Squeeze Me Page 4

  Teabull wanly made a one-armed motion toward the goldfish pond. “I’ll make sure Mauricio posts some men along the bank.”

  “Please do that. It’s unusual for us to make two dives in a private body of water and not locate the victim. Mrs. Riptoad gave you my direct number, right?”

  “Yes, of course. Twice, actually.”

  As he watched Jerry Crosby drive away, Teabull was clammy and gut-sick. He felt much better after making a phone call.

  * * *

  —

  Joel had gone back to his father’s house, though not before cleaning Angie’s apartment and re-stocking the kitchen. She turned on the television, muted the volume, removed a fresh syringe from the refrigerator, kicked off her clothes, and gave herself a tetanus shot in the hip.

  Goddamn opossum.

  She should have worn the canvas gloves. Rookie mistake, reaching barehanded into a crevice of a hoarder’s cluttered attic. Contrary to popular lore, cornered opossums don’t always play opossum; this one had sunk its teeth into Angie. For a professional wildlife wrangler, getting chomped by one of nature’s slowest, most nearsighted creatures was embarrassing.

  My own damn fault, Angie thought, buttering her punctured left forearm with antibiotic cream. She’d released her captive in an orange grove near Bluefield. It was a calmed critter now, as was the hoarder.

  Angie’s phone rang, as it usually did at six p.m. Her nightly death threat.

  “Hello, Pruitt,” she said.

  “Listen, bitch, I’m gonna hunt you down and rip out your fucking spleens!”

  “Only got one, pal.” Last night it was her livers, also plural.

  “Yeah, then after? I’m gonna chop off your legs and feed ’em to my dogs!”

  “Not the Bichon, for God’s sake,” Angie said. “They’ve got tiny stomachs, Pruitt. Give ’em to that big-ass Labradoodle instead. Name’s Fritz, right? Feed ’em to Fritz.”

  “Fuck you, lady! Your time’s up.”

  “Have a pleasant evening, sir.”

  Pruitt was the reason Angie had lost her job as a wildlife officer and gone to prison. One spring evening, while Angie was patrolling the lee shore of Lake Okeechobee, she watched aghast through binoculars as an obviously drunken fuckstick drove an airboat over a baby deer standing in the shallows.

  The fuckstick was Pruitt, and he wasn’t too intoxicated to circle back and collect the dying fawn for dinner. As soon as Pruitt unsheathed his butcher knife, Angie moved in for the arrest.

  Then—somewhere between the crime scene and the boat ramp—Pruitt lost one of his hands by forcible trauma. Angie told the paramedics that her prisoner had slipped the zip ties and jumped overboard, startling a large alligator. Pruitt’s version of the incident was quite different. He claimed that Angie had sought out the reptile, into whose gaping maw she’d inserted Pruitt’s left fist, the one that had been holding his knife.

  Angie eventually resigned, pleading guilty to one felony count of aggravated assault and one misdemeanor charge of illegally feeding wildlife. The gator in question was a popular dock denizen nicknamed Lola. Over the years she’d received so many chicken bones and marshmallows from clueless tourists that she eagerly approached every occupied vessel she saw, expecting a handout.

  Which is literally what she got, in Pruitt’s case.

  Ironically, the amputation served to benefit the poacher when he went to court for killing the deer. Not wishing to be viewed as a hard-ass on the handicapped, the judge sentenced Pruitt to probation and a token $100 fine. However, his beloved airboat was confiscated, and that—more than the missing hand—fueled his ongoing fury toward Angela Armstrong. Every new call displayed a different area code and phone number, Pruitt being skilled at spoofing caller IDs. His punctuality was also impressive, and somewhat uncharacteristic of redneck whack jobs.

  Still, after so much time and still no attempts on her life, Angie found it hard to take the man seriously. She did, as a precaution, keep tabs on Pruitt’s whereabouts, job status, bank loans and registered vehicles. Fortunately she still had data-savvy friends at the sheriff’s office. The info on Pruitt’s dogs came from veterinary vaccination records.

