Lord of the Wings

by Donna Andrews

  More children were pouring in after them.

  “It’s not a real foot,” Noah was saying.

  “It’s still awesome,” Mason said.

  “Stay out, all of you,” I said. “I think we’ve caught the person responsible for this.”

  “Is he missing a foot?” Josh asked.

  “I didn’t do anything,” the intruder wheezed from beneath Michael.

  Grandfather pushed through the crowd.

  “What’s this?” he boomed.

  “We caught him trying to slip out of the swamp,” Michael said.

  “I was just looking at the alligators,” the intruder whined.

  “The zoo is closed for a special tour,” Grandfather said. “Only first graders and their parents allowed, and you’re definitely not either. Michael, make sure this young gentleman stays just where he is. Meg, call 911 and report that we’ve secured an intruder.”

  “Roger,” I said.

  “Children!” Grandfather said. “You’re going to get a special treat. Since the swamp is now a crime scene, we’re not going to disturb it any more than we already have.”

  “It’s only a fake foot,” Mason grumbled.

  “So I’m going to take you to the next exhibit—the crocodiles!—through the hallways that are normally open only to official zookeepers! You are about to learn the zookeepers’ deepest, darkest secrets!”

  The children cheered at this.

  “Follow me!” Grandfather said. “Chaperones, make sure no one wanders off or touches anything.”

  The tour members began filing out, keeping their distance from the black-cloaked intruder, whom Michael was still restraining. As I dialed 911 I noticed that the children, intent on the promise of crocodiles, tended to ignore him, while the parents, particularly the mothers, glared at him so fiercely that I suspected he was lucky to have Michael between him and them.

  I was waving bye to Josh and Jamie—not that they noticed, since they were intent on being the first to enter the secret, zookeepers-only part of the Creatures of the Night—when Debbie Ann, the emergency dispatcher answered.

  “Meg, what’s wrong now?” she asked. Clearly, in the course of my Goblin Patrol duties, I’d been calling her rather often.

  “Intruder at the zoo,” I said. “Grandfather was taking the first graders on a special tour before opening time, and we caught a guy who’s been trying to terrify the children by throwing fake body parts into carnivore habitats.”

  “No,” the young man said. “That’s not why I did it.”

  “Patrol car on its way,” Debbie Ann said. “Is the intruder secured?”

  I glanced over to see that Clarence the Mummy had arrived and was kneeling down to bind the intruder’s wrists with a roll of leopard-print duct tape.

  “Reasonably secure,” I said. “And about to get even more so.”

  “Stay on the line in case anything happens,” Debbie Ann said.

  “You want to do his ankles?” Clarence tossed me another roll of duct tape—this one in a faux snakeskin pattern.

  “Let’s just keep an eye on him until the police get here,” I suggested.

  The young man groaned at the word “police.” I squatted down by his head.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  He clamped his mouth more firmly shut, as if afraid his name would escape by accident.

  “You didn’t actually say how he was secured,” Michael suggested. “I think if we threw him in the alligator lagoon he’d be even more secure.”

  “Yeah, dead’s pretty secure,” Clarence added, clearly entering into the spirit of the occasion.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” the young man said.

  “Try me.” I put on my fiercest expression. “I’m pretty sure you just traumatized both of my sons for life. I’ll be lucky if I can ever get them near the water again. So don’t tell me what I wouldn’t dare.”

  Actually, I was afraid the boys would never tire of scanning the alligator lagoon for rubber body parts, but I kept my expression thunderous. Michael scowled. Clarence’s mouth was twitching, but he was behind the intruder’s head.

  “Justin,” he said.

  I frowned some more.

  “Justin Klapcroft. And I wasn’t trying to traumatize anyone, honest. It was just one of my tasks. If I finish the first set of tasks by midnight I advance to the next round.”

  “Next round?” I echoed. “So this is all a game?”

  “It’s an adventure!” It’s not really possible to draw yourself up to your full height when you’re lying on the floor of a fake Cajun swamp shack with your hands duct-taped behind your back, but Justin made a decent effort.

