Hunter’s Dance by Kathleen Hills Page A

strong. The smell, I mean. Bambi had to have had a real pile of it to be able to detect the odor. And to make the stomach contents alkaline as they were.”
    McIntire nodded. He’d expected as much.
    â€œThere wasn’t much in his stomach,” the doctor went on, “a few bites of ham, some brandy, microscopic bits of leaf and the definite odor of a variety of lobelia commonly known as Indian tobacco.”
    â€œ
Indian
tobacco? This is starting to sound like a bad joke.” Not that McIntire felt much like laughing. “I figured it must be some kind of poison that killed him.”
    â€œWell, it wasn’t.”
    â€œNow you lost me.”
    â€œLobelia takes a long time to act. And it’s a powerful emetic. Anybody consuming lethal levels would probably upchuck it before it did much harm. Regardless, Bambi Morlen died before he absorbed enough of it to have an effect.”
    â€œAnd, of course, he did vomit some of it up,” McIntire remembered.
    â€œSomebody vomited, but it wasn’t Bambi.”
    McIntire waited. Guibard sipped his drink and returned his glass to the table.
    â€œThere was no sign that anything that boy ate went any direction except down. The person that puked on the floor in that loft wasn’t Bambi. But whoever it was might also have partaken of the poison.” He paused. “Possibly.”
    â€œThen what did kill him?”
    â€œHe bled to death.”
    Now McIntire put down his glass. “How’d you figure that? I didn’t see a drop of blood except on his head, and you said he was already dead when that happened.”
    â€œThe bleeding was internal.”
    â€œHis brain?”
    â€œJohn! No, not his brain. He was stabbed. A small wound in his back, only a bit of a poke. It closed up right away, but the weapon nicked the pulmonary artery. He bled to death internally. Seeped to death is more like it. It might have taken quite a while. He could have been up walking around in the meantime. For sure, he put his coat on after he was stabbed. It didn’t have a hole in it. He maybe lived as much as an hour, possibly more, depending on how active he was. Might not even have realized he was injured until he started getting woozy.”
    â€œNot realize it? Wouldn’t the fact he’d just been stabbed in the back give him a clue?”
    â€œThere’s not a lot of sensation for pain there. He’d have probably felt the whack, but not necessarily know it was anything more than a blow. ”
    â€œSo it might not have happened in the woodshed?”
    â€œNo. It could very well have happened somewhere else. If he was active, say walking, or involved in a struggle with his attackers, he would have bled quicker. But if he was just sitting in a car, driving…who knows? Like I said, the rest of it—the binding and gagging, the mutilation—all that was done some time after he died. There was no bruising or scrapes from the cords and no sign that he’d put up any fight against them. Anyhow, the way they were tied a two-year-old could have gotten free.”
    McIntire figured he was, after all, as thick as Guibard took him to be. All was not being made clear. After a short hesitation McIntire asked, “You said something about a hole in his skull?”
    â€œNot quite a hole, but it was like I figured. Someone tried to drill right through the bone using a bit brace. The human skull is pretty tough though. Whoever did it may not have put a lot of effort into it. At any rate he didn’t make much headway, so to speak.”
    â€œYour unfailing sense of humor is a marvel.” McIntire didn’t want to think about that hole, inflicted after death or no. “Did you find anything else of importance, a few stray bullet wounds, maybe evidence of strangulation?”
    Guibard laughed outright. “Well. He did have a bit of abrasion on his neck, but I doubt it contributed to his death. Unless the young