The Searcher(43)

“Nope,” Cal says. “Might take the puppy, though.”

“If it’s outa that beagle of hers, you might as well. That’s a fine dog. Is that where you’ve been the day? Cuddling puppies?”

“Nah. Went for a walk up the mountain. Stood in a patch of bog, though, so I came home.” Cal holds up his wet boot.

“Watch yourself around them bogs, now,” Mart says, inspecting the boot. Today he’s wearing a dirty orange baseball cap that says BOAT HAIR DON’T CARE. “You don’t know their ways. Step in the wrong patch and you’ll never step out again. They’re fulla tourists; eat ’em like sweeties, so they do.” He shoots Cal a wicked slantwise look.

“Gee,” Cal says. “I didn’t realize I was taking my life in my hands.”

“And that’s before you start on the mountainy men. They’re all stone mad, up there; split your head open as soon as look at you.”

“Tourist board wouldn’t like you,” Cal says.

“Tourist board hasn’t been up them mountains. You stay down here, where we’re civilized.”

“I might do that,” Cal says, reaching to open his gate. And, when Mart doesn’t move: “I haven’t been to town, man. Sorry ’bout that.”

The mischief falls off Mart’s face instantly and completely, leaving it grim. “I’m not here looking for biscuits,” he says. He takes one more hard draw on his cigarette and throws it into a puddle. “Come on up to my back field. I’ve something to show you.”

Mart’s sheep are clumped together in the near field. They’re edgy, jostling and picking up their feet nervously, not grazing. The far field is empty, or almost. In the middle of the green grass is a rough pale heap, not immediately identifiable.

“One of my best ewes,” Mart says, swinging the gate open. His voice has a flat tone so far from its usual snappy lilt that Cal finds it a little bit unsettling. “Found her this morning.”

Cal walks round the ewe the way he would walk a crime scene, keeping his distance and taking his time. Clusters of big black flies are busy among the white wool. When he moves closer he waves an arm to make them rise, looping and buzzing angrily, so he can get a clear view.

Something bad has got at the sheep. Its throat is a mess of clotted blood; so is the inside of its mouth, lolling too wide open. Its eyes are gone. A rectangular patch on its side, two hand-spans across, is flayed to the ribs. Under its tail is a great red hole.

“Well,” Cal says. “This isn’t good.”

“Same as Bobby Feeney’s,” Mart says. His face is hard.

Cal is examining the grass, but it’s too springy to hold prints. “I looked,” Mart says. “In the muck out by the road, as well. There’s nothing to see.”

“Kojak pick up any trail?”

“He’s a herd dog, not a tracking dog.” Mart tilts his chin at the ewe. “He didn’t like this at all, at all. He went pure mental. Didn’t know whether to attack it or run for his life.”

“Poor guy,” Cal says. He squats to look more closely, still keeping some distance—the rich smell of rot is already starting to seep from the ewe. The edges of the wounds are clean and precise, like they were made by a sharp knife, but Cal knows from shooting the shit with the Homicide guys that dead skin can do strange things. “Bobby lost any more sheep?”

“He has not,” Mart says. “He’s been out on his land half the nights this last while, hoping to spot the little green men coming down for more, and he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of anything worse than a badger. You tell me: what animal is cute enough to take just the one sheep from a farm, and then move on from a place where it knows there’s food, as soon as the farmer’s on guard?”

Cal was wondering the same thing. “Big cat might, maybe,” he says. “But you don’t have those here, do you?”

“They’re cute hoors, all right,” Mart says. He narrows his eyes at the hills. “We haven’t, not native, anyhow. But who knows what someone mighta wanted to get rid of. They’re a great place for getting rid of things, them mountains.”

Cal says, “A human would be smart enough to move on after one sheep.”

Mart doesn’t look away from the mountains. He says, “Someone that’s gone in the head, is what you’re talking about. Gone rotten in his mind.”

“Anyone round here fit that description?”

“No one that I know of. But we mightn’t know, sure.”

“In a place this size?”

“You’d never know what maggot’s ating someone’s mind,” Mart says. “The Mannions’ lad—lovely young fella, never a bit of trouble to his mammy and daddy—a few year back, he threw a cat on a bonfire. Burned it up alive. No drink on him or nothing. He just fancied doing it.”

Anyone could do anything; even, apparently, here. Cal says, “Where’s the Mannion kid these days?”

“He went to New Zealand, after that. Hasn’t been back.”

“Huh,” Cal says. “So you gonna call the police? Animal Control?”

Mart flicks him a glance exactly like Trey’s moron look. “OK,” Cal says. He’s wondering what Mart wants from him here. Things have got plenty out of hand already; he doesn’t plan on adding a dead sheep to his caseload. “Your sheep, your call.”