“It’s best when expectations are clearly stated. So many people get married with this picture in their head about how things are going to be and their partner doesn’t know anything about it. That’s one thing Harry and I got right. We made sure we understood what we each wanted from marriage before we got engaged.”
“I moved in with a boyfriend right after I got out of college,” Lia admitted. “Once I signed a lease with him, he started expecting things. I was supposed to be a little hausfrau, and my painting was never as important as whatever he had going on. It was like he was on good behavior the whole time we dated, until I signed for that apartment. Then the real him came out.”
“It didn’t last long, I take it?”
“Longer than it should have. It took me a while to recognize what was happening, and then it took me a while to realize it wasn’t going to get any better. When the light finally came on, I couldn't get out of there fast enough.”
“I can see why you’d be nervous now. Have you thought about talking to a professional about this? Something like premarital counseling might help you and Peter figure out if you’re on the same page, or even reading the same book.”
“That’s like religious counseling, isn’t it? A church thing? I don’t know if I want to do anything that has the word premarital in it, unless we’re talking about sex.”
~ ~ ~
“Where have you been while I’ve been tracking down hunters?” Peter asked as Brent set a cardboard box down on his desk. “Out showing off your new girlfriend?”
“I talked to Munce’s lawyer, then I decided to do some detecting. I detected that bow hunters for the deer cull are required to pass a marksmanship test with the exact weapon they will be using while hunting. Being a smart detective, I wondered if there was a record of applicants’ tests that included their weapon. I wondered that over the phone to the park board and they put me on the trail of the original hard-copies. I hope you didn’t have any plans for this afternoon.”
Peter smiled. “Sometimes I think you almost deserve that shield.”
“Thank you, Brother. I shall take that as a compliment.”
Peter eyed the box, dubiously. “That many hunters applied for the deer cull this year?”
“That’s from the past two years, since our weapon was shipped out from the factory. It occurred to me that our man may not have applied this year. So I got the previous year to avoid making a second trip.”
“Huh.”
“How about I pick up a pizza and we sit here and run our man down. What’s that kind you like?”
“Dewey’s,” Peter said absently. “Edgar Allen Poe.”
“That can be your half. I’d like a Green Lantern with olive oil instead of red sauce on my half, thank you very much. Phone it in and I’ll head on down there to pick it up. Don’t forget to pay for it,” he called over his shoulder.
“Hey!” Peter yelled after him, but Brent was gone, his leather heels clipping down the hall.
~
“That, Brother, was a dirty trick,” muttered Brent as he set the hot pizza box down on Peter’s desk.
“Expecting me to pay for the whole pie was a dirty trick,” Peter responded.
“You’re lucky I had a few dollars in my wallet. Celeste is an expensive mistress.”
“Then you shouldn’t have suggested an expensive lunch. Give me a plate. I’m starving.” He deftly disengaged the largest slice from his side of the pie, and slid it onto the paper plate Brent handed to him.
“How far did you get while I was gone?”
“You wanted me to start? I’m sorry. You should have said so. Oh, but you couldn’t. You were too busy hightailing it out of the station so I couldn’t tell you to pay for your own lunch.” Peter shrugged and took a large, satisfying bite out of his pizza.
They hunkered down, each pulling a stack of handwritten records out of the box. They scanned the cards in silence for several minutes.
“Jackal, Inferno Fury, Predator, Ghost, Wildcat, Cobra. . . These bows all sound like code names for the members of some wet work team in a Russell Blake novel,” Brent said.
“Russell Blake? Who’s that? What happened to J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter?”
“Russell Blake is this Kindle millionaire who can spit out a new thriller in less time than it took for your first experience of carnal knowledge.”
“Nice. You’ve got to get a real woman. Playing with your Kindle and talking to your overpriced car are doing strange things to you.”
“Maybe so, but at least I now know twenty-three ways to kill a man with my pinkie. Lookie here, I think we have a winner.” Brent held out the yellow card. Peter took it and squinted at the blue scrawl. “Looks like it says ‘Zombie’ to me,” Brent continued. “Too bad they don’t include serial numbers.”
“That would have been expecting too much,” Peter said, laying the card to one side. “What do we know about Scott Estep?”
“It’s your computer, Brother.”
“Right.” Peter turned to his keyboard and pulled up Scott’s drivers license. He checked the record. “Looks like a solid citizen. A few speeding tickets. No arrests, no warrants. We’ll put him on the list and keep going. According to the manager of the sporting goods store, there’s more than one Zombie in the area.”
Their second hit was Mike Heekins, who had a commercial operator’s license and an ancient arrest for public intoxication. Hit number three was a Bill Stryker.
“I wonder if he’s related to the guy who invented the Stryker saw. What does Hal say?” Brent asked.
“Name your own computer. Leave mine alone. Mr. Stryker looks interesting. A DUI, some D and D’s, and a Domestic Violence charge. Also a restraining order filed by one Colleen Stryker.”
“Interesting, indeed. I say we need to go have a talk with Mr. Stryker, once we finish looking through the rest of these.” They continued reviewing the cards in silence. Finally, Brent replaced the last one in the box. “That appears to be it. Three matches. Are we going on a field trip?”
