The Geography of Murder

by P. A. Brown

  Both of them were staring hungrily at Alex. The black guy turned to me. "You two together? Is he hot? He looks like a powerhouse." He reached over and snagged the beer the bartender handed over. The Anglo also got a beer. He and the bartender traded words.

  The two conferred again. Then the black guy leaned over and spoke in my ear. "Rafe told me they spent the night at his place and the guy was a fucking machine." He threw a slug of beer down his throat. I wanted to believe he was talking about someone else, but I knew it was Alex they meant. So the bartender was one of his fucks. No biggie. I knew he wasn't a one-man kind of guy. But the informative 196

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  asshole wouldn't give up. "Rafe bragged to everyone here that he walked like he was fucked by a bull for a week. Lucky guy. God, I'd love a piece of that."

  I wanted to cool him off with a drink over his head, but could just imagine how that would go over. Instead I leaned over the bar and fumed.

  Alex came back and got another beer. He didn't get me one. I said screw that and ordered my own. He raised one eyebrow but didn't say anything. More friends must have shown up because the next instance he was gone again. I nodded in time to the music, wanting to dance more than anything. The beat hammered through me; my body vibrated to it.

  The skinny black guy touched my arm and held out a vial.

  Poppers. I started to shake my head then saw Alex on the other side of the room with an elfin blond draped all over him.

  I grabbed the popper and inhaled, my lungs expanding as the vaporous drug was sucked into them. I was instantly buzzed; my heart raced.

  Alex was coming back. Before he could reach my side I pushed through the field of writhing bodies and grabbed his arm.

  "Come on, dance."

  Alex might be a great cop, I know he's an incredible lover, but he sucks big as a dancer.

  But he was game, I'll give him that. He didn't exactly lumber, though he did step on my feet several times. It was nice to see there was something he didn't excel at. I on the 197

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  other hand, knew I had a hot set of feet—when they weren't being pinned to the tile floor by Alex's chunky boots.

  When I winced for the fourth time he took my arm and pulled me off the dance floor back to the bar. Over the pounding techno-music he shouted, "I don't dance."

  "I can tell," I shouted back.

  This time I left to go to the bathroom. The black guy followed and I took a couple more popper hits before going back. I guess it was so crazy and electric that Alex didn't notice my buzzed state—or he attributed it to being out with him. Alex had no shortage of ego.

  The buzz faded and I started getting a headache. I headed back to the bathroom where a new crowd had gathered. The energy level was high. Someone I didn't see groped my crotch. I twisted away from him. Someone else put their arm around my shoulder and before I could shake him off he showed me a small plastic package full of white powder.

  "Want to share some blow?"

  I should have run. I shouldn't have let him guide me over to the counter where he laid out a line. My headache still throbbed in the back of my skull. Maybe a small hit would clear that problem up. I leaned down and snorted. Instant bliss. I grinned and turned to thank my benefactor only to find him gone. Too bad. I wouldn't have minded a second taste.

  Eventually I wandered back out to the bar area, to find Alex in deep conversation with a chain-festooned leather daddy. He didn't look around when I reached him, but he did 198

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  slide his arm around my waist and draw me tightly against him.

  The evening wound down and I was wilting. Alex finally noticed and indicated we were leaving. He got no argument from me. We hit the cool air outside and my buzz returned with a rush of oxygen.

  He steadied me when I swayed. "Think you had a bit too much there, boy. Come on, let's get you home."

  I think I dozed in the truck only waking up enough for him to guide me into the house where he coaxed me into getting undressed. I was exhausted but amorous as hell. I kept grabbing his crotch and mumbling that I wanted him to fuck me. Gently he put me down on the bed and held me firmly when I would have stood up again.

  "Wait," he said sternly.

  Out of habit I obeyed. After several minutes—or hours, I had no time sense—he slid in beside me. I immediately draped myself over him dry humping his hip.

  "Want to fuck?"

  "Not tonight, hon," he said. "Go to sleep."

  Again I obeyed, sinking down into the welcome embrace.

  My last conscious thought was, he called me hon. Oh shit.

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  Spider

  I got off the phone with a woman who wanted to file a missing person's report on her daughter, who had not been seen since Friday. I had tried telling her that this was homicide and she needed to direct her questions to missing persons. Then on the off chance that we might be dealing with a potential AMBER Alert I asked her how old her missing daughter was.

  "She's thirty-three. This is the third time this year she's done this. Really, I wish you'd find her and make her stay."

  "Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry you're having problems with your daughter. If you wish to file a missing persons you have to call this number." I rattled off the front desk number wishing I could tell her that thirty-three year olds were supposed to leave home. It was called growing up.

  I groaned when Nancy dropped a mass of folders on my desk, nearly knocking off my vente coffee, the second of the day. Not that they were helping.

  "Tox screens on both vics," Nancy only used that slang term when she had no respect for the dead. "The other one is for your boyfriend. Don made a big point out of making sure you saw that one. Is everyone in on your extracurricular activities?"

