Chapter Twenty-Four
A knock on the door roused me from a fitful dream about claws and cages. “Time is wasting, Miss Rook,” Jackaby announced as I pried open my eyes. The bright daylight was pressing unsympathetically into the bedroom. “There has been a disturbing new development. Charlie is already away.”
I sat up abruptly, then swayed as the blood caught up to my head. “What sort of development—the bones? Have they found the missing tooth?”
“Better yet—they’ve found Brisbee’s kid.”
I rubbed my eyes. “With all due respect, sir, your priorities are a curious mess. Please tell me that Charlie Barker did not seriously rush off at the crack of dawn just to bring a lost goat back to Brisbee’s farm.”
“I’m not sure if he intends to bring it back, but I imagine he’s rather interested in taking a look at what’s left of it, and to see if he can find any useful clues amid the blood and debris.”
I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth.
“I’m rather keen to have a look myself,” continued Jackaby, “but I promised Mr. Barker not to leave you behind, what with the grisly nature of the mess. Come on, then. Bright new day and all that!”
I dressed quickly, and we reached the clearing in ten or fifteen minutes. It was back from the road by about half a mile, not far from the Brisbee farmhouse. How anyone could tell that the thing had ever been a baby goat was beyond me. Scraps of hide and hair were tossed all around the clearing, and the trees were splattered with dark droplets. Flies had begun to collect in busy swarms around the larger pieces. The image of a cozy huddle of cuddly kids hung in my mind, and the notion that this mess had once been one of them made my head swim.
“My word,” I breathed. “What happened to the poor thing?”
Charlie was picking his way around the edges of the gore. He glanced up as we arrived, looking a bit chagrined to see me approach the morbid scene. I was half expecting him to insist that I wait by the road, but he said nothing of the sort. Instead, he just looked from one end of the carnage to the other and shook his head. “Mr. Brisbee found it this morning. He seemed pretty shaken up about it.”
I couldn’t blame Brisbee. I felt a little woozy myself.
“Reasonable enough. Find anything of interest so far?” Jackaby asked. The policeman nodded to a tree toward the middle of the mess.
“Whatever did this is strong. The marks are only a few feet off the ground, but they’re half an inch deep in the tree bark. Could be teeth or talons. It’s hard to tell.” Jackaby knelt beside the tree and examined a series of gashes in the trunk. He snapped off a shredded piece of bark and tucked the splinter into the recesses of his coat.
“I can’t say I love what you’ve done with the place, darlings,” Nellie Fuller trilled as she trod into the bloody grove, her tripod swung over one shoulder of a slick checkered coat. “Far too much red for my taste—but I must applaud you for going bold. Oh Lord, there are even bits in the branches over there! Goodness! How marvelously grisly.”
Jackaby and I exchanged glances. Charlie was watching the woman skeptically as she began to situate her camera. “Good morning, Miss Fuller,” Charlie said. “You seem very . . . positive this morning.”
“Sanguine, even,” added Jackaby.
“Are you kidding?” She held out her hands, framing a rectangle with her fingers. “Giant bones in the hills, scary monsters in the woods”—she peered through her imaginary photograph directly at me—“and a beautiful young lady right in the middle of it all.” She let her hands drop and looked at me earnestly. “Say, are you all right, sweetie?”
“Of course I’m all right,” I said in what I hoped was a convincing tone. “I’m great, remember?”
“That’s my girl. With your poise and my prose, we’ll make every paper from here to Oregon!”