A Murder of Crows

by Jan Dunlap

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, pulling a U-turn in the road so I could head toward Morris instead of back towards Savage. “Let me rephrase that. I know you are not the Bonecrusher now. But you were.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Wasn’t.”

  The sun was already back out, and the skies were clearing.

  I chanced a look in Boo’s direction.

  No deer attacked the car this time.

  “I totally understand that you want your privacy and that you don’t need or want your students to get wrapped up in your celebrity wrestling past,” I assured him. “But come on, give me a little credit here. Who else on the faculty could be the Bonecrusher? You’re the biggest guy on staff, you’re around the right age, you wrestled in high school, you don’t talk about your past, or much of anything for that matter, as you pointed out. You’re a mystery man. And I happen to know you wrestled steers on the farm. If that’s not a curriculum vitae for a former wrestling celebrity, I don’t know what is.”

  Boo crossed his big arms over his chest and grinned. “I’m flattered—I think—but you’ve got the wrong man, Bob. What about Paul Brand, the new art teacher? He’s more of a loner than I am, and he played professional hockey for a couple of years. Those hockey players are tough,” he reminded me. “I could easily see him head-butting an opponent in a wrestling match.”

  Well, sure, hockey players were tougher than nails. Everyone in Minnesota knew that. When I’d seriously considered that Paul Brand might be the Bonecrusher, I had taken that for granted, and I could easily see that he had the lean muscle to back it up. But when I mentally compared the two men’s physical attributes, Paul was no match for Boo.

  Although Boo’s nose—straight and unbroken, compared to Paul’s crooked one—did give me a moment’s pause.

  Could a man wrestle for five years without getting his nose broken even once?

  My moment of pause stretched out. Was I going to lose this bet yet … by a nose?

  I swatted the doubt away.

  Boo was the Crusher. I wouldn’t expect him to own right up to a secret he’d been guarding from everyone at Savage for the last few months. Anyone trying to go incognito would naturally deny it if someone correctly identified him.

  But I also knew that Boo hated liars, and my gut instinct told me he’d hold himself to that same standard. Sure, he was a big guy, but he came from a family of Norwegian farmers. And yes, a lot of strong kids wrestled in high school, but that didn’t automatically mean they became professional wrestlers. As for being close-mouthed about certain pieces of his past, well, that probably applied to everyone who survived being a teenager.

  Myself included.

  Stupidity is an equal opportunity employer when it comes to youth.

  So now I had to ask myself: Had I let my personal bias color my deductions about Boo’s hidden past?

  My little doubt buzzed back in and got bigger.

  Had I been so sure I was right that I’d neglected to objectively weigh what I thought was the evidence?

  Gee, what a novel idea.

  Bob White runs with the ball of conjecture and jumps to the conclusion he wants.

  He shoots.

  Oh! He misses.

  He loses ten bucks.

  I suddenly remembered that Alan had said almost the same things about Paul Brand when we’d made our bet about the true identity of the Bonecrusher.

  With competitive experience on the ice behind him, Alan had maintained that it wouldn’t have been much of a leap for Paul into the physical punishment of the wrestling circuit. And that broken nose, which Paul had told me was a souvenir of his senior year in high school, could just as easily have been a reminder of his five years in the ring, or a memento of a rough night on the ice with the big league.

  Given how crooked Paul’s nose was, it could even have been both of the above.

  Not to mention that Paul had a leaner body frame than Boo. Actually, when I’d first looked at photos of the Bonecrusher online, I’d been surprised to see that he wasn’t the big hulky guy I’d expected a wrestler to be. In the old shots, the Crusher looked slimmer than Boo did today, but I’d attributed Boo’s heavier physique to the inevitable effect of long-term weight-lifting that built bulkier muscles.

  Paul, on the other hand, looked more like a runner with his trimmer size. I didn’t know if he still hit the rink with a local group, but in my experience, hockey players never stopped playing hockey, even if they just skated alone on neighborhood rinks, slapping the puck against the boards.