  Just then Deputy Vern Shiffley loomed up in the doorway. He was carrying his service weapon, though the barrel was pointing up.

  “All secure here?” Vern leaned down and tested Clarence’s taping job. Then he nodded approvingly and holstered his gun.

  “Vern’s here,” I said on my phone. “Want to talk to him or shall I hang up?”

  “He’ll call me if he needs me,” Debbie Ann said. “Tell him I’ll start looking for information on Mr. Klapcroft.”

  “Will do.” I ended the call and pocketed my phone.

  “So what did the creep do?” Vern asked. “Debbie Ann seemed to think he’d fed someone to the alligators.”

  “No!” Justin yelped. “It was fake! Honestly!”

  I introduced Justin and explained about the fake foot, and its discovery by the school group.

  “You see?” Justin said. “I didn’t do anything awful. It was just a joke. And then these people tied me up.”

  “You’re lucky Meg and Michael were here,” Vern said. “’Cause if they hadn’t been, my cousin Velma would probably have fed you to the alligators. Scaring a bunch of little kids like that. What were you trying to prove, anyway?”

  “I want my lawyer,” Justin said.

  “Fine,” Vern said. “Be that way. You can call your lawyer when we get you back to the station.”

  “Back to the station! No! Everyone else will get ahead of me and—”

  Then Justin realized that maybe talking wasn’t in his best interest. He closed his mouth and clenched his jaw.

  “I think it’s some kind of scavenger hunt,” I said. “He said something like ‘If I finish the first set of tasks by midnight I advance to the next round.’ But he hasn’t given us any more details.”

  Vern studied Justin for a few moments. Then he squatted down beside him.

  “You carrying any weapons?” he asked.

  “No!” Justin squeaked.

  “I need to make sure of that,” Vern said. He patted Justin down. Then he put on a plastic glove and searched his pockets. He found a wallet in the back pocket of the young man’s jeans, and a folded piece of paper in one of the front pockets.

  “This looks interesting,” he said.

  Michael, Clarence, and I gathered around to look over his shoulder. The paper was about three by five inches, but irregularly shaped, as if it had been cut rather haphazardly out of a larger piece of paper. It contained a list of five items.

  1. Go to the graveyard and do a tombstone rubbing.

  2. Visit the Creatures of the Night while the zoo is closed.

  3. Eat a live insect.

  4. Scare someone with a fake body part.

  5. Steal a pumpkin.

  “Yeah, sounds to me like a scavenger hunt,” Vern said. “Pretty weird one, but—”

  “It’s an adventure!” Justin exclaimed. “A quest! But go ahead. You mundanes will never understand.”

  “May I?” I had pulled out my phone and was holding it up.

  “Be my guest,” Vern said.

  As I took a couple of pictures of the list, I noted that the first, third, and fifth items were crossed off, leaving only “visit the Creatures of the Night” and “scare someone with a fake body part” to go.

  “Evidently he was trying to knock off tasks two and four with one blow,” I said.
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  “They would be the hardest,” Michael said. “No one would pay much attention to someone doing a tombstone rubbing, and these days it’s hard to walk through town without tripping over pumpkins everywhere.”

  Just then we heard a thudding noise out in the corridor.

  “Tarnation!” someone exclaimed.

  “Chief’s here,” Vern said. “Maybe I better shine a flashlight down the hallway so he won’t trip again.”

  But before he could act on this plan, the chief limped in.

  “I hope all these blasted night creatures appreciate what we go through for their comfort,” he growled. “Is this the perpetrator?”

  He glared down at our prisoner, who flinched as if expecting to be struck. Sterner souls had cowered under the chief’s gaze, but if Justin expected mistreatment, he clearly wasn’t from around here.

  “Name of Justin Klapcroft,” Vern said. “He seems to be playing some kind of game that involves terrifying the toddlers.”

  Justin uttered a small whimper. Vern showed the chief the small slip of paper with the list of five tasks. The chief read them, then shifted his gaze over to Justin.

