by Anne Bishop
Sproing. By all the laughing gods, what kind of name was that for a village? It sounded like some kind of initiation or razzing— have the new guy respond to a call and then have to keep asking for directions to Sproing. Plenty of off-color jokes could be made about that.
Except he knew the name wasn’t a joke. He had seen it on the map at the Bristol station and had been told calls from citizens living around Lake Silence were part of Bristol’s jurisdiction. Added to that, the emergency dispatcher, who was a no-nonsense woman, had sounded reluctant to send him—and he’d been advised a couple of times by other officers at the station that if he had to answer a call around Lake Silence, he should get in and out as quickly as possible because things around that particular lake were a wee bit . . . hinky.
The village had a small police station but no longer had its own police force—not a single cop patrolling its streets. The people there were dependent on the highway patrol that worked out of the Bristol station, and even then . . .
Over the past few months, two officers who had answered calls around Sproing hadn’t returned. One officer was found in his patrol car, which had been crushed by something powerful enough to flatten a car with its fists or paws or some freaking appendage. The other man . . . Most of that officer had been found, but no one knew what had set off the attack or why it had been so vicious. Both deaths were harsh reminders that the highway patrol traveled through the wild country as part of the job, and a man never knew what was watching him when he stepped out of his vehicle.
Grimshaw had been patrolling the secondary roads south of Bristol— a loop that would have taken him close to Lake Silence anyway—so when he spotted a sign for the lake, he turned onto the dirt road, hoping it would take him to The Jumble, which he’d been told was some kind of resort right on the lake. Instead he found himself in the parking area for the lake’s public beach.
From what he had gathered from his captain’s orientation speech, the land on the western side of Lake Silence was privately owned—or at least privately controlled—as was most of the eastern side. There was no vehicle access to the northern end of the lake, which left only the southern end for anyone who wanted to take a cool dip on a hot day or take a boat out for fishing or recreation.
Grimshaw frowned at the two signs attached to the low stone wall that separated the parking area from the beach.
The first sign read:
PACK OUT YOUR TRASH OR ELSE
The second sign read:
YOU MAY SWIM, FISH, SAIL, ROW, CANOE,
OR FLOAT ON RAFTS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
IF YOU PUT A MOTOR IN THE WATER,
YOU WILL DIE.
Nothing ambiguous about either message.
Grimshaw turned the cruiser around and got back on the main road, heading north. The next turnoff had a weathered sign for The Jumble. He made the turn and followed the gravel access road up to the main building. As he shut off the car, he pressed two fingers against his chest and felt the round gold medal for Mikhos, the guardian spirit of police officers, firemen, and medical personnel—a talisman he had worn under his uniform every day since he graduated from the police academy a decade ago.
“Mikhos, keep me safe.” It was the prayer he whispered every time he answered a call.
A woman stepped into view, looking agitated. Curly brown hair, a pleasant enough face, and a build he would describe as stocky if she had been a man. He couldn’t tell more than that from this distance, so Officer Wayne Grimshaw got out of the cruiser and went to see Ms. Victoria DeVine about a body.
CHAPTER 3
Vicki
Moonsday, Juin 12
“But I can’t!” Aggie wailed, sprouting more feathers when I told her she would have to talk to the police.
The additional black feathers in her hair were less distressing than the ones that suddenly appeared on her face and forearms.
“You have to,” I replied, striving to remain calm. I placed a saucer over the bowl with the eyeball. “You’re the only one who knows where to find the body. You’ll need to show the police when they get here.”
“But I’ll get in trouble!”
My breath caught and my heart thudded. Aggie was petite and had a small-boned physique—and my purse probably weighed more than she did. But being one of those Crows, she could be a lot stronger than she looked.
“Aggie, you didn’t . . . ?” What would I do if she admitted that she had killed a man in order to eat his eyeball? I imagined myself being strong and brave and performing some kick-ass self-defense moves despite not actually knowing how to do them. Then I imagined myself smiling weakly right before I ran away.
I liked the idea of running away. Much more sensible.
“I didn’t kill him!” Aggie sounded insulted. “He was already dead when I found him and only had the one eyeball.”
“What happened to the other one?”
“Dunno. Probably got eaten.”
Since I liked Aggie, I really didn’t want to ask more questions. I grabbed the bowl with the eyeball and went outside to wait for the police. Aggie followed me out the front door but started edging toward the trees.
“Aggie . . .” Hearing tires on gravel, I turned to watch the police car as it drove up within sight of the house and stopped at a spot that blocked the access road. When I turned back, a pile of clothes lay under a tree and Aggie was gone. So I stood there, alone, holding the bowl while I waited for the police officer to get out of the car.
You know those cartoon heroes with the strong lower jaws, sparkly teeth, broad shoulders, and tiny waists? The man who stepped out of the police car could have been the model for the caricature, but he was correctly proportioned and looked really official with all the doodads on his belt. He was wearing sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t tell if the expression in them was a warm “Can I help you, ma’am?” or a cold “You’re being a pain in my ass, so talk fast.”
