"What kinda shit're we talking about, Lucas?"
"Jack, the sender is anonymous, and the contents of the package… well, it's highly unusual."
"Highly unusual?" he repeated.
"Especially for a young woman to be hauling around."
Tebo grunted. "Unusual how?"
"Come on up and see unusual for yourself."
"Give me a few minutes…be right up. Haven't seen a good unusual for some time, bud." Tebo imagined it must be sexy under things.
"I need a witness to this, Jack."
"That bad, huh? Some bitch stalking you, huh?"
"I'm so glad my supposed love life affords you so many fantasies, Jack, but believe me, unless you are the pervert I suspect you are, you'll get no pleasure out of this business." Lucas breathed too deeply, catching up the odors of the package in his nostrils and throat again. His mind wafted back to Nam, but he fought the memories. Choking, he added, "So get up here, will you? I don't want to be alone with this thing any longer."
Finally a serious note came out of Tebo. "That bad, huh?"
"That bad, yes."
CHAPTER 2
Tebo read the note and stared at the contents of the package opened in Lucas's kitchen sink. A hefty, barrel chested man in an apron with his tavern's signature-logo T- shirt blazoned and stained across his chest, Tebo sputtered, "Damn, you weren't kidding. Somebody's trying to tell you something… something damned serious, Stoney. This is just sick, man, too sick."
"My own personal psycho-terrorist, it would seem."
"We better not let Eunice hear about this. She gets a whiff of this, and you're outta here, amigo…no pun intended."
"Yeah, when Eunice learns about this, she'll have me kicked out for certain," Lucas conceded. "Look, you were a butcher for a time. Does this soup and sandwich of fleshy cuts look human or animal? If it's animal, I won't have to take this quite so seriously. I'll know for certain it's a hoax."
"Hoax?"
"Bad joke then…cooked up by some of the fools in the department."
Tebo examined the contents more closely, squirming, squinting, puckering his lips, retracting his nose, creasing his forehead in a mix of revulsion and thought. His beard bobbing, he said, "Sorry, pal, doesn't look like any animal I ever cut into."
"I was afraid you'd say that. I had the same initial reaction." Lucas stepped from the kitchen and fell into an easy chair. "I've seen autopsy cuts like this, when Chang wants to take a biopsy of an organ, you know. This has the stamp of a medical man behind it."
Tebo, his nose twitching with the odor rising from the sink, followed Lucas into the living room, shaking his head in disbelief, still reeling from the odor left behind in the kitchen. "You know, amigo, I didn't smell any of that stench coming off the package when it was delivered. But like I said, Eunice-she's got a nose on her like a bassett hound- said she didn't like the smell of it. Sure gotta be some sick creep behind this! You ever give any thought to getting into another line of business? Maybe invest in that new location I'm opening on the Rivera Esplanades?"
"Yeah, I can really see you fitting in there with the cappuccino crowd. Look, I gotta call Chang, get his CSI unit over here. Hell, this is human remains.. Damn sure ruined my night. They'll have to go over every inch of this thing."
"Christ!" Tebo banged an open palm into the doorway, causing some of Lucas's gun collection, hanging on the adjoining wall, to shake loose and go helter-skelter, barrels tilted, handles swaying.
"Hey, easy! My guns."
"I like having you around, Stoney. You're like insurance in my book, like having a pit bull around, but Eunice…no way I can keep a coroner's van parked outside from Eunice."
"All right, then she knows."
"She'll want you out, bro. And she'll bug me for every detail. Damn these times we live in…all kinda vipers and lunatic snipers coming out of the woodwork everywhere you turn. Can't go out to dinner anymore without packing a weapon."
"Agreed."
"What with you being a cop…amigo, seems doubly foolish of you to've opened that package at all. Hand- delivered, that weird return address. Suppose it was anthrax or some other infectious disease?"
"I suppose you're right, Jack."
'Tell me, Lucas, being Wolf Clan in the Cherokee Nation and all… you got something going with that convent chick on the side that might've, you know, pissed her or the boyfriend off maybe?"
"Hell, no. You know I prefer a mature lady."
"Then what connection do you have to that convent school?"
"None, damn it."
Tebo's frown said he wasn't buying it.
Lucas opened his palms in the universal gesture for confusion. "Look, before I gave any mind to the return address, for just a moment, I thought it might've come from some bastard on the reservation who'd gutted a deer," he confessed.
"Yeah, sure, when you got that first whiff, whew! First thought was reservation road kill cookin', huh?"
It made Lucas laugh. "Thought someone was sending a buffalo burger through the mail," he said to keep the joke rolling.
Tebo laughed lightly, "Hey, don't knock the favorite tourist dish. It's on every menu now 'long with-"
"Spare me, Jack. Don't go there."
Both men had family on the Alabama amp; Coushatta Indian Reservation near Huntsville. Both had found a life off the reservation. Tebo's family ancestry was Coushatta Comanche, Lucas's Texas-immigrated Cherokee.
"So, you've got no idea who might be behind it?" asked the big man at Lucas's side as he too dropped onto the sofa.
"I suspect it's a joke. Has to be a sick prank."
"Christ, if that's true…Some friends you've got, amigo. You give any thought to it's maybe originating with that prick cousin of yours, Billy Hawk? Or worse yet, his boss?"
"Zachary Roundpoint's too busy with his casinos and Indian mafia networking to play games like this with me. Besides, there's no animosity between us."
'Tell that to Billy Hawk. He still thinks you stole his wife from him."
"Bullshit. Everybody on the res knows she left him because he hooked up with Roundpoint. I had nothing to do with her leaving him. Billy brought that all on himself."
"You told me she wanted him out of the picture, so she and you could ride off into the sunset, man. I don't forget a thing like that."
"I thought I told you to forget that, Jack! I told that to you in confidence, so don't repeat it."
"Confidence? How many others've you told the same story to? Stoney, you light up on beer and peyote, and you sometimes talk, my friend, but I've kept your secret." Tebo began to pace, agitated. "You gotta at least consider that maybe Billy thinks you are after him? Maybe this is his way of striking first, sending a warning, bro. I mean, Tsali, she's not known for diplomacy or discretion, and she is living in your grandfather's house with her girls- the house you bought for the old man."
"She nursed the old man in his final days."
"We all know that, but like Eunice says, your old girlfriend's got it easy because of you, and that can't sit well with Hawk."
Lucas thought, If it is Billy, let the bastard come, but he said, "Come on, Jack, you're beginning to sound like the gossips on the fucking res. That shit with Billy's old water under an old bridge."
"But the woman wanted you to snuff her husband!"
"Shhhh! Can you be any louder? Damn it, Jack, when Tsali came to me with that nonsense, she'd been pushed beyond her limit. It's been a year, and I stopped seeing her, end of story."
Tebo frowned and muttered under his breath as he wiped at his two-day-old stubble. "Seems there's plenty of room between the lines for bad blood, and-"
"Not on my part!"
"— and a desire to avenge family honor, whether-"
"Bullshit!"
"— whether you've sworn off her or not!"