She looked to Flynt as he sat down and when she smiled at him, Flynt thought he could see the young girl she used to be. Her bright smile could brighten up someone’s day. It certainly did Flynt’s.
“Detective Flynt,” she said with cheer in her voice. It was not something Flynt was accustomed to hearing. “How are you today?”
“Trying to get some answers.” He put on his best serious-detective voice. “Think you could help?”
“I can certainly try. What do you need?”
“I need to look at any calls that came in through dispatch from Puta Gorda proper last night. The stranger the better.”
“Well now, let me see.” Frances started typing something into the computer on her desk and as she did, Flynt smiled. She was a hunt-and-peck typist. Watching her type in the information reminded Flynt of when Bill tried to help her with learning the precinct database. Still, it was almost cute to watch her on the keyboard.
“Hey, Mrs. Frances…did you ever do drugs in your youth?”
She looked away from the keyboard, baffled. “Excuse me?”
“You know…when you were young. Did you ever do any drugs?”
She chuckled and swung her head from side to side. “You know, I’m rather proud to say I never did. Well, I don’t count cocktails. Anyone that can stop with one martini remains responsible if you ask me.”
“No marijuana? LSD? Speed? Meth?”
“Goodness, no.” Frances was aghast. “What kind of a woman do you think I am?”
Her good cheer seemed to be gone. She hammered on the last few keys and then stared at the screen. “I’ve got seven calls that came in last night. Three of them were from Puta Gorda.”
“You mind if I take a look?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He rolled the swivel chair around to see the screen. The chair groaned under his weight. He placed his notebook on Frances’s desk, knocking over a tiny ceramic clown. “Sorry,” he muttered as he read the entries.
He jotted each one down. The first one was a noise complaint from a woman claiming there was a raucous party going on next door. Flynt scribbled down the woman’s name and phone number. Even before he got the number down, Flynt was reading the other two entries. He was certain they would be what he was looking for.
The second entry read: Near Puta Gorda college. A man running around partially nude and screaming. Looks like he has a dead duck in his hands.
The third read: Loud quacking noises coming from the strip of woods between the highway and Puta Gorda Community College. Assumed some sort of strange, college-related prank.
Flynt wrote it all down, including the names and numbers of the people that placed the calls. He saw in the entries that officers went out to investigate the call concerning the dead duck, but there was no follow-up. Flynt guessed the partially nude man was Carson Butler. If that was the case, maybe he was already dead and in a tree by the time the officer got out there to investigate.
“Thanks, Frances!” He slapped his notebook closed and then straightened up her little ceramic clown. “Clowns creep me out.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” Frances said.
“It’s a common fear. Did you ever read that Stephen King book with the clown?”
“No. I prefer funny clowns.”
Flynt did not find clowns at all funny and even talking about them gave him the willies. He gave Frances a little nod, the tiny clown a sidelong glance, then headed off in search of Steele.
* * *
Flynt and Steele rode out together to speak to the people that placed the calls to dispatch the night before. As they neared the community college, dusk settled in over the town. It made Steele feel uneasy. It meant they were creeping up on the twenty-four-hour mark of Carson Butler’s death. And while his case did not look to be a murder, he knew that all cases—not just murder cases—tended to go a little cold after the twenty-four-hour mark.
Steele was impressed by Flynt’s efficiency. Steele was going to ask for any calls that came in the night before right after speaking with Kerrie but was shocked to find that Flynt already got the information. It made him wonder if Flynt was simply so used to being the laughing stock of the precinct that no one bothered to take note of his sharp intuition when it did manage to shine through.
Their first stop was at a small apartment complex sitting about a mile away from the community college. The woman that called in the complaint was in her forties and when she answered the door, she took a step back to survey who knocked—a tall, rugged, nearly somber detective on one side and a short, stout cartoonish one on the left.
“Yeah?” she said, confused. “Can I help…you?”
“I’m Detective Steele, and this is my partner, Sergeant Flynt. You spoke with me on the phone about forty minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Clearly, she was expecting a detective like the millions she saw on TV. “Sure, yeah, come on in.”
As she led them into her apartment, Steele asked, “You’re Tamara Galt, correct?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“And you called in a complaint about someone making quacking noises out in the woods last night?”
“I did. And look, I know it sounds like something stupid to complain about, but it was so loud! And it was getting late, too.”
“The dispatch records say you made the call at 11:05 at night.”
“That’s right.”
“And where were you when you heard them?” Steele asked.
“I was in bed, and I could barely hear it. I thought maybe there was some weird malfunction in the fridge or the stove, so I came to the kitchen to check. When I was standing in the kitchen, it was much clearer.”
She brought Flynt and Steele into her kitchen where a tea kettle on the stove just started to whistle. She removed it and poured hot water into a waiting mug.
Steele pointed towards her back door, that led out onto a darkened porch. “Did you go out to listen closer?”
“Yes. And it was ridiculous. It was one of those things that once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it, you know?”
