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he said.

I reminded him. I picked up the scent soon afterward and we carefully followed it back about thirty thousand foot-yards, or meters, or whatever, until there was no more. I said.

Atticus caught up and looked down at the earth, covered in grasses in between the bushes and mashed flat by the dead guy’s passage. There was a small collection of blood droplets.

“Weird. That looks like he was shot rather than stabbed.”

“If he’d been stabbed, there would have been more blood in a kind of streaky pattern, dropping from the blade as the knife was yanked out. But this is a tight cluster, just drips from a puncture wound.”

“No, it’s weird because this happened recently and we should have heard the gunshot. Except we didn’t.” Atticus squatted down on his haunches to have a closer look at the blood, and as he did, something whistled overhead and thunked into a tree. It was an arrow, planted right behind where he’d been standing.

Back the way we came! Atticus shouted in our heads as he rolled and scrambled to his feet, keeping low. Starbuck and I scampered back the five hundred kilo-furlongs or whatever to where the body was.

“The police are on their way!” Atticus shouted behind us. “I’ve already called them!”

I said.

How do you know it’s a he, Oberon? Did you smell something?

Statistics?

“You murdering bastard!” Atticus shouted.

Starbuck got inspired to join in.

He barked and quivered with rage. He looked over at me, tongue hanging out and smiling.

Quiet now. See if you can hear him or her moving out there. Keep some tree trunks between you and that direction.

Starbuck’s ears perked up and pointed the way we came. His hearing was a little bit better than mine; his breed was supposed to be able to hear mice and voles and small critters patter around.

he said.

Which way are they moving? Can you tell? Atticus asked.

You’re sure?

Atticus let out a breath he’d been holding. Good. I don’t suppose either of you caught a whiff of whoever that might have been?

I said, and looked back toward the body.

Maybe. Or the shaft broke off and is trapped underneath him. Or…somebody pulled it out. That would explain the huge pool of blood underneath him. The barbs would have torn through quite a bit of tissue as the arrow was removed, and if that’s what happened, I’m sure it wasn’t removed gently.

If someone had pulled out the arrow...it was probably right near that tree. So, somewhere around it we should pick up somebody’s scent besides the dead guy’s.

That would be fine. Starbuck went clockwise, which means he circled around to the right, and I went counterclockwise, which is around to the left, because we have to counter this narrative that clocks are wise. People say they tell time, but they’ve never given me the time of day.

I found a different human scent than the dead guy’s after the length of about six stretched-out wombats.

The Boston circled around and snuffled at the grass where I indicated.

Can you tell if it goes toward the body? Or comes from it, I guess?

I followed the scent a few short steps toward the body.

All right, can you follow it away from here?

I turned around with Starbuck and we followed the scent away and found where it turned to cross our own path. We’d missed it earlier because we were chasing the bee and not sniffing around.

I said. Starbuck froze and turned his head to look behind us, his ears pointed up.

That’s probably the police. Okay, we’ll track that scent later. While the police are here, I need you to respond to my verbal commands exactly. Come on over here and sit down next to me and don’t move unless I say.

“Mr. Molloy?” a woman’s voice called.

“Over here,” Atticus responded, and there was some back-and-forth like that until two police officers emerged from the undergrowth near where the perfumed lady had been. They had their guns drawn, though they were pointed down, and Atticus raised his single hand.

“Hello. I am friendly and unarmed,” he said. “Same with my dogs.”

The officers looked a bit different from the ones I’m used to seeing in the United States. They had dark ball caps on with a little checkerboard pattern running along the base of it. Where a team logo would be, they had a badge: a shiny circle with a golden lion in it and on top of that, a red crown.

They wore bulky yellow-ish vests over their shirts with a bunch of lumpy pockets full of stuff and things, but I knew they wouldn’t have any meats in those pockets, so I didn’t pay close attention.

One of them was a slim but fit woman with cool brown skin and lips a bit darker than the rest. She wore a thingy under her cap that covered up her ears and hair and her neck as well, disappearing underneath her shirt. I think Atticus mentioned one time that humans who did that practiced a certain faith and it was a sign of devotion to their god. Anyway, she was the boss. On her vest she had a little vertical banner in the center with three chevrons, and I knew what that meant from movies: she was a sergeant.

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “Constable Fosse is going to confirm that, if you don’t mind. Please remain still and allow him to pat you down.”

“Sure. You’ll find all my stuff in my left pocket, since I have only the one arm,” Atticus said.

