Buck Fever Read online

  Damn locals, they’ll shoot at anything, he thought, as he approached the animal. It’s a goat, probably a family pet. He poked the animal with his gun barrel, shook his head and walked back to the blind.

  “You guys see anything worth shooting?” Hermanski said, pressing his walkie-talkie call button.

  “No bucks, just some haggard-looking doe coming through the cornfield. She was limping like she took a bullet in the ass,” Montagno said into his walkie-talkie.

  “Dipshit locals, they apparently shot some family goat over here. Probably shot that doe too,” Hermanski said. “If I don’t see anything in an hour, I’m heading east about fifty yards to another blind. Will let you know if I move.”

  “Okay, but it’s already four o’clock. We need to be out of here by five,” Montagno said.

  “Yeah, maybe I should go over there now. Will let you know when I get there.”

  Click, click, Montagno acknowledged.

  ~ ~ ~

  Hermanski picked up his gun propped next to an oak tree and headed east. As he approached another blind, he looked up, seeing a tree perch 20 feet up strapped around a foot-wide oak tree.

  Locals, he thought. Been here too.

  “What the...” he blurted and clicked his walkie-talkie. “Guys, you’re not going to believe this. I just found a half-gutted buck with an arrow sticking in its neck next to a tree with a hunter’s perch strapped to it. An eight-pointer no less and it looks like a fresh kill from yesterday. It’s been cold out so the meat should still be good.”

  “I’ll bet it’s some moron without a license. He probably got spooked by someone coming through the woods and left it,” Lacarter said.

  “You know, I have half a mind to claim it and take it with us. I’m so pissed at these guys getting all this meat on the cheap. What do you think?” Hermanski said.

  “We’re with you. We have to go soon anyway. Might as well bag a dead one as a live one,” Montagno said. “We’re heading over to help. Guide us in.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The three men stood over the fallen buck.

  “Hmm, nice kill to the neck. Let’s get the arrow out, clean out the rest of the insides and drag it out,” Lacarter suggested.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Hermanski said, removing a knife from the strapped sheath on his left leg.

  “You’ll get goo shit all over your hands; use these. Here, take this knife; your diddly knife isn’t cutting through that hide,” Lacarter said, offering Hermanski a pair of rubber gloves and a large stainless-steel knife with a jagged back edge and rounded point.

  “Go, Rambo,” Montagno said, backing away from the knife.

  Hermanski slipped the gloves on, reluctantly accepted the larger blade.

  Lacarter tugged on the arrow, removing it.

  “Look at this. It has a razor-tip and carbon shaft. There’s another opening just above it, like he’s been hit twice.”

  “Whoever it was knew your sniper trick. Must be an ex-Marine,” Montagno said.

  “Probably explains the arrow lying over there. Like I said, one shot to the neck and down he goes without making a sound; another and you are sure of a clean kill.” Lacarter pointed to a fallen tree about 20 feet away.

  “Without making a sound, huh? That’s great if you’re shooting arrows, but a gunshot to the windpipe is going to spook all other deer in the area anyway—I still don’t get it.”

  Hermanski bent down and patted the carcass. The meat’s cold and firm. Hey, does this meat smell unusually sweet to you? A little like asparagus?”

  Montagno bent down and sniffed. Lacarter followed. They agreed.

  “Hope it’s okay. You don’t think it’s spoiled do you?” Hermanski looked concerned.

  “Cut some muscle around the stomach area. If it’s mushy then maybe,” Lacarter said.

  Hermanski cut out a small chunk of meat next to a rib. He held it up for a sniff test.

  “Looks and smells fine. It doesn’t have an odor of the intestines. Probably the smell of whatever food he was eating,” Hermanski remarked. He then slit the stomach open revealing a reddish-brown mush. “Here’s the culprit. Whew, it smells like asparagus and…and urine?”

  “His bladder probably burst earlier and backed up through the intestines,” Montagno said.

  “We’re over-analyzing this. Let’s get the rest out and get going.”

  Hermanski worked diligently for five minutes cleaning the breast cavity. Montagno retrieved a rope from his coat pocket and wrapped it around the antlers to form a towrope. Lacarter offered up a deer tag and secured it around one of the antlers.

