The Flock

by James Robert Smith

  “Yes. Two were small. Maybe twenty pounds. But the other two were big animals. One was an Airedale. I can’t imagine any animal making off with something the size of an Airedale without some commotion.”

  “Unless it was a snake.” Mary smiled again, showing her perfect teeth. “I ever tell you about that python I caught over in Frostproof?”

  “Frostproof? Hell, no. That’s not that far from here. How’d you miss telling me about that one?”

  “Yeah. Retired doctor had a place on Lake Reedy. Some neighborhood pets had vanished, and the raccoons he was feeding weren’t coming around to the slop trough anymore. He told me he and his wife had enjoyed sitting on the deck and watching them come up to eat the scraps every night. I warned him about rabid coons, but he ignored me, of course.

  “Anyway, they also had a terrier which they would keep locked up in the bedroom at night when the coons came around. But in the day the dog had the run of the yard. Well, they’d noticed that the coons had stopped showing. They started leaving all kinds of food for them, but none of them showed up. And they’d noticed that the numbers had been getting thin for a while, less each week. Finally, none of the coons were showing up for supper. He and his wife figured they’d just gone off into the swamps, or something.

  “Then, one day they let the terrier out in the yard. This was about a month after the coons had stopped coming around. He said his wife let the dog out, and it started barking at something. But it barked all the time. At anything. So they didn’t pay it much mind. But all of the sudden, right in the middle of a barking fit, it stopped. Just shut up. It stopped so sudden-like that they went out to see what was going on.” Mary chuckled, a little bit of trapper humor.

  “What’d they see?” Ron asked, smiling at Mary’s morbidly amused expression.

  “What they saw was about fifteen foot of python wrapped around their dog. By the time they got out there, the dog was already dead, squeezed about as big around as my wrist. The doc’s lady started screaming while that snake unhinged its jaws and made a big snack out of Bowser. After that, it crawled under their house where it had been denning for a few months, apparently, since it had been enjoying a steady supply of baited coon. When the coons were either all eaten or spooked off, the only thing around for it to eat was that dog.” The trapper shook her head in disbelief. “Damn, people are stupid.”

  “Mary! Don’t talk about the public that way,” Ron chided. “Heck. If it weren’t for all of those stupid people, you wouldn’t have this career you’ve got going.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. God bless the stupid buttheads.” Mary looked around, taking in the whole of the artificial township that was visible to her. “So. Where do you think this snake might be? Think he’s denned up somewhere around?”

  Ron turned back to his truck, waving his arm for Mary to follow. “Come over here,” he said. “I’ll show you this map and maybe you can make some assumptions.”

  Niccols waited while Ron reached into the truck and produced the map. It was a studio layout, blue line in great detail, which showed each lot and parcel, even naming each individual owner and the size of properties, right down to the inch. Mary looked at the map, quickly picking out the places Ron had highlighted. She pointed with a brown finger at the lot marked #1.

  “First dog disappeared from here, hey?” She squinted, reading the lines scribbled down in yellow fluorescent ink. “Big dog, too. Biggest of the lot.” Mary could see that Ron had written the animal’s weight: 60 pounds. Then she pointed again, her index finger etched a bit with dirt and oil. “And the next dog was just a week later? No way. No way does a snake, any snake do something like that.” She looked at Ron who was still gazing at the map. “I mean, even if it was a twenty footer, it couldn’t digest sixty pounds of dog meat that fast and come back for twenty more pounds. Hunh-uh. No way.”

  Ron sighed, ran his hands through his sweat-damp hair. “Yeah. I know, I know. But there’s the way it happens. Each owner tells me the same story. Place is real quiet. Happens in the late afternoons, while the sun is still up. Not night, yet. The dogs have never barked or shown alarm, and then…poof…they’re gone. No tracks. No blood. Nothing.”

  Mary shrugged. “Hey. Look. I could use the money, hunting for a big snake. Catching it. But this doesn’t look like a snake.”

  “What then?” Ron was folding his Berg Brothers map, carefully bending it the right way.

