Hocus by Jan Burke

about the library fines as heartily as they had cheered the earlier announcements. No one liked fines. But the library was more forthcoming than the bank or the municipal court — already strapped by budget cutbacks, it couldn’t afford the loss of revenue. Libraries would be closed on weekends until further notice.
    Parents of kids with homework projects were the first to howl, and others quickly joined in. A fund-raiser was held, and the library reopened on Saturdays. Now the local citizenry seemed to understand that damage could be done.
    The people of Las Piernas began to ask the same questions that computer security personnel had asked all along. Who were these people? How many of them were there? What was Hocus trying to prove? How had they managed to break into these computer systems? And perhaps most important, what would they do next?
    In those days all the actions Hocus took had fit with its name. Pranks. No one was taking revenues, they were just preventing the collection of revenues.
    Computer experts were called in, and any organization using computers did its best to heighten security. We waited for the next trick.
    When it came, we were taken completely by surprise.
    An animal rights group was blamed at first. In the immediate chaos that followed the release of every creature in the city animal shelter, the body of the night manager lay undiscovered for over three hours.
    If you open a birdcage or two, even let out a couple of snakes, not much is going to happen. Set twenty or thirty cats loose and then release just over two hundred dogs not long afterward, and you’re going to see some action. Let a horse be the grand finale, and people will definitely notice.
    The birds flew off, and the snakes were never found again. The horse was old and skinny and didn’t go much farther than the first open field he came across. The cats apparently had enough lead time to climb trees or make themselves scarce. The dogs were another story.
    Social beings that they are, the dogs must have decided these adventures were more fun when shared, and most of them gathered into packs as they set off through the streets. Some packs announced their freedom as they ran.
    Most of the police activity in those early hours centered on rounding up animals, especially those dogs that had been quarantined for viciousness.
    Two men were on duty that night: the night shift manager and an animal control officer. The animal control officer had gone out on an emergency call that turned out to be bogus. Before he could return, the police were contacting him by radio about the calls they were getting.
    For all the pandemonium on the streets nearest the shelter, the shelter itself was eerily quiet. The night manager didn’t seem to be on the premises, and a second truck was gone. At first, everyone thought he was out catching dogs. The truck was found much later, abandoned under a freeway overpass.
    The shelter actually ended up with more dogs than it started out with — if not necessarily the same dogs — since the previous inmates had picked up some sympathizers along the way. It was only after the dogs had been caught that anyone could spend much time at the shelter itself, trying to figure out what had happened.
    A woman LPPD officer saw drops of blood on the ground and followed the trail they made to a building at the back of the shelter. They led to the area where the dogs were put to sleep. The door to one of the chambers used for large dogs was open, but as she stepped closer she saw that the chamber had been recently used. The body of the night manager was inside, along with a note:
    HOCUS SET THE CAPTIVES FREE.
    Hocus’s first murder.
     
6
     
    T HE DREAM HAD BEEN PLEASANT . He could still see her face, feel the whiskey warmth of her skin, her softness. He had already forgotten what had happened in the dream, was not sure if they had made love, but drowsily he thought perhaps they had, as his awakening was the slow, reluctant