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Muskrat Blues

by Ianus J. Wolf

The phone was ringing when I stepped into my office in the early afternoon. I barely had time to rush to my desk before my answering service would take the call. Then I would have had to go through the rigmarole of calling them up and getting the message right after someone had left it. I took a second to catch my breath once I had the receiver in my trotter. Rushing across the office isn't good for my leg, and I'd just been on a decent hike through the city after closing things out with my last client. I'd had to inform a deer that his doe was stepping out on him just like he suspected. I felt for him, with what I've known of heartache.

Finally, I put the phone to my ear. "Harrison." I said through a few heavy breaths by way of hello. A new client would at least know they'd properly reached Harrison Investigations.

"Hello, Mike," said the growling voice of Grimaldi, a cougar police detective who I recognized from the first syllable. "I'm giving you a courtesy call."

His voice was just somber enough in its neutral, official tones that I had a bad feeling. "What kind of courtesy call?"

"Alex Richards is dead," he answered flatly. Grimaldi wasn't the kind to beat around the bush or take his time with bad news.

My snout sank a little bit, and my eyes closed. Alex and I went back a long time. Back as far as the days when I was on the force, even so far as taking the fall with me when the department needed a couple patsies for PR and decided a wounded pig and a loud-mouthed muskrat wouldn't be much of a loss. We'd gone through entering the private sector together and helped each other back and forth through the process of getting licensed and occasionally pooling our resources on cases. He also kept his ear to the ground for me about anything that might lead to finding Michelle. I gave him a pittance each month out of pride, even though he'd have done it for free. I hadn't seen him the last few weeks owing to both of us being busy on cases. Now he was dead.

"Where?" I asked.

Grimaldi sighed on the other end of the line. "Now Mike, this is police business. Unless someone's paying you--"

"Where?" I said again.

"Damn it, Mike, this was a courtesy; don't make this hard on me."

"I'm not asking to be cut in; I just want to know where it happened."

There was silence for a moment except for light, agitated breathing. "We found him along a trail in Migorsky Park. You don't want to see him, Mike. He's torn up and--"

I hung up and didn't let him finish. I told my somewhat bum leg to stop whining because we had places to be. Like Migorsky Park and wherever all the pretty police tape was marking the area.

***

I'd caught a cab to the entrance of the park to give my leg a rest and avoid the hassle of parking so close to downtown. It helped some, but I still had to make my way through the trail. I was used to the slight limp slowing me down just a little and working around it when I had to. It was a memento from my last official case with the police. I'd say you should see the other guy, but he's in Oak Lawn Cemetery and the funeral was closed casket.

The day was making my leg worse though. Between my client and hearing about Alex, it was too full of reminders of Michelle, which always made the leg flare up. Michelle, the beautiful brown-furred bunny that shared a bungalow with me for a couple years and always put off the idea of actually getting married. Who would have drinks and game nights with me and Alex and whatever skirt he was into that week. Who worried about the life we'd have trying to make it together. And who, once she knew I was going to walk with a limp for the rest of my life, forced me to come home to a half-empty little bungalow and a letter scented with stale perfume.

I pushed the memories out of my thoughts, because all they could do for me right now was make it harder to walk. And I was coming up on the part of the path where yellow tape had cordoned off an area. I could see Hank Grimaldi, already back from whatever payphone he'd used to call me. When the tawny cougar looked up and saw me, he rolled his eyes and stalked up to meet me in his ill-fitting suit. Even before he blocked me, I could tell he hadn't been lying about Richards.

The plump little muskrat body was lying in its own half-dried pool of blood just off the trail, surrounded by a few smaller pools here and there in the grass. From where I was I could vaguely tell some of him was missing and see occasional glimpses of white bone. Any clothing was ripped to shreds. I could make out one glassy eye staring at nothing while uniformed officers tagged spots on the ground and collected bits of extra evidence. The whole thing almost made my gorge rise, but I had plenty of experience at pushing that back down. Then Grimaldi stood in my way.

"Mike, this is a police investigation. What are you doing here?"

"Checking up on an old friend. Want to tell me what happened or should I just start disrupting things around here in nice, perfectly legal ways?"

Grimaldi gave an exasperated sigh. "He was found late this morning by a Labrador taking a morning jog. Probably would have been found earlier, but it's a Saturday and not as many early risers. The Lab called it in; we came out and found him pretty much as you see him. We questioned the dog, but there's no reason to think he's a suspect. No blood on his breath, no connection to Al--to the deceased. Clearly, this is a predatory killing, so we're going to investigate the area, see if we have anyone with a history of stalking or other priors, but..." The cougar trailed off, spread his arms wide, and gave me a look.

I snorted and nodded. It was something you got used to in this city when you were one of those species certain folks look at as a lesser creature. Hunting anything on two legs had been illegal for a long time on paper, and for the most part it worked. Most inhabitants of the world at large and our fair city at least managed to see people like me as ... people on some level. But everyone also knew there were still certain neighborhoods you didn't get caught in after sundown if you lacked claws and fangs, or at the very least antlers or horns.

When a predatory killing did happen, the department made a token effort to investigate and sometimes found their culprit. But unless they already had teeth impressions or a specific scent sample on file that we could match pretty quickly to a known suspect, the case would get cold practically before the body had a chance to. No one really wanted to sweat too many resources over some defenseless leaf-muncher that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Grimaldi and I both knew this.

Yet when I looked around him at the scene, something bugged me about it. Something in the back of my mind...

Like what you just read? Pick up _Inhuman Acts_from FurPlanet for the full story. Find it at a convention dealers' den or order online at http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=811Thanks for reading!