A werewolf among us

ripped your shoulder?"
    St. Cyr unconsciously reached for the bandaged arm. "A wolf."
    "You saw it?"
    "Sort of." St. Cyr tried to explain the chaos in the garden, the way things had looked to him when he was under the influence of the hallucinogen.
    Rainy interrupted him. "You don't have to go into much detail. I've used TDX-4 many times, though never with a paranoid reaction."
    "I've been feeling paranoid lately." St. Cyr shifted, sat up higher in bed. "Anyway, I saw a wolf, a silver wolf."
    "Gray," Rainy said.
    "No, silver. Bright shiny silver, in parts."
    "That could be part of the illusions."
    "Perhaps. But I remember that I also seem to remember that it was always snarling, its mouth opened wide, lots of teeth showing… Funny that it never attempted to bite. It just swatted at me with those godawful claws…"
    "A trained animal?" Rainy asked.
    "I thought of that. In fact, I thought it might belong to Hirschel. If a trained animal
is
involved, its master has to be a member of the household—to let it in when it killed Leon and Betty."
    Rainy sank back in the chair. "We keep getting more and more file pages on this affair, but nothing makes sense when you try to put it together."
    St. Cyr squirmed uneasily and turned sideways on the bed, more directly facing the policeman. "I have this bothersome notion that everything I need to know is right before me. I've been hunting the needle in a mound of hay, have gotten down to the last piece of straw, have picked that up and found nothing. All the while, the needle is lying flat on the ground under my knee. If I could just move, see it at a different angle than I've been viewing it from so far, it would all be very obvious."
    Rainy pointed at the cyberdetective's chest. "Isn't your machine helping any?"
    St. Cyr frowned. "Not much yet. That also bothers me. If it
feels
this close, the bio-computer ought to have more of it worked out than it does."
    To
feel
is an emotional response. I operate logically
.
    Rainy said, "Well, everyone in the family was by himself at that hour. No one has an alibi. For all we know, it could have been all of them working in harmony against you."
    "Been taking TDX lately?"
    Rainy smiled. It was the first time St. Cyr had witnessed any genuine humor in the man. Rainy said, "And what in hell do you want me to do with the bloodhounds?"
    St. Cyr sat up straight, "They've arrived?"
    "Yes," Rainy said. "What a hideous name for such gentle-looking creatures. What are they for?"
    "A little-known, seldom-used method of tracking fugitives," St. Cyr told him. "They became passi when limited-response mechanicals became the big rage in police work."
    "You're going to put them onto the wolf?"
    "I hope so. I sent for them three days ago, when Dane and I came back from visiting the gypsies. They're from off-planet, though out of this same solar system. Great expense getting them here, but it's Jubal's money being spent." He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and got to his feet. A dull flutter of pain flowed down his left side, most of it masked by whatever narcotics the autodoc had given him.
    "Here, now!" Rainy said, standing, reaching to give him a steadying hand. "As I understand it, you're confined to the bed."
    "Not with the hounds here and some daylight left," St. Cyr said.
    "You're in no condition to—"
    "Look, Otto, you know as well as I how an autodoc can knit you up. I've got bulky speedheal bandages on here. In two days I'll have nothing to show for this but a white scar."
    Reluctantly, Rainy agreed.
    "Good. Now I want to find the shirt I was wearing this morning when I was attacked. It'll have my scent, chiefly. But good dogs ought to be able to ferret out the wolf's spoor and ignore mine."
    "I'll ask Tina where it is," Rainy said.
    St. Cyr said, "Be in the garden, where it happened, in fifteen minutes."
    "Right."
    St. Cyr dressed slowly, favoring his damaged shoulder.
     
    "Track him by
smell
?" one of the policemen with Inspector Rainy asked, incredulous. He looked disdainfully down at the sloppy-lipped hound that was snuffling at his shoes.
    "They successfully tracked more fugitives, over the last few thousand years, than any of your damned machines," the dogs' trainer said. He was a short, wiry, blue-eyed albino named Horace Teeley, and he clearly would not tolerate anyone maligning his charges. The expression he gave the young copper was enough to wilt the grass under them.
    The first couple of times St. Cyr had located and leased