didn’t know that to fix home plumbing, you had to go into the sewers,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“He had a weird problem. I had to show it to him in the sewer. I figured it was all right to be in them without authorization if he’s the chief of police.”

“I replaced the plumbing in my house and redid the bathrooms, and it didn’t cost $22,000.”

“He felt sorry for Ryan.”

“We have evidence that Laufenberg bribed a lot of people. You are a public worker and can be bribed. He needed to be in the sewers, and he needed somebody familiar with the sewers.”

David’s story unraveled slightly. He added that, possibly, he and Dennis Laufenberg saw some rubbish in the sewers and moved it, as a public service.

Between Dennis Laufenberg’s personality and the nasty gunk and rubbish Sheriff Jordan saw in the sewer search, he thought Laufenberg would rather raise ducks inside his closet than voluntarily clean out the sewer.

Dr. Paulsen said that once the wolf strap’s healing powers were interrupted by removing the strap, once wearing the strap again, it would not continue to heal the person. He worried the transfiguration might damage Corey’s injuries.

So, they waited two more weeks for Corey to recover from her gunshot wound. Sheriff Jordan filmed Corey grudgingly transfiguring and took stills from it.

The Sheriff’s Department blocked off a road, surrounded the manhole cover with screens, and opened the sewers. Corey demonstrated climbing in and out, just as she had during the wolf attacks. The screens protected her from gawkers, but the Sheriff’s Department filmed her.

Sheriff Jordan hated watching her transfigure; it gave him the creeps. He wondered if he should have asked her to complete the experiment and noticed how uncomfortable it made her.

The Sheriff’s Department took stills from the footage.

Sheriff Jordan showed the stills to David Turner, who seemed alarmed. He attempted to reassure David that the böxenwolves would not hurt him, and Sheriff Jordan legitimately sympathized with David’s motive for assisting them.

“Maybe I hallucinated three things with four arms or legs or something and a lot of fur,” David said. “From the sewer gas. It builds up, and we don’t always know where it is.”

“It is hard to believe things like that might happen in real life,” Sheriff Jordan said. “But I have evidence that you were not hallucinating. The lady in the pictures, Corey Brown, says you were in the sewers. You lifted up manholes so that she could climb out and menace people. You would’ve seen her transfigurations multiple times.”

Through a plea deal, David Turner confessed to accepting a bribe and, since he lifted the manhole covers and therefore let the wolves out of the sewers, he confessed to being an accomplice to a public disturbance. David denied seeing böxenwolves or Dennis Laufenberg, but Sheriff Jordan thought he lied. He was required to testify in court, had the opportunity to enter a work-release program, and did not pay a fine. Charges of trespass in the sewers were dropped. Sheriff Jordan found no evidence that he performed illegal plumbing work in Dennis Laufenberg’s house; he overlooked the other instances.

David Turner lost his job with the city sewer, but he was sentenced to prison, with a work-release program for six years.

Last part coming August 15, 2025.

By Tuesday, March 14, news throughout Wisconsin reported chaos in Wolftown. Paula wondered into what situation she sent John. She called his motel and Happy Howlers, and at Rebecca Austin’s suggestion, Wayne’s house.

“Oh, he’s probably at the sheriff’s,” Nancy said. “Wait, that sounded worse than it is. Don’t worry. He’s fine.”

Wayne called in sick, saying he felt all right, except for being creaky, sore, exhausted, and 69-years-old.

John checked out of his motel room and drove to the Wilde County Sheriff’s Office, where he gave a statement with a public defender. He requested information for the Nature Protection Society’s report, but the deputy told him they could not release information about an ongoing investigation.

John drove to the Nature Protection Society office and attempted to answer some of Paula’s questions.

“Was it mass hysteria?” she asked.

“Probably not,” John said. “The situation wouldn’t make sense unless you were there.”

He told neither Paula nor his coworkers that he had transfigured into a böxenwolf as proof that the wolf straps worked. Later, he told Paula that he absolutely believed they existed. But Paula thought he held more opinions than he shared. John dodged questions and, if pressed, claimed the involved wolves required close, physical examination under sedation; in his head, he added, So the examiner will find the strings.

Beginning on Wednesday, Happy Howlers canvassed Wilde County for liver lobe donors. Adopted in a closed adoption, and with an incompatible daughter, Suzanne needed somebody else’s lobe. John volunteered for testing.

Suzanne Giese received an anonymous liver lobe and survived, but with a permanent, complete disability. She actively avoided wolves.

Wayne and Suzanne intended her to inherit Happy Howlers when he retired, but he found another employee.

Schuster’s parents’ savings, a scholarship, and his part-time jobs barely sent him through the University of Madison. Still, from 1991-1993, he studied political science and earned a certificate in criminal science. Schuster attended the police academy in 1993. The Wolftown Police Department hired him. In the summers, Schuster worked full-time. During the school years from 1993-1997, he worked part-time in Wolftown and full-time in the summer, and finished his bachelor’s degree in political science, driving back and forth to stay a few days in either location.

People said that the Wolftown police behaved wrongly, but Schuster attributed much of it to anomalies and the fact that people complained about the police. Schuster wanted to serve his hometown.

Foster completed the police academy in 1993, aged 18. He began a degree in forensic science at the University of Madison and worked part-time as a campus police officer.

In 1994, Schuster and Foster met during other college students’ drunken brawl outside a fraternity. Schuster, as a passerby, reported it to campus police, and Foster responded as part of his job. Waiting, Schuster saw one drunk person break a beer bottle and slash at another drunk person. The first drunk person wildly missed, but in the mayhem, almost cut an onlooker. Schuster involved himself.

Quickly, Foster and Schuster became close friends, and they enjoyed watching people’s reactions when they said how they met.

