Andy got up, for some reason careful not to wake Kerri, and scanned the bedroom for a weapon. She knew only too well there would be nothing. Weapons were not known in Kerri’s bedroom; it was a war-free territory; it was a utopian civilization oblivious to the greedy, fanatic, barbaric things living outside.
The door quivered on its hinge, flinching under the graze of claws on the other side.
Andy felt her heart defect to chaos. The scratching was becoming deafening. She couldn’t believe Kerri didn’t hear it. She couldn’t believe the creature outside had not heard her galloping pulse. Desperately she ordered her brain to slow down and go through her options. The window was blocked; she would make less noise by ransacking the wardrobe for Kerri’s old baseball bat. She needed to lay out a strategy. She needed to rein in her heart and think—the skill she sucked at most in the world.
She went for the wardrobe, gripped the bat, swung it with her right hand as she pulled the door open.
Tim padded in with a Thank you, Jeeves nod at Andy, went to smell Kerri’s hand.
Andy stumbled out into the hallway for a second, a hand to her mouth to block a vomit jet of pure rage, and closed the door behind her. She leaned on the wall, panting, internally yelling at her body to put itself together. The house was as quiet as it had been in years, a time capsule of closed blinds and shrouded furniture.
After a minute, still soaked in sweat, she popped in the bedroom again.
“Tim. A word, please.”
Tim followed her into the hallway as if summoned out of a meeting, and Andy knelt down to him.
“Never fucking do that again,” she admonished. “Do you understand? You don’t go scratching walls or doors. Ever. If you’re shut out, you bark. You hear me?”
Tim did his best impression of comprehension.
“Try it now. Bark,” Andy ordered. “Come on. Bark.”
Kerri opened the door and ordered, “Speak!”
Tim woofed unquestioningly.
“The command to make him bark is ‘speak.’ ‘Bark’ is too close to ‘park,’?” she explained, kneeling to snuggle the dog. “Right, Tim? You’re a very smart boy when we use the right words, aren’t you?”
She stopped the petting for a second to take in Andy’s pose.
“What’s with the bat?”
Andy was going to blurt a ridiculous excuse when they were interrupted by the analog ring of the telephone in the living room. She ran downstairs to pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Did you say you know a biologist?”
It took her a while to tell Copperseed’s voice apart from the static, and a little longer to pick up the thread from their last conversation.
“Yeah. Why?”
“State can’t send a forensics expert until tomorrow. I fear we don’t have that long.”
“We don’t?” she said, self-consciously puzzled.
“I just checked on the body; it’s decomposing fast. I don’t think our freezer is cold enough. If you know someone, we need to examine it now.”
Andy glanced at Kerri on the landing upstairs.
“I’m not sure she’s ready,” Andy whispered into the phone.
“Ready for what?” Kerri asked.
Andy covered the mouthpiece. “Something’s wrong with the wheezer’s body. Copperseed says we need to check it before—”
“I can do it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” She folded her arms, lips pressed, conjuring strength all the way up from her newly found Huckleberry Hound socks. “I’m a biologist.”
“But, you know, it’s performing an autopsy on—”
“Dissection. It’s a lake creature. Local fauna,” Kerri said. “All that is required is a scientific description. Like a new species of butterfly. Might even name it after one of you guys.”
“I’d rather wait for the butterfly,” Andy said, and returned to the phone. “Deputy? Okay. She’ll do it.”
—
They were back at the police station within half an hour, the time to shower and gather some instruments from the kitchen cupboard and Kerri’s old Polaroid camera. Copperseed nodded them good morning, thus ending the formalities, and led them down a ramp and into the morgue. In a station with no forensics lab, it was no more than a bare pantry-sized cubicle with a sink and two cold chambers where bodies could be stored, often for convenience, since Blyton Hills had no funeral home. The kids were still adjusting to the dismal room when Copperseed opened one of the chambers and pulled the slab out.
Tim complained vigorously about the smell, and everybody else turned away, sleeves under their noses, mentioning several biblical characters by first name.
The thing lay facedown, minus the face: the medial limbs that sprouted from under its shoulder blades made it difficult to rest on its back. Kerri, who had avoided the body while Andy and Nate were packing it up, immediately captured some details she had not registered before: the webbed toes, the squamous skin, the growths reminiscent of anemone sticking out of the holes under its ribs.
Copperseed took a pen and pinched one of the upper arms. The flesh gave way like lukewarm wax.
“No way,” Andy complained. “It was a lot tougher a few hours ago.”
Nate shot a photograph of it, started waving the Polaroid. Tim was still yapping, unable to accept that everyone else had gotten over the smell already.
“Tim can’t be here,” Kerri said, forcing last night’s dinner back where it belonged and stepping forward to the specimen. “Take him out.”
“Nate, can you look after him?” Andy said.
“Both of you,” she firmed up. “This is a lab now.”
“But I don’t want to leave you alone with this,” Andy protested.
“I won’t be alone; the deputy will assist me,” she said, nodding toward Copperseed and pulling some cuticle scissors out of her kit. “Go, I’ll meet you at Ben’s in two hours.”
Copperseed handed her a mask, put one on himself, and prepared to work for a day as the toughest lab assistant this side of the Mississippi.
—
Nate, Andy, and Tim found themselves back on the police station porch the next minute, basking in uncontaminated air.
Nate sat down on a step, rubbing his mouth. Andy noticed the somber circles around his eyes.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He inspected Andy. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool, everyone’s okay!” Peter said, kicking litter along the sidewalk. “Fuck the signs, we’re all systems go! Locked and loaded! Five by five! I don’t even know what that one means.”
Nate popped a pill into his mouth and pocketed the bottle. Assuming Andy was waiting for the right time to ask what now, he suggested, “We could go see Dunia Debo?n.”
“Why?” Andy asked. “We’ve got the lake creature in there. What could she possibly have to do with it?”
“I don’t know. We never met her last time; since we’re reopening the case, might as well check every angle this time around.”
“And say what? ‘Hi, we just caught one of the Sleepy Lake creatures; as the granddaughter of a pirate who practiced black magic, can we have your input?’?”
“If we were still kids, what would we be more likely to do?” Nate said. “Sit here and wait, or go visit the witch’s house?”
Tim was already halfway down the block, calling over his shoulder like, Yo! Where did the witch live again?