Oberon's Meaty Mysteries_The Squirrel on the Train
Page 3
Chapter 3:
The Guy
Who Hid
the Sausage
Atticus snorted at the driver’s license. “Hudson Keane? Who names their Irish kid Hudson?”
“I’d say so. Hmm. Twenty-two years old. Address here in Portland, not too far. But we probably shouldn’t go there without Detective Ibarra. If I go there and don’t share this info she won’t be cool with that and will never share anything with us.”
“What? You mean quid pro quo?”
“What the heck is a squid pro?”
“Add it to the bucket list, I guess.” He took off our leashes and said we could roam as long as we kept him in sight and didn’t harass anyone. “We’re heading back down to the park entrance.”
Orlaith and Starbuck kind of wandered off a wee bit to smell and pee on trees, but I stayed right by the side of my Druid as he pulled out his phone and Detective Ibarra’s card.
“Don’t you want to go smell some stuff, Oberon? It’s why we came up here.”
“Okay. I appreciate it, buddy. You know what? I like this spot. Think I’ll bind a tree to Tír na nÓg here so we can come back easily. Then I’ll call the detective and put her on speaker so you can hear.”
I could hear the detective’s impatience when she answered his call, but much of the richness of her voice was gone, strained and tinny sounding through the phone. What happens to human voices when they travel through phones? Is there some kind of monster living in the in-between spaces, feeding on their expression and tone? Something that lives on timbre? I might need to include a chapter in my book about unheard sound and what our ears so often miss.
“Yes, Detective,” Atticus said. “I think I may have something to help you out. My hounds picked up a scent at the scene and we followed it all the way to Washington Park. I do believe I’ve found the victim’s wallet.”
“You mean the man who looks exactly like you?” she said.
“Yes, that’s the one. Would you mind meeting me at the park entrance and we’ll go to the victim’s house together?”
“No, you’ll just give me the wallet.”
“I think I deserve some courtesy here, Detective Ibarra, for once again, I am doing a good portion of your investigative work for you in the pursuit of a murderer. Can you consider me a consultant, at least, if not an equal? I’m only trying to be helpful.”
“What would be helpful is you turning over what you’ve found so I can do my job.”
“I’ll be happy to turn it over as long as you give me a ride to his house. I have an interest in finding this murderer and clearly, I can help you. Or do you know the victim’s name and place of residence already?”
“God damn it, Molloy, you know I don’t. What’s his name?”
“Come pick me and my hounds up at the entrance to Washington Park and I’ll tell you. Oh, and we found his keys too.”
“Seriously? What about a cell phone?”
“Sadly not. Just the wallet and keys. But surely that will provide you more leads than what you have now? Come on, Detective. We’re on the same side. Let’s work together on this.”
Detective Ibarra muttered something unintelligible and then arranged a pickup spot with Atticus. I chuffed in the chilly air, victorious. Druids rock.
Some time later—hours or minutes or months, I don’t know—we piled into Detective Ibarra’s automobile, the engineers of which never anticipated two wolfhounds jumping into the back seat. “Jesus,” she kept saying, as if saying his name would make him appear and magically give us more room in her tiny car. “Do they shed a lot?”
Oh, that was a low blow, if I may use the parlance of human gladiator sports. She makes it sound like humans would never vacuum their cars if it weren’t for hounds. Humans shed too, you know!
Atticus distracted her with the wallet of Hudson Keane, and we hounds were soon distracted by the many, many discarded taco wrappers behind the front seats, the legacy of stakeouts, perhaps, or just never enough time to enjoy her lunch at an actual table. Thin wax paper coated in thick layers of grease: They were the ultimate tease. I could fault the detective on her prejudice against hounds, but I could not fault her customary choice of carne asada topped with fresh cilantro. Even long dead and gone, those tacos still smelled great. They were ghost tacos, taunting us with our tardiness. Oh, ghost tacos! Why can’t I quit you?
He ignored me, though, because the detective switched to quizzing him for details about the wallet and keys, and their conversation eventually penetrated my greasy taco dreams. How did he find them? Where did he find them? Did he see anyone near them? Atticus was very careful to leave Suluk out of it and pretend that we led him to the wallet and keys, discarded in the park—which I suppose was partially true. We did lead him to the park.
When we got to the apartment complex of Hudson Keane, Atticus put leashes on us again at the insistence of the detective. Apparently, her opinion of hounds was that we just run around contaminating crime scenes and pee everywhere we can, but that’s not true. We pee wherever we want to, and there’s a big difference.
