Page 66 of Evil Bones
“Hugh Norwitz, white, age forty-four. Busted in 2012 on a 14.190.9.”
“I know you’ll tell me what that is.”
“Indecent exposure. The prick whipped out Mr. Happy at the Manor Theater during a matinee ofThe Dark Knight Rises. Meaningful, eh?”
“Deeply.”
“Norwitz was over eighteen, a couple of theexposees were under sixteen. That made the act a class H felony.”
“He did time?”
“Not much. But the incident got him registered as a sex offender. During a pop-in visit in 2018, a social worker spotted child porn. Then investigators found the mother lode of naughty kiddy pics on his laptop.”
“He was busted for possession of child pornography.”
“Am I not making myself clear?”
Santa Claus with a bad dye job and an even worse shave. That unlikely combo of descriptors popped to mind when I first laid eyes on Hugh Norwitz.
The man looked older than I expected. His neck skin hung loose, his jawline and cheekbones hunkered indistinct beneath layers of fat. A profusion of burst capillaries reddened both his cheeks. To say the Morticia-black dye job looked amateur would be excessively kind.
As anticipated, Norwitz was less than thrilled by our early-morning ding-a-ling at his artsier than Carmel-by-the-Sea Fourth Ward home. Dressed in a silk bathrobe and sherpa-style wool-lined slippers, he ordered us off his porch with an imperious flick of one wrist.
Slidell flashed his badge and laid the usual cop prose on him. Drawing himself up, Norwitz wrapped each of our palms in a weak spiritless grip, and invited us in.
The air in Norwitz’s home felt Torrid Zone warm and humid. I guessed that thermostatic choice was for the benefit of the enormous, vining philodendron spreading across two of his living room walls. A carefully placed pair of blue spots illuminated the somewhat unsettling plant.
But the mongo flora was the least bizarre of the artifacts filling Norwitz’s home. Taking a seat in the dining room as directed, I looked around. Saw dead animals everywhere, most stuffed and posed in poorly executed attempts at simulating their natural behaviors. A red fox, head lowered, one forepaw lifted and curled. A copperhead, body coiled, fangs bared. A Canadian goose, wings spread, a fish in its half-open beak.
Those weren’t the items I found most disturbing. A stuffed cat occupied the top level of a set of shelving opposite the table, tiny patent leather boots on its hind legs, a miniature whip grasped in one raised paw. A squirrel wore a tutu and fishnet stockings on its shaved hind limbs. Two rabbits, each tuxedo attired, hugged in a bipedal cottontail embrace.
Every animal had the same beady glass eyes. The same crude stitching defacing its fur or feathers or scales.
“What the fucking fuck?” Slidell mumbled, taking in the array.
“Please sit down, sir. I’ve harmed no one.”
“Yeah?” Jabbing a beefy forefinger in the direction of the dancing bunnies. “Tell it to those two.”
“It’s what I do to relax.”
Still standing, Slidell whipped around to face Norwitz. “And what the galloping Christisit you do?”
“Taxidermy.”
“You kill animals so’s you can yank out their innards and stuff them?”
“I kill nothing. I collect carcasses.”
“You disembowel carrion and shove sawdust up their butts.”
“That makes it sound crude.”
“Ain’t it?”
Affronted, Norwitz skirted Slidell’s question. “An interest in taxidermy isn’t that strange. I was just at a conference attended by hundreds of practitioners, some hobbyists, some professionals.”
“So, this is your hobby, eh? Taxidermy with a little S&M twist?”
