Humphrey's P.O.V.
When Kate named me the lead investigator on the Artist case, I was terrified. Sure I had followed my mate around and had picked up a few tricks here and there, but I was no detective. I honestly didn't know the first thing about sleuthing and Miles wasn't much help either. First of all, at that point in time he was still far from functional, and he was a combat specialist before he was assigned to Pointe West, so he also knew little to nothing about how to conduct a proper investigation. I wished more than anything that I could have Kate by my side to help guide me through it all, but she was still injured and for whatever reason she seemed to think that the world beyond the den was lava, so I was on my own. Thankfully, she at least back-filled me on everything that she knew regarding the case. Only problem was: She made me swear that I would not breathe a word about what she knew about Charlie or her theory about the Artist's plans to anybody, so, yet again, I was basically on my own.
I had to pore over case reports, witness testimonies, suspects, previous interviews, and try to make heads or tails of it all on my own, and if I'm honest, the entire investigation was a mess. The Artist did such a good job covering their tracks that the case reports were about as useful as tics. Furthermore, nobody ever actually witnessed the murders, so all we had were statements from the wolves who discovered the bodies, and since there was no concrete evidence to point us in the direction of any one wolf, we had to consider everyone a suspect. Once upon a time, I wondered how it was that so many months of detective work had yielded so few results, but once I was a part of it, I completely understood, and I was honestly impressed that they were even able to gather what little evidence they had.
Kate's journey north had answered many of the questions that plagued my mind each time I would gaze upon the flayed wolf who had been dumped in our territory all those months ago, but it still didn't bring me any closer to cracking the case. Elias, Janice and Candu were all viciously slain, and the wolf responsible still breathed free air. It was honestly maddening, so I could understand Kate's obsession with it. It was easy to feel like if I just stared at it for just long enough at just the right angle the answer would suddenly become clear, but the Artist murdered and staged their victims with such meticulous care and attention to detail that looking at the case for too long would leave me with more questions than answers.
What they did was perfect- too perfect for any one wolf to do alone it seemed, but we could never find any evidence that suggested that the Artist had an accomplice. So, just like Kate and every other alpha assigned to this case, I ultimately ended up chasing my tail around in circles and getting nowhere. I'll admit, it was all very frustrating, but then one day, in the midst of one of Miles' angry, withdrawal-driven rants, the old drunk said something that put things into a completely different perspective for me, and that's when I got my first big break in the case.
Kate's P.O.V.
Honestly, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but Humphrey really rose to the occasion. In the beginning, it all went exactly as I had expected it to: Without someone they respected in charge, the team was sloppy and disorganized, and Humphrey drove himself mad chasing down a never-ending parade of dead ends. I could see the frustration that he carried into the den with him at night, and even though I felt for him, I couldn't help but laugh because I knew his pain. Before he stepped up and filled my role, the Artist investigation and Miles' addiction had begun to slowly eat away at my spirit.
As strange as it may sound, even though they were two completely different situations, I never felt any less trapped by one than I did the other. I poured so much time and effort into both of them and I accomplished nothing. In spite of everything that I did in order to save the park from the Artist and save my friend from himself, things only got progressively worse until I felt as though I could never win. It all felt so futile, but I knew that if I didn't apprehend the Artist or help pull my friend out of the abyss, someone I loved would end up getting hurt. I could see all of the same turmoils in my husband's eyes as we sat down for dinner in the evenings, but I must say that in spite of the frustrations that massed within him, he never once took those frustrations out on me, and I've gotta commend him for that. Sure, he might ramble or rant about how hopeless it all was, but he never raised his voice at me, he never directed anything that he said at me, and he never carried any of it to bed with him.
Occasionally, he and I would go over case details together, but even with our collective minds, we couldn't seem to get any closer to solving the case than we were when Janice was murdered. A few times, he even asked me to accompany him to one of the crime scenes so he and I could canvas the area again for anything we may have overlooked, but at the time, the world beyond the confines of our den was so full of chaos and unknowns that the idea of setting foot beyond the safety of my home terrified me to no end. So, my desire to keep our pups safe from harm would inevitably outweigh my desire to help my husband every time and he would once again be left to do everything alone. I felt terrible, of course, but at that time, I knew that I would feel so much worse if I miscarried again, so I just had to swallow the disappointment that I felt in myself and try to act as though I didn't see the disappointment in my husband's eyes.
Humphrey's P.O.V.
"It's all bullshit, ya know?" Miles grumbled, bitterly.
I cocked my head, intrigued, as I turned to face him.
"What is?" I asked him.
