A Murder of Crows (17 page)

Boo turned his head and studied the plant.

“I don’t know. Is it ragweed? Yarrow? It’s tall and sort of feathery, but I’ve never been any good at identifying plants.” He looked back at me. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t have been any good at killing Sonny Delite, either, then,” I told him, putting the car in gear and pulling away from the roadside. “That wasn’t yarrow, Boo. It was hemlock.”

“And?”

I momentarily debated telling him about Sonny’s hemlock tea, but since that detail hadn’t been released to the media, I decided that the less Boo Metternick knew about Sonny Delite’s death, the better. Based on his inability to identify hemlock, I felt moderately assured that Savage High School’s new physics instructor hadn’t brewed any poison for the deceased.

I did, however, still have a few questions for him.

“Since you brought it up, why were you at the Arb on Sunday morning, Boo? And no, I don’t think you killed Sonny Delite. You’re … too nice.” I turned on my windshield wipers to brush away the snow that was beginning to accumulate.

“Really? Too nice? I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I thought maybe I had you going there for a minute,” he confessed. “Life as a physics teacher can get pretty dull, I’m finding. I’ve been thinking I need to give my image an edge—be the big scary guy, you know?”

“Is that why you don’t talk much? To other people, I mean?” I added, realizing that since we’d chased the chickens, Boo had been a regular Chatty Charlie with me. “You’re trying to give yourself a make-over?”

Boo peered through the snow piling up on the windshield faster than the wipers could clear it.

“No,” he answered. “I don’t talk a lot because I usually feel uncomfortable around new people. I always get the feeling that people are intimidated by my size, and I don’t know how to make them get over it, so I just listen and watch most of the time.”

Which, I knew from my conversations with other faculty members, made them even more uncomfortable. Before I’d gotten to know Boo, I’d thought he was a little creepy that way too. I mean, who likes to see a giant staring at them every time they catch his eye?

“I could always talk to Gina,” Boo continued, “but she was the exception. I don’t know why it’s so easy for me to talk to you, but it is.”

I knew why—it’s because I have this invisible sign on my forehead that lights up and makes people tell me their life stories, whether I want to hear it or not. It’s a gift. I guess. Or maybe it’s a curse. I haven’t decided yet. As a counselor, it helps a lot when I’m working with students; when I’m standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and the ice cream is melting in the cart, not so much.

“It’s really coming down,” Boo commented. “Remember I told you that storms can really blow up suddenly out in this part of the state?”

I slowed the car down to a crawl as visibility approached zero.

“Yeah, I remember,” I said, my eyes glued on the white wall in front of the car. “For some reason, I got the feeling you were trying to dissuade me from coming up here today.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Beats me. Because you’re a closet competitive birder, and you didn’t want me to see a Ferruginous Hawk?” I shook my head slightly, still focused on keeping the car on the road. “I don’t think so. Because you know Sonny was a friend of mine, and I’d probably snoop around in Morris and dig up some dirt on your father? Maybe.”

I felt the SUV’s wheels slide, and the slippery ice icon flashed on my dashboard. I slowed even more until I felt the tires grip the road again.

“And then your tires got slashed,” Boo commented. “With a license plate like yours, you can’t imagine it was random.”

“The possibility has been presented to me.”

The wall of white receded and the heavy curtain of snow lifted a little.

“But since you didn’t call me last night to confirm ‘one more time’ if we were still going this morning,” I explained, “I figured you didn’t have anything to do with the slashing. I didn’t realize Rick would have tipped you off to the tire replacement, though, so maybe you still should be on my slashing suspect list.”

“It’s letting up,” Boo noted, nodding at the windshield. “I hate these surprise snowstorms. When you grow up out here, you learn how to deal with them, but you never learn to like them.”

I sensed him turning toward me in the passenger seat.

“Rick didn’t tell me about your tires,” he corrected me. “Gina did. I was feeling kind of bad about our little collision during basketball, so I called her to ask how Rick was doing, and she told me about your car. By the way, why do you keep thinking that Rick Cook and I are such great pals? He’s dating Gina, you know. I can’t say that’s making him my favorite school police officer at the moment.”

“I figured you two were tight because he knows all about you,” I said. “You know—the big secret?”

Boo was silent.

“And it’s not that he told me, either,” I made sure to add.

Rick was already in enough hot water with the Crusher by dating Gina that I didn’t want to add another reason for Boo to be angry with Rick.

A couple of seconds passed by before Boo responded.

“What in the world are you talking about?” he said.

“You! Your former career and secret identity.” I glanced at Boo. “I know you’re the Bonecrusher.”

I only had the chance to register his surprise for a second before I heard the
whump
and the car began a fast spin on what had quickly become a sheet of ice.

Chapter Seventeen

“Crap!” I hissed as I struggled with the steering wheel, trying to stop our slide into the road’s snowy shoulder and beyond it, a steep incline down to an ice-crusted ditch.

The car’s spin accelerated. Trees on both sides of the road flashed past.

I thought about Luce.

I thought about Baby Lou.

I thought about the money I’d just shelled out for four new tires.

Four new tires that couldn’t find a bite of traction on a suddenly icy road.

Last time I go to the Tire Shoppe, I promised myself, then immediately tacked on for tires. It’s the last time for tires.

Even under duress, I like to be accurate.

Especially when an icy ditch and certain death might be waiting for me.

I turned in the direction of the skid.

Really, I’d like to go to the Tire Shoppe again.

A lot.

Frequently, even.

The speed of our spin decreased.

Yes! I’ll even get a customer loyalty card!

“You got it, Bob,” Boo congratulated me as the car straightened itself out and came to rest in the opposite direction of the lane I’d been driving. “Nice driving, buddy.”

“I try,” I said, letting out a long breath I’d been holding as I’d battled the skid. I looked down the road we’d already traveled. “I hit something. I heard the collision, but I don’t see anything on the road back there.”

“Deer,” Boo informed me. “I caught a glimpse of it clipping the front of the car just as it happened.” He gazed down the road, too. “Bambi is long gone, it looks like. He’ll live to scare the pants off another motorist, I’m sure. It’s a common driving hazard in this part of the state: deer dodging.”

“It happens everywhere in Minnesota,” I told him. “I lost a headlight to a deer a few years ago just driving home from the high school. It’s a good thing you can’t hunt deer within city limits, or it wouldn’t be safe to step outside my townhouse during hunting season. I swear I’ve got a herd that regularly walks through my backyard. And that doesn’t even include all the road kill you see.”

I climbed out of the car to take a look at the front end of the car. Snow was still swirling a little in short gusts, but the intense dumping action had stopped. I found a clump of brown deer fur wedged along the fender and the hood of the car, but no blood. The headlights were still working. Boo was right; Bambi would live to terrorize drivers for another day. I got back in the car.

“We’re good to go,” I said. “Any more weather warnings or driving hazards I should know about between here and Morris?”

“None that I can think of,” Boo said. He pointed beyond the windshield. “What’s that?”

I followed his line of sight and saw a Merlin perched on the top of a utility pole.

“Good eye,” I told Boo. “It’s a Merlin, and it’s uncommon throughout the state. I won’t say it was worth a collision with a deer in order to see it, but it’ll go on my list for birds in this county. I hadn’t seen one here before.”

I gave Boo a suspicious look. “You sure you’re not a birder in disguise?”

Boo laughed. “Scout’s honor. And I’m not the Bonecrusher, either, by the way.”

“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.”