Foster visited Wolftown and liked it, although Schuster warned him of difficulties in the police department. In the school year of 1996-1997, because Wolftown had a job opening, Foster worked and studied under the same system as Schuster. In 1997, Foster worked full-time in Wolftown because Megan also thought Wolftown would be a lovely place to live. The potential stress and gruesomeness of forensic science worried Foster, but he found forensics interesting. Probably, he would find another job elsewhere.

In 1996, Schuster asked about his suspicions and mild evidence, but by 1997, he and Foster were reporting it to the Wolftown police.

Foster and Schuster worried they had overreacted, but as they learned more about Laufenberg, they thought higher authorities needed to know about his activities. Nobody except them showed serious interest. They often wondered if they had enough experience to be alarmed, but Laufenberg’s corruption stretched into the early 1990s or possibly before.

In late 1998, Schuster and Foster contacted every law enforcement agency they thought might act on the information. Foster suggested investigating Laufenberg and collecting evidence independently because nobody took their claims seriously. Simultaneously, in 1999, they contacted members of local, county, and state government to no avail.

Sheriff Jordan was elected in 1998 and, in 1999, reminded Schuster and Foster that every person was equal under the law and that law enforcement officers swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, federal, and local laws. He believed their concerns.

In 1999, for some reason nobody explained, Schuster and Foster became partners. Schuster wondered if it might slow them down—it halved the opportunities to witness a problem with Wolftown’s criminal justice system. But it also meant extra corroborating statements.

Foster and Schuster were completely ignorant about Dennis Laufenberg, Corey, and Tyler transfiguring into böxenwolves in the woods.

Transfiguring into a böxenwolf was not illegal, but Sheriff Jordan thought that if a person broke a law while in wolf form, he broke the law as much as he would in human form. Writing a police report about the activities or reporting the activities to the authorities required quite a bit of confidence. An insistent, argumentative streak helped.

Even though Laufenberg’s possessions showed little evidence of his crimes, Schuster and Foster found enough elsewhere to charge him with unremarkable drug offenses, bribery, sexual misconduct, tax evasion, and other crimes. Sheriff Jordan did not mention böxenwolves to the judge yet, worried he might be released.

Physically unable to leave his bed, let alone appear in court, Laufenberg hired a lawyer, Greg Martin.

On Tuesday, March 14, Greg Martin petitioned the court to delay his legal proceedings for health reasons, and the court and Sheriff Jordan considered it a reasonable request. Over time, Laufenberg delayed the case, however possible.

Laufenberg was bailed out because he required extensive medical care. One of the bail conditions forbade travel outside Wisconsin. When a member of law enforcement was not questioning him, Sheriff Jordan arranged for surveillance. His communications were monitored.

Schuster knew that if Dennis Laufenberg did not have a wolf strap, Schuster could kill him. But Laufenberg’s release on bail scared him. He wanted Megan and Stephanie to hide somewhere outside Wolftown, and preferably hide with them. He warned Megan, but Stephanie insisted on going to work. She volunteered for the sewer search. Schuster locked the windows and doors, turned off the lights, and stayed below the windows, but decided with Laufenberg’s injuries, he would remain in the hospital.

Instead, Schuster drove to Megan and Foster’s house to return her wedding ring, which she thought Foster had lost forever in the Marshal’s backyard, and give her his account of the attack on him and Foster, particularly Foster’s role. Megan asked about his arms; he asked about her and the baby. Schuster apologized for Foster’s death.

“You didn’t attack him,” Megan said.

“No!”

“Then it isn’t your fault. I knew you hadn’t.”

“Did someone say that?”

“No, of course not. But it’s the only reason why I would blame you. I don’t. The medical examiner said some of the bites were a few millimeters from arteries or veins. The wolf bit some veins and made a lot of deep bites. So, I’m surprised he lived as long as he did. I talked to Mr. Marshal, and he says you wouldn’t leave Foster. Was he right?”

“Yeah. Foster kept fighting the wolf when he was biting me.”

“He would. Our family members are arriving, but you can come inside.”

“They wouldn’t want to see me.”

“Why?”

“I told him Wolftown was a good place to live.”

“It is. When you and he volunteered to patrol during the wolf attacks, he called you first. You went with him.”

Schuster shook his head.

“Come by if you change your mind.”

On Wednesday night, Laufenberg was arrested again for violating a bail condition—he called Acting Chief of Police Phelps for an update on the wolf response. On Wednesday morning, he was denied bail.

Greg Martin also defended Laufenberg against the corruption charges, but Laufenberg would not answer difficult-to-explain questions around his lawyer, such as ones that led to böxenwolves and murders.

Kevin switched from defending Schuster and Foster to defending Corey. Megan objected to changing lawyers and for Kevin, who opposed Dennis Laufenberg, to defend his accomplice. Schuster could not explain böxenwolves.

Stephanie knew that Schuster omitted some information about the weekend, and regarding Dennis Laufenberg, he normally told her most things. She thought his status changed from “vigilante” to “active investigation.”

Nancy convinced Wayne to drop the charges against Corey for trespass and breaking and entering Happy Howlers. She seemed desperate for assistance. However, for injuring Moqwaio, she was charged with endangering an animal and harming a protected species.

Corey voluntarily underwent days of questioning about the wolf attacks and Dennis Laufenberg, and she wrote down things she had forgotten to tell. Everything seemed consistent, ranging from tiny details to “I don’t know.”

Confessing improved Corey’s mood; she felt like eating again, she slept better, and she felt healthier. She said for months, she had longed to tell the authorities, but believed nobody would consider her credible. If Laufenberg found out, he would kill her and hide the evidence, and Corey still worried he could hire a criminal to attack her.

Corey’s Aunt Karen loved her and supported her decision to turn herself in. Considering herself a bad influence on Cassidy, Corey thought she should make Aunt Karen Cassidy’s sole legal guardian and have no contact with Cassidy.