  “Gents, we are ready. This buck is ours,” Hermanski said, taking off his rubber gloves. He rolled them neatly inside out and stuffed them into his coat pocket. He cleaned the knife with some leaves and handed it back to Lacarter.

  “What should we do with these guts? Bury ‘em?” Montagno asked.

  “Naw, leave them for the locals. They deserve it. Besides the turkey vultures and other predators will have the mess cleaned up in a couple of days anyway,” Hermanski said.

  The three men took turns dragging the dead animal through the woods.

  Chapter 4

  A mid-twenties newspaper reporter stretched back into his desk chair, twirling an apple with his right hand, taking determined bites, while patting his slightly disheveled blonde hair with his left. His scuffed-black loafers rested on an open file drawer to maintain balance as he leaned out his cubicle to gaze through a green-tinted window. The view from the 20th floor of the new Detroit Times building, overlooking the Detroit River, encouraged daydreaming. He had two hours left on the clock before the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend officially began. His last story went to the editing department at noon. The November sun waned behind other buildings. It would be twilight on the drive home.

  “Porter, my office, now!”

  “Yes, Chief,” Jeb Porter replied using his best movie-line mimic voice, straightening up, throwing the apple core with determined force into the file drawer, kicking it shut. He had dreamed of becoming a major-league baseball player and even won a sports scholarship to Michigan State. However, an elbow injury his sophomore year ended that notion, so he concentrated on journalism classes to become a sports writer.

  “What do you think he wants at this hour, Jeb?” Katie Kottle said, glancing over the cubical wall. “God, I hate the newspaper business. We never get a holiday or full weekend off. I was so looking to spend Thanksgiving at your place.”

  The stately auburn-haired woman brushed back several strands, revealing intense brown eyes. Katie was a junior working on the school newspaper with Jeb, a senior. A bit prissy and elitist, but he would make her into a decent middle-class woman someday. Although, just friends at the time, he vowed to get her into the news business when she graduated so he could nurture a closer relationship. She just wanted to write crime novels like her famous uncle, but she needed a job so here she was.

  Porter looked up and blew her a kiss. Office relationships were discouraged, but the two junior reporters often covered the same assignments, so they did what came naturally: shared work during the day and a bed at night.

  “I haven’t seen any breaking news come over the satellite feed. I can’t imagine he’d want us to cover anything this late in the day.” Porter stood up, put on his suit jacket and smoothed down his red-and-blue striped tie. “You think he might let me cover the big game this weekend? Or, crap, I’ll bet he couldn’t get Dingledorf to cover the parade tomorrow,” he said and walked toward an imposing frosted-glass office.

  Cronies ran the sports department and only well-seasoned writers made it into the inner circle if an existing writer died or left the company. The general local news department had openings, though, and journalism graduates started there.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Good news, Porter,” Cory Pillbock, Chief Editor, said, as Porter walked through the deep-etched glass door into the splendor of oak-covered walls and oversized leather furniture
. A middle-aged man with graying hair and dramatic good looks sat behind a massive ornately carved wood desk. He wore an impeccably pressed blue-silk suit, starched-white shirt and bright-yellow tie.

  “Let me guess. I get to cover the Lion’s game tomorrow.”

  “In your dreams,” Pillbock said, looking impatient.

  “The Thanksgiving parade?”

  “You’re pushing me, boy. I already told you, Louis Dingman is covering the parade. Damn it, you don’t listen. Straighten your tie. Look sharp, man. You’re representing the number-one newspaper in the Midwest. I’m going to give you first crack at solving a possible murder mystery; you’re chance to shine.”

  Porter made a slight effort to adjust his tie and tuck in his rumpled pinstriped shirt. He called me ‘boy,’ he thought, becoming self-conscious.

  “Who else is on the floor that can assist?”

  “There’s Kottle, sir. I’m sure she’d jump at the chance to cover a homicide with me. We were just talking about how she loves the newspaper business.” Porter’s eyes twinkled as his confidence returned.

