The Boreal Owl Murder

by Jan Dunlap

  Well, hell, I thought. Things just kept getting better and better tonight.

  Motionless, Commando Joe stared at me through his night vision goggles. In the distance, I heard an owl call.

  “Great Grey,” I said, without thinking.

  Fortunately, Joe didn’t respond by pulling the trigger and ending the family line before it even began. Instead, he lowered both weapons to the ground and peeled off his goggles. “White. Thought it might be you.”

  I knew this guy? I tried to see past the camouflage clothing and face paint, but without a flashlight, and under these circumstances, I was … well … in the dark. I couldn’t recall any Rambo-types in my phone book.

  And then it hit me.

  It was Scary Stan.

  Stan Miller.

  The one birder in the state nobody liked to bird with because birding with Stan was like birding with a ghost. He rarely said a word, moved without making even the hint of a sound, could disappear in a heartbeat, and when he did look at you, it was like he looked right through you. Rumor had it he was either a free-lance sniper, a mob killer in the Witness Protection Program, a CIA operative on long-term medical (read “psychological rehab”) leave, or just plain nuts.

  And it was common knowledge in the Minnesota birding community that he hated my guts because I’d had the nerve to question one of his bird sightings a few years ago. But—come on—an Arctic Tern in downtown Minneapolis in June? Who wouldn’t have questioned it?

  Of course, when I went to see the bird myself and found that it was, indeed, an Arctic Tern (courtesy of a freak Alberta clipper cold front that had blown the poor bird thousands of miles off-course), I graciously ate a very large serving of crow and apologized to Stan, but as far as he was concerned, the damage to his credibility was done. Since then, we’ve had a running, but silent, competition to score the most unusual birds every season.

  Which probably explained what he was doing up here tonight: he was chasing the Boreal, too.

  Although that didn’t explain the rifle and crossbow.

  I blinked, and—naturally—he disappeared.

  “You do this?” His voice came from behind me where he was squatting next to the frozen man.

  I walked over to where he was studying the body.

  “Right,” I said. “I always bring bodies with me when I bird. It’s the secret of my success.”

  Mike had recognized Stan, too. “How about you?” he asked.

  Stan gave Mike his empty-eye stare.

  “Just asking,” Mike said.

  Stan stood up. “Bears aren’t the only predators in this forest.”

  And then he disappeared.

  “Man, is he creepy.” Mike shivered in his parka.

  I shivered, too, but it wasn’t from the cold. I could still feel Stan’s stare through his night-vision goggles, watching me, and for the barest space of a moment, I wondered just how nuts Scary Stan was. If I’d been alone …

  But I wasn’t. Mike was with me. Reason number ninety-three to always bird with a buddy: to discourage scary people from killing you.

  “Okay,” I said to Mike. “We’ve got to get to a phone. We’ll just have to hope the bear doesn’t come back in the meantime.”

  “I doubt it will,” he replied. He retied his parka hood to fit more snugly against his ears. “I expect Stan’s gunshot convinced it to find a different buffet line for the night. I know I sure wouldn’t hang around where someone was taking shots at me.”

  We started back down the trail, the moon beginning to rise above the treetops. Funny thing about someone taking shots at you, I realized. It could actually mean one of two different things. One: someone wanted to hurt you. Or two: someone wanted to scare you off so they wouldn’t have to hurt you.

  Without a doubt, Stan scared off the bear by shooting at it. And while I really didn’t think Stan would shoot me—no matter how many times I might lock horns with him over birds—I couldn’t help thinking a little bit about how close that bullet had come to my ear, as well as his parting comment about predators in the woods. Was he trying to scare me out of the area so I wouldn’t find a Boreal before he did?

  That would be pretty low.

  It would also be useless.

  Because if he was so sure he’d find a Boreal in that particular location, then the last thing I was going to do was stay away from it.