The apartment was on the second floor. The detective called into her station or precinct or whatever it’s called to inform them that she was entering the home of the victim with his keys.
Except that we didn’t need to. The door was open a little bit, the lock smashed or hacked to pieces right out of the frame. When Detective Ibarra saw that, she asked us to stay back and she pulled a gun out of a shoulder holster underneath her jacket. Then she called her base again saying she needed a team out here for backup because the victim’s residence had been broken into.
“I think we’re getting closer to discovering a motive here,” the detective said. “Don’t enter until I say it’s clear.”
I guess she wasn’t going to wait for that backup. She kicked the door open and went in low, gun pointed in front of her.
Atticus took a peek around the door jamb after a few seconds.
The place is trashed. Huh. It’s starting to look like Hudson’s murder wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. He really was the target. What kind of naughty shit do you think he was into?
I beg your pardon?
Interesting. Hey, before we go in, all three of you sniff around the door jamb here and the threshold. Do you smell any scents that you also smelled in the train station—besides Hudson, I mean? Because if you find a match that might be our killer.
We applied our snoots to the scenario, snuffling around the edge of the doorway. I didn’t catch anything and neither did Orlaith, but Starbuck growled at something. He recognized a scent from the train station and started pulling on his leash toward the stairs.
Found something, Starbuck? Go ahead, lead the way, but take it slow. We’ll stay on the leash for now.
We followed Starbuck’s sniffer downstairs and to the parking lot, where he turned sharply away from the detective’s car. The trail led along a decorative plant bed near the building, almost right in it. Whoever it was had tried to hug the building and purposely didn’t walk in the middle of the sidewalk.
Starbuck led us to the parking spot nearest the street, which had some kind of
generic four-door sedan parked in it. I thought it would have more room in the back for wolfhounds, but not much. Starbuck led us all around the car and snorted in frustration.
It’s okay, Starbuck, you did great! I take it this is not the killer’s car but he or she was parked here earlier. Atticus walked to the back of the sedan and craned his head around at the buildings, searching for something in the complex. Aha! See there? He pointed at the office entrance but I had no idea what he wanted me to see.
Mounted on that light pole about twice my height. Surveillance camera pointed at the parking lot. We’ll get the detective to pull the footage. Oh, shit!
We just left her and didn’t say where we were going! I don’t even know if the apartment was clear! Gods below, I’ll never make a good cop! Come on, let’s go back!
Atticus erupted into what was a long-legged stride for him but we kept up easily. As we climbed the stairs to Keane’s apartment he shouted, “Detective Ibarra? Detective!”
He sighed with relief when she called back, even though she didn’t sound happy to hear from him. “Yeah, I’m here. All clear. Where the hell did you go?” She had her arms crossed at the front door and was doing a human scowly-face thing. Atticus was in trouble.
Atticus shoved his hands into his pockets and broke eye contact, hunching his shoulders together, and spoke with far less confidence than he usually did. He said this was “being sheepish,” but sheep don’t have any pockets so I don’t know what’s up with that expression.
“Well, my hounds recognized a smell from the stairwell of the train station and we followed it out to the parking lot. There’s a surveillance camera there so you can probably check the tape and get the killer’s license plate and maybe even a screen cap of his face.”
“What?” The detective raised one hand and waggled a finger at him. “No no no no no. See, this is why we don’t have consultants. There are so many things wrong with what you just did and said that I don’t know where to begin.”
“Okay, how about science?”
“What science?”
“The science of olfaction. Every human has a scent as unique as their fingerprints. Dogs can detect that and use it to track people. What they picked up here at the outside of the door was the same scent of someone who was in that stairwell at the train station—and I don’t mean Hudson Keane.”
“How in the world do you know that? Did they tell you that?”
“No, they’re trained.”
Heh heh! I love it when Atticus lies to other humans about talking to us. They always buy it.
“But they’re not bloodhounds,” the detective objected.
“Almost all dogs are capable of detecting those scents. Bloodhounds are famously good at it but the noses on my hounds are perfectly up to this. And you can train for exclusion as well as inclusion. What you see in films are people holding up a piece of clothing and telling their hounds to go find it—that’s fine. But you can also train them to look for what doesn’t fit that same scent profile. Find something new and follow that. That’s what we did here. Starbuck—the Boston terrier—made the match. And it’s fine if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t. You know why? Because even if you can train dogs to do that—I’m not sure it’s possible—you’ve only had that dog for what, a couple of weeks at most?”
