"Are you sure nobody else wants to come?" Andy inquired, as he moved toward the front door.
Joe simply staggered into the kitchen, mumbling "Coffee,"while CC, Jinxx, and Jon shook their heads. Faith looked up from her laptop and said, "Nah, I'll take a pass today. You guys have a nice run, though."
Andy joined Ashley, Jake, Jesse, and Yanni at the door, all of them wearing sweats and sneakers. The plan was to jog to the end of the private road and back, roughly a mile each way.
The plan changed abruptly the moment they stepped off of the porch and looked across the yard.
"Holy shit!" Andy and Jake shouted simultaneously, while Yanni's jaw dropped, and Jesse went pale.
"What the actual fuck happened here?" Ashley asked in a startled tone .
Hearing the commotion, everyone else piled onto the porch, and a collective gasp emerged as they saw what the guys had found.
Lying in the grass, midway between the porch and the driveway, was the gutted carcass of a large buck, its large brown eyes now glazed over and empty.
Everyone stepped into the yard, encircling the animal, and Joe said " I guess Jinxx was right about the coyotes."
"No." Faith responded.
"What the hell do you mean, 'No'?" Andy inquired .
"There's no blood," she stated flatly.
Everyone stared at her in confusion for several seconds, then a look of comprehension crossed Ashley's face. "Fuck, she's right!" he said. "If this thing had been killed here, it would be laying in a puddle of blood. Not to mention that at least one of us would've heard something! Hell, it's almost right under your window, Andy, and you wake up at the drop of a fucking hat!"
"So do you think that maybe some of the locals don't like the idea of a bunch of 'satanic rock and roll weirdos' staying here, and decided to try to scare us off?" CC asked.
" Who knows?" Yanni responded. "But no matter what it's about, we all need to start being more careful. We can talk about it some more later, but right now we should get this thing out of here."
They abandoned the idea of jogging, and, along with CC, wrestled the heavy carcass off of the lawn and into the back of the pickup truck that Ashley drove up from the detached garage behind the house. Before they moved it, Joe made sure to film it, just in case they might need the footage later.
They drove a couple of miles down the road, then pulled over into a small clearing, and carried the animal into the treeline.
"Nobody lives out here, and it's far enough away from the house that we won't smell it if the animals don't finish it off," Jesse commented.
"Yeah, this is probably the best we can do right now," Andy replied.
"Do you think we should've called the cops and reported it?" Jake questioned.
"I don't know what they could have done, there's no way to tell where it came from," Yanni said, with a frustrated expression. "Remember, Joe said that camera over the front door isn't working. If he can't figure out how to fix it, we need to get ahold of Allan and let him know. I mean, it is his place, maybe he has a handyman around here somewhere. Right now, I think we should just head back."
They all nodded in silent accord, and piled back into the truck for the return trip.
_________________________________________
The next morning, when Jinxx attempted to go out onto the porch and nearly tumbled over a dead cow that had somehow been placed in front of the door, Yanni reversed his earlier position and called the police. About half an hour later, a squad car pulled up in front of the house, with the words "Tuttlesburg Police" emblazoned on the door, and a uniformed officer emerged from the vehicle. It was closely followed by an unmarked car being driven by an African-American woman who appeared as though she might be in her early forties. As she got out of the car, Jon and Faith, who were at the window, saw the officer point toward the house, apparently drawing the woman's attention to something.
She gestured to him, and he reached into his car and retrieved something, then he mounted the stairs, and she walked around to the sliding glass patio door, and tapped on it.
Jon opened the door, and the woman said "Hello, sir. I'm Chief Charlene Potter, of the Tuttlesburg PD. That's Sergeant Gibbs on the porch. And you are?"
"My name is Jon Syverson. Please, come in."
He led her into the living room, where Faith has already joined the others, and introduced everyone.
As she looked around the room, a faint smile played across her lips, and she inquired, "How long have you folks been here?"
"We got here Tuesday, so, like five days, I think," Jake mumbled, still not fully awake.
"Well then, it seems that I should commend all of you on your restraint," she said. "The last time Mr. Devashar had 'guests' here, I had two of them in lockup the first night. Apparently, getting drunk and running naked through the schoolyard at 2:30 AM sounded like a brilliant idea."
CC turned to Andy and said "So this is the place Cam was talking about!"
"No worries here, Chief," Ashley informed her. "Most everyone here has given up drinking, and those of us who haven't, have enough sense to stay here and do it. It not only keeps you out of jail, it pretty much eliminates the chance of trying to drive back from the bar and becoming one with an oak tree on one of those hairpin curves."
"Wise choice," Chief Potter replied. "Now, I suppose we should get started discussing your little present."
She had everyone walk her through the events of the past two days, and when they told her about the deer, and what they had done with it, she shook her head, and sighed in exasperation. "I really wish you hadn't done that. If you'd called it in, we might have been able to catch them when they came back last night. Or at least picked up some usable evidence."
At that moment, Sergeant Gibbs walked in through the patio door, and said "I got the pictures you wanted, Chief, and I called in to get the van out here to pick up the carcass. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. I did a full perimeter sweep around the house, and there were no discernable footprints, no unaccounted-for tire tracks, and no blood other than what was smeared on the front door."
Everyone looked around in confusion at that statement, but then Joe commented "Yeah, Faith pointed out how there wasn't any blood around the deer yesterday."
Chief Potter glanced at her notepad and said, "Yes, so it says here. So, tell me, Miss ... Scanlon, why did that particular detail stand out to you?"
From her seat between Ashley and Jake on the sofa, Faith directed her attention to the older woman. Raking her fingers through her wavy, chin length dark hair, she said "Because my dad is a surgeon, and my mom is a veterinarian. Dad made me and my brother start learning basic first aid as soon as we were big enough to open a Band-Aid. Plus, I used to help out sometimes in my mom's office, and I've seen more blood on a dog that cut itself on a wire fence. It just wasn't normal."
"You're observant, I'll give you that," the chief said. "But that still doesn't tell us what happened, or how they got here. Those were tearing wounds, not clean cuts, but obviously an animal couldn't carry a cow up onto the porch. So what we seem to have is someone who's decided that they want to play games with you."
"So what happens now?" Andy inquired.
"What happens now is that I station a couple of officers out here tonight, and we see if they come back. In the meantime, be careful, and I recommend not going out alone, especially after dark."
As she stood to leave, Jinxx asked "What was he saying about the door awhile ago?"
"Whoever did this used some of the internal organs to smear some sort of symbols or gibberish on the door. You'll probably want to have Mr. Devashar get somebody to paint over it or something."
Jon walked with her back to the sliding door, and noticed that several more officers had arrived, and were trying to wrestle the cow off of the porch.
As he closed the door behind her, CC said " Well, since we can't go anywhere for awhile, maybe we should jam or something."
The others agreed, and began heading toward the practice room, but as he started to walk out of the room, Andy noticed Joe standing by the unlighted fireplace, seemingly staring at nothing. He walked over and tapped Joe on the shoulder, causing him to jump.
"Hey, you OK there, cuz ?" Andy questioned .
"Uh, yeah, just thinking," Joe mumbled .
"Anything you want to talk about?"
Joe shook his head, sort of like a dog flinging off water, and said "Nah, just silly stuff."
But as he followed Andy down the hall, he thought again about Chief Potter's words, and wondered.
Was it, really?