  That meant he’d still have the lean-muscled shape he’d had while he was wrestling.

  And as long as the photos pictured the Crusher in his black mask and leotard, it was almost impossible to get a true read on his size. In fact, now that I thought about it, I realized that in all the photos Alan and I had scrutinized, not once had the Crusher been pictured with anyone else, so there was nothing to use as a scale of comparison.

  When you came right down to it, for all the proof you could get from what we’d seen online, the Bonecrusher could have been a ninety-six-pound weakling who just happened to be a genius when it came to posing for the camera and looking big, muscular, and mean.

  “Paul Brand, huh?” I asked Boo. “He likes to scrapbook, you know.”

  “I’m not saying he’s the Crusher,” Boo equivocated, “but I’m also not saying he’s not. He looks like a good candidate though, if you ask me.”

  “Shoot,” I said again. “There goes my ten bucks.”

  “You had a bet on the Crusher’s identity?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, with Alan.”

  “Do you two guys bet on everything?” Boo asked. “I thought the bet about turbines killing more birds or people was … a little unusual … but I didn’t know this was a regular routine for you two.”

  That’s right. I’d forgotten about Alan’s white lie when he asked Boo about his experience with the wind farms. Excellent. Now Alan and I were going to get a reputation as incurable gamblers, when the only real gambling I ever did was driving halfway across the state in hopes of seeing a rare bird.

  Like a Ferruginous Hawk.

  “Oops,” Boo said, pointing across the dashboard. “There’s one that took it on the chin. Or maybe the car hood.”

  Some twenty yards ahead, on the opposite side of the road, I saw the dead deer, or at least what was left of it, laying in the weeds just beyond the blacktop. Perched atop, a murder of crows was enjoying the free meal. “It didn’t make the dodge, I guess.”

  While we watched, the crows abruptly dispersed. A moment later, a large hawk flew low past the carcass and settled on a highway marker overlooking an open stretch of a snow-laced field.

  “That’s a big hawk,” Boo commented.

  I slowed the car to give myself a better look. We’d seen quite a few Red-tailed Hawks on the drive west after finishing our breakfast at Millie’s, but this hawk’s head was noticeably lighter in color. The bird also had a lighter tail compared to what we’d seen earlier, and there was no banding of any kind on it. I’d caught a glimpse of dark legs against white feathers as it had swooped past the deer, but the thing that really impressed me the most was its size.

  It really was a big hawk.

  So big, it could have been a … Ferruginous Hawk.

  I blinked.

  I was looking at a Ferruginous Hawk.

  I immediately pulled over onto the shoulder.

  “That’s a Ferruginous Hawk,” I told Boo. “It’s the biggest hawk in North America. That’s exactly what I was hoping to see today.”

  I snagged my binoculars out of the storage compartment between the two front seats and slid out of the SUV. The hawk was still surveying the empty acreage. I focused my binos on his belly. The smooth expanse of his white feathers was lined with only a few fine streaks of gray, and the feathering on his legs was clearly dark. As I watched, he glided off the highway marker and rose a bit in the sk
y, then paused in a hover over the field. I could see the pale uppersides to his primary and secondary flight feathers contrasting with the darker upperwing coverts.

  “Pretty impressive,” Boo said from the other side of the car, where he, too, had stepped out to observe the hawk.

  “You should start your bird list right now, Boo,” I told him, my eyes focused on the hawk as it searched for a meal. “You’d be starting with a bird that other birders would kill for.”

  An image of Sonny popped into my head. I bit my tongue.

  “Forget I said that. That was totally inappropriate given the events of the last few days.”

  “You think someone killed Sonny Delite over a Ferruginous Hawk?” Boo asked, his voice incredulous. “Birders really get that competitive?”

  I looked at Boo.

  “Not that competitive,” I said.

  At least, I didn’t think so.

  Not to my knowledge.

  Geez.

  “No,” I tried again to explain my comment, “it just wasn’t very sensitive of me to make a joke about birders killing each other, especially when one of the best-known birders in the state was found dead days ago of highly suspicious causes.”

