Laying Down the Paw (32 page)

 

FORTY-EIGHT

BLOODY SUNDAY

Dub

Dub woke Sunday morning feeling stiff and sore. The sleeping bag was thick, but the metal floor of the van had been hard underneath it. He felt like he'd slept on a rock.

At least he was still free. A security guard employed by Walmart had apparently noticed Dub's van had been in the lot all night on Friday. When Dub went inside the store Saturday morning to use the bathroom, the guard stopped Dub and told him that overnight parking was not allowed. Dub had been forced to find another place to park on Saturday night. He'd chosen an apartment complex near the TCU campus. He figured college kids would be less likely to report the van.

He'd nearly panicked last night. He'd woken to police lights flashing outside the van. He'd pulled the sleeping bag over his head and laid as still as possible. A cop had shined a flashlight in the window and slapped a violation sticker on his windshield. He'd heard a dog bark and sniff around the doors, and a female voice ordering the dog back into the car. Thank goodness the cop hadn't noticed him inside the van and he hadn't been arrested.

He couldn't be sure whether the officer and the dog had been the same ones he'd run into at the Bag-N-Bottle, but chances were good. There were way more male cops than female cops, and probably not many K-9 teams. But if he were going to be caught and taken into custody, he'd rather it be by those two than some dickwad who'd rough Dub up first.

Dub found his keys, climbed into the driver's seat, and drove to a gas station to use the restroom and brush his teeth. When he finished, he splashed some warm water on his face and scratched at his scruffy beard. He wished he could afford to shave. The damn thing was itchy and made him look like a terrorist. Sometimes he wished the puberty fairy hadn't been quite so generous with the facial hair and had instead made him a few inches taller.

The clerk frowned at Dub as he walked to the exit. “Next time you come in to use the bathroom,” the man said, “buy something.”

Ignoring the clerk, Dub returned to his van. As he pulled away from the curb, he caught a whiff of himself.
Phew.
He could really use a shower.

Remembering his membership card, Dub drove to the YMCA. He parked his van in a spot next to an old blue Nova with orange flames painted down the side. He flashed his card to the attendant at the counter and headed to the men's locker room. He had no soap, no shampoo, and no towel, but figured he could make do with a handful of the liquid soap from the sink dispenser and a dozen or so paper hand towels.

After the cold, uncomfortable night in the van, the hot shower felt beyond good. He washed his hair and body with the hand soap, and just stood under the spray for a good twenty minutes. What else did he have to do? When he was done, he had no choice but to put his sweats back on, despite the stench. At some point he'd find a Laundromat and wash his clothes. For now, his funds were too tight to splurge on detergent.

He exited the locker room into the indoor pool area and stopped still.
Holy crap!
That female cop and her shepherd were standing by the pool, talking to a blond man who was in the water, his arms hooked over the edge.

Dub ducked his head and hurried by, keeping one eye on the cop, hoping she wouldn't see him. The dog turned, sniffed the air, and wagged her tail. She looked at Dub and let out a loud
Arf!
that echoed in the enclosed space.

The officer looked down at her dog and wagged her finger. “Brigit, hush!”

Yes, dog!
he thought.
Please be quiet!

Once he was in the hallway, Dub jogged as fast as he dared to the exit and ran to his van. He pulled out of the parking lot and lurched down the street, one eye on his rearview mirror.

Good.
Nobody was on his tail. It looked like the cop hadn't spotted him.

 

FORTY-NINE

A BANG-UP JOB

Megan

Seth and I were halfway through our pancakes, Blast and Brigit halfway through their bacon and sausage, when my cell phone rang. The readout indicated it was Detective Jackson calling.

I tapped the screen to accept the call. “Good morning, Detective Jackson.”

“You hear about the shooting in Park Place last night?”

“I did,” I told her. “I worked the night shift. I was tied up with a DUI while it was going on.”

“Turns out the victims came home late and surprised a burglar.”

Tragic, of course, though unfortunately not unusual. “Did they get a good look at him?”

“The husband is unconscious,” she said, “but the wife gave a detailed description. Get this. She said the shooter was a young man with light-brown skin, dark curly hair, and a white hoodie with a tornado printed on the front.”

