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On Thursday, Stiles almost got run over by a reindeer. He dropped Jamie off at school, still yawning and grumpy, and got the call to head down to the Santa’s Workshop set up at Ogden’s Christmas Tree Farm. The elves that weren’t standing in shuddering, traumatized groups were trying to help contain the reindeer from Santa’s Sleigh. There were seven of them, all wild-eyed and sweating with terror, trying frantically to escape their pen. The first dose of sedative, delivered via tranquilizer dart, seemed to be having no effect.
Stiles stood for a moment, shocked. He’d taken Jamie to Ogden’s the past four years and these same animals had been well behaved and placid. As he stood there, a buck finally succeeded at what he’d been attempting for what must have been half the night and knocked the gate of the pen from its posts. The buck broke for the path of least resistance, which happened to be the small gap where Stiles stood in the yard. Only Farmer Ogden yanking him back by the collar saved Stiles from death by deranged reindeer. He sprawled, gracelessly, in the snow as the small herd thundered past, into the tree plots. Mrs. Ogden, wielding the tranquilizer gun, swore loudly and at length.
Farmer Ogden pulled Stiles back up and brushed the snow from him with several pats that threatened to push him down again. The elves and the farmers dispersed as Mrs. Ogden shouldered the gun and began shouting about shutting down the farm and contacting the Forest Service and Animal Control. Farmer Ogden left her to it and jerked his head toward the pen. “C’mon.”
Stiles followed. At the far end of the enclosure, an eighth reindeer was very, very dead. The snow around it was a trampled, pink slush, his antlers had been taken, his eyes gouged out, and long, clean cut ran the length of its underbelly. Its ribcage had been cracked open and splayed wide.
Stiles swallowed down bile and pulled his scarf up over his nose. Whatever had done this had to have been in the pen. Which meant sharing space with seven mindlessly terrified, massive creatures for a half hour at least, assuming that they worked quickly. There was no reason to connect this to the stag in the forest, the methodologies were completely different. The five slashes down the flank of the stag had been jagged and torn, but the overall scene had been surprisingly clean, with little blood. The cut down the center of the reindeer could have been surgical while the scene itself was bloody and wild. The stag, Stiles had no doubt, had been left to make a point. This? This was violence for violence’s sake, enjoyed like a fine wine.
He stood, blinking at the corpse, loathe to get any closer. “Keep the farm closed until the other reindeer have been rounded up. I’ll have the crime scene techs come out.”
For all the good it would do. Stiles had no doubt there would be as little evidence here as there had been around the stag. Behind him, Farmer Ogden snorted his own derision.
“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “Make sure everyone’s careful out there.”
Stiles turned to go, but Ogden’s gravelly voice made him pause. “That all you have to say, detective?”
Ogden was rough-hewn, stoic, and deeply observant. Stiles shrugged. “Carry iron.”
***