  “You’re not dipping into company ink, are you?”

  “No, sir, absolutely not, she’s seeing some guy in Ann Arbor.”

  “Aren’t you from Ann Arbor? Anyway, she has no time for romance if she wants to move up the ranks in this business.” Pillbock stood up and walked to the office door. “Kottle, I need you in here, now!” he shouted. Several mocking voices arose from other cubes as Katie Kottle walked her tight dress toward the office door. “You other cubs better have a damn-good draft of the Mayor’s campaign on Canadian drug smugglers on my desk by eight AM Friday, or you can all go work for the Eccentric.”

  Groans replaced mocking voices.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Okay, Porter, Kottle, here’s your opportunity to make a big splash on page one.” Pillbock returned to his oversized leather desk chair, as Porter and Kottle sat on separate leather sofas. “It’s hunting season and it’s the biggest sporting event in Michigan. I mean, each year thousands of yahoos go traipsing through the woods throughout the state and kill more than their share of sixty-thousand deer.” Pillbock pushed several file folders apart to reveal a photo on a computer tablet. “Well...” he said.

  Porter looked at Kottle who squeezed her nose at the thought of hunting.

  “It’s an utterly disgusting sport: grown men with bows and arrows and guns killing poor defenseless animals,” she said.

  Porter pretended to hold up a rifle and mocked a shot at Pillbock who kept his head down for the moment.

  “It’s not football, but hunting is a sport, right? Do I, er we, get a sports byline?” Porter said, his eyes beaming.

  “No, this is not a sports matter. It’s a mystery: a murder of sorts. I’ve got to ask you two for assurance you won’t go spouting off about what I’m going to show you,” Pillbock said, looking unnaturally serious.

  “No problem here. I can’t imagine you telling me anything I’d die to share with anyone else,” Porter said.

  “I’m a locked box,” Kottle said. Her mind raced at the thought of getting involved in a crime story. Maybe she would get background for a good murder novel.

  “Cut the BS, I’m dead serious. We have a kick-ass Michigan-local scoop here. No other paper has plugged this into their Internet site yet. What do you think?” Pillbock pushed his computer tablet, showing an image of a clothed male body lying on a pile of leaves, across his desk. The two reporters leaned forward.

  “Eesh. What happened? Looks like this guy got taken out by a machine gun,” Kottle said, searching for detail.

  “I count eight perforations into his chest, spaced in a symmetrical pattern, four to a side. Can’t be bullets; his shirt is stuffed into the holes as well. Bullets would rip through the shirt leaving ripped holes and a bloodstain. I’d say this guy’s been impaled by a set of blunt objects, maybe arrows, but they’d have to be a half-inch in diameter,” Porter said.

  “Well done,” Pillbock said. “You can see through the bokeh. Kottle, don’t just sit there gawking, take notes.”

  “He can see through the ‘bow-kah’.” Kottle repeated, slowly fingering text into a cellphone.

  “Bokeh…b-o-k-e-h. The out-of-focus part of a photographic image. Get with it, girl, Porter knows what it means, right, Porter? And, use this notepad. You’re not going anywhere texting into a phone—it’s not professional.”

  Girl? Kottle frowned as she hesitantly grasped the notepad and a pencil from Pillbock’s hand.

  “Yup, I know my bokeh,” Porter said, glancing toward Kottle. Never heard of it, he thought. He smiled, took a notepad and pen from his suit-coat pocket, wrote the single word on a note page and flipped to the next page.

  Pillbock knew the art of capturing and retaining the attention of his reporters. He gave them something—a word, a phrase, a new idea—they had never heard before to chew on. It kept the junior reporters on their toes.

  “So, any more observations? Think about what I said earlier. Think about what time of the year this is.”

  “Thanksgiving?” Kottle asked.

  “Holiday tomorrow. Long weekend?” Porter said.

  “All right. I get it. I want both of you on the road to West Branch Friday morning and back by Sunday night with a front-page story. Here is the deal. Bob Sanguini, Editor of the West Branch Herald, emailed me this earlier today. He got a tip from the State Police about a local man found dead Thursday, lying in a field near his home. His wife discovered the body. She was up at dawn looking for the family pet, a goat. Her husband went hunting earlier. She didn’t find the animal, though.”

