The Litter of the Law (3 page)

“No. The sun had been up about an hour. What we smelled was him,”
the first crow reported, his olfactory powers acute, especially for blood and meat.

“Without his eyes, I can’t tell if he was strangled,”
Pewter matter-of-factly announced.
“They’d be bulging and bloodshot.”

“Eyes are so tasty.”
A smaller crow opened his beak wide.
“A real delicacy.”

“Any idea how he was killed?”
asked Mrs. Murphy.

“You didn’t hear him scream, did you?”
Pewter, normally not interested in much besides her own meals, was oddly thrilled at having discovered such an unusual murder.

“How could we have heard him scream?”
a young crow replied.
“He was dead and gone by the time we found him.”

“Eat what you can, because the sheriff is on his way. He’ll cut him down,”
Mrs. Murphy advised.

Tucker sniffed the bottom of the stake, sniffed the corpse’s shoes, then picked up the diminishing odor of a set of rubber boots. Raising her nose, she sensed the smell moving away from the body, then, nose to ground, she began to track, the cats in her wake. As the three friends stuck to their trail of the pair of rubber boots, presumably those of the person who had carried the body, the crows burst out singing a song whose refrain was
“Oh, those beautiful eyes, those great big beautiful eyes.”
Then they burst into raucous laughter.

“Gross,”
Tucker said.

“Yeah.”
Pewter looked back.
“Twisted. They’re really twisted.”

“It’s the killer who’s twisted,”
Mrs. Murphy sensibly replied as she, too, kept her nose down.

The three followed the line until it came out to the side of the road, where there was a small stain that smelled like motor oil.

“Every third person wears rubber boots around here when it’s wet.”
Tucker sat down.
“But I think this is the spot where the scarcrow’s companion parked, then carried out his body from here.”

“A strong person. They don’t call it dead weight for nothing,”
Mrs. Murphy noted.

“She’s red in the face,”
Pewter said, referring to Harry, calling their names in the distance with increasing frustration.
“We’d better go back to the wagon.”

When they got back to the Volvo, Harry scooped them up, put them in the back, and closed the door. “Curiosity killed the cat,” she huffed, unaware of the irony of Harry Haristeen making such a statement.

“Yeah, yeah.”
Pewter put her paws on the window just to make a smear.

“She’s upset.”
Tucker put her head on her paws.

“Pop is, too. Humans can’t face death.”
Pewter was right about that.

“This is murder. Worse.”
Mrs. Murphy heard cars coming closer.

“I found a head in a pumpkin, remember?”
Pewter reminisced.

“We’ve heard that story a hundred times,”
Tucker grumbled, heading her off.
“This is just as weird. And we were first on the scene. I mean, after the crows and the killer.”

The sheriff’s car rolled up. Sheriff Rick Shaw stepped out from the driver’s side and Deputy Cynthia Cooper emerged from the other. Cooper—Harry never called her Cynthia—rented the farm next to Harry’s farm, the old Jones homeplace. The two women had become friends.

The two law enforcement officers carefully pushed through the late-maturing corn, the leaves rattling, ears full on the stalks. They looked downward as they walked but were rows away from the footprints that Tucker had found.

Harry and Fair stayed with their station wagon as instructed. They could see how carefully Rick and Cooper looked about, conferred, looked down. Then the two circled the scarecrow. The crows flew in loops around them.

One crow dive-bombed.
“Leave us alone!”

Cooper ducked, then waved her hands at the noisy birds. “Damn.”

Rick, tempted to take out his sidearm and fire, did not. No need to alert the residents of Morrowdale or anyone else at this moment.

After twenty minutes, they returned.

“Do you know who it is?” Harry asked.

Cooper shook her head. “The face is pretty well gone. But he’s youngish, and had been in fairly good shape. Look, why don’t you two go on home? I’ll get a statement from you later. If there’s anything of immediate importance, tell me now. Otherwise, you’ll get caught up in the removal team, the forensic team, and, of course, the news team, as they know where we are every minute thanks to being able to listen in to all our calls.”

Tucker barked from the car.
“There’s a drip of oil just up the road. And footprints in a corn row.”

“Save your breath,”
Pewter, paws on the windowsill, counseled.

“They’ll find the footprints,”
Mrs. Murphy said.
“The humans will crawl over that cornfield and the two of them will be down at Morrowdale questioning everyone and going through the barns and sheds.”

Harry and Fair drove west down Garth Road, then turned toward Crozet, heading south. The Blue Ridge Mountains were now on their right. They passed a large cattle farm, Dunrovin, with Herefords in the pastures; they passed by rolling acres of grapes, the land dotted here and there with old farmhouses and the occasional new structure, always sited for the view.

“You okay?” Fair asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” They passed the apple shed now housing Chuck Pinell’s leather shop. “Yeah, but …” His voice trailed off.

“Creepy.” Harry shivered.

“People kill for lust, for love, in a fit of anger, or for money, and some because they are plain nuts,” Fair said.