For instance, when Corey asked Shane to rescue her, she told him to leave Cassidy alone in his apartment and pick her up. He did because, first, Corey thought Dennis Laufenberg would harm anybody who knew about her escape, and second, Cassidy was asleep, and it would only be forty-five minutes or an hour before Aunt Karen reached his apartment.

Aunt Karen and Kevin disagreed about no contact, but thought Cassidy would grow up better with Aunt Karen than in foster care. Cassidy became Aunt Karen’s ward, and Corey self-imposed minimal direct contact with her. She thought Cassidy would understand when she grew up.

Late on Monday night, a warrant was issued to autopsy Tyler Wilson because Corey Brown identified him as a böxenwolf in the sewer. A deputy waited outside the Sweet Rest Funeral Home and served the warrant just as employees unlocked the door on Tuesday morning.

Tyler Wilson had already been embalmed.

Dr. Groves identified his official cause of death as “accidental death by drowning” on Sunday and merely examined his lungs because he was found face-down in the river. Deputy Chief of Police Phelps asked, “Did you see signs of self-harm or needle marks?”

“There are some bruises and abrasions, but I didn’t see cuts or needle marks,” Dr. Groves said.

Dr. Groves offered to examine him further or refer him to the medical examiner, both of which Phelps declined. Deputy Chief of Police Phelps did not investigate his death.

But Sheriff Jordan and Dr. Groves doubted that a person would find a shallow, rocky sewer outlet, accidentally undress, but bring a wolf strap with him, and lie twisted on his side, with nothing nearby from which to jump. Dr. Groves thought the temperature was too high for a hypothermic person’s paradoxical undressing, and nobody found Tyler’s clothes. However, the water level definitely lowered by the time anybody discovered him, and people drowned in two inches of water.

The autopsy showed that hard objects struck him, or he struck them randomly just before and after death. Dr. Groves and the embalmer, Brenda Pfaff, said that Tyler had strong body odor and that she washed his hair twice to remove the grime, mud, and decomposing leaves.

Corey said that the sewers filled faster than expected, and the current swept her and Tyler away from Dennis Laufenberg. She intended to save Tyler, but the rising water in the sewers almost drowned her, too.

In 1998, Dennis Laufenberg and Sheriff Jordan knew that Tyler Wilson’s father, Greg Wilson, was guilty of abusing him and his siblings. Sheriff Jordan did not know that Dennis Laufenberg planted evidence to raise the abuse from misdemeanor to felony; he thought Greg Wilson would reasonably commit the crimes.

Corey said that the evidence was planted with Tyler Wilson’s cooperation, which explained why the evidence against Greg Wilson did not magically change, disappear, or appear. When Sheriff Jordan heard about the case, he thought Mr. Wilson could reasonably commit the crimes.

Sheriff Jordan added Mr. Wilson’s case to the list of ones to review, and when the department had enough resources, it investigated the charges. To Sheriff Jordan’s extreme annoyance, Mr. Wilson was released from prison, the charges were expunged, and two months later, he committed another misdemeanor.

Jessica Smith, Tyler’s sporadic girlfriend, wondered why Laufenberg showed interest in Tyler. Because Mr. Wilson controlled the family’s finances, and Mrs. Wilson prioritized drugs and alcohol, Laufenberg helped Tyler set up a secret bank account. Jessica said he occasionally paid Tyler for unspecified work, enough for reliably clean clothes, minimum toiletries, meals he missed otherwise, and enough gas to drive between work and home. Laufenberg taught him life skills, such as how to tie a tie and roast a chicken. Tyler told Jessica Laufenberg gave him his old, broken car under the condition that Tyler learned to repair it or paid for its repairs, but Sheriff Jordan thought Laufenberg would never drive one like it, and he would not keep a broken car to tinker with.

Jessica reported Tyler missing on Friday. They often had days without contact, but none of his friends had seen or spoken to him. The Sheriff’s Department determined that Tyler had few alibis during the wolf attacks, and none when people reported Wolf Charlie. He may have been home, but his mother tended to pass out from drugs and alcohol.

Last part coming August 15, 2025.

On Saturday afternoon, March 11, Sheriff Jordan convinced the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation to investigate Dennis Laufenberg, but they waited for the flood waters to recede and the phone lines to be repaired.

On Monday, March 12, from the Walmart breakroom’s ceiling, Deputy Castillo retrieved a Walmart bag full of Corey’s seven disposable Kodak cameras, with film of Laufenberg’s wolf attack plans, and receipts and addresses for Corey’s alibis during the murders, and a note.

The note explained that she refused to participate in or hear anything about the murder plans. Worried that security tapes could be recorded over before anybody found the bag, Corey always chose locations with plenty of people, introduced herself to at least two, and made a transaction with the date and time. If she found a public phone, she called somebody. She claimed she estimated the date and time of the murders, and many receipts came from the surrounding days.

She wrote that she knew Laufenberg would kill her if she told anybody about the murders, and she claimed total ignorance about the diversion murder victim’s identity.

Kevin successfully advised Corey against allowing law enforcement to search her entire apartment for anything they considered useful to their investigations.

The Sheriff’s Department had a warrant for her telephone records.

Corey had called Shane Greenbough and asked him to take her to Minneapolis. She told Shane that to escape Dennis Laufenberg, she should cross state lines. She and Shane would meet in the park, then drive to her apartment, where she could pack a bag.

Then, Corey said that she walked to the park in human form, and Laufenberg encountered her in wolf form. He bit her clothes and shoes. In either wolf or human form depending on the part of the confrontation, he threatened her unless she participated in the wolf attacks. She cooperated with him, scared.

When Sheriff Jordan learned that Shane’s body was found with marijuana, he investigated Shane’s drug use. He had already been embalmed, which prevented a toxicology report. A search of his apartment showed no drugs or paraphernalia, only some residue that could be months old considering the state of the apartment. Corey, his friends, and family said he was sober.

