Chapter 14
The back door stood wide open. Beyond the screen, I could hear the usual pre-twilight symphony of crickets and frogs. The rhythmic tic-tic-tic of a neighbor’s sprinkler. The distant hum of traffic on Queens Road.
Hurrying across the room, I slipped outside.
The evening was early September warm and muggy, the air heavy with the scents of overripe peonies, damp earth, and mown grass. Of water that had passed through a spigot and hose. And of something else, sweet and earthy.
A substance rich with terpenes.
Ruthie was a dark cutout against a sunset slowly yielding its color to the woolly gray of dusk. She sat atop my garden table, slumped, back toward me, arms hanging between splayed knees.
As I watched, she raised a hand to her face. A small oval glowed orange, lighting her features and carving soft valleys around them. A moment, then smoke paler than the deepening twilight coned from her mouth.
“Hey, lady,” I said.
Her head whipped around.
“You startled me.”
“Didn’t mean to.” There. I didn’t say sorry.
“I guess the cat’s out of the bag.” Raising the joint, which was squeezed between her right index finger and thumb.
“You do know that weed can alter your judgment,” I said, only half joking.
“Kind of like political ads.”
“Good point.” The kid really was funny.
“I don’t smoke often. Honest. And I only do it when and where I know I’ll be safe.”
“Grass isn’t legal recreationally in North Carolina.” Christ. I sounded like a hundred-year-old granny.
“I know.”
“If you plan to apply to colleges soon, a drug bust on your record could complicate things.”
She shrugged.
“I hope you never smoke and drive.”
“Do I look like a moron?”
“Of course not.”
“Besides, I have no wheels. I am forced to depend on the kindness of strangers.” Doing a passable Blanche Dubois imitation.
“Are your parents aware—”
“God, no. Mom would kill me.” Her eyes went wide. “Are you going to rat me out?”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I said, “unless I feel that you’re endangering yourself.” How I’d make that determination was better left for another day.
“Thank you, Aunt Tempe. You’re the best.”
“May I ask where you got the grass?”
“Remember I went on that visit to UNCC?” Her eyes gave a varsity-level roll. “It was my mother’s idea. She insisted and wouldn’t take no for an answer even though I’ve made myself absolutely clear that I’ve maxed out on the sitting-in-class thing.”
“But you digress.”
“Right. Our group’s guide was a grad student—in psych, I think. A totally rad dude.”
“And?”
“After the tour he asked me to join him for coffee.”
“He hit on you.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
“He introduced me to some of his friends. They have this sort of club, I guess. I don’t know.”
“What was his name?”
“Lester.”
I raised both brows in question.
“Lester Malloy. Or Malory. Or something like that.”
“Lester hooked you up with the marijuana?” Making a mental note to run this guy down through university channels.
She nodded.
“How old is Lester?”
“Seriously?” Angry, two-handed hair tuck behind both her ears. “That’s exactly where my mother would go.”
I waited.
“Shit. I don’t know. Grad student age.”
I just looked at her.
“Jesus, Aunt Tempe. I’m not planning to marry the guy.” Full-on petulant. “Maybe in his midtwenties?”
“Ruthie, I know this little chat means you no longer view me as cool. But you’re staying in my house, so I feel responsible for your safety.”
Ruthie’s eyes were doing the granddaddy of rolls when my mobile gave forth with the Kill Bill whistling clip currently programmed as a ringtone. Ruthie cocked a brow but made no comment.
Again, Slidell’s number filled the screen, so I answered.
“Hold on.”
Pressing the phone to my chest, I asked my niece, “Do you need anything, sweetie?”
“I’m totally cool.”
“Do you have plans for tonight?”
“Hang here, watch some Tube, turn in early.”
Perfect.
“Are we good?” I asked, pointing at her, then at myself.
“Totally,” she said.
“What’s new?” I asked Slidell as I reentered the kitchen.
“The squirrel alibied out.”
“Which squirrel?”
“Bright. Jax”—with a mocking lilt—“claims he went to Orlando on vacation. Says he was there for two weeks, got back yesterday. Who the hell goes to Orlando for fun?”
Knowing the question was rhetorical, I said nothing.
“Anyway, I checked out his story. One credit card told the tale. Gas receipts. Tolls. A charge at the Magic Manse Motel in Kissimmee. A one-week pass to the Magic fucking Kingdom.”
“World.”
“What?”
“It’s Disney World.”
“Don’t matter if it’s Disney freakin’ Universe. I got another possible.”
“Another sex offender?”
“Eeyuh.”
“I think you may be reading more into Dr. Kum—”
“I’ll be interviewing this dirtbag before he has time to take a morning shit.”
“When? Where?”
He told me.
“I’ll be ready,” I said.
Slidell was twenty minutes late. But he’d stopped at a Starbucks for morning coffee, so I couldn’t be too cross.
