The Plucker: A Beastly Crimes Book

by Anna Starobinets

  Sal snuck into a crack in the baseboards and reappeared on the opposite end of the office. Then he scampered up the wall and disappeared out the window.

  “A feeling of loss!” came his voice from outside. “That awful feeling of being split in two.”

  Then silence. Badgercat opened his paw, and Sal’s tail fell to the ground, wriggled a few times, and lay still. Badgercat curiously swatted at it, but the tail remained motionless. He stepped over it and headed to the corner where Mouse was shivering.

  “Ar-r-r-e you go-o-o-ing to plu-u-u-ck me?”

  “We’ll see.” Badgercat’s pupils dilated in excitement. “First, I want to play a game: psychopath and psychologist. I’ll be the psychopath. You be the psychologist. I’m here for counseling. Go!”

  “Go?” squeaked Mouse.

  “Go ahead,” Badgercat came face to face with Mouse. “You’re the psychologist. Counsel me.”

  “Okay. Please lie . . . lie . . . lie down—”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll stand.”

  “C-c-close your eyes.”

  “No, no.” Badgercat touched the tip of her nose with his soft paw. “How about you close your eyes.”

  “But psychologists don’t close their eyes!”

  “In my game they do.”

  Mouse submissively closed her eyes.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’m a psychopath, and psychopaths go to psychologists.”

  “You think you are a psychopath,” said Mouse uncertainly.

  “I don’t think! I’ve gone completely mad. I have an imaginary friend named Ratty. Sometimes I talk to him. Also, I pluck birds and burn their feathers. Because the moon orders me to do so. And then I forget that I’ve plucked them. But that doesn’t excuse my behavior. But I’ve never plucked a mouse, though it’s never too late . . .”

  Something heavy pounded on the office door.

  “Ruff! Ruff! There he is!” A hunting hound had knocked down the door with his head. He slowly walked toward Badgercat, snarling. “Fellas! He’s here! Caught right in the act! Call for backup! Quick!”

  The wail of a police siren came from the sky. Two more dogs, barking wildly, burst into Mouse’s office. Badgercat let out his claws on all four paws and puffed up his fur. And then he heard a voice from outside, amplified by a megaphone. The familiar, weary voice of his former best friend. His former partner. His former adoptive father.

  “Badgercat, you’re surrounded. Resisting is futile. Don’t do anything rash. Come out with your paws up. Come out . . . Son.”

  * * *

  “Can I open my eyes now?” asked Mouse hopefully.

  No one answered. She cautiously opened one eye and then the other. Badgercat was gone. She walked on trembling paws through the empty door frame out on to the porch. Chief Badger was cuffing Badgercat’s paws behind his back. Badgercat did not resist. Super Bat circled above them in the blood-red streaks of the setting sun. The dogs scratched their ears with their back paws in disappointment. They’d found a lead. They’d hunted down the criminal. They were hoping to maul him. At least a bit. But he surrendered without a fight. The so-called maniac.

  Badgercat jangled his pawcuffs—this was a new feeling. Up until now, he had been the one doing the cuffing, not the other way around.

  “I want to confess—”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” interrupted Chief Badger. “You have the right to an attorney.”

  “I don’t need an attorney. I want to confess to my crimes. I am the Plucker. I plucked birds and burned their feathers.”

  By the sharp pain in the back of his head, Chief Badger assumed that Super Bat was squealing in ultrasound. Probably out of joy.

  “We can’t hear you, Super Bat,” said Starling for him.

  “We did it!” squealed Super Bat. “We caught the maniac! The maniac has confessed! I discharge all dogs who are guarding birds. Take the perpetrator to the interrogation room. Thank you, everyone, for your incompetent, thick-brained efforts!”

  Chief Badger turned away and wandered off.

  CHAPTER 19: IN WHICH THERE IS A CONFESSION

  “Have you finished writing your confession?”

  “Aye aye. We’ve finished.” Badgercat handed Super Bat a piece of birch bark covered in small, uneven handwriting.

  “Who is ‘we’?” asked Super Bat. She was hanging upside down from a ceiling beam. She looked over everyone in the interrogation room: Badgercat, Chief Badger, and psychologist Mouse. “Maybe Chief Badger has decided to confess as well?”

  Badgercat smiled cryptically, clinking his paw-cuffs. Mouse squirmed on the edge of her seat.

  “What the patient means—” she began.

  “The accused!” screeched Super Bat.

  “The accused patient means—”

  “I maintain he is still only a suspect,” interjected Chief Badger.

  “The accused, though perhaps still only suspected, patient means,” said Mouse, “that he has an evil side. And that both of his sides—the good side and the evil side—have finished writing—”

  “Irrelevant!” Super Bat cut her off. Her beady eyes stared hungrily at Badgercat’s confession. “Owl . . . Cuckoo . . . excellent, very good.” Her snout trembled in satisfaction. “A confession—the first good thing you’ve done in months, Badgercat. Possibly the only good thing you’ve done in your whole life. This will be good for you. Now please read it out loud . . .”

  “How will confessing be good for Badgercat?” asked Chief Badger glumly.

  “A confession reduces punishment. Taking this into account, Madame Weasel will probably show mercy and dispense justice quickly, in one bite, so he will not suffer.”

  “Actually, sentencing should be done by a jury, not by Madame Weasel.”

  “According to a new law invoked by the Union of Mixed Woods, in especially serious cases the head of the union has the right to sentence the perpetrator without a trial.”

  “Oh really? And what cases are considered ‘especially serious’?”

  “Those which the head of the union, that is to say Madame Weasel, considers to be so,” said Super Bat smirking. “But let’s not get distracted. The accused Badgercat, read your confession out loud and sign below . . .”

  “Don’t do it, Son!” said Chief Badger quickly. “Don’t sign anything! We’ll get the best lawyer in all the woods for you! We’ll plead insanity! We’ll prove you can’t be held accountable for your actions!”

  “But I want to be held accountable for my actions,” said Badgercat quietly and resolutely.

  “Don’t you understand? If you sign the confession, your head will be bitten off!”

  “Stop pressuring the maniac!” squealed Super Bat.

  “A real cat must live like his head has already been bitten off,” said Badgercat.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Ancient rat wisdom. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You really have lost your mind!” whispered Badger sadly. “At least it will be easy to prove you’re mentally incompetent.”

  “And then what? If we prove I’m insane, what will happen to me? They’ll put me in a cage for the rest of my life!”

  “Yes . . . a cage,” frowned Chief Badger. “But you’ll be fed three times a day.”

  “I don’t want to spend my life in a cage,” said Badgercat arching his back proudly. “I’d rather my head be bitten off, quickly and in one bite.”

  Badgercat hunched once more. He was tired. He’d had a long—an endlessly long—day. This morning he had been free, and then he had surrendered and been pawcuffed. Then he had written the story of his crimes on the birch bark. And now night was descending on the Far Woods as he sat in the interrogation room, and he felt like he had lived an entire lifetime in this one day. He wanted one thing only: for it to end as quickly as possible.

  “That’s
good to hear.” Super Bat let go of the ceiling beam and dropped like a rock, almost slamming into her empty chair (she hated sitting in chairs), but at the last second changed her trajectory and began zooming about the room. “The accused Plucker, read your confession!”

  “I, former Assistant Chief Badger of the Far Woods Police, confess to committing a number of crimes. I stole bird’s milk from the police evidence locker. I gave it to Arctic Fox in exchange for a bottle of cologne called Potent Marking. However, later I apparently decided to return the milk, so I probably attacked Arctic . . .”

  “The words apparently and probably are unnecessary,” said Super Bat. “It sounds like you aren’t sure of your actions. Cross them out!”

  “But he isn’t sure!” said Chief Badger.

  “I’m sure, I’m sure,” said Badgercat wearily and crossed out the two words with the stub of a broken claw. “However, later I decided to return the milk, so I attacked Arctic and stole back the milk. Once I drank the milk up, in the air I did leap up, flipped three times and turned into a rabid monster through and through. Growling, with an evil grin, into the woods I ran. I brandished my claws, gnawed on tree trunks with my jaws—”

  “Badgercat, you realize those are not your words? It’s the poetry of Robert Forest!” interrupted Chief Badger.

  “Yes, I realize this, but Forest’s poetry is the best way to describe the crimes I committed.”

  “Did you know, Badgercat, that Vulture could not confirm that it was your teeth marks on the trunk of the oak in whose hollow Ro was found? He found that it was the teeth of a rodent and not a cat!”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” said Badgercat sluggishly flicking his tail. “I guess I gnawed on some other tree . . .”

  “Continue!” ordered Super Bat.

  “I . . . where was I? Chief Badger you made me lose my place! Oh, I remember: I brandished my claws, gnawed on tree trunks with my jaws. I grew strong—was back in my prime, but I lost my mind. And in a mad, cackling fit I tore Owl and Cuckoo to bits. . . And I attacked another owl, too, his wing I plucked out of the blue. . .”

  “Unclear!” screeched Super Bat.

  “The accused, though perhaps still only suspected, patient means that he completely plucked owl Chuck but only partially plucked his brother, owl Huck. Only Huck’s wing was plucked,” explained Mouse.

  “Then that’s exactly what should be written!” squealed Super Bat. “Correction! Cross it out and neatly write above it: ‘partially plucked Huck.’ Good. Continue!”

  “And I plucked Magpie and sparrow Ro.”

  “Doesn’t rhyme!” squealed Super Bat.

  “So?” asked Badgercat, Chief Badger, and Mouse in unison.

  “It just doesn’t sound good.” Super Bat furrowed her brow, thinking. “How about this: both sparrow Ro and Magpie, I beastly plucked, I do testify.”

  “Fine,” said Badgercat indifferently and started scribbling on the bark.

  “With all due respect, Super Bat, you are now dictating a confession to the suspect,” said Chief Badger.

  “So?”

  “So? That’s unlawful. That’s pressuring the suspect into a confession!”

  “Nonsense! I’m simply helping him formulate it. You’re distracting me! I had a good rhyme going! And the penguin . . . pum–purum.”

  Super Bat returned to hanging upside down from the ceiling, swaying recklessly. She always felt pride and satisfaction when she sensed yet another super skill developing in her super brain. This time, she had developed the ability to compose rhyming confessions.

  “Got it! Write this,” she screeched. “And I plucked King Ping. The whole bird, not just his wing.”

  “But the penguin hasn’t been found,” protested Chief Badger. “Plucked or otherwise. Admitting to plucking the penguin is premature.”

  “I’m almost certain I plucked the penguin,” said Badgercat. “It was in my dream.”

  “Son, you’re going to confess to a crime because you dreamed about it?”

  “Pressuring the accused!” squealed Super Bat. “The accused has the right to confess to whatever he wants! Continue confessing!”

  “But . . . there’s nothing else to confess to.” Badgercat frowned. “Or at least, I don’t remember anything else.”

  “What about your accomplice? You have to confess that you had an accomplice. For instance, Chief Badger.”

  “Chief Badger was not my accomplice,” said Badgercat firmly.

  “How do you know? You have memory lapses!”

  “Chief Badger was NOT my accomplice,” reiterated Badgercat.

  “So you insist that you worked alone and no one helped you? No one provided you with useful information? Then how were you able to always be one step ahead of the police?”

  “My imaginary friend, Ratty, helped me.”

  “Unclear!”

  “What’s unclear? I’m insane. Remember? So I thought I had a friend who was helping me. But then I understood that he didn’t exist. That I had imagined him.”

  “Irrelevant!” concluded Super Bat. “All right then. Sign with your claw right here . . .”

  Badgercat raised his claw to sign and then his ear jerked anxiously: someone had politely knocked on the door of the interrogation room with their beak.

  “Do not disturb!” screeched Super Bat. “The accused is signing his confession!”

  “Wait! Don’t sign anything!” yelled Doc Hawk from the other side of the door. “Open up! We have new, important information regarding the Plucker!”

  “Irrelevant! The Plucker has already confessed!”

  “Badgercat is not the Plucker!” Hawk knocked more firmly. Then came the sound of another animal impatiently pounding on the door.

  Chief Badger got up. Super Bat flew around the room, opening and closing her mouth in annoyance.

  “We can’t hear you, Super Bat, but I think you’ll want to hear this new information at once,” said Badger opening the door.

  Doc Hawk and Barbara burst into the interrogation room.

  CHAPTER 20: IN WHICH THERE IS A DEATH SENTENCE

  “Iam a trustworthy bird! Any animal in the Far Woods will attest to it!” Hawk’s beak trembled in indignation. “I swear, I just saw the maniac, the Plucker, at my clinic, Hawks Without Borders. And it was not, as you can deduce, Badgercat, since Badgercat was here with you. I am telling you, the Plucker is still at large!”

  “How do you know it was the maniac?” asked Super Bat, annoyed.

  “Because . . . because he came for me!” whispered Hawk. “Well, for my feathers!”

  “He attacked you?”

  “He wasn’t able to. But he was going to.”

  “And how can you be so sure?”

  “Believe me, you would be sure, too, if you had seen him! It was . . . it was a giant hamster! An enormous, horrifying hamster! He was watching me through my office window, and the moon gleamed off his greenish-brown fur!”

  “So you’re saying you just saw a giant, green hamster that was watching you through a window?” Super Bat let out a high-pitched giggle.

  “Yes, I swear!”

  “Can any other staff at Hawks Without Borders confirm this?”

  “All the staff had already flown home . . . ,” began Hawk.

  “If I may be so bold, I don’t think the doctor is lying,” Mouse interjected cautiously. “He’s sure he saw the giant hamster. He simply isn’t aware that this vision came to him due to extreme stress and overwork—”

  “But Barbara can confirm it,” finished Hawk.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Barbara nodded excitedly. “I was there! I saw the hamster!”

  “What were you doing at the clinic so late at night?” asked Chief Badger, concerned. “Are you sick?”

  “I went there to protect Hawk.”

  “From who?”

  “From the maniac, of course! You said it yourself: badger logic told you it was too soon to discharge the dogs from guarding the birds. And that Badgercat wasn’t a ma
niac. And that Hawk could be the next victim. Well, my badger logic agreed with your badger logic. It told me the same thing! So I decided to go to Hawks Without Borders. And I’m glad I did. I spooked that dead hamster away!”

  “Dead?” asked Chief Badger.

  “He was greenish-brown,” whispered Hawk. “In my many years as a doctor I’ve seen my fair share of dead animals. And this hamster . . . well, he looked like he had just crawled out of a grave!”

  “And smelled like it too,” added Barbara. “He smelled rotten! Like a stagnant swamp!”

  “The ghost of a hamster . . . ,” whispered Badgercat. His pupils grew huge, like two full black moons. “The hamster was killed by a bird, but his ghost returned from the underworld to seek vengeance . . .”

  “What is he on about?” screeched Super Bat. “Is he really insane?”

  “Yes, he really is,” said Mouse tragically. “Maybe he really ought to be put in a cage . . .”

  “What Badgercat means is that the ghost of a hamster is mentioned in Robert Forest’s ballad—which, by all accounts, is inspiring our Plucker. Listen.” Chief Badger opened his copy of Forest’s collected works to the needed page:

  A dazzling bird came from the heavens.

  Was it angel? Was it demon?

  Down it bolted just like lightning,

  just as frightening.

  And pecked the monster in the head—

  down he went, instantly dead.

  One and done, the bird did fly

  disappearing in the sky.

  The hamster’s cheeks, they sagged once more,

  his hump was back and strong no more,

  his whiskers fluttered in the wind

  but he was lifeless—had met his end.

  The animals were merry—

  the monster was finally buried!

  But since that day, in that wood,

  there’s a relentless presence:

  the hamster’s ghost seeks vengeance.

  He never forgave the bird.

  The ghost sneaks around

  plucking any bird to be found.

  Be attentive, birds, or else:

  for years you’ll be left speechless