Morning dragged a gray sleeve over Queen Street. Streetcars hissed. Pigeons argued over nothing. The city didn’t breathe; a tense energy cinched the blocks, Toronto holding its breath.
Rumors ran ahead of the day: he’d tried to kill a police officer and a young woman, and only the city’s mysterious—and divisive—vulpine vigilante had intervened. Stories spiraled—some feeding fear, some feeding hope. One tabloid claimed Vulpes and the Bloodletter were rival criminals fighting over turf. Another splashed: When Will the Bloodletter Kill Again? People whispered: if the police couldn’t protect their own, how could they protect anyone? What did it mean when a masked vigilante seemed to do more than the people assigned to protect them? A few held a quieter hope—that Vulpes wasn’t a thief or rival crook at all, but a hero, someone willing to bring the Bloodletter down.
This was the Toronto Coraline Penrose, attorney at law, walked into. Her second life as the Vulpes gnawed at her—bone-deep fatigue tucked under a crisp suit—but no one could know. She had to be the picture of an upstanding young lawyer, even if what she wanted, under the silk and starch, was seven hours’ sleep and her latest problem locked in a cell.
Coraline made her way into the offices of Penrose & MacLeod, offering nods and clipped pleasantries as she passed. She didn’t want to be at work, not really, but the demands of Coraline Penrose didn’t care about the demands of the Vulpes. The mask could wait; the billable hours could not. She slid into the role expected of her—upstanding young Toronto lawyer.
In reception, a boxy TV murmured CP24. On the coffee table, a Toronto Sun lay face-up: VULPES: HOAX OR HERO? She caught her reflection in the glass, then kept moving.
At the water cooler, two coworkers lowered their voices just enough to make it obvious.
“—if he’s going after cops now—”
“—she, you mean. The fox-girl. You think she’s real?”
“My cousin’s in traffic. Says Homicide’s… tense. Says the vigilante’s making them look—”
They noticed her and broke off. Coraline gave them the same small, professional smile she reserved for judges and elevators. “Morning.”
Arthur MacLeod’s door cracked open down the hall. “Penrose. A minute?”
She squared her shoulders and went.
Arthur was at his desk—the big mahogany slab from the 1940s he’d jokingly christened his “boss desk.” If you didn’t know him, you might mistake him for an ex–pro hockey enforcer poured into a suit. Tall, broad-shouldered, steel-grey hair and beard trimmed just enough to suggest the rebel under the gentleman. He leaned forward and motioned Coraline into the chair opposite.
She sat, never entirely sure what to expect from the man who was officially her partner now but unofficially Uncle Artie—her dad’s best friend and the most eccentric lawyer she knew.
He steepled his fingers. Serious lawyer face. Not a morale joke. Not a half-baked scheme.
“I have some news regarding the Little case.” He used Alice’s real name, not the “Wonderland” the media had slapped on her after Macentyre Systems.
“Good news, I hope,” Coraline said—calm on purpose. Someone had to be the straight man around Arthur MacLeod. With her father retired in Florida, that duty fell to her along with the name on the door.
“I was talking to an old colleague—Dr. Ashton White. Big name at Erie House Asylum.” He paused; Coraline supplied the cue.
“I’ve read his work on rehabilitative care.”
Arthur’s eyes warmed—smart girl without saying it. “He thinks Alice is presenting with EPS-DID—Extreme Persona Shift Dissociative Identity Disorder—built on pre-existing issues and pushed over by extreme stress.”
Coraline kept her face still but felt the click of pieces aligning. “Binary switch. Triggers. Two selves who may know each other. The… stylized pattern you see in Specials cases.”
“That’s his language, yes.” Arthur tapped a file. “He believes the ‘Wonderland’ behavior is a distinct, goal-driven state—performative but not delusional—and that Alice is treatable under secure care. He’ll testify. He wants her moved to Erie House for a full evaluation rather than remand.”
The fax machine in the corner hummed to life, spooling a sheet. Coraline glanced at it, then back to Arthur. Mercy, not freedom. That was the line.
“What do you need from me?” she asked.
“A steady hand and a clean presentation,” Arthur said. “We keep the tabloids out of it, we keep the vigilante out of it, and we ask the court for hospital evaluation. No grandstanding. Just what’s humane and lawful.”
Coraline nodded once. “Then that’s what we do.”
Coraline paused. An idea rose—reckless, maybe, but Arthur liked reckless when it helped. “Strike the vigilante part. What if I can get the vigilante to testify?”
