Buck Fever (4 page)

“Mrs. Purdle, you know Mr. Briley passed away last year. How could he steal your paper? Remember, I told you that they only deliver three papers a week now. The rest you can read online on your computer. Are you sure you ordered the Times? Maybe your subscription ran out.”

She ignored Porter’s comments.

“Look at this,” she said. “Some rat-bastard hunter over in Port Huron has come down with a virus. Says here, he was up north hunting last weekend and had to be dragged out of the woods. He gutted a deer and became violently ill. Doctors thought it was an asthma attack, but now they think it might be West Nile. Hah, I bet it’s
Buck Fever
. You know, that bullshit that destroys your brain. Serves the rat bastard right for killing those pretty animals. I saw the movie you know. Last week, I saw the movie on TV.”

“Mrs. Purdle, you watched a Disney movie:
Bambi
. Remember, I explained it to you last week.

“And, get this, the guy’s become some kind of Einstein now. Says here, he keeps saying screwy things about how the universe is not expanding as we all think. So, Mr. Deer Hunter, you think you know more than Einstein, rat bastard? I hope a deer pisses on your grave.”

“You’re being insensitive, don’t you think, Mrs. Purdle? The guy’s sick. Let me make sense out of this for you.” Porter wrestled the newspaper from her hands and read the byline. “Son of a...Louis Dingman made the front page.”

“See, see. The rat bastards are everywhere.” She raised her arms, stepped back into her apartment, slamming the door. The glowing cigarette fell out of her mouth on the way.

“Dammit, old lady, you’re going to burn the building down one of these days.” Porter unconsciously stepped on the cigarette with his bare right foot. “Ouch. Son of a bitch.” He awkwardly danced, ducked back into his apartment and closed the door.

~ ~ ~

“What’s the problem?” Kottle said, stepping out of the bathroom. She attempted to dry her long hair with part of the towel wrapped around her body.

Porter limped toward her. “That old bag is going to burn the place down. She keeps stealing my newspaper.”

“Why do you get the paper delivered when you can read it on your computer?”

“I like to hold it in my hands, you know, feel the ink. Let it run through my veins.”

“You are so full of shit,” Kottle said, rolling her eyes.

Porter read Dingman’s news article aloud.

“I thought
we
were going to be the ones to get the big hunting scoop. Why didn’t Pillbock tell us about this?” She batted the newspaper article with the back of her hand.

“Probably just hit the wires yesterday. This is going to rile up the Michigan hunters. Talk of mosquito viruses or Lyme disease gets the wives all peeved and concerned. Of course, the men don’t care. They think they’re invincible.”

“They can be thankful it’s not Mad Cow disease or the Spongiform virus that rots your brain.”

“It’s weird, though. The doctors remain baffled by how the brain is affected. They think the virus affected his frontal lobe in some way, making him act like some kind of savant.”

Chapter 6

A
bright-yellow water tower with a large painted-on happy face appeared through the trees near the freeway. “Have you seen it? Ah, there it is,” Kottle said, pointing.

“We’re two hours late. Here, call him. We should be there in ten minutes,” Porter said, handing his cellphone to Kottle. He pulled off the I-75 freeway onto Cook Road and headed north to West Branch, a small northern-Michigan tourist community containing quaint 100-year-old buildings.

She dialed Sanguini’s number, briefly apologized and confirmed a meeting in ten minutes.

“We’re good to go. He’ll meet us downtown at the Herald building. It’s a restored Victorian home next to a funeral home on the corner when you turn onto Main Street.”

~ ~ ~

“Mr. Sanguini, this is Katie Kottle and I am Jeb Porter. You know why we’re here, of course. We’d like to ask a few questions. Maybe take twenty minutes or so, and you can have your day back.”

“Sure, sure, no problem.” A strapping fortyish linebacker-sized man greeted the two reporters. He wore denim jeans and a tweed sport coat over a blue western-style shirt. Aging ostrich-leather boots poked out his pants legs, a silver-inlay belt wrapped around his slim waist. “I’m just going over the new construction. How do you like my new office? What do you want to know?” He led them into a freshly painted room containing a single plain-metal desk, phone and leather desk chair. “Not much furniture yet. I recently moved from across the street. Here, you can sit on these.” He carried two folding chairs in from the hallway and set them up.