“You’d need to be pretty demented to take someone you’ve just killed and tie them up as a scarecrow, especially with Halloween just around the corner,” Harry said. “Or it could be a side show designed to cover up another crime. Think about it.”

Fair couldn’t take his eyes off the road, because it was two-lane and treacherous. “I’d rather not.” As he continued, his voice was firm, for his wife was more curious than the cats. “You don’t need to think that much about it either. It was a shock. An unfortunate discovery. We can say a prayer for the victim and then go about our business.”

“Prayers are wonderful. So are results. Who speaks for an innocent victim? Until I know more, I’m assuming he’s innocent.”

Knowing he was losing the battle against his wife’s curiosity, he calmly replied, “Just leave this to Rick and Cooper.”

“Of course.”

“Boy, was that a fib.”
Pewter giggled.

The others laughed with her.

Harry then said, “Whoever did it has quite the imagination.”

“The last thing this county or state needs is an imaginative killer,” said Fair, “especially if you’re one of the victims.”

“Fair, think about this: Don’t most murderers try to dispose of their victim’s bodies so no one finds them? Or if it’s a crime of anger or passion, they run away and leave it, but they don’t turn the corpse into a scarecrow or a public display. Whoever did this had time to plan it out.”

“I guess.”

“So I don’t think it’s a crime of passion.”

“Unless the killer meant to make a mockery of the corpse.” Fair braked at the stop sign at the Amoco station in Crozet. “Dammit. Now you’ve got me thinking about it. Let’s just let it all go.”

“Mmm.” Harry was already off and running.

O
n the kitchen table, Pewter flopped on her side, her tail gently swaying. She thought this her best angle. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker thought otherwise.

As Harry opened the oven door to pop in a casserole, Pewter lifted her head.

“I know you’re making that for me.”
Her voice hit the dulcet-tone register.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, each curled up in their faux-sheepskin-lined animal beds by the door to the back porch, observed with amusement.

Mrs. Murphy imitated the gray cat’s voice:
“I am the most loving kitty in the world.”

Pointedly ignoring this, Pewter again sweetly meowed.
“I could use a little tuna until the casserole is ready.”

Harry closed the door, set the timer, then turned to behold the cat, whose head was now raised, tail moving a bit faster. “Does smell good, doesn’t it, Pewts?” Harry said. She caressed the cat’s silken fur.

“I have suffered a terrible shock,”
Pewter panted, pushing her head into Harry’s hand.
“The sight of a shredded face. Crows devouring human flesh
before being impertinent to me. If one of those vile birds had dropped even two feet, I could have leapt up and torn it to bits.”

“You’re laying it on a little thick.”
The dog raised her head.

“Shut up, Bubble Butt. If she breaks out the cookies, you owe me big-time.”
Pewter rolled onto her back, cocking her head to one side.

“All right.” Harry opened the treat cabinet, counted out two greenies, and gave them to Tucker. Next she opened a bag of cat treats in the shape of fishes. She gave half of these to Pewter, then walked over and gave the rest to Mrs. Murphy.

“You owe me!”
Pewter cried in triumph as she gulped her tiny yellow fish.

Harry—unaware of the exchange, it sounded like meows and catcalling to her—walked back to her husband’s small office in the old farmhouse.

“Forty-five minutes,” she told him.

“Huh.” He looked up from the screen. “Okay.”

“Work?”

Fair was the best equine veterinarian in central Virginia.

He smiled sheepishly. “No. That’s the trouble with the Internet. Easy to get sidetracked.”

“And?” She came up behind him, placing her hands on his broad shoulders.

Not an inch of fat on the man.

“Uh, well, I’ve been kind of reading about bizarre murders. This website has examples going back to the eighteenth century. Really weird things, like duels fought in costumes or heads put on London Bridge with fake crowns. I guess that’s political. But here’s one from Wisconsin in the 1850s that caught my eye: A guy would kill men for no particular reason, or at least one no one could find, and he’d put them in a boat, push it out onto Lake Michigan, and set it afire. A Viking funeral. His victims were all men he had admired.”

“Sometimes I wonder when I hear or read these things whether anyone is normal.”

Fair leaned back in his chair. “I guess that’s debatable.” He rolled his chair around to face her, the rollers clicking on the hardwood floor. “I guess I can’t fuss at you. Sometimes I’m a little too curious myself.”

She kissed his cheek. “Makes me feel better,” she said, then headed to the kitchen.

He followed the wonderful aroma of her chicken casserole, her mother’s recipe.

“That scent brings back so many memories,” Harry said. “And, hey, Halloween is what, two and a half weeks away? More memories.”

“Heads in pumpkins,”
Pewter blathered.

Tucker listened, then put her head back on her paws.
“I thought they were about to discuss food. They’d be much better off focusing on things that matter rather than random corpses.”

The tiger cat silently agreed as she left her own bed to curl up with the corgi.

Both animals felt the chill of premonition.