Lycanthropus: A Clem MacDougall Adventure, Take VI

VI. THE CAPTURE. Twenty minutes later, a white van with Excelsior City insignia pulled alongside the lime-green Chevy Vega in the parking lot. The door of the Vega still hung open. MacDougall and his guests watched as two men and two women in bright orange coveralls emerged from the vehicle, carrying ropes and nets. One of the men carried a muzzle and one of the women carried what looked like a rifle. They surrounded the rhododendron bush on three sides and advanced slowly toward what sounded like a rabid mastiff in the midst of an asthma attack. As they came closer, the sounds of distress grew louder and more insistent. The woman carrying the rifle raised it to her shoulder, sighted carefully and squeezed the trigger. Phut! A tranquilizer dart flew from the gun on a flat trajectory toward an unseen target in the bushes. The snuffling and snorting and yelping subsided. Thirty seconds later, silence reigned once again throughout the grounds of the Excelsior Mews Condominiums.

***

Despite the agony of descending stairs in his delicate condition, Clem MacDougall went down to see what all the commotion had been about. Doyle and Kuznetsov joined him. “In all my twenty years of working with animals,” said the woman with the tranquilizer gun, who appeared to be in charge of the animal-rescue team, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” She shone a beam from her flashlight on the beast, now lying safely sedated in a steel cage. “I don’t know what that thing is. It’s not a canine; it’s not an ape. Kind of like a baboon with that snout and those teeth, but too big and way too ugly. Look at the tongue on that thing! It looks like a giant toadstool. I’m surprised it doesn’t gag the poor creature.” The creature drooled. “What will ye be doing wi’ the puir beastie?” MacDougall stared at the thing with a glimmer of recognition. “It almost looks a bit like one o’ me ... ah ... business associates.” “We’ll keep it in the holding kennel overnight. In the morning, we’ll call the zoology department at the University. I’m sure they’ll want a look.” The two men from the animal shelter picked up the cage, taking care to keep their hands and fingers outside the bars, and slid it into the back of the van. “Looks like somethin’ out of a Grade B science fiction flick,” one of them muttered. As the leader walked toward the van, she slammed the door on the lime-green Vega, which bounced back open. After the van had pulled away, MacDougall, Doyle and Kuznetsov bid each other a good night, shook hands and went their separate ways. On his way toward his car in the parking lot, Doyle called back over his shoulder: “Hey, Mac. Isn’t this Talbott’s car?” He slammed the door and it latched. It was locked. The keys were inside. WHAT NEXT? WHO KNOWS?