Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) (14 page)

Peter smiled. “Sometimes I think
you almost deserve that shield.”

“Thank you, Brother. I shall take
that as a compliment.”

Peter eyed the box, dubiously.
“That many hunters applied for the deer cull this year?”

“That’s from the past two years,
since our weapon was shipped out from the factory. It occurred to
me that our man may not have applied this year. So I got the
previous year to avoid making a second trip.”

“Huh.”

“How about I pick up a pizza and
we sit here and run our man down. What’s that kind you
like?”

“Dewey’s,” Peter said absently.
“Edgar Allen Poe.”

“That can be your half. I’d like a
Green Lantern with olive oil instead of red sauce on my half, thank
you very much. Phone it in and I’ll head on down there to pick it
up. Don’t forget to pay for it,” he called over his
shoulder.

“Hey!” Peter yelled after him, but
Brent was gone, his leather heels clipping down the
hall.

“That, Brother, was a dirty
trick,” muttered Brent as he set the hot pizza box down on Peter’s
desk.

“Expecting me to pay for the whole
pie was a dirty trick,” Peter responded.

“You’re lucky I had a few dollars
in my wallet. Celeste is an expensive mistress.”

“Then you shouldn’t have suggested
an expensive lunch. Give me a plate. I’m starving.” He deftly
disengaged the largest slice from his side of the pie, and slid it
onto the paper plate Brent handed to him.

“How far did you get while I was
gone?”

“You wanted me to start? I’m
sorry. You should have said so. Oh, but you couldn’t. You were too
busy hightailing it out of the station so I couldn’t tell you to
pay for your own lunch.” Peter shrugged and took a large,
satisfying bite out of his pizza.

They hunkered down, each pulling a
stack of handwritten records out of the box. They scanned the cards
in silence for several minutes.

“Jackal, Inferno Fury, Predator,
Ghost, Wildcat, Cobra. . . These bows all sound like code names for
the members of some wet work team in a Russell Blake novel,” Brent
said.

“Russell Blake? Who’s that? What
happened to J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter?”

“Russell Blake is this Kindle
millionaire who can spit out a new thriller in less time than it
took for your first experience of carnal knowledge.”

“Nice. You’ve got to get a real
woman. Playing with your Kindle and talking to your overpriced car
are doing strange things to you.”

“Maybe so, but at least I now know
twenty-three ways to kill a man with my pinkie. Lookie here, I
think we have a winner.” Brent held out the yellow card. Peter took
it and squinted at the blue scrawl. “Looks like it says ‘Zombie’ to
me,” Brent continued. “Too bad they don’t include serial
numbers.”

“That would have been expecting
too much,” Peter said, laying the card to one side. “What do we
know about Scott Estep?”

“It’s your computer,
Brother.”

“Right.” Peter turned to his
keyboard and pulled up Scott’s drivers license. He checked the
record. “Looks like a solid citizen. A few speeding tickets. No
arrests, no warrants. We’ll put him on the list and keep going.
According to the manager of the sporting goods store, there’s more
than one Zombie in the area.”

Their second hit was Mike Heekins,
who had a commercial operator’s license and an ancient arrest for
public intoxication. Hit number three was a Bill
Stryker.

“I wonder if he’s related to the
guy who invented the Stryker saw. What does Hal say?” Brent
asked.

“Name your own computer. Leave
mine alone. Mr. Stryker looks interesting. A DUI, some D and D’s,
and a Domestic Violence charge. Also a restraining order filed by
one Colleen Stryker.”

“Interesting, indeed. I say we
need to go have a talk with Mr. Stryker, once we finish looking
through the rest of these.” They continued reviewing the cards in
silence. Finally, Brent replaced the last one in the box. “That
appears to be it. Three matches. Are we going on a field
trip?”

“We taking your girlfriend?” Peter
asked.

“I think, if we’re going to see a
man with a known temper, we should go in your car. Just in
case.”

“Where was that address, again?
Brestel? Isn’t that off of Baltimore Avenue?”

“Didn’t a meth lab blow up over
there last year?” Brent asked.

“If it didn’t, it wasn’t for lack
of trying.”

“Good thing you’re driving. That’s
some incline over there. Doesn’t bode well for our interview that
he tucked himself away on top of that hill. Folks up there are
clannish.”

They turned onto a side road that
led, as Brent predicted, up a lumpy asphalt road that took two long
switchbacks before climbing a hill that was too steep for most cars
and hadn’t been paved in too many years. The weeds on the side of
the road were taller than a man and could be hiding . . .
anything.

Echoing Peter’s thoughts, Brent
said, “If there’s a militia presence in Cincinnati, this is where
they do maneuvers. We could be surrounded right now and we’d never
know it.”

Peter wondered how the residents
got in and out in the winter. Probably didn’t. Probably just stayed
put and lived off their Armageddon rations and the occasional
unlucky possum.

The road flattened out at the top
of the hill and ran a short distance before it stopped dead. It
wasn’t a proper cul-de-sac. The asphalt gave way to gravel and
dirt, the tail end surrounded by four one-story brick houses in
various stages of disrepair. There was a weedy vacant lot where a
fifth house, possibly the ill-fated meth lab, once
stood.

Woods encroached all around.
Several stacks of old tires sat in patches of dying grass. Peter
imagined the tires collected water in the summer and became a
breeding ground for mosquitos. Boxes of beer and whiskey bottles
sat on one porch, while another house was fronted by a sagging
sofa. A stained mattress lay in a yard. Several of the windows were
boarded over. A rail thin pit-bull strained the chain that tethered
him to a porch and snarled.

“What do you suppose they have all
those tires for?” Brent wondered.

“Good question. Maybe target
practice.”