  “Well, hell. I think somebody’s taking them.”

  The paper ruffled in the still air. Ron stopped. “What?”

  “Somebody’s taking them. Stealing them. Dognaping, they call it.”

  “Well, I thought of that.” He resumed folding the map. “I thought of it, too. But I don’t think that’s what it is. I’d think of them running away before dognaping would occur to me.”

  Mary reached out and took the map from Ron. “Give me that thing. You got the names of the folk with missing critters?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket for the small notebook he carried there. “Got ’em all right here.” Ron began to tear the names and addresses out of the spiral-ringed book. “I’ve got them at home, and on some paperwork in the glove compartment. You keep these.”

  Mary closed her fist around the three little squares of paper, Ron’s black ink scribblings showing boldly. “Let’s talk to some of these people. See what we can figure out. Hell. Maybe there’s more than one snake. Maybe there are two.”

  “Or three,” Ron added.

  The two of them saw a flash of a shadow in the trees and looked up to see an osprey glide past at treetop level.

  “You know,” Mary muttered. “There could be a freaking army of giant snakes in that wilderness.” She indicated the green forest beyond them with a wave of her muscular right arm. “There’s no telling what’s in there.”

  “No telling,” Ron agreed.

  “Good idea to take your truck.”

  “Huh? Why is that?” Ron looked over at Mary, who was sitting low in the seat, peering at the corner of the mirror on the passenger side of the truck.

  “Well, if I had been driving instead of admiring the neighborhood, I think I might have missed the fact that we’re being tailed.”

  Ron glanced in his rearview mirror. “Tailed? Who the hell…” He slowed down a bit, almost to a crawl to get a look at the car that was about a block behind them.

  “Recognize it? It’s a 1999 Buick Grand Regal. Royal blue metal flake paint, with a V-8, loaded. Rental, I’d say. Know who it might be?”

  Riggs crossed the next intersection and continued to steal an occasional glance back at the car. The windows were tinted and he couldn’t make out the driver. “No. I’ve never seen it. If it’s a rental, it could be anyone. How do you know it’s following us, anyway?”

  “Believe me. He’s following us. Not a very good tail, if you ask me. I’ve been followed by some guys who were good at it.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah. Once, back when I was still married, my husband thought I was steppin’ out on him and he hired a private detective to follow me. I only found out when he felt guilty about it and told me. He finally coughed up the file he’d built. Pictures and everything. Just added fuel to my desire to divorce him.”

  “You never told me about that,” Ron said, a squint in his eyes that betrayed his surprise.

  “Well, as you should recall, you didn’t like for me to mention my short-lived marriage when we were dating. It made you jealous.”

  Ron could think of nothing to say to that.

  “Anyway,” Mary continued. “I never even knew he was there. That guy was good. This guy,” Mary pointed back with her thumb, “ain’t worth a darn at it.”

  “Well, we’re going to be pulling over in about five seconds to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Brill who owned that Airedale. If the guy is following us, he’ll have to either stop or pass us. Maybe we’ll see who it is.” Ron squinted, rubbed the sweat off of his brow. “I’ll bet it’s on
e of those Salutations security officers.”

  “I dunno,” Mary said. “Why would they be tailing us? Who else wants to know about us?” Mary wiped at her forehead, too. “And tell me something else, Mr. Fish and Wildlife.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Why the hell did they give you a truck with no air-conditioning?”

  Before he could answer they had arrived at their destination. He pulled the pickup into the driveway of the Brill residence. The home, a big five-bedroom brick ranch, was built on the highest point of land in the neighborhood. It stood on a rise a full ten feet or so above most of the other homes. In terrain as flat as that around Salutations, the small rise looked impressive. Ron was sure the retired couple had paid a premium for the lot.

  “Nice house,” Mary said as they climbed out of the truck.

  “They’re all nice,” Ron replied.

  Both turned to see if the Buick was still following. In fact, it had pulled onto the shoulder of the street half a block away. They still could not see into the car, which sat there, its motor running. “Yep. That guy sucks for someone trying to keep an eye on us,” Mary commented.

