by Ann Charles
Layne’s list was all about the family business. He’d included a chainmail armor shirt, the trident I’d told Cornelius about, throwing stars, and a morion helmet, which Doc told me was used in the 16th and 17th centuries. Other than battle equipment, Layne listed books that fueled his recent obsession with weapons and medieval warriors, along with several thick tomes about the ancient Maya, including one about how to read their glyphs. I swear the boy took after his uncle Quint more every year.
Before I realized it, we were passing the battered Slagton town sign.
I did a double take at what looked like fresh paint on the metal. “Hey! I didn’t notice that skull and crossbones spray painted on the Slagton sign yesterday.”
“That’s because it wasn’t there.” Cooper slowed the pickup as he rolled into the congregation of shacks and rusty old buildings that remained along the old town’s main drag.
“Well,” I huffed. “That’s just freaking great, isn’t it?”
“Relax, Parker. It’s probably just some kids out on their snowmobiles screwing around.”
“Right,” I said, looking through the back window at the other side of the sign. “Kids.”
I didn’t believe that for one minute. That emblem was a bona fide warning. There was something back here. A killer, and it wasn’t me.
At least I didn’t think so.
Then again, yesterday I’d killed something unnatural in that woodshed. Now the town’s sign had a death emblem on it.
Maybe I was the killer.
I settled back into my seat, worrying out the window as we cruised by a ramshackle house and teetering shed covered in snow. Smoke puffed from the dilapidated chimney that looked on the verge of tumbling over any minute.
Dark clouds blocked out the cold winter sun. We crunched along in silence, the easy-going conversation squelched in the ominous atmosphere. I searched the shadows under the tree line, watching for signs of something strange hiding in the pine trees.
Cooper eased off the gas as we neared the informant’s shack. The house looked the same as yesterday—ready to keel over. There was no smoke from the chimney, no fresh tire tracks in the drive, no signs of human traffic. My breath steamed the glass. I wiped my window and peered into the trees behind the woodshed, looking for another one of those weird black creatures. Clumps of snow fell from the lower branches of one of the pine trees. Breath held, I watched for a sign of movement. It must have been a breeze, or the snow melting enough for gravity to win.
Pulling into the drive, Cooper stopped and shut off the pickup.
He pointed out the windshield at the front of the house. “What do you make of that?” he asked us.
Harvey and I leaned into the middle, peering out between Doc and Cooper’s shoulders at something hanging from the porch rafters.
“What is that?” I asked, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. “Is that a fur coat?” A raggedy, torn-up one, if so.
Harvey grunted. “Looks like a headless carcass in the process of having its blood drained.”
I recoiled at the dark smears on the gray hide and the pool of something shiny on the porch boards under it.
“What kind of carcass, though?” Cooper asked.
“It’s too bulky to be a deer,” Doc said, pulling on his stocking hat. “Reminds me more of a bighorn sheep, but its legs aren’t right.”
“It’s been gutted,” Harvey said.
I made a face. “How can you tell?”
“There’s a pile of intestines on the porch steps.”
I looked at the steps and gagged, sitting back.
Doc pushed open his door, climbing out into the snow.
“Where are you going?” I asked, rolling down my window.
He slipped on his gloves. “To see what’s waiting for us inside of the house. You can wait here if you’d rather, Killer.” He winked at me and then moved to the front of the rig.
Cooper joined Doc outside, checking his handgun before trudging through the snow toward the front gate.
I looked at Harvey. “I have to go in there, don’t I?”
He shrugged. “It’s up to you, but those boys will be in a hell of a fix if something comes at them that bullets won’t stop.”
“Damn it.” I sighed. “I should have ignored Cooper and brought my war hammer.”
“We goin’ in then, Sparky?”
“I don’t have a choice, but you do.”
“If you go, I go, bein’s I’m yer bodyguard and all.”
“Did you bring Bessie?”
He guffawed in answer.
“Does Cooper know?”