"Everybody says that I should get sober and make all of these changes for myself, right? But it seems like everybody wants me to get sober and make all of these changes on their terms and on their schedule," he vented, "like, I'm sorry that I'm fucked in the head, and that in moments of weakness I take it out on people who don't deserve it, but I'm trying, ya know? I feel like I deserve at least SOME credit."
I lowered my eyes for a moment as I tried to piece together a response that would not upset him.
"I'm sorry if it feels like I am pushing you too hard," I began, finally, "it's-"
"No, Humphrey, it's not you," he interrupted, "even though I was a dickhead to you in the beginning, which, sorry for that, by the way."
"It's okay," I replied, "I know that this has been hard for you."
"Yeah," he continued, "but anyway, yeah, man. It's not you. It's everyone else."
"What makes you say that?" I inquired.
"Well, you see the way they all look at me," he replied, "no matter what I do, no matter how much progress I make, it feels like it's never good enough, ya know? It feels like everyone is just waiting around for me to fail. Hell, I'm willing to bet that some of em are even counting on it just so they can say 'I told you so.'"
"Look, Miles, I know that right now it feels like everyone is against you, but honestly there are more people on your side than you think," I stated.
He scoffed.
"Yeah, that must be why you and Kate are about the only people left in this park who will actually talk to me," he seethed, "and Kate doesn't even WANT to talk to me, really. She only does because she feels sorry for me and feels obligated to me."
"Miles, you've hurt a lot of people," I replied, "and it's gonna take a long time for that hurt to heal, but believe it or not, we all just want you to be better. Relationships will heal with time, and even if some of them don't and you end up having to live your lives apart, all they want is for you to be better."
"Yeah, right," he grumbled, sarcastically, "if they never want to talk to me again, that kinda means that they hate me, doesn't it?"
"It's not as black and white as you make it out to be," I posited.
"And how not?" he snapped, "if they didn't hate me, then they'd talk to me."
"Miles, you're starting to entertain obsession," I said, calmly, "please, just take a breath, and-"
"Hell no," he retorted, "people either love you completely or they don't love you at all. My girlfriend taught me that the night she dumped me for that Jensen fag. All those pretty words she said about how she would love me forever and that nothing would change that were all a crock of shit," he ranted, "You think people are grey, but I'll tell you right now, they're not. If something appears to be one way, chances are that's probably how it is. You can look at it from as many different angles as you want, but at the end of the day, if you wanna know what something is all about, all you gotta do is look at it on the surface. The best solution to a problem is usually either the easiest or the most obvious, and I don't understand why people are so fixated on trying to find deeper meanings that just aren't there. Take your infamous Artist, for example."
I cocked my head.
"You guys have spent so long trying to figure out the why before you figure out the who, but the why couldn't be more obvious. It's hate, dummy. Just like all these fuckers who hate me, the Artist doesn't want to talk to you or try to work things out. They hate you, they hate omegas, they hate anybody who sympathizes with them, and they want all of you, and all of the changes that you've brought with you, gone. Who does that sound like to you? Who hates omegas more than anybody? Ding ding ding. That's right! Traditionalists!"
I opened my mouth to interject, but he continued before I could.
"So now you've got the why and most of the who. Look at it on the surface and what have you got? Who is the party leader of the Traditionalist camp? Who's the one spouting the hateful rhetoric in the shadows and whose influence is slowly beginning to spread throughout the park? And when did that all start? Right after you failed A-School. Sure that wasn't your fault, but in the minds of those who had their doubts about what kind of leader you would be, that left a bad taste in their mouth and suddenly the crazy shit that the Traditionalists have been spewing at them about how omegas are mentally and genetically inferior to alphas suddenly starts to sound a whole hell of a lot less crazy, doesn't it?"
Again, I opened my mouth to respond, but he continued before I could get a word in edgewise.
"You better bet your ass it does. So, what are you gonna do now? If you even think about saying anything besides 'Round up the Traditionalists and start rolling heads until someone confesses', then you're crazy. There's only one language they understand and if you wanna put an end to all of this madness, you'd be wise to learn it, because you're running out of time. Now come on. If you're gonna stop the threat, you're gonna need to be a whole hell of a lot stronger than you are now. Personally, I don't think that this weird ass alpha omega hybrid thing you're trying to do will even work. In my mind, you'd be better off committing to the alpha lifestyle and giving up your omega title entirely, but I know this fucked up political atmosphere you guys created would shit the bed of that happened, so let's just-"
If I'm honest, I completely stopped listening. At that point in my life, I had grown used to being ranted and raved at by him, and most of the time I couldn't even figure out what point he was trying to make. The berries had twisted his mind so much that he couldn't even put together a coherent line of thought, so I would typically just sit there and nod along as he spoke and wait for it all to finally end. I couldn't tell you how much longer I had to sit there and endure his ramblings, but as I waited for him to finally shut up, I began to reflect upon something he said before that actually stood out to me. Sure, the logic that his chemically unstable brain applied to it was complete nonsense, but I had to admit that maybe he was right when he said that we were looking too deeply into the string of murders that had plagued our pack.
