The Boreal Owl Murder (4 page)

Now, though, I had a growing, ugly, suspicion that I did know the man—not personally, exactly, but by reputation … and his work with the Boreals. If the body was that of Andrew Rahr, his death would send shock waves throughout the Minnesota birding community, not just because he was a respected researcher and ornithologist, but simply because he was a birder in Minnesota. Birders in Minnesota are almost like a big, extended family. Connected by a passion for birding, as well as a continuous flow of email information, Minnesota birders know each others’ names, if not faces. If Rahr had died, that whole family would feel the loss.

Including me.

Hopefully, that would be all I felt.

Loss.

Not guilt.

I mean, the man had sounded pretty disturbed that one time on the phone, but certainly he hadn’t been in danger, or feeling suicidal, had he? I was a counselor, for crying out loud. I could recognize when someone was making a plea for help, and help was the last thing Rahr had wanted from me when we had talked.

So, maybe now he was dead. And I’d found a death threat hanging on my bird feeder.

I realized that Knott was still waiting for my answer.

“I’d never met the man before I stepped on him Saturday night, Detective,” I assured him one more time. “But now I have this bad feeling I might know who he is … or was.”

“Try me.”

“Dr. Andrew Rahr.”

There was a moment of silence. “Okay. You win a cigar. Now you tell me how you knew the right answer.”

The sick feeling I’d noticed earlier in my stomach was gone, but now my heart was slowly edging down inside my chest.

It
was
Rahr.

“I got to thinking about who would be up there this time of year,” I explained to Knott. “I realized that Dr. Rahr was one of the few people who would know that particular location and have a reason to be there.”

An image of the frozen body I’d stumbled over popped into my head. Knowing now that it was Rahr somehow didn’t make sense in that picture, though. Rahr was a seasoned professional researcher. He’d been in the Minnesota woods in March for years. He couldn’t possibly have misjudged the weather that badly.

Could he?

Or did he? Deliberately?

If that were the case—if Rahr had committed suicide—then Stan was simply taking advantage of a tragic death to jerk my chain with a threatening note, to try to scare me off from finding the Boreal before he did. And if that was the real story behind the note, then Scary Stan was even lower than the rumor mill supposed.

“White, are you still there?” Knott’s voice floated out of the phone’s receiver.

“Yeah,” I said, realizing I’d zoned him out while I had zeroed in on other thoughts. “Just thinking.”

“Me, too. The initial exam at the scene said cause of death was exposure, but I’m thinking that’s pretty odd, seeing as the man had been working up there for years in the cold. I’m thinking there’s something else going on here.”

I was thinking that, too. But, unfortunately, suicidal people don’t always leave good-bye letters. And if it wasn’t suicide … I really didn’t want to think about that at all.

I tried, instead, to focus on Knott. Though I’d just met the man the day before, I could clearly picture him, his lanky frame sprawled in his squeaky office chair. He’d be tilted back right now, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. Mike and I had spent a couple of hours with him, most of it repeating our movements on Saturday night from the time we left our hotel after dinner to the time the police arrived at the gas station phone booth from which we’d called for help. The fluorescent overhead lights in his little office had shone constantly on his shock of jet-black hair which seemed to stick out at all angles from his head.

And I thought I had bad hair days.

“Rahr was obviously well-acquainted with conditions up there, seeing as he’d been doing field research for years,” Knott was saying, echoing my own thoughts. “It’s not like he was some neophyte in the woods. So why would he have been so inadequately dressed? Suicide? I don’t think so. Granted, we all go a little crazy in the winter around here, but I can think of a lot quicker ways to kill myself than freezing to death on purpose,” Knott speculated.

Instantly, I felt some of the pressure building in my chest ease up. If Knott had discarded the suicide option, that was good enough for me.

Of course, that left an alternative that was even less appealing.

If it wasn’t an accident or suicide, then there was someone else involved in Rahr’s death.

Someone who was up in the woods last weekend.

“How well do you know that forest, White?”

