“Owen Ruud,” said O’Rourke. “He’s got an ID says he’s the stadium janitor. Looks genuine. And he’s not Latino, looks more like a squarehead. It’s his day off today, he says. Came along just for the mayor’s speech and to have a beer.”
“Owen Ruud is on the list!” called one of the JTTF men sitting at the rear of the room with an open laptop in front of him on the table. “Can someone ask them to take his picture and send it to me so we can be one hundred percent certain?”
“Okay! Ready to go again,” Springer called out to the room. “Mayor Patterson, when you’re ready, sir.”
“Wait!” called Walker. “I’ve just received a message from one of my colleagues. It seems that Gomez is a white man and—”
“Mr. Mayor!” Springer interrupted. “If the janitor is the man we’ve been looking for we have him now and we won’t be letting him go. You’re quite safe, so go ahead!”
“We can’t know if it’s the same man!” Walker shouted, aware now that all eyes were on him, including Patterson’s.
“We’re grateful to the Homicide Unit,” said Springer. “But we’re in charge here and this situation is under control. Mayor, all sixty thousand people out there have been thoroughly searched, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sex or sexual orientation. But the final decision must, of course, remain yours.”
The whistling had increased in volume.
“Announce through the loudspeakers that the mayor has been held up in traffic,” said Walker. “That’ll give us time to get a picture of the suspect and check if his face shows up on any of the security cameras.”
“People saw me arriving,” said Patterson and peered out from behind the curtain. “Listen to them. I have to get out there. This is live TV, remember.”
“Mr. Mayor, sir—” Walker began.
“Now listen!” Patterson turned and stared directly at Walker. “Suppose it gets out that I stood here and refused to go on even though the terrorist specialist unit said it was safe to do so, and it gets out that the man I was so afraid of was the stadium janitor. Or let me put it this way, would you want a man like that as your mayor?” He turned to the man wearing the headset. “Tell them to introduce me.”
The man in the headset said something into the microphone as Patterson turned his back on Walker and started rolling his neck again. Walker told himself he hadn’t tripped up, he’d done his part, said what he had to say, and the mayor had made his decision. Soon he would be going home to eat with his family.
A deep bass voice crackled across the stadium loudspeakers, accompanied by a drumroll that would probably soon give way to the national anthem: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct from city hall…”
Or rather, if Walker really covered himself completely, there was one small correction that needed to be made.
“The suspect is not the janitor,” Walker said quietly, addressing the mayor’s back. “His name is Mike Lunde. He’s a taxidermist.”
“Here is our city’s mayor, here is everyone’s mayor and good friend to the Second Amendment,” intoned the voice over the loudspeakers.
Walker saw how the layer of skin pressed up against the collar around Patterson’s neck tensed. Maybe it was the word “friend.” Maybe something else. The man with the headset drew the curtain aside and they all looked out into the stadium. As expected the drumroll had segued into a hymn that drowned out any whistling there might have been or the absence of applause. Still Patterson stood motionless in front of the opening.
“Something wrong, sir?” asked the headset.
Patterson turned. Not toward the headset, but toward Walker.
“What did you say his name was?”
49
The Masterpiece, October 2016
“It’s lovely,” said Jill Patterson as she stroked the dog. “Absolutely lovely.”
“Thank you,” said Mike Lunde.
The two of them and the children, Siri and Simon, sat in the store in a little circle around Quentin. Jill kept stroking him, she said the Labrador’s coat seemed so glossy and bright. Outside, on the other side of the street, their Chevy stood parked, with their private bodyguard Hector Herrer inside. From where she was sitting she could see that the other one, the extra security man from the JTTF, had taken up a position outside the car and was monitoring the street in both directions. The JTTF man had wanted to come into the store with them, but Jill had explained that Mike said they should always be alone in the store whenever they were looking at Quentin. The JTTF man had said okay, but he asked them not to be too long. Jill hadn’t replied. After all, thismight be the last time they would ever see this nice taxidermist, whom everyone in the family had become so fond of. Mike had been to their home in Dellwood and listened as she and Kevin and the children talked about Quentin. The Labrador retriever had been their beloved companion until the day he ran out into the road and was run over by the neighbor’s Lexus. The children had insisted that Quentin be buried in their own backyard, and they had even had a priest for the burial. But so great was the children’s grief that after just one week Jill said to Kevin that they had to do something, the kids wouldn’t leave the grave, they spent every evening weeping there. Kevin’s first response had been that maybe the grave had become a place for the kids to get rid of all their frustrations, that maybe it wasn’t just about Quentin, maybe what was happening was good for them. But Jill said it was grief, and that children shouldn’t grieve, that could wait until later. She’d spoken to a friend who knew a friend who’d had the family’s pet rabbit stuffed and spoke of it like a resurrection. She was the one who had recommended Town Taxidermy to Jill.
Of course, neither Jill nor the children had been present when the grave was opened. After a mere fourteen days the fur was still pretty much unchanged, and Mike had said it wouldn’t be a problem to repair any damage. They agreed to use as much of Quentin as possible, not just the teeth but the whole skull. That way she felt she could tell the children it wasn’t just a copy of Quentin, it reallywasQuentin. Mike took the dog’s measurements for the mannequin he had to make, and he studied the family’s photographs and home videos of the animal. The better to capture Quentin’s character and personality, as he explained.
Siri sat next to her mother and began stroking Quentin too. Because it had turned out just as Jill hoped, it reallywasQuentin. Mike hadn’t just captured the dog’s personality, he’d caught the way he walked and had frozen their beloved pet in mid-stride. And the look in the eyes! It was Quentin’s look exactly. It reallywas an exercise in pure magic. Simon, their youngest, stood up and ran across to the fox. Felt its teeth. Then ran over to the wolf and tugged at its tail. She hoped he wouldn’t break anything, he was a bit of a handful. But Mike took it all calmly enough. Simon came running back and put his arms around Quentin’s neck.
“Simon, be careful!” his big sister called.
Simon obediently let go.
