Рита Браун: Santa Clawed

Mrs. Murphy inhaled deeply. “Fresh.”

The two scooted off.

“Hey!” Harry called to them.

“We’ll be right back,” Tucker called over her shoulder.

“This tree is so perfect—the apotheosis of Christmas trees.” Harry admired it.

“Even if for some reason I didn’t like it, bet you someone else would.” Fair lifted one side of the ball. “Heavy, but I think I can get it to the truck.”

“Honey, don’t. You’re strong as a bull, but maybe Brother Sheldon would let you borrow the forklift.”

“Good idea.”

They hadn’t taken two steps toward the square when Tucker ran past them. She carried her head to the side, something in her mouth.

Mrs. Murphy, in hot pursuit, called out, “I told you to leave it. You’re going to get us in a lot of trouble.”

Tucker refused to answer lest she drop her prize.

Harry yelled, “Tucker, what have you got?”

“She stole it.” Mrs. Murphy blew past Tucker and turned to face the dog, but Tucker, with corgi agility, leapt to the side, avoiding the swift paw.

Fair sprinted toward the powerful, low- built dog. “Tucker, drop it.”

Hearing that bass voice commanding her, Tucker did release her treasure. Standing over it, she kept a glaring eye on Mrs. Murphy.

“I don’t want the damned thing,” Mrs. Murphy, eyes large, hissed.

Harry shone the LED light on the coveted object. “Black rope. It’s what the monks use to tie their robes.”

Fair stood up, all six feet five inches of him. “I’ll give this to Brother Sheldon. Hate to think of a monk in undress.” He laughed. Then he picked it up. “Sticky.”

“Tucker, where’d you find this?” Harry asked.

Tucker led her two humans to the site.

“You just can’t leave well enough alone.”

“The blood smells so delicious.”

Trotting through the long rows of planted trees, Tucker took them to the very back. Leaning against a huge, perfectly pyramidal tree was Christopher Hewitt. Eyes wide open, mouth agape, he appeared to be calling out.

Harry, using her little light, faltered a moment as she took in the scene.

Fair stopped, too. Then the vet in him took over. He checked for a pulse. He shook his head.

“The body is cooling. It’s so cold out, though, I can’t really estimate how long he’s been dead. Shine that light here.”

When the light hit Christopher’s face, Harry moved it downward. She grimaced. His throat had been so neatly sliced one barely noticed it.The dark brown of the robe matched the blood stains.

Fair flipped open his cell and called their neighbor, Deputy Cynthia Cooper, who was on duty tonight.

“Smells wonderful.” Tucker lifted her nose to inhale the aroma of fresh blood.

“Poor guy. Poor guy,” Harry repeated to herself.

“At least it was quick. Who would do such a thing?” Fair had been two years ahead of Christopher Hewitt in high school and hadn’t known him well. “Shouldn’t we tell Brother Sheldon?”

“Listen, for all we know, Brother Sheldon killed him. When we hear the sirens, we can walk out. No telling what he’ll do if he is the murderer.”

What he did was pass out.

Cooper arrived not ten minutes after Fair had worried that Brother Sheldon was the culprit. Those ten minutes seemed so long to Harry and Fair, standing still in the biting cold.

Cooper, having first checked out the scene, brought back Brother Sheldon. He keeled over without even bending at the knee.

She knelt down to lift him at the shoulders.

“Coop, let me,” Fair said.

“Thanks. Get behind him to lift him, Fair. Sometimes they puke all over you.”

Brother Sheldon didn’t throw up; he simply passed out again.

“The hell with it.” Coop gave her full attention to the scene.

“Whoever did this worked fast and knew what they were doing,” Fair commented.

“How so?” Harry asked.

“It takes some power to cut through a throat.This is neat.”

Cooper, plastic gloves on, carefully checked the body. “Doesn’t appear there’s trauma elsewhere.” She pushed up his sleeves. No bruising appeared. The coroner would be the last word on this.

“He was turning his life around. He was so positive. I can’t believe this.” Harry was upset.

“Any ideas?” Cooper stood up.

“No,” they replied in unison.

“It’s bad enough to murder someone, but at Christmas.” Harry felt both sorrow and outrage.

Brother Sheldon moaned.

“He’ll come to when he’s good and ready.” Cooper shone her powerful flashlight on Sheldon’s face. “Ought to be interesting when we find the killer.”

“Why? I mean beyond finding out who did it?” Harry wiggled her toes in her boots, because even with Thinsulate they were cold.

“Brothers of Love. Right? Can they forgive the killer?”

Fair smelled that odd metallic tang of blood. “Better find him first. Then we can worry about forgiveness. It’s a crying shame, really.”

They heard the sirens. In the still of the night, sound carried. The sheriff’s squad car and the forensic team’s car had just driven under the railroad overpass and were now heading north.

“How do you know the people you told to stay here won’t leave?” Harry considered the shoppers standing in the lighted square.

“If they go, they’ll be suspect, which I made abundantly clear. I also took the precaution of punching their license plates into my computer.” Cooper kept a laptop in her squad car, as did the other officers.

“Smart.” Fair nodded.

“Procedure. Get as much information as you can as fast as you can without being obvious. People like to complain about the department, but then, people like to complain, period. We’re well trained.”

Brother Sheldon, laid out like a log, nearly tripped Sheriff Rick Shaw, whose eyes immediately darted to the tree, then back to Brother Sheldon.

“Is he dead?” Rick asked about Brother Sheldon as three other law- enforcement people walked with him, one with a camera.

“No. Where’s Buddy?” Cooper meant the regular crime-scene photographer, who was a freelancer.

Well prepared as the department was, the struggle for an adequate budget did create problems.

“Doak will do it,” Rick said, then added, “Why would anyone take out a monk?”

Doak called out from behind his camera. “Shine more light here, will you?”

The other members of the sheriff’s department focused their flashlights on the corpse.

Rick crossed his arms over his chest. “Doak, when you’re finished with the pictures, go get statements from the people up front. It’s cold, and they’ll want to go home.”