If he had stopped to help when I was stranded on a dark, lonely road, I would have been happy to see him. But that presence was less reassuring when I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be labeled the villain.
“Are you the lady who called about a suspicious death?” he asked, approaching warily.
He was a big man and had a big voice. Not that he was yelling at me or anything, but it was the kind of voice that could hammer a person—the kind of voice that, when used with a threatening tone, could trigger a panic attack.
He stopped and studied the claw marks on a tree—marks that were high enough that I hadn’t noticed them because they weren’t in my usual line of sight.
Something to think about on a hot summer night when I’m trying to convince myself that it’s safe to leave the windows open to get some air. Safe from thieves maybe, since I have nothing to steal. Safe from the mysterious Clawman?
I’d read somewhere that an ordinary bear could hook its claws in a car door and rip the door off the hinges in order to get to the snacks someone foolishly left inside. Odds were good that whatever prowled around in The Jumble’s woods didn’t qualify as ordinary, although, to be fair, Aggie was the only terra indigene I had seen—“seen” being the qualifying word. If one of the crows hanging around The Jumble was Crowgard, how many others were more than they seemed?
“My lodger found a body near the farm track that is the boundary between my property and the Milfords’ orchards,” I replied, trying for matter-of-fact helpful. I held out the bowl. “Here. This is evidence.”
He took the bowl, lifted the saucer, and stared at the eyeball. At least, I assumed he stared at the eyeball. Since he was wearing those mirrored sunglasses, he could have been staring at me—and it suddenly occurred to me that if he asked to look in my refrigerator, I had no idea what he might find.
“Wait there.” He walked back to his car and opened the trunk. He returned in a minute without the eyeball. It didn’t look
like he was going to return my bowl and saucer either. “I’ll need to speak to your lodger.”
“She’s a little shy about talking to the police.”
He removed the sunglasses. The look in his blue-gray eyes said my lodger better get un-shy in a hurry. Or maybe I was projecting from past experience with men. Man. The one who used to leave me feeling that something was my fault even when I couldn’t have controlled someone else’s actions or thoughts or opinions.
“Did she tell you the location? Can you show me the alleged body?”
I had just given him an eyeball. How alleged could the body be? “I—”
“Caw.”
I looked at the crow—or Crow—perched in a tree a couple of yards down one of the bridle paths, of which The Jumble has many.
“Yes, I can.” I set off down the path and hoped really hard that I was following Aggie and not someone else.
The second time I tripped and would have landed face-first in the dirt if the officer hadn’t grabbed my arm and kept me upright, he grumbled, “You might do better watching where you’re walking than looking at the trees.”
Sound advice. I wished I could take it, but I didn’t want to explain that our guide was in the trees, because that would require explaining the nature of our guide.
“Stop,” he said after we had been walking awhile. It felt like forever, and since I hadn’t gone back inside the house to get my wristwatch before we headed out, time was measured by how it felt. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?”
“Of course I do, Officer . . .” I realized he hadn’t told me his name. Maybe that wasn’t required?
“Grimshaw.”
“Really?” So not the correct response, especially from someone named Vicki DeVine. “The Milfords’ place is the land between The Jumble and the road that leads to Sproing. The body was found near the farm track between the Milfords’ land and mine.”
“So we should be heading east?”
I was about to agree but the affirmative words stuck in my throat. Were we supposed to be heading east? Was this a trick question? Couldn’t be heading west. The lake was to the west of the main house—could, in fact, be seen from the back of the main house. But that left two other directions unaccounted for.
“Ms. DeVine?” Officer Grimshaw was not a happy camper.
“Um . . .”
“Caw.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “This way.”
Suddenly there were three crows on the same branch, making me think of the shell game where you have to figure out which shell is hiding the pea.
Three black birds were sitting in a tree. Which one was A-G-G-I-E?
“Caw.”
Only one took off, so I followed, hoping it was a Crow, and Officer Grimshaw followed me. Big mistake. I probably should have admitted to being geographically challenged before I led him into the woods.
“Caw!”
Open ground. Daylight. The dirt road, aka the farm track. And the body.
“Ew.” That wasn’t a professional response, but I wasn’t a professional and I sincerely hoped I never met this man again. Either man.
“Stay there,” Grimshaw said as he moved closer to the body.
Like I was going to get closer when my knees already felt rubbery and my stomach felt swoopy.
“This body has been disturbed.”
“I’d be disturbed too if I was suddenly dead,” I replied.
He twisted around enough to look at me and must have decided I wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass; I just wasn’t quite in control of what I was saying anymore. Since I had dealt with the eyeball pretty well, the only explanation was that my brain had decided that, with someone else here to handle the problem, it no longer had to be fully functional during this stage of the crisis and could enjoy a mini anxiety attack.
“Not a lot of predation,” Grimshaw said, studying the body. “I don’t think he’s been here long.”
