Chapter 15
“That sonofabitch is so dirty I can smell the stink coming off his skin,” Slidell said as we crossed the lawn outside.
“Guilty of what?”
“For starters, doodling dead animals.”
“Taxidermy does not equate to bestiality.”
I waited for Slidell to unlock the Trailblazer’s doors.
“That ain’t what I’m saying,” he continued, sliding behind the wheel.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the guy ain’t right.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Killing helpless animals is harsh.”
It seemed pointless to pursue the conversation, so I let it go.
“Now what?” I asked, buckling my belt, then lowering my window to encourage the circulation of air already smelling of Skinny.
Slidell considered, left hand on the wheel, right index finger corkscrewing in his right ear.
“Now we talk to the NOK.”
Next of kin? “Haven’t we already done that?” I asked, thinking he meant Bear.
Inspecting, then flicking something I didn’t want to imagine, Skinny yanked his mobile from his belt and, employing the same digit he’d used to mine the aural intruder, jabbed at the screen. After eyeballing the address proposed in response, he programmed the vehicle’s navigation system.
Directions were delivered by what sounded like a chirpy robot. Slidell gunned the engine, and we set off.
“You plan to tell me whose next of kin we’re about to assault?” I asked, a bit testy.
“Eleanor Godric.”
“The lady stolen from her grave?”
“Eeyuh.”
“Why?”
“You got a reason why not?”
I didn’t.
Slidell explained that Eleanor Godric had only one living relative, a grandnephew named Harvard Boynton. Boynton, an unemployed art teacher, had lived on the outskirts of South Gastonia for the past two decades.
WAZE navigated us west on I-85 and south on HWY 321, then, after several miles, onto a two-lane cutting through cornfields that looked wilted from the relentless late-summer heat.
Eventually, he rolled to a stop by a shingle-roofed wooden sign identifying the entrance to Brook Mountain Mobile Home Park.
Looking around, I saw no sign of either of the natural phenomena described in the name.
Boynton’s trailer was one of those silver affairs that look like sausages with the corners squared off. A spindly pine struggled to shade it. A Chevy pickup, probably new in the eighties, sat on a nearby patch of gravel.
Hand-painted in scrolly black-and-green lettering on the jerry-rigged enclosure surrounding the trailer’s wheels were the words Warning: Redneck in Residence. A set of homemade wooden stairs connected a tiny landing with the ground.
Before Slidell and I were out of the SUV, the trailer’s door opened, and a man stepped onto the stoop. He wasn’t what I expected, given the message scrawled on the base of his home.
Standing about my height, the man exhibited a body mass that couldn’t have exceeded mine. His skin was pale and seriously freckled, his ginger hair drawn into a meager bun atop his head.
His outfit was hard to describe. Or explain. Neon-yellow long-sleeved tee. Baggy beige cargo shorts held up by blue-and-orange silk fleur-de-lis suspenders. Striped green-and-red knee socks. Birkenstocks.
“Whatever you’re peddling, I don’t want it.”
“Are you Harvard Boynton?” Slidell demanded, his gruffness probably triggered by distaste for the man’s attire.
“I’m warning you,” Mr. Suspenders said, with an attempt at bravado that didn’t really land. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”
“It’s your lucky day.” Slidell flashed his badge. “We are the police.”
Mr. Suspenders scurried down the treads, Birkenstocks slapping at his colorful heels. “Let me see that.”
Slidell extended his arm. Yanked the shield back when the man attempted to take it.
“Are you Harvard Boynton?” Slidell repeated.
“Maybe.” With a sullen tilt of his head that threatened the integrity of the topknot.
“You got an Aunt Eleanor?”
“I did. She died.”
“Auntie leave you a bundle so’s you could buy this little palace?” Slidell cocked his chin at the mobile home.
“Eleanor didn’t leave me a dime. What’s this all about? Why are you here?”
Slidell ignored Boynton’s questions. “Harvard. That’s an odd name. Your mama have aspirations for you? Something that didn’t involve trailer parks?”
Boynton said nothing.
Slidell did his quick segue thing, a trick intended to rattle an interviewee.
“You got pets, Harvard? Maybe a dog or a cat?”
“I have fur allergies, so I keep canaries.”
“You eat a couple of those birds now and again?”
“Jesus. No. What kind of question—”
Slidell’s phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. After checking caller ID, he strode off a few paces and turned one shoulder to us.
“Is he always like this?” Boynton murmured, half under his breath.
“Yes,” I said.
“I have to go, or I’ll be late for a job.”
“What sort of job?”
“I perform as a clown at kids’ parties.”
I was about to comment but Slidell rejoined us.
“Let’s go,” he said to me. To Boynton, “Don’t plan no European vacations. I ain’t done with you.”
Back in the Trailblazer, now truly a bake oven, Skinny explained why he’d cut short the interrogation.
“Nun found another one.”
There was so much to unpack there, my brain struggled to organize questions.
“A nun?” The gray cells settled on that first.
“Sister Mary Adelbert,” he replied, casting a sideways glance at me. “Real name Mariana Kowalski. She’s at St. Peter’s. You’re a mackerel snapper, eh?”