  Angie showered and drove to Applebee’s with an eye on her rearview. Nobody followed her. She sat in a corner, and ordered a salad and iced tea. When the server inquired about the bandage on her arm, Angie told him she’d had a gaping skin biopsy. It was a line devised to end the conversation, yet instead it elicited an over-long monologue in support of homeopathic cancer remedies. Angie made a mental note to wear long-sleeved shirts in public until the opossum bite healed.

  She skipped dessert and returned home. The door was unlocked, the apartment ransacked.

  Angie sighed and said, “Well, fuck a duck.”

  For years her stepson had told her she was a dumbass for renting on the first floor, even if it saved seventy bucks a month. Still, this was the first successful break-in. Entry had been achieved at the rear of the building, through a bathroom window. A glossy imprint of the burglar’s large right sneaker was visible in the tub.

  By the time the cops arrived, Angie had taken inventory. Her main concern was the money from the Lipid House python job, five thousand in fifties. The cash sat untouched, inside a white box marked “Wound Care” that Angie kept in a cabinet under the kitchen sink.

  The only items missing from the apartment were her laptop and checkbook.

  A Taser that she hid under the mattress was on the floor, near the foot of the bed.

  “Do you own a firearm?” one of the officers asked.

  “I do not, sir,” Angie said.

  “How come? Everyone on this block’s got a gun.”

  “Multiple guns,” the other cop added.

  Angie shrugged. “I’m a convicted felon.”

  Amused, the cops looked at each other.

  “And your point is…?” one said to Angie.

  “I know the law.”

  “All that means is if you had a firearm and it got stolen, you wouldn’t tell us.”

  “Probably not. However, if I did own a firearm, why would I bother keeping that lame-ass bug zapper?” Angie motioned toward the Taser.

  The officers conceded the point, but they ran her name and D.O.B. anyway, checking for warrants. Angie didn’t mind; she was clean.

  When she asked if the cops planned to dust the apartment for fingerprints, they showed her a discarded medical glove that they’d found on the sidewalk. “Your visitor didn’t leave any prints,” one of them said. “Doesn’t mean he was a pro. Any shithead watches CSI knows to use these.”

  “But there’s only one glove.”

  “Which he dropped by mistake, I’m sure. The other one’s probably still in his pocket.” The officer handed a copy of the burglary report to Angie and said, “You got insurance, right?”

  “Not much, sir.”

  After the cops were gone, Angie grabbed a flashlight and went outside to see if the burglar had left any clues behind the building. She was looking for more that pointed to Pruitt. A search of the area beneath the broken bathroom window revealed only shards of glass.

  But when Angie looked inside a nearby dumpster, she spotted her checkbook discarded among the trash bags. She climbed in to retrieve it.

  The blank checks were untouched though, oddly, the register in which Angie wrote down her payments and check numbers was missing. It would be useless to an ordinary burglar.

  Angie called Joel and said, “Somebody busted into the apartment. Came in through the bathroom window, but please don’t be a smartass and sing the song.”

  “What have I been telling you? Rent that place on the third floor!”

  “All he took was my laptop.”

  “Not the art collection?” Joel said.

  “Walked right past the Chagall. Go figure. Anyh
ow, I was thinking maybe you should stay away from here for a while.”

  “Why? It was probably just kids. Your neighborhood has a very active chapter of the Future Felons of America.”

  Angie said, “There’s a possibility my six o’clock stalker is taking it to a new level. I’d feel better if you weren’t in the target zone.”

  “You mean Pruitt? Come on, burglary isn’t his M.O.”

  “The cops found only one glove.”

  “Right or left?”

  “Right.”

  “Damn,” said Joel.

  “I can still meet you out for dinner on our weekends.”

  “But who’s gonna clean your apartment, Angie?”

  “I bet there’s a tutorial somewhere on Google.”

  Joel said, “Then at least get your cheap ass off the first floor. Promise?”

  “Love you, kid. Good night.”