  Stan Miller might be scary, but he was also an exceptional birder, and I could certainly respect that. If finally getting a Boreal this season meant following in Stan’s disappearing footsteps, then I was definitely willing to give it a try. I mean, really, if he didn’t like me on his tail, what was the worst he could do to me?

  Shoot me?

  He’d already passed on that one tonight.

  Leave me to freeze to death in his tracks?

  I came to an abrupt halt on the trail. Now that I thought about it, Stan hadn’t seemed particularly disturbed to see a frozen man in the middle of the forest. Of course, depending on which rumor about his real identity was true, finding dead men might be a big event on Stan’s radar. Even so, if Stan had staked out the area for the Boreal, wouldn’t he have noticed an underdressed man wandering around or have found the body before Mike and I did? And wouldn’t he have done something about it? Instead, he’d just melted away into the woods tonight after shooting at the bear, like he’d never even been there.

  And what was up with the rifle and crossbow? Not exactly standard birding equipment. Deer hunting, maybe. Boreal chasing, no. Bear hunting was a possibility, but he’d let Smokey go with only a warning shot. So what was Stan really hunting up here tonight?

  Which only made me conclude that something weird was up with Scary Stan Miller. That, and the fact that all my finely-honed school counselor instincts were jangling. This guy had a secret, and I was going to find out what it was.

  But first things first, and the first thing I had to do was get a police officer back up here in the woods to pick up a frozen body.

  Yup, like I said, I love birding. And even when it goes bad—and at this point, I had no idea how bad it was really going to get—there’s always the possibility of getting something you hadn’t planned on. Of course, you hope it’s another bird.

  Not a body.

  Chapter Three

  So then, like, you know, I told her she was being a lousy best friend because she knew I liked Brad, and he was starting to like me, too, and then she started flirting with him? I mean, Mr. White, how could she? And then …”

  It was Monday morning. I was folded into my cubbyhole office at Savage Senior High, a good three hours south of where I’d spent the weekend chasing Boreals, not to mention finding a body and providing Stan Miller with the opportunity to practice his marksmanship. And, like every Monday morning, I already had a line of students waiting to talk with me as soon as I walked in.

  Naturally, I like to think that students flock to me because I’m good at what I do. I feel their pain. I share their angst.

  I get them out of class.

  Bingo.

  However, I also knew—and as my colleagues delighted in reminding me, frequently—that many of the girls I counseled had crushes on me, which seemed to be an occupational hazard for any single guy surrounded by masses of seething female teenage hormones.

  Right now, it was one of those seething masses, by the name of Kim, who was taking a turn sitting in my office, venting about her upsetting weekend. Believe me, her upsetting weekend was nothing in comparison to my upsetting weekend, but, unfortunately, that wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. No, at the moment, it was my turn, as her guidance counselor, not to unload my truckload of personal crap, but instead, to listen patiently while she unloaded hers.

  Most of the time, that’s not a problem for me. I really like kids. I want them to know I’m in their corner. I know that when I was growing up, I could have used a few more teachers’ sympathetic ears. There were lots of times I was miserable, thanks to other kids. I got teased a lot,
but with a name like Bob White, what did I expect? Once it got out that I was interested in birds—okay, make that practically obsessed with them—I got “bobwhite, bobwhite!” bird calls all the time and lots of mean-spirited remarks about bird brains, eating like a bird, and heading south for the winter.

  Now, I figure all the harassment I put up with while I was growing up made me into the sensitive and understanding kind of guy I am, which is one of the reasons I chose counseling for my career path. God knows it wasn’t for the money. And it sure wasn’t for the non-existent luxury office space, either. Or the mandatory lunchroom duty assignment.

  Talk about human misery.

  Don’t get me wrong—I love what I do. There’s nothing better than working with teenagers. Hormones notwithstanding. Plus, you get the same schedule they get—almost three months of summer off every year. And don’t forget winter break, spring break, and the occasional long weekend, too, thanks to a couple dead presidents and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hail to the Chief and I Have a Dream. I can always find a bird to chase.