“It’s none of his goldurn business.”
“Good. Grab her and let’s go.”
I tried to walk in Doc’s and Cooper’s steps to keep from adding to the amount of foot traffic in the snow, since Cooper might need to check tracks later. Harvey trudged along behind me, not caring where he stepped.
I caught up with the guys at the base of the porch steps. I avoided looking at the pile of guts, staring out toward the woodshed instead.
“Them there innards ain’t normal,” Harvey said when he reached my side.
“How can you tell?” I asked, still looking the other way.
“Well, fer one thing, they’re blue.”
“What?”
I looked down. Sure enough, they didn’t look like normal innards. Not that I was an innards expert.
Doc stepped through the snow and weeds over to where the carcass dangled. “I still don’t know what this thing was.” He scanned the yard. “If we could find the head, that would help.”
“I’ll take a look inside while you three wait out here.” Cooper skirted the mess on the stairs and paused at the door. He stepped to the side, bracing his back against the wall next to the door, and held his Colt .45 chest level. “Uncle Willis, get Parker out of the line of fire.”
Harvey nudged me through the snow to the corner of the porch where a rusted oil drum sat in the yard and pulled me down behind it. At the other end of the porch, Doc leaned against the trunk of a tree, shielded from view.
I heard the sound of knocking, and then Cooper shouted, “Police! Anyone inside?”
We all waited.
A branch cracked in a stand of trees across the street. More snow tumbled to the ground.
The sound of hinges creaking made me peek above the oil drum. Cooper looked around the doorjamb and then disappeared into the darkness beyond.
I started to stand, but Harvey yanked me back down. “Hold yer horses, girl. Wait ‘til he gives the all-clear.”
My thigh muscles started to burn as we waited. I looked over at Doc, who was focused on something down the road. I followed his line of sight, frowning when I locked onto the crumbling two-story building that had been a store at one time according to Harvey. Now, it had a mix of broken and boarded-up windows with bullet holes peppering its walls.
“Nyce,” Cooper called from the doorway. “You need to see this.”
I stood, stretching the kink in my lower back. “What is it?”
Cooper looked at me for several seconds. No snarls, no glares, no scowls. He just stared.
“ ’Fess up, boy,” Harvey said from behind me.
“I think it’s a message.”
“From whom?” Doc asked, moving to the first of the porch steps. He waited for me to reach his side. “Want me to boost you over the mess, Killer?” At my nod, he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me up onto the porch, making sure I had my footing before he let me go. “You need a hand, Willis?”
“Teach yer grandmother to suck eggs.”
“I think that means, ‘No thanks,’ “ I told Doc, who was looking down the road toward the old store again. “What is it? Do you see something?”
His forehead furrowed. “When I was waiting by the tree, I thought I saw something race along the covered boardwalk in front of it, but then it was gone.”
I stared at the building, trying to remember the exact wording of the m
essage spray painted on one of the walls. I’d noticed it that day several weeks ago when Harvey and I had traveled here to pick up a message for Cooper. If memory served me right, it said: Trespassers will be gutted and hung!
Whoever wrote the message must have stolen it from a greeting card company’s “Wish You Weren’t Here” product line.
Wait a second! My gaze moved to the carcass hanging from a porch beam. … Gutted and hung.
Holy shit! Was this creature some kind of trespasser? Had a local done this, sending a message to the others out there roaming the hills? Maybe it was a warning for that curly-horned thing whose image the missing informant had caught on film and passed on to Cooper. Or were those words on the old store building not meant to threaten humans, but rather alert them of the dangers hidden back here in Slagton?
“Violet?” Doc asked, tugging on my hand.
I blinked, hitting the brakes on my runaway train of thoughts. “What?”
“You ready to go inside?”
I looked at the doorway. It was empty. Cooper had disappeared inside the house again.
“Sure,” I told Doc and led the way.
The rancid smell inside the room made my eyes water. It took a couple of seconds for my pupils to adjust to the dark room. When they did, I gasped and took a step back, colliding with Doc’s chest.
