Buck Fever (7 page)

Whoosh. Thump.

Ugh, I’m hit. Feel weak. Cannot stand. Falling.

~ ~ ~

“Ahh, shit!” Montagno yelled, wrestling with the bed covers. He heaved them back and rolled out of bed, smacking his head on the floor.

“George...George, you okay? My God, you scared the life out of me,” Montagno’s wife, Sissy, said. She sat up, looking around the darkened room. “Where the hell did you go? Another bad dream? You had better stop taking those pills. They’re definitely not doing you any good.”

Montagno’s right hand reached up grabbing onto the bottom bed sheet. He pulled himself up and sat on the bed, getting his bearings.

“Fuck. It’s the same dream over and over. I’m in the woods walking around with a fawn and doe and some bow hunter shoots me in the neck. I swear, it’s like I’m a deer…I even feel like a deer.”

“How would you know what a deer feels like? Deer can’t think like humans. It’s probably a stupid reaction to your experience with the buck at Hermanski’s house. You guys think you’re such big shots. Boy, that deer sure is getting back at you.”

“I told you; we didn’t kill it. We found it dead, lying by a tree with a bow hunter perch attached. Damn it, I can’t sleep. I’m all stuffed up. I think I’m going to go over the accounts receivable for Monday. Hermanski’s on my butt to get it done before we create budgets for next year.

~ ~ ~

What the hell, these numbers don’t add up,
Montagno thought. He sat by the desk in the soft leather chair in this study, leaning forward and struggling to make sense of numbers lined up in the printed ledger spreadsheet. Ever since taking his CPA exam ten years ago, he felt locked into accounting. He hoped that becoming a partner in Hermanski’s company would change that, but no such luck.

There it is.

He pushed back from the desk for a moment, then looked at the spreadsheet again. He had mentally added three columns of numbers in less than five seconds.

Shit. I adjusted these numbers last week--not good.

He flipped through several more pages of the ledger. Each time, verifying that the number on the bottom matched the sum of the columns on the page.

What in hell is going on? Whoa, hold on.

The room started spinning. Faster, faster, then stopped abruptly.

Montagno slumped back into his leather desk chair and passed out.

Chapter 10

K
ottle leaned on Porter, legs entwined, both undressed in bed as Porter, stomach down and propped up by his elbows, continued typing.

“Not much of a story. Certainly not front page news,” she said, reading the words on the laptop computer screen.

“I think Sanguini’s right. I’m only presenting the bare facts for now and will take time to get the real story.”

“If Pillbock lets you.” Kottle pressed her chest against Porter’s back waiting for a reaction.

“Just one more click and I’ll have it sent for his approval. There, it’s finished.” Porter closed the laptop and flipped over to receive Kottle’s embrace.

~ ~ ~

Porter’s cellphone began playing reggae music.

“Pillbock,” he said, struggling to reach over to the nightstand.

“Not now. I’m just getting into it,” Kottle said, shifting from her straddled position.

“Yes, Chief,” Porter said into the phone. “Okay, I’ll make the changes and send it right back. Yup, saw the article. Why’d you send Louis to cover it? Oh…I just...well, I thought we had the exclusive. Okay, we’ll head over there in the morning. Katie, ah...she’s in the motel room next door. Want to talk to her?” Kottle held her finger to her lips, stepped to the motel door, opened and shut it. “Ah, she just came through the door...here.” Porter smirked and handed the phone to Kottle.

“Hello, Mr. Pillbock. What’s up? I...yes, I’ll do better, bye,” she said, and threw the cellphone onto the bed, bouncing it onto the floor. “God, he’s such an ass.”

“No, don’t do that. No wonder my phone never works. What’d he say to you?”

“Apparently, Sanguini told him about my being a little repulsed in the morgue. Doesn’t show the strength he’s looking for. He called me ‘girl’ again.”

“He’s just trying to drive that little girl out of you, like he’s trying to drive that little boy out of me.  He told me to make some minor changes, and he wants us to go to Port Huron for the rest of the story. He talked to Sanguini after we left.” Porter put his arms over her shoulders and touched her breasts.

“What do you mean, little boy? Umm, let’s get back into bed,” Kottle responded and pulled Porter onto the bed on top of her.

He stared into her face for a moment.