It took me another split-second to catch Knott’s train of thought. In the same instant, I realized I didn’t want to go there. In fact, I realized I’d really rather not be talking about this at all.

I’d rather be watching for those space aliens in New Mexico.

I’d rather have Kim back in my office, spitting drama.

I’d even rather be in the lunchroom on duty assignment.

Well, maybe not that.

Knott, however, was well on his way to this particular conversational destination. In fact, he was already pulling into the station and climbing out of the engine.

“I’m thinking murder, White. You’re not a suspect, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

I was wondering. Maybe he could hear my heart pounding against my ribcage. A murder suspect! That was something else we never covered in graduate school.

Knott paused, and I could sense that he was trying to decide if he should say anything more. He decided to go for it.

“We can tell that Rahr had been dead for about thirty-six hours by the time you found him. We know you and your friend Mike Smith were both at work. We checked. As for your fellow birder Mr. Stan Miller, he seems to be a little slippery so far to verify his whereabouts at the time of Rahr’s death. We’re having some trouble tracking him down, actually. It appears he must be self-employed. But beyond that, I don’t have any leads. Nor do I have any experience with, or links to, this owl stuff, so whatever you can tell me would be helpful. Might give me a head start on some places to look. What do you say?”

At the moment, I was saying nothing. I was still thinking about what great fodder it would be for Mr. Lenzen at the next faculty meeting if he found out I’d been a murder suspect—even a very short-lived one.

On second thought, could I rephrase that?

I did, after all, have a death threat hanging over my head. One which, at this point, I couldn’t be completely sure was entirely fake.

So, Stan was self-employed. Doing what? Or did I really want to know the answer to that?

What I did know was that I needed things to slow down. Maybe this was a lot more than a humble school counselor like me wanted to be involved with. God knew I had enough drama in my life every day thanks to Kim, Lindsay, and my other needy charges. For some reason, the idea of getting deep into a murder investigation was just not falling into place in my mind with dress code violations and catching kids sneaking a smoke.

Then again, I couldn’t ignore the birding family connection I felt to Rahr. I’d spent months pouring over his reports, making me feel like I almost knew him personally. Certainly, I could give Knott some insight into birding and general information about it—if I knew anything he wanted. It wasn’t like I was volunteering to track down a killer and go in with guns drawn.

Right?

And as for my rivalry with Scary Stan and his low-rent attempt to intimidate me with a melodramatic threat, well, I figured that was one less thing Knott needed to hear about right now. The detective had a murder case to solve. The least I could do was answer his questions about birding.

“Okay,” I said. “What can I tell you?”

Twenty minutes later, I hung up the phone. I’d told Knott what I knew about Rahr’s research and about how difficult it was to find the owls. I told him about birders and how we all kept lists: lists of birds we saw in the state, in individual counties, all over the country and even the world. I knew birders who kept lists of birds they sighted while doing other things: “birds I saw while brushing my teeth,” or “while I was riding a tractor,” or “while hiding from my in-laws.” I’d even heard one birder say she kept a list of birds she saw while having sex. I didn’t ask who was having the sex—she or the birds; I figured I’d already gotten way more information than I wanted. Some of this stuff I had told Knott in the woods on Sunday morning, explaining why Mike and I were there. Now, knowing who the dead man was, we’d gone over it again, trying to find leads for Knott to investigate.

Then, out of the blue, something Kim had said earlier flashed into my head—something about jealousy.

I remembered that Rahr had said something about sabotage in our short phone conversation back when I was plotting my Boreal strategy. I’d chalked it up to his having a bad day, but maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe he really was paranoid, and for good reason. He obviously thought someone was messing with his research, but he also obviously didn’t know who that someone was, if he was reduced to making wild accusations on the phone to a total stranger.

Who might be jealous—professionally—of Rahr? Thanks to his work with the Boreals, Rahr had an international reputation. Had he stepped on someone else’s toes along the way?

Rahr was, after all, dead. Maybe I was being naïve about academic politics, but I thought death was a rather extreme form of retribution for toe-stepping.