We had, of course, always assumed that the Artist was a Traditionalist. After all, time had proven over and over again that they were not above the use of violence in their efforts to cast us back into the dark ages. The problem was, however, that we could never prove it, and they covered their tracks so well that they may as well have been ghosts. First of all, contrary to what Miles believed, they did not seem to have an established party leader. Rather, they appeared to all operate as equals. Secondly, aside from a few of the more outspoken bigots among the pack, it was nearly impossible to determine who belonged to them and who did not. We were, at one point, hopeful that we could infiltrate their camp with a man on the inside, but Candu was compromised and killed long before he could give us any real information.
When we first discovered Candu's body, we knew immediately that the infamous serial killer was responsible for his death, but as I thought back on what little I had seen of the crime scene and the information annotated in the case file, I realized that something was off. Though the manner in which the Artist displayed the bodies differed from victim to victim, the way that I felt when I set my eyes upon them was always the same. It was something that resonated deep within me, something that seemed to trigger my basest instincts and the sense of unease that would wash over my body would make my stomach churn every time. It felt as though the eyes of my deepest, darkest fears were always watching me from somewhere just out of sight, and each time I would arrive on scene, the hairs on my body would bristle and a chill would race down my spine. When I set my eyes upon our slain alpha and a few weeks later, upon the gruesome diorama that the Artist had constructed, I felt only disgust.
At first, I had simply assumed that after seeing so many bodies desecrated and displayed in such horrific ways, I had become desensitized to it, but it was in that moment as Miles ranted at me for the hundredth time that I truly understood why everything about Candu and the diorama felt so weird. When Charlie appeared, and shortly thereafter, Janice was murdered, there was always a show, don't tell element to the Artist's work. Sure, there were messages to accompany each body at some point, but these messages and threats were concise and believe it or not, they left a lot up for individual interpretation.
Candu and the diorama, however were presented at face value in a manner that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Then I wondered: Why would the Artist suddenly change their style? Though the Artist was the first serial killer I had ever faced, the park's history was littered with sickos who killed either for sport or for pleasure, but no matter what- no matter how deranged or disorganized they were, they always had an M.O. which they followed to a T. So why would the Artist's M.O. suddenly and so drastically change?
It didn't make any sense to me. Or, I guess it did. I just hated to think about what that would mean. To be frank, each time the rational part of me told me that somebody had discovered the Artist's identity and now used them as a weapon of terror, my stomach balled itself up into tight knots. The dreamer in me wanted to believe just about anything else was possible, but as much as I tried to fight it, as much as I had tried to see the grey between the black and the white, I just couldn't think of any other explanation.
As I sat there and nodded along to the tune of Miles' ramblings, I found myself thinking: Perhaps he was right. I grew up around both the black and the white, but in Kate I found the subtle comfort of the grey. It opened my eyes to possibilities far beyond what my narrow mind could have ever even imagined at that time, but perhaps in the wake of this great vivification, I had opened my eyes too wide and allowed myself to become a dreamer. In the throes of these waking dreams, I had grown to understand true empathy, and I realized that in the end, we were all just victims of our circumstances.
We didn't ask to be born, nor did we ask for the cards that this rotten world dealt us, and what we called life was nothing more than a desperate struggle to make the best out of what we were given. Some were born lucky. Others were lucky to be born, but beneath all of that, we were all the same. Whether we wanted to believe it or not, we were all nothing more than mortal clay to be shaped by the ever-changing world that surrounded us. Our identities, our ideals, our beliefs: They were nothing more than a reflection of our unique experiences. So who was I to judge anyone, really? In my mind, it wasn't ever a matter of good or bad. It was simply a matter of trying.
In his short time here on this earth, Miles was many things. He was an alpha, he was an alcoholic, he was a friend, but above all, he was a fighter. From the day he picked up his first berry, he battled the demons that dwelled within him, and in the end, he died fighting for the lives of the ones I love the most. In spite of all of his flaws, he always tried to do the right thing, to be a better man. And while I wish he was still around to see our pups grow up, I take comfort in knowing that he left the world a better man than when he came in.