“We taking your girlfriend?” Peter asked.
“I think, if we’re going to see a man with a known temper, we should go in your car. Just in case.”
“Where was that address, again? Brestel? Isn’t that off of Baltimore Avenue?”
“Didn’t a meth lab blow up over there last year?” Brent asked.
“If it didn’t, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
“Good thing you’re driving. That’s some incline over there. Doesn’t bode well for our interview that he tucked himself away on top of that hill. Folks up there are clannish.”
~
They turned onto a side road that led, as Brent predicted, up a lumpy asphalt road that took two long switchbacks before climbing a hill that was too steep for most cars and hadn’t been paved in too many years. The weeds on the side of the road were taller than a man and could be hiding . . . anything.
Echoing Peter’s thoughts, Brent said, “If there’s a militia presence in Cincinnati, this is where they do maneuvers. We could be surrounded right now and we’d never know it.”
Peter wondered how the residents got in and out in the winter. Probably didn’t. Probably just stayed put and lived off their Armageddon rations and the occasional unlucky possum.
The road flattened out at the top of the hill and ran a short distance before it stopped dead. It wasn’t a proper cul-de-sac. The asphalt gave way to gravel and dirt, the tail end surrounded by four one-story brick houses in various stages of disrepair. There was a weedy vacant lot where a fifth house, possibly the ill-fated meth lab, once stood.
Woods encroached all around. Several stacks of old tires sat in patches of dying grass. Peter imagined the tires collected water in the summer and became a breeding ground for mosquitos. Boxes of beer and whiskey bottles sat on one porch, while another house was fronted by a sagging sofa. A stained mattress lay in a yard. Several of the windows were boarded over. A rail thin pit-bull strained the chain that te
thered him to a porch and snarled.
“What do you suppose they have all those tires for?” Brent wondered.
“Good question. Maybe target practice.”
“Oh, good. A man with a known temper and skills. Just what we want.”
The man who answered Peter’s firm knock stood five foot, nine. He was muscular, straining the seams of an undershirt that might have once been clean. A hairy navel peeked out from under the hem of the shirt, with jeans riding low. A red scalp showed through his military buzz-cut. He held onto the doorknob with one hand while gripping the probable mainstay of his diet in the other, a bottle of Hudy Delight.
Obviously a man of taste and refinement. Peter schooled his face. “William Stryker?”
“Who wants to know?”
Peter and Brent flipped out their shields. “I’m Detective Dourson, and this is Detective Davis of the Cincinnati police. We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Did you find it?”
“Did we find what, Mr. Stryker?” Brent asked.
“My goddamn Zombie. Isn’t that why you’re here? My crossbow?”
“Yes, we’re here about a cross bow–” Peter started to say.
“Well, well, whadya know. From the way the moron you sent was talking, I didn’t expect to ever hear from you again.”
Peter and Brent looked at each other. “Which moron would that be, Mr. Stryker?” Brent asked.
“Some guy named Hinkle. Don’t you guys talk to each other? Isn’t his name on the report?”
“We’re not aware of a report–” Peter said.
“I reported that bow stolen over a week ago. If that’s not why you’re here, then what do you want?”
“We understand you own a Barnett Zombie crossbow. Is that true?” Brent asked.
“It was until some rat bastard took it.”
“Do you have the serial number?” Peter said
“I gave it to that other guy. What’s this about?”
“A Zombie crossbow was used recently in a crime. We’re trying to determine who owned the bow,” Peter said. “May we come in?”
“What was my bow used for?”
“Homicide,” Peter said.
Stryker glared at Peter. “That bow was stolen, you have it on your report. And you’re not getting in here without a warrant. You want to talk to me, you do it right here where all the neighbors can see. I want witnesses.” He looked around, raised his voice. “Y’all hear that? They think I shot someone with that crossbow what was stolen out of my garage.”
Peter thought about looking around to see who Stryker was talking to, but felt it prudent to keep his eyes on the man. He attempted to suppress an image of an armed militia emerging from the woods dressed in camouflage, black greasepaint slashing their faces. In his mind’s eye, they turned into a flashmob while “Dueling Banjos” played in the background. It occurred to him, in that fraction of a second, that he might never call Lia ‘Babe’ again.
“We don’t think anything, Mr. Stryker,” Peter said. “We’re just trying to find out what happened. At this point, we don’t know for sure that it was your bow.”
“Whatever. Who is it you think I killed?”
“The deceased is a man named George Munce,” Brent said. He pulled the photograph out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “Have you ever seen him?”
Stryker glanced down at the picture, curled his lip. “Nope. When’d he die?”
“Last Monday. Can you tell us what you did that day?” Peter said.
Stryker snorted. “I was working on my truck. Right there. Pulled the transmission.” He pointed at a greasy patch in the gravel. “Plenty of people saw me, including the mailman, if you don’t trust my neighbors.”
Peter jotted a few words in his notebook. “What time was that?”
“Late morning, early afternoon.”
“What about the rest of the day?”
“Right here. You want to try that hill with a bum transmission?”
“Did you spend any time hunting deer at Mount Airy in the past month?”