“He’s got Dingman researching deer stories, too. He thinks the competition will drive out the best story between us. You know, Dingman has a couple of years on us. All look-and-learn bullshit.”

“I don’t like it. We need to check out by eleven. I’m going to set the alarm for eight. Maybe we can beat Dingman to the punch.” Kottle pushed Porter away briefly and set the alarm.

“Okay, where were we?” Porter said, maneuvering her on top again.

Chapter 11

C
louds rushed over Saginaw Bay revealing patches of blue. A brisk nor’easter-like wind blew off Lake Huron. Kottle adjusted her coat over a smart-looking gray-wool skirt and black blouse as she exited the car. Porter flapped the lapels on his blue pinstriped suit as shelter from the cold as they both proceeded up the cement walkway to the Port Huron Hospital.

~ ~ ~

“You can tell another cold Michigan winter is coming,” she said, as they approached the front reception desk.

“May I help you?” a nurse said, walking up to them.

“We’re from the Detroit Times. Our editor, Cory Pillbock, should have called and notified you,” Porter explained.

“I don’t know, we usually don’t allow reporters here unless they’re accompanied by the police. Who are you here to see?”

“Harry Lopez.”

The nurse walked over to several other nurses sitting behind a reception desk and relayed the request.

“Are you from Newsday?” one of them asked.

“No, we’re from the Detroit Times,” Porter said, holding up a card from his wallet.

“Newsday? Looks like the national press are sniffing this out, too,” Kottle whispered.

“Yeah, my thought as well,” Porter whispered back.

“We’ve already had the Detroit Times in here earlier this morning. A guy by the name of Louis Dingman,” another nurse said.

“Yes, we know, but apparently Mr. Lopez was sleeping at the time, and he didn’t get much information,” Porter said. “We are here to follow up and find the underlying cause of what’s ailing Mr. Lopez. Maybe we can shed some light on what’s causing his illness, as we are tracking down all the events leading up to this.”

“
Dingman?
” Kottle whispered. “I feel betrayed.”

“Yeah, makes me feel like a fool too,” Porter whispered back.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that last comment,” the nurse said.

“We were just remarking about how nice the Thanksgiving decorations looked,” Porter said, pointing to a giant turkey obviously crayoned by grade-school students.

“My five-year-old did that in preschool,” a smiling nurse at the desk responded.

“Okay, okay, follow me. I hope Mr. Lopez is up to this. What we won’t do for public relations,” the first nurse said, shaking her head while walking through the corridor.

Porter and Kottle followed.

~ ~ ~

“Mr. Lopez, are you able to take visitors?” the nurse said, as the three walked into a single-bed room.

A bronze-skinned smile formed on Lopez’ face. He sat up in bed, covered by a thin white blanket, sipping orange juice. A woman sat on a chair next to the bed, combing his slick black hair. She handed him a pair of glasses.

“Sure...I love company,” Lopez said, his eyes appearing overly large through thick lenses.

“Thank you, nurse,” Porter said, waving her away. “Mr. Lopez, I’m Jeb Porter and this is Katie Kottle from the Detroit Times. We’d like to follow up with some questions Mr. Dingman…Louis Dingman, asked you earlier today.”

“Dingman...I don’t recall. Do you honey? Sorry, this is my wife, Lucinda,” Lopez said, looking at the woman next to him. She nodded whispering in Spanish. “What? Oh, apparently, I was asleep then. What do you folks want to know? More about my hunting catastrophe I suppose.”

Yahoo
, Porter thought.
Dingman didn’t get the scoop after all
.

“Yes, can you tell us if you encountered anything strange about the deer your friend shot?”

“All I remember is some doe got pissed at us and tried to scare us away. She came at me with a damn arrow. I got her good, though. Kicked her in the groin. She got me, too.” He held up his bandaged hand.

“Look and learn,” Kottle whispered.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened? An arrow? Where did the arrow come from?” Porter asked, scribbling notes into his notebook.

“Well, it started like this...” Lopez said, and explained in detail how the doe pulled the arrow out of the buck’s neck and attacked him with it. Lopez’s wife held her head, shaking it.

Porter jotted more notes, and looked up, hesitating as he thought of phrasing his next question.

“You want to know about my new ability to second guess Einstein and all of his theories...right?”

