Bat's Eye Bob and the Duct Tape Mummy of the Frisbee Shoals

Steven C. Levi

Box 241467

Anchorage, AK 99524

[email protected]

Jonathan Scarborough Wilkerson Todd

known ‘round the office as ‘Bat’s Eye Bob’

was blind as a bat thus the source of his name

but as a gumshoe he earned his own fame

for solving the bizarrest of criminal deeds

from the kidnapping of clowns to the thieving of weeds.

He had been born with a good pair of eyes

Which he used to decipher the guise

of the most heinous of crimes – and robberies too –

along with the theft of artwork and jewels

or anything else that could be stolen in stealth

and converted posthaste to tangible wealth.

Whether the crime occurred in daylight or night

Todd was alert for it just didn’t seem right

that someone should steal and get away with their crime

while honest folk worked hard for their dimes.

He had the greatest disdain for those up to no good

who practiced their craft where he spent his childhood.

As a young man he had carried a badge

and worked undercover chasing the bad

from the Atlantic shore where smugglers abound

across the sand dunes to Pamlico Sound

then northward to Norfolk after sellers of coke

and south to the land swindlers around Ocracoke.

His career had been sterling for two decades and two

years when a slug burned its way through

the side of his head and nipped clean the connection

between his eyes and brain’s optic perception

and he descended to darkness as though on a stage

when the curtains came down at the end of the play.

With years on the job he was only short three

for a full pension so it was determined that he

would end his career with a declining workload

in a darkness of vision he would never outgrow

and days turned to weeks to months and then years

as he sat in the gloom of his closing career.

Boredom became his career’s ambient

as he swept forward in years to his retirement

but a strange twist of fate gave him a new lease on life

when he joined in a case of a missing ale wife

who had drained millions in cash from her family account

leaving her spouse in a ditch before heading south.  

With the police in pursuit like a pack of bloodhounds

from her home to the ferry ‘cross Pamlico Sound

she’d boarded the craft at the Ocracoke dock

as though dressed for a picnic in bonnet and smock.

She was observed by the captain scrambling aboard

so he called for police backup on the far shore.

Shoulder-to-shoulder when the ferry arrived

was a legion of men in blue suits who tried

to locate the woman. They searched every car,

every carton and crate, package and jar

and then took the ferry apart, as the cliché goes,

but failed to find even a thread of her clothes. 

She’d vanished as though snatched from this world to the next

and left kith and kin concerned and perplexed.

The law was concerned as she was laden with cash,

one million dollars and no wish to come back

and every reason to run for some foreign sea shore

where she was undoubtedly with her conspirator.

Now a woman with cash runs like a freight train

barreling down mountain tracks with speed unrestrained

by gravity pulled and not slowed by its load

regardless the number of boxcars in tow –

and American dollars don’t leave many tracks

and once they’ve been spent they never come back.

So there the cops stood with egg on their face

no woman, no cash and a homicide case

that was tossed hither and fro about the squad room

‘til it landed on Todd’s desk with a boom

for failure can stain the best of the blue

so let it stain someone whose career was quite through.

Though blind as a bat and chained to a desk

did not mean that Todd’s mind had gone to rest

so he read the report, rather, it was read by his staff

composed of a woman who had a horse laugh

that made her the bane of the men with the guns

but who couldn’t be fired because of the union.

Jonathan Todd knew that like muddy boots

the worst thing in a squad room is the word ‘oops’

for it means someone has made a mistake

which is much like a rock that is tossed into a lake:

a quick little splash and the pebble is in

leaving only the dying of a concentric ring.

But Todd was no slouch and had his own rules

which had served him well when his eyes were his tools.

Married for years he knew as a spouse

in the eyes of his in-laws he was merely a louse;

and difference, they say, ‘tween outlaws and ins

was that the ins are not wanted though they be kin.

Applying this rule one step removed

when it came to a crime that had to be proved

one starts with the in-laws because they’re not scattered

and have more to gain in any matter

particularly when it involves lots of cash

because everyone expects a slice of the stash.