  “And you’re the one who found him.”

  I paused. That wasn’t supposed to be public information.

  “Gina told me,” he answered my unspoken question. “Rick told her. She’s concerned about her brother.”

  I stared at Boo, trying to make sense of his words. “What does Gina’s brother have to do with Sonny Delite’s murder?”

  “Well, for starters,” he said, “Gina’s brother, Noah, really hated Sonny Delite for two reasons: one—Noah held Sonny responsible for stopping the project in Henderson, which meant Noah lost a good job prospect he was counting on, and two—Noah was furious with Sonny for leading on Gina.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, “I can understand that, I guess.”

  “But the part that was really worrying Gina was the fact that Noah was threatening to quit his job because Sonny was going to be at the sustainable sources conference at the Arboretum.”

  He shook his head. “He just landed that job there last month, and Gina didn’t want him to go through the whole unemployment bit again. That’s why she wanted me to talk to him. I’ve known Noah as long as I’ve known Gina. He was kind of like the little brother I never had, and I know he always looked up to me.”

  I had a bad feeling I knew where this explanation was going to end up, and I really didn’t want to go there. I’d just found my first, and perhaps only, Ferruginous Hawk, and I should be doing my victory dance, not leaning against my car for support while my stomach began to drop.

  Noah Knorsen had been working at the Arboretum during the conference.

  According to Sara’s eavesdropping report, he’d quit his job on Monday, the day after I’d found a dead Sonny near Wood Duck Pond on the Arboretum grounds.

  Noah hated Sonny.

  “Did you talk to Noah about not quitting?” I asked Boo, not sure I wanted to hear the answer to that. Boo had, after all, admitted to me that he’d been at the Arboretum on Sunday morning.

  And though I’d already asked once, he hadn’t told me why he was there.

  On early Sunday morning.

  I looked the Norse giant over once again.

  Boo Metternick was easily strong enough to carry Sonny Delite into the woods after Noah Knorsen had offered him a cup of hemlock tea. Maybe Boo hadn’t killed Sonny, but maybe he’d helped Noah—the little brother he never had—clean up afterward. It wasn’t like Boo had unequivocally stated to me, “Bob, I was in no way involved in the death of Sonny Delite.”

  Of course, I hadn’t specifically asked him if he was, either.

  Boo and Noah were close friends. Close friends help each other out.

  Hey, best buddy. I just killed this guy for really good reasons. I could sure use your help here so I don’t go to prison for murder. I’m thinking we could just prop him up like an old scarecrow in the woods, and no one will ever know. Then maybe we can catch the rest of the football game on TV later. What do you say?

  Yikes.

  “I talked to him,” Boo said. “Saturday. At lunch. At Millie’s. Red remembered me correctly this morning, even if she couldn’t remember she asked us for our order four times.”

  “And Sunday morning?” I asked. “You were at the Arboretum… with Noah?”

  “Not with Noah,” he said, shaking his head. “With Gina. After I told her I didn’t get anywhere with Noah on Saturday, she insisted on talking with him as soon as he got to work on Sunday. She didn’t want him to quit. I offered to drive her to offer moral support. When we got to the Education Center, I stayed in the car, and Gina went in. When she came out a while later, she was really upset, but she wouldn’t tell me what had happened. She told me to take her home, so I did. End of story.”

  For some reason, I didn’t think “end of story” was quite accurate.

  More like, “dead end of story,” I thought.

  Sonny’s dead end.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I looked back over my shoulder to where I’d last seen the Ferruginous Hawk, but only empty sky and field was there. The hawk had flown. No surprise.

  I climbed back into the car. On the other side of the SUV, Boo did likewise.

  “Is Gina afraid that Noah is involved in Sonny’s death?” I pointedly asked Boo once we had buckled our seatbelts and I’d gotten us back on the road to Morris.

  “A little,” he allowed. “Personally, I don’t think Noah could kill someone. But I’m sure Gina knows her brother a lot better than I do.”

  Yeah, that tends to happen with brothers and sisters.

