Page 169 of Property of Whiskey

I check the yard before I focus on the woods. Fence line. Shed. Windows. Gravel shoulder. The soft strip of dirt beside the drive where fresh tires or boot soles would leave something worth seeing. Years of police work have taught me how easy it is to stare at the thing somebody points toward and miss everything around it.

Nothing near the house looks disturbed.

Whiskey switches on his flashlight. “Where’d she say?”

“Tree line.”

We slow as we reach the darker edge of the lawn.

A plastic bowl sits beneath a maple a few feet from the grass. There must have been apple slices inside because the bottom is sticky with juice and a couple scraps of peel are mashed into the dirt.

Whiskey crouches. “She’s feeding something. Could be raccoon.”

“Could be.”

He angles the beam lower, illuminating several small cloven prints around the bowl before they disappear toward the trees. They look like ordinary deer tracks, the edges softened by damp ground.

I crouch beside him. “Those look normal.”

“Yeah.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I’m fucking thrilled.” He sweeps the flashlight farther, and a second set of hoofprints crosses the first. Beyond those are marks that don’t immediately resolve into anything I recognize.

I lean closer. “What the hell is that?”

Whiskey lowers the flashlight nearly parallel to the dirt so the shadows deepen inside every impression. The marks are uneven and partly smeared, not clearly hoof and not paw. They could be branches dragged across wet soil or overlapping prints distorted by rain. They could be nothing except two exhausted adults standing in the dark after a seven-year-old named a forest creature Prickle and told us it doesn’t like church people.

Whiskey straightens. “Raccoon.”

“That ain’t a raccoon track.”

“Ugly raccoon.”

“Whiskey.”

“Deer.”

“Which one?”

“Deer with fucked-up feet.”

I look at him.

He looks back at me.

Neither of us says monster.

“Good,” I say. “Normal.”

“Completely.”

“We’re both full of shit.”

“Absolutely.”

A branch snaps somewhere beyond the reach of the light.