finds girl

“Get furry again. We might be here awhile.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“I think the girl might come by in the next few hours.”
“Why?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s assume Luther’s telling the truth.”
“Sure.”
“This guy grabs a little girl and drags her into the alley. Luther jumps him from behind and gets thrown into a wall. Fights him hard, and beats him to death with a bowling pin. What can we deduce?”
“That Black was stronger than normal and tougher than normal,” Will said. “Some kind of supernatural.”
I nodded. “A predator. Maybe a ghoul or something.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So a predator, operating in the middle of a town? They don’t tend to openly grab little girls off the street, because someone might see it happen.”
“Like Luther.”
“Like Luther. But this guy did. He didn’t go after a transient sleeping in an abandoned building, or someone wandering down a dark alley to buy some drugs, a prostitute, any of the usual targets. He went with something dicier. He’s going to do that, he’s going to cut down on every random factor he can.”
“You think he stalked her.”
I nodded. “Stalked her, learned her pattern, and was waiting for her.”
Will squinted up and down the alley. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s how something from Winter would do it,” I said. “How I would take someone in a busy part of town, if I had to.”
“Well. That’s not creepy or anything, Harry.”
I showed my teeth. “Not much difference between wolves and sheepdogs, Will. You should know.”
 He nodded. “So, we wait here and see if she’s still going by?”
“Figure if she still goes by here, she’ll do it fast and she’ll be worried. Should make her stand out.”
“You know what else stands out on a busy Chicago street? A timber wolf.” “Thought of that,” I said, and produced a roll of fabric from my duster’s large pockets.
“You’re kidding,” Will said.
I smiled.
“And what’s in the guitar case?”
I smiled wider.
A FEW MINUTES later, I was sitting on the sidewalk with my back against a building, an old secondhand guitar in my lap, the case open beside me with a handful of a change and an old wadded dollar bill in it. Will settled down beside me, wearing a service dog’s jacket, resting his chin on his front paws. He made a little groaning sound.
“It’ll be fine, boy.”
Will narrowed his eyes.
“Just keep your nose open,” I said, and started playing.
I started with the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt,” which was pretty simple. I sang along with it. I’m not good, but I can hit the notes and keep the rhythm going, so it more or less worked out. I followed it up with “Behind Blue Eyes,” which gets a little harder, and then “Only Happy When It Rains.” Then I followed it up with “House of the Rising Sun,” and completely mangled “Stairway to Heaven.”
There wasn’t a ton of foot traffic on a weekday evening on this street, not in a fairly brisk late March, but nobody really looked at me twice. I made about two and a half bucks in change the first hour. The life of a musician is not easy. A patrol car went by and a cop gave me the stink-eye, but he didn’t stop and roust me. Maybe he had things to do.
The light started fading from the sky, and I was repeating my limited set for the fifth or sixth time when I started to think about giving up. The girl, if she was still following the same pattern, definitely wouldn’t be running around town alone after it became fully dark.
I was singing about how you’d get the message by the time I’m through when Will suddenly lifted his head, his eyes focused.
I followed the direction of his gaze and spotted a girl of about the right age getting off of a bus. She started walking right away, down the street, though she stayed on the other side, directly toward the El station a block away.
“There we go,” I said. “Kid walking a regular route alone gets jumped in Chicago, kid’s probably using public transit, running on a schedule. Makes her real predictable. Perfect mark for a predator.”
Will made a low growling sound.
“I think I’m kinda smart, yeah,” I said to him. “Get her scent?”

Brief Cases, Jury Duty, Page 338-339