The Canes Files

by Nicholas McConnaughay

  “It looks like Benjamin Sexton and Steven Fosbis both died of natural causes. Harris Woof wasn't as lucky, however, and died from a house fire.” Psitticus announced.

  Vulpecula looked back over and saw the other officer leaving, and that Detective Psitticus now held a manila folder in his hands. “That's hardly a pattern,” V remarked quietly under his breath.

  “Benjamin Sexton was a well-esteemed lawyer but died six weeks ago from kidney failure, mid-forties. Steven Fosbis was a banker and died only a few days ago, well into his sixties. Then, at last, twenty-five-year-old Harris Woof,” Psitticus chuckled a second, “He was a firefighter.”

  “Two of the three are dogs,” Vulpecula began.

  “What about the middle-man?” Psitticus interrupted.

  “Cut the middle-man? He is a banker, after all. I know we cannot. Two of the three are dogs, the other a fox, which rules against the idea of a hate-crime. The coroner evidently suspected nothing out of the ordinary, and I don't think this is something as meticulous as that.” Vulpecula investigated the six-foot holes that'd been dug out. “This is a message, this is meant to be legible as pertaining to something else.”

  “Oh, and what might that be?” Psitticus blurted out, his voice not sounding very impressed with V's reasonings.

  Vulpecula, however, feigned being aghast by his interruption, offering the parrot a confused look. “I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to myself, and I find it rude for you to eavesdrop.” The Fox Detective looked back to the tombstones, mild amusement in his gift of inducing irritation.

  “I am gonna head back to the station,” Marybeth's Head Detective stated. “I'll leave the profile folder with your friends here and if you happen to find something significant, don't hesitate to call me. You have my number, correct?”

  “No, what is it?” Vulpecula pondered, looking at the corpses like he expected them to whisper a clue at any moment.

  “716...” The parrot began before being waivered off by V.

  “Stop, I have it. I didn't think I did. Thought I erased it. But I have it.” Vulpecula reassured. The Blank Chalkboard led assist on various details about cases, on numbers, and the occasional algebraic equation. And in time, all was erased, filed, and forgotten. Blank again.

  Psitticus said nothing, instead, Vulpecula simply his footsteps walking through the snow. Soon after, the iron gate was opened, and his character was written out for the time being.

  Vulpecula walked over to the skeleton canine and reached in his front-pocket.

  “Don't you think you should buy him dinner first?” cracked Lacerta, and for the first time, perhaps more comfortable now that the Head Detective was out-of-sight, walked toward the bodies.

  Vulpecula didn't laugh. He felt around in the skeleton's pockets in hopes of finding something significant. But found nothing at all. No matter, he walked over to the decomposing fox and did the same.

  “At the very least, don't you think you should be wearing gloves while tampering with a crime-scene?” Apus suggested.

  Vulpecula stopped for a moment, looking over to Apus, and smiled. “I'm not of the law, if Psitticus trusts us unsupervised in an investigation, that's his problem.”

  Eureka! Or at least, a partial eureka. An “Eka” without the “Eur,” Vulpecula held the deceased fox's pocket-watch in his hands. Pocket watches were such foolish contraptions. Why have a pocket watch when you can simply wear a watch on your wrist? Useless. (He thought, while knowing full-well he'd be checking his phone for the time in a matter of minutes.) Vulpecula held it in his hands. It had nothing peculiar about it. Nothing out of the ordinary. The watch was a yellowish gold color, but V's detective skills couldn't decipher whether it was metal or the real-thing. Either way, it was an item a grave-robber would have stolen.

  Vulpecula opened the watch and smiled big. Almost as big as the dead fox standing beside him. A clue.

  “What is it?” Lacerta asked.

  “Watch out!” Vulpecula said at once, tossing the watch at him as if it were a bomb that could detonate at any moment.

  Lacerta flinched like he was terrified, but Apus' levelheadedness allotted him the means to catch it before it fell on the snowy ground.

  “That's interesting,” Apus commented.

  Once realizing himself made a fool, Lacerta had an offended look on his face that lasted only seconds. “What is it?” The lizard asked.

