Cops are bad news for werewolves!
When you’re a werewolf like Sara Flores, you do your best to avoid them because they can sense something different about you. It makes them curious. Makes them want to investigate you. This is a problem for Sara — because she’s after a man who works with the police.
Since her turning, Sara has used her new abilities to rescue those being abused by evil people. Cops would call her a vigilante — something they hate as much or more than criminals.
Sara smelled evil from the man she’s after. She knows he has protection from at least one high-level officer. Finding proof, however, is turning out to be much harder.
Sara decides to risk everything on one big raid. Even though cops are on her trail. Even though it’s critical that nobody learn what she is.
Unfortunately, Sara has no idea just how big a stink she’s sticking her nose into. But she’s about to find out.
Cops are bad news for werewolves!
When you’re a werewolf like Sara Flores, you do your best to avoid them because they can sense something different about you. It makes them curious. Makes them want to investigate you. This is a problem for Sara — because she’s after a man who works with the police.
Since her turning, Sara has used her new abilities to rescue those being abused by evil people. Cops would call her a vigilante — something they hate as much or more than criminals.
Sara smelled evil from the man she’s after. She knows he has protection from at least one high-level officer. Finding proof, however, is turning out to be much harder.
Sara decides to risk everything on one big raid. Even though cops are on her trail. Even though it’s critical that nobody learn what she is.
Unfortunately, Sara has no idea just how big a stink she’s sticking her nose into. But she’s about to find out.
Sara Flores believed you should stay away from cops when you have a really big secret. Cops are suspicious by training — by their nature as well — and they are very good at knowing when you’re hiding something.
In the past year, since Sara became a werewolf, she’d made it her mission to rescue people trapped or being abused by powerful assholes. To complete her missions, she usually had to make those abusers become dead assholes.
Twice now she’d run into cops in the vicinity of a dead body she’d caused. Twice she’d managed to talk her way out of it.
Continuing on like this would be pretty stupid.
Sara decided, instead, to get a private investigator license. It would explain to suspicious cops why she might be in dark alleys any normal woman would go far out of her way to avoid.
How was she to know that decision — to get her private eye license — would cause so many deaths?
To get her license, Sara found herself early one evening in a crappy classroom at People’s Tech of Tulsa. The state of Oklahoma requires just 55 hours of training and passing a test — and voila! — you’re a licensed P.I.
This classroom had small, high prison-like windows that gave off no light because the sun was already down on a cold February evening. And the smell… some mixture of chalk, carbon and body sweat — made Sara feel like she was back in 10th grade. It wasn’t a fond memory.
She was sitting in one of those old high school desk/chair combos that you have to swivel into in order to sit down. They are so uncomfortable that you spend the entire class squirming around and watching the clock until you can free yourself.
Sara fidgeted some more and looked around at her “classmates.” Eight of the 16 torture chairs were filled and she had a good view of them, as she was sitting in the back row.Â
There was a married couple, the Lauriers, upfront and center. Both were in their late 20’s. Both were bright-eyed and scrubbed clean like new pennies.Â
There were three had-to-be cops sitting to Sara’s right. Each had those hyper-observant cop eyes that could describe everything and everybody in a place within just a few minutes. Sara had expected to see some cops who were approaching retirement age and were considering hanging out a private investigator shingle after leaving the force.
Two of them fit that bill. One was a big, white slab of beef about 50-something with a shaved head. The other was a black woman who could have been anywhere from 40-60 — it was hard to tell.
The third probable-cop was different. He looked in his 30s — which made Sara wonder just why he was here. He was white with light brown buzz-cut hair. Average height. Average build. He had an above-average smile, however, under a trim mustache. The smile showed because he was joking with the other two cops.Â
The teacher for this class finally walked into the room. Mr. Andersen — “Call me Greg” — was a good-looking older man with neatly trimmed gray hair. Although… there was something smarmy about him.Â
By the end of the three hour class, Sara had made only two notes on her pad — things she thought might be asked on the final test for the license. The cops hadn’t made any notes. There wasn’t much point in writing down things like, “You should show respect to the interviewee — even if you suspect them of lying.”Â
Well, duh! thought Sara. Thank god this part of the training is only 35 hours.Â
Two evenings later, she was back with her classmates facing another three hours of Mr. Andersen — “call me Greg.”
This class promised to be more interesting — it was supposed to include reading body language.Â
Andersen handed out a sheet titled, “Body language that could indicate untruthful answers.” Then, as if they were incapable of reading it for themselves, he read through each item.
“Lip biting — shows anxiety.
“Crossed arms — can be defensive or closed off.
“Eyes open very wide — surprise.
“Eyes narrowed — anger.
“Thumb up — agreement.
“Thumb down — disagreement.”
Sara put her hand over her eyes — so she could roll them to express her opinion of these “incredible” insights. She couldn’t believe she was paying actual money for this.