“Do you mind?” Steele was already walking to the door.
“Help yourself.”
Steele stepped out onto the small porch and looked out behind the apartment complex. There was a small back lot with a few picnic tables and old grills shining in the streetlights that shone on either side of the lot. The thin strip of trees at the edge of the little grass lot was the same one that bordered most of the community college.
Flynt stepped out and leaned cautiously against the porch rail. They were on the third floor, so there were two other porches beneath them, and then the ground. Steele wondered if Flynt was afraid of heights.
“The college is over that way, right?” Flynt asked. He pointed a finger in a north-eastern direction.
“Yeah. And that trail Butler was on is less than a mile away. If he was out in those trees making quacking sounds, Ms. Galt would have easily heard it.”
Steele looked out into the growing night a bit longer before heading back inside. Tamara Galt was sipping from her cup of tea as she watched Flynt close the back door.
“When you heard the quacking outside, how loud was it?” Steele asked. In the back of his mind, he thought: There’s a question I never expected to ask in my years as a detective.
“Real loud. I wouldn’t say the person was screaming, but it was pretty close.”
“Do you know if any of your neighbors also heard it?”
“I asked the woman just down the breezeway this morning. She said she thought she heard something briefly last night around the same time, but she went right back to sleep. Aside from her, I haven’t spoken to anyone else.”
“Do you happen to recall when you stopped hearing it?” Steele asked.
“I don’t have a specific time, but I’d say around one or one-thirty in the morning.”
“And it always seemed to be coming out there from the trees?”
“Yes. It would be closer
to the apartments at times, and then further away. But I feel pretty sure it never left that area.” She pointed toward the sliding glass door.
Steele looked over at Flynt, wondering if he had anything to add. When Flynt gave him a mechanical nod and raised his ample eyebrows, it was a sign he was good to go.
When they turned for the door, Tamara followed them. When she opened the door, she paused for a moment. She looked troubled about something.
“Something wrong?” Flynt asked her.
“I assumed it was some weird drunk person out there in the woods, just acting stupid,” she answered. “But with you two looking into it, it makes me wonder. Is there something bad going on?”
“Nothing that you should be concerned about,” Steele said.
“Ducks, on the other hand,” Flynt added, “might need to be on the lookout.” Then, as if he just offered some sage words of wisdom, Flynt took his leave.
Steele sighed, thanked Tamara Galt, and followed his partner out.
* * *
The second stop was at a small diner about two blocks away from the campus. Before leaving the station, Steele arranged to meet with the caller behind the other Puta Gorda call from last night. Their report detailed the story of a partially nude man carrying around what appeared to be a dead duck.
When Flynt and Steele entered the little greasy-spoon diner, they found not one person, but a young couple. Steele guessed them to be nineteen or twenty years of age. The girl was rather cute, though maybe a little too petite. She wore a pixie haircut and at least five piercings in her right ear. The guy was very average-looking, wearing a ball cap without a logo and a t-shirt with the name of a band Steele never heard of.
Flynt slid into the booth first, instantly plucking the menu from between the salt and pepper shakers. Without really even looking at them, Flynt said, “Detective Flynt and Steele. Nice to meet you.”
Steele slid in next to his partner, gave an apologetic look, and went through introductions again.
“I’m Clint, and this is Tori,” the guy said.
“I was the one that saw the naked guy first,” Tori said sheepishly. “I was leaving campus a little late and saw the guy on my way to the parking lot.”
“Did he engage with you?” Steele asked.
“No. I don’t even think he saw me. But I got freaked out. He was sort of marching back and forth, doing little half-circles on the lawn in front of the south parking lot. So, I called Clint to come and escort me. I know there are security guards on campus and all, but they’re sort of a joke.”
“Can you describe what you saw?”
Before Tori could answer, a waitress came by to take their orders. Steele ordered a coffee. Flynt ordered a double bacon cheeseburger, a side of fries, and a slice of cherry pie. When the waitress walked away, Tori picked up her story without missing a beat. With his order placed, Flynt was finally paying close attention.
“There was this guy, just running in circles on the grass. He held a duck in his hands. I thought it was just a rubber one at first, but there was something about the way it was just…I don’t know…limp. I’m pretty sure it was a real duck. And I think the guy had some of its feathers in his hair. I think if it were daylight, it would have been funny. But at night when there’s no one else around, it was pretty creepy.”
“Had you ever seen him before?” Steele asked.
“No. He didn’t look familiar.”
“Did you get a good look at his face?”
“Just from the side for a second. But it was really hard to see because of the dark and the shadows.”
“Was he saying anything that you could make out?”
“He was muttering something really fast, sort of under his breath. But then every now and then he would make these odd quacking noises.”
“When I got there,” Clint said, “he was holding the duck in one hand and this stick in the other. He was using it like a baton or a gun or something. When I got out of the car to get Tori, he pointed it at me like it was a wand and made a goofy zapping noise.”
“I don’t think wands zap,” Flynt said. “Although, I guess it would depend on the spell.”
