The Squirrel on the Train

by Kevin Hearne

  Atticus sighed. “We’ll have to hope Detective Ibarra can come up with something, then.”

  Chapter 8:

  Murder

  by Delivery

  I have to admit that humans are pretty funny when they get self-conscious. Point a camera at them and they instantly start worrying about how they look. They make a fuss about their hair, usually, but their greatest fear is that there might be a tiny little booger hanging out in their nostrils. Suluk Black was no different, even though she was a great big bear and could tear apart anyone who made fun of her boogers. Once Atticus pointed a camera at her, she became a wreck until Atticus reminded her that she was four hundred years old and she should have oodles of dignity and gravitas—things that I didn’t realize came in oodles until he said it.

  Atticus had shifted into town to get the camera with a memory card in it and came back to film Suluk in front of Strawberry Lake. She wouldn’t give her name, or even any of her actual aliases, but made up a new one instead. She was “the Marmot,” a secretive financier of scientific research who paid scientists in cash and operated in the shadows to foil the efforts of corporate espionage. She admitted to financing the solar research of Hudson Keane and Ignacio Medina and recounted what happened in the stairwell, but refused to come in to the police for questioning. She ended by stating her fervent hope that the police would catch the killers of two brilliant young minds.

  “That’s great,” Atticus said as he turned off the camera. “They won’t give up on you with this, but at least they’ll entertain other possibilities. They’ll waste time searching for the Marmot though, and that cracks me up.”

  Suluk had a cave up in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness somewhere and she was going to be a bear for a while, but check back at the lake every day to see if Atticus was there and needed to talk. They agreed to work on the solar business after the murders were cleared up—or at least, Hudson’s. We were pretty sure the murderers of Ignacio Medina had been buried outside Eugene, but Suluk wasn’t a suspect in that one. Unless…

 

  Okay, buddy. We said farewell to Suluk and shifted back to the cabin. “What’s the big idea?” he said aloud.

 

  “Those murders weren’t Suluk’s style. If she wanted someone dead, no one would ever find the body. They’d just disappear. No body means no murder investigation, and no investigation means no contact with the police. That’s her highest priority.”

 

  “It’s good you’re being thorough.”

 

  “Popcorn and apples and a movie. We’ll get this video to Detective Ibarra in the morning and see if she’s made any progress on her end. What movie shall we watch?”

  Is it okay if we watch Hellboy? I was telling Orlaith about Sammael the Desolate One, Hound of Resurrection, and how the movie completely ignores physics like the squirrel on the train did, so she wants to see it.

  Orlaith was immensely comforted to learn that creatures from hell regularly ignored physics and that therefore squirrels must be from hell, which only confirmed our long-held suspicions. The world made sense again.

  In the morning Granuaile had already gone back to Poland and Orlaith wanted to come with us, so we drove all the way to Portland since we’d woken too late to catch the train. It was close enough to lunchtime when we got there that Detective Ibarra agreed to meet us in Beaverton at a Vietnamese place called Ph King Good, the name of which Atticus found amusing. The ph was indeed quite good: He bought bowls of brisket ph to go for us hounds and asked them to leave out the green onion. He and the detective sat on the curb and ate theirs next to us and did one of those squid pro go thingies.

  Atticus gave her the memory card from the camera and pretended he had gotten it from someone else. “My guy found the woman from the security footage and got her to record a statement. Not sure how much it will help.”

  “If it doesn’t help enough I’m going to need your contact and talk to her in person.”

  “Let’s hope it helps enough, then, because I doubt she can be found unless she wants to. The Marmot stays off the grid as much as possible. It’s amazing she let herself be filmed in the train station.”

  “The Marmot?”

  “Shadowy figure, sort of like Keyser Söze except she’s involved in underground science instead of drugs.”

  “You’re messing with me, right?”

  “No, it’s true.”

  “Damn, just when I thought I’d heard everything. Well, you were right about someone being on the take. Remember that footage I showed you yesterday of this Marmot person in the train station? He smuggled out a picture of her before I even had a look at it.”

  I said.

  Yep. But they still had to identify her and track her down. That means some pretty serious resources.

  “So you found him because he made a big cash deposit.”

  “Yeah. Though he was trying to be smart about it by making smaller deposits, any cash deposit over a couple hundred bucks for a cop is going to raise some questions. Gave me a line about selling off a coin collection, but he had no proof of sale and he didn’t like the idea of being tied to the murder. He decided to help instead.”

  “Are you going to charge him?” Atticus said.

  “I haven’t decided yet. He’s dirty for sure, but you can’t snitch on another cop without consequences.”

  “How did he get the picture out?”

  Detective Ibarra held up the memory card Atticus gave her. “Like this, actually. He froze a frame of the footage, took a picture of it with a digital camera, removed the card, and made the handoff.”