  “Happy Givings,” Apus answered, turning the watch over, facing Lacerta, allowing him to see the sticky-note closed within the pocket-watch. Besides the early season's greeting, a crudely drawn smiley-face was also visible, written in black permanent marker.

  “A playful message,” Vulpecula said.

  “Heavens, Vulpecula, we've contaminated the evidence! This could have had the man's finger-prints on it and now we've smudged it up with these shenanigans!” Apus fired back, sounding legitimately bothered by the revelation.

  “Yes, there's a one-and-a-million chance the perpetrator was stupid enough to leave fingerprints on the pocket-watch but smart enough to stage this whole spectacle,” Vulpecula agreed. “But where would the fun in that be?”

  “You have that look in your eyes,” Apus commented.

  Vulpecula waved him off and looked once more toward the corpses. He meant his comment. About not wanting to catch the perpetrator off such a lackluster detail. This was a display that was meant to be unraveled, and for some unknown reason, The Fox Detective anticipated the clue was already available to him. Glaring at him. Vulpecula let out a breath, easing his disposition, and like that, his stressful tension returned.

  “Hand me the folder,” Vulpecula barked, walking over to Apus and taking it from his hands.

  The folder's confines held ten-pages in total. Photographs of all three victims, criminal records, medical reports, but none of it seemed significant.

  Vulpecula dropped his walking stick into the snow and perused the folder with both paws, skimming through the pages like an editor proofreading for typos. “All three of them are squeaky clean, neither of them with as little as a single parking ticket. Nobody would dig up three bodies and set them up like this, just for the sake of it!”

  4.

  “I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Every case I can remember, I had an idea of what to do next. Like a loose string from a fabric, I always had something to pluck and help unravel whatever it is I was stuck on. This was like trying to find a loose string on chain-mail.” Vulpecula vented, another sip of alcohol came and went. He hadn't ever been fully drunk in his life, but there was a first time for everything.

  “You solved it though, how did you do it?” Red asked, only half of his attention offered to Vulpecula, the bar had become busier and more crowded.

  “I called Psitticus and admitted defeat, I didn't want to do it. It was the last thing I wanted to do. My head ached so badly, I don't know if it was the case or something else, but I couldn't string anything together. I wasted an hour-and-a-half pacing around those three corpses, eventually more of the Police Department arrived, they took an album's worth of photographs of the scene and brought the bodies into body-bags. You'd figure they'd knock the bodies back into their holes and bury them, but instead, they stretchered them out.” Vulpecula chuckled a second, adrenaline coursing through his veins just by the thought of it. The thought put his teeth on-edge.

  “What did Psitti...The Head Detective say?”

  “He laughed a little at my suffering but reassured me. Told me that he already investigated the whole scene and couldn't find anything, said the only way they'd be able to find anything is if the perpetrator tries it again and makes mistakes.”

  “They don't have surveillance cameras or security guards that look over the cemetery?”

  “This is Urgway,” Vulpecula replied. “The city can't afford any of that, filled with greaseballs that would rather feed their own selfish agendas rather than something of worth.”

  “A bar filled with greaseballs, V.” Red reminded, fei
gning the look of someone scared.

  “Waiting,” Vulpecula continued. “Waiting isn't something I can do. It isn't how I am programmed. Lacerta, Apus and I soon arrived at a small diner called Beagle's Bagels. To wait.”

  5.

  “I don't think the other customers are fond of us, Vulpecula.” Apus commented quietly, looking around at the old dogs beaming at them.

  “Dogs from different times, I'm afraid, not the most tolerant,” Vulpecula quipped fast, “Anyways, why is it that Psitticus sent a crew of officers to take the crime scene away from me!?”

  “Maybe he thought you'd contaminate the crime scene.” Apus answered plainly.

  “That's ridiculous,” cried the offended fox.

  “You contaminated the crime scene.”

  Vulpecula laid the manila folder atop the wooden table they all sat, brushing aside the menu and rolled napkin of eating utensils.

  “I really think we're better off waiting and not obsessing about this one, V.” Lacerta said, then began looking through his menu with the same intensity Vulpecula offered the victims' profiles.

