Stuffed by Brian M. Wiprud

Author:Brian M. Wiprud [Wiprud, Brian M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780440335450
Google: FL3k9_TZyPsC
Amazon: B000FCK5Y4
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2005-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Pygmies.” Phil eyed the Lincoln hesitantly. “In Vermont.”

Clearly, he was mulling over ways to explain it to a jury and make them believe it. I could tell by the way he’d bitten a pencil in half that the boulder on my trunk didn’t bolster my case, though the small crowd gathered in the spring twilight on the courthouse steps seemed impressed by the spectacle. The Lincoln’s backseat was stuck like a pincushion with little arrows.

“Well, they were little, and dark, with bows and arrows. What would you call them?”

“And the pygmies . . . did they throw this rock at you?”

“C’mon, how could pygmies lift a big rock like that?” I felt myself redden as the crowd’s attention turned from the Boulder Mobile to me. “This came from atop the cleft. The pygmies were charging up the hill behind me.”

After I told my absurd story, Phil led me inside, where I was compelled to repeat this yarn to Danny DA. When I got to the end, I summarized:

“So there’s these three: one who I think is a funeral director named MacTeague from Oregon, Bret, and then this cowboy and—” I quickly decided to leave Jimmy out of the picture—he didn’t fit. “Bret worked carnivals, and then there’s this sideshow in the woods where they shot little arrows at me. . . . Look, I may be going out on a limb here, but I think these carnies grabbed a dead gorilla from an Oregon zoo, maybe to make a gaff, I dunno.”

Danny squinted at the floor, a paper cup dangling from one hand and his tie undone.

“Pygmies. In Vermont.”

Phil was standing at the window, staring at the meager city lights of Brattleboro.

Then Danny asked, “What’s a gaff?”

“Yeah, you know, a carnival attraction, like a saber-toothed bass, alien fetus, mummified mermaid . . . or a clam rat. They don’t make them anymore because the traveling freak shows are extinct. Not PC.”

“Clam rat?” Danny shook his head in bewilderment. “So you’re saying that Fletcher and some carnies and a tribe of pygmy warriors and a giant thumb have stolen a dead gorilla for a sideshow attraction. For a gaff. Even though freak shows no longer exist.”

“Maybe they were going to make a yeti or something.” I shrugged. “They usually make them out of bears, but . . . anyway, that’s the way I figure it.”

Phil didn’t flinch. “Yeti?”

“Abominable Snowman.”

“Ah.” Danny pursed his lips. “So now we have Big Foot. Does Bat Boy enter into this anywhere?”

I reiterated: “It’s about the white crow.”

Phil sighed before I did.

I continued: “What this has to do with the crow is anybody’s guess, but they wanted it enough to come all the way to Manhattan to steal it and dump a lot of very valuable taxidermy in the river.”

Danny stood next to the blue cigarette-burned table, shaking his head at the floor. “I don’t see any connection. But at the same time, I can’t see why you would make up such a load of crap.

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