  “To heck with him. Let’s get down to business.” Ron started up the drive and headed for the door, Mary right behind him. But before they could get to the front stoop, the door opened and out stepped Mr. Brill.

  “Hello, son,” Brill said, extending his hand. Brill was a retired executive for Exxon. He and his wife had wanted to retire to Florida and had chosen Salutations as the place. They hadn’t counted on something eating their dogs, and the couple was pretty upset about it. Brill’s pale features were prone to redden either in the sun or whenever he was angry. Just then, the great bush of white eyebrow that made a single line across his forehead accentuated his emotion-ruddied skin.

  Ron took Brill’s hand and indicated Mary who had come up beside him. “This is Mary Niccols, Mr. Brill. She’s an expert on capturing problem animals, and I thought you might want to talk to her and let her take a look around. She has quite a bit more experience in these matters than I do.”

  Brill grasped Mary’s hand, winced at the quick pressure of the gator trapper, and reclaimed his fingers. “Hello, Ms. Niccols. You’re more than welcome to look around, if you think it’ll help you figure out what’s happened. But first, I want to show you two something.”

  “What is that, Mr. Brill?”

  Brill had a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he admonished. “Keep it down. I’ll show you, but I don’t want my wife to see. She was really attached to Sarah. That was our Airedale,” he added. “I haven’t told her about it, and was really happy when you called this morning. Don’t know how long something like this would keep before I’d have to throw it in the freezer, and I sure didn’t want to do that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Brill had started around the house. Riggs and Niccols were following him through a covered breezeway that connected his garage to his house, and through which one could access his large back yard. Beyond the yard was the forest against which Salutations was waiting to encroach; sixty species of trees waited just beyond Brill’s yard, waiting to be left alone, or to be felled.

  In the back yard Brill led them over to a very nice brick building almost as large as Mary’s own house. It was merely a workroom and storage structure for the retired executive. Both of the wage slaves were growing more impressed by the expression of wealth around them. “I put it back here,” Brill told them as he got out his keys and unlocked the door. “I have a little refrigerator in here, where I keep drinks when I’m working here in the shed.” They went in, greeted by a rush of cool air.

  “Some shed,” Mary muttered. The room was large: fourteen feet on a side, a neat one fourth of the building. The trapper wondered what was in the other rooms. This one was full of woodworking equipment. Fine stuff, she noted. Strictly top-of-the-line.

  The older man went over to a tabletop attached to the far wall. He opened the door of the dorm-sized refrigerator and reached in, producing a bundle about the same dimensions as a big hardback book. His guests noted that it was a white towel, folded neatly to contain something. Brill laid it on the tabletop as the pair came to him, and he unwrapped it.

  “What do you have?” Ron asked, looking.

  Brill said nothing. Inside the towel was a plastic bag, which he gingerly opened. He spilled the contents out on the towel.

  Unmistakably, what was there was the paw of a large dog, and a section of leash composed of a fine linked chrome chain. The paw had been very neatly sheared off. The chain, too, appeared to have been cut.

  Mary and Ron crowded in close. Without any hesitation, Mary reached out and picked up the portion of the dog’s front leg and looked at it. The insects and maggots had been at it, but there was still flesh attached to the bone. The stench, even from such a small piece of matter, was very powerful. Riggs and Brill flinched back. “Ugh,” Mary said. Her voice seemed loud in the quiet workroom. “Where did you find this?”

  “Well, I was inspecting the back yard after the maintenance crew left when they finished mowing yesterday. And I noticed a line of black ants cutting across the corner of my fence at the very back of the lot. That was where Sarah had been tied up when we last saw her. We had been letting her run on a line back there stretched between two poles…like a clothesline. You know the type?” Both nodded at Brill.

  “I saw the ants. So many of them. So I crawled through the split rails to see what was there. I could smell something rotting. And in the broom sedge growing over there I found the foot and the bit of chain.”

  “Find anything else?” Mary asked.