Arthur’s brow climbed; the corner of his mouth tipped. “Under Canadian law a masked witness can testify. I once had a guy take the stand in full costume back in ’eighty-two.” He studied her. “You think you can get ahold of the Vulpes, kid?”
She nodded slowly, working the angles. She couldn’t be both counsel and witness. But the mask could be. “I can try. I made a promise. I’m not letting Alice get chewed up by the machine.”
Arthur drummed the file with two knuckles. “If you pull it off, we keep it clean. Publication ban, limited gallery, voice obscured. No circus. Defence will try to unmask her; we keep the focus on Alice, not capes. And you do not examine your own witness. I’ll handle the motion—you sit second chair and look respectable.”
“Respectable is my superpower,” Coraline said, almost smiling.
The fax machine spat another sheet. Arthur glanced at the header. “White can see her tomorrow. We file today.”
Coraline rose. “Then I’ll make contact.”
“Tell your fox friend,” Arthur said, dry as a law book, “to wear something the judge can live with.”
“She owns a suit,” Coraline said, already halfway to the door.
Coraline skipped her office and took the stairs down to Records. The air was cooler here, the hum of the new Wright-Tech towers underscored by the soft chew of a microfiche scanner that Martin the records clerk refused to retire on principle.
“Morning, Ms. Penrose,” he said, peering over his glasses. “Hunting anything particular?”
“Wellington County and Toronto,” she said, light as small talk. “Old missing-persons and any homicides that smell… odd. Mid- to late-’90s through this year.”
Martin’s eyebrows did a polite hop. “Well now. Try the new indexer. We finished the bulk import last week.”
He logged her into a terminal and drifted away, giving her the fiction of privacy. Coraline set her briefcase down, rolled her shoulders, and fed the machine simple words: Wellington County… missing student… apprentice… body found, rural outbuilding. Headlines stacked on the screen like a bad hand of cards: Missing Student, Missing Apprentice, Body Found in Rural Outbuilding. She clicked through. A grainy photo of a barn, wind snapping crime-scene tape. The write-up: the victim hung from a beam, throat opened over a bucket. Not a frenzy. A process.
She skimmed the sidebar: local gossip about a high-school crowd, names repeating across years—thin threads, but threads. The overlap pinged—students passing through the same halls within a four-year band before their names started turning up in police notes or not at all.
Her gaze dragged back to the barn photo. Hoists. Slings. Buckets. Not exotic—familiar. The copy might as well have whispered abattoir, locker plant, meat counter, farm work.
She printed the clippings and slid them under a paperweight, then pulled up her Toronto folder to sanity-check the echo: three victims near Bloor, different blades, same hand—posed bodies, blood deliberately drained, selected parts removed cleanly post-mortem. Precision over spectacle; “curated,” as Benoit had put it.
One more tab: the planted utility knife—bleached, over-sharpened, left where it would be found. Not a mistake. A taunt.
The overlap wasn’t proof. But it was direction.
She grabbed a legal pad and built herself a plan in clean, lawyerly lines:
- Timeline & geography: start at the barn and sweep thirty kilometers—abattoirs, co-ops, locker plants, meat counters.
- Names: cross those workplaces with the four-year high-school band that keeps resurfacing.
- Cycles: overlay dates against seasonal labor—slaughter schedules, harvest hires—any rhythm that could become ritual.
She tucked the printouts into a red folder and snapped it shut. On the way out, Martin gave her a curious look but didn’t ask. Good man.
If the Bloodletter started out where the air smelled like bleach and copper and work, then somewhere between that barn door and Bloor Street was a name. And Coraline intended to find it before he found another canvas.
She was about to print what she had when a line in the index caught her eye—settled out of court, names sealed. She opened it.
Civil claim. Ten-plus years old.
—[REDACTED]— assaulted and beaten by peers following the mutilation of a pet cat.
She tilted her head, reading it twice. Not rumor—notation. The kind of careful, bloodless phrasing lawyers use when something ugly sits underneath.
If the boy had cut up a cat, the beating was neighborhood justice. If he’d been blamed for it, the beating was rumor hardening into bone. Either way, the seed was the same: cruelty to an animal at the center of it. She’d learned enough criminal psychology to know where that road likes to lead. Most serial killers don’t start with people. They practice. They test how much the world will tolerate.
Her pen hovered, then moved. Revenge origin? Early targets = the peers who “taught him a lesson.” Families settle → records sealed → names lost in the fog. Years later, a cleaner, colder violence blooms in the city.