  “You want to explain yourself.”

  Justin shook his head.

  “He wants his attorney,” Vern said.

  “Have we called his attorney?”

  “He hasn’t given me a name to call,” Vern said. “I told him he could call when he got down to the station.”

  “Might save a little time if we have his attorney meet us there,” the chief said. “Mr. Klapcroft, would you like to call your attorney now?”

  Justin just frowned.

  “Son,” the chief said. “Do you even know an attorney to call?”

  Justin shook his head vigorously. The chief sighed and turned back to Vern.

  “Have Debbie Ann call the Public Defender’s office,” he said. “She can ask them to send someone down to the station. And then take Mr. Klapcroft in and book him for trespassing.”

  “And maybe disorderly conduct?” Vern sounded hopeful and eager. Maybe a little bit too eager. “And what about child endangerment?”

  “Trespassing will do for the time being.”

  Vern looked crestfallen, and the chief relented.

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t start thinking about other things we might end up charging him with if he proves uncooperative. And get Horace to process his wallet and that piece of paper. Meg, Michael—you want to show me this fake foot?”

  Vern looked cheerful again, and we left him and Clarence to deal with the intruder while we accompanied the chief out into the swamp exhibit. We followed the board walkway till we reached the place where Grandfather and the children had been standing. Then we leaned against the rail and gazed down at the dark water below. Vincent had submerged again, and we couldn’t spot him or any of the other alligators. The chief fished a small flashlight out of his pocket and moved its beam over the surface of the water until he located the fake foot.

  “That thing probably wouldn’t fool anyone if the lighting in here were better,” he said. “But I imagine the little ones got quite a shock. Nasty thing to do, and we’ve had quite a rash of that kind of doings in town lately.”

  “Justin did say that there were others who would get ahead of him if you took him down to the station,” Michael remarked.

  “To judge by what my officers have seen, at least half a dozen others,” the chief said. “And that’s only the ones who fooled someone into thinking they’d found a real body part and calling us. Who knows how many more people just wrote it off as a tasteless prank?”

  “Grandfather did call you about the fake hand in his lion habitat, didn’t he?” I asked.

  “He did indeed.” The chief shook his head. “Evidently Mr. Klapcroft is not the only game player trying to kill two birds with one stone.”

  Vincent—or one of his cousins—surfaced again and stared up at us with unblinking eyes.

  “Shoo, you ugly reptile,” the chief said.

  Vincent ignored him.

  The chief pulled out his cell phone and punched a couple of buttons.

  “How’s it going?” he asked whoever he was talking to. “Good. Can you send someone in here with a net to fish out this fake foot? No, that’s fine. It’s not as if the gators are likely to eat the evidence.”

  He hung up and turned to me.

  “As it happens,” he said, “I had a few words with your brother earlier today on the subject of tasteless pranks. Given his somewhat exuberant sense of humor, I considered him a prime suspect when word of the first couple of fake body part findings reached me. I suppose I shall have to apologize to him.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “He did equip all our guest bathrooms with those creepy soaps shaped like severed fingers. He’s probably not responsible for all the tasteless pranks, but I doubt if he’s completely innocent.”

  “Point taken,” the chief said. “Though Rob did assure me that he had been far too busy with his Goblin Patrol work to celebrate the Halloween season with his usual enthusiasm. You know, I don’t want to second-guess the county board, but I wonder if they really thought through the ramifications of this Halloween Festival thing. I know the annual Christmas in Caerphilly celebrations have been quite successful. They’re helping to get the town back on its feet financially.”

  “But the Christmas festival attracts a very different kind of visitor,” I said. “More family oriented.”

  “Traditional,” Michael put in. “Sentimental.”

  “Precisely,” the chief said. “With this Halloween thing, we’re trying to appeal to two very different audiences.”

  “Not just different,” Michael said. “Antagonistic.”

