"Well, I'll be plucked." Harvey whistled low, looking over the murder scene. When Hawk Cooper had said Quail had been murdered, and that there was another crime scene like Peter Mole's, Harvey's flew right alongside Silas and Cooper as they passed over the woods, strong beats of his wings as if he had not just been throwing up in a highway rest stop.
“What’s that say? ‘Drawco’? What the hell is drawco?” Harvey squinted at the letters written in blood on the side of the barn. “Yeah, I think that says drawco. What is Donny doing in that cage? That is Donny Quail, right? He looks weird, though … besides being dead.…”
They were gathered around the barn that served as Forest Council headquarters, where Silas had just been the night before discussing Mole’s murder. The requisite crowd of animals gathered in a semicircle around the scene, jostling for a look at Quail, and the words on the barn.
“What’s that say?”
“ ‘Silas’.”
“Like in Silas Oaktree?”
“Who else?”
“But what are those hook marks with the dot under them?”
“Question marks. I think those are question marks.”
Some patrol animals were keeping the crowd back behind a perimeter of sticks they had set up. Rex Washer had his hands up, looking thoroughly ghosted, pleading with John Deer to keep behind the line, who was insisting he just needed to step forward because he had dropped his baseball cap. Deer said something about how he was running for Council, so it was practically his duty to explore the crime scene. Silas, Hawk, and Harvey were close up to the birdcage resting against the barn.
“Why’s Silas get to be right up there?” John Deer asked. “I should have a closer look — You’ve got to run a fair election … no picking favorites …”
Cooper called back, “Keep behind that line, Deer, or I know a few hunters who’ll pick you as a favorite to mount on their wall.”
Deer muttered something about just wanting to retrieve his cap, backing behind the line.
“Another publicity stunt, Oaktree?” Cooper said, a piece of grass dancing in his beak as he talked. “Or just upping your chances for Council?”
“Go pluck yourself, Cooper.”
“How do you explain this crap, then? Barnes is riding my tail for answers, and all I see is a second billboard for Silas Oaktree in as many days.” Cooper gestured to the birdcage, an old-fashioned brass one, and the backdrop of the barn wall, the blood used to paint the letters still not completely dry.
“Thanks for pointing it out, Cooper. Don’t know if I would’ve noticed otherwise.”
Inside the birdcage, hanging from a string around his neck, was Don Quail. His body rotated slowly; when his front came back around into view, Silas saw the Quail’s beak, which normally had been black and hooked downward, was now covered by a small yellow cone; his breast, which had been camouflage-colored plumage, was smeared with blood so it was strikingly red.
“Looks like an ugly relative,” Harvey said.
Silas looked closer. Harvey was right. Quail was done up in a crude way to look like a robin. What kind of message was the killer trying to send? … “Where’s Fox?” Silas demanded.
“Didn’t take you long to bring up your fall guy, Oaktree,” Cooper said. “But theory died right along with Council Perch Quail. Shaky Don was with Rex Washer this morning, official business — looking into a case —”
“At the Bear Cave. I know.”
Cooper looked irritated at Silas knowing details about the investigation. He went on. “Left the site — the cave — accompanied by Washer mid-morning, and immediately went to meet with myself, Barnes, and enough patrol animals to fill Noah’s swimming pool —”
“Went where?” Silas asked.
Hawk looked like he was enjoying himself, like he was after a mouse running for cover, taking his time before swooping down to savor the smaller animal’s distress. “That’s classified, Oaktree. Barnes might want you in on the investigation, but as far as I see it, you’re still just an amateur trying to play detective, and it’s —”
“They went to the Fox Den,” Harvey said. Hawk’s look, a mixture of surprise and irritation, told Silas it was true. Harvey hopped around the brass birdcage, peering in getting a closer look at Quail. Top Perch Barnes was looking over at them, his expression furious, but he was still involved talking with a group of patrol animals and Winnie Wildbush, the human forest ranger.
“I don’t see what the opinion of a junkie —” Cooper started to say, but Harvey spoke over him.
“They showed up there before noon. I was there, finishing a — uh … transaction. I was just about to leave, taking a pit stop on a branch to roll a Hop Leaf, when I saw a parade of these pomp-ass animals, led by our friend here —” He gave Cooper a smirk crafted to get under the hawk’s feathers. “— So I thought, What the hell?, and stuck around to see the action.
