Buck Fever Read Online Free PDF Page A

back.”
    “Sure, sure, no problem.” A strapping fortyish linebacker-sized man greeted the two reporters. He wore denim jeans and a tweed sport coat over a blue western-style shirt. Aging ostrich-leather boots poked out his pants legs, a silver-inlay belt wrapped around his slim waist. “I’m just going over the new construction. How do you like my new office? What do you want to know?” He led them into a freshly painted room containing a single plain-metal desk, phone and leather desk chair. “Not much furniture yet. I recently moved from across the street. Here, you can sit on these.” He carried two folding chairs in from the hallway and set them up.
    “These old Victorian house designs are retro-hot around Detroit these days. Several new subs are opening up offering this architecture complete with ornate cornices and pointed steeple-like roofs. I did a story about it several months ago. Bet it’s nicer living up here, though, away from the drone of big-city life,” Kottle said, thinking how nice it would be to have time to write a novel up north.
    “Beats the daily grind of a big office building, for sure. I can’t get a good reporter to move up here, though. Maybe you two would like to join my operation,” he said, half-serious.
    “I could live here,” Kottle said.
    “You need a sports writer? I could do that,” Porter said, as the three sat down.
    “Sorry, not much need for sports writing, unless you want to cover a few high-school games.”
    “So, we’ve got a possible murder case here?” Kottle asked, starting the interview. She folded her legs trying to get comfortable. Her tight skirt tended to ride up the slippery metal-chair seat. She twisted the imitation-gold ring on her left hand, making sure Sanguini saw it.
    Porter tugged his collar, loosened his tie and took off his suit jacket, hanging it on the back of the chair. He jotted a memo in his notebook to research high-school sports writing when he got back to Detroit.
    “Not much to say other than what I’ve already shared with your boss. A retired lumberjack, Gordon Lickshill, apparently was out hunting and, we think, ended up in a scuffle with another hunter. Probably arguing over the same turf. According to his wife, who found him dead, he stays out days at a time in a shed he built for deer hunting, so she didn’t worry about him. However, the family goat turned up missing, and the next morning she walked the perimeter of their farm to find it. You know the rest.”
    “How do you explain the antler marks impaling his body? Pretty sick way to kill someone don’t you think?” Porter asked, handing Sanguini several photos he printed from Pillbock’s memory card.
    “Who knows how some of these locals think; Lickshill might have encountered a meth lab in the woods. Junkies drive around the back roads, and when they find an old shack in a secluded area—typically in the woods near some private property posted for no hunting—they set up shop. I think they killed him with a sharpened wood dowel in a pattern like deer antlers.”
    “This time of year? Who sets up a lab when it’s this cold? Doesn’t click with me. And if they wanted to make it look like a deer killed him, then why leave behind a note scratched in the dirt?” Porter shook his head hoping for inspiration.
    “Hah, I think whoever did this knew the guy,” Kottle said, smiling.
    Porter looked at her waiting for a half-baked thought.
    “Please continue,” Sanguini said, interested.
    “You said he was a lumberjack before moving here, right?”
    Sanguini nodded.
    Kottle pointed to the photo of the letters scrawled in the dirt next to the body.
    “ Hew , like in chop the tree down. Get it? Hew man. Someone was referring to him being a lumberjack. I say the person knew him.” Kottle switched leg positions and waited for confirmation of her brilliant analysis.
    “The Ogemaw County sheriff suggested the same. However, if you look closely, a cap lying next to his head