“Oh, good. A man with a known
temper and skills. Just what we want.”

The man who answered Peter’s firm
knock stood five foot, nine. He was muscular, straining the seams
of an undershirt that might have once been clean. A hairy navel
peeked out from under the hem of the shirt, with jeans riding low.
A red scalp showed through his military buzz-cut. He held onto the
doorknob with one hand while gripping the probable mainstay of his
diet in the other, a bottle of Hudy Delight.

Obviously a man of taste and
refinement.
Peter schooled his face. “William
Stryker?”

“Who wants to know?”

Peter and Brent flipped out their
shields. “I’m Detective Dourson, and this is Detective Davis of the
Cincinnati police. We’d like to talk to you for a few
minutes.”

“Did you find it?”

“Did we find what, Mr. Stryker?”
Brent asked.

“My goddamn Zombie. Isn’t that why
you’re here? My crossbow?”

“Yes, we’re here about a cross
bow–” Peter started to say.

“Well, well, whadya know. From the
way the moron you sent was talking, I didn’t expect to ever hear
from you again.”

Peter and Brent looked at each
other. “Which moron would that be, Mr. Stryker?” Brent
asked.

“Some guy named Hinkle. Don’t you
guys talk to each other? Isn’t his name on the report?”

“We’re not aware of a
report
–
” Peter said.

“I reported that bow stolen over a
week ago. If that’s not why you’re here, then what do you
want?”

“We understand you own a Barnett
Zombie crossbow. Is that true?” Brent asked.

“It was until some rat bastard
took it.”

“Do you have the serial number?”
Peter said

“I gave it to that other guy.
What’s this about?”

“A Zombie crossbow was used
recently in a crime. We’re trying to determine who owned the bow,”
Peter said. “May we come in?”

“What was my bow used
for?”

“Homicide,” Peter said.

Stryker glared at Peter. “That bow
was stolen, you have it on your report. And you’re not getting in
here without a warrant. You want to talk to me, you do it right
here where all the neighbors can see. I want witnesses.” He looked
around, raised his voice. “Y’all hear that? They think I shot
someone with that crossbow what was stolen out of my
garage.”

Peter thought about looking around
to see who Stryker was talking to, but felt it prudent to keep his
eyes on the man. He attempted to suppress an image of an armed
militia emerging from the woods dressed in camouflage, black
greasepaint slashing their faces. In his mind’s eye, they turned
into a flashmob while “Dueling Banjos” played in the background. It
occurred to him, in that fraction of a second, that he might never
call Lia ‘Babe’ again.

“We don’t think anything, Mr.
Stryker,” Peter said. “We’re just trying to find out what happened.
At this point, we don’t know for sure that it was your
bow.”

“Whatever. Who is it you think I
killed?”

“The deceased is a man named
George Munce,” Brent said. He pulled the photograph out of the
inside pocket of his jacket. “Have you ever seen him?”

Stryker glanced down at the
picture, curled his lip. “Nope. When’d he die?”

“Last Monday. Can you tell us what
you did that day?” Peter said.

Stryker snorted. “I was working on
my truck. Right there. Pulled the transmission.” He pointed at a
greasy patch in the gravel. “Plenty of people saw me, including the
mailman, if you don’t trust my neighbors.”

Peter jotted a few words in his
notebook. “What time was that?”

“Late morning, early
afternoon.”

“What about the rest of the
day?”

“Right here. You want to try that
hill with a bum transmission?”

“Did you spend any time hunting
deer at Mount Airy in the past month?”

“I was scheduled for the first
round. Last time I was there was October third. Thursday. Haven’t
been back since my bow was stolen. No reason to go until somebody
gives me back my goddamn bow, which would be nice, since my session
isn’t over yet.”

“Have you ever seen this woman?”
This time Brent showed him a photograph of Kate Onstad.

“She dead, too?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you employed, Mr. Stryker?”
Peter asked.

“Not since those bastards at
Hudepohl fired me.”

“When was that?”

“Back in July. You got any more
questions for me? Want my shoe size? It’s 10C. And in case you need
to know, I’m circumcised.” A flush spread up Stryker’s face during
this tirade.

“That’ll be all for now,” Peter
said. “We’ll review the report you made and get in touch with you
if we have any further questions.”

Stryker grunted and slammed the
door.

“That was fun,” Brent said once
Peter’s Blazer was creeping back down the steep grade. “Think he
did it?”

“Don’t know. I wouldn’t mind
having a search warrant for his place, if it turns out to be his
bow. Not likely to get it, unless we can prove some connection
between him and Munce.”

“Know what’s peculiar? Hudepohl
fires him, and he’s drinking Hudy Delight beer. What do you want to
bet one of his friends at the brewery pushed it off the back of the
truck?”

“I don’t take sucker bets, Brent.
You know that.”

“So, Boss, what’s for the rest of
the afternoon?”

“First we pull that report and see
if the serial number matches. Then we start canvassing hunters, see
who saw whom when they were in the woods. According to Mr. Stryker,
he was nowhere near the woods when Munce died. But he could have
seen him wandering around the woods earlier. Next time we talk to
him we should take a map of the forest and get him to show us where
he hunted. I wish I’d thought to bring a map today.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“By the way, what did the lawyer
tell you? You never said.”

“George was pondering the wisdom
of divorce and the financial ramifications. He received the best
and worst case scenarios and was taking a little time to fully
consider same before he made his decision.”

“He was putting his wallet before
the love of his life?”

“Not so much that, more worried
about the situation a divorce would create for the girl, his
stepdaughter. He was very concerned about her welfare. To hear the
lawyer tell it, that marriage was deader than the roadkill on
Donald Trump’s head.”