She checked the docket’s crumbs—the counsel of record, the insurer, the school board named, the town weekly cited in an attachment. No names, but there were dates, a season, a grade year, a mascot on a photocopied pep-rally flyer. Enough to triangulate a cohort.
Coraline pulled a yellow pad and built the next pass:
- Match the year. Yearbooks / local clippings for that class; pull the short list of boys disciplined that fall.
- Map the aftermath. Where did each end up—abattoir, locker plant, trades, college, disappeared?
- Cross the vanishings. Guelph/Wellington missing-persons in the years that followed; look for overlap with the cohort.
- If any are dead, compare method—clean cuts, posed bodies, blood managed.
Confirmation bias was a hunger, and she knew it. But the shape of it… the shape made sense.
She printed the docket summary, jotted the weekly’s name in the margin, and slid both into her red folder. On the way out, Martin glanced up over his glasses.
“Find what you needed?”
“Maybe,” Coraline said. “Enough to keep looking.”
Martin nodded and drifted off, leaving her with the hum of the stacks and the glow of the screen. Coraline kept working through related files and clipped clippings, the outline of a theory settling in.
Bloodletter reads like a butcher by trade—or at least someone who learned the work. A kid who started with a cat and never got corrected, grew up rural outside Guelph, cut his teeth on something that couldn’t scream “stop,” then moved to people. First human victims? The boys who “taught him a lesson” after the cat. From there, escalation.
The trick was the bridge—tying missing people and later murders back to one sealed incident and a set of redacted names. Liv could chase the court orders, but that would take time. If Coraline could connect the dots sideways—public records, yearbooks, clippings, work notices—she might get there faster.
She built a path on her legal pad:
- School cohort: pull the yearbooks for that fall; flag any boys disciplined after the cat incident.
- Workstream: check co-op bulletins, locker plants, abattoirs, butcher apprenticeships in Wellington County the next 3–5 years.
- Disappearances: cross those names against missing-persons tallies and obits; note any “farm accidents” that read too neat.
- Skills creep: look for WSIB injury claims in meat processing—hands cut, tendons nicked—the kind of job where edge control becomes religion.
She fed the indexer careful words—apprentice butcher, meat cutter, locker plant, Wellington, disciplinary. Results stacked. A community-weekly brief about seasonal hires at a small packing house off the highway. A notice about a teenage co-op placement “terminated for cause” with names withheld. A two-paragraph item from the Mercury about a barn accident the same month a boy from that class stopped appearing in team photos.
She printed, circled dates, drew arrows. Three names surfaced again and again—not spelled out, but implied in coaches’ quotes, in a guidance counselor’s letter to the editor, in a church bulletin about “praying for our boys after the trouble.” She underlined the one with a paper trail that kept getting close to knives: meat counter → locker plant → seasonal slaughter.
Confirmation bias prowled the edges of her mind. She kept her hand steady.
If he started where the air smelled like bleach and copper and work, there would be someone who remembered him wearing an apron and not talking much. Someone who would remember a left-handed cut. Someone who would give her a name.
Coraline slid the pages into the red folder and capped her pen. Time to make some calls that didn’t look like what they were.
Coraline made her way back to her office, nodded to her temp—another face in the revolving door she hadn’t learned yet—and slid past him with a polite, “Hold my calls? I need to focus.” He nodded. The door clicked shut.
She set her notepad beside the phone and looked at the list she’d built in Records. Now she needed a reason for a big-city lawyer to be calling small-town Ontario about a boy beaten by his peers after he killed a pet cat. It had to be something true enough to live with.
Comparable incidents. That would do. She wasn’t asking for names, just patterns. Duty of care, peer-on-peer violence, post-incident placements—public stuff if you knew where to knock.
She flipped to a fresh page and wrote:
- Call #1 — District School Board Records (Wellington): request board minutes/policies on peer assaults (autumn, Year X), no names.
- Call #2 — High school office: ask if a parent forum or special assembly followed; who organized it.
- Call #3 — Locker plant / abattoir HR: ask about co-op terminations in the two years after; reasons logged (knife safety, attendance).
- Call #4 — Parish office / community centre: confirm any prayer vigil or youth outreach after “the trouble.”
She picked up the receiver, dialed long-distance, and listened to the ring.
“Wellington District School Board, Records.”
“Good morning,” Coraline said, professional and warm. “Coraline Penrose, Penrose & MacLeod in Toronto. I’m compiling comparable incidents for a peer-on-peer assault matter—no names, just whether your board held any disciplinary hearings or special sessions in the fall of [year]. I’m especially interested in any policy changes that came after.”
