Red Dog Saloon (10 page)

Bart
was a bright shade of red. He clenched his teeth and balled up his fists. He
wanted to make his move.

“If
you weren’t wearing a badge I’d …” Bart began.

“You’d
what?” Sam interrupted. “This badge can come off real quick, tough guy. I’d
like nothing better than for you to take a swing. But then you're the type who
likes taking advantage of little girls. Fighting with a grown man isn't
something you've got the guts to do unless your daddy is around to save you.”

Bart
eyed the lawman head to toe. He would like nothing better than to smack the
smile off Sam's face. But he realized that was just what the sheriff wanted. He
was baiting him. Plus, deep down, Bart knew the sheriff would wipe the floor
with him in a fair fight.

“That’s
just what you want isn’t it?” Bart said knowingly. “You’d love for me to take a
swing at you. Then you could put me in your jail. Well, sheriff, I’m not going
to give you that pleasure. I will, however, have to ask you to leave the
premises.”

“I’d
love to do that but this is an active crime scene,” Sam responded. “And as for
having you in my jail, I’d rather have the pleasure of kicking your ass.
Besides, one of your old Red Dog buddies is already a guest at my bed and
breakfast. Remember your old friend Rhody Turner? Well, he’s back at the jail
just waiting to spill his guts about what went on out there twenty years ago.
I’m sure what he has to say will be fascinating.”

For
the first time Sam detected nervousness in Bart, the cool customer shaken by
his revelation.

“Rhody
Turner?” Bart said nervously. “I wouldn’t hang out with a loser like that even
if he was buying the beer. He's nothing but a drug dealer and a liar.”

“If
you say so,” Sam grinned as he turned to leave the office. “One thing I do know
is he’s safe as a baby in his mother’s arms. I’ve got twenty bucks that
says he outlives you, Bart. Maybe you should have punched me.”

Bart
was filled by a poison mixture of anger and fear as he watched Sam walk
out the door. How he hated Sam Delaney. He would give anything to see the
high sheriff six feet under.

His
musing about wanting the sheriff dead was interrupted by the ring of his
cellphone. Pausing to look at the caller identification, almost too mad to
talk, Bart noticed the call was from Glenn Satterfield. He had to take it
despite his overwhelming anger.

“What!”
Bart snapped as he answered his phone.

“We
have a problem,” Glenn declared, ignoring Bart's rude answer.

“You
have a problem?” Bart retorted. “Have you heard? I have one big problem right
out front of my office. Plus the sheriff is nosing around here asking all kinds
of questions.”

“Yes,
news travels quickly around Easton,” Glenn agreed. “Does he know about the Red
Dog?”

“He
thinks he knows,” Bart responded. “But we don’t need to be talking about this
on the phone. He’s figured out I’m involved in something having to do with the
old Red Dog. He just can’t prove it.”

“What
about me?” Glenn asked. “Does he know about me?”

“I
doubt it,” Bart replied. “I think he’s still fishing.”

Giving
a sigh of relief, Glenn’s tone remained all business.

“I
need you to come down to my office,” Glenn said.

“I
kind of have my hands full here right now,” Bart countered as he parted his
blinds and watched several officers milling around his car. “They think it’s
Stevie this time.”

“Just
get on down here right now!” Glenn yelled. “I don’t care what’s going on down
there, drop what you’re doing and get over here.”

Glenn’s
insistence caught Bart by surprise. The car dealer was intrigued
by the emotion in the usually calm voice of his life-long friend. What could be
so important? Glenn wasn't the type to be over dramatic.  For Glenn
to be rattled meant something was amiss.

“Trust
me, get down here now,” Glenn urged.

“If
you say so,” Bart replied.

Bart
hung up the phone and immediately headed for the back door. He slipped out,
making sure he avoided the collective eye of law enforcement. He didn't want
any further run-ins with Sam. There would be time to settle that score later.

Parking
in front of Glenn’s office after a short drive from the dealership, Bart
hustled inside. A secretary motioned him on back to the office. She was
used to seeing the businessman visit so she thought nothing of his morning
arrival.

Finding
Glenn’s office door locked, something that was unusual in Bart’s experience, he
paused to rap on the door. Things were getting stranger by the minute. Since
when did Glenn lock his door?

“What
gives?” Bart asked as the door swung open.

Glenn
reached out and pulled his friend into his office before stepping out to look up
and down the hall. He then closed the door and locked it.