Andersen finished his reading and asked if there were any questions. Sara slammed her teeth closed — to prevent any of the sarcastic remarks on the tip of her tongue from flying out.
The woman cop — Velena Davis was her name — raised her hand. She said, “I heard if you’re questioning someone and they look up and to their left — they’re accessing their memory. But if they look up and to the right — they’re creating a lie.”
Andersen smiled. “You’ll see that in a lot in articles, but it’s not true. It was tested recently with a large group of volunteers. Half were instructed to lie about where their cell phone was and the other half were told to tell the truth. Then they were interviewed in front of a camera. There was no difference between the truthful group and the liars as to whether they looked up. Or in what direction.”
OK, thought Sara. I got one good tidbit from this class. Because she had heard the same thing as the cop.
“Now, let’s break up the class with a little role-playing,” said Andersen. He handed out another sheet of paper.Â
This paper said, “You’ve been hired to discover who is stealing equipment from a company. There are three employees who have enough access to be able to pull it off.”
Andersen said, “We’ll switch off being the interviewer or the subject. If you’re playing the subject, you decide if you are innocent or guilty.” He gave the class a little time to consider.Â
Then he asked Sara to come up and run through it with him to show the class.
Andersen role-played interviewer first. After some bland questions, he surprised her with, “Do you use illegal drugs?”Â
Sara raised her eyebrows at this. But she answered truthfully, “No.”Â
Andersen watched her, curiously intent. Sara got the idea her answer disappointed him.
Then they switched places. Sara asked Andersen questions, easy to start with, then harder. Then she tried to surprise him. Payback. She asked, “Have you committed a recent felony?”
She got a very calm “No,” with no lying indicators from his body language. In fact, she could see he was expecting some surprise question, although not that one.
But Sara knew immediately that Andersen was lying.
He controlled all his body language — but he couldn’t control his sweat glands. When she asked the question, he gave off a sudden, sharp, acrid smell. It was so faint she knew nobody else in the class could smell it. But to a wolf nose — even one currently in human form — it was unmistakable. And it came instantly when she asked the question.
She wondered what kind of recent felony Andersen was committing.Â
Suddenly she pulled her attention back. Andersen was looking at her with a questioning look.Â
Oh, hell! she thought. He knows I caught something.
Andersen stood up, smiled, and waved her back to her desk.Â
“Thank you, Miz Flores. Now turn your desk to a neighbor, and each of you complete the exercise.”Â
The rest of the class was at least entertaining. Sara took turns doing the exercise with the young cop — Mike Walsh was his name. His smile was even better when he turned it on her.
Mike had a friendly, almost puppy-dog personality, but he was also a champion liar. He gave nothing whatsoever away when he lied — except for the smell only she could detect. He knew he was good at it, so it annoyed him that she found him out each time.
Sara had fun with the assignment. But three times, when she wasn’t looking forward, she could feel Andersen’s eyes on her. Intently.
What kind of felony could he be committing that would make him that anxious?
Sara Flores is an extraordinary woman. She is a newly turned werewolf who has made it her mission to use her new abilities to rescue those who are being abused and trapped by evil people. To further her work and hide her reasons for being out where a woman ought not be at night, she decides to get a private investigator license. There are three cops in her class as well, once of which is an African American female named Velena Davis. One day after class Sara and Velena have coffee (tea for Sara), together. During this time they discuss the fact that Sara believes that their teacher is guilty of a felony. One month later Davis is dead. To paraphrase Shakespeare, something smells rotten in the state of Oklahoma, (where our story takes place). Sara promptly gets in touch with Velena's daughter Nia and her partner Mike Walsh to help get to the bottom of things.
I used to read really long novels by authors like Stephen King, Alexander Dumas, etc. So, I thought that an author has to write long novels with lots of words in order to get a proper backstory and delve into the psyche of the characters. However, Denver has proved this conjecture wrong. She is able to convey to her readers that her main character Sara is 5ft 7in, has a French mom, experienced a bad divorce, is a loner that likes to keep to herself, has a wolf dog for a pet, carries a Rugar LC9, and has a penchant for Ford vehicles. Regarding Velena Davis, the police officer that was killed, we know that she had one year left until retirement and had two children: a daughter that is an attorney and a son that is a musician. We are also treated to an interesting point-of-view of a werewolf. I was amazed at Sara's ability to smell things like sweat for example. She uses this ability when they are checking out the house of the suspect in question and is able to uncover a dangerous and heinous crime. All of this takes place in a short novella!
I give The Stench of Fear: A Paranormal Mystery Novella by Sue Denver 5 out of 5 stars for the author's larger than life main character and for providing an incredible point-of-view werewolf style. Warning this novella contains some graphic explicit content.
Is there an upper rank cop scandal going on?, Are there dirty cops on the force?,What happens when you trust the wrong person?
In addition to writing the author Sue Denver sells really cool wolf-themed jewelry. She also provides a sneak peak of her next novella entitled The Good Assassin.