A pause; keys tapped. “We do have board minutes and policy memos. Fall looks… active. I can pull agendas for you.”
“That would be wonderful,” Coraline said. “If there were any community meetings attached—assemblies, parent nights—I’d appreciate the dates. I can send over a fax number.”
Another pause. Paper rustled. “There’s a Student Conduct Special Session in October. And a Community Safety Forum the week after. No names in the minutes, of course.”
“Of course,” Coraline said, pen moving. “One more thing—did any guidance or co-op notes get archived separately? I’m looking for general outcomes, not student identifiers.”
“That would be with the co-op office. Different number.”
She wrote it down, thanked the clerk, and hung up. The notepad now had dates, a sequence, a direction.
Toronto held its breath outside her window. Coraline dialed the next number.
Most of the calls were dry as burnt toast—policy minutes, polite shrugs—until she reached the parish office.
“Hello, my name is Coraline Penrose. I’m calling from Penrose & MacLeod regarding comparable incidents for a case. Do you have a minute?”
A cheerful voice came on at once. “I’m Trudy, the pastor’s wife, and I always have time to talk!”
Coraline allowed herself a small smile. Town memory had answered the phone. She softened her tone, friendly, casual. “Thank you, Trudy. I’m looking into something from about ten, maybe twelve years ago—a young man was attacked by his peers after he killed a local girl’s pet cat?”
Trudy’s response came clean and fast, like the story lived right behind her teeth. “Oh, you mean when the Campbell boy killed little Linda McClaine’s tabby and her brother and three of his friends went after him. Tsk—boys will be boys—but they worked poor Callum over with a vengeance. Not his parents’ fault—good folks, the Campbells—but that boy had the devil in his eyes.”
Coraline blinked at the sheer volume, then leaned in. “You knew the families involved personally?”
“Everybody did. Small town.” Paper rustled on Trudy’s end. “Callum Campbell—C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. Lived out past the sideroads. Linda’s brother was Michael—Mike—and his friends were… let me think—Jason P., I won’t say his surname over the phone, I’m not unkind; then there was a lanky boy everyone called Tully, and another whose daddy worked at the co-op.”
“And Callum? What happened with him after the incident?” Coraline asked casually as she took down more notes.
A soft sigh. “Quiet family. They kept him close for a while. He finished school, more or less. Family owns an old fashioned hog farm mostly by hand you know, anyway. Anyway after school he took a placement at the locker plant out by the highway—didn’t last too long, after a year or so he got a certified as a proper butcher, good to see he made something of himself”
Coraline’s pen moved. “Understood.I don’t suppose you know anything about the incidents that happened a few years back, missing peoples and a suspected homicide?, off the record”
Trudy paused for a moment “Well if it's just between us, it was a bit suspicious, first Jason, then Tully and poor Mike he was the one they found strung up like a hog. Always though our little town was the short of place where things like that never happen”
“Everybody did. Small town.” Paper rustled on Trudy’s end. “Callum Campbell—C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. Lived out past the sideroads. Linda’s brother was Michael—Mike—and his friends were… let me think—Jason P., I won’t say his surname over the phone, I’m not unkind; then there was a lanky boy everyone called Tully, and another whose daddy worked at the co-op.”
“And Callum? What happened with him after the incident?” Coraline asked, keeping it casual as she took notes.
A soft sigh. “Quiet family. They kept him close for a while. He finished school, more or less. Family’s got an old-fashioned hog farm—mostly by hand, you know. Anyway, after school he took a placement at the locker plant out by the highway. Didn’t last too long. Year or so later he got certified proper as a butcher. Good to see he made something of himself.”
“Understood.” Coraline let a beat pass. “I don’t suppose you know anything about the incidents a few years back—missing people and a suspected homicide? Strictly off the record.”
Trudy hesitated, then lowered her voice. “Well, if it’s just between us… it was suspicious. First Jason, then Tully, and poor Mike—he was the one they found strung up like a hog. Always thought our little town was the sort of place where things like that never happen.”
Coraline’s pen paused, then moved again. “Thank you, Trudy. Dates aside, that helps me understand the sequence.”
“Oh, love, I remember the prayer list like it was yesterday,” Trudy said, voice going soft. “We had candles all along the rail.”
“You’ve been more than helpful.” Coraline closed her eyes for a second, fixed the order in her head, and underlined three names. “If I need to confirm public meeting dates—school board, parish forum—may I ring you back?”
