“I was asked to handle this by someone who is,” I said.
“We already told them everything.”
“Tell me,” I said.
One of the women turned to the other, “My hands are getting cold. I’m going inside. Can you talk to him?”
“No, I’ll come with you.”
Ignoring me, the two women turned to head for the door.
“Hey,” I said, raising my voice.
They didn’t even turn to look. Furtive, hurrying.
“Hey!” I shouted.
That got a response. They turned, obviously alarmed.
Too alarmed.
Even the way they held themselves, heads ducked down…
Was that the case with everything here? With everyone?
The cawing of the crows carried through the general silence. The roads here weren’t active.
One mote, or one imp. Whatever it was. It was up to something here.
“He’s left his place a mess, as I understand it,” I said. “Some animals?”
“No, a lot of animals.”
“Rats, raccoons?”
“Stray dogs, cats. Mangy things. He feeds them, you know. He’s a hoarder, but he hoards animals.”
“And, what, it’s getting to be enough of a problem that people won’t leave their houses?”
That earned me irritated looks. A bad guess?
Something was keeping people from leaving their houses, abandoning their nice cars under several feet of snow.
They weren’t volunteering anything, here.
“Any specific incidents?” I asked.
“Incidents?”
“Attacks? Strange behavior? Anything about Dowght himself?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said I was cold.”
“If you help me,” I said, raising my voice, stern, “I can maybe fix this. But it gets a lot harder if I’m flying blind.”
“We’ve reported it for months and nothing’s come of it.”
“We think someone’s pulling strings,” I said, “Stalling investigation by dealing with stuff behind the scenes.”
I saw them exchange glances.
“And,” I said, “You should know that if I don’t deal with it, there’s a good chance this will keep getting swept under the rug. At least until it gets so bad there’s no choice but to address the problem.”
“It’s already bad,” one woman said.
“How bad? Tell me.”
Another set of glances.
“Or tell me why you don’t want to talk about it?”
“You aren’t with the media?”
“No.”
“If this story gets out, nobody benefits,” the second woman said.
“If it gets out, they’re forced to take action.”
“And property values plummet, we get embarrassed, and they do the bare minimum necessary, procrastinating until someone else takes over and foots the expense.”
“Ah,” I said. “But it’s the embarrassment, really?”
“Now you’re being rude.”
“What incidents? What happened?”
“Someone, and I’m not naming names, had their baby attacked in its stroller, back in the fall.”
“By?”
“Mice.”
“Mice in a stroller,” I said.
“It’s not that we’re afraid to leave our houses. You get attacked once, and you learn to be careful from there on out.”
“Attacked?”
“It’s that man. He feeds the animals, and they get dependent on him, but then he stops, or he starts feeding different animals, and-“
“I’m getting the picture. You wind up with a lot of hungry mice, stray dogs, cats, and whatever elses who are collecting in the area, dangerously hungry, and a human looks like a good target.”
“And bears,” the second woman said. “No attacks, thank God, but I’ve heard they’ve been lurking. We stopped putting out trash, stick it in the back of the car and take it to the dump ourselves.”
The other woman added, “The birds too, they attack. Nobody talks about it, but you see the exterminators.”
I didn’t follow her segue? “For the birds?”
“No,” she said. She looked like she was caught between humiliation and annoyance.
“For the rodents?” I guessed.
“For the bugs,” she said, whispering the last word.
“For the bugs, I see.”
“They’re in the basements, the pantries. If you seal it, the mice get at it. If you don’t, the bugs get in it. I can’t turn my back on a glass of orange juice without finding a fly drowned in it.”
“I’m starting to see the problem. Alright. I’m going to see what I can do.”
“There’s no easy fix for this,” the first woman said. “Even if you deal with him, the infestations, and the upset to the ecosystem…”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, again. I paused. “Is he violent?”
“I don’t know.”
Have to assume he is, then.
My momentary deliberation seemed to be their excuse to make their exit. I couldn’t think of another question before they disappeared inside, bags rustling. The door slammed shut.
I checked the house numbers, identified the direction I needed to walk, and trudged in the slush along the side of the street.
The crows croaked, shuffling on branches, roughly half of them staring down at me.
A woman screamed, a bloodcurdling shriek.
Turning, I saw no woman.
A hare, or a rabbit, charging me.
Mouth opened wide, incisors ready to bite-
I shifted my weight and kicked. It sailed over a snowbank and into a driveway. Crows on nearby trees flapped wings and shifted to different branches.