Corey added, “And even if he’s stoned, he’s not stupid enough to go outside in bad weather around a killer animal. Why would he be outside in that weather anyway? I’ve never seen him desperate enough to go outside in that weather, either.”

From home, on Sunday, March 12, Wayne called Glenn Malone and told him to take Moqwaio to the vet. The wolf recovered well.

On Monday, March 13, Wayne slept in and had barely enough energy to dress in the morning.

John called Paula. He told her that people caused the wolf attacks, and he doubted he had reasons to stay longer.

“And the police needed to use the satellite phone. I’ll pay the bill if it is too expensive,” John said.

“It must be bad if you helped the police,” Paula said.

“Yeah. I’ll drive back tomorrow. The police want to question me, too. Apparently, I’m a witness now.”

John considered himself a witness instead of a victim, even though Dennis Laufenberg or Wolf Abel charged towards him. Why he targeted John was a mystery forever.

By Monday evening, people no longer believed Mayor Dwyer and Deputy Police Chief Phelps’ reasons for Police Chief Dennis Laufenberg’s absence, and the authorities could not pretend he had been on duty all weekend.

The Wilde County Chief Executive, Cheryl Woods, warned Mayor Dwyer that the county would be investigating the wolf response and murders; Sheriff Jordan thought it gave Wolftown authorities time to hide evidence. Once the bridge into Wolftown drained, the Sheriff’s Department and members of the County Chief Executive’s office drove to Wolftown. Sheriff Jordan and Cheryl Woods publicly announced they had taken over the wolf response, and that the Sheriff’s Department had taken over the murder investigations and had arrested Dennis Laufenberg on charges unrelated to the murder and wolf hunt. The Wolftown Police Department would fulfill its normal, routine duties.

Because Sheriff Jordan thought the Wolf Guard could have assisted Dennis Laufenberg’s attacks, he disbanded them. He asked for the Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Division and animal control’s assistance. In the process, he discovered that Laufenberg had requested their help; they accepted it, and he interfered with their work. The Sheriff’s Department proceeded to cooperate with them.

Sheriff Jordan asked law enforcement in Wolfberg, Germany, if they had experience with similar crimes committed by böxenwolves. He also asked them and the Wolftown Museum if anybody knew of böxenwolf experts willing to consult a criminal investigation.

Nancy McDowell (Wayne’s wife) and John hiked to the river to retrieve Luke’s canoe. They dropped it off, then Nancy drove John to the Motorer’s Motel. Later, he sent the McDowells one of his homemade scented candles and a thank-you note for unexpectedly hosting him.

Watching the news, John finally relaxed in solitude and ate cold food. His food had expired, and the local restaurants were flooded, but Nancy, a vegetarian, reprovisioned him.

The reporter said, “The Wilde County Executive’s office will also be looking into reports that the sewers were not cleaned before the high rainfall. There are concerns that clogged sewers and the wolf-proof fences caused extensive flooding in Wolftown.”

The week before, many Wolftown citizens either risked a wolf attack while sandbagging their houses or risked flooding their houses in one to three feet of water. On Monday, those with flooded houses either began cleaning up the flood damage, which often required leaving the house, or they waited for the wolf hunt to end, and the water damage increased.

Sheriff Jordan and deputies carried out a search warrant of Dennis Laufenberg’s house, car, computer, and storage unit, looking for written evidence of police corruption. They found nothing in the house, car, or storage unit, and no computer hard drive or floppy disks, but warrants for phone and banking records provided some information.

Corey said that Laufenberg burned the journal in which he planned the wolf attacks, and so Sheriff Jordan asked her if he had burned evidence of police corruption. She said that she saw a book “or something” and “computer stuff” in their campfire the days before the wolf attacks began.

Corey had photographed every page of the plan to attack Wolftown, but some pictures were too blurry, shadowy, or off-center to fully decipher.

In the Sheriff’s Department, through the afternoon of Monday and the night of Monday and Tuesday, two deputies typed another copy and pasted in photographs of the unintelligible sections.

Sheriff Jordan had taken a photographed copy home Monday afternoon. He read it, simply to see its general contents, by Friday evening, then began re-reading it and taking notes. Eventually, he, Schuster, and other investigators could quote sections from memory.

Mr. Marshal had waited through the weekend for police to examine his and the Parkers’ backyards and his kitchen. He and his family stayed with friends due to rabies concerns. Wayne swabbed the blood in his kitchen and collected other evidence, but the police did not. Also, police did not question the Marshalls and Parkers—Wayne did. Sergeant Dustin Groves (Schuster and Foster’s supervisor) said he would request information from Happy Howlers, but by Monday, he had not.

On Friday evening, Mr. Marshal called the non-emergency police number to ask for instructions, and the police said he would be contacted again.

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Marshal called the Sheriff’s Department because he could not go home to a police investigation, especially if his children might be exposed to rabies or if his family could be accused of tampering with the scene. The Wolftown Police Department unsettled black people.

On Sunday, the phone lines were out, or he would have called again.

On Monday, he called. The Sheriff’s Department and Wolftown Police Department responded, both rather prickly with each other. Captain Deputy Bloom referred the attack on Foster and Schuster to the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation.

The weather destroyed or contaminated all evidence except Mr. Marshall’s kitchen. Rain washed blood from Foster’s red Swiss army knife, or the blood and mud mingled.

On Saturday, Schuster had brought his bloody, muddy uniform to the police station for evidence, but it had been processed and stored improperly.

Schuster requested back-up five times and an ambulance twice, each time telling EMTs to shelter in their ambulance because Schuster would bring Foster to them. The radio tapes recorded Foster gurgling, as if saying the same thing as Schuster. The dispatcher sent police units to Mr. Marshall’s house, but they failed to arrive.

Against orders, Lang and Wayne ran a few blocks away from the wolf hunt, thinking that the wolf would kill Schuster and Foster.