“Anytime,” Trudy said. “I’m almost always here.”
“Appreciated.”
She hung up and boxed the chain on her pad: Jason → Tully → Mike (homicide; posed). Then, under that, in smaller print: Campbell family hog farm; butcher cert; locker plant—earlier placement.
Direction, not proof. But it was a line she could follow.
“Everybody did. Small town.” Paper rustled on Trudy’s end. “Callum Campbell—C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. Lived out past the sideroads. Linda’s brother was Michael—Mike—and his friends were… let me think—Jason P., I won’t say his surname over the phone, I’m not unkind; then there was a lanky boy everyone called Tully, and another whose daddy worked at the co-op.”
“And Callum? What happened with him after the incident?” Coraline asked, keeping it casual as she took notes.
A soft sigh. “Quiet family. They kept him close for a while. He finished school, more or less. Family’s got an old-fashioned hog farm—mostly by hand, you know. Anyway, after school he took a placement at the locker plant out by the highway. Didn’t last too long. Year or so later he got certified proper as a butcher. Good to see he made something of himself.”
“Understood.” Coraline let a beat pass. “I don’t suppose you know anything about the incidents a few years back—missing people and a suspected homicide? Strictly off the record.”
Trudy hesitated, then lowered her voice. “Well, if it’s just between us… it was suspicious. First Jason, then Tully, and poor Mike—he was the one they found strung up like a hog. Always thought our little town was the sort of place where things like that never happen.”
Coraline’s pen paused, then moved again. “Thank you, Trudy. Dates aside, that helps me understand the sequence.”
“Oh, love, I remember the prayer list like it was yesterday,” Trudy said, voice going soft. “We had candles all along the rail.”
“You’ve been more than helpful.” Coraline closed her eyes for a second, fixed the order in her head, and underlined three names. “If I need to confirm public meeting dates—school board, parish forum—may I ring you back?”
“Anytime,” Trudy said. “I’m almost always here.”
“Appreciated.”
She hung up and boxed the chain on her pad: Jason → Tully → Mike (homicide; posed). Then, under that, in smaller print: Campbell family hog farm; butcher cert; locker plant—earlier placement.
Direction, not proof. But it was a line she could follow.
“Ms. Penrose, there’s a call for you on line two—from Dr. White at Erie House,” her secretary’s voice crackled from the intercom.
Coraline glanced at the little speaker, pressed the button. “Thanks. Put him through.”
She slid her notepad into a drawer. Coraline’s day demanded attention. Vulpes problems could wait—maybe after a ten-minute power nap, if the gods were kind.
A click, a breath. “Ms. Penrose? Ashton White.”
“Doctor. Thank you for calling.”
“I just spoke with Mr. MacLeod. If the court grants our assessment order today, I can see Ms. Little at ten a.m. tomorrow. We’ll begin with a structured interview and observation. Thirty days would be ideal; I understand the court may give us less.”
“We’ll ask for thirty,” Coraline said. “Publication ban, limited gallery. We’re keeping this humane and quiet.”
“Good.” Paper rustled on his end. “Two quick items. First—any reliable triggers for the alternate state you’ve observed? Stress, specific objects, phrases?”
“Yes,” Coraline said, choosing her words. “Acute stress and symbolic cues tied to the Macentyre incident. I’ll fax a short brief within the hour.”
“Perfect. Second—there’s chatter about a masked witness. If such testimony is contemplated, please keep it entirely out of the clinical file. The court can deal with it; my focus is Ms. Little’s care.”
“Understood.”
“I’ll fax intake forms in five minutes,” White said. “If you return them by three, we’ll be ready.”
“We will. Thank you, Doctor.”
They hung up. Coraline exhaled, reopened the drawer, and tapped the edge of the red folder against her desk until the rhythm steadied. Mercy, not freedom. One promise at a time.
She reached for the fax cover sheet—and, after a beat, circled the parish names on her pad again. Tonight was for the fox. Now was for Alice.
Coraline yawned and rubbed her eyes. Now she just had to balance a legal case, track down one Callum Campbell, and pencil in enough sleep not to collapse on patrol. Just another glamorous day in the life of a caped crusader. No rest for the wicked? Feh. No—the bad guys get plenty of rest. It’s the ones chasing them who pay in hours.
She set her pager to buzz in twelve, leaned back in her chair, and let the ceiling tiles blur. Ten minutes for Alice, two for the fox, and then the hunt.