“What’s
up is we got big trouble partner,” Glenn declared with his eyes wide. “We got
big trouble.”

“I’d
say so,” Bart agreed. “In case you haven’t heard, my car was covered with blood
spelling out the words Red Dog this morning and the going theory is that blood
belonged to Stevie.”

“I
know,” Glenn agreed.

“Of
course they haven’t found the body yet so I guess there’s a chance it isn’t
him,” Bart noted. “Unfortunately, he’s still missing.”

With
an odd look on his face, a look Bart had never seen on Glenn’s face in all the
years they knew each other, his friend walked across the room to a small coat
closet.

“He’s
not missing anymore,” Glenn declared.

The
closet door swung open to reveal the lifeless body of Stevie
Grissom. Their old friend hung from the coat pole like a string of fish on
the river bank.

Bart
was speechless; the air going out of him like someone punched him in the gut.
Both men stood silently gazing at the ghastly remains of their friend like they
were looking at a piece of macabre art on a museum wall. Stevie's throat
was slit from ear to ear. His skin was pasty white as if he had been drained of
all his blood. He was held to the coat pole in a noose with his body
encased in a see-through plastic bag.

Bart
was unable to rip his eyes away from the horrible scene.

“I
found him this morning when I opened the door to put away my coat,” Glenn
revealed. “As you might guess, it was quite a surprise.”

Swinging
the door shut to hide the nightmarish sight, Bart tried to gather himself.
Things were happening too fast even for the calculating businessman.

“Any
idea how he got in here?” Bart asked

“I’m
guessing he didn’t walk in,” Glenn retorted. “How should I know? I go to put up
my coat and there’s a dead body in my closet. It's not exactly the way I
usually start my day."

Shaking
his head, the puzzle of how Stevie’s body got into Glenn’s office baffling him,
Bart tried to get his head around the mystery.

“But
I don’t understand,” Bart began. “How in the world could someone have gotten
him in here without being seen?”

“The
question isn’t how he got in here. The question is how we’re going to get him
out of here without someone seeing us,” Glenn pointed out. “I can’t have a dead
body found in my closet. I don't think I have to tell you that he's going to
start stinking pretty soon."

“Settle
it down, mayor,” Bart replied, eyeing their surroundings trying to formulate a
plan on how they were going to sneak Stevie Grissom’s body out of Easton City
Hall.

Suffering
through an hour of chilling temperatures on what had become one of the coldest
winters in Castle County history, Sam watched as the crime lab team towed
Bart’s Corvette to their forensics garage for a closer inspection.

The
sheriff discovered Bart must have slipped away through the back of the
dealership while he and the crime team were canvassing the area. The
businessman was nowhere to be found to sign the papers for the impounding of
his vehicle. It didn’t matter, since the car was taken as evidence anyway but
his absence did further convince Sam that his words had struck a chord with
Bart.

Sam
was about to climb in his car when he saw a figure walking at a fast pace
toward his location. It was Cliff Chapman. He was moving quicker than
the sheriff had ever seen the old newsman move. Hopefully he wouldn't break a
hip in his haste.

“Out
for a morning jog there, Cliff?” Sam joked as the old reporter bent over trying
to catch his breath.

He
held up a finger to indicate he needed a second to catch his breath. Cliff
took one final gulp of air before forcing out a single word.

“Gina,”
Cliff blurted between gasps.

“Gina?”
Sam repeated.

“That’s
the girl’s name … Gina,” Cliff clarified as he caught his breath. “The girl
from the Red Dog you were asking about. Her name is Gina.”

“You
just now remembered that?” Sam asked.

“It
just hit me,” Cliff admitted. “I figured I’d better tell you before I forgot
... again.”

“I
don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth but do you have a last name?” Sam
asked.

Cliff’s
memory had been stretched to its maximum. He hadn't the foggiest of the girl's
last name.

“Nope,”
Cliff responded. “And to tell the truth, I may not have ever known her last
name. You got to remember, this stuff was all through the grapevine. I’m sorry
sheriff.”

Sam
gave Cliff a grin and reached out, patting the old reporter on the shoulder.

“You
did good Cliff, you did good,” Sam said. “We’ve got a name and we know about
what age she was back then so that’s a start. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still
be at square-one.”

Sam's
compliment brought a smile to Cliff's wrinkled face. He was honored his
information might play a role in helping solve the biggest crime in Castle
County history.

“I’m
glad to help, sheriff,” Cliff said. “Now what’s the red substance all over
Bart’s Corvette?”

