Dead Duck (Flynt & Steele Mysteries Book 2)

  DEAD DUCK

  FLYNT & STEELE MYSTERY #2

  by

  Micheal Maxwell

  &

  Warren Keith

  Copyright © 2020 Micheal Maxwell & Warren Keith

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Micheal Maxwell.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Please Consider This

  About the Authors

  CHAPTER ONE

  The quiet morning was shattered by an excited, slightly out of breath voice that seemed altogether happy.

  “In your dreams!”

  The faint but slowly growing sound of what, at first, sounded almost like some odd drumbeat followed. Around the bend came several college-aged young men jogging in the road that ran alongside Puta Gorda Community College. The crowd was led by a sinewy young man in a red t-shirt and blue running shorts. The boastful comment came from him, and with good reason. Three minutes ago, he was at the back of the pack. The rest of the group stepped up the pace but the young man in the lead turned and started to run backward, taunting the rest of the team.

  “Come on ladies, you’ll never catch me that way!”

  Stillman Keir, or Tilly to his friends, family, and teammates could often be quite full of himself. He was exceptionally handsome, physically fit, and found a way of being both encouraging and a bully all at the same time. Love him or hate him (and there was a perfect mix of both within the rest of the runners), Tilly was a natural leader. It was why the members of the Puta Gorda Community College Cross Country Team put up with his smart-aleck remarks as they came over a low rise in the street.

  Tilly led them off of the street and into a trailhead that stuck out at the edge of the woods, just a few yards off of the college’s main entrance. The rest of the team followed him. Some were happy to be out running first thing on a Friday morning, but Tilly could tell there were a few—mostly the freshmen—that were oddly daydreaming about what it might be like to sleep in on a Friday.

  Tilly, however, loved it. He loved running and he loved nature. He frowned on the posers that only ran on flat sidewalks and tracks. To him, it wasn’t even running unless you were having to keep an eye out for stray tree roots, fallen branches, rock outcroppings, snakes, and—

  “What the hell is that!”

  The question came from somewhere near the center of the pack. Tilly spotted the runner, a slightly pudgy sophomore named Brent, pointing to the trees behind Tilly. Brent stopped running and was looking queerly out into the forest. They were about a mile off of the campus now, far enough away to feel like the school wasn’t even there.

  “Looks like your mom,” another of the runners said, though there was very little humor in his voice.

  Tilly turned back around, his back to the runners, and his eyes set ahead. He looked up where Brent was pointing and spotted it right away. It took about three seconds for him to actually understand what he was seeing.

  A camouflage-painted pair of legs were dangling from the crotch of a tree about eight feet off the ground. At first, Tilly thought the legs were simply wearing a very tight pair of camo pants, but no…the legs were naked and were sloppily painted camo colors: grey, that weird green, and black.

  One by one the group came to a stop behind him as if standing behind an invisible fence. Tilly realized all their eyes were on him so he did his best to play the part of the leader and took a few steps towards the tree and those legs.

  Standing back from the tree just far enough to see clearly, but not close enough to strain his neck, Tilly gazed up and could see the body connected to the dangling legs.

  It was a young muscular man’s body, naked but covered head to toe in camouflage body paint. A necklace of feathers that was draped around his neck hung down to the center of his chest. Tilly cocked his head, the presence of the feathers somehow bringing his mind to a screeching halt. He took a step closer to study them and realized they were duck feathers. Twigs, leaves, and those feathers stuck out of his hair in a way that looked too natural to be accidental. It was as if Mother Nature’s junk drawer exploded. Lacerations covered the young man’s face, but that was hardly the most interesting thing.

  The head of a duck protruded from his mouth.

  “Anybody got their phone?” Tilly turned to face the gawking collection of runners.

  “You know the rules,” one of the runners nearest him said. “No phones on runs.”

  “Like that ever stopped anybody!” Tilly rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  “Got mine,” said Brent. He waved his phone in the air, his eyes still on the body.

  “Call 911,” Tilly ordered. “This is sort of messed up, huh?”

  The entire Puta Gorda Community College Cross Country Team nodded their heads in unison, still looking up to the body. Four dead eyes stared back down to them—the eyes of the deceased naked young man and the black eyes of the duck’s head.

  * * *

  The pair of detectives that showed up on the trail an hour and a half later were almost as peculiar as the sight of the naked camouflaged guy and the gruesome snack hanging out of his mouth. One was tall and looked a bit like a swollen funeral director. The other was small and looked to have never combed his hair. A few of the runners from the cross-country team that stuck around would later tell their friends that the short one resembled a leprechaun.

