<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/f2/Beardycox.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Avery Burnham<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Law Dogs (1)<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 18th, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Dead Man’s Rest<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Charlie Flatbush; CLOSED<br/><hr/><br/>“Very true, Charlie, very true…”<br/><br/>Avery’s voice was soft as he traced the tip of a finger along one of the deep gouges.  Whether he was responding to Charlie’s anecdote about investigative techniques or the unlikelihood of smuggling a bear through town was not made clear.  It happened to be the former though.  Look with soft eyes, look for questions, not answers.  This was not bad advice actually.  Not for the first time it struck him as a shame that the sheriff was the not the man he used to be -- or rather the office was not held by the man who had used to hold it.  He had commanded some amount of respect it seemed.  The new sheriff commanded fear, but it was not the same thing.  Not really.<br/><br/>So what questions was this asylum asking them?  It was asking how.  How had these claw marks gotten here?  A wild animal seemed the only reasonable answer.  How had the unfortunate residents been so badly mauled and torn to pieces?  A wild animal of sufficient size and strength.  Collaborating ‘evidence’:  Dolores spoke of a Doggy being housed at the asylum that she had liked to visit and play with.  He'd made the reasonable assumption that Doggy was another patient, a man with an unusual nickname or perhaps even appearance that had earned him the moniker.  Was it possible that Doggy was an actual dog or wolf though?  If so Doggy would need to be of a hitherto unrecorded size to do this amount of damage.  An unlikely theory, but examining the claw marks and their patterns led him to reluctantly concede that it was no longer a completely dismissible one.<br/><br/>The led directly to the whys, his favorite question, the most difficult, the most persistently challenging.  Why did anyone do anything really?  Most often even the actor him or herself could not explain it.  ‘Jealousy’ said the girl in Charlie’s story but jealousy wasn’t the whole answer.  Everyone had been jealous at one time or another, everyone had their heart broken.  Only a very select few responded by hacking someone into bits.  The ‘why’ was elusive.<br/><br/>Why would the staff wish to keep a wild animal locked up here?  Why would the staff place such an animal in the same sort of room where it lodged it’s human inmates?  Why not a cage?  Possible [/i]logical[/i] answers: none so far.  Scientific experimentation perhaps but that still didn’t answer the other whys.  The only why he could answer with some confidence was why the creature had responded this way.  If it had been locked up, tormented and toyed with by the people who ran this hellhouse then there was ample reason for it respond with violence and savagery.  Only where had it gone afterwards?  Had it plummeted over the edge of the mesa?  Why not kill Dolores as well?  Because she had been kind to it?<br/><br/>“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard any stories about a wolf roughly the size of a man?  Or a man who looks like a wolf?”  Avery smirked, mostly to himself, both annoyed and intrigued at the case for being so persistently strange.<em>This isn’t your case.  You’re only here to gather ample evidence to prove Dolore’s unsuitability as the killer and scupper the prosecution.  Yes, yes, I know that but… </em>But he wanted to know, he wanted to know more than ever now.  “Sounds quite silly doesn’t it?  It<em>is</em>quite silly but this all rather suggests we’re dealing with a very large, very powerful man with some very peculiar tools at his disposal, or a very large animal of some kind.”   Standing up, Avery dusted his hands on the seat of his slacks, trying to picture a scene in his head as he again glanced over the remaining carnage…but the only scenes that fit were madness.  Absolutely bloody madness either way you imagined it.<br/><br/>“Yes.  Well.  Let’s go see that treatment room Charlie.  I don’t suppose you know much about the doctor who ran this place?  Peculiar fellow I’m assuming.  Any idea of his background?  Gomorra being a rather odd place to establish an asylum if you ask me…”<br/>