“I was raised Catholic.”
“Why is it nuns chuck the names their parents spent months thinking up for them?”
“Some do, some don’t.” Not wanting to engage in a theological debate, I left it at that. “The nun found another what?”
“Corpse. All dressed up for the show.”
“A fresh body?”
“Not clear.”
“Human?”
“Apparently.”
“Same postmortem treatment? Eyelid stitching, feathers, glitter, one missing body part?”
“Eeyuh.”
“Where?”
“Cordelia Park.”
“Where’s that?” I’d never heard of it.
“Northeast of Uptown.”
I knew Skinny was amped when he dug a portable LED rooftop beacon from the center console and planted it on the SUV’s roof.
“Buckle up!” he barked.
I did.
Strobing red-blue-red-blue-red-blue, we raced across town, Skinny white-knuckling the wheel. Moi bracing two-handed against the dash.
A google search had shown Cordelia Park as a small patch of green space not far from the Little Sugar Creek Greenway. In less than twenty minutes we screamed into its tiny, paved parking area.
After the breakneck sprint through traffic, I needed a moment to bring my heart rate back down from the stratosphere. As the thumping settled, I scanned my surroundings.
Our Trailblazer shared the small, hedge-enclosed space with four patrol cars jammed at haphazard angles, doors flung wide, radios spitting. Beyond them was a late-model sedan, undoubtedly an unmarked CMPD vehicle.
Also present was a low, sleek number that might have been a Corvette. The sort of car you herniate yourself getting into and out of.
At the unsubtle sound of our arrival, two heads had popped up inside the Vette. Quickly dropped back down out of sight.
Young love, a sappy cluster of neurons had offered. Sweet.
At ten a.m. on a Wednesday? their more practical brethren had countered. With cop cars screaming in from all directions? More like horny desperation rudely interrupted.
The moment Slidell killed the engine we both fired out.
Cordelia Park was similar to the other sites favored by our doer. Same wood chip–blanketed playground. Same swing sets, merry-go-rounds, and slides. Same picnic tables sheltered by corrugated tin roofs. Only one grill here.
Chest-high chain-link fencing separated the park and playground from the adjacent woods. A patrolman stood guard at the gate. Slidell badged him and he waved us through.
We encountered another uniform a few yards into the trees, her face ashen beneath a sheen of sweat. She straightened on seeing us but said nothing.
There was no need.
The buzzing flies gave notice enough.
Behind the cop, a half-naked man hung upside down nailed to the trunk of a large live oak. His legs were spread, his bare feet pierced by what appeared to be railroad spikes.
The man’s arms dangled limp beside his head, his right hand, purple and swollen, just a few inches short of the ground. His left hand, severed neatly at the wrist, was nowhere to be seen.
Swatting at Diptera annoyed by my presence, I stepped closer for a better look.
The man’s eyelids were stretched wide and sewn above and below his orbits. His pupils, though dilated, fixed, and opaque, seemed to register surprise in death. Glitter winked sunlight off the man’s hair and skin, and bundled feathers projected from each of his ears.
And this scene offered a macabre new twist.
Beside the human corpse, a dog’s body was suspended by its hind legs. A small one, maybe twenty pounds, with a curly black coat and eyes that had been honey-brown in life.
A decorated corpse with a missing body part. Except for the canine, the pattern was all too familiar. And there was one other new element.
A pair of letters gaped raw and ugly on the man’s forehead: PE. The eggs of energetic female flies were already whitening the borders of the incised flesh.
I shifted my focus to the dog, circling the carcass to take in a full three-sixty view. Its torso had been shaved to create a furless patch on one side. The same two letters were carved into the bluish-white rectangle of exposed skin: PE.
“What the fuck’s PE?” came from behind me.
Slidell had gone so silent I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“Initials?” I tossed out.
“Hot damn. Chalk up the solve,” Slidell said sarcastically.
“Physical education? Petroleum engineer? Pulmonary embolism?” Piqued by Slidell’s sarcasm, I began voicing whatever popped to mind.
“Are you trying to piss me off?” Slidell sounded as irked as I felt.
“I don’t hear you making any brilliant guesses,” I said, wrist-wiping sweat from my face.
“This scumbag thinks he can screw with animals ’cause they don’t count for nothing.” Slidell was again thinking out loud. “Maybe rob a grave or two. Either play buys a slap on the wrist.”
“He’s not wrong on that.”
“Yeah? He’s wrong on one thing.” Skinny’s face had deepened to the color of a pickled beet. “No one messes with people’s pets on my turf. No how. No way.”
Ryan had commented on Skinny’s protective attitude toward animals. A character trait my years of interaction with him had not revealed.
Slidell jabbed a thumb at the inverted man on the tree. “This vic look human to you?”
“Obviously.”
“The body’s still fresh?”
“The flies think it’s fresh enough.”
“That’s it.” Breathing hard, Skinny yanked his mobile from his belt. “This asshole’s gone beyond sick pranks. Now he’s looking at a murder-one charge.”
Slidell was punching buttons when we heard the gate creak.
Startled, we both turned.