Schuster’s second cousin, Todd, an EMT responding to the wolf hunt, did not know Schuster was being attacked by a wolf until Schuster radioed directly to the wolf hunt. Todd happened to stand immediately next to a police officer. He argued with his partner about driving to the Marshals’ house, regardless of the officers’ identities, then Officer Matthews fell into an open manhole, spraining, bruising, and breaking half of his lower body. The EMTs could not hoist Officer Matthews out and requested fire rescue, which arrived promptly. So, Todd left his partner with the wolf hunt and commandeered their ambulance.

The chaos of street parking, a police vehicle, the Wolf Guard, and police officers blocked the ambulance’s available routes. His cousin drove the long way and, due to the rain and dim light, relatively slowly for an ambulance that had activated lights and sirens. By the time Todd reached Mr. Marshal’s house, Schuster was driving Foster to Dr. Groves.

Todd felt extremely guilty about the incident for the rest of his life. Megan gradually learned everything that happened and did not blame him. Schuster thought Todd responded as quickly as he could, and he appreciated the effort.

Then, as Lang predicted, Lang was placed on desk duty and tolerated it.

Phelps lectured Wayne about abandoning the official wolf hunt for a routine safety check on the Parkers’ house. In the ensuing argument, Phelps almost arrested Wayne for disorderly conduct.

Over the weeks, Schuster tried not to speculate that officers could have responded to the attack on him and Foster.

The other officers were attempting to catch Barker and Charlie, or Corey and Tyler, and the officers and other members of the wolf hunt vastly outnumbered the wolves and believed the wolves might attack them. Before and after his attack, Schuster would never have hoped a wolf would maul anybody to death. Schuster noticed Corey behaved threateningly when provoked, and she claimed Tyler tended towards violence. Law enforcement had a duty to protect civilians, who technically included Wayne and the Wolf Guard.

Throughout the mauling, Schuster considered Foster and himself in greater danger than the officers and the rest of the wolf hunt. Lang agreed with him as a witness, and Karl Henry agreed as someone experienced with blood loss. Todd called him an idiot for justifying the police.

Nobody on the scene identified Corey as a human, but Corey’s wolf ears heard the radio transmissions clearly. The wolf hunt and dispatch used two separate frequencies. She repeated Schuster’s two urgent transmissions to the wolf hunt word for word, minus the static. In his other three transmissions, Schuster spoke with the dispatcher.

She had been three to six blocks away, but also heard Foster. Corey believed Dennis Laufenberg intended to kill him and Schuster.

The DIC determined that during the wolf attack on Schuster and Foster, Dennis Laufenberg definitely did not order other officers not to respond to Foster and Schuster. Nobody could verify Laufenberg’s location, even Deputy Chief of Police Phelps. The investigation could not determine if Laufenberg prearranged the other officers’ responses.

Schuster’s radio messages explicitly described his and Foster’s situation, and Mr. Marshal’s observations should have dispatched at least one police unit. Many members of the wolf hunt indicated that most of them milled around the blocks, aimlessly panicked.

During the wolf attacks, he and Foster had been on unpaid leave, which the investigation thought Dennis Laufenberg assigned as a punishment for uncovering his corruption. Schuster and Foster did not argue about it, saving their energy for later. Schuster and Foster volunteered for patrol without pay. The DIC strongly suggested that Schuster be placed on paid medical leave, paid administrative leave, or regular duty, depending on his arms. He was, which surprised him.

Megan and Stephanie listened to the radio transmissions over their police scanners and thought that the police abandoned Schuster and Foster, although Megan said they were biased.

The last member of law enforcement to be killed in the line of duty in Wilde County died in 1923. Based on national statistics, Megan considered Foster’s death possible and his serious injury likely, but she accepted it when they married. As well as her husband’s death upsetting her, the situation around his death disturbed her, and she worried about Schuster.

Stephanie worried that Schuster’s back-up would fail again, intentionally.

Schuster tried to convince her that he probably would not have another major problem during his career—Laufenberg spiked Wilde County’s crime rate as a statistical anomaly. She and Schuster argued about whether he should transfer to a different police force or stay in Wolftown, but Schuster thought his concerns were paranoia, stress, or psychological shock.

Lang told Schuster to let Stephanie win, partly because issues inside the police department could lead to burn-out or family trouble, and law enforcement careers naturally provoked family trouble. Further, the investigation verified Schuster and Foster’s observations, and some officers had definite reasons to think Schuster betrayed them or would spy again.

Over several weeks, five members of the Wolftown Police Department quit, resigned, or were fired, and the hierarchy reshuffled.

Schuster thought that he should stay, working overtime until the department hired enough new officers, then continue working his regular hours until he found another law enforcement job nearby. He and Stephenie preferred two steady incomes before beginning adoption proceedings.

For decades, Lang and Karl Henry received similar but much less dangerous treatment than Schuster and Foster through much of their careers. The four of them stayed to provide some uncorrupt law enforcement to the citizens of Wolftown. Until he found another law enforcement job nearby, Schuster thought he could continue working.

On Friday, March 10, Schuster cynically thought Dennis Laufenberg’s lack of a condoling statement about Foster’s death seemed reasonable, and that if he had issued one, Megan would have publicly called him a liar.

Now Schuster thought that Laufenberg knew Foster died and that Schuster potentially fatally injured Laufenberg. The wolf strap healed him, but with such serious injuries, nobody would risk transfiguring into human form for hours or days. It was ridiculous to expect an apparent wolf to trot into the chief of police’s office and write a statement that police etiquette demanded.

However, the media received a typewritten statement signed in type, “Police

Chief Dennis Laufenberg.” He normally signed by hand.

Laufenberg hunted-and-pecked the typewriters and word processor, and so handwrote copies, and told somebody to type them up. More often, he told somebody to compose for him, then demanded edits. Ross Wilcox wrote for him better and faster than anybody else.