  “Nope. That was all. I got a big stick and poked around in there just to make sure. Searched an area roughly fifty feet on a side. Didn’t find anything else like that. Didn’t see any more ants, either.”

  Ron had reached over and picked up the chain. There was only about six inches of the leash remaining, and it looked as if it had been cut cleanly with some kind of shear. He held it in the palm of his hand and examined it, looking for patterns where the metal had been cut. “Hunh,” he grunted, seeing only a smooth surface.

  “Look at this,” Mary said, holding the dead animal’s paw out to Ron, wrist side up. She pointed at the exposed bone with her left index finger.

  “Jesus.”

  “What is it?” Brill asked. “What did this?”

  “Well.” Ron stopped. He and Mary exchanged glances.

  “Well, what,” Brill asked again.

  “What do you make of it, Mary?”

  Mary took another long look at the bit of flesh and bone and put it down. “You got somewhere we can wash up back here?”

  “Yes. Certainly. Right over there,” the homeowner said, indicating a door on the far side of the room. Mary and Ron retreated to it, went into the bathroom, which was far larger than they had thought. They turned on the hot water, got down a bottle of anti-bacterial cleanser they found on a shelf above the big, tub-like sink. And they closed the door, blocking them off from their host.

  “What do you say, Ron?”

  “Well. We ain’t looking for a snake, I’d say.”

  “What does that to bone?”

  “And to metal.”

  Mary stuck her hands into the hot stream of water and lathered them up. Ron stood beside her and soaped up his own hands. They were silent. Ron felt uncomfortable, being this close to her after having ended the physical side of their relationship.

  “Some sick bastard killed his dog,” Ron finally said.

  “Looks that way,” Mary admitted. “Looks like I’m out of an assignment.”

  Ron let the hot water run over his skin, washing off the soap. He immediately poured another dollop of cleanser into his palm and repeated the lathering process. Mary followed his lead, pausing only to sniff at her hands.

  “Well, let’s not be too hasty. Let’s say it is a sick bastard killing the dogs around here. The cops will have to take over. But ma
ybe something else took off that paw. Maybe something bit it off.”

  “Nothing I know of bites clean through like that. You saw it. That paw looks like a surgeon sliced through it with a fine-toothed bone saw. What the hell cuts like that other than a scalpel or some kind of blade?”

  “A big cat, maybe? You know some of the reintroduced panthers have wandered north out of the Everglades. Could be a panther. Certainly enough habitat for it around here.”

  “No, no, no. You know as well as I do that panthers don’t hunt down dogs. Especially not a dog like an Airedale. Hell. Those dogs are bred to hunt big cats. No way.”

  “Looks like Salutations has some kind of slasher loose in it. Maybe one who just does dogs, but still a crazy.” Ron doused his hands with water again and reached for a towel hanging from a rack to the left of the sink. He patted his hands dry and passed it to Mary.

  “I wonder if the Buick is still parked out there.” Mary looked at Ron. For a moment, they were silent. “Let’s go talk to Mr. Brill,” she said. “And then we can go see if it’s still out there. Let’s have a talk with whoever’s driving it.”

  Ron thought for a moment, considering the danger of messing around with someone who’d cut up a dog on site. But then he thought of Mary’s considerable physical strength and her reputation as a scrapper. “Let’s do it,” he agreed. They went back into Brill’s woodworking shop.

  “Can I take this back with me to the lab?” Ron asked, pointing to the grisly bits in the plastic bag.

  “Sure. You can wrap it back up in the towel and take it all away.” Brill shrugged. “And what did that, anyway? What bites clean through a dog’s leg like that?”

  “Not an animal, Mr. Brill. Probably some kind of knife.” Ron stood back where the paw and chain were, and he gingerly rolled the bagged mess up in the towel.

  “A knife? You’re saying a man did this? Why? How?” Brill’s face was growing crimson, even in the cool workroom.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. I’m going to report this back to Bill Tatum in security. After that, it’s his project. He’ll probably want to talk to you about it all.”