He grabbed me by the shoulders, steadying me. “What the hell is that, Coop?”
“I was hoping you could tell me since you’re the one studying Parker’s freaky family history.”
“Ho! What the …?” Harvey said from the threshold. “Now that there is far from normal.” He shuffled up next to me, nudging me with the stock of his shotgun. “Looks like we got us some wasps in the outhouse again, Sparky.”
Chapter Six
And I thought waking up with a mouse on my bed was hair-raising.
“Trespasser,” I read aloud the words scrawled in blue-tinted blood on the wall above the creature’s severed head, which sat lopsided on the deep freezer in the dining room. It appeared that somebody had gotten a little too rambunctious with a handsaw. Shit criminy, these Slagton folks were tight as banjo strings when it came to infringing on their property.
“Well, at least we know where the head is.” I turned to Cooper. “Looks like you won’t need your crime-sniffing, canine partner to find this body part for you, Detective.”
Over the past few months, Harvey’s dog, Ol’ Red, had discovered several body parts before the cops could at Harvey’s ranch—a fact with which I liked to poke Cooper every now and then.
His steely eyes narrowed. “I’m laughing on the inside, Parker.”
Doc approached the head. His breath steamed in the air as he touched one of the curled horns. “It’s similar to a bighorn sheep, but the head is too round. The snout is more elongated than what’s typical of the ovis species, more like something from the crocodile family with its V shape.” He bent down, leaning closer. “Willis, hand me your screwdriver.”
Harvey tugged a screwdriver from his leg pocket. “Always like to be ready for a screw,” he told me with a grin.
I rolled my eyes. “You tell me that every time you pull it out.”
“Better than waitin’ ‘til after I shove ‘er in, eh, Doc?” He snickered.
“No comment.” Doc took the screwdriver and lifted one side of the creature’s mouth.
I yanked on Harvey’s beard. “Don’t make me hurt you, old man.”
“Willis,” Doc said, “you wouldn’t happen to have a pair of pliers on you, by chance?”
“Sure as a goose goes barefoot.” Harvey dug in his other leg pocket and handed Doc one of those folded multi-tools.
“You’re a regular tool chest today,” I told the old buzzard.
“Aren’t ya glad ya brought me along?”
“That’s still up for debate,” Cooper answered.
I watched Doc inspect the creature’s face. The nostrils were large and round, protruding up from the snout. It must have been able to pick up scents from a great distance. Its two black eyes were wide open but murky in death. They faced forward above the snout. “It’s a predator,” I said. “Forward-facing eyes allow for binocular or stereoscopic vision. They need the depth perception to track and pursue their prey.”
When Doc hit me with a raised eyebrow, I explained, “Layne likes to watch National Geographic documentaries.”
Harvey harrumphed. “This varmint is an all-new breed of hunter.”
“Or an old breed that’s returned to this neck of the woods,” Cooper said, walking over to the mantel. “Shit.”
“Did you see the long arms and hair-raisin’ claws danglin’ from the front end of it?” Harvey asked nobody in particular. “You’d think somethin’ with horns like this would have cloven hooves, not fingers and toes. I tell ya, one swing from this sucker and yer head would go flyin’ a helluva ways from home.”
It must have stood upright. I stared at those horns, remembering a photo I’d seen recently. “It’s the creature from the picture in that manila envelope.” The envelope Harvey and I had driven to Slagton to pick up for Cooper a week and a half ago. “Isn’t it?”
Harvey scratched under his beard. “That photo was purty fuzzy, but the horns look ‘bout right.”
I glanced Cooper’s way to get his two cents, but he was gone. I saw a glimpse of his black coat through the grimy front window.
Doc used the screwdriver to prop open the jaws. Apparently rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet. Then again, maybe this thing didn’t experience the chemical changes in the muscles that caused post-mortem stiffening.