While it was a fact that the absconding spouse

had not left on the ferry there was lingering doubt

she’d ever boarded the ferry in the first place

for, after all, the proof was tightly laced

about the ship’s captain who made the call to the law

who himself was a cousin and thus an in-law.

This tidbit of fact was known by the police

but ignored for in Buxton in-laws increase

in geometric progression with each passing year

so the focus on in-laws and kin clearly appeared

a lost proposition so attention was primed

to the crew and their links to roots of the crime.

But the crew was all there with none getting rich

and the captain, though married to a ball-breaking witch,

was at home with three children and a wife in her teens

of a collateral cousin who was a Marine.

The captain, a deacon in the Lutheran church,

seemed hardly the man his name to besmirch.

No one saw a body jump over the side.

No choppers were airborne to give someone a ride.

No alien craft were reported that day

and road blocks had been set on the single roadway

to stop the ale wife if she jumped back ashore

and took the road north to Norfolk’s back door.  

Now Todd was a man of physics inclined

and believed that once a body’d been spied

in a location the person there stays

and if not found dead then in remains

so if the ale wife had not been found on the boat

then she surely was on the ocean afloat.

Since no one was missing from any small town

and no body’d been reported in pieces or drowned

and the captain was truthful in what he had seen

then as sure as good Scotch will not mix with benzene

there was only one option left to explore

that the ale wife on the ferry had been an impostor.

This was as clear as a mackerel in lace

and parsed by the cops at the start of the case

but not one of the passengers who left Ocracoke

had any connection to the ale wife or bloke

who had served as her husband ‘til he ran out of luck

with the cause of his death being double-ought buck.

All of the cops, most competent folks,

had checked and re-checked all the kinfolk

of the ale wife and husband, late though he was,

to find a lineal link of marriage or blood.

They concentrated on women rather than sirs

for only a woman could be an imposter.

“Only,” Todd mused, was a dangerous word

for it leads one to assume something’s absurd

but the criminal mind has no envelope

and as long as its free from cocaine and tope

no theft is too strange to pose obstriction

and often the facts are stranger than fiction

So Todd started his search by running the men

through genealogical catalogs and then

looked for a link, bloodline and kin,

to anyone who was consanguine

to the kith of the ale wife on any shore,

who was awash with cash while his family stayed poor.

His aide with a pen into cyberspace plunged

putting names to a list and some she expunged

until what she had was just gobbledygook

which the blind man went through looking for flukes

to turn GIGO to gold and solve the impossible crime

by extracting nuggets of truth from out of the grime.

In the end it was much easier that had been presumed

and he was successful because he’d been groomed,

born and bred on both shores of Pamlico Sound

so he knew all the people and what had gone down

from his days with his Daisy hunting black snakes

and a thirsting for justice that had yet to slake. 

From the plethora of names on the forest of sheets

he uncovered the name of a likely deadbeat

who had a taste for crime unreserved

and would be more than willing for greenbacks to serve

as the ale wife dressed in a bonnet and smock

to lure the police to the Ocracoke dock.

Although he was a man he was slender of build

and into a girdle that was carefully filled

to expand in the most feminine of places

he could look like the wife at numerous paces

with bonnet and smock and layers of paint

and a pocket of cash to pay for his taint.

But the plan’s basic weakness was the crew’s eyes

for it only took one to negate the disguise

but once into drag in both visage and frame

he was easily mistaken for the absconding dame

and his presence on board set off a row

while the real wife beat feet to places unknown.

The imposter needed but seconds of sight

to convince the captain his glimpse had been right

then into the bathroom he stripped to his shorts

dumping clothes overboard before he reached port

so when the cops searched this ship of the line

there was really nothing there for them to find.

Placing a call to the miscreant’s house

his wife shrilly yelled that the two-timing louse

had absconded in style in a new Cadillac – 

which she wanted herself if he ever came back –

but as far as she knew that was not to be

as he was headed south for the beach and sea

near Mazatlan in some romantic retreat

where the Latinas were hot and daiquiris sweet.

Then true to the form of a pulp fiction tale

the wife spilled her guts and drove the last nail

into the coffin of her runaway spouse

who had abandoned her bed and their conjugal house.