The couple gave Flynt a confused look.
“Could you make out anything he was saying?” Steele directed his question to Clint.
“Not really. It was really fast. I thought he might be trying to speak in tongues or something. I mean it was either that or, he was pretty clearly on drugs or something. I wasn’t really scared of him, but I was scared for him. That’s why we decided to call the cops in the first place.”
“Did he remain there on the lawn the entire time you two were there?” Steele asked.
“No,” Clint said. “When Tori got in my car and I started pulling out of the lot, he went running for the trees.”
“I looked back one last time,” Tori said. “Right before Clint pulled out of the parking lot. I’m pretty sure I saw him climbing a tree right there at the edge of the woods. He was completely naked. He’d taken his underwear off at some point.”
“Any idea if anyone else saw this?”
“I don’t know. Something like that, you think you’d hear all about it the next day. But I haven’t heard a word.”
The waitress came back with all of Flynt’s food boxed up to go. He popped the top on one of them and shoved a few fries into his mouth. “You ever see any ducks wandering around campus?” Flynt asked.
“Every now and then,” Tori said. “There’s a little wading pond back behind the agricultural building. I guess sometimes they sort of wander around.”
“Tori, why were you at school so late?” Steele asked.
“Because my stupid laptop is fried. I’ve got a paper due next week and I was using the computer lab. As long as you have a student ID, you can use the lab up until eleven at night.”
Steele considered this for a moment. It would be easy enough to check, but he wanted to test one thing before calling this interview to a close. “Have either of you ever heard of something called an Awakening meeting?”
Clint chuckled. “Sure. It gets made fun of a lot. I think it’s like this new age self-improvement crap the psychology department does.”
“Ever been to one?”
“God no,” Tori said. “It’s a joke. No one takes it seriously. Sort of feels like a cult, but what a cult might look like in some weird comedy movie.”
To Steele’s surprise, something about this comment stirred Flynt to open his notebook and jot a few things down. Steele noted the grease from the fries Flynt just ate were smearing the edge of the page.
“Thank you both for your help,” Steele said.
“Do we need to like, be careful?” Clint asked. “Is there something going on we need to know about?”
“It’s not clear at this point,” Steele said. But then, as an afterthought, while getting up from the booth, he added: “For the next few days, maybe just be careful about the people you hang around.”
“Like the freaks at an Awakening meeting?” Tori asked. “No problem.”
Tori and Clint chuckled at this, but in a kind of peculiar way he could not quite identify. Steele found absolutely nothing funny about it.
CHAPTER NINE
Ben Bower was freaking out. He’d been freaking out ever since those two detectives came by the Shake Shack earlier in the day to speak with him. He was starting to regret being so honest with them. Ben had personally never dealt with cops before, but his friends got into trouble on occasion. And from what Ben knew, it was always smartest to be as honest as possible unless it was going to get you into some very big trouble.
While Ben felt confident that the two detectives were done with him and would probably never even waste a second thought on him, he was still worried.
He was worried that his honesty was going to result in getting his drug supplier taken away. His supplier was the only guy he knew that had access to the drug he told the detectives about it. It was some new drug—so new that it didn’
t even have an official street name yet. His dealer simply called it Ducky.
Ben only experienced the drug twice and each time it resulted in an amazing, enlightening experience. The violent mood swing that came following the second time was just an unfortunate side effect.
Ben was worried because he didn’t have any of the drug left. He planned to purchase more later in the week but now he feared he may have messed that up.
It was this fear that found him doing eighty miles per hour down the highway, taking him back to Puta Gorda. He had some extra cash and figured he’d buy enough to get him through whatever investigation the detectives were digging into. Not only that, but Ben figured if he could give his dealer a heads up, his dealer would owe him a favor. And there was nothing better than a dealer that owed you one.
The problem was that his dealer wasn’t answering his phone. It was going straight to voicemail. A knot of worry formed in his gut as he neared the college. Did those detectives already bust him? He found this hard to believe because they didn’t exactly seem competent—especially not the shorter one.
The smart thing to do would be to turn around, go home, and forget the drug existed. After all, Ben wasn’t an addict by any means. He’d experiment with anything that he didn’t have to inject and found none of it appealing. But now there was this drug, this Ducky stuff. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, while turning back would have been the smart decision, Ben ignored it. He gave in to a side of himself he was not familiar with—the side that needed the drug.
The fact that his dealer wasn’t available didn’t really matter. This first time he did it, he was with three other people after an Awakening meeting. One of those people was a professor at Puta Gorda. Ben was pretty sure he knew where the professor kept his own stash.
He remembered the detectives trying to get him to fess up about where he’d bought the drug from. In all honesty, Ben barely knew the guy he purchased it from. What he did know was that the supplier was that same professor. Ben attended some of the Awakening meetings and heard the hare-brained professor speak, and he had a good idea of where the drug would be. The idiot all but told him and a few other kids after one of the meetings. That night was the first time Ben tried the drug.
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