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“I don’t have an explanation for it. All I know is I got this ugly big growly ogre ruining my sleep,” Lula said.
“How do you know it’s Grendel? Did you just readBeowulf?”
“You can read about Beowulf?” Lula asked.
“It’s a book,” I said.
“I didn’t know that,” Lula said. “I learned all about him in this video game I downloaded. It’s a total kick-ass video game, I can’t stop playing it. I thought it was made up except that don’t seem to be the case.”
Bob was drooling, standing in front of Connie. She gave him the doughnut with the sprinkles, and he swallowed it whole.
“Why do you think it’s Grendel?” I asked. “Have you actually seen him?”
“He’s always in the dark,” Lula said. “He’s the shadow walker. That’s what they call him. He brings darkness, chaos, and death. I mean, I don’t like none of that. I especially don’t like death. You know how I feel about death.”
“But have you seen him?”
“Hell yeah. Sort of. He’s big and hairy like Sasquatch. I mean, huge! And he’s got a little shrunken head. The whole package is nasty. Mostly I hear him shuffling around and making grunting sounds. By the time I get the light on, he’s gone. From now on I’m sleeping with the light on. It’s not good for your melatonin production, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“I have my own problems,” I said. “I can’t find anybody.”
“A new FTA just came in,” Connie said. “Vinnie is in a state over it. He should never have written the bond. The guy is high risk, and the bond was six figures.” She handed the file to me.
I paged through it. “Farcus Trundle. Charged with armed robbery and kidnapping.”
“That’s a terrible name,” Lula said. “No wonder he had to turn to a life of crime.”
“He’s fifty-eight years old and unemployed,” I said.
“Technically that’s not true,” Lula said. “He’s self-employed as an armed robber. He might be misguided, but at least he’s trying to be self-sufficient.”
“He kidnapped a seventy-three-year-old woman.”
“Hunh,” Lula said. “He shouldn’t have done that. I hope he treated her good.”
“It says here that he chained her to a doghouse in his backyard.”
Lula finished off the chocolate cake doughnut. “Was it a nice doghouse? Some of those doghouses have heat and carpeting and everything.”
“He has a bunch of priors,” Connie said. “Career criminal, sex offender and anger-management issues. You don’t want to underestimate him.”
I found his photo. “He’s six foot two and weighs two hundred forty-five pounds. Dark brown hair, thinning at the top, beady brown eyes, day-old beard, not smiling.”
“What do beady eyes look like?” Lula asked.
“Like eagle eyes but without eagle eyebrows,” I said. “He has normal eyebrows.”
I showed her the picture attached to the file.
“Yeah,” Lula said. “He’s got beady eyes. We need to go investigatethis. I want to see the doghouse. I’m wondering if the old lady had to share it with a dog. It had to be a big doghouse if it was shared.”
I went speechless for a couple beats, processing the mental image of a woman and a dog huddled together in a Snoopy-style doghouse.
“You might want to go in armed on this one,” Connie said.
“I got us covered,” Lula said. “I’m ready to rock and roll.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