“He’s already a trained champion and I’m very good at my job. I’m very sorry if I’m interfering with yours but I’m trying to be helpful. My hounds got us this far, at least. Checking that tape can’t hurt, right? You probably would have done it anyway.”
“Oh, absolutely, I would have. Because that’s the sort of thing you use to build a case on, not some hipster’s claim that his dog found something.”
Atticus grinned back at her, not bothered at all. “Can this hipster’s dogs take a sniff around before your backup arrives and tromps through there?”
“And just add dog hair to the crime scene? Uh-uh.”
“Well, how about me? Can I take a quick peek around if I don’t touch anything?”
The detective’s eyes dropped down to us.
“Oh, don’t worry about them. They’ll stay here.” Please stay here, Atticus added mentally, and then he squeezed past the detective before she could think of an objection. She kept watching us to see what we would do, and I thought it was weird but then I realized what she was doing: She was waiting for us to misbehave so she could use us to mess with Atticus. Sorry, Detective.
Oh, crap. I’m sorry. I don’t normally forget. Things have been a little intense since we got here.
Atticus tore off a paper towel hanging from a roll mounted underneath the cabinet and the noise drew the detective’s attention.
“Hey, you said you wouldn’t touch anything!” she said.
“I’m just checking the fridge and not leaving any prints.”
“Why?”
“Making sure there aren’t any human body parts in there. And my dogs are hungry.” I heard the shuffle of glass containers in the door as he opened it and I imagined what they might be. Jars of mayonnaise, probably, or pickles. Hopefully no mustard. I didn’t hear anything else for a few moments so I assumed he was taking it all in, until he said, “Looks like Mr. Keane was a vegetarian.”
I did my best impression of a frustrated Vizzini in The Princess Bride.
I heard Atticus open drawers and mutter as he inspected them. “Blocks of tofu, soy cheese…that’s not going to work. Aha! What’s this way back here?” The detective left the doorway and stopped blocking our view, so I could see him holding up a plastic baggie with something promising inside. “I do believe that this is a summer sausage, hidden from his sight and long forgotten! He must have had it for some meat-eating friends or something and never finished it. Okay if I give this to the dogs? And before you say no, Detective, remember that the only reason we’re here is because of them.”
She sighed, took a quick look at it, and gave in. “All right. I guess he won’t be eating it. But nothing else. I need to see if I can find any electronics or his phone. The fact we haven’t found any so far worries me.”
“Thanks.”
The detective disappeared down a hallway or something and we didn’t really care what she was up to because Atticus was heading our way with sausage and that was vitally important. Orlaith and I were basically sweeping the front stoop with our tails and Starbuck, sitting between us, quivered all over with excitement.
Atticus squatted down on his haunches in front of us and smiled. “This will take the edge off until I can get you something with gravy on it, eh?” He opened the bag and a heavenly scent wafted forth. Yeah, we all drooled. But when Atticus pulled it out of the bag, a big stout cylinder of cured beef with a delightful pattern of marbled fat showing on the end that had been cut, we all realized at the same time that he didn’t have any easy way to divide it up for us.
“Oh, I didn’t bring a knife. That was stupid. Sorry. Hang on a second.”
Orlaith asked for clarification when Atticus didn’t move but just kept staring at the end of the sausage.
I said.
“Wait up. This doesn’t look right,” Atti
cus said, keeping his voice low. “There’s a fissure here. Or something.” He put his finger and thumb to the center of the sausage and with just a little bit of effort pulled out a neat little chunklet of it, leaving a rectangular hole in it that was much deeper than the small chunk he’d pulled out.
“It’s hollowed out because he put something in there,” Atticus nearly whispered, and tossed the small chunk at Starbuck, who snatched it out of the air and said,
Atticus upended the sausage over his hand and shook it up and down. A slim black rectangle of plastic fell out of the sausage into his palm, and he didn’t look at it long before standing up and pushing it into his pocket.
“Stay here, please. I’m going to go cut this up for you. Thanks for being patient.”
Atticus switched to his mental voice to make sure the detective didn’t hear him.
I’m not sure precisely what it is yet, but there’s a good chance it’s what got Hudson Keane killed. No tech in the house and no phone, but we have a flash drive hidden in a sausage which was itself hidden in the back of a vegetarian’s refrigerator. And very carefully, too. Neither I nor the detective saw that little cut at first glance. So whatever’s on this flash drive was worth the trouble in Hudson’s mind.
Atticus rummaged around the kitchen using a paper towel to touch everything so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints. He found a cutting board and a knife, wrapped the towel around the handle, and began chopping.
Yep.
Nope.
Yep.