“I was scheduled for the first round. Last time I was there was October third. Thursday. Haven’t been back since my bow was stolen. No reason to go until somebody gives me back my goddamn bow, which would be nice, since my session isn’t over yet.”
“Have you ever seen this woman?” This time Brent showed him a photograph of Kate Onstad.
“She dead, too?”
“Not at all.”
“Are you employed, Mr. Stryker?” Peter asked.
“Not since those bastards at Hudepohl fired me.”
“When was that?”
“Back in July. You got any more questions for me? Want my shoe size? It’s 10C. And in case you need to know, I’m circumcised.” A flush spread up Stryker’s face during this tirade.
“That’ll be all for now,” Peter said. “We’ll review the report you made and get in touch with you if we have any further questions.”
Stryker grunted and slammed the door.
~
“That was fun,” Brent said once Peter’s Blazer was creeping back down the steep grade. “Think he did it?”
“Don’t know. I wouldn’t mind having a search warrant for his place, if it turns out to be his bow. Not likely to get it, unless we can prove some connection between him and Munce.”
“Know what’s peculiar? Hudepohl fires him, and he’s drinking Hudy Delight beer. What do you want to bet one of his friends at the brewery pushed it off the back of the truck?”
“I don’t take sucker bets, Brent. You know that.”
“So, Boss, what’s for the rest of the afternoon?”
“First we pull that report and see if the serial number matches. Then we start canvassing hunters, see who saw whom when they were in the woods. According to Mr. Stryker, he was nowhere near the woods when Munce died. But he could have seen him wandering around the woods earlier. Next time we talk to him we should take a map of the forest and get him to show us where he hunted. I wish I’d thought to bring a map today.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“By the way, what did the lawyer tell you? You never said.”
“George was pondering the wisdom of divorce and the financial ramifications. He received the best and worst case scenarios and was taking a little time to fully consider same before he made his decision.”
“He was putting his wallet before the love of his life?”
“Not so much that, more worried about the situation a divorce would create for the girl, his stepdaughter. He was very concerned about her welfare. To hear the lawyer tell it, that marriage was deader than the roadkill on Donald Trump’s head.”
~ ~ ~
Peter decided that expecting Lia to cook after the ‘little woman’ business the night before was a dangerous idea and instead offered a trip to Pleasant Ridge for Ethiopian. Lia enjoyed African cuisine, though they rarely made the trek across town for it.
An olive branch wasn’t really called for. They hadn’t exactly had a fight, but they’d certainly skirted around the edges of one. Still, Peter liked to be proactive whenever possible.
Lia insisted that they toss the ball for the dogs for a while before abandoning them for the evening. Peter tossed, Honey chased the ball, and Chewy and Viola chased Honey. Max backed up against the lip of one of the wood steps and ground her sacrum against it. Peter could see where her fur was worn down. The dog grunted and moaned, producing sound effects straight out of a cheap porno.
“She’s going to take the paint off that step if she keeps it up.”
Lia sighed. “It’s either that, or scratch her myself. I’d rather lose a little paint.”
“You sure there’s nothing wrong with her?”
“The rescue took her in for a full physical. They checked for impacted anal glands. I’m afraid she’s just deviant.”
Peter held a tennis ball up to her nose. Max sniffed it, then turned back to her grinding. Peter bounced the ball on
the walkway to see if he could engage her interest. No dice. “Isn’t there anything else she likes? Besides this?”
“There’s food. Running away. Finding dead bodies. Speaking of which, how is your dead body coming?”
“We know where the bow came from.”
“You found the owner of the bow?” Lia asked. “Then that must mean Kate is off the hook. Have you arrested him yet?”
“Not so fast. He reported it stolen two days before George died.”
“Maybe he knew he was going to kill George and just said it was stolen.”
“I don’t think he’s that smart. He also has an alibi. We still have to check it out, but if we can verify it, it clears him. And we don’t have a connection between him and George Munce. Or Kate Onstad.”
“Well, that stinks.”
“One step at a time. Cases aren’t built in a day. We made progress and that’s important.”
Honey ran back with the ball and dropped the slobbered orb at Peter’s feet.
Peter stared at the Honey’s offering. “I bet the Chucker was never intended for throwing balls further. I bet it was invented so people wouldn’t have to pick them up covered in dog goo.”
“A big, manly guy like you, afraid of a little saliva? Chicken.” Lia picked up the ball, tossed it again, sending the trio rampaging after it. Max just groaned and grinned sheepishly when Peter and Lia stared at her.
“How is this progress if you don’t think he did it?” Lia asked.
“It’s still part of the picture. If he didn’t do it, he was still in the orbit of the perp. So now we know that our perp not only crossed paths with George, he was also aware of Kate and knew Stryker kept a crossbow in his garage.”
“You think it was another bow hunter?”
“Doubtful. Bows aren’t like guns. They don’t leave forensic fingerprints so there’d be no reason not to use his own. Just get some bolts in a brand you don’t use. Buy them out of town and pay cash for them. We checked Hinkle’s report. This guy used Stryker’s bolts. Even Stryker isn’t that dumb.”
Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) Page 10
