Lula was pacing in front of Connie’s desk when I walked in. She had a butterscotch glazed doughnut in one hand and a chocolate cake doughnut in the other. Connie was looking like she needed a vacation. The door to my cousin Vinnie’s inner office was closed.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“I’ll tell you how it’s going,” Lula said. “It’s not going good. I didn’t get no sleep last night. And I didn’t get no sleep the night before that. I didn’t say nothing because I don’t like to complain. I’m not one of them whiners, you see what I’m saying?”
I knew I was going to regret asking, but I had to ask anyway. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m getting stalked,” Lula said. “And it’s no normal stalking. I’m getting stalked by Grendel.”
Connie pantomimed stabbing herself in the eye with her fine-tipped Sharpie.
“Who’s Grendel?” I asked Lula.
“You don’t know Grendel?” Lula said. “He’s a famous demon. He’s a man-eater. He lives in the land of the Spear-Danes and attacks King Hrothgar’s mead hall every night. Supposedly he was killed by Beowulf but clearly, he wasn’t.”
“Oh,” I said. “That Grendel.”
“He’s stalking Lula,” Connie said to me, holding out the doughnut box. “Do you want a doughnut? There’s a maple glazed and a vanilla frosted with sprinkles.”
I took the maple glazed. “What about the daily mead-hall attacks?”
“He must have given them up,” Lula said.
“In favor of stalking you?”
“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 read Beowulf?”
“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 investigate this. 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.”
Lula rushed outside to my Jeep Cherokee and claimed the front passenger seat before Bob had a chance to get in. Bob didn’t look like he cared too much. He jumped into the back and snarfed around, looking for yesterday’s crumbs.
“Where’s this loser live?” Lula asked.
“Carlory Street.”
“That’s just past the junkyard,” Lula said. “There’s some good real estate possibilities there if you don’t mind living by a junkyard on one side and the power substation on the other.”
For the most part, Trenton is chockablock with houses. Carlory Street not so much. It’s a little over a mile long and it’s sprinkled with empty lots and houses in various stages of neglect. The vegetation is overgrown, the street is dotted with potholes and abandoned cars. Feral cats outnumber humans by about ten to one.
“If you’re going to kidnap some woman and chain her to a doghouse, Carlory Street is a good place to do it,” Lula said. “I imagine nobody there pays a lot of attention to dogs barking or people yelling.”
I bypassed the center of the city and came at Carlory Street from the substation side. There were no names or numbers on driveways, but Google Earth gave me a picture of the dirt drive leading to Trundle’s house, and the GPS lady told me I was at the right spot.
“I guess this would be considered rural in Trenton,” Lula said, “only it’s not the scenic kind of rural. It’s not Vermont, if you see what I mean.”
The house was hidden from the street by a weathered privacy fence and small shed. Vines grew over the fence and tangled in brush that was partially obscured by weeds. I slowly drove down the short driveway. A cat streaked across the driveway in front of me and Bob sat up in the back seat and woofed.
I stopped just short of the house. It was all on one level with mold on the roof and rot in the wood window trim. No car on the property. No sign of activity.