There was joy unrestrained from the murdered man’s kin

for the thousands in cash that had not yet to be spent.

The ale wife and her lover came back north in chains –

the wages of crime when one has no brains.

While the great wheel of justice lacks get-up-and-go

that wheel still turns though exceedingly slow.

There was much joy about the cop station

for Todd and his odd prognostications

blind he may be, dumb he was not

thus he was renamed “Bat’s Eye Bob.”

His desk and his aide from the closet broom

were moved to the corner of the main squad room

where he could be given the most perplexing of cases

that had gone cold or had run out of traces

of evidence, suspects or clues to exhume

or cases perplexing the entire squad room

be it the theft of a corpse or a meddling gadfly

or any matter that required more brains than eyes.

An unusual case came the following spring

when the upwelling Atlantic currents did bring

a jetsam of sorts riding in with the tide

that hung up on the rocks at the end of its ride

where in the shallows it tumbled and rolled,

a duct tape wrapped mummy on the Frisbee Shoals.

When it was pulled from the turbulent sea

the Coast Guard turned it over with the surrounding debris

to the local police for though the find was in brine

it was on dry land of sorts and therefore the crime --

if any occurred – was a landlubber matter

and the Coast Guard wanted different fish on its platter.

The cadaver, or corpse, choose your own term

was odd for it was too old for worms.

Dry so to speak, from the skin to marrow

it had drawn its last breath in the time of the pharaohs

but there was fresh blood on its clavicle black

and a .38 slug was lodged in its back.

Perhaps it had come from antique collection

abandoned because of an imperfection

The bullet was odd and clearly not of its time

and then found deep ‘neath the layers of grime

was a diamond the size of a humming bird egg

in a paisley pouch strapped to the back of its leg.

It was assumed that the mummy had been

at the scene of a disintegration of friends

who had come to blows over divisions of loot

and at least one of the crooks had gotten the boot.

If so then how did the mummy get into the drink

wrapped in duct tape so it wouldn’t sink?

Dumping ancient cadavers was hardly a crime

so taping it up seemed a waste of good time;

the blood on tape was of human race

but matched not a face in the computer base

and no one came forward to claim the lost soul

and no body was found full of slug holes.

After each lead had been checked for its worth

and a nation-wide search had turned up a dearth

of suspects or thefts, the body embalmed

was dropped onto the desk like a ticking bomb

of Bat’s Eye Bob because, as Bat’s Eye did know

he did not have the option to tell the squad ‘No.’

Now Bat’s Eye Bob didn’t mind the case

as it was the kind to tickle his cranial base

so he began working on a theory of two

that were a bubble and a half off the rest of the crew

who all thought like cops, and as Bob knew

unusual crimes take a new point of view.

Solving a crime of unusual bent

requires keeping one’s mind out of cement

and dividing the forensic wheat from the chaff

to find a seed of the former in tons of the last

for here there were more than a few red herring

concealing the purpose of the mummy’s true bearing.

Unlike the rest of his professional clan

Bob focused his eyes on the paisley band

that wrapped the gem tightly behind the knee

for all other clues were designed to mislead

which they had. So Bat’s Eye Bob and his AA

examined the paisley pouch for trace.

They knew that their task was Herculean

for all the clues were antipodean;

solely designed to lead policemen astray

as they had, in fact, caused a delay

which, not doubt, had been the original theme

as the bandits embarked on a more ambitious scheme.

There were too many things that left him surprised,

like how the mummy in water had even been spied

and how the duct tape kept the blood droplets fresh

with the bullet embed in the mummy’s dry flesh

but the cleverest of twists was the gem in the rough

for it gave the impression of wealth in the buff.

While flesh may not be the most exacting word

in describing a mummy once interred

and the gem had been wrapped in the depth of the grime

to convince the police there had been a crime

or was to be a crime and this set the cops on edge

as to which jewelry stores for protection to pledge.

The singular thing to which all cops did nod –

with the exception of Bat’s Eye Bob –

was that a jewelry heist was being planned

and the mummy had been part of the scam

but its loss had only changed the approach

and their intent was still diamonds to poach.