  “Let me see the photo again,” Porter said, peering closely at the slightly bloated corpse lying on wet leaves. A frightened stare contorted the man’s face, eyes open. His dark-brown coat lay open revealing eight bloodstained chest holes punctured through a faded-blue work shirt.

  Pillbock flicked his finger across the tablet screen showing several more images in succession. “Well, any more thoughts?

  “Antlers? Could these be goring marks from an angry eight-point buck?”

  “You definitely are my bokeh-man. Now take this file and get out of here. Sanguini says they are trying to keep this quiet to avoid hunter concern for the big upcoming hunting weekend. He put a small two-paragraph statement into his West Branch newspaper as a death pending police investigation and Medical Examiner’s inquiry. The TV stations picked it up as a hunting accident without explanation. He wants to print a bigger story in a couple of weeks, but needs more info. I told him I would send someone up there to help him dig deeper into it.”

  Pillbock handed Porter a small memory card.

  “We don’t get a tablet—would be helpful for taking notes, showing others the photos on the road,” Kottle said, making a pitch to get some updated technology. All she had was a heavy laptop used by another reporter who moved on several years ago.

  “Use the GD notepad and pencil, get me a good story, and we’ll talk about it—ok? Share what you get with Sanguini, but make sure the guts of the story stays with us.”

  Kottle laughed slightly, acknowledging the pun, and looked down at her notepad pretending to scribble more notes.

  “So, what’s the big deal? A rutting buck went mad. There have been cases of this before, right? A surprised buck thinks a human is vying for his doe. Bucks sometimes lock antlers and gore each other, don’t they?” Porter asked, now sucked into the storyline.

  “Yes, the simple explanation. But here’s the tickler,” Pillbock said, sweeping his finger across the tablet, bringing up another image. “This was taken about four feet from the body amidst a jumble of deer-hoof prints.

  “Ooh, let me see through the bokeh this time,” Kottle demanded.

  “Take your best shot.”

  “H-E-W. Hmm. M-A-N. HEW MAN? What’s that mean?” She struggled to grasp the meaning of the scrawled letters in the dirt.

  “HEW as in cut, slash or hack MAN. Or maybe it simply means:
human,” Porter said.

  “Well done, rooky. You’re going to be a real reporter someday.”

  “Hey, what about me? I made out some of the letters too,” Kottle said, acting hurt.

  “Looks like we’ve got a homicide, here,” Porter said.

  “Give the rooky a cookie.”

  “Oh, I get it, now,” Kottle said.

  “What do you see?” Pillbock asked, holding up his left hand. “Come on, girl, what do you see?”

  Porter knew what was coming. Pillbock had pulled this on him the day he joined the company a year earlier.

  Kottle’s face flushed. “Ah...ah, a hand...a left hand.”

  “Look again. A real reporter would see it.”

  Out of Pillbock’s sight, Porter tapped his left ring finger with his right forefinger. Kottle glanced over. A look of disillusioned enlightenment covered her face.

  “Ah, I see a wedding ring; you’re married. Is marriage significant?” She couldn’t believe how crass her boss acted.

  “Good God, young lady, how do you expect to make it in this business? What do you see on my desk? Look around the room.”

  “I don’t see anything. Just a picture of your...ah...dog. So, you’re separated?” She struggled to make sense of the degenerating conversation.

  “No, no, no. I’m single. A married editor does not last in this business. Look and learn. People answering questions don’t trust single reporters, especially young single reporters. We’re a local newspaper; we report Michigan news, especially Detroit news. We are modest, middle-class, solid citizens. I want you to get a couple of cheap drug-store rings and wear them when interviewing the public. Now go and get me a Pulitzer-worthy story. Everything’s in this file. Start by contacting Sanguini. He knows someone from the Times is coming this weekend to gather facts. He’s a trustworthy friend, so treat him right.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Look and learn, girl,” Porter said, escorting Kottle to her car in the parking ramp next to the Times building.