“Sir, will your dogs remain still while I approach?” This was from Constable Fosse, who holstered his gun and shot a glance at me, uncertain if he could take me or not. Probably not, unless I was napping. He was a sizeable white man, much taller than the sergeant, and while my eyes are not the best at identifying reds, I think his skin must have been pretty pink or flushed or something since it appeared in those kinds of grays in my vision. He had enough muscles that I think he could qualify as “swole,” in the parlance of gym bros.

“They will,” Atticus assured him.

“They should be on a leash.”

“Ah. Are we still inside city limits here?”

“Yes. Just barely. The ordinance applies.”

“Fair enough. Despite the absence of a leash, Constable, they won’t bother you. They’re very good dogs.” Mentally, Atticus added to us, Please don’t move.

Constable Fosse approached while the sergeant remained where she was, watching. I understood what this was: they had to make sure Atticus wasn’t a threat be
fore anything else. They were following procedure. The constable patted him down and found that he had three things in his left pocket.

“What’s in your pocket, sir?”

“My cell phone, my passport, and a bag of snacks for the hounds.” Atticus had the rest of his stuff in a pack he’d left by the Tasmanian devil den.

“Would you remind removing them, slowly?”

“Sure.”

Atticus pulled them out and offered them to the constable, but he said to hold on to them while he continued. Once he was satisfied that Atticus wasn’t carrying any weapons, he nodded to the sergeant and she put away her gun. She then strode forward.

“Thanks for your cooperation. I’m Sergeant Naseer. May I see your passport?”

Atticus handed it to her and she flipped it to the page with his picture on it, comparing the photo to his face. “American, eh? Is this address current?”

“It is.” Atticus still technically owned his cabin in Oregon, even though he’d put it up for sale.

“How long have you been in Tasmania?”

“About six weeks.” I didn’t know if that was right, because I’m pretty bad with time, but she was flipping through stamps in his passport to confirm the date of entry. I wasn’t worried because I knew Granuaile had gotten his passport prepped for him. She snuck in all invisible to the Melbourne airport where the customs officers were, stamped his passport like he’d flown in on an airplane, then returned it to Atticus so he’d have it for situations like this. The police would never figure out that he was there illegally unless they searched for his name on flight manifests and never found it.

“What’s your business here?”

“I’m a biologist working on saving the Tasmanian devils.” I was impressed. He was telling the truth except for leaving out that he was a Druid. He gestured with his hand behind us, and the bag of snacks rustled with a delicious noise. “I was working with a den back there when I heard a woman scream. I followed the noise and found him.”

Constable Fosse stepped a bit toward the body, paying attention to it for the first time, but the sergeant kept her eyes on Atticus.

“You didn’t find the woman?”

“No. I stopped here and called it in.”

“So it’s possible there’s a woman out here in trouble?”

“It’s possible. I haven’t heard anything since the one scream, and that was before I made the call. I kind of assumed she would have called this in too.”

“Have you touched the body? Or have your dogs?”

“No. But the dogs went that way, sniffing something—I think it was the trail of this guy—and somebody took a shot at us.”

“A shot? What kind?”

“An arrow. We haven’t confirmed it, but the arrow is probably still stuck in the tree. We ran back here and yelled that the police were on the way. Nobody chased us.”

“Right. Constable Fosse, please call the inspector and the forensic team.” She handed Atticus his passport back. He put that and his cell phone back in his pocket, but then used his teeth to open the bag of snacks and pulled out a couple for me and Starbuck. He tossed them in the air, we caught them neatly, and then he resealed the bag and put it back in his pocket. “Will you show me where this arrow is, Mr. Molloy?”

“Certainly.” He turned to me and Starbuck and said. “On my heels, guys.” We followed him as he led us back to where the arrow was embedded in the tree.

“These really are very good dogs,” she remarked, and I wagged my tail for her.

“They are indeed. Here we are. I was examining that splotch of blood there—I think it might be where the victim was shot—and as I bent down, this arrow thudded into the trunk. Someone was out there. Maybe still is.”

“Right.” Sergeant Naseer pressed a thumb to her radio thingy and asked for more officers on scene to search for “the perp and a possible second victim.”

I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Whoever had shot at us might have easily shot at that screaming lady, too. After she ran away, we didn’t hear her scream again. She might be lying dead in the forest, her bonnet all ruined, her face fixed in a permanent expression of horror. But we couldn’t go look for her ourselves at the moment. We had to wait for the inspector to arrive and inspect things and ask Atticus a lot more questions.

“Let’s head back and not give anyone another shot at you,” the sergeant said, and Atticus did not tell her that Starbuck had heard someone running away out there. We were probably safe to stay, but he walked back toward the body.

“Any idea of how long you’ll need me?”

