Porter grunted. “Resist the urge to use it. I need you for your nose, not your weapon. Robin says you’ll be as good as a bloodhound.”
“I did not say bloodhound,” Robin corrected mildly. “I suspect bloodhounds can outsmell a wolf.”
“Robin’s correct,” Benedict said. “Bloodhounds have extraordinary noses, and their ears and wrinkled skin trap the scent to help them track. But wolf noses are good—somewhere between ten thousand and a couple hundred thousand times as good as a human’s, depending on which expert you listen to.”
Porter nodded. “And you’ll be able to understand us when you’re a wolf? You’ll still think like a man?”
“I don’t think exactly the same way when I’m wolf as I do when I’m man, but I don’t think like a wild wolf, either. I’ll understand you just fine. I’ll know who you are, that you’re the sheriff, and what that means—law, the courts, the whole complex system. But that kind of complexity isn’t interesting to a wolf. I have to make an effort to call up some things. Do you know how to find the circumference of a circle?”
“Ah—something to do with pi. Pi r squared . . . no, just Pi r. Pi times the radius.”
“You had to stop and think about it. That’s what it’s like when I’m wolf. I know the same things, but some of them aren’t at the top of my mind.”
“Huh. Will the need to keep your teeth to yourself be at the top of your mind?”
Benedict chuckled. “Good way to put it. Yes, it will. Some things are . . . if not instinctive, then automatic. Ingrained.”
“It’s like asking an engineer or math teacher about pi,” Arjenie put in. “It would be right there at the top for them, because they work with it a lot and it is interesting to them. The clans train their youngsters really well so that—” No, wait, she couldn’t finish that sentence the way she’d intended. “So that they don’t eat anyone” would not create the right impression.
“So that we understand the difference between people and prey,” Benedict finished for her. “I will no more overlook that difference as a wolf than I would as a man. Nor will I mistake normal human actions for a threat, the way a wild wolf would, or become excited by certain scents.”
Fear, he meant. Wolves could get excited by that smell, but to Benedict it would be information, nothing more.
Benedict paused, then added, “You will find it works better to ask me to do things rather than telling me what to do.”
This time it was Porter who chuckled. “You’re no different from most men, then. People generally prefer being asked. I’ll try to keep in mind that you’re not one of my deputies.”
That made Arjenie grin. Benedict would certainly not look like a deputy.
“That will help. You want me to track someone or something.”
“Something,” Porter said. “Or that’s what we think right now. Some boys—teenagers—found a body down by Moss Creek this afternoon. A man.”
“Oh, no,” Arjenie said. “Do you know who?”
“Assuming the ID in his wallet is accurate, it was Orson Peters. Robin here didn’t think you’d know him.”
She thought a moment, shook her head, then realized he couldn’t see her. “I don’t think so.”
“He’s an ex-con, so I’ve kept an eye on him. Did odd jobs mostly but he kept his nose clean, aside from some trapping I tried not to notice. He lived alone in a little shack not far from where the body was found.”
Benedict spoke. “If you’ve kept an eye on Peters but couldn’t ID him without his wallet, I’m guessing the body was in bad shape.”
Porter nodded. “Looks like he was mauled by something with claws and teeth, then partly eaten.”
“Which parts?” Benedict asked.
“Why the hell does that—”
“Humor me.”
The sheriff shrugged. “The guts, from what I could tell. Things were pretty much of a mess, though, so don’t hold me to that.”
Yuck. Arjenie looked at her aunt in disbelief. She and Uncle Clay wanted the twins to be part of a circle investigating that kind of ugly? Even if the body had been removed by now—and she was hoping hard it had been—Arjenie would not have brought Sammy and Seri into this. They’d turned twenty a month ago. In some ways they were wise beyond their years, but in others they were naive, even immature. “Uh . . . has the body been removed?”
Porter gave her a look that said he knew some of what she’d been thinking. “Yes.”
“You’ve got an animal attack,” Benedict said, “but you haven’t asked me where I’ve been today.”