  “A live handoff?”

  “Right in front of the station, too. Gigantic balls, eh?”

  “So you have tape on that, I bet.”

  “Yes, we do. But we can’t really prove anything. The video’s useless.”

  “How so?”

  “He was told to pick up a delivery of pizza and wings at a certain time. Delivery guy rides up on a scooter and he’s covered head to toe in winter gear, and the license plate is ‘accidentally’ covered up as well. My dirty cop has the memory card folded up inside a couple of twenties for the driver so you can’t see him making any illegal exchange. And inside the bag of wings is actually a couple of fat stacks of bills for him.”

  “But there was really pizza and wings in there too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the pizza place is going to have a record of that delivery! Gabby, we can nail the driver and—” Atticus didn’t finish because the detective was shaking her head.

  “Already tried that. This place is called Pisa Pizza and none of their locations have a record of a delivery to the station this week. Someone picked it up, paid cash, and then made the delivery. We’re trying to figure out who that was now by going through the pizza place’s tapes and matching orders for pizza and wings to faces. But it’s just due diligence. Nothing will come of it. Even if we can match a nameless customer face to the order, it won’t help because we can’t match that face to the anonymous delivery guy. And before you ask, we also asked if any of their drivers use a scooter. No luck.”

  “Damn.”

 

  What do you mean, Oberon? he asked me mind-to-mind.

 

  Yeah, so?

  x pointed at the parking lot? What was the killer driving then? A scooter or something else?>

  Whoa, good catch, Oberon. Let me ask. He jerked his head around as if he’d just been struck by an idea and said, “Gabby, did you ever look at the footage from the parking lot?”

  “Keane’s place? Yeah. Perp was driving an older model white Corolla with stolen plates from Kansas.”

  “So not a scooter, then?”

  “No. That’s a good point! We might be dealing with more than one person here.”

  “Or the same person who is very careful to use a different vehicle for every crime, knowing how easy they are to trace.”

  “We’ll check the clothing and posture and so on to see if it’s the same person or not.”

 

  You just ate, Oberon.

 

  It’s worth a try, he said to me privately, then turned to Gabby. “Which location would have delivered to the station? You have an address?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Atticus used his thumb to point at us. “Because the science of olfaction might still apply here. If the delivery dude was the same person who ransacked Keane’s apartment they might be able to pick up his scent. And the person who ransacked the apartment was the one who pulled the trigger at the train station.”

  The detective turned to consider us. “That’s going to be a paper-thin case. I don’t know how I can prove they smelled the right guy. Or explain why we’re stalking Pisa Pizza without exposing my crooked colleague.”

  “I’m sure we’ll figure something out if we have to. Let’s just see what they can smell. Might be nothing.”

  “Or it might be everything.”

  “Won’t know unless we try.”

  The humans finished up their ph and got everything thrown away before the detective looked up the address. She said she’d meet us there and drove separately. It took us twenty years to pull into the parking lot of a strip mall that featured a nail salon, a laundromat, and a tax preparation service in addition to Pisa Pizza. Altogether it smelled of ethyl acetate, perfumed detergent, pepperoni, and existential despair. Atticus leashed us up and asked privately that we let Starbuck lead on this, and also to ignore the stupid things he would say out loud to make it seem to the detective like we were trained scent hounds and not able to understand his speech.

  Heading up to the place I wasn’t sure that Starbuck or any hound could pick out a human smell over all the meat and cheese, and when the little guy said, I thought the trip was a bust. But Atticus pressed the Boston to make sure.

  Do you mean yes you smell food or yes you smell the man we’re looking for? Evidently it was both; he might not have all his words yet, but he could still tell Atticus things through nonverbal cues and feelings. Starbuck says the scent is strong. Not just on the ground but all around the door jamb. Atticus looked at the detective.

  “He was here. No doubt about it.” He peered through the glass of the door to the interior and I followed his gaze. There was a counter with a register and a menu hanging above it showing delicious pies made of fat and grease. To the left of the counter there was a gap leading into the kitchen area for employees. “I want to go in and check on something,” he said. “Back me up that these are service dogs?”

  “Okay, sure, but wait—”

  Atticus didn’t wait. He pulled open the door and told Starbuck to follow that scent. No sooner did he cross the threshold than the manager called out a challenge. She was middle-aged, I think, had her hair pulled back into a ponytail hanging out the back of a baseball cap, and she looked and sounded tired.

  “Sir? You can’t bring dogs in here. It’s against the health code.”

  Starbuck ignored her and pulled to the left, short snout tracking along the floor, his nose full of bad guy. He headed straight for that gap in the counter rather than the cash register, where customers would go. The manager got louder the closer we got to the kitchen and moved to intercept us. Atticus told us to hold up before we started an imbroglio—that’s a word that you can pull out most anywhere and expect someone to give you brownie points or sometimes an actual brownie.