  When Comrade Flynt approached the tree where the body was hanging, he was holding the last bite of a donut. The remaining bite seemed to have more sprinkles than one entire donut would hold. When he looked up the body, he slowly put the last bite of the donut into his mouth. When he chewed, the sound of sprinkles being pulverized could be heard on the trail.

  His partner, Noah Steele, looked over to him with an annoyed look. “You done?” he asked.

  Flynt held up a finger as he made a show of chewing faster. After finally gulping it down, he nodded and said: “Good to go.”

  “Initial thoughts, Detective Flynt?” Steele asked.

  Flynt looked at the body for a long moment. They were debriefed upon leaving the station, and given the rundown: a cross country team over by Puta Gorda Community College was out for a practice run when they came by a naked body hanging in a tree. The body was covered in camo body paint and there was a ducks’ head sticking out of its mouth.

  Sure enough, Flynt and Steele were staring at that very thing. Steele had seen worse in his time as a detective, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything this strange.

  “Flynt?” he asked, mak
ing sure his partner didn’t let his mind wander.

  “Duck or goose?” Flynt asked.

  Steele studied the necklace of feathers around the victim’s neck. They matched the feathers of the duck’s head sticking out of the victim’s mouth.

  “Duck, for sure. The feathers match.”

  “No. I mean to eat. Which do you prefer?”

  “Neither. The correct answer is chicken.”

  Flynt made a hmm sound. It was a ridiculous question, given what they were faced with. But Steele was quickly learning to roll with Flynt’s odd behavior and quirkiness. There was some sort of method to the man’s madness; Steele couldn’t figure out what it was, though.

  “Steele, do you think it’s okay for a man to not like to hunt?” He was still staring at the body and the duck head as if his questions were directly related to the grotesquerie.

  “I don’t like to hunt. Too much work. I’ll just go to Ralph’s. Their meat is cheaper in the long run.”

  “Breast or drumstick?”

  “Thigh.” Steele sighed and then leaned in closer to his partner so none of the runners could hear him. “Reign it in, Flynt. Focus.”

  As they looked to the body in the tree, Steele noticed two men coming their way from the other direction along the trail. It was two policemen, the occupants of at least one of the two police cars Flynt and Steele walked by as they entered the trailhead back at the parking lot by Buchanan Park.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant,” one of the cops said. He was a stocky patrolman, on the older side.

  “Good morning,” Steele replied. “You mind telling me why these kids are still allowed to be here?”

  “Crap,” the second officer said. She was tall, on the young side, and raven black hair. “We were too worried about questioning them. They’ve been helpful in showing us the lay of the land.”

  “All the same…why don’t the two of you push them back out towards the park? They have no business here.”

  The cops both nodded. The older gentleman looked to the seven or eight runners that were standing nearby. “You heard him. We appreciate the help, but we need to get you out of here.”

  “Wait,” Steele said. He eyed the group and asked: “Any of you know him?”

  They all looked back up to the tree as if they needed to look again just to be sure. He got a few vocal no’s and lots of shaking of the heads.

  “There’s a girl, though, in the back of Archevo’s car,” the woman officer said. “She’s pretty shaken up. She kept pointing at the victim and calling out a name, seemed to recognize him. She clammed up when we tried to calm her down and get the name.”

  “Shock?”

  “Could be. I was going to have the paramedics take a look at her when you arrived.”

  Steele observed the runners and frowned. “This is an all-male team. Why was there a girl out here?”

  One of the runners stepped forward. “She’s not on the team. She came running through about five minutes after I called it in.”

  “And you are?” Steele asked.

  “Tilly Keir, the team captain. The girl, she was just out for a run. There’s a lot of runners that use these campus trails. It’s not just the cross-country team.”

  “She say anything?”

  “Not that I could make out. She was trying to talk, but yeah…like you said. I think she was in shock.”

  Steele considered this as he saw another pair of uniformed people walking along the trail. He recognized one of the faces but did not know the name to go with it. He was still struggling to place names with faces at the precinct. It all still felt brand new to him. What he did know was that the familiar face and the other face that came along beside it were both from Forensics.

  “Lieutenant,” the familiar face said as they approached. “You okay? Can we step in for now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “We’re just going to snap photos and see if we can get some casts of the footprints around the tree. For now, I don’t think we should move the body. That high up, just to preserve the body, we’re going to probably need to call a fire truck.”

  “Agreed.” With that, Steele nudged Flynt. “I’m going to go talk to this girl that seemed to recognize the victim. You want to come or do you need to take it in longer?”

  “I’ll stay here a second,” Flynt said, still looking up to the body. “It’s making me wonder, though…”

  “Wonder what, exactly?”