  This morning, though, my counseling skills were being sorely tested. I was having my own “issues”—that’s a code word we counselors like to use. It’s shorter than “self-indulgent bull crap.” I didn’t want to listen to Kim, the drama queen of the hour. For one thing, she kept repeating herself, and I’d gotten the highly complex concept the first time around: she was angry with her best friend over a boy. Big surprise. What I really wanted to say was, “Hey! Just get over it! Get your little caboose outta here and go back to class where you belong,” but I was afraid that wouldn’t fly with my boss, Mr. Lenzen, the assistant principal.

  Besides, I could just hear the whine as the little caboose went out the door, “But what am I gonna DO, Mr. White?” The fact is, for some of these kids, no matter what advice I give them, or what coping skills I try to teach them, they just don’t get it. For drama queens, drama is definitely king.

  The other thing that kept distracting me was that I was still seeing that hand from Saturday night pop up out of the ground. The recurring mental replay hadn’t exactly given me sweet dreams during the last twelve hours. Neither had the memory of tripping over a corpse. And, oh yeah, there was also the big hungry bear and Scary Stan in camo with loaded artillery in his hands.

  But then, should all of that not be enough, I’d found a note attached to my bird feeder this morning. “Stay out of the forest or you’re next.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I love threatening notes with my morning coffee just as much as the next guy. Adrenaline and caffeine. What a combination. Definitely jump starts a Monday morning after a long weekend.

  And, believe me, it had been one long weekend.

  By the time Mike and I had found a phone, led the police to the body, made statements and promised to buy tickets to the policemen’s annual ice fishing fund raiser for the rest of our natural lives, it was Sunday morning. We took turns driving back home to the Twin Cities. I dropped Mike off at his place in the northern suburbs, then made it back to my town house on the south side just before noon. I filled the suet feeders hanging off my deck and passed out on my living room sofa. I woke up about six, showered, zapped a tray of frozen breaded shrimp in the microwave for dinner and listened to my phone messages.

  The first was from the detective in Duluth—John Knott—who was in charge of the investigation about the body. He said there were no reports of missing grandfathers or uncles, so the Alzheimer’s theory had gone into the circular file. There were, however, a few complaints about missing husbands, which, he said, wasn’t that unusual on a Sunday morning; he said he’d be able to rule most of those out by early afternoon when the hangovers let up and the men meandered on home. He left several phone numbers and asked me to keep in touch.

  The second was from my sister Lily. We don’t get along very well, but can call a truce when it’s mutually advantageous.

  “Call me,” she commanded. “I have a client who wants to landscape her backyard big-time for attracting birds. Help me out with this, and I’ll keep you in birdseed for the next year.”

  Ah, Lily. Never let it be said that my sister doesn’t know the power of a good bribe.

  The third was from my girlfriend, Luce. Her last name is Nilsson, and though all the members of her family have been born on American soil for more than three generations, her dad still flies the Norwegian flag in his front yard and sings the Norwegian national anthem on holidays. But you don’t need to hear Luce singing to know she has Norwegian genes. One look at her will tell you. She could be the poster child for the women of Norway. She’s got long blonde hair, blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, toned muscles, and stands six-feet, two-inches tall.

  “Bobby,” her voice on the machine said.

  Luce and Lily are the only ones who still call me Bobby, by the way. When I was little, I was Bobby to everyone. My mom says I was cute and round, with big chipmunk cheeks and a mop of dark-red hair. Now I’m tall and lean and broad-shouldered and most people have to look up at me, so I guess I don’t come across as a Bobby anymore.

  Except to my sister and Luce. Lily’s excuse is that I’ll always be her little brother just because she’s older than I am, but not by much. Luce, being gorgeous and sexy (did I forget to mention that part?), doesn’t need an excuse, as far as I’m concerned. She can call me anything she wants as long as she keeps calling me.

  Of course, Luce has a habit of calling people anything she wants to anyway because, besides being tall, she’s a little intimidating until you get to know her. She’s the executive chef at a very classy conference center in Chaska, the old river town west of the Twin Cities, and she’s—how do you say?—arrogant.