The statement said nothing suspicious about Foster, but it could indicate Laufenberg was in the police station on Friday or Saturday. The lack of a handwritten signature seemed odd. None of the investigators found an early draft or a police officer who spoke to Laufenberg about the statement. Deputy Chief Phelps acted as if Laufenberg told him to delegate it and sign his name.

Corey said that Dennis Laufenberg intended to kill Schuster and Foster if he had opportunity. She said he used Corey and Tyler as diversions, almost letting the wolf response catch or kill them, while he menaced the Parkers. He knew Mr. Marshall would be awake and that, according to Corey, “If Schuster and Foster think people are going to get hurt, they try to fix it.”

Several pages in the photographed planning journal seemed to be vague ideas, false starts on plans, and lists of potential targets. One difficult-to-decipher page listed people who Laufenberg had motive to murder and contained a fragments: “S. F. hope them, maybe too risky…Protect…other…Investigate me if aliv…”

Sheriff Jordan quickly told Schuster and Megan he believed Laufenberg premeditatedly attacked him and Foster but he did not believe Megan and Stephanie were in danger, unless they attempted to defend Schuster.

“They won’t defend me,” Schuster said.

“I will,” Stephanie said. “And Megan would.”

“No, you aren’t. You’re going to escape and call the Sheriff’s Department.”

“We will respond,” Sheriff Jordan said. “We’re monitoring his phone calls, and we’re asking prison informants for information. If he is released and stays in Wilde County, he will be under surveillance. He doesn’t have a wolf strap anymore, and we’re keeping an eye on where they are in Wilde County and a couple other places in Wisconsin.”

“We appreciate it.”

Sheriff Jordan asked them if Laufenberg could influence anybody to attack Schuster again. Schuster considered it possible because he manipulated, threatened, or bribed other people.

“But I don’t understand why he thought murdering people and faking wolf attacks would protect him from the corruption charges,” Stephanie said.

“People are totally depraved, but this is pretty extreme behavior. It made sense to him. I think he was trying to act like a hero and redeem himself, but he was also getting rid of evidence and trying to make it look unrelated to him. I’m trying to get a criminal psychiatrist to analyze him.”

The psychiatrist thought Dennis Laufenberg could hide his most violent tendencies for years.

Laufenberg called the böxenwolf theory crazy and said that they did not exist.

(Last part coming August 15, 2025.)

Corey came out of surgery first, and she convinced Kevin to at least ask if Sheriff Jordan would listen to her. He planned to question her the next day, when the anesthesia wore off. Because she worried he would release Dennis Laufenberg, Sheriff Jordan and Schuster went to her room. Kevin warned that anything she said could be attributed to post-operative loopiness.

Deputy Rice’s single gunshot passed through Corey’s abdomen cleanly, and her abdominal wall and perforated intestines clotted spontaneously, which confused the surgeon. He expected Corey to recover without complications.

Corey said, “Dennis burned the plans the night before the attacks began, but I photographed them the night before. I was going to mail them to somebody, but I got scared. They’re in the Walmart’s breakroom’s drop ceiling.”

“Which Walmart?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

She told him. “I work there. If Dennis Laufenberg finds out, he’ll kill me, and he’ll attack you.”

“We won’t let him attack you again,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“But he’ll try.”

“He won’t know you are here, and he will be restrained and under guard. You will be in protective custody for however long you need. How could he cause you to be attacked?”

“Escaping from the hospital or something.”

“What about the man in the sewers? The one who didn’t turn into a böxenwolf?”

“I don’t know where he is. He needed money for his kid’s medical bills. He was paid half before the attacks and would get half after. He backed out because he didn’t want to be involved with a murderer, so Dennis said he had to give the first half back. It was cash, so he could say he won it.”

“Was he dangerous?”

“No. Tyler was because he tried to imitate Dennis sometimes. He killed the animals and pets to make it look like they were hunting, but Dennis did the murders. I didn’t kill anything or anybody. Dennis will know where I am when he calls Vincent Phelps.”

Vincent Phelps was Wolftown’s Deputy Chief of Police.

“We’re monitoring the patient’s communications from the hospital. The Wilde County Sheriff’s Department might take over the wolf hunt,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Good, he’ll hate that,” Corey said. “But he will attack you again.”

“Now we have experience. Did he threaten anybody else?”

“He got Foster and Schuster to go to 405 4th Avenue, and he kept them there to kill them. Tyler and me had to keep the wolf hunt occupied, so he’d have time to kill them. And killing the other guy, not Ricky Hanson, was a diversion.”

“Why did Dennis Laufenberg want to kill Foster and Schuster?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“They got enough evidence against him, and you got elected instead of him.”

“That didn’t have anything to do with us, except we voted,” Schuster said.

“But Sheriff Jordan listened to you. If Dennis had a chance, he’d probably kill you, too.” She pointed at Sheriff Jordan. “The other guy’s kid has to stay in the hospital for cancer treatment, but the guy can’t afford it.”

“Who was Ricky Hanson?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“Dennis killed him because he was an accountant and found some corruption stuff.”

“Was he going to kill anybody else?”

“If he had a chance, but he knew he’d get caught if he killed too many. Ricky Hanson, Schuster, and Foster were the worst, but he couldn’t get away with Schuster and Foster. But he changed his mind and tried to kill them like a wolf would. He was too weak to transfigure, like he would’ve bled out if he tried, so I don’t know what happened.”

“Was he transfigured into a böxenwolf?” Schuster asked.

“Yeah.”

“So that’s why he wouldn’t die?”

“I guess. I was hoping you two would survive so you could stop him. How long will he be in prison?”

“Hopefully the rest of his life, if we can find enough evidence admissible in court,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“And I asked Shane Greenbough to help me escape, but he found out and killed him.”

“Who killed Shane Greenbough?”

“Dennis Laufenberg.”

“Did he kill anybody else?”