  Angie nailed a sheet over the window before sitting down to pee. She went to bed with the Taser positioned on her nightstand. As she sometimes did, she thought back to the regrettable night that she’d fed a piece of Pruitt to Lola the alligator. Most of all, she remained dismayed by the fact that the reptile had been shot afterward and sold to a hide tanner—the state-proscribed fate for gators that lose their fear of humans. Lola was now somebody’s handbag, while Pruitt was sporting a state-of-the-art polymer prosthetic that cost $6,000. Angie had paid for the device out of her own pocket, in compliance with the court order. Her listless defense lawyer never sent a bill for his fees, which she later learned were paid by an anonymous benefactor. Angie figured it was somebody from PETA, which had publicly denounced the judge for handing out such a light sentence to a poacher of baby deer.

  She fell asleep anticipating another enigmatic dream. Tonight’s feature starred the commander-in-chief himself. Angie had been summoned to Casa Bellicosa to unfasten a screech owl from the presidential pompadour, which the low-swooping raptor had mistaken for a road-kill fox. When Angie arrived, the commander-in-chief was lurching madly around the helipad, bellowing and clawing at the Velcro skull patch into which the confused bird had embedded its talons. The owl was still clutching a plug of melon-colored fibers when Angie freed it. Swiftly she was led to a windowless room and made to sign a document stating she’d never set foot on the property, or glimpsed the President without his hair. A man wearing a Confederate colonel’s uniform and a red baseball cap stepped forward and hung a milk-chocolate medal around Angie’s neck, after which she was escorted at sword-point out the gates.

  She awoke with renewed certainty that Carl Jung was full of shit. Dreams meant nothing—nonsense farted by a restless subconscious.

  Angie spent all the next day removing a population of fruit-eating bats from the stately but vulnerable bell tower of a Lutheran church in Hobe Sound. She caught a career-high total of seventeen, which she released at dusk in a public park before driving home exhausted. Dinner was a microwave pizza. After one glass of wine Angie pitched into bed still smelling of bat piss.

  It was a rare dreamless sleep, mercilessly interrupted by the goddamn phone. Groping in the dark, Angie by mistake snatched the Taser from the nightstand and with a hot crackle she fired both barbs into her pillow.

  On the second swipe she found her cell.

  “Is this Ms. Armstrong?”

  “Who are you, sir?”

  “This is Johnny Sanford at Safe N’ Sound. I’m the co-owner.”

  Safe N’ Sound was the warehouse yard on South Dixie Highway where Angie rented storage space.

  “May I ask what time it is, Mr. Sanford?”

  “Uh. Three-fifteen a.m.”

  “So this will likely be unwelcome news,” Angie said.

  “Our security service called. Your space is K-44, right?”

  “Yup.” Angie sat up in bed. “I assume it wasn’t a false alarm.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Well, fuck.”

  “They used a bolt cutter on the padlock,” Sanford said.

  “How many other units got hit?”

  “Just yours.”

  “I feel special.”

  “How fast can you be here?” Sanford asked. “The police have some questions.”

  I’m sure they do, thought Angela Armstrong.

  FOUR

  The marriage had been Angie’s first and only. Dustin was twenty-one years older, smart, charming, and self-confident. He was also, in her eyes, arrestingly youthful. Although he listed his occupation as a life coach, most of his income came from modeling in TV commercials for a chicory-based edible called Luv Buzz, a trendy though medically unproven treatment for male fatigue and depression.

  Angie first met him when she was sent to his house to sedate a confused black bear. Lured from the woods by the scent of the chicory gummies, the animal had broken into Dustin’s garage and gobbled a thirteen-pound bag. It was in a manic state, hurling itself in all directions and emitting a piteous croak, by the time Angie arrived. She had to fire three times before getting a dart in the wild-eyed bear, and by then Dustin’s cherry Targa was totaled. He remained phenomenally calm, even philosophical, despite an unsatisfactory exchange of phone calls with his insurance company.

