Page 87 of Evil Bones
“I just got off the phone with Harve Acorn,” Slidell went on. “Acorn caught a call about a body at the McDowell Nature Preserve.”
“Acorn’s the tall gray-haired detective who walks with a limp?”
“Yeah. The guy’s a real piece of work, thinks—”
“McDowell is down off York Road?” Suspecting where this was going, I was coming awake fast.
“Yeah. Acorn heard about the cases we’re looking at. You know, through the cop shop grapevine, and he—”
A woman spoke in the background. I couldn’t make out her words.
“Hold on,” Slidell said.
The line muffled.
Birdie took advantage of my silence to head butt my arm. I stroked his head, which was not what he wanted. He was jonesing for breakfast.
Seconds passed, then Slidell was back.
“Acorn figured this new DOA sounded like our doer. Paint, glitter, face messed up, missing body parts.”
Bird nudged me harder. This time, I ignored him.
“What’s the plan?”
“I’m meeting Acorn at McDowell in sixty.”
“I’ll be ready in thirty.”
Lake Wylie was created in 1904 when the Catawba Power Company built a dam and power plant between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Fort Mill, South Carolina. The thirteen-thousand-acre body of water straddles the border between the states like a giant meandering millipede.
Hugging a stretch of Wylie’s shoreline is the McDowell Nature Preserve. Like the other locations in which animal remains were displayed, McDowell is composed mostly of undeveloped forest and grassland, but also contains picnic and recreational areas. Also like the other sites favored by our doer, McDowell is easily accessed via a major thoroughfare.
During the drive to the preserve, Slidell briefed me on the little he’d discovered about Ozzie Key.
Key, now in his forties, was a native Charlottean who’d dropped out of South Mecklenburg High School to enlist. Following his discharge from the army, he hadn’t bothered to pursue a GED.
Currently, Key lived alone—no wife, no kids, no girlfriend, no roommate—in a small rental home off North Sharon Amity Road. He worked part-time as a Wendy’s cook, part-time as the shampooer for a dog spa near the Southpark mall.
Slidell learned that Key had a sheet going back to his middle school years. Nothing major, nothing violent. Shoplifting. Petty larceny. One auto theft bust that landed him in the can for five years. Several DUIs.
All in all, Key’s profile didn’t read like that of a candidate for MENSA.
The day’s outing unfolded as a reboot of our trip to Chantilly.
Until we connected with Harvey Acorn.
Harve the Nut, to his friends. Of whom there were few, according to hearsay.
My policy is to avoid gossip about the personal lives of others. That strategy often leaves me out of the loop. Truth be told, I’m happy that way.
So, here’s what I knew about Harve the Nut.
Three years back, Acorn had left the NYPD to accept a much less prestigious job with the department in Charlotte. There was talk at the time, of course, with explanations varying.
One version had it that Acorn had appeared drunk at the workplace once too often. Another that he’d been caughtin flagrante delictowith the captain’s wife. Another that he’d been nailed taking a bribe.
Acorn’s account of his southern migration relied on far less drama. He attributed the change of locale to his personal arrival at a tipping point regarding three issues: snow shoveling, commuting, and paying through the nose for his kids’ private schools.