“That’s up to the inspector. She’ll be by within thirty minutes, and I’m sure she’ll have more questions for you.”

I’m not sure if it was thirty minutes, but a whole lot more humans showed up after a while wearing those same uniforms and checkered ball caps with the lion badge. One of them was a woman with skin a bit darker brown than the sergeant’s and she had a vertical bar on her vest with three of those lion badges on it. I figured three lions must have been more important than three chevrons, and I was right. After she spoke to the sergeant for a moment, she came over to Atticus and introduced herself. She had curly black hair underneath her cap and a broad nose, big eyes and tiny ears.

“Mr. Molloy? I understand you found the body?” Her voice was smooth but I think her Tasmanian accent might have been a bit more pronounced than the sergeant’s.

“Yes,” Atticus said.

“I’m Inspector Badgely.”

No, she said Inspector Badgely. Don’t you dare sing—

Damn it, Oberon, now it’s in my head. That’s a snack penalty right there.

The Honey Badgely Don’t Care

I MISSED SOME of the humans’ conversation while I worried about how severe the snack penalty would be and watched a line of constables take off into the woods in search of the shooter, but I returned to the conversation as the inspector tried to catch Atticus in a lie.

“Describe the woman you saw for me, please,” she said, and Atticus blinked at her a few times before answering.

“I didn’t see any woman. I just heard her scream. She was gone by the time I got here.”

“Oh, pardon me.” I knew what she was up to. She was going to ask Atticus things incorrectly to see if he’d answer with some information inconsistent with what he’d said earlier. Atticus was too smart for that, though. “Was the scream more like a woman’s, or perhaps it was shrill, like a young girl’s?”

“Sounded like a grown woman to me,” Atticus replied.

He walked her through finding the body and showed her the blood and the arrow in the tree trunk while forensics technicians took lots of pictures of the crime scene. Inspector Badgely asked Atticus a lot more about what he was doing in the woods outside of Launceston, the precise nature of his work with Tasmanian devils, where he was staying, things like that. She was very surprised to hear that he was staying outdoors.

“Aren’t you afraid of face-eating spiders? Most Americans are.”

“My dogs eat them.”

Starbuck chimed in.

It was a bullshit question, so I gave her a bullshit answer, Atticus told us privately.

The inspector only smirked, so I guess she understood he wasn’t being serious. That was good because I didn’t want her to think I had spider breath. I’ve heard legends. It’s pretty bad.

“So, you must have a campsite somewhere?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t made camp for the day. Happy to show you the den I was working on, if you’d like.”

“Sure. I’d like to do that in a few minutes, though. I want to find out more about the victim. You don’t know him?”

“No, never seen him before.”

“Know anybody at all in town?” r />
“No. But if I may, I’ve aided in police investigations before. You can check with Detective Gabriela Ibarra in Portland, Oregon, and ask her about me. I helped her clear a couple cases.”

Inspector Badgely raised just one eyebrow, which is a trick that humans do since they can’t move their ears around. “How did you do that?”

“My dogs are pretty good trackers.”

Before the inspector could reply, Constable Fosse came over to tell her that forensics was ready to turn him over.

“All right.” Her eyes flicked to Atticus and she said, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She walked away and Atticus waited about three months before he followed after her, quietly, to get a better view.

Listen carefully to everything they say, he told us. You might pick up something I don’t.

I said.

Starbuck said.

The inspector paused to look up at the beehive buzzing above everyone’s head. “Feral honey. I bet that stuff’s amazing. Wouldn’t mind a taste of that.”

The other humans agreed with tiny laughs, but the inspector kept staring. The longing was real. I thought she was going to climb that tree and go after some, just go for it like a honey badger that doesn’t care, but she blinked and looked down once she heard the snap of gloves on Sergeant Naseer’s wrists and had to put on a pair of her own. The sergeant was very careful not to touch the tree and disturb the hive again. She slowly turned over the body, grunting a bit because the victim was a fairly tall and solid fella. Once we could see his back, the cause of death was pretty apparent: a broken arrow shaft protruded from just to the left of his spine, and the remainder of the shaft was pressed into the ground where he had lain.

“Huh,” the sergeant said. “The tip must have lodged against a rib bone so it didn’t punch through. The shaft had to break instead.”

Inspector Badgely nodded. “So he’s shot in the back some distance away, but it’s not instantly fatal. He staggers into the tree and it disturbs the hive above us. The bees descend to attack, he whirls around and falls backward, and that’s probably what finished him. The additional impact of hitting the ground had to tear him up inside, maybe opened up an artery, which is why we have so much blood underneath him and not more spray trailing from where he was first shot.”

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