“All right. You found the body there. When was it?”
“It was Sunday, September eleventh.”
“About what time?”
“Around three or four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I was coming along the road, driving up to my place, and got to wondering whether Sabin had got in for the fishing. I hadn’t seen him, but he usually managed to get in when they opened up the fishing in Grizzly Creek, so I stopped the car to take a look at the house, and heard the parrot screaming something awful. So I says to myself, ‘Well, he’s there if his parrot is there,’ so I drove up to the house. The shutters were all down the way it is when the place is closed up, and the garage was closed and locked, and I thought, ‘Shucks, I’ve made a mistake, there ain’t anyone home.’ So I started to drive away, and then I heard this parrot again.”
“What was the parrot saying?” the coroner asked.
Waner grinned and said, “The parrot was cussing a blue streak; he wanted something to eat.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I got to wondering if Sabin had maybe left the parrot there without being there himself. I figured maybe he’d gone fishing, but if he had, I didn’t see why he’d pull all the shutters down; so I got out and looked around. Well, the garage was locked, but I could get the doors open a crack, just enough to see that Sabin’s car was in there, so then I went around to the door and knocked, and didn’t get any answer, and finally, thinking maybe something was wrong, pried open one of the shutters and looked inside. This parrot was screaming all the time, and, looking inside, I saw a man’s hand lying on the floor. So then I got the window up and got inside. I saw right away that the man had been dead for quite a while. There was some food for the parrot on the floor, and a pan that had held water, but the water was all gone. I went right over to the telephone and telephoned you. I didn’t touch anything.”