“Fox was there, so was Brandon Weasel … Looked to me like the Council was inspecting the Den, asking questions … I got out of there when I saw Tony Crow coming back. He’s got sharp eyes … might’ve seen me, and I didn’t want to be answering no questions. So I flew off to enjoy my purchases.”
“Great,” Hawk said. “Now I’ve got two Oaktrees bobbing their heads in where they don’t belong. Yeah,, that’s the gist of it. We were at Fox’s Den — with Fox — inspecting the place, working off your lead on the Bears. A bad lead at that —”
“Did you find anything?” Silas asked.
“No, Oaktree. Not a single piece of Bear fur. But that’s not my point. My point is we were alerted to Quail’s murder while we were with Fox. He didn’t do it, Oaktree.”
“Wait. You said Quail met you and the others at Fox’s den. Wouldn’t he have been there with you?”
“He, uh,” Hawk looked uncomfortable, the way someone who prides himself on being observant looks when he realizes he might have overlooked something. “Quail didn’t stay with the group. Shaking pretty bad. Probably too anxious to go into the Den. You know what Quail was like. Fox’s Den has a rep as a den of sin, illegalities, all that — plus being his size … you know how jumpy the Council Member is — was.”
“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” Silas said. “Quail came all the way from the Bear Cave with Rex, knowing full well where he was going. Then he meets the group there, surrounded by patrol animals and the rest of the Council — in broad daylight. Then he didn’t go in with the group on the inspection — no one noticed he was missing — and the next thing you know, someone found him dead all the way over here at the barn. This animal who found Quail then knew where you and the Council were, though as you say, it was ‘classified’, and had the initiative to go to Fox’s Den — in the deepest, darkest part of the forest — to alert you?”
Hawk was chewing his tongue, looking ready to sink his talons into Silas. “Quail was too scared to go in. He chickened out — quailed out — and when no one was looking, he bailed. He wanted to hide but didn’t want to own up to it.”
“You know this for a fact, or are you just biting at gnats,” Silas said. If no one knew he left, how did they know to find him here and kill him?”
“If I was the killer,” Harvey said. He saw Cooper’s look. “Which I’m not. My alibi is still floating in the rest stop.… But if I was, I would have lured him here. Make Quail think I needed to meet him for something, then BAM! Kill him, and cage ‘em.”
“An interesting theory, Mr. —” Barnes said, landing beside them.
“Oaktree. The Oaktree. Harvey.”
“Hmm, yes.” Barnes inspected Harvey, looking between him and Silas. “The other Oaktree. I heard Oaktree had a brother. But yes, your idea that Quail was lured here is correct.”
“It is?” Harvey sounded surprised.
“Yes. But the problem is, it was I who told Council Member Quail to meet me here. I understood his … anxieties. I saw no need for another set of eyes inspecting the Den; we found nothing conclusive, anyhow. But I had matters to discuss with Quail, and told him to meet me here, at headquarters. So unless you are suggesting I had anything to do with his demise —”
Harvey and Silas shook their heads in an adamant no. Barnes was so intimidating, Silas doubted they would have said otherwise even if Barnes’ talons had been dripping blood. Silas nodded to the barn wall.
“Killer’s got some fixation with me — Do you know what it means?”
His name, “Silas”, and question mark symbols were written over and over again on the wall, framing the birdcage on either side and above it. In the middle, right above the birdcage, about three feet off the ground, was another string of letters:
DRAWCO
The A and C were circled.
“It’s another puzzle,” Barnes said. The letters are scrambled, but you rearrange them, and it spells ‘coward’.”
“Coward.… The ‘A’ and the ‘C’ — Why are they circled?”
Barnes studied the scene. “I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the words that aren’t circled … They would spell ‘word’ unscrambled — but I don’t see what that would mean. And what the perpetrator means by the … disfigurement of Quail, I do not know. Why someone would do such a thing …”
Barnes shook his head. He looked strained, tired.
But Silas knew. Silas knew why someone would do such a thing. He remembered what Fox had said:
They’re not doing it to win something. They’re doing it to get at you, Oaktree.
And they’re not going to stop until they see you break.