“What are you doing here?” he asked, detaching himself from his headphones.
“You do realize that if you miss that target, you could skewer anything or anyone who happens to be passing back there?” I asked.
“It's posted no trespassing!” he said. He sounded fierce, but his face looked scared.
“Oh, and that makes it all right to shoot passersby?” I said, gesturing at the gash on my cheek.
“It's posted,” he said, but from the way he hunched his shoulders slightly I could see he was backing down.
“And I heard a suspicious noise over here and came to investigate,” I said. “What if you’d been a poacher? If I spotted a poacher on your father's land, what would you want me to do— ignore it?”
“If you spotted a poacher, smart thing to do would be run away as fast as you could,” Charlie said. “You don’t want to mess with those guys.”
“Good point,” I said. “I’ll tell your uncle Randall he should have warned me about that while he was showing me the back way into the zoo.”
The mention of his uncle seemed to reassure him a little, as I’d hoped it would. He nodded, and stood, slouched, looking as if he wished I’d go away.
“You should put a bandage on that,” he said, looking at my cheek.
“Do you have one?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I’ll probably live,” I said.
He hunched his shoulders again. I fished in my pocket and found a tissue. I used it to blot my wound while Charlie shifted from foot to foot.
“So you’re keeping in practice for the hunting season?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Just letting off steam, really,” he said. “I mean, everything's so screwed up now.” “Like what?” “Like my scholarship.”
“That's right,” I said. “Your uncle Randall told me about that. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Except with everything that's happened they’ll probably take it away.”
“What do you mean by ‘everything that's happened’?”
“You haven’t heard about Mr. Lanahan from the zoo trying to get me arrested for shooting one of his animals? I thought the whole town knew.”
“I hadn’t until yesterday, when your uncle told me something about it.”
“Yeah,” he said, kicking at a tree root. “And the people from the university weren’t too happy about the whole thing. I thought it would be okay once Chief Burke refused to charge me with anything, but then it seemed like the university still might take my scholarship away because of Mr. Lanahan suing me. That doesn’t seem fair!”
“No,” I said. “But colleges are like that—they hate bad PR. My fiance teaches at Caerphilly College, and I’m beginning to realize that anything I do to get myself in trouble could hurt his career.”
“Yeah,” he said. “So I guess when they hear I’m a suspect in a murder, that’ll kill it for sure.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Being a suspect isn’t so much a problem—we’re all suspects. Getting arrested wouldn’t be so good. Mainly it's getting convicted that would really mess up your football career.”
“It could happen,” he said gloomily. “I mean, Chief Burke's a good cop, don’t get me wrong, but he's a city cop. Doesn’t know beans about hunting or crossbows or anything.”
“Not many people do,” I said. “Why hunt with a crossbow, anyway?”
“It's more challenging,” he said. “Just as challenging as with a bow and arrow, in spite of what all the purists say.” “Purists?”
“Lot of bow-and-arrow hunters look down on crossbows. Say there's no skill involved, which is bull. Or that it's not fair because crossbows have a longer range, which isn’t really true, either.” His voice had risen, though he sounded more upset than angry or threatening.
“How far you can shoot an arrow or a bolt in target practice doesn’t mean anything,” he continued. “They’ve both got about the same effective range when you’re hunting—maybe forty yards max. And when they talk about crossbow hunters not making clean kills, that just—”
“Chill!” I said, backing away slightly. Clearly Charlie hadn’t yet acquired the typical Shiffley imperturbability. “I’m not arguing with you. Just asking.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It's just that I get in a lot of arguments about this with the traditional bow-and-arrow guys. Like the people over at the Sherwood Archery Range. Bunch of yuppies from the college, really. No crossbows allowed.”