Stuffed (14 page)

“Hello?”

Startled? It was as if Electra the 100,000 Volt Woman had hit me with her jumper cables.

I wheeled around, but there was nobody there. My skin rippled with fresh goose bumps, and I willed my heart and lungs to start functioning again. I was going to start running and I needed their help.

“Please, help me, please!”

It was a girl’s voice, very weak, and it was coming from one of the trailers. Chivalry was dead as far as I was concerned—the needle on the strange meter was pinned in the red zone. I’d get the cops and they could save her.

“They’ll be back soon. . . . I want to go home.” I detected faint sobs.

One part of my mind had me halfway up that hill to the safety of the Lincoln, smoke pouring out of my running shoes, Speedy Gonzales put to shame.

Another part of my mind was becoming fixated on the plight of this girl.

And still another part of my mind said,
IT’S A TRAP, YOU IDIOT. FLEE!
It was like I was watching myself in a drive-in horror show.

You’d think those two parts sandwiching the middle one would have won hands down, and they were very near to quashing my burgeoning guilt for being a heartless bastard. I’ll admit there was still another part of me that imagined a zombie girl like from
Night of the Living Dead,
her arms clawing the air, her bloody fangs bared. Sure, she was saying “Help me!” now, but when I was within arm’s reach it’d be “MORE BRAINS. NEED MORE BRAINS!” Perhaps the lingering, grisly image of Bret Fletcher’s crushed body and wriggly fingers had left me more squeamish than I might have been otherwise.

I scanned my surroundings. Nothing stirred. I stepped out from behind my tree, took a step toward the clearing, and a piece of the tree exploded.

An arrow hummed, vibrating where it protruded from the tree, which only seconds earlier had been protected by my head. The arrow was a tiny thing, like a large toothpick, fletched with leaves instead of feathers.

A shriek bounced across the hollow. I’m pretty sure it was mine.

My next conscious sensation was pounding. My heart, my feet, my ears.

By the time I had visual to go with my audio, I found that I was doing an admirable Speedy Gonzales imitation on the switchback road. I now know why all that smoke comes out from behind the Road Runner and Speedy. It’s not the friction from their feet on the dusty southwestern roads. It’s burning calf muscles. Mine felt like Kingsford briquettes ready for the chops.

I heard another arrow whistle by my ear, thwack a tree. I veered off the road and ran directly up hill through the woods. I was beelining for the top of the hill and the Lincoln.

Flight instinct was fully engaged; there was no stopping. For all I knew I was running toward the archer. Believe me, I’m no athlete, but under those kinds of circumstances you’d be surprised what you can do. My legs were about to leave my torso behind.

MANLESS LEGS. Behold World’s Fastest Feet that Left Their Master Behind! Free Deodorizing Insole if You Can Prove They’re Not Real! ALIVE and KICKING!

I could see the hill’s rocky summit, trees silhouetted against the growing twilight. The niche where the Lincoln would be, it was up there, to the left. I saw a glint of the chrome bumper.

Voices, squeaky voices behind me, cursed, as I closed in on the Lincoln.

Unable to resist, I looked back down the hill. I wish I hadn’t.

Charging up behind me was a squad of . . . well, pygmies. I don’t know, they could have just been black midgets or dwarfs, but they were small dark men carrying bows and arrows, and they were screaming at me.

I vaulted over the passenger-side door. My knee slammed the steering wheel but I cranked the key, pushed the pedal to the floor, and shoved the gearshift down in one smooth motion.

An arrow hit the inside of my windshield, bounced back out of the car.

My tires churned, shuddered, looking for good traction. The Lincoln lurched forward.

Looming just ahead was the rock cleft.

Something moved.

I looked up.

It was the second time in two days that I saw something that made absolutely no sense. There was a silhouette against the sky, atop the rocks, that was too smooth to be part of the stone. It was like some oddball bedevilment from Zeus, a Colossus, Harpy, or Cyclops—or even Symplegades of the Clashing Rocks. It looked vaguely human at first, and then part of it detached and spun end over end down at me. What was left atop the rocks had no arms or legs, was rounded and slightly bulbous. A giant thumb?

I ducked, pedal to the metal.

Something slammed the Lincoln. Hard. From what direction I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that the impact tossed me into the air. I landed sideways across the seats and struggled to right myself as the Lincoln swerved for the embankment.

I wrenched the wheel right and plowed the Lincoln into the dead weeds and saplings on the uphill side. As the car fishtailed, I reached my feet back to the pedals, righted myself, and tapped the brakes. The Lincoln came to, gravel churning in my wheel wells.

I shot right out onto the highway without looking—knock wood, nobody was coming.

Back on pavement, my exhaust system started to rattle. So I pulled on the headlights and saw I was doing a hundred miles an hour away from Brattleboro. The dashed roadway stripes looked like a solid line. Next to me, on the driver’s seat, were a bunch of twigs and leaves I’d picked up when I scraped the hillside. I glanced in the rearview mirror—no lights following. I took my foot off the accelerator and tapped the brakes. The exhaust system quieted. My knee throbbed where it had hit the steering wheel.