That's all I ever asked of anyone, but I realized as I pondered the words that bombarded my ears, that, perhaps, sometimes, the grey did not exist. In matters such as those that had plagued our pack for so long, there was no deeper meaning. The most likely solution truly was the most obvious. Only problem was: "Obvious" had been so cleverly disguised by those who terrorized our pack that it was nearly impossible to see. The perceived intricacies, the indecipherable clues, and dread that loomed over us had led us asunder so often and for so long that we all lost ourselves down our own rabbit holes. Truth be told, I'm not sure if any of us believed we would ever see the light again.
However, as I mentally gathered what I knew and laid it out upon the temporal plane before me, I retraced my steps to the very beginning. With my mind's eye, I recalled the day that we discovered Charlie. I remembered the sickness that overtook me as I gazed upon his body, once again heard the cold, frightened undertones of my mate's commands, and I recalled the terror I felt as my eyes fell upon those two, chilling words: "Attention Omega."
But perhaps there was something more there on that day, something that slipped through the cracks that chaos had scourged into the atmosphere around us. But what could that have possibly been? I ventured through the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feelings and all that lied between, but even in slow motion, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Unless...
I do recall that something about that day struck me as odd, but I was far too busy dealing with the body, and everything felt so surreal that I somehow managed to convince myself that what I saw and how it made me feel were only my imagination. After all, while it may have been strange, it surprisingly didn't seem out of the ordinary, given his history. If I'm completely honest, I kinda expected that kind of demeanor from him anyway. We all did. Scar was a hardened, twice decorated alpha. Though he was medically separated from the military side of the fence several years ago and now lived a comparatively peaceful life as a hunter, it was clear that what he saw and what he did during his service to his pack still haunted him.
Through the grapevine, we had all heard stories and rumors of his valorous acts during the Eastern Civil War years ago, but we never really knew what was fact and what was fiction because he never talked about it. Truth be told, he never really said much of anything to anybody. He was old, crotchety, reserved and outside of work, he kept mostly to himself. His only friend was his old A-School classmate, Claw, and even she said that he was a hard wolf to know. I guess in a sense, he and I carried our traumas in much the same way- though our lives had carried us down highly different paths. So I could understand his desire to keep to himself. Kate opened me up and allowed me to be the wolf I am today, but it seemed that Scar never really found that.
But, anyway, I'm rambling again. Though I didn't fully know the extent of what Scar had seen and done during his time of service, it was clear that he was desensitized to death and severe bodily harm, but what struck me as odd was that he seemed... comfortable. Our pack has its fair share of combat veterans, many of whom were present at the crime scene, and while they remained composed, it was clear by their voices and the erected fur upon their backs that they were scared. In spite of their service, they had clearly never seen anything like this and it freaked them out. Regardless of this, however, they all steeled their resolve and got to work.
Scar, however, remained stoic, seemingly unfazed by the horrors that lied in the field. For a moment, he kept his distance and then began to assist in the investigation, and only once he was among the other alphas and actively involved in the investigation did he begin to appear "normal". Something about it, though, seemed disingenuous, like he was just going through the motions and trying to mirror the emotions and behaviors of the others around him. I wondered, then, if the Eastern Alpha was prone to sociopathic tendencies, and if any emotions he expressed were merely an act to appear normal to the rest of the pack.
Of course, if that was the case, that didn't necessarily mean that he was a murderer. I had grown to notice that many alphas in high positions of power or military stature behaved in much the same way, but there was something else. Once he got involved, he seemed to be TOO helpful, if that makes sense. If I remember correctly, he was the only one who voluntarily offered to assist in corpse removal. Other alphas were involved, of course, but it was clear that to them it was merely an unfortunate part of their job, which they begrudgingly fulfilled. Scar, however, didn't even need to be asked, and while at the time it merely struck me as odd, as I recalled the events of those days and the strange behaviors that I noticed, it led me to wonder if the reason why he was so comfortable with the bodies was because he was the one who had left them there.
This was all circumstantial, of course, and I knew that given the severity of it all, there was no way in hell I could just throw that accusation at him without actual, physical evidence. But at least it seemed that I finally had a place to start. After my training session with Miles, I took this theory back to Kate, and while at first she was skeptical of my deductions, as I walked her through the various cases and explained to her what I saw, that skepticism seemed to fade. She didn't seem entirely convinced that he was the Artist. Honestly, I wasn't either, but we at least agreed that it was worth looking into, and that was when we devised the most daring, most dangerous sting operation this pack has ever known.