“Some trapper got out of hand, and somebody found our camp. We spent days in the woods since about May, 1998.”

How many people would he have killed if he thought he could get away with it? Schuster wondered.

Schuster and Foster struggled to investigate Dennis Laufenberg’s outdoor activities, but they knew that, contrary to expectations and appearances, he spent days alone deep in the woods. If he transfigured into a wolf, they could have easily overlooked him.

Once, he and Foster had a rather spooky feeling, but attributed it to unfamiliar surroundings. Schuster felt like somebody watched them. He and Foster left quickly, though, and stopped investigating the woods. During the wolf attacks on himself and Foster, Schuster had a similar feeling, but he assumed the same feeling applied to various situations.

“Who were they, the trapper and who found your camp?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“A Mexican man and a woman, but I don’t know anything else,” Corey Brown said.

“Who was the trapper?”

“Joel, but I forget his last name. And the Mexicans found the camp. Dennis says they found it. He panicked about it, and he wasn’t detailed. It’s backwards.”

“Why?”

“He’s specific until he has to hide something. Are you going to call my family?”

“We don’t have any phone numbers, but we can. Is there anybody you want to see?”

“No. I don’t want to see any of them. They wouldn’t understand, and they thought I was trying to get my life together. He said he would help me.”

“Who said who would help you?” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Excuse me, actually, your aunt reported you as a missing person to me,” Schuster said. “She says whatever you were doing, she wanted you to be safe, even if you were doing something illegal again.”

“It’s too much for her this time,” Corey said.

“You can always change your mind,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“Dennis Laufenberg said he would help me. He did. I didn’t go to jail, and he paid some of my bills.”

Schuster and Foster discovered that Dennis Laufenberg gave large amounts of money in cash to somebody for an unconfirmed reason, and they suspected Corey Brown or another woman’s involvement. However, they had never absolutely identified the resident, how he knew the resident, or the address. Now, Schuster suspected the arrangements had happened in the woods.

“If I was going to fail a drug test, wearing the wolf strap wore off the drugs faster. But I’m clean for 302 days,” Corey said.

“That’s good,” Sheriff Jordan said.

“You’re doing a lot better,” Schuster said.

“And I’m not taking the real painkillers. The kind that work,” Corey said.

“Your aunt said she was really proud that you broke your record. She said she wouldn’t be disappointed by you if you relapsed,” Schuster said.

Corey briefly described actions done by Dennis Laufenberg against her that, if both people were in human form, would be prosecuted or be examples of his nefarious character. But Corey believed that nobody would prosecute him; Schuster and Sheriff Jordan understood why.

“The Sheriff’s Department will do our best to bring him to justice,” Sheriff Jordan said. “He will be incarcerated for something.”

Corey said that she and Shane Greenbough shared custody of their three-year-old daughter, Cassidy. They were no longer in a relationship, but Cassidy motivated them to stay sober and out of prison. Worried Dennis Laufenberg would make Cassidy become a böxenwolf, Corey distanced herself from Shane and Cassidy, which neither understood. She could not explain it before, and dreaded needing to. But she worried that Dennis Laufenberg somehow killed Cassidy, too. She did not think that the third man would harm Cassidy.

“I’ll make sure she and your aunt stay safe until we detain the third man. I’ll check on her now.” Sheriff Jordan left the room.

“She’s healthy,” Schuster said. “CPS took her to your aunt and your aunt took her to the emergency shelter in Holy Trinity.”

“Okay. Good. I didn’t want to abandon her.”

“When I arrested you, did Dennis Laufenberg have the charges dropped?”

“Yeah.”

“And it was after when you and he became involved?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

Corey shrugged. “I didn’t know he was that bad.”

“If I knew there was something else going on, I would’ve done something else.”

“I didn’t know. And you had to arrest me. I was kinda upset about it, but I broke the law.”

The phone lines in Wolftown were still out of service, but CPS said that they had no reason to worry about Cassidy’s safety.

Sheriff Jordan placed Corey in protective custody, and they argued over the risks of checking out of the hospital against medical advice. He transferred her to the Wilde County Jail’s infirmary.

Post-surgery, but while the böxenwolf was under anesthesia, and awaiting bandaging, Schuster looked at him. He identified the patient as probably Dennis Laufenberg, judging from approximately one-third of his face; the lack of a nose confused him. Also, Schuster thought the patient or Dennis Laufenberg could be the naked man in the security footage. The surgeon verified that the patient had an appendectomy decades ago, like Schuster said that Dennis Laufenberg had. He knew it from a conversation; he and Foster had not managed to acquire Laufenberg’s medical records.

The patient’s mangled face resembled a survived gunshot suicide attempt after months of healing. He was thirty pounds lighter than Dennis Laufenberg, which could be from his most recent activities. But like Dennis Laufenberg, he had green eyes and the same height, age, bald spot, and appendectomy scar. His hair lengthened dramatically since Schuster saw him last, and Ms. Brown said that wolf straps grew hair, nails, and skin. His forehead, both eyebrows, and half of his receding jawline matched Dennis Laufenberg’s.

Although the surgeon expected to repair the damage from multiple gunshot wounds, he reduced complications when possible and removed bullets for evidence. The böxenwolf had stopped bleeding and damage from gunshot wounds had healed without medical treatment, meaning the flesh or scars regrew as lumps and baggy areas, filling in the holes’ tissue. Bullets caused severe damage to his lungs, and a bullet grazed his heart. The patient’s internal injuries confused the doctor, and he referred the patient to another surgeon. However, he found four gunshot entry wounds and four exit wounds and five entry wounds with the bullets inside his body.

To treat the patient’s face, the surgeon drained the pus from his abscess, repositioned his dislocated eyeball, removed fragments of bone and teeth from his face, stabilized his cheek and jaw, and removed the flesh from his nose and smoothed the bones. His nose was a black hole.