“No
comment,” Sam replied with a wink as he climbed into his cruiser and started
the engine.

“But
I’m helping you solve the case,” Cliff declared. “How about a little help
here?”

“Don’t
worry Cliff, you’ll get an exclusive when this is all over,” Sam replied. “You
might even write a book out of it.”

Sam
sped out of the dealership and made a beeline for his office to confer with the
one person he figured could help him most in discovering the true identity of
the girl named Gina.

“I
need to know everything you know about girls named Gina around your age,” Sam
said as he walked into the records office to find his wife busy typing on
her computer.

“Take
a number, take a seat,” Carly said, glancing up over her reading glasses not
missing a key stroke. “I’m kind of busy over here, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Seriously
honey, this is important,” Sam insisted. “I need the benefit of that beautiful
brain you have inside that beautiful head of yours."

Carly
rolled her eyes as she stopped typing.

“Flattery
will get you everywhere,” Carly smiled. “So you’re looking for a girl named
Gina who's around my age? Do we know anything else about her?”

Sam
filled in his wife about the information Cliff gave him and his suspicions the Red
Dog murders may have had something to do with the unreported crime from two
decades ago.

“That's
so horrible to think something like that happened right here in Castle County
and nothing was ever done about it,” Carly said. “But, as far as girls named Gina,
you may be in luck since I don’t recall a lot of them around my age. They were
like girls named Carly - few and far between. Now had it’d been a
Lisa, Tammy or Sherry, you’d be out of luck. They were a dime a dozen and they
were all bleached blondes.”

“I’m
looking for girls, likely a little younger than …” Sam began.

“Watch
it,” Carly warned.

She
was still a bit gun shy from all the black balloons that were delivered to her
during her recent fortieth birthday celebration. Actually, in her book, turning
forty was more of an observance than a celebration.

“You
know what I mean,” Sam said. “Someone who was one or two years behind you in
high school that left town either right before or right after graduation.
Shoot, for all I know she may have even been in your class.”

Carly
chewed on her reading glasses as she sat deep in thought for a minute. Sam
could see the wheels spinning.

“I
suppose if we’re talking about high school I could dust off one of my old
annuals,” Carly suggested. “There’s a good chance that if she was around my age
and she was from here that she’d be in there. The annuals had the freshman
through senior classes so that covers four years.”

Sam
realized he could be on the verge of finally uncovering the identity of the
young victim.

“Tell
you what, I’ll dig out my annual when I get home tonight,” Carly offered as she
placed her glasses back on her nose.

“No,
you’ll dig it out right now,” Sam said impatiently.

He
reached out and grabbed his wife’s arm.

"Come
on," Sam directed as he pulled her from her desk. "I'll drive.”

It
took only a few minutes for Carly to lay her hands on her senior annual once
they got home. She blew dust off the hard-cover book before venturing into its
long-forgotten pages. It was a walk down memory lane.

“Boy,
it’s been a long time,” Carly lamented as she thumbed through the pages of
the annual. “Can you believe those hair styles? How were mullets ever cool?”

Carly
laughed as she turned the pages, commenting about old friends, her step back
into the past bittersweet.

“Those
were some good times,” Carly said as she lost focus on her mission while waxing
nostalgic.

“Honey,
I’m trying to catch a killer,” Sam interjected as he pointed to the annual. “Do
you mind?”

Beginning
from the senior class, Carly went page by page. She wrote down the
last names and page numbers of all the girls named Gina. She eliminated most of
them for one reason or another. Working on the same criteria, Carly backed
up all the way through the freshman class.

“Okay,
here’s what we have,” Carly declared after about thirty minutes of meticulous
study.

She
produced three possibilities from her careful scanning of her old high
school classmates' pictures.

“We
have a freshman, Gina Kirby. We have a junior, Gina Porter. And, we
have a junior, Gina Jones,” Carly said. “I can account for everyone else named
Gina.”

Sam
carefully studied the pictures of the three girls and immediately eliminated
the junior class member Gina Jones who he knew lived in Castle County for
several years after high school. She had moved to California to marry a
man she met on the Internet. She was a friend of a friend so Sam was confident
she wasn’t the girl he was looking for.

“So
we’re down to Gina Kirby and Gina Porter,” Sam said as he rubbed his
chin. “That’s a pretty good start. Now to figure out which one it is.”

Sam
gave his wife a kiss on her forehead, thanking her for a job well done as he
snatched the annual and hustled her back out the door.