  He turned to Detective Ibarra and said, “He works here. We’ll wait outside.”

  We headed back for the door as the detective flashed her badge at the manager. “Portland Homicide. We have reason to believe one of your employees is involved in a murder.”

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” the manager said. “This is all I need.”

  I didn’t hear the detective’s answer to that because the door closed behind us after that and Atticus congratulated us on being awesome.

  “Only a matter of time, now,” he said. “We are about to solve another crime and it’s all thanks to the best hounds anywhere. Negotiations for a special meal are now open.”

  Orlaith suggested.

  I said because I figured we would win either way.

  Starbuck added. He’s not picky yet.

  The detective brought out a series of sullen teenagers one by one to see if any of them matched the scent of the killer. Starbuck snuffled at each greasy hand but none of them matched. The detective was bringing the manager to the door just as a car drove up with a Pisa Pizza sign attached to the top of it by a magnet. Atticus was paying attention to the detective and the manager coming to the door, so he didn’t see the car or the guy who got out of it.

  He was pretty tall and ripped for a delivery guy. He looked like he could be a bouncer or a bodyguard and make lots more money that way, just flexing at smaller people and intimidating them. He was a white guy who had his hair cut the way white supremacists do: short on the sides and a small lawn of dark limp hair on the top. I barked almost by reflex because ever since World War Two, Atticus has lived by the moral code that “if you see a Nazi, punch a Nazi,” and this guy set off my alarm bells. That car of his was white too.

 

  Atticus didn’t even have to ask because Starbuck sensed him coming and turned to investigate. His wee nose snuffled and twitched in the air as the detective pushed open the door and the guy said, “Excuse me,” since we were kind of blocking the entrance. Atticus automatically started to move out of the way and the detective held the door open as Starbuck planted himself and started barking like five cats had stolen all his fish sticks. he shouted, but Atticus got more sense out of him than that.

  “It’s him,” he told the detective, and things happened pretty fast after that.

  “Detective Ibarra,” she said, and pulled out her badge. “Portl-uggh!” Lightning fast, the dude socked her in the nose before she could finish and straight-kicked Atticus in the gut, knocking him down and thereby jerking our leashes in the process. Then he took off—but not to his car, which surprised me. He was headed for the other end of the strip mall, where I guess he hoped to turn the corner. There must be an alley back there or someplace he thought he could hide.

  Bring him down, Atticus said in our heads, and let go of our leashes. But don’t break the skin.

  The dude was pretty fast for a human but he was slower than a box turtle on barbiturates compared to three hounds. We caught up to him in front of the nail salon. Starbuck and I nipped at his heels and tripped him up. He fell sprawling on the concrete and Orlaith just kept running right over him, making sure to plant a foot on the back of his head and ram his chin into the sidewalk. But once she was off him and past, he kicked out at me and Starbuck, tagging both of us, though it didn’t hurt much—it just pushed us back and gave him room to gain his feet. Atticus wasn’t having any of that; the guy would pr
obably be able to aim a much better kick from a standing position. I heard Atticus mumble something in Old Irish—he was making a binding of some kind—and Detective Ibarra was telling him to freeze.

  You can back away, I’ve got him now, Atticus said, and I saw what he meant. The guy took exactly one step and then the inseams of his jeans fused together as he tried to take another and he fell down again, growling in his frustration. He flopped like a professional soccer player but then Detective Ibarra fell on him with a knee in his back, pinning him. She had him in cuffs a few seconds later and Atticus undid the binding on his jeans.

  Good job, you three, Atticus told us in our heads. Where did he think he was going?

  I trotted to the corner and looked past the mall. There was one of those alleys where trucks could make deliveries, but then there was a low wall he could have jumped over and he’d be in an apartment complex. Lots of places to hide in there and lose us.

  I said.

  …Pet Druid? Really?

 

  The detective smooshed the perp’s face into the concrete with one hand because he was calling her some rather unkind names, and used her other hand to fish a wallet out of his back pocket. She flipped it open and read the name on the driver’s license. She sniffed before talking because she had a bloody nose.

  “Brock Slater, you’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer,” she said. “And we’ll see what we can add on to that later.”

  The manager of Pisa Pizza came over and put her hands on her hips. “Now I’ve gotta do all the deliveries tonight. You’re fired, Brock. You asshole.”

  I didn’t think that was enough. You can’t kick me, Starbuck, and Atticus and punch our taco friend, Gabby, and just get handcuffed and fired. I remembered Atticus’s rule about Nazis and realized he couldn’t follow through on that now; Gabby wouldn’t allow stuff like that. But I could modify Atticus’s rule and get away with it. I trotted over to him and lifted my leg on his head. I have pretty good aim. Gabby reared back just in time so none of it got on her.