“It did make the front page,” Porter said, handing Lopez a cutout copy of Dingman’s news article..

“I can’t really tell you anything more. A rush of apparent knowledge literally attacked my brain for about fifteen minutes when I first arrived at the hospital in West Branch, then was gone. I didn’t write it down, but I remember most of it. Before you get too excited, you should know I’m a part-time physics teacher at Wayne State University. I’m also writing my doctoral thesis on particle physics. I see those facts didn’t make it into the news story, though. Typical.”

Porter smiled at Kottle briefly, as she sheepishly glanced at Lopez and his wife.

“Hah, you’ve gotta love the stereotype: Some poor Hispanic goes hunting, is attacked by a deer, and goes off the deep end after contracting some strange virus, and his poor Hispanic wife waits patiently by his side in the hospital, as he gets better. I met her at the University of Mexico last year while doing research. She’s working on her doctorate too. Just doesn’t speak much English,” Lopez said, nudging his wife. She smiled and nodded.

“Oh, I’m...well, we...I’m...” Kottle stuttered, her face red. “Look and learn,” she mumbled, shaking her head briefly.

“Excuse me?” Lopez said.

“It’s a long story. I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“We all do,” Lopez acknowledged.

“So, you...they don’t know what caused this brain activity, right?” Porter asked.

“Nope. The doctors think it’s from a virus or maybe the allergy medicine I was taking. Could have caused a living daydream of sorts. My mind’s full of research information. Some of it was bound to leak out,” he said, laughing. “Heck, if what I said was true, we’d have to rethink quantum physics and the whole structure of the universe. If I am right, we are no more than a day’s space flight from any star or any planet, not millions of light years away.”

“You’re over my head now,” Kottle said.

“It means light traveling through space might simply be a wonderful illusion to make us feel we are isolated in the universe, when in fact, we’re not.”

“‘To make us feel’ suggests there is a greater power at work,” Kottle said. “I like the thought. It goes along with my Christian upbringing.”

Porter glanced at her, hoping to keep the conversation at an objective level.

Lopez shared words in Spanish with his wife, explaining Kottle’s remarks. She nodded and crossed her breast confirming her strong Catholic faith.

“Of course, we’ve all been told the universe is an expanding bubble into nothing. Suppose everything is a bubble like a set of atoms forming molecules. The Earth is a bubble attached to the Moon’s bubble, attached to the Sun’s bubble and so on. To travel quickly through space, we would need to find the outer rims of these bubbles and traverse them and simply pass between the boundaries of time and space. Light bounces inside these bubbles giving the illusion stellar objects are further away than they really are.”

“You mean like a right-side mirror on a car makes things appear farther away than they really are? Wouldn’t we have discovered the edge of one of these bubbles when we went to the Moon?” Kottle shook her head.

“Maybe we did. We just thought it was the edge of the Earth’s gravity encountering the edge of the Moon’s gravity. In my supposed theory, gravity doesn’t exist, just a compressed set of forces within the sphere of each bubble.”

“Reminds me of a statement my high school physic teacher said: ‘We might simply be a molecule of a giant table leg in another dimension.’”

“Yeah, could be.”

Porter glanced at his watch. “Do you know what happened to the deer? We...ah...we were in the woods near where you left the deer—we think, anyway—investigating another incident with a local hunter, but didn’t see anything. We did find an arrow, though.”

“Incident?” Lopez asked.

“It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. Another hunter was...ah,” Porter said, hesitating. He knew he shouldn’t be talking about it yet, but thought it might be pertinent. “Apparently, this guy was out hunting and got gored to death by an eight-point buck, or someone killed him to make it look like a deer did it.”

“What? You don’t think we did it, do you?” Lopez straightened his body in defiance.

Porter suddenly realized the possible connection. Kottle looked at him for meaning.

“Ah...I suppose the authorities will want to question you. Has anyone contacted you regarding the deer? What about your friend, John Greppleton? Can we give him a call?”

“Holy shit. Maybe I should get a lawyer.” Lopez pulled up the bed covers over his body. His wife mumbled in Spanish. He responded. She briefly stared at him and rattled off more unintelligible words. “No, no, it’s okay. They’re not going to put me in jail.” He repeated the statement in Spanish.