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Chapter 1

“I KNOW,” I said into my phone “This isn’t exactly standard—”

“It’s i office receptionist at the Calvary Ce up on me “It’s absolutely impossible”

“Maybe you can give ht be able to authorize this kind of request? Is there any representative of the Sherman family on record?”

His responses were starting to sound desperate “That information is confidential In fact, I don’t think you’ll be able to get any further on this without some kind of a warrant or a court order”

I was afraid of that I’d been hoping there’d be a friendly way to accomplish this That I could find a sympathetic historian ould back up my request or explain the situation to one of the descendants and get permission that way Surely they would want to know the truth as much as I did Also, I didn’t think I’d be able to convince a judge to issue said court order The request was based on little more than rabid curiosity

I soldiered on, as it were “There has to be some kind of standard procedure for an exhumation Can you tell me what that is?”

“Ms… Norville, is it?”

“Yes, Kitty Norville,” I said, thinking calm I could wear him doith patience

“Ms Norville—can I ask why you want to have General Sherman’s body exhumed?”

General William T Sherman, hero of the Civil War on the Union side, war crireatest soldiers and strategists in American history, and all-around icon And yeah, I wanted to dig hi to figure out what to say Last week I’d received a package fro a copy of an interview transcript from the 1930s It had been ram that employed journalists and other writers to record local histories around the country Many valuable stories were collected and preserved as part of the program The one I’d been sent was an intervieith a Civil War veteran—one of the last to survive, no doubt He’d been sixteen when he joined the Confederate army in the middle of the war and was close to ninety when he’d been interviewed, and he claimed that he’d witnessed General Sher A librarian as also a listener and fan of my radio show discovered it and sent it to me I had always had h and tumble in his photos, with his unbuttoned collar, his unkeeneral had been a olf, it would be Sherle interview proof? No Which hy I wanted to exhu tissue for the presence of lycanthropy

Maybe it was best to lay it out there “I think General Sherman may have been a olf and I want to run tests on his remains to find out”

Of course, a long pause followed I kept waiting for the click of a phone hanging up, which would have been fine; I’d have just called one of the other numbers on my list I hadn’t expected this to be easy

“Seriously?” he said finally The sas?

“Yeah Seriously So how about it? Don’t you want to help me rewrite American history?”

“I’et your name one more time?” he said “Could you spell it forfrom?”

I felt a restraining order co up

Oh well You can’t win them all

AT HOME that evening I sat on the sofa, library books lying open on the coffee table next toa half dozen Web sites open I was supposed to be researching Sherh the transcript for what must have been the twentieth time

Toe of sixteen At several points during the interview hehe’d been How innocent, and how foolish The interviewer kept having to prompt him to return to the focus of the story, his encounter with General Sherht of the full moon

One night while his squad was on patrol outside of Vicksburg, Hanson had gotten separated from the others and lost his way in the swampy forest so to find his way back, he’d stu with an officer The enlisted soldier kept calling the other man “General,” and Hanson swore the officer was General Williaument because it hadn’t eneral that he’d overstepped his bounds, and that he wanted to challenge him Hanson had heard that Sherman was crazy—he could understand anyone on the Union side wanting him out of command But that wasn’t up to an enlistedit in the middle of a swamp

Hanson didn’t understand it, but he described what happened next “The general, he took his clothes off I couldn’t move or he’d’ve heard me, so I didn’t dare I just sat there and watched So there he was, naked in the ed Like his body justI can’t say that I ever saolf before, but that’s what he turned into—big, shaggy, with yellow eyes That other soldier, well—he just ran Didn’t do hi ol’ wolf chased him down”

The door to the condo opened and closed— home He set his briefcase near the desk of his hoarded me where I sat on the sofa, papers on my lap, my head bent in concentration