The Kiskadee of Death Read Online Free Page B

who found the body to follow me back to the observation deck to give statements while our forensics team processes the scene. The rest of you need to clear out and give my guys space to do their jobs.”
    â€œWhat happened?” Rosalie, the volunteer naturalist we’d met on the deck, asked, tears brimming in her eyes and lips trembling. “I just saw him a few hours ago.”
    The chief held up his hands and motioned for us all to move back from the edge of the pond. “I can’t share anything at this point. I need everyone out of here and on the deck.”
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    I glanced around at what had grown into a small crowd of people in the aftermath of our unfortunate sighting.
    Of the birders who’d been with us at Alligator Lake, the short woman with the straw hat and one of the men sat together at a table near the deck railing, quietly talking, while the remaining two fellows from our original group were listening to the instructions the local chief was giving to a crew of his deputies. Several detectives were comparing notes. Rosalie sat in a chair surrounded by other park personnel, saying nothing and wiping her eyes with a crumpled ivory handkerchief, while standing nearby, the park superintendent spoke quietly into her cell phone.
    â€œI wonder if they’ve located Buzz Davis yet,” I said. “As the last one to see his friend Birdy alive, I’m sure the chief and detectives will have plenty of questions for him.”
    Luce took a drink from the bottle of water she’d set on the table between us.
    â€œI think I heard one of the park people saying he was going to go look for Buzz on the other side of the levee straight south from here,” she said, wiping a line of perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. “I gathered it’s a good spot for Sandpipers.”
    â€œIt is,” said one of the birders who’d just been hovering near the chief and deputies.
    He was the white-haired birder we’d met at the lake. “I heard that you kids are visiting from Minnesota,” he said, extending his hand to shake mine. “I’m Schooner Benedict from Duluth.”
    â€œI’m Bob White,” I replied, “and this is my wife, Luce. We live in Savage on the southwestern side of the Twin Cities. Nice to meet you.”
    â€œI don’t know that I’d call the circumstances ‘nice,’ given that we’ve got a dead birder on our hands,” Schooner said, “but it’s always good to see another Minnesotan down here. I’m a snow bird myself. A Winter Texan, we call it.”
    â€œSo I’ve heard,” I said. I glanced at his wildly flowered Hawaiian shirt and the beat-up straw hat that topped his snowy white hair.
    Schooner laughed.
    â€œI know. I look more like an escapee from a Caribbean cruise ship in this get-up, but I’m really a dyed-in-the-wool North Shore boy at heart. I grew up fishing Lake Superior and hiking along Hawk Ridge in Duluth before anyone called it Hawk Ridge. Heck, when I was six years old, the only people who even knew raptors were migrating along there were the local guys who used the hawks for target practice.”
    He took off his hat and held it over his heart, his face apologetic.
    â€œI’m ashamed to say I shot at those hawks a few times, too, when I was a kid,” he confessed. “What can I say? I was young and stupid. Appreciating the hawks and eagles and all the other birds came with maturity.”
    â€œAh, don’t let him fool you,” a raspy male voice warned us.
    The voice belonged to the man who had been sitting with the straw-hat woman at the table on the deck. He, too, had been in the group at Alligator Lake, I realized. Like the woman with the hat, he was short and round, but instead of straw, the hat on his head was a cloth ball cap with the White Sox baseball team logo on it.
    â€œHe’s not nearly as mature as he should be, seeing