But Bat’s Eye Bob did not see eye-to-eye,

with his colleagues in blue and by and by

he developed his own take of the jape

which did not include stone or duct tape.

He believed that the mummy was only a spoor

for the cops down the wrong path to be lured.

Now ‘IQ’ and ‘smart’ are not quite the same

and each can inhabit the very same brain

or not – or one and not the other –

for neither are linked by blood as are brothers.

Any fool can memorize arcane rules

but common sense is not often fooled.

To key to solving a devious crime

is to excavate facts from their cover of grime

for truth is much more than what you think;

it’s knowing which facts to flush down the sink

and then to ponder all that remains 

regardless of how absurd it arraigns.

He created a list of the glaring red herrings

starting with mummy and duct tape pairing

then came the slug in the moldering flesh

and the blood that was wrapped to keep it quite fresh

and finally the gem in its primeval state

cupped deep inside the dusty vallate.

There was only aspect of this alleged crime

that was worthy of the expense of his time:

the paisley pouch offered a glimmer of hope

the thinnest of fibers that might lead to a rope

to unravel the truth of the actual role

of the duct tape wrapped mummy of the Frisbee Shoals.

With an eye to the trace, excusing the pun,

he looked for a lead as he needed but one.

Analyzing the garbage found on the crepe

that was stuck in the cloth and onto the tape

for a bit that was missed by his brothers in blue

that would give him a break in the form a clue.

In addition to wax and some hair of a cat

was the singe of an iron and lump of pork fat

along with three fibers from an indigenous plant

and some dust that probably came from a cant

along with some sand of manganese base

and traces of ash from a firing place.

He pondered the trace and the mummy intact

then told his AA to begin to track

by newspaper, web and police report

and every court case both criminal and tort

for jewelry links and paisley bands

or fire places and manganese sand.

That list was compared with museums and banks,

jewelry stores or suspicious pranks

that involved gems, both real and in faux,

and private collections both antique and vogue

cross-referenced with shippers who handled exports

in  cartons or crates traveling by rail to any sea port.

The concentric pairings gave him too many hits

so he fine-tuned his focus and let his emphasis shift

‘til he found the most likely target of theft

but since the object had far too much heft

his brothers in blue pooh-poohed his surmise

and left him alone with his theory despised.

Though lacking in sight, Bat’s Eye Bob

had the advantage of years over the youth of the squad

and he knew that the size of the crime being planned

was directly proportioned to the size of the gang

and the value of loot so the heist about to take place

would be large based on the clues in the trace.

Not one to take “No” as a final retort

Bat’s Eye took the matter through a back door

and came at the crime from an angle oblique.

He formed a contingent of believers and geeks:

three were accountants and two worked in the garage

where they added power to the policemen’s’ squad cars,

four were assistants and one was a priest

and the last three were cops from the Northeast

on assignment to Buxton with time on their hands

in pursuit criminals both small time and grand.  

When they were all assembled, Wilkerson Todd

gave them a rundown of the clues and job.

And thus it was that this motley crew

staked out some homes in the suburbs of New

Sandersonville and there under the cover of night

they spotted a van with a bank of floodlights

extracting a work of Chihuly glass  

from the front room of a home reeking of class.

At the arraignment amid the applause

attention was focused on Bat’s Eye Bob

who explained what he’d learned from the paisley crepe.

The fabric itself had been used to drape

a faux Chihuly made of manganese sand

by a cabal of thieves from the gangland

to be used as a front, false though it be, 

to obscure the theft of the real Chihuly

for the top portion of the artwork of glass

was window dressing in the home reeking of class.

Since the Chihuly was so heavy and odd

mechanics were needed to finish the job

would take hours and to keep police effete

it was best to keep them shuffling their feet

and their manpower covering too many places

by giving them leads and too many traces

like mummy and bullet and fresh splatter of blood

as well as the gem – but all were a dud

designed to obscure the original crime.

But the one clue that was left under the grime

that proved their undoing was the paisley pouch

with the traces of clues which, like a mouth,

proclaimed in its way thus the story unrolled

of the duct tape mummy of the Frisbee Shoals.