  For better or worse.

  In my case, I knew my sister really well, and Lily knew what made me tick, too, but we still managed to surprise each other once in a while. Like when she fell in love with Alan, my best friend. I was afraid that was definitely going to end up as one of the “worse” scenarios, but then she married him, and now I have a gorgeous niece, so it turned out to be one of the “better” cases.

  If Gina thought her brother was capable of murder, I’d think that was an example of a “worse case” in knowing your sibling well. But if he knocked someone off for her sake, did that make it “better”?

  Or did it just make it partners in crime?

  Gina had gone to the Arboretum on Sunday morning. With Boo. To talk to her brother who hated Sonny Delite.

  That put three people who each had a reason to really dislike Sonny at the scene of the crime.

  Was it Noah Knorsen with a cup of tea in the Education Center?

  Was it Gina Knorsen with the whole teapot beside Wood Duck Pond?

  Was it Boo Metternick with the candlestick in the hallway?

  I never was very good at that Clue game we played when we were kids. Too many suspects. Too many rooms. I mean, really, did you ever know someone who had a ballroom in their home, let alone a conservatory? I didn’t even know what a conservatory was the first time I played it. I thought maybe it was some kind of lab for keeping things preserved. Things like dead bodies, maybe. It was a murder game, after all.

  Real murder, though, was definitely not a game.

  Even if the dead person did look like part of a scarecrow display.

  We drove along in silence until Boo pointed out another hawk flying ahead of us.

  “Red-tailed, right?” he said. “I’ve been paying attention when you’ve mentioned field marks this morning. I have to admit, I’ll probably take a closer look at birds from now on. The challenge of identifying what you see kind of grows on you.”

  “That’s certainly a part of birding,” I said. “I know a lot of people have this idea in their heads that birding is really dull, but for people who love the hobby, it’s a never-ending source of interest and anticipation. There’s always another bird to see somewhere.”

  We passed a road sign that said Spinit—Boo’s hometown—was
five miles ahead. Perched on the sign was yet another Red-tailed Hawk.

  “I know I’m paying attention to birds this morning, which I don’t usually do, but have there always been this many hawks out here?” Boo asked. “I think we’ve seen one on every fencepost for the last five miles. It’s like a plague or something.”

  I realized I’d registered the same impression: there were more hawks along the highway than I could ever recall seeing in one trip in this area. I’d assumed that the short but intense snowstorm we had passed through had blown in the hawks ahead of it, which could possibly account during a migration season for increased numbers of a species in one area.

  “It does seem a little unusual,” I told Boo. “Maybe it’s the weather fronts.”

  “Is that why birders have been seeing so many Ferruginous Hawks out this way? Because the weather pattern has been bringing them in?”

  I considered Boo’s question, but he interrupted my thoughts with another observation.

  “What are those platforms out there?”

  I looked in the direction he was pointing. Far across the fields to the left of the road were a line of poles that stood about six feet tall. At the top of each pole was a small platform. On several of the platforms were hawks.

  The poles and platforms reminded me of something I occasionally encountered when I was out birding in remote places: bird-baiting.

  “It’s a hawk cafeteria,” I said to Boo.

  “What?”

  “Bird-baiting. Somebody out here likes to watch hawks eat.” I nodded towards the line of platforms that extended toward the horizon. “Lots of hawks, too, by the looks of it.”

  When he still looked confused, I proceeded to explain to Boo about bird-baiting and the sometimes bitter battles it caused among birders in Minnesota.

  Sorry. I really wasn’t going for a tongue-twister there.

  “It’s a method of attracting birds,” I began, “and it relies on strategically placing something the birds would eat in a spot where an observer can have a clear view of the bird. Some photographers use the method regularly to enable them to “pose” shots with wild birds, or to get photos they might not otherwise be able to take because they can’t get close enough to the birds. Basically, they’re luring the birds in for a photo op. Other folks bait birds because they feel they’re helping the birds out by providing them with a steady diet, especially when climate conditions are severe.”