  “You and I both know that won't happen.”

  A waitress walked over to their table with a grumpy glare and a smell that wreaked of oldness. A stuffy smell that's inherited when life's expiration date's coming up on the calendar, but not yet spoiled. Exhaust fumes, in a way. The somehow distinct odor of plainness. “Uh, fellas, we're gonna have to ask you take your business elsewhere,” She began. Looks weren't deceiving, her tone had the rasp of a long-time smoker and her disposition carried an entitled sass.

  “I can't believe this,” Vulpecula mumbled.

  “This isn't really an area for your kind,” the waitress answered.

  “Why would that stupid parrot ask me to be involved in a case that's such a dead-end?”

  A sigh from the waitress as she walked away from their table. Vulpecula was well-aware of her annoyance, but he didn't really care. He needed to solve the three bodies mystery but couldn't.

  “Look, Vulpecula, I know you're feeling irascible about this, but it isn't worth obsessing over.” Lacerta answered, by now, he understood his chances at obtaining food were slim to none. Instead, he began playing the word search puzzle available on his menu, circling two across.

  Vulpecula ignored him. “This is what we know, … Three bodies have been dug out from their graves, stood up and positioned like mannequins. Their features made to look as though they are gesturing toward their own grave-sites and laughing at them. A woman discovered them in the Alo Cemetery as she was visiting her deceased father. None of the three victims have any known criminal records, no affiliation through work, no family ties. Inside the fox's front-pocket, I discovered a watch with a holiday greeting inside written on a sticky note.” Vulpecula stopped, taking the pocket-watch out from his fur-pouch and inspecting it.

  “You kept it!?” Apus questioned.

  “What am I missing?” Vulpecula cried out, flipping the pocket-watch open and shut again and again like he thought he'd uncover a secret compartment or a second clue.

  “Vulpecula,” Lacerta said calmly.

  “Maybe there's another message written on the inside of the dentures, I should call the Department and ask them.”

  “Vulpecula!” Lacerta shouted, his annoyance unable to contain itself, slamming his hands against the table. It'd have drawn eyes on them too, had all eyes in the diner not already been on them.

  V hesitated. Caught off-guard by his friend's disturbance, but then reacted stoic. “I can't stop, Lacerta. It isn't a choice, I have to do this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am alone in my head when I don't.” Vulpecula's eyes ventured off to the floor, fidgeting uncomfortably with the fur on his chin.

  Lacerta sighed, “Well, you're going daft, mate.”

  “What am I missing, Lacerta?” Vulpecula said, and at that moment, out the corner of his eye, he watched a large dog step out from the men's bathroom.

  He watched the door swivel about, and before it shut, his eyes could have sworn seeing Comet Fowley smiling at him devilishly as blood spurted out the hole made from his severed hand.

  The door shut, its momentum opening it one last time, Vulpecula saw the porcelain sinks and part of the bathroom stalls, but no Comet Fowley. “I am much crazier when I don't occupy my mind.”

  Lacerta slid the manila folder away from Vulpecula and began thumbing through it. The folder now had, not only the profiles of the three victims, but photographs and details regarding the findings at the crime-scene. “Isn't really a whole lot to talk about.” Lacerta stopped a moment, reading. “Honey, never EVER forget to feed the humans. That's funny,” Lacerta said, a small laugh.

  Vulpecula stared at him blankly. “How is that helpful?”

  “Well,” Lacerta said, “I mean, Our Man seemed to like it. I mean, he has Benjamin Sexton pointing at it.”

  “He is pointing at the gravesite,” Vulpecula affirmed.

  “Don't think so,” Lacerta argued, turning the photograph over to where V could see it.

  Vulpecula waved him off. It wasn't like it mattered. “Anything else?”

  Lacerta squinted at the pages and shook his head, “I don't understand why you're so certain this person would leave a hint. Hasn't the theory about serial-killers wanting to be captured been disproven?”