“These old Victorian house designs are retro-hot around Detroit these days. Several new subs are opening up offering this architecture complete with ornate cornices and pointed steeple-like roofs. I did a story about it several months ago. Bet it’s nicer living up here, though, away from the drone of big-city life,” Kottle said, thinking how nice it would be to have time to write a novel up north.

“Beats the daily grind of a big office building, for sure. I can’t get a good reporter to move up here, though. Maybe you two would like to join my operation,” he said, half-serious.

“I could live here,” Kottle said.

“You need a sports writer? I could do that,” Porter said, as the three sat down.

“Sorry, not much need for sports writing, unless you want to cover a few high-school games.”

“So, we’ve got a possible murder case here?” Kottle asked, starting the interview. She folded her legs trying to get comfortable. Her tight skirt tended to ride up the slippery metal-chair seat. She twisted the imitation-gold ring on her left hand, making sure Sanguini saw it.

Porter tugged his collar, loosened his tie and took off his suit jacket, hanging it on the back of the chair. He jotted a memo in his notebook to research high-school sports writing when he got back to Detroit.

“Not much to say other than what I’ve already shared with your boss. A retired lumberjack, Gordon Lickshill, apparently was out hunting and, we think, ended up in a scuffle with another hunter. Probably arguing over the same turf. According to his wife, who found him dead, he stays out days at a time in a shed he built for deer hunting, so she didn’t worry about him. However, the family goat turned up missing, and the next morning she walked the perimeter of their farm to find it. You know the rest.”

“How do you explain the antler marks impaling his body? Pretty sick way to kill someone don’t you think?” Porter asked, handing Sanguini several photos he printed from Pillbock’s memory card.

“Who knows how some of these locals think; Lickshill might have encountered a meth lab in the woods. Junkies drive around the back roads, and when they find an old shack in a secluded area—typically in the woods near some private property posted for no hunting—they set up shop. I think they killed him with a sharpened wood dowel in a pattern like deer antlers.”

“This time of year? Who sets up a lab when it’s this cold? Doesn’t click with me. And if they wanted to make it look like a deer killed him, then why leave behind a note scratched in the dirt?” Porter shook his head hoping for inspiration.

“Hah, I think whoever did this knew the guy,” Kottle said, smiling.

Porter looked at her waiting for a half-baked thought.

“Please continue,” Sanguini said, interested.

“You said he was a lumberjack before moving here, right?”

Sanguini nodded.

Kottle pointed to the photo of the letters scrawled in the dirt next to the body.

“
Hew
, like in chop the tree down. Get it?
Hew
man. Someone was referring to him being a lumberjack. I say the person knew him.” Kottle switched leg positions and waited for confirmation of her brilliant analysis.

“The Ogemaw County sheriff suggested the same. However, if you look closely, a cap lying next to his head contains an emblem and the words: Lumberjack Worker’s Union. The double reference is interesting, though.”

“Is the sheriff around? Could you set up a meeting for us?”

“Not this weekend. He’s out of town—actually out hunting. A deputy is taking over for him, and he knows nothing about this. I suppose you could try to talk to Lickshill’s wife, but I must warn you, she’s a Russian immigrant and speaks little English. I swear; when we talked to her she was more upset over the missing goat than her dead husband.”

“Maybe she did it. They always say, family first when it comes to murder,” Kottle said.

“The sheriff had the same suspicion. Turns out, though, the woman has arthritis and couldn’t use her hands to kill a mouse. Who knows, maybe some local found him and scrawled the note as a sick joke. Lots of ex-cons and war vets out there squatting off the back roads. Speaking of sick people, your paper had an article in it this morning about a man in Port Huron suspected of catching some deer-related virus. Did you know his friend who dragged him out of the woods said they were hunting about fifty yards from where they found this guy’s body? Might be worth pursuing as a possible link.”

“Yes, I read about it this morning. Supposedly, he was gutting a deer. They had to leave without it. The diseased carcass is probably still in the woods. Not a pleasant thought,” Porter said.

Sanguini’s desk phone rang. He signaled to Porter and Kottle to wait while he took the call.

