The stupidest angel: a heartwarming tale of Christmas terror

Chinese place in Pine Cove. Besides, I'm really swamped here. I handle vacation rentals and it's Christmas Eve eve."

    "We could go to your place for a quick lunch. You have no idea how quick I can be if I put my mind to it."

    Lena looked past him to her coworkers, who, of course, were now staring. "Is that what you need to ask me?"

    "Oh, no, no, of course not. I wouldn't – that would be, well, yes – but there's something else." Now Tuck was feeling the realtors watching him, listening to him. He leaned over Lena's desk so only she could hear. "You said this morning that that constable guy your friend is married to lives in a cabin at the edge of a ranch. It wouldn't be the big ranch north of town, would it?"

    Lena was still looking past him. "Yes, the Beer-Bar Ranch, belongs to Jim Beer."

    "And there's an old single-wide trailer next to the cabin?"

    "Yes, that used to be Molly's, but now they live in the cabin. Why?"

    Tuck stood back and grinned. "Then white roses it is," he said, a little too loudly for the benefit of the audience. "I just didn't know if they'd be appropriate for the holidays."

    "Huh?" Lena said.

    "See you tonight," Tuck said. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then sauntered out of the office, smiling apologetically at the exhausted realtors as he went.

    "Merry Christmas, you guys," he said, waving from the door.
    * * *
    The first thing that Theo noticed when he entered Gabe Fenton's cabin was the aquariums with the dead rats. The female was scampering around the center cage, sniffing and crapping and looking rat-happy, but the others, the males, lay on their backs, feet shot to the sky, like plastic soldiers in a death diorama.
    "How did that happen?"

    "They wouldn't learn. Once they associated the shock with sex, they started liking it."

    Theo thought about his relationship with Molly over the last few days. He pictured himself in the dead-rat display. "So you just kept shocking them until they died?"

    "I had to keep the parameters of the experiment constant."

    Theo nodded gravely, as if he understood completely, which he didn't. Skinner came over and headbutted him in the thigh. Theo scratched his ears to comfort him.

    Skinner was worried about the Food Guy, and he was hoping that maybe the Emergency Backup Food Guy might give him one of the tasty-smelling white squirrels in the cages on the table, now that it appeared that the Food Guy was finished cooking them. This teasing was as bad as when that kid at the beach used to pretend to throw the ball, then not throw the ball. Then pretend to throw the ball, but not throw the ball. Skinner had to knock the kid down and sit on his face. Boy, had he been bad-dogged for that. Nothing hurt like being bad-dogged, but if the Food Guy kept teasing him with the white squirrels, Skinner knew he was going to have to knock him down and sit on his face, maybe even poop in his shoe. Oh, I am a bad, bad dog. No, wait, the Emergency Backup Food Guy was scratching his ears. Oh, that felt good. He was fine. Doggie Xanax. Never mind.

    Theo handed Gabe the sandwich bag with the hairs in it.

    "What's the oily substance in the bag?" Gabe said, examining the specimen.

    "Potato-chip flotsam. The bag is from my lunch yesterday."

    Gabe nodded, then looked at Theo the way the coroner always looks at the cop on TV – like: You numbskull, don't you know that you're contaminating evidence just by continuing to draw breath and I'd be a lot more comfortable with you if you'd stop?

    He took the bag over to the microscope on the counter, removed a couple of the hairs, and put them on a slide with a cover, then fitted it into the microscope.

    "Please don't tell me it's polar bear," Theo said.

    "No, but at least it's an animal. It seems to have a distinct sour-cream-and-onion signature." Gabe pulled back from the microscope and grinned at Theo. "Just fucking with you." He gave Theo a gentle punch to the arm and looked back into the microscope. "Wow, the medulla is absent and there's low birefringence."

    "Wow," echoed Theo, trying but not really feeling the low-birefringence stoke that Gabe was.

    "I have to check the hair database online, but I think it's from a bat."

    "There's a database for that? What, Bat Hair Dot-Com?"

    "That was supposed to be the whole purpose of the Internet, you know. To share scientific information."

    "Not a Viagra- and porn-delivery system?" Theo said. Maybe Gabe was going to be okay after all.

    Gabe moved to the