From the red glow of my brake lights, in my rearview mirror, I saw the silhouette of something on the trunk lid, a lump of some kind. I swerved onto the shoulder and stopped.
Please tell me the giant thumb didn’t jump onto the back of my car.

It was a rock. Or maybe a boulder. Anyway, this one was the size of a microwave. The impact had destroyed the trunk lid, but otherwise the Lincoln seemed unfazed. Two points for the old battleship. Fixing that was going to cost me plenty.

Then I noticed the pygmy arrows sticking out of my upholstery.

I put my shaking hands back on the steering wheel and made tracks away from Brattleboro. I’d be damned if I was going back that way. It took me a half hour to loop around and find my way back to town. I didn’t even want to take the time to try to remove the boulder.

Clam rats and pygmies—eat my dust.

Chapter 16

P
ygmies.” Phil eyed the Lincoln hesitantly. “In Vermont.”

Clearly, he was mulling over ways to explain it to a jury and make them believe it. I could tell by the way he’d bitten a pencil in half that the boulder on my trunk didn’t bolster my case, though the small crowd gathered in the spring twilight on the courthouse steps seemed impressed by the spectacle. The Lincoln’s backseat was stuck like a pincushion with little arrows.

“Well, they were little, and dark, with bows and arrows. What would you call them?”

“And the pygmies . . . did they throw this rock at you?”

“C’mon, how could pygmies lift a big rock like that?” I felt myself redden as the crowd’s attention turned from the Boulder Mobile to me. “This came from atop the cleft. The pygmies were charging up the hill behind me.”

After I told my absurd story, Phil led me inside, where I was compelled to repeat this yarn to Danny DA. When I got to the end, I summarized:

“So there’s these three: one who I think is a funeral director named MacTeague from Oregon, Bret, and then this cowboy and—” I quickly decided to leave Jimmy out of the picture—he didn’t fit. “Bret worked carnivals, and then there’s this sideshow in the woods where they shot little arrows at me. . . . Look, I may be going out on a limb here, but I think these carnies grabbed a dead gorilla from an Oregon zoo, maybe to make a gaff, I dunno.”

Danny squinted at the floor, a paper cup dangling from one hand and his tie undone.

“Pygmies. In Vermont.”

Phil was standing at the window, staring at the meager city lights of Brattleboro.

Then Danny asked, “What’s a gaff?”

“Yeah, you know, a carnival attraction, like a saber-toothed bass, alien fetus, mummified mermaid . . . or a clam rat. They don’t make them anymore because the traveling freak shows are extinct. Not PC.”

“Clam rat?” Danny shook his head in bewilderment. “So you’re saying that Fletcher and some carnies and a tribe of pygmy warriors and a giant thumb have stolen a dead gorilla for a sideshow attraction. For a gaff. Even though freak shows no longer exist.”

“Maybe they were going to make a yeti or something.” I shrugged. “They usually make them out of bears, but . . . anyway, that’s the way I figure it.”

Phil didn’t flinch. “Yeti?”

“Abominable Snowman.”

“Ah.” Danny pursed his lips. “So now we have Big Foot. Does Bat Boy enter into this anywhere?”

I reiterated: “It’s about the white crow.”

Phil sighed before I did.

I continued: “What this has to do with the crow is anybody’s guess, but they wanted it enough to come all the way to Manhattan to steal it and dump a lot of very valuable taxidermy in the river.”

Danny stood next to the blue cigarette-burned table, shaking his head at the floor. “I don’t see any connection. But at the same time, I can’t see why you would make up such a load of crap. Why would you drop a rock on your trunk and shoot arrows into your upholstery? The sheriff did go out there. They found that abandoned sideshow in the woods. Too dark to see much else, nobody around.
No pygmies.”

“Yeah, but there was a banner for a sideshow featuring pygmy warriors,” I retorted.

He looked up at Phil, took his turn at a sigh, and left the room. Detectives and DAs always do that, just walk out. Which almost always means they’re going to talk to the people behind the big mirror to see what they think.

I cleared my throat. “So, Phil, am I getting anywhere near being able to go home?”

“Are you sure you’re telling us everything?” He didn’t turn. “You didn’t forget anything?”

“All the news that’s fit to print.”

“You didn’t see who rolled the rock down on you?”

“Is it a rock or a boulder?”

Phil almost turned to look at me. “What?”

“I mean, is the rock on my trunk big enough to be considered a boulder?”

Phil scratched his head but didn’t say anything. You didn’t really expect me to tell them a giant thumb threw that boulder, did you?

Danny came back in.

“We’ll be willing to bargain on the manslaughter charge if Mr. Carson agrees to cooperate with an ongoing investigation.”