Speeding
back to the office like there wasn't a second to waste, Sam called in his
investigators and explained what he had learned.

“The
girl you’re looking for isn’t Gina Kirby,” Bo declared as he looked at the
annual over the sheriff’s shoulder.

“Why
do you say that?” Sam asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.
We kind of dated back in school,” Bo said matter of factly. “She wasn’t bad
looking.”

Sam
looked at the investigator, trying to decide if he was serious. He would have
been a few years younger than her.

"Hey,
what can I say? I was a real cougar magnet back then," Bo grinned. “She
moved out of town with her family the next year but she would have only been
about seventeen then. I think her daddy took a job up north so I think you can
cross her off your list.”

“That
just leaves us with Gina Porter,” Sam said.

He looked
at the picture of the cute brown-haired junior and wondered what had
become of the girl.

“That
is if our Gina didn’t miss picture day,” Kendal spoke up. "I hate to rain
on your parade but that's a real possibility."

“Stop
it with the negative vibes,” Sam snapped. “This is the girl we're looking for.
Something in my gut tells me she's it. Regardless, we need to find this girl as
soon as possible. Once we locate her we can figure out, for sure, whether she's
the girl from the Red Dog.”

The
lawmen fanned on their mission to find what became of Gina Porter. In the
meantime, Sam intended to work the Rhody Turner angle. He realized the con
could provide the key to cracking the case.

Sam
grabbed the annual and walked over to the copying machine, printing out a
grainy but large picture of Gina Porter. He then took a walk through the hall
leading to the jail portion of the sheriff’s office. Sam directed the guard to
open up C-block where Rhody was being held.

Since
the sheriff made few trips into the block, his progress to Rhody’s cell was
delayed as inmates took the opportunity to express grievances with their
accommodations ranging from cold food to the lack of recreation time. Sam
finally reached his destination and found Rhody sitting on his bed
staring at the wall.

“Got
that paper?” Rhody asked as he kept his eyes fixed on the wall.

“I’m
working on it,” Sam replied. “I should have it later today.”

“I
hear our boy Stevie bought it,” Rhody revealed without a hint of emotion.
“That’s too bad. He was a good guy.”

“News
travels fast in here, doesn’t it?” Sam noted. “We’re not sure it's
Stevie, but it could be. Of course, you could have stopped that if you’d
cooperated.”

Sam’s
statement got the inmate's attention. Rhody glared at the sheriff who was
leaned against his cell door bars.

“Don’t
blame me for your not being able to stop whoever it is. That’s on you,
sheriff,” Rhody snapped. “As for me, I have a perfect alibi for once.”

“Yep,
this is one crime you actually didn’t commit,” Sam agreed.

“So,
what’s with the visit? The high sheriff doesn’t usually go slumming,” Rhody
noted. “Like I said, until I get something in writing, we got nothing to say.”

Pulling
out the piece of paper from his pocket, Sam motioned for the inmate.

“Hey,
a deal is a deal,” Sam agreed. “You’ll get your paper. But while we’re waiting,
take a look at this.”

Rhody
rose from his bunk, curious about what the sheriff was holding.

“You
bring me some porn?” the inmate asked with a wry smile on his face as he walked
over to the bars.

“You
tell me,” Sam said.

With
that, the sheriff held up the picture in front of Rhody’s face. The image
caught Rhody unprepared. The expression on the hardened criminal’s face told
Sam all he needed to know.

“Never
saw her before in my life,” Rhody growled.

The
inmate snatched the picture out of Sam’s hands and ripped it to pieces
before throwing them back in the sheriff's face.

“Now
if you don’t mind, I’m expecting a call from my old lady here in a few minutes.
Come back when you got something for me," Rhody said in a dismissive tone.

“It’s
a date,” Sam grinned.

He
had gotten what he came for without the inmate having to say a single word. His
eyes couldn't lie.

Sam
walked back to his office, confident he was on the right trail. Now, if they could
only locate the whereabouts of the mysterious Gina Porter they would be in
business.

“There
you go,” came the voice of Kendal Parks as the sheriff stepped back into his
office.

“What’s
this?” Sam asked as he took the piece of paper his detective as holding.

“It’s
what you asked for,” Kendal replied. “It’s the last known address of Gina
Porter, former resident of Castle County”

“Impressive,”
Sam admitted.

The
address on the paper was located only a couple of hours drive from Easton.

“I’ve
got to say that was pretty quick,” Sam said.