Fatal Judgment. Andrew Welsh-Huggins
and swung it down hard on his knife hand. He grunted in pain and staggered backward but kept his grip on the weapon.
“What the—” I managed, eyes still on the knife, which meant I didn’t see his left hand as it shot out and grabbed me by the throat. He was shorter than me, thin and wiry, and in a fair fight I might have come out on top. At least that’s what I told myself as he tightened vice-like fingers until I started to gasp, unable to dislodge him. Unable to stop him from swinging the knife down and under, straight for my stomach. I raised my right knee and deflected the blade at the last moment. I gasped at the pain as the tip slid off my kneecap, then brought my right foot down hard on his left. He swore again and stumbled backward. I grabbed his knife hand with both of mine and squeezed his wrist. I stared at his face, up close now, taking in pale skin, watery hazel eyes, and a dark fleck just above his right cheek. He grunted, spit in my face, and, before I had time to register my discontent, head-butted me hard. I fell back, still clinging to his knife hand, and we both went down, rolling back and forth on the boardwalk like alligators in a death struggle above a real southern swamp.
Struggling for an upper hand, I grasped at his jeans, found a hole in his back pocket, and pulled, but gained nothing as the pocket tore open and my hand flung free. We rolled right and he flipped me beneath him. He won the point but lost the round as I forced his wrist against the hard edge of a supporting post jutting out of the pond and pushed with all my strength. At last he cried out in pain and his grip loosened and the knife slipped onto the deck. He reached around for it, but I got there first and pushed it over the edge. It made no more noise falling into the water than a duck disappearing below the surface after a water bug. I exhaled and was rewarded with a punch, then another, then both his hands around my neck. I raised my hands to break the grip, to find any purchase at all, but gray mist clouded my vision as I struggled to breathe. As I stared into his face, his eyes greedy with dark victory, I realized too late the fleck below his eye wasn’t mud. It was a tattoo. A tear drop—the prison emblem marking the inmate as a man who has killed. Absorbing this truth, I arched my back, trying to weaken his angle. But it was too late. He had me, and behind me was a swampy pond I might soon be floating in permanently—
“Hey!”
A voice, behind us. Tear Drop paused, his grip loosening for just a second. Just long enough. I tore his hands off my neck and rolled free, gasping like a man waking from a nightmare at dawn.
“What’s going on?”
A woman’s voice, back on the boardwalk.
I scooted farther away, saw something on the wooden deck in front of me, and swept it up with my left hand just as Tear Drop saw what I’d done. He dashed toward me as the woman called again, nearer now. He stopped. I backed myself into a viewing bench on the side of the observation deck, gently rubbed my bruised throat with my right, and tried to stand. Tear Drop glared at me, straightened, and stared at the figure approaching from behind. He turned back toward me. His eyes were no longer greedy. Now they gleamed with disappointment, and something more. I recognized it after a moment. The hunger of a hunter who still has to eat.
“You’re dead,” he said, and turned and ran.
11
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine? You can’t even stand up. Who was that? What’s going on?”
I tried to disprove the statement by standing. Mistake.
“Fellow birder,” I said, taking a breath. “We were having an ornithological dispute.”
“Bullshit. I’m calling the police.”
“Please don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Just give me a minute, OK?”
She was midthirties, with short brown hair and glasses, wearing the olive-green uniform of a park employee of some kind. She helped me to my feet and sat me on the bench. She pulled a water bottle from someplace, let me drink, then splashed the remainder on her hands and wiped my face with her fingers.
“So,” she said. “Police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?” She took a step back. “Are you the bad guy here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then why wait?”
“I need to look at something.”
“Like what?”
Without replying I opened my left hand. In it sat Tear Drop’s wallet, which fell onto the observation deck after I tore open his pants pocket. So at least that was something.
HER NAME WAS DEANNA Fleischer. She was a state wildlife biologist with a wetlands specialty. I knew this because she told me, but also because she handed me her card, after I handed her mine.
“What’s a private detective doing in Mendon Woods?” she said, suspicion back in her eyes. “Whose side are you on?”
“Side?”
“The lawsuit?”
“Neither, as far as I know. Also, I’m an investigator, not a detective.”
“In that case, what are you investigating? And who was that?”
“I don’t know. I came up here on a job and he attacked me.” I decided not to mention the knife. That might override my lack of interest in involving the police.
“What kind of job?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t really know what it is.”
“You’re not making much sense. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Right as rain,” I said, doubtfully.
“So why not call the police?”
“I don’t have time.”
“Don’t have time? What’s the big hurry?”
I didn’t respond. I was preoccupied now, going through the contents of the blue nylon wallet. There wasn’t much. A little money, mostly ones and fives, and a lone receipt from the day before from Down Home Buffet, a country-cooking restaurant in a place called Mohican Township whose phone number indicated it was closer to Cleveland than Columbus. Oddly, the wallet also held two driver’s licenses. The first belonged to Tear Drop, who apparently was someone named Gary Phipps of Springfield, Missouri, when he wasn’t a knife-wielding would-be assassin.
The second license belonged to Laura M. Porter.
“YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE OK to drive?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure?” Fleischer asked. “Maybe you should get yourself checked out first.”
“I keep aspirin in my van. And some superhero bandages from when my kids were little. The Spiderman ones usually do the trick.”
We were back in the parking lot after a slower-than-normal walk up the trail. She had agreed, reluctantly, not to call the police, at least not right then.
“I’ve never heard of a private eye driving a Honda Odyssey,” she said. “My husband always says they look like they’ve got a big butt.”
“What can I say? My Karmann Ghia’s in the shop. Plus you wouldn’t believe the gas mileage. And you can fit a decent-sized magnifying glass in the glove compartment.”
“Where are you going now?”
“I guess I’m going to find some country cooking.” I explained about the receipt. “I’m overdue for some biscuits and gravy.”
“Isn’t that a bit, I don’t know, dangerous?”
“Maybe.