“If you’re right about this being a hunter,” Doc said, squeezing the pliers on the multi-tool a few times while he stared at me, “then who’s killing the hunters?”
I knew what he was thinking. I was a hunter, too.
Cooper strode into the house, snaring our attention. His cheeks were pink, either from the cold outside or whatever had his forehead puckered up. “The rifle is missing.”
“What rifle?” Harvey asked.
Cooper jabbed his thumb at the mantel. “There was a Ruger 10/22 rifle above that Remington 12-gauge yesterday. Now the Ruger is gone.”
Sure enough, only one gun sat in the wall rack.
Cooper joined Doc over by the head, pulling out a small flashlight. He shined the light around the backside of it. “See that hole?” he said to Doc, pointing at something with the light. “It looks like an exit wound.”
“Where’s the entrance wound?” Doc asked.
Cooper moved the flashlight around, his forehead wrinkling. “I don’t see one.”
“Wait,” Doc said. “Let me see your light.” He took the flashlight and peered into the mouth. “Check out the back right side. A bullet would explain why some of the teeth are broken.”
I joined them, peering into the propped jaws at a small hole behind some broken molar-like teeth. I covered my nose. Even in the cold I could smell the rank odor of death. Then again, maybe this thing reeked while alive, too.
“Its mouth must have been open when the shot was fired,” Doc said, his words painting a scene in my head of holding a rifle steady in the face of all of those pointy teeth coming at me.
Cooper stepped back, his gaze darting around the room. “I’ll need to find the bullet and take it to ballistics to see if the Ruger was used to kill it.”
“You could take the head to Eddie Mudder on the sly,” I halfway joked. I wondered what the local mortician-slash-pathologist would say if Cooper plopped this thing on the autopsy table. Eddie had seen his fair share of kookie shit lately, but this one might take the cake.
Cooper turned on me. “This whole Slagton situation keeps getting more and more fucked up, Parker. Now I have a missing informant and rifle.”
“And a dead hunter,” his uncle added.
“This is not my doing, Cooper, so you can quit glaring at me.”
Harvey prodded the side of the severed head with his gun barrels. “Ya thin
k this thing was one of the good guys or another troublemaker?”
“That probably depends on who’s asking.” Doc handed the tools back to Harvey.
Cooper was still staring at me. However, instead of pissed-off wrinkles lining his face, he had a perplexed crook to his mouth, as if I had a pair of curling sheep horns sprouting out of my head.
“What?” I crossed my arms. “Whatever you’re thinking, I’m innocent. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Didn’t Dominick Masterson say there were hunters coming for you?”
“Yeah, but why would they be here in Slagton? I’m easy enough to find in Deadwood.” Too easy, actually, which gave me night sweats when I thought about it in the dark hours.
“I don’t know, but my gut tells me this is the tip of the iceberg.”
Cooper’s gut wasn’t alone in that line of thinking.
“So, what now?” I asked. “Are we going to scour this place for more clues or go door-to-door with questions and cross our fingers we don’t get shot, hanged, and gutted, too?”
“You two troublemakers aren’t doing anything besides waiting in the pickup.” Cooper ushered Harvey and me toward the door. “Nyce and I are going to head out back and check the woodshed, looking for any new tracks.”
I didn’t like him dragging Doc with him on rounds when there were non-local predators roaming about in the shadows. “Don’t you think I should go with you after what happened yesterday?”
“You killed it, Parker. I doubt the damned thing will rise up from the ashes like a phoenix. If it does return in spirit form, I’ll be able to see it now thanks to the ghost vision you cursed me with, won’t I?”
Son of a peach! The stubborn detective would blame me if he cut himself shaving these days. He seemed to be stuck in the anger stage of grief since losing his ghost blinders. If he didn’t snap out of it, I was going to drag him by the ear to the next stage whether he liked it or not. “Try to be positive, Cooper. Think of it as me giving you the gift of sight.”
“There was no giving. You hit me with it like a Mack truck.”