In addition to the gunshot wounds and destroyed face, the surgeon found: a set of pointy bite marks near his waist, a set near his armpit, a scarred laceration on the sole of his foot, one stab wound on his buttock, one on his thigh, one on his hip, and a slashed scar on his genitals.

Finally, the patient had fluid in his lungs and peritonitis.

Sheriff Jordan took Schuster’s Beretta and Glock as evidence, along with the deputies’ guns, and would require Danny Lang and Wayne’s guns.

“I understand why somebody would cut him, but when did somebody have opportunity? Was there an incident that nobody reported or was it during a wolf attack?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“When he was biting me, he had his back end close to Zach, and Zach was stabbing him. Zach had a Swiss Army knife. He did something painful to the wolf, but nobody else saw what, and I didn’t think to ask,” Schuster said.

“A cut like that would make a person stop attacking.”

“But he turned around and bit Zach.”

“The suspect didn’t run away?”

“Not because of that. But Zach probably thought it would. I couldn’t make the wolf stop attacking him.”

“I’m sure a real wolf would have run away. And most people would,” Sheriff Jordan said. “But if Dennis Laufenberg knew he would be fine, why would he stop?”

“I tried to scare him away or something,” Schuster said.

“Do you know where the Swiss Army knife is?” Sheriff Jordan asked.

“No, but I’ll look for it.”

“Tomorrow.”

“He had trouble holding it, so I think he dropped it. I hope it isn’t in the grass and Mr. Marshall’s kids stepped on it.”

“Were the blades like this one?”

Schuster examined Sheriff Jordan’s knife. “I’m pretty sure it is.”

“Then it’s about the right size for the stab wounds,” Sheriff Jordan said.

Sheriff Jordan required permission or a warrant for the patient’s fingerprints, dental records, and DNA. Without them, he still thought the patient was Dennis Laufenberg. The patient refused permission.

Due to flooding, Schuster’s mother drove to Oneida Community Hospital on an indirect route, one hour longer than normal. She brought a quilt so that Schuster could sleep in the back of the truck, hiding his uniform. He survived three encounters with a böxenwolf; he refused to die because somebody opportunistically fired at a police officer sleeping in public. Also, he considered sleeping in uniform unprofessional.

Within two hours, Sheriff Jordan acquired a warrant for the forensic evidence. He, Murphy, and two security guards wrestled fingerprints and DNA from the patient, and Sheriff Jordan took it to the Wilde County Sheriff’s Department. He personally sent the DNA sample for testing, arranged the dental analysis, unusually hovered over the deputy matching the fingerprints, and returned with the fingerprint results.

Sheriff Jordan already had a warrant for Dennis Laufenberg’s arrest, but the wolf attacks and flood delayed serving it. Few members of law enforcement knew the warrant existed; otherwise, he would have escaped. It was the most difficult warrant Sheriff Jordan had acquired. Some judges and the county chief executive thought his arrest should wait until after the wolf attacks and flooding ended because people needed a reliable authority figure. Sheriff Jordan argued that Dennis Laufenberg was not one under normal circumstances, although he was a familiar authority figure. Then the road and bridge into Wolftown flooded.

Schuster suspected that other things also caused delays, including the Wolftown Police Department refusing assistance from the county or state police, when, during other severe weather, they would accept it. If the department had accepted the assistance, somebody could have been within arresting distance of Dennis Laufenberg or begun niggling at the homicide investigation and wolf hunt procedures.

To Dennis Laufenberg’s plain, vocal annoyance, Schuster watched Sheriff Jordan arrest him for bribery, tax evasion, drug use, police misconduct, and driving while under the influence, and crimes committed against three women. He was suspected of murder of a law enforcement officer, public exposure, destruction of property, and crimes committed against Corey Brown. Finally, Dennis Laufenberg was a person of interest in false imprisonment, miscarriage of justice, poaching, harming an endangered animal, possession of illegal fur, trespassing, disturbing the peace, coercion, menacing, battery on Maria Vasquez, Schuster, and Suzanne Giese, and the deaths of Joel Block, Sergio Vasquez, Shane Greenbough, Ricky Hanson, and Tyler Wilson.

Schuster added in his head, Death of Barbara Lubens. Assault on the patrollers. Attempted breaking and entering the Parker’s house. Menacing John Dalton and the mailman. Fleeing the scene of the crime and fleeing from police in multiple instances.

“And the Sheriff’s Department might be adding to the list during the course of the investigation,” Sheriff Jordan said.

Dennis Laufenberg explicitly gave his opinion, but Sheriff Jordan and Schuster left before he finished.

Schuster wanted to say, You got yourself into this snafu. You could’ve just gone to jail for six to forty years. Ideally, forty, but probably not. And less if they were concurrent sentences. Maybe you would’ve been on probation for part of the sentence.

Under constant guard, Dennis Laufenberg would be hospitalized in Oneida Community Hospital until the jail infirmary discharged Corey Brown. Next, he would be transferred to the jail’s infirmary or another surgeon. Normally, the Oneida County Sheriff automatically found resources to guard a suspected cop killer, but Sheriff Jordan had trouble explaining the situation. Still, the two counties found the resources.

“Do you think the delays meant people died?” Schuster asked.

“We acted on our interpretations of the available evidence at the time we had it. We did what we could with the evidence we had at the time we had it,” Sheriff Jordan said. “Nobody in America predicts a crime spree like this one.”

While Sheriff Jordan told Corey that he had arrested Dennis Laufenberg, Schuster called Stephanie and Megan’s motel room. Dennis Laufenberg’s arrest relieved all three, and Megan cheered for a minute and began crying.

“But Sheriff Jordan says not to tell anybody, especially people in Wolftown. If it is in the news, you can talk about it,” Schuster said.

They talked for a couple minutes, but because Schuster’s mother had already waited seven hours for him, they hung up.

Last part coming August 15, 2025.