  Angie married him six months later, and loved him until the day he bailed. She adored his son, too. Joel’s mother, Dustin’s first wife, had died after sinking her golf cart in a lake during the inaugural member-guest tournament at the Jupiter Glades Country Club. The toxicology report showed she had enough Xanax in her blood to etherize a sumo wrestler.

  Joel was a toddler when the tragedy happened. He was ten when his father introduced her to Angie, who was attracted to the idea of an instant family; in her teens she’d lost her own mother to cancer, and had no brothers or sisters. Her father hadn’t spoken to her since the day she’d quit his veterinary practice, the same morning a cocker spaniel died while Angie was removing a ping-pong ball from its stomach. Surgically she hadn’t done anything wrong, and it wasn’t the first animal she’d lost on the table. The dog was old and had heart problems, but watching the life-light fade from its eyes crushed Angie worse than any other experience. She couldn’t figure out why this time and not the others, but she knew she was done.

  The state of Florida was pleased to give her a job as a wildlife officer. Being overqualified did not elevate her prospects for a proper wage, but over time Angie saved enough money to repay her father for the tuition to veterinary school. He never responded except for cashing the check. Later, when she went to prison, she didn’t bother writing him. By then she was single again, Dustin having dumped her a few years before she fed Pruitt’s hand to the alligator.

  Angie sometimes wondered if they’d still be married had she stuck with those damn yoga classes. God knows she tried. The crowded, windowless studios made her claustrophobic, and that mandatory loop of Eastern chimes was so annoying. Why the fuck couldn’t they play Pearl Jam?

  “I’m not cut out for this, Dustin,” she’d said after one blazingly sweaty Bikram session. “Serenity is overrated.”

  He didn’t get angry; that wasn’t his style. Instead he took up with one of the community’s freshly divorced, self-discovering female yoga fanatics that traveled in packs, ever-alert and lithe as meerkats.

  Looking back, as Angie too often did, she regretted overlooking other signal differences between Dustin and herself. For one thing, he disliked being around animals; he claimed their presence interfered with his meditations. Joel would have loved to own a dog or a cat, but dear old dad wouldn’t even buy the kid a hamster. That, Angie knew, was a red flag missed.

  One time Dustin had chased after a small garter snake in the yard, swinging at it frantically with a 24-inch carbon steel crowbar. He’d missed the snake completely but pulverized three toes on his right foot.

  Angie was reminded of the incident by the sight of a simi
lar crowbar—definitely not her ex-husband’s—on the floor of her rented storage unit. This one had been used to snap the hinges on the lid of the freezer.

  “What’s inside that black bag in there?” the cop asked. He happened to be one of the same pair who’d answered the burglary at Angie’s apartment.

  “Dead coyote,” Angie replied.

  “And that thing?”

  “Juvenile otter.”

  “What the hell?” the cop’s partner said, with exaggerated disgust.

  Angie explained that she was in the business of removing so-called nuisance wildlife from human environs. The coyote had been shot by a horse trainer, and nobody at the stable wanted to handle the corpse for fear of rabies. As for the poor little otter, it had failed to outrun a pit bull mix owned by an eccentric obstetrical nurse in Greenacres.

  “Most of my trade is alive,” Angie felt compelled to add.

  “Then how come you collect the dead ones and freeze ’em?”

  “I don’t collect them, sir. There’s a place way out west, some woods near Loxahatchee, that’s where I bury them. It’s a long drive, so I usually wait until I’ve got a full truckload.”

  The cops said they’d never met a woman in her line of work. Without comment Angie acknowledged that most critter-removal companies were owned by men.

  Mr. Sanford wasn’t much help. To the police he proclaimed: “I had no idea she was using our premises for this!”

  “Oh, Johnny, that’s bullshit,” Angie said. “When your granddaughter’s pet bunny croaked, who showed up on my doorstep with the shoebox?”

  Sanford lowered his eyes and licked his mustache. The first cop said to Angie: “You’re on an epic bad-luck streak, ma’am. Any chance this incident was connected to the break-in at your apartment?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “What else you keep in this freezer?” the second officer asked in a serrated tone. “Maybe a leafy green substance?”