  Not only that, but when she wears her poufy chef’s hat, she’s got to be about seven feet tall—a veritable giant. Put a boning knife in her capable hand, and it makes people nervous to be in the same room with her.

  “If you’re eating that microwave crap for dinner again tonight, I’m totally disgusted,” Luce’s message went. “Did you get the Boreal? And did you try that new little bistro on the North Shore I told you about? What did you eat? How were the desserts? Call me. You know where I am.”

  Yeah, I knew where she was, all right. In the kitchen. The problem we had was getting her out of the kitchen: executive chefs work afternoons and evenings. I work days. If it weren’t for Saturday and Sunday mornings, we’d hardly ever see each other

  Luckily, Luce is a birder too. That’s how we met. We were both on an MOU—that’s Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union—trip to the northwest tip of the state, looking for a Northern Hawk Owl. There were about twelve of us in three cars, and she and I were crammed together in a miniscule backseat for two days, so we had lots of time to get acquainted with each other’s knees and elbows. I typically don’t meet many (make that any) beautiful thirty-something single women who even know what birding is, let alone are interested to the point of going on a birding weekend with a bunch of people who think standing in a mosquito-infested bog to see one particular bird is a peak experience, so I wasn’t about to let the opportunity slide by.

  Long story short—we got the Northern Hawk Owl, and I got the woman of my dreams. She’s smart, she can cook, and she loves birds. That’s three for three, as far as I’m concerned. We bird together whenever we can, which usually means weekend mornings during the school year. If I want to go for a birding weekend, I have to find other birders, like Mike, to go with me, since it’s hard for Luce to get away overnight because of her job.

  I returned her message (she was at work, of course) and said I was saving her some microwaved shrimp.

  So here I was on Monday morning, my counselor game face on, giving the required sympathetic ear to today’s drama queen. I did not, however, hear a word she said.

  I was too busy thinking about that corpse.

  And the note.

  Because obviously, they had something frightening in common: me.

  Sorry, Kim. Nothing personal.

 
The note, though—now that was personal. Not only was it clear that the note writer knew I had found the body in the forest, but it was equally clear that the note writer knew where I lived. Neither of those things made me feel especially comfortable, but it was the message itself that made me feel the worst.

  Someone was threatening my life.

  Because I had found a body?

  God knew, I hadn’t gone looking for one. Even though I’d read the note a hundred times already, I still felt like a bottom-dweller on the information chain: I didn’t know what was going on here. Was I being threatened because I’d found a body or because I’d been in the forest? Or was it both? If my anonymous letter writer was trying to tell me something, I was going to need some help figuring it out. Exactly what was it that I had done that had earned this very special attention? And how in the world did the letter writer, whoever it was, find out so quickly that (1) it was, in fact, me who found a dead man, and (2) my backyard address? Which could only mean that unless there was a service provider for writing and delivering personal threats speedily across the state, my note writer was right here in town.

  A very scary thought.

  Which, of course, made me think of Stan.

  Stan lived in Mendota Heights, not even twenty minutes away from Savage. No one else in town knew about my weekend. Besides Mike and Luce, I mean. Oh, and I guess the entire Duluth Police Department—they all knew about it. But they were in Duluth. It was kind of a stretch to think that one of Duluth’s finest may have beaten a path to my backyard very early this morning to pin a threat to my feeder.

  Which left me, again, with Stan.

  Which meant he was taking our birding rivalry a couple shades too far. Although, if the rumors about him were true, clearing the field of opponents probably wouldn’t be such a stretch for him to consider.

  And then it hit me: could the dead man have been a birder as well?

  Come to think of it, why would anyone else be up in those woods in mid-March? Detective Knott had already ruled out the Alzheimer’s possibility, and certainly there were lots of more easily accessed remote places for a killer who needed a spot to dump a body, so it stood to reason that the deceased had chosen to be up there.