The Penguin Who Knew Too Much(62)

“We’re trying to withhold the bit about the crossbow,” Horace said. “You can’t go—”

“I know that. That's why I’m asking you instead of, say, going to see Ms. Ellie at the library, or wandering down to the gun store and pretending I want to buy one.”

“Okay,” Horace said, slightly mollified. “We don’t really know yet. It's not like you get a whole lot of calls for crossbow forensics. With firearms, it's mainly the rifling that lets you tie a bullet to a specific gun. That and the firing pin. Crossbows don’t have either.”

“So there's no point in testing them?”

“We’re still going to test them, yes,” Horace said. “The gun shop's lending us half a dozen brand-new crossbows that couldn’t possibly have been used for the murder, and we’re going to take them over to the Clay County bow range and test-shoot them and see what we can learn. And if we find out that shooting leaves some kind of markings on the bolt that we can tie back to a particular crossbow, then maybe there will be some point in seizing every crossbow in the county.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “And explains why Charlie Shiffley still has his crossbow to use for target practice, instead of having to turn it over to Chief Burke.”

“When we find Charlie Shiffley, I think we’ll be seizing his crossbow even if we don’t yet know what to do with it,” Horace said.

“You haven’t found him yet?”

“No—and what's this about target practice? Have you seen him?”

“Yes, he was—”

“We’ve got to tell the chief.”

He put down his plate and practically dragged me into the house. The chief was now sharing his makeshift office in the dining room with three overhead sloths and a cage full of exotic rabbits. He didn’t seem particularly pleased with the company. Or, for that matter, particularly grateful to hear my news.

“Why the devil didn’t you come straight back and tell us?” he snapped.

“Because I had no idea you were still looking for Charlie,” I said. “He lives only a couple of miles from here, and his uncle and his father have been hanging around here most of the last day or so, and they knew you were looking for him. I assumed you’d already talked to him.”

“Where exactly did you see him?” the chief asked.

I described the dirt road and the place where the tree had fallen over the fence. The chief turned down my offer to show them, which was just as well. If I went along, once I got to the place where I’d parked, the only thing I could do was wander around in the woods, hoping to hit on the clearing where Charlie had been doing his target practice, and they could do that much for themselves.

So as the chief and most of his officers drove off, sirens blaring, I watched from the front porch.

“Cool,” Rob said from the rocking chair where he was lounging. “Something up?”

The thought of explaining my day made me feel suddenly tired.

“Who knows?” I said, sitting down on the top step.

I heard a gruff bark and looked down to see Spike, tethered to the porch railings.

“Here, Spike,” Rob said. “Have another squames de chats.”

He tossed something off the porch onto the ground beside Spike, who pounced on it and devoured it in a single gulp. I leaned against the railing and closed my eyes, enjoying the relative peace and quiet of the front yard.

“Where are they going in such an all-fired hurry?”

I looked around to see Vern Shiffley frowning at the departing police convoy.

“They’re off to find Charlie,” I said. “I’m afraid I let it slip that I’d seen him in the woods.”

“Damn fool kid,” Vern muttered. “Don’t know what he thinks he's doing.”

I could see a curious range of emotions on his face—not just the usual exasperation and protectiveness of a parent who sees his child doing something stupid, but a faint hint of fear.

“Does he even know the police are after him?” I asked.

“Course he knows,” Vern said. “Chief Burke said he wanted to see the boy, so I told him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course! What kind of—”

“What exactly did you say?”

Vern thought about it for a second.

“He came in a couple of minutes after his curfew last night,” he said. “He has a ten p.m. curfew on a school night, and midnight on weekends, and lately, more often than not, he's been careless about it, so I was a little short with him, maybe. I asked if he’d heard the news about Patrick Lanahan, and he said he had. And then I said that the chief wanted to talk to him, on account of the bad blood between us and Lanahan, and did he want me to go down to the station with him tomorrow. And he said no.”