  “My favorite duck has always been Donald. But he never wore pants. You ever notice that? Mickey and Minnie, they wore pants. Even Goofy wore pants. But not Donald…”

  Steele looked to the ground, hoping the Forensics guys didn’t hear. “I’ll be back at the parking lot if you need me, Flynt.”

  Steele turned and headed back to the parking lot, hoping the girl that came running through earlier could offer up a positive ID. As he walked, he silently cursed Flynt. He was right. Donald didn’t wear pants. But neither did Daisy. Did she? Steele wasn’t sure.

  Steele sighed and shook his head. Apparently, his eccentric partner was starting to rub off on him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A small crowd started to gather behind the yellow crime scene tape when Steele made it back to the parking lot. More police arrived, keeping the looky-loos behind the tape. There were now three police cars in the parking lot. Two were empty, but another one was occupied by a frail-looking officer he knew as Archevo and an equally small girl. The back doors were open, and the girl in the back was sitting half-in and half-out of the car.

  Steele went over to the car and gave Archevo a nod. “You mind if I have a word?”

  “By all means,” Archevo said.

  Steele walked to the opened back door and looked at the girl. She was the type that was likely twenty but looked as young as sixteen. The fact that she recently cried and looked very pale only made her look younger.

  “You doing okay?” Steele asked.

  The girl made no response. She looked up at him and he saw how red-rimmed and wide her eyes were. He hated the thought, but she reminded him of a creepy girl from one of those Japanese horror movies.

  “I could really use your help. My name is Noah Steele, a detective. One of the runners told me you know the young man in the tree. Is that right?”

  The girl nodded her head but made no sound.

  “Can you tell me his name?”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. When she opened her mouth to speak, she did it slowly. “Carson.”

  It was all she was able to get out before breaking down in sobs.

  Steele leaned against the back of the patrol car, not wanting her to feel pressured. “Can you tell me Carson’s last name?”

  The young woman’s sobbing stopped, but she continued to whimper. “Butler.”

  “Carson Butler. Were you close, Miss…?”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “No, not really. That’s just the thing. I don’t know why I’m so upset. Just how weird and shocking it all looked, I guess.”

  “So, you knew him, but you weren’t close?”

  “We went to high school together. He was a jock. We had a lot of classes together over the years. Since grade school, actually. When we found out we were taking some of the same classes, we had a laugh about it and that was it.”

  “What’s your name?” This question earned Steele an icy glare.

  “Will I have to go to court?”

  A sudden dislike for the girl came over Steele. Kids these days, always assuming everyone was out to get them. “Only if you refuse to give me your name,” he finally answered.

  “Melanie. What do you need my name for?”

  “Just for my notes. What’s your last name?”

  “Villapiano.”

  “You certainly seemed upset for not being close. Are you going to be okay now?”

  “Oh yeah. Like I said, I guess I was kind of shocked when I saw him up there.” She wiped a few tears away and did her best to regain her composu
re. She did legitimately look embarrassed.

  Steele took down Melanie Villapiano’s number before leaving her with Archevo again. He noted the crowd behind the tape getting bigger. He heard murmurs, assuming any number of rumors were already starting to circulate.

  Steele smirked. They were all going to freak out when the firetruck arrived.

  * * *

  Flynt was very much aware that the sight before him was a gruesome one, but it was too fascinating to not look at. For some reason, his eyes were drawn to the necklace of feathers. If they were not on the neck of a dead body, if the duck weren’t beheaded, and the head wasn’t in the dead body’s mouth, the necklace of feathers might have actually been pretty.

  “Flynt, are you standing in the exact same spot?”

  It was Steele’s voice. He did not have to turn to see his face to know this.

  “Maybe. Probably. That necklace…it’s weird.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Another voice responded. It, too, was familiar but this time Flynt turned to identify it. He saw Paru Sankaran, the medical examiner, standing by Steele. He was looking up into the tree with the sort of curiosity often seen on the faces of children that have happened upon a beehive.

  “Now, this is a strange one,” Sankaran said. He sounded delighted.

  “The girl with Archevo gave me an ID,” Steele said. “Carson Butler. He attended at least a few classes here. She says he was a jock. I didn’t ask if he was into sports because she’s clearly in shock. I didn’t want to push too hard so early.”

  “Glad you got a name,” Sankaran said. “Naked people tend to not be very forthcoming with their personal details.” The ME chuckled at his own joke.

  “You always have fingerprints,” Flynt argued.

  “It was a bit of a joke, you see. Naked people don’t have any place for a wallet.”

  “Oh, I get it.” But he didn’t. But not getting jokes was nothing new for Flynt.

  “I’m afraid I’m useless until that body comes down,” Sankaran said. “But from the feathers and camo paint alone, I think it’s a safe bet that I’m going to find something worth talking about.”