As I sipped, burning my tongue on liquid registering at least a thousand degrees, Slidell briefed me on our target.
“Hugh Norwitz, white, age forty-four. Busted in 2012 on a 14.190.9.”
“I know you’ll tell me what that is.”
“Indecent exposure. The prick whipped out Mr. Happy at the Manor Theater during a matinee of The Dark Knight Rises. Meaningful, eh?”
“Deeply.”
“Norwitz was over eighteen, a couple of the exposees were under sixteen. That made the act a class H felony.”
“He did time?”
“Not much. But the incident got him registered as a sex offender. During a pop-in visit in 2018, a social worker spotted child porn. Then investigators found the mother lode of naughty kiddy pics on his laptop.”
“He was busted for possession of child pornography.”
“Am I not making myself clear?”
Santa Claus with a bad dye job and an even worse shave. That unlikely combo of descriptors popped to mind when I first laid eyes on Hugh Norwitz.
The man looked older than I expected. His neck skin hung loose, his jawline and cheekbones hunkered indistinct beneath layers of fat. A profusion of burst capillaries reddened both his cheeks. To say the Morticia-black dye job looked amateur would be excessively kind.
As anticipated, Norwitz was less than thrilled by our early-morning ding-a-ling at his artsier than Carmel-by-the-Sea Fourth Ward home. Dressed in a silk bathrobe and sherpa-style wool-lined slippers, he ordered us off his porch with an imperious flick of one wrist.
Slidell flashed his badge and laid the usual cop prose on him. Drawing himself up, Norwitz wrapped each of our palms in a weak spiritless grip, and invited us in.
The air in Norwitz’s home felt Torrid Zone warm and humid. I guessed that thermostatic choice was for the benefit of the enormous, vining philodendron spreading across two of his living room walls. A carefully placed pair of blue spots illuminated the somewhat unsettling plant.
But the mongo flora was the least bizarre of the artifacts filling Norwitz’s home.
Taking a seat in the dining room as directed, I looked around.
Saw dead animals everywhere, most stuffed and posed in poorly executed attempts at simulating their natural behaviors.
A red fox, head lowered, one forepaw lifted and curled.
A copperhead, body coiled, fangs bared. A Canadian goose, wings spread, a fish in its half-open beak.
Those weren’t the items I found most disturbing.
A stuffed cat occupied the top level of a set of shelving opposite the table, tiny patent leather boots on its hind legs, a miniature whip grasped in one raised paw.
A squirrel wore a tutu and fishnet stockings on its shaved hind limbs.
Two rabbits, each tuxedo attired, hugged in a bipedal cottontail embrace.
Every animal had the same beady glass eyes. The same crude stitching defacing its fur or feathers or scales.
“What the fucking fuck?” Slidell mumbled, taking in the array.
“Please sit down, sir. I’ve harmed no one.”
“Yeah?” Jabbing a beefy forefinger in the direction of the dancing bunnies. “Tell it to those two.”
“It’s what I do to relax.”
Still standing, Slidell whipped around to face Norwitz. “And what the galloping Christ is it you do?”
“Taxidermy.”
“You kill animals so’s you can yank out their innards and stuff them?”
“I kill nothing. I collect carcasses.”
“You disembowel carrion and shove sawdust up their butts.”
“That makes it sound crude.”
“Ain’t it?”
Affronted, Norwitz skirted Slidell’s question. “An interest in taxidermy isn’t that strange. I was just at a conference attended by hundreds of practitioners, some hobbyists, some professionals.”
“So, this is your hobby, eh? Taxidermy with a little S&M twist?”
“My art is a unique blend of life and death.”
“Art?” Slidell’s eyes were now crimped with disgust. “And where is it you get ‘supplies’ ”—hooking air quotes—“for this art? It sure as shit ain’t Michaels.”
“I scout rural areas. Roadsides. State and county parks.”
The spots threw the same aquamarine light across Norwitz’s face that they cast on the wall behind him. I couldn’t help but think that the illumination made him look ghoulish.
Slidell hit Norwitz with the usual rundown of cop questions. Where were you when the remains appeared on the Frog Pond tree? On the day Bear disappeared? At the time Eleanor Godric’s grave was disturbed?
Norwitz was unsure of his whereabouts but promised to consult his calendar. Which was at his place of business. Which was a two-person accounting firm.
Uncertain what Slidell’s motives might be—perhaps to shock and pry loose info—I watched as he pulled a printout from his pocket and held it in front of Norwitz’s face.
From my angle I could see that it was a photo taken during the Godric autopsy.
Norwitz glanced at the image. Quickly away.
“Terrible,” he said, swallowing hard.
“You know anything about that?” Slidell asked, eyes narrow.
Norwitz answered with a slow shake of the head.
“You sure on that?”
“One hundred percent. That’s not a sight I would ever forget.”