The Kiskadee of Death by Jan Dunlap Page B

emergency personnel were able to clean and wrap it sufficiently. Nevertheless, I’d already told him Luce and I would be taking him straight to the local emergency room for a thorough exam as soon as the paramedics finished with him.
    â€œThat gunshot wasn’t meant for a vulture,” Pacheco said when I joined him in the glare of his headlights. “The vultures are up in the trees, not down by a car door.”
    I glanced at Eddie and the medics in the back of the open van. Luce stood off to the side of the van, talking with another police officer.
    â€œYup, I kind of figured that out,” I said.
    The chief crossed his arms over his chest and looked towards the vultures’ roost. I waited for him to say something else about Eddie being a target, but the silence lingered.
    And lingered.
    Since I highly doubted Pacheco had developed a sudden interest in observing the habits of roosting buzzards, I guessed something else was occupying the man’s thoughts. And since he was standing only a few feet away from where Eddie had landed in a shooter’s sights, I also guessed the chief was mulling over the coincidence of two violent acts in one day that involved two men who knew each other.
    I knew that’s what I was mulling over.
    Okay, maybe not “mulling,” exactly.
    More like Holy crap! someone was just shooting at Eddie, and this morning, a friend of Eddie’s, got his head cracked and a canoe turned over on top of him .
    Needless to say, this was not how I envisioned my third day of birding in the Valley to turn out.
    â€œWho knew you three were coming out here to see the vultures tonight?” Chief Pacheco finally asked, his gaze still on the dead trees of the vultures’ roost.
    The question hit me in the gut like a sucker punch. For a moment or two, I couldn’t speak. When air returned to my lungs, my voice came out with a squeak.
    â€œYou think whoever shot Eddie… you think we talked with him?” I tried to force my words into coherent sentences. “We know the shooter? Are you kidding me?”
    Pacheco turned his head towards me and despite the dark of the falling night, his eyes were sharp and glowing. They reminded me of the eyes of the Barred Owl that I’d spotted one evening in early November from my bedroom window. It was already dark outside, and I’d walked into our bedroom, which was upstairs, to pull the curtains before turning on the room’s overhead light, but just as I reached for the curtain cord, I glanced through the window and froze. On the other side of the glass, maybe ten feet away at my own eye level, sat a full-grown Barred Owl. His implacable dark eyes latched onto mine, and I felt an almost palpable chill run down my spine.
    This must be how a rodent feels just before it suddenly becomes dinner , I thought.
    Then, in the blink of an eye, the owl flew away, its big broad wings gliding into the darkness.
    I blinked my own eyes then at the memory, and focused on Pacheco’s question.
    Who knew that Eddie, Luce and I were going to be here tonight?
    â€œBirders,” I said. “The birders staying at the Alamo Inn. Schooner, Gunnar and Paddy Mac.”
    â€œThey tell anyone else?”
    I shrugged. “I have no idea. Why would they?”
    I felt Luce’s hand slip into mine. “What are you talking about?”
    I repeated the chief’s question for her.
    â€œI think we may have said something to the naturalist here at Frontera when we visited yesterday morning,” she said. “She was the one who first told us about the vultures’ roost and some of the trouble they’ve caused. I think we told her we would try to see them tonight.”
    â€œCynnie Scott,” Pacheco said. “She’s a local legend when it comes to birding. She’s probably the most outspoken bird conservationist along the Lower Rio Grande Valley. She’s also the president of McAllen’s seniors’