“Yup, I’m working. What’s up? You are bullshitting me, right?” Sanguini looked concerned as he listened intently for several minutes. “Now, don’t do anything rash. I’d call in the State Police. Okay, I’ll be out there in ten minutes.” He hung up the phone while standing up.

The two reporters stood up, waiting for direction.

“Okay, you two, it looks like we’ve got another breaking news story to cover. Let’s go. We can take my car. I’ll explain on the way.”

The three headed out of the house toward an aging silver Cadillac.

~ ~ ~

“This is absolutely nuts,” Sanguini said, backing out the driveway. Kottle and Porter sat patiently in the back seat. “Well, there’s a new twist to the Lickshill story. His daughter and son-in-law came to visit for the funeral along with their one-year-old son. Apparently, last evening at twilight they watched a doe and fawn trample through a makeshift flower-and-wreath shrine in the front yard of their trailer home. The son-in-law tried to remedy the situation by firing a few shots to scare them. He hit the fawn and it fell down kicking. This is where it gets interesting. The doe bit the fawn’s neck and dragged it into the woods. The next morning, they looked for the fawn, but couldn’t find it.”

“Shouldn’t we be writing this down?” Kottle asked. Porter held up a notebook. “Oh.” Her face flushed as she opened her notebook.

Sanguini turned off on a dirt road and stopped briefly. A blue vehicle with flashing red and blue lights approached, passing from behind at high speed.

“What’s this all about? A dead fawn?” Porter asked.

“Well, maybe. The daughter and son-in-law were outside straightening the wreath and flowers while the mother stood nearby holding their child. The old woman apparently decided to take one last look into the woods. So, she walked over to the trees, still carrying the child and peered in.”

An ambulance suddenly appeared behind them. Sanguini slowed to let it pass.

“We must be getting close. Hey, there’s a trailer, and…and a wreath out front,” Kottle said. “Where’s the police car and ambulance?”

“They turned up the road where the hunters go. As I was saying, the grandmother and grandson entered the woods. Several minutes later, she came out screaming. The son-in-law ran to help. When he got to the woods, he could see a doe standing about twenty feet away. The child dangled in its mouth, held by a coat collar. Then—”

“Oh, no, don’t tell me what’s coming. Did she...she didn’t. Tell me the doe didn’t hurt the child,” Kottle said, bringing her hands to her mouth.

“Get a grip,” Porter said, elbowing her.

“I understand your concern, but no, not yet anyway. The doe carried the boy into the woods, placed him by an oak tree next to her dead fawn, and stood there over him. The deputy sheriff called earlier at the house. He’s all up in arms about what to do without the sheriff being around. I told him to get the State Police to handle it. And, maybe we can help; I don’t know. Either way, it could be a hell of a story.”

Sanguini turned off the road into a public-access area and parked next to the ambulance and behind the police car.

“I’m getting nervous. I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” Kottle said.

“You can stay here if you want. I’m going in,” Porter said, getting out of the car with Sanguini.

“Not on your life. I’m coming, too,” she said.

~ ~ ~

A Michigan State Police officer, handgun drawn, maintained a steady aim at the disgruntled doe standing about 30 feet away. The deputy sheriff stood by the officer waving for everyone to stay still. The ambulance driver and his sidekick were consoling the child’s parents and grandmother who watched, horrified. The child sat on the ground, crying helplessly. The doe peered down at the toddler underneath it, snorted twice then looked up. A foot away from her right hoof laid a blob of bloody entrails. An apparently dead fawn lay to her left. She stroked the ground in a determined motion. One foot-long mark in the dirt, then another and another. In the middle of the second mark, she twisted her hoof to form a jagged line through it.

“I haven’t seen anything this bizarre in all my years in the news business,” Sanguini whispered, walking up with Kottle and Porter to join the group.

“Ain’t this a fine mess, Bob? Sheriff Dave is going to wish he were runnin’ this show when he gets back. Who are these folks? Should we be having the public back here?” the deputy asked, stepping over to Sanguini.

“Hey, Dan, I see you’re in control...well somewhat, anyway. I’d like you to meet a couple of reporter friends of mine from the Detroit Times. Katie Kottle, Jeb Porter, meet Deputy Sheriff Dan Crossbine.”

“Hi, that’s C-r-o-s-s-b-i-n-e,” he whispered, beaming.