Or, if not professional jealousy, could Rahr have been dispatched by a crazed birder who’d seen one too many cuckoos?

The truth is, anyone who has birded for any amount of time knows how competitive some birders can be, especially when it comes to adding elusive birds to their lists … and then not letting anyone else know where the sighting took place. But could any birder be so jealous of a bird sighting to murder someone?

Stan’s face popped into my head for about the hundredth time that morning. I wished it would quit doing that. But if the shoe fits …

Besides, even though the owls were a challenge, all the birders in the state already knew basically where they were. It wasn’t like it was a never-before-revealed secret. Rahr had been publishing his findings for years in the MOU newsletters, since the state organization was his primary financial supporter for the research. True, the reports were a pain in the ass to decipher, but they were unquestionably available to the public.

And even to consider that a birder would commit murder to bolster his or her own list … now, that was unthinkable.

Wasn’t it?

“Hey, Mr. White.”

I looked up from my desk. It was Jason Bennett, a Savage senior, who, thankfully, didn’t know the meaning of the word “drama.”

For that matter, he didn’t know the meaning of the word “style,” either.

He was standing in my office doorway, dressed in his usual attire: fatigue pants, a striped polo shirt, and a down vest. Definitely not GQ material.

“Hey, Jason. What’s up?”

“Dude, I’m bummed. I brought these excellent deer hooves to school to show-and-tell my friends, but Mr. Lenzen just nabbed me in the hall and said I should go directly to my counselor, do not pass go, do not collect $200. He said I was violating the school weapons policy. With deer hooves? Anyay, here I am.”

I looked at the two deer hooves Jason was holding. I’d seen enough deer in my days with the DNR to know that the cuticles in question were indeed the real McCoy. “Very cool, Jason.”

“Way cool, but weapons? No way, dude. These are natural artifacts. I got them at a garage sale. How cool is that?”

“Well, Jason,” I said. “Maybe they’re not weapons to you and me, but Mr. Lenzen, he’s …” Anal. I wanted to say anal, but I didn’t think that was a good thing to call a colleague, let alone my boss, in front of a student.

“Anal,” Jason said. “Definitely anal.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, let’s just say he’s trying to stick to the letter of the law here,” I said. “Tell you what. I’ll just keep the hooves in here for the rest of the day, and you can take them home after classes. That way you’re disarmed, the rest of the students are safe from hoof violence, and Mr. Lenzen can be happy knowing he’s upheld the law of the land.”

“Cool,” Jason said. He put the hooves on my desk and left.

Odd mementos of a hunting trip, I’d say. Antlers I understood, but hooves? It reminded me of an article I read once about poachers in Africa and how they managed to sell every part of the animals they killed. I didn’t think poaching was a problem in Minnesota, though. We have more than enough deer to go around.

Heck, if you want a deer, just drive a country road after dark. Cars are deer magnets. They practically throw themselves at them. I’d gotten one myself last November. I was coming home in the dark after attending a Sunday matinee of the high school’s fall musical, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a deer was standing in the beams of my headlights. I started to hit the brakes, remembered you’re not supposed to do that because that makes the deer slide up your front hood and shatter your windshield, so instead, I swerved off to the right shoulder of the road. I heard a thunk, felt the impact of the deer hitting my left front fender and coasted to a stop. I got out and looked across the road. I expected to see a deer carcass, or at least a deer hobbling off into the forest on the other side, but there was nothing. Bambi had disappeared.

When I got home, I checked the front of the car. Bambi may have vanished, but he’d left a wad of fur behind on the hood, and he’d taken my left headlight with him. Not a fair trade as I saw it. When I dropped the car off at the auto repair shop the next morning, I noticed that the car I happened to park next to was likewise adorned with fur and missing its right headlight.

Which meant that somewhere, two deer had a pair of headlights between them. Maybe they were pretending to be a car. Maybe they were plotting.

“Mr. White?”

The voice was quavery, just barely holding together. It was Lindsay, the other half of today’s drama queen duo.

“Lindsay,” I said. “Come on in.”