  “We should have come down on one side or the other,” I said. “Either made it a completely wholesome, G-rated, family-friendly event or warned the parents to keep their kiddies away and gone full-bore with the zombies and vampires. The mad scramble twice a day to switch between the Day Side and the Night Side is insane.”

  “I see I’m preaching to the choir,” the chief said.

  “And not saying anything that wasn’t said in the town council and county board meetings before they approved Randall’s plans,” Michael added.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter now what we think of the festival, or whether we approve of having it next year,” the chief said. “We’re stuck with it. We invited all these people here and we owe it to them to do our best to keep them safe while they’re having whatever kind of good time they’re looking for.”

  “Provided their idea of a good time doesn’t break the law or interfere with the other tourists’ good times,” I said.

  The chief nodded.

  Just then, my friend Aida Butler, who was one of the chief’s deputies, strode in. She was carrying a net with a telescoping handle, just like the one we used to skim leaves out of our pool.

  “That was quick,” the chief said. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t have to go far,” Aida said. “They keep a couple of these handy. Apparently the tourists are always dropping things into the ponds.”

  We all watched as Aida extended the pole to about ten feet and then maneuvered the net under the floating foot. Several more sets of alligator eyes surfaced to observe the process, but the pond’s legitimate inhabitants kept their distance.

  Aida carefully pulled in the net and held the fake foot out for the chief to inspect. He was right—close up it wasn’t nearly as scary, and in proper lighting we’d probably find it ludicrously unrealistic. But so far, to my relief, the chief was respecting the swamp creatures’ need for their normal dim night conditions. He probably wouldn’t have if it had been a real severed foot, so perhaps we should be grateful to Justin for choosing such an obvious fake.

  As we were watching, the chief got a phone call. His end of it was monosyllabic and not very interesting, but once he hung up, he filled us in.

  “Sammy found where our intruder gained entry,�
�� he said. “Used a pair of wire cutters to make a hole in the chain-link fence at the far end of that big open field where Dr. Blake keeps all the antelope and buffalo and other herd animals.”

  “Grandfather’s going to need better security,” I said. “And for that matter, so is Dr. Smoot.”

  The chief nodded.

  “Did you find any fake body parts when you checked out the haunted house?” he asked Aida.

  “I found plenty of them, not that I was looking,” Aida said. “Dr. Smoot has a bunch of them lying around as part of the décor. But I was looking for evidence of an intruder, not fake feet and such.”

  “Do you suppose Dr. Smoot would even notice if a prankster left more fake body parts in his house?” Michael asked.

  “And more important, why would the pranksters leave them there?” I asked. “It wouldn’t fulfill the task, would it? The list doesn’t just say ‘leave a fake body part lying around somewhere.’ It says ‘scare someone with a fake body part.’ Who would be scared by one more disembodied hand at the Haunted House?”

  “Let’s hope that whoever is running the game is less particular than you are,” the chief said. “Because having additional fake body parts turn up at the Haunted House would be a lot less disruptive than some of the places where the pranksters have been leaving them. And who knows where it could escalate by Halloween night?”

  “Then if some of the pranksters consider the Haunted House a soft target for today’s tasks, maybe a lot of them will be turning up there—so wouldn’t it be a good place to catch them?” I asked. “Assuming we could enlist Dr. Smoot’s help. Ask him to note the locations where he’s already decorated with fake body parts, so we’ll know if anyone adds any.”

  “Good point,” the chief said. “I suppose I should go and talk to him.”

  He didn’t sound that keen on the prospect. I remembered how much Dr. Smoot annoyed him.

  “You’re busy with actual crimes,” I said. “How about if I talk to him? I need to go over there anyway. Rob seems to think I might have more luck than he’s had at calming Dr. Smoot down.”

  “Be nice if someone could,” Aida muttered.

  “I’d very much appreciate it,” the chief said.

  “In fact, maybe while I’m there, I can get Dr. Smoot to give me a complete tour, and I can document all the fake body parts that are supposed to be there,” I said. “I can take pictures of everything, and then at least we’ll know how many of them are there, and where, so if any more turn up, we’ll have proof.”