  “Yes, but this isn't a serial-killer, this is a man committing a petty crime because he wants to scream something to the heavens. Wants everyone to see it. Wants them to know it. To reach out and bring them to his level. Nobody does something like this without reason,” Vulpecula reaffirmed, and at that moment, he could hear a voice in the inner-most of his psyche whisper to him, “Unless they do.”

  “You're petty,” was Lacerta's retort. “What would you do if you dug up bodies like this?”

  “Why would I do something like that?” Vulpecula asked, concerned.

  “You tell me?”

  “I wouldn't.”

  “But, what if you did?”

  Vulpecula stopped. Closing his eyes, as if to imagine it. A second later, his eyes opened, looking at the photographs in the folder. “I'd taunt everyone in sight. A million intricately embroidered red herrings all leading to the same conclusion – Nothing.”

  “And why would you do that?” a voice asked The Fox Detective, but the voice was not Lacerta's.

  Vulpecula lifted his head up and made eye-contact with a grey fox. But not a grey fox. Himself. Depleted of all enthuse and empathy. His teeth dripped blood. “If it were you. And we BOTH know it COULD be you. Why would you do it?”

  “I wouldn't do it,” Vulpecula replied; bloodshot eyes, staring at his reflective monster.

  “You can lie to them, but you can't lie to me.” The Grey Fox said, his teeth spread wide. It reminded Vulpecula of the deceased fox back at the cemetery. But somehow deader inside. The Grey Fox reached over the table and grabbed Vulpecula by his scarf, bringing him close. “WHY WOULD YOU DO IT!?”

  “Boredom,” Vulpecula calmly said. Lacerta's face looked confused, asking Vulpecula to elaborate without having to say a word. “This isn't a message, no rhyme or reason. This is a scream of suffering, 'look at all I had to do to make you see,' a normal man gone astray from convention in search for intellectual nourishment. Something of substance,” Vulpecula laughed a little to himself, though, nothing he said was funny in the least.

  “Vulpecula…?” Lacerta asked, snapping his fingers in-front of The Fox Detective with worried eyes.

  “I'd hide a puzzle,” Vulpecula answered. “An inside reference only I could understand. Nobody would find it because they'd have no reason to think it exists. A trick or riddle, perhaps,” he continued, digging his claw into Lacerta's Beagle's Bagels menu, spinning it to face toward him.

  “Right, but where, exactly? I know you want to solve this, but I don't think grasping at straws is, …” Lacerta began, until being interrupted by V.

  “What if I told you our next cl
ue has already been said, many times? A puzzle has already been said?” Vulpecula asked.

  “We would have found it by now, V. If he left anything we missed, surely the Department would have found it and said something,” his voice sounded depleted of enthuse, no longer enjoying his furry friend.

  “Benjamin Sexton, Steven Fosbis, and Harris Woof, not counting their predicament have one really significant thing in common, what is it?”

  “They're smiling and pointing at where they were dug up?”

  “You were right the first time.”

  “The tombstones?”

  “The epitaphs all, do you recall? I do, but I look at them with new found eyes and open-minds, I look at them from left to right and discover a message from them. A small one; insignificant at first inspection. But first, let's stop and look at each quote etched onto them. Each is a cliché, neither particularly clever nor particularly profound. The epitaphs offer no indication or hindsight of the carbon footprint left behind by each person. I am suggesting the etchings weren't chosen by loved ones, supported by the profiles on each of them; unmarried, no real families. Nobody would notice a small alteration or completely unique epitaph.”

  “That seems a little far-fetched, don't you think?”

  “Living life with hesitance is the only worthwhile formula. Useless is it, a time without love, no sense planning or premediating. Honey, never EVER forget to feed and water the humans.” Vulpecula read from his Blank Chalkboard. “Reading these, first and last letter of each sentence, a double acrostic, tombstones left to right, what do you find?”

  6.

  “Laughs,” Vulpecula answered, sounding unimpressed by the revelation. Too much had happened in too short a time, and his respect for such things had dwindled. “It was logical. The whole act was inspired by such an action. Each body, of course, adjusted to resemble laughter.”

  “Seems like a lot of planning must have went into it,” Bartender Red commented.