“Aggie said his eyeball was squooshy. That’s why she wanted to warm it up in the wave-cooker. Wouldn’t it take a while for the eyeball to get squooshy?”
I watched him put his sunglasses back on before he turned to face me.
“Aggie is your lodger?” Arctic Voice.
I nodded, glad I couldn’t see his eyes because my insides were quivering as I braced for Arctic Voice to become Hammer Voice.
“I really need to talk to her.”
My quivering insides translated his Officially Polite Voice as more encouraging than scary, so I pointed at the branch above me. “Go ahead.”
His head moved, so I assumed he was looking up. Then, as he turned away, I heard him say, “Crap.” It wasn’t so much spoken as a breath shaped into sound.
Aggie lifted her wings in what might have been an apologetic shrug and let out a timid caw.
Grimshaw pulled out his mobile phone and made a call. The next couple of minutes sounded like a TV show with all the “officer needs assistance” and requests for the medical examiner and transport of the remains.
He hadn’t gotten very far into explaining the situation when seven birds winged toward the body. They landed close and moved closer, despite Grimshaw waving an arm to keep them away.
“Friends of yours?” I asked, looking up at Aggie.
“Caw.”
“Officer . . .”
“I heard.”
Yeah. Regular crows would have been enough of a problem if you wanted to avoid having more body bits and pieces being taken away for someone’s dinner. But dealing with the Crowgard? That made this a potential PR fiasco for the police department—and every other human service that could be affected by the terra indigene’s taking exception to someone keeping them away from the buffet.
Or was it the body that was so intriguing? I saw a glint of gold. A wristwatch. It looked like someone had been trying to pull it off and had been interrupted. By our arrival?
“I have to stay with the body until the Crime Investigation Unit gets here,” Grimshaw said. “Can you find your way back to the house?”
“Sure.”
“Can you find your way back?”
Could we call that a no-confidence vote for the geographically challenged?
“Caw.” At least Aggie was confident of getting us back to the main house.
So there, Officer Smarty-Pants.
I headed back up the path, fairly sure that I could get out of sight before getting lost.
“Ms. DeVine?”
Grimshaw’s voice stopped me but I didn’t turn around. “Yes, Officer?”
“I’ll still need to talk to you and your lodger. Don’t go anywhere.”
Like I could with his big official vehicle blocking the access road that led up to the main house. Somehow I couldn’t see myself taking off on my bicycle in order to escape the law. Besides, all I did was report finding a body. How much trouble could I get into for doing that?
CHAPTER 4
Them
Moonsday, Juin 12
He studied the three men he had summoned for this late-night meeting. Two of them were top-tier members of the club, men who knew how to put together a deal and hold it together until it paid off. They were friends of long standing, and he had worked with them on several highly successful and lucrative projects. The third man came from money and a solid family name, but he was a third-rate schemer who thought he was a big shot—and could talk a good enough game to make other people believe he was as good as he believed himself to be, at least until a person started looking at the actual deals he’d made. Then it became clear that his success depended on his being the big fish in a very small pond.
Normally a man like that wouldn’t be included in a deal this size, but the fool was the one who held the papers for the asset they wanted—an asset the man’s family hadn’t bothered to utilize for decades. Exc
ept the damn fool didn’t hold the papers anymore, a detail he had “forgotten” to mention until the other men had shaken on the deal and couldn’t exclude him without staining their reputations with the rest of the members of the club.
But that forgotten detail was the reason they were looking at trouble now.
“Franklin Cartwright is dead,” he said, his voice full of harsh anger.
“Murdered?” the fool asked, sounding hopeful.
“Killed. My sources have confirmed nothing human could have done it.”
“Did Cartwright get the papers we need before getting killed?” the oldest man asked. He had gray hair and a hefty build and was a decade older than the rest of the men involved in this deal.
“No, but another source is going to make sure those papers aren’t available to anyone who might need them.”
The oldest man nodded. “If the bitch can’t prove she owns the asset . . .”
“It will give us time.” He studied the fool. “Why did you ask if Cartwright was murdered? Do you think your lump of an ex-wife could do that?”
“Nah.” The fool waved a hand as if erasing the words. “She’s a dishrag. Just raise your voice and she’ll do whatever she’s told.”
He looked at the two men he considered friends. “A murder charge won’t stick, but I’ll call one of our associates who is on the scene. Let’s see if he can push the dishrag’s buttons and convince her that she’ll be held responsible for Cartwright’s death.”
Everyone thought that was a splendid idea. Since he knew the fool would go home and bleat the details of this secret meeting to the new wife, he didn’t say anything more about their plans, even though the new wife happened to be his cousin. And he waited until he was sure the other men had left the building before calling the associates currently located in Sproing.
CHAPTER 5
Grimshaw
Sunsday, Juin 13
The following morning, Grimshaw parked the cruiser in front of Sproing’s police station and studied the building. The exterior looked more like a store that hadn’t quite gone out of business but wasn’t being cared for properly because the owner had given up on turning a profit.