Phil came to life. “Manslaughter? You’ll be lucky if you get reckless endangerment, Danny. Frankly, I think my client has a very good—”

The door opened again, and Special Agent Renard of the NYSDEC strolled into the room, a little more awake than the last time I saw him. But just a little.

“We meet again, Mr. Carson.” He dipped his head at the others before coming back to me. “Your white crow seems to be causing a bit of a ruckus.”

“What’s this?” I pointed at Renard.

“We’re interested in your gorilla story.” Renard suppressed a yawn. “And want your help in getting to the bottom of all this. About who dumped that boulder on your car.”

I snorted at him. “Are you sure it’s not a rock?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, Phil thinks it’s a rock, and you say it’s a boulder. Anybody know when a rock becomes a boulder? How big does it have to be?”

I can get pretty trivial when I’m reaching the end of my rope.

Danny groaned. “Boulder, rock, what’s the difference?”

“Exactly!” I added.

“A boulder”—Renard raised an eyebrow at me—“is too big to lift without aid of a machine. Look here, Mr. Carson, we’re trying to help you, but you’ll have to help us.”

“I think I’ve done quite a lot already. Don’t you think it’s about time you people did something about all this? I’m a taxpayer, for God’s sake. And a victim.”

Renard exchanged glances with Danny, who opened a folder and dropped a photo in front of me.

“Your cowboy look like this?”

It was a black-and-white 8x10 of a man with a black eye, new stitches on his forehead, holding a mug-shot placard that said
TAYLOR COUNTY CORRECTIONS, NC.
The date was ten years earlier, and Slim looked like he’d been in one heck of a bar fight.

“That’s him! He’s older and wears a cowboy hat. How’d you find this?”

“We do this kind of thing for a living, Carson. What taxpayers pay us for. That’s Tex Filbert, an independent showman who did travel with a carnival run by Faldo Amusements. He has a record, bar fights, check kiting, spent some time in county here and there, but nothing serious.”

“Was he a showman?”

“He was a carny, if that’s what you mean.”

“What I meant was, did he operate a concession on the sideshow that featured gaffs?”

Danny took the picture back. “Yes.”

I folded my arms, grinning. “See there, I was right.”

“He’s
not
a cowboy.”

“Well, he’s got the hat, and he’s bowlegged.”

Danny ignored me. “So, Renard, you want to take it from here?”

“It’s that snipe of yours.” Renard flashed a smile, but it wasn’t friendly. “It’s actually a
Limnodromus scolopaceus.”

“You came up here to tell me that my snipe is—lemme guess—a woodcock? A Virginia rail?”

“Scolopaceus is a long-billed dowitcher.”

My grin wearied. “It’s a snipe, Renard. LBDs don’t have the ruddy breast feathers.”

He cleared his throat and folded his arms. “The males do when they’re in breeding colors, Carson. And, as you’re aware, long-billed dowitchers are a protected species.”

“Fine, let’s do a DNA test. What’s this got to do with—”

“We’re willing to overlook this irregularity, and Brattleboro County is willing to drop any charges—”

“Rescind the charge,” Danny corrected.

“—your reckless endangerment—”

“Manslaughter,” Danny corrected again.

“—if you assist the New York DEC with an investigation into—”

“Egad, fellahs, you don’t have to beat me over the head with my snipe, or dowitcher, or whatever. If you look right outside you’ll see a
boulder
on my trunk. Pygmy arrows in my backseat. Know what that means? It means that between you and them I can’t stay out of this mess. So what’s it going to be? Going to wire me up, night scopes in a van parked across the street, or what?”

Agent Renard was stroking his chin. “There’s something amiss here, and the NYSDEC and the State of Vermont have agreed to cooperate in getting to the bottom of it. We have some jurisdictional complications, some technical problems. Because your pelts were stolen in New York and found in Massachusetts, we can’t convince a Vermont judge that there’s compelling evidence for the NYSDEC to conduct an investigation in this jurisdiction.”

“Then what are you doing here, Renard? What is this?”

“And the Vermont State Fish and Game have neither the facilities, nor the manpower, nor the impetus from the FBI to conduct an investigation into what amounts to the interstate theft and transport of a dead crow. However, under a codicil in Vermont State law, another state’s police force can conduct a limited investigation if approved by the district attorney’s office—”

I stood as Detective Walker ambled into the room, looking decidedly unrural in his new plaid flannel jacket and mad-bomber cap. An airline ticket folder protruded from his jacket pocket. He smirked at me, and it felt like a poke to the sternum. His smirks are like dares, like drawing a line for me to cross. Walker would like nothing better than for me to take a swing at him. Or him at me.

“Detective Walker is going to work with you undercover. He’s going to pose as your partner. You’ll wait in your motel for MacTeague and his friends to contact you again. We figure if they tried to kill you once, they’ll probably try again.”

“Walker? I’ve got a tribe of angry pygmies after me, and I get Walker?” Jungle Jim he’s not.

The subject of my disdain sneered. “You got a problem with that, Mr. Dead Things?”