My looter and the possible murder suspect.

Whoa.

Brigit took advantage of the fact that I was temporarily discombobulated to snatch a hunk of pancake from my plate.
Bad dog.
I pushed the plate over in front of her, basically rewarding her naughty behavior, but she'd left several hairs stuck in the syrup. I wasn't above picking a dog hair or two out of a plate of spaghetti and pretending it didn't happen, but I drew the line at fishing fur from sticky syrup.

“I'm heading over to the hospital,” the detective continued. “I need to ask the wife some questions while things are still fresh. Want to come with me?”

“Of course.”

She gave me the room number and hung up.

“I have to go,” I told Seth. “It looks like the curly-haired looter was involved in a shooting last night.”

“I thought you said he was the only one who didn't pull a gun on you? That he seemed nonviolent?”

I raised my palms and shook my head. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Seth stood and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Let me know what happens.”

“I will. Can you take Brigit home for me?” Surely the doctors would frown on me taking an animal into the intensive care unit, and if I left her in my car she might eat the floor mats.

“Be happy to,” Seth said.

I finagled my house key off my chain. “You can leave it under the mat when you go.”

Twenty minutes later, Detective Jackson and I met in the lobby of the hospital. We checked in with the nurse on duty in intensive care.

“There's been no change,” she said, “but the good news is he's still hanging on.”

Hanging on with the help of life support. Despite the beeps from the heart monitor that indicated he was still alive, Mr. Prentiss looked deathly pale and lifeless in his bed.

Jackson and I continued to the room where Mrs. Prentiss had been taken. Now that her bullet had been removed and she was in recovery, her condition had been upgraded from critical to serious.

The woman lay in her bed staring straight ahead as if dazed. Her eyes were pink and puffy, her fox-red hair mussed, her makeup streaked with tears. An IV bag at the head of her bed dripped what I assumed was a low dose of morphine into her veins, enough to ease the pain of her wound but not so much as to render her unconscious.

Jackson rapped on the door frame. “Mrs. Prentiss? May we come in and speak with you?”

The woman turned her head our way and, noting my uniform, motioned for us to come in. We pulled a couple of chairs up next to the bed and took a seat. The detective pulled out her digital recorder as well as her notepad. She turned the recorder on and positioned it on the rolling, adjustable table situated over the bed.

Her preparations done, Jackson put a compassionate hand on the patient's arm. “I am so sorry about all you're going through, Mrs. Prentiss.” When the woman nodded and said a soft “Thanks,” the detective removed her hand and picked up her ballpoint pen. “I've been told that you got a look at the shooter. Did he look familiar at all?”

“No,” Mrs. Prentiss said. “I don't think I've ever seen him before.”

“Can you describe him for me?”

Mrs. Prentiss spoke slowly, her voice warbling with emotion. “He was a little shorter than average,” she said. “Curly black hair. Olive skin.”

“Olive?” the detective repeated. “Any guess as to his race or ethnicity?”

“It's hard to say,” the woman said. “He looked sort of like Johnny Depp except for the hair.”

Jackson and I exchanged glances. I'd told her about Stefan Nicolescu, the odd mailman who seemed to know so much. Maybe
too
much. Nicolescu had Johnny Depp's coloring, sure, but with his buggy eyes and Jay Leno chin, he looked more like a caricature of Johnny Depp or a reflection of the actor in a funhouse mirror.

Jackson jotted the Depp reference on her notepad. “Could he have been eastern European?”

“I really don't know.” Tears welled up in the woman's eyes when she noticed the frustration on the detective's face and mine. “I'm trying. I really am.”

The detective gave her arm another reassuring pat. “We know you're doing your best, Mrs. Prentiss.”

The woman closed her eyes for a moment as if trying to blink back the tears. When she opened them again, the detective continued her questions.

“What was his build? Thin? Heavy? Average?”

“It was hard to tell for sure since he was wearing a bulky sweatshirt,” she said, “but he had the sleeves pushed up and his forearms looked pretty muscular.”

Hmm.
I hadn't seen the looter's arms, of course, and his upper body had likