As the Crow Dies

by Kenneth Butcher

  She shrugged. Could be someone following them. Could be just some guy who liked the way she looked. Could even be a roller derby fan. On the other hand, she and Segal were in this case deep enough to warrant the attention of various agencies of various governments, foreign and domestic.

  “Okay, point taken,” she said.

  “So, where are we?” Segal asked. “First of all, did you get your houseguests stashed somewhere out of the way?”

  “Yeah, they’re out of the way, all right.” She sighed, played with her salad. “Look, Segal, I’m sorry about that.”

  Segal held up a hand.

  “No, I mean it. I should have talked to you first. They showed up. We went from there.”

  “Sometimes, you have to make a call on the spot.” He made a dismissive wave as if it were no big deal. “Rule number 1 of police work,” he said. “Back up your partner.”

  Dinah stuck a forkful of chicken in her mouth.

  “What are your thoughts on a next move?” Segal asked.

  She swallowed, then said, without much enthusiasm, “We’ve got forensics and autopsy reports to follow up on. Both Chickey and Gloria.” They had talked about this before, and neither one of them expected much in the way of breakthrough information.

  “How about witnesses? Are we overlooking anyone? Anyone who might have seen something? Anyone else on background?” Segal reached for a dish of olives.

  “We’ve got two guys canvassing the neighborhood around Creatures 2.0. Asking the neighbors if they saw or heard anything.”

  “Rule number 8 of police work,” Segal said. “When you don’t have any exciting stuff, follow up on the boring stuff till something gets exciting.”

  “This is the boring stuff, all right.” Dinah had heard Segal’s rules before. Although they tended to change in both number and content, they were pretty good.

  Segal glanced toward the mirror. “Blue-shirt is making me hungry for garlic knots,” he said.

  “What about the picture Richard brought us?”

  “I still don’t know what to do with it,” Segal said. “I mean, who do we trust? Even if I trusted Guilford personally, we don’t know where it would end up. Could be tipping off the very people we’re looking for. Then there’s the problem of explaining how we got the picture using a crow and a crow camera we aren’t supposed to know about.”

  “Suppose we show it to some of our most reliable eyes on the List,” Dinah said. “We don’t tell them who the guy is. We don’t tell them why we’re looking for him, only that they should call us if they spot him.”

  Segal popped an olive into his mouth and chewed.

  “The List,” as Dinah and Segal called it, was a group of people they consulted from time to time: street singers, guys who got the drum circles going, a couple of guys who played chess in Prichard Park, and a host of mobile food vendors. This was a network they had used in the past, their own private lookout team; people on the streets all day, present and unnoticed. Over time, they had cultivated relationships, figured out who they could trust and who could keep their mouth shut when that was called for.

  “I keep thinking about Peter Olson’s reaction. If he’s right, this is a dangerous guy. Very dangerous, which we know from our own experience. If we pass out that picture and it somehow comes to the attention of the wrong people, we could be putting them in danger,” Segal said.

  “A lot of people seem to be in danger already.”

  “You have a point. It would have to be a very short list.”

  Dinah nodded as she discussed possible team members with Segal, arguing over some and quickly coming to an agreement.

  “I’ll start making the rounds,” she said.

  “You haven’t had any more messages from Richard, have you?”

  “Nope.”

  Segal swirled his drink.

  Dinah had a swallow left; he had more.

  “Why don’t you take off first,” he said. “I want to see if the guy follows you or sticks with me.”

  Dinah drank up and stood to leave.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” Segal said. “You do your thing. I’ll follow up on forensics, and in the meantime, we invoke rule number 11 of police work.”

  “Remind me what rule number 11 is.”

  “Rule 11 is work the case and wait for the bad guys to do something stupid. And sub-rule number 11.1 is sooner or later they always do something stupid.”

  “They better do something stupid pretty soon. We’re running out of time.”

  Segal watched her push open the door and disappear into the bright sunlight. Then he checked out the length of the mirror as the garlic knot guy followed. Hope he got a good look at her butt ’cause he’ll never find her now, he thought. That girl knew every alley and backroom in Asheville. He turned away and was surprised to find a woman on the barstool where Dinah had been. Her elbow was on the bar, and she leaned forward, resting her cheek on her hand. His grin faded as he suddenly felt much less smug about stealth operations.

  “Interesting book,” the woman said.

  Segal was not sure if she was talking about the Hemingway or his notebook, open on the bar. He turned toward her and recognized who she was. She slid a business card to him, and he looked at it and read the name he expected to see. “Nancy Lund,” he said.

  “Peter Olson told me you have some questions about Francis Elah. He seemed to think something big might be happening here in Asheville. I feel like I owe it to Francis to help out if I can, considering the chances he took for us.” She had a low, alto voice that reminded Segal of movies involving women conspirators. Secrets told in whispery shadows.

  “Do you know where Francis is?” Segal asked softly.

  “No,” she said without hesitation. “Francis went off the radar a couple of weeks ago and took Richard with him.”

  “He was working with you?”

  She frowned. “It’s complicated. He worked a project for us. It involved going into another country, officially an ally of ours. We put him with a private contractor, so if things blew up, we could have some plausible distance from it.”

  “Cormorant?” he asked.

  Nancy Lund blanched. “That’s not a name you want to say out loud in the wrong place.”

  “We think some of them might be here in Asheville.”

  She leaned into the bar and pushed Dinah’s empty glass out of the way. “That’s not good news. Not for you or for Francis.”

  “If they work for you, why don’t you call them off?” he asked.

  “We used them for this job. That doesn’t mean we control them. They have what people call ‘a high level of autonomy.’ At least this particular unit. It’s led by a guy who really gives me the creeps, Colonel Arlon Peters. He calls himself ‘the good guy with the gun,’ as in, ‘The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ Believe it or not, there are people high up in our government that eat that stuff up.”

  “He’s still a colonel even though he’s with a private company?” Segal asked.

  “Well, his history is very hush-hush, however word around the drinking fountain is that he was drummed out of the army over some incident in East Africa. Some incident that no one especially wants to talk about. Let’s say only that the supposed good guy with a gun stopped a lot of bad guys that didn’t turn out to be so bad after all. Anyway, he hooked up with Cormorant so the colonel is gone but not forgotten. To my mind, it’s debatable who he hates more, our enemies or the current administration. Between you and me there is an investigation into Cormorant going on right now. It’s slow going though so you can’t expect much help out of Washington any time soon.”

  “You think he’s looking for Francis, this colonel?” Segal asked.

  “Probably Francis and Richard both,” Nancy Lund answered. “Look, I can’t tell you what they were doing. I can tell you Francis, along with Richard and a group from Cormorant, were tasked with a very specific, critical, and dangerous operation. They pulle
d it off perfectly. Ironically their part of it required no guns. Everything should have been fine.”

  “And it wasn’t.”

  “Soon after they got back to the States, I got a frantic call from Francis. He told me he had to go underground. He said Cormorant wanted him for another project. He refused, and Cormorant didn’t like it. He was told he didn’t get to choose.”

  “Did he say what this other project was?”

  “No. They hadn’t let him in on the details. Only gave him a rough idea. Enough that he knew he wanted nothing to do with it. He told me he would try to get some specifics. So, we could stop them. Then he was gone.”

  “Cormorant is looking for him because he knows too much about something they’re planning?”

  “That would be my guess,” she said.

  “And why is ONI looking for him? Are they working with Cormorant?”

  She shook her head. “This ability for Francis to use Richard to observe certain things without drawing attention, that’s a capability we would rather keep under wraps. ONI was tasked with getting Francis and Richard back, one way or another.”

  “What should we do?” Segal asked.

  “You should be careful is what you should do. Cormorant are not your ordinary guys.”

  “If you figure out what this mysterious project is that Francis didn’t want to do, will you let me know?” Segal asked.

  Nancy Lund reached over and took a drink of Segal’s beer. She wiped her mouth and said, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, lieutenant.”

  And Segal watched as she, too, disappeared through the door and into the sunshine.

  CHAPTER 29

  Nasty Fox

  “I am not falling for this animal crap again,” said the man with the muscular build. In spite of the fact I that he was wearing civilian clothes, he came off as military in appearance and bearing. His companion, a much thinner man, did not.

  He stood beside a stone wall bordering an open field, watching a fox approach on a well-worn footpath. The fox took a few stumbling steps, paused, looked around, and seemed to consider its lot in life. Then it staggered sideways and continued its advance toward them.

  “That fox is not right,” the thinner man said. “I’ve seen plenty of foxes in the wild. They move real smooth and graceful. This fox has rabies or something.”

  The muscular man put his hand flat against the wall. “That’s what they want you to think. That fox was trained by Francis Elah. Or someone who works for him, and I’m tired of them making fools of us. Think about where we are. We’re on the Biltmore Estate, where we know he trained lots of animals. That fox was supposed to act like it has rabies just to scare us off. If it even is a fox. Maybe it’s some kind of dog made up to look like a fox.”

  “Either way,” said the thin man, “I say we shoot it.” He withdrew a pistol from a pocket in his cargo pants.

  “I’m not falling for this crap again. I almost got killed falling off that Grove Arcade building when that crow tried to peck my head off. Then I had to explain it to command. I’m not going through that again. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on … whatever,” he said, forgetting the line. Then he, too, checked his pockets, but instead of bringing out a gun he produced a box of Milk Duds. “Watch this,” he said.

  By this time, the fox was less than twenty feet away. The man shook out a Milk Dud, held it on an open palm, extended his hand, and advanced slowly toward the fox.

  The thin man said, “Chocolate’s not supposed to be good for dogs.”

  “Really?” the muscular man said. “You’re ready to put a nine-millimeter round in it, but you’re worried a Milk Dud might upset its stomach?”

  “How do you know it even likes Milk Duds?” the thin man said. He backed away while his companion advanced.

  “Who the hell doesn’t like Milk Duds?” All this time, he had not taken his eyes off the fox. He crept slowly forward with his hand extended. “You like Milk Duds, don’t you, little fella?” he said in a sweet, coaxing voice. He got within a couple of feet and knelt. The fox leaned to one side and opened his mouth, allowing a blob of foamy saliva to drop to the ground.

  “You still think he’s faking rabies?” the thin man asked.

  “He’s just salivating ’cause he sees food,” the muscle man persisted. “Yeah, it looks good, doesn’t it, little fella? Here.”

  With that, he extended his hand with the Milk Dud right under the nose of the fox. The fox bit into man’s hand with savage speed and force. His diseased teeth sunk deep into the web of flesh between the thumb and forefinger and the fox rapidly shook his head in a motion designed to make the teeth sink in even deeper and to rend the skin and muscle and sinew.

  The Milk Dud dropped to the ground.

  The man screamed as he stood and stumbled. When the fox held on to his hand like a pit bull, the man spun around, as if maybe the fox might fly off by centrifugal force. It did not. “Do something!” he yelled to his companion.

  The thin man was panicked for his companion but also terrified of the fox. He had a vision of the fox coming loose from the guy’s hand and flying toward him with snarling teeth. He didn’t know the best course of action, so, having a pistol conveniently in his hand, he shot the fox the next time his friend’s bizarre spinning motion brought the animal back around to a favorable position. It was a good shot, even if it was at close range.

  Although the animal hung limp, the jaws did not release and had to be pried open with a stick they found by the wall.

  Segal returned to the station to check the forensic reports. He heard raucous laughter well before he reached the break room. When he entered, he saw four uniformed officers around one of the tables. They hunched over an iPad. “Play it again,” one of them said.

  Segal assumed they’d found a new YouTube video, not an uncommon occurrence in a police break room. Probably, it was a drunk driver video. Cops loved drunk driver videos, especially videos of young women pulled over for traffic violations and undergoing sobriety tests. The drunker they were, the worse they did on the tests and the funnier the videos.

  Segal walked over to the coffeepot. The owner of the iPad had started the video over, as suggested. “Oh, man. There he goes,” one of the guys said. The others were making sounds of anticipation, even though Segal realized they knew exactly how this thing was going to end.

  “What is that he puts in his hand?” another cop asked.

  “I told you, I think it’s a Milk Dud,” the first cop said. “Yeah, there. You can see the box in his other hand.”

  “Why would you give a Milk Dud to a fox?” the other cop asked. “Would a fox even like a Milk Dud?”

  “Who the hell doesn’t like a Milk Dud?” said the owner of the iPad.

  Segal’s attention peaked considerably. “What are you guys watching?” he said, leaning in.

  “You gotta see this, lieutenant,” the first cop said.

  The man on the iPad advanced, hand extended, toward a fox.

  “That animal doesn’t look right,” Segal mumbled.

  “No shit, lieutenant. That fox is rabid as hell.”

  Segal watched in horrified amazement as the scene unfolded, perhaps one of the worst judgment calls ever captured on camera. When the man’s advance stopped and he knelt in front of the fox, one of the cops said, “Wait for it, wait for it.” When the fox struck the hand, everyone in the room yelled, “Damn!” And when the fox shook his head to sink the teeth in deeper, everyone said, “Oh, shit!” It was so perfectly bad Segal could not look away.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked. “Is it on YouTube?”

  “Not yet it isn’t,” the one with the iPad said. “This is from one of the security cameras at the Biltmore Estate.”

  For Segal, this stopped being a funny home video. “When did you get this?”

  “Yesterday. I mean, it happened yesterday. Animal Control got the call from Biltmore security. Film footage shows the outside of the wall around the flower garden.
”

  “People there heard the shot?” Segal asked.

  “No, that was the weird thing. I mean, one of the weird things. People in the flower garden, just on the other side of the wall, heard the guy screaming and saw the two men running away. No one heard a gunshot. It was only when they pulled up film that they saw the gun. Then they went around and found the dead fox.”

  “I need a copy of this right away,” Segal said to the cop with the iPad.

  The cop nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Sure.”

  Before leaving the room, Segal turned and said, “And no posting to YouTube. Not yet.”

  “What do you think?” Segal asked.

  Now, he had his own iPad. He was showing it to Dinah. She was trying to cool down from running all over town. A drop of sweat fell onto the screen. He was showing her a still picture of the guy bitten by the fox.

  “I can’t tell if it’s him.” She dried the drops on the screen with a napkin, then flicked back to the file that held the other photos. Segal let her take the iPad. She was better at this stuff than he was. She dragged the photo so the images were side by side. She also held up the copy she had been passing out to selected lookouts. “The lighting is different. They’re built kind of the same. I can’t tell if it’s the same guy.”

  “Yeah, me neither,” Segal said, feeling disappointed. “It’s similar, but somehow you don’t get the same impression. I mean, these guys seem like knuckleheads, like, ‘Hey, y’all, watch this.’ The guys who attacked us were nothing if not professional.”

  “I know what you mean,” Dinah said. “Especially if the killer trained as a sniper. The ones I knew were professional. Army Rangers. The best of the best.”

  “Either way, we need to track these guys down.”

  “We should put out a notice to the emergency rooms to inform us if someone comes in with a bite like that,” Dinah said.

  “Already done. It’s standard procedure with rabies. The Animal Control people were already on it.”