With his investigation into the murder and possible "weirdness" (his word) concerning the death of Lionel Ulysses unproductive and not knowing what else to do at the moment, Tom Herald decided to go back to the office and at least file the sports stories he did have.
He considered himself a hard news journalist, but at least covering the upcoming Seattle Seahawks game that Sunday kept him employed.
Tom was debating with himself whether or not to still go to wherever this "Moon Lake" was in Washington State between Friday and Saturday, but two things were making him hesitate on that decision.
One: if he missed any of the sports coverage while gone, his editor would kick his ass.
Probably literally, not metaphorically.
Besides, two: Tom now had a date for a Halloween party with the beautiful clerk at the costume shop he just left. He told her he was checking out possibilities for a "do it yourself" Halloween costume for his nephew, when truth be told his sister didn't want her brother anywhere the kid.
Tom was just using that as an excuse to figure whether or not Lionel Ulysses' alleged tail was real or fake.
That homeless guy claimed to find it near where the raid went down, yet every inch of that area was gone over with a fine toothed comb with no results. So either he's lying with a fake tail and Ulysses' was real since the police never found it, or the guy's telling the truth and the police were inept searching the area and that means Ulysses' tail was fake, realized Tom. Either way, the police are accepting the homeless man's find as real and consider the matter closed. But what's the truth? And if the tail WAS real, what kind of person... or creature has a tail and still looks relatively human? were the unanswered questions, when Tom spotted something odd in his rear view mirror.
"Is somebody following me?" he wondered, spotting a sedan trying to keep pace with him in Seattle traffic.
Curious, Tom turned right at the next intersection. All that would do as far as his journey was concerned would be to add an extra couple of moments to his trip, but the fact that the sedan made a right turn too make him suspicious.
Coincidence? he asked himself. If I am being followed, why? It can't be because of my sports coverage. Could be the police in an unmarked vehicle wanting to make sure I buy the fake tail story, which would make me ask all kinds of questions if that's true. It could be someone hoping my coverage leads them to Ulysses' killer(s), which would definitely be interesting considering I'm no closer to catching whoever's involved than the police are. Then again, considering some of the hard hitting exposes I've written in the past...
Not wanting to take any chances, the first chance Tom Herald could safely do so without causing any trouble or risk getting a traffic ticket, he made a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back the way he came.
The driver of the car, spotting the reporter's sudden maneuver, made a hasty right turn at the closest intersection to avoid contact; not knowing that doing so also prevented the reporter from taking their picture with his camera or trying to get their license number.
"Call central and request them to assign someone else to carry on our mission for today. The reporter realizes he's being followed," the driver said to his passenger.
"Right," said the other man, as he grabbed his cellphone. "Let's just hope he doesn't realize why he's being followed, let alone who we really are."
"If that is the case, then the Luna Brotherhood will deal with him appropriately," said the driver, while checking in his rear view mirror to make sure they were not being followed.
After a couple of blocks, Tom Herald realized that he had shaken off his tail.
Happy, he resumed his journey back to the newspaper offices, not realizing that there was a new car following him more discretely than the first, or the trouble he would be in if he did discover evidence of weres' existence.