  I grabbed the tox screen and scanned it rapidly. Massive quantities of Dichloropheyl-Dimenthylaminocycolhexan, then looked for the translation Don kindly provided. Ketamine.

  "I don't think my mother knows. Should I call her?"

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  "I'm sure all she's going to have to do soon is pick up a newspaper, or did you miss that too?"

  She dug through the files of papers and photographs and pulled out a copy of the Independent conveniently open to the local section.

  Nothing subtle about the headline:

  Local police losing focus on double homicides, by Martin E.

  Boulton.

  What do ravens and bloody trophies and horrific murders done in the name of vigilante justice have in common? A Poe novel? An episode of CSI Miami? No, this is the ever competent Santa Barbara Police bumbling their way through a case that has them baffled. They released their prime suspect last week and he was last seen in the company of the off duty homicide detective who originally laid the charges against him. Forget Poe, this is more like the Keystone Kops in all their glory. No new suspects have been put forward, meanwhile the city quakes in fear..."

  I raised eyes to look over at Nancy. "Are you quaking? You don't look like you're quaking."

  She patted her side where I could see the butt of her Beretta. "I've got a gun. No mother fucker is going to mess with me."

  "Oh good, can you protect me, too?"

  "How so?"

  I lifted the paper off my desk and flung it at her. "Go and shoot that reporter for me."

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  "Wish I could partner. Really wish I could. One less rat-fuck in the world. It would indeed be a better and happier place."

  "Should I ask the Lieutenant if he's quaking?"

  "If I were you, I'd stay as far away from him as you can."

  "Better advice has never been spoken. W
e're in luck. Our favorite taxidermist has agreed to take time out of his busy schedule to look at our bird. Want to ride with me?"

  "Someone has to keep you safe from reporters lying in wait."

  I signed the raven out of evidence then Nancy and I drove over to Geoffrey Lowe's shop. It was the same dark interior full of mounted heads and all those beady eyes I now knew were glass. While I had waited to set up this appointment I had done some research. As we waited for Lowe to finish up a phone call I moved around studying the heads that festooned the walls. I stopped in front of the boar again. I wanted to reach up and touch the thing's snout, to see if it was as coarse as it looked. But I didn't think that would go over well with Lowe. Nancy came up behind me and I could feel her displeasure.

  "Did you know they don't use anything but the antlers, and sometimes the hide, to make these things?" I said. "It's all forms and airbrush, clay and wax. Sometimes even the hair is faked. It's more art than animal."

  "It's gross is what it is," she said. "Surrounded by dead animals, knowing they got shot by some whacked out red neck with a shotgun and a case of beer in his belly, who goes 202

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  home and brags about how many spikes the deer they butchered has on its head."

  "Hmmm," I kept my voice non-committal. I wasn't about to argue with her. She had a point in a way. I also saw the hunter's side of it. It had to take a certain amount of skill to get close enough to one of these things and get a good shot out. I could believe that boar at least could do some serious damage on you if you missed your shot. But she didn't want to hear any of that.

  Lowe hung up and came around the counter to greet us.

  He held out his hand and we shook. Then I brought out the evidence box and set it on the counter.

  "There someplace we can do this? I don't want anyone coming in and seeing what we have."

  "Got a studio in back. Bring it along."

  We followed him through a door, then a black curtain to a cramped space about the size of a two-car garage. Several tables were scattered through the room. In one corner there were at least a dozen tan hard to recognize forms, deer skulls and antlers. There were lights everywhere. Spots, banks of incandescent and fluorescent illuminated every nook and cranny. A direct contrast to the show room outside. The air had a chemical smell. Nothing like the other house of the dead I was more familiar with. But then if my research was right, very few of what looked like animal corpses were real.

  All clever fakes.

  Lowe cleared a table for us and swung a brilliant white light over the box. I gingerly pried the lid off, lifting the large black bird out and setting it down on the table top.

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  He pulled down a large magnifying glass and bent over to study the thing. With a pair of tweezers he lifted the wing up and separated some of the tail feathers.

  "What are you looking for?" I asked. I could just imagine some sleazy defense attorney asking me how the information I was presenting to the court had been found. I had to be able to assure the jury and the judge that care had been taken to ensure the integrity of the search and there had been no haste in what we did.

  When I saw him examining the eyes, I spoke, "What do you expect to find there. Those are glass, aren't they?"

  "They're gonna be the best way to find out who did this bird."

  "I don't follow."

  "Lot of glass eye manufacturers around. Each one different. We don't all use the same type. I use Van Dykes.

  These..." He peered through the magnifying glass. "Look like Tohickon's."

  I shook my head. Who would have thought there'd be that much demand for glass eyes?

  He looked up from his magnifying glass. "Is this the way the cast came to you?"

  "Cast?"

  "The bird. Did it come like this?"

  "Yes, in a shoe box. Why?"

  "No effort was made to put the animal on any kind of display. That's the whole point of doing this."

  "I don't think they meant for this particular bird to be put up in public."

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  "That makes no sense."

  "Tell me about it."

  "So if this is a Tohickon's eye, what does that tell you?"

  Nancy asked.

  "Only one guy in this area uses those. Randall's The Art of the Game in Oxnard."

  Lowe couldn't tell us much more about Randall. Randall Craig. He'd been in the business longer than Lowe. "A hack,"

  Lowe said.

  "That right." My eyes met Nancy's. "Road trip I guess."

  I collected the bird, thanked Lowe for his help, telling him if we needed anything else I'd be sure to come and talk to him again. And if he thought of anything, he shouldn't hesitate to call me. I handed him one of my business cards and he took it gingerly as though he thought it might explode.

  He nodded gravely. I knew the card would be filed in the circular filing cabinet the minute we were out the door. Oh well, I knew where to find him if I needed him.

  Back outside we stood over the unmarked car I had signed out, basking in the brightness of the sun. It was warmer today. I lifted my face to the sun, eyes shut. The car door thunked shut. I joined her, fired the engine up. "Want to take this bad boy to Oxnard for a visit?"

  "Sure. Breakfast first?"

  Oxnard was a small agricultural oases of flat land nestled between Bone Mountain, South Mountain and Red Mountain.

  It was the strawberry capital of California. The Art of the Game was situated in a strip mall in the shadow of the 101.

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  low-level white noise, punctuated occasionally by a blast of truck horn or the rumble of a heavy big rig gearing up.

  The inside of the shop was so eerily reminiscent of Lowe's place that I wondered if claustrophobic and Gothic were a franchise. The man who came out of the back room wasn't anything like his Santa Barbara counterpart. I remembered Lowe's parting words. Hack. What made a taxidermist a hack?

  Pondering those words I cruised the showroom. No boar's head here. Plenty of deer and a buffalo head that looked a little moth-eaten to my unknowing eyes. Did moths actually eat dead animal heads? Still, the black head, which was about the size of a small pickup, was impressive.

  "Can I help you folks?"

  I showed him my badge. Nancy did the same. Having done the equivalent of SBPD's finest's ritual greeting we got down to business. "We're down to see you because of some work you may have performed recently. You got a few minutes?"

  "S-sure. What's this about?"

  I hefted the box containing the bird. "Like to show you something."

  He led us over to his cash register, set atop a glass topped case that displayed tools of the trade. Who knew there were so many things you might need to stuff a dead animal. I slipped on a pair of gloves, popped the lid off the box and lifted out the raven.

  Randall gave a short 'oh' and stepped back as though he expected the thing to go for his throat.

  "You recognize this?"

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  Before he could reach for the bird I handed him a pair of nitrile gloves. "To protect the evidence," was all I said.

  He nodded as though he understood, pulled the gloves on and picked up the bird. Like Lowe he examined it in great detail and like his counterpart he studied the eyes most of all.

  After a while he slipped a pair of reading glasses on. Finally he handed the thing back to me. "Those are definitely Tohickon."

  "Do you recognize the work? Did someone commission you to do this for him?"

  He took his glasses off and tucked them away in his shirt pocket. "It does resemble one I worked on," he said, but cautiously, like h
e didn't want to commit himself. "What's this about, officer?"

  "It's about a homicide," Nancy said. She took the boxed up bird from me and crowded closer to Randall. "Now, do you or don't you recognize the damned bird?"

  "Okay, yes I do. What murder? Who was murdered? Here in town? I haven't heard of any murders."

  "Santa Barbara. A Clarence Dutton, sixty-one. Was killed in his bed in Rancho Verde, a nursing home. He was savagely beaten."

  "Oh my, that's terrible. Who would do such a thing?"

  "That's what we want to know. This raven," she held up the box, "was sent to the family just prior to the attack that killed him. We need to know who commissioned you to mount this bird. Do you keep records? If you do, we want to see them."

  "I do ... do you need a warrant for them?"

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  I rolled my eyes. People watch way too much TV these days. "Are you a doctor?"

  "No, of course not."

  "Then there is no expectation of privacy on sales records.

  You have to report them to just about everyone anyway. You can give them to us, too."

  "Well, I don't know."

  "I will get a warrant if you want. And when I get it I will bring a whole team of cops down here with me to tear this place apart. Is that what you want?"

  I hated using half-truths and even lies to convince people to do what they knew was right. But this case was frustrating me and even without the scathing indictment in the Independent this morning I wanted this piece of shit caught, good deed or not. Let him convince a jury of his peers that he did the world a favor.

  "What's it going to be, Mr. Craig?"

  "What time frame are you looking at?"

  I pulled out my notebook and flipped back to my interview with Dutton's son. "About four weeks ago. Say six to be on the safe side. Oh hell, you can't have had too many jobs mounting ravens, so give them all to me from the last year."

  I was right, there weren't many. There were two.

  Something shivered up my spine and Nancy and I traded looks. Two? Nancy took the receipts from him.