Inside the Moon Lake Police Department, there is a section of police officers whose job it is to enforce the were provisions in the town code as well as help maintain the secrecy of the Moon Lake were population. Their task includes keeping track of potential troublemakers and dealing with non-compliant normals who won't obey the mandatory were law. Theirs is an ugly task, yet they have a rather innocuous name; Animal Control.
The first line of defense were the workers of the town's hotels and restaurants. They kept their eyes and ears open for any potential trouble, such as snooping reporters, meddlesome writers, or government officials who went a little too deep. Anyone who worked in these establishments were given training as to what to watch out for and how to respond if they suspect trouble. Rebecca was one of those people.
She dialed the telephone number for the police department and asked for Animal Control. The operator knew immediately what that meant, and connected her to Officer Schultz.
At the police department, Officer Schultz's phone rang, and he quickly picked up the phone. It was rare for his phone to ring. "Animal Control, this is Officer Schultz."
"Hi, Officer Schultz, this is Rebecca at the Moon Lake Inn," answered Rebecca. "I'd like to report on a stray."
As part of her training, she learned how to speak to the Animal Control unit using code. It was a way of allowing people to talk to each other without letting anyone eavesdropping know what they were talking about. If anyone listened to Rebecca, she was talking about some wild animal. However, for those in the know, such as Officer Schultz and Rebecca, a stray meant a person who was a normal and not a resident of Moon Lake.
"What kind of stray are we talking about here?" asked Officer Schultz.
"A dog. A male dog," answered Rebecca. A dog was code for a stray that was a journalist or a writer of some sort. Someone who could reveal the secret of Moon Lake to the world.
"Is the dog dangerous?"
"Not yet. He just barely got here. I think he's starting to sniff around." Dangerous meant that the journalist had evidence of the secret of Moon Lake. By saying that he wasn't dangerous, Rebecca was telling the officer that Lawrence had no information about the were population. However, she could tell that he was about to investigate.
"Understood. We'll send an officer over right away."
"Thank you," Rebecca replied as she hung up the phone. She knew that she had to wait for an officer to arrive there so they could discuss more what she knew about Lawrence.
Animal Control wasn't an ordinary police outfit. Rather, it contained the elite of the Moon Lake Police Department. These men and women were all former intelligence officers. Some of them served in the military as intelligence operatives, some of them were former FBI or CIA agent, and many of them had extensive law enforcement experience. The vast majority of them had to "retire" before people started to notice that these people were aging way too slowly, and often had to fake their deaths in order to lose their trails. Some of them have been on the force for decades, and could tell stories about how before the laws were changed, they had to forcibly change entire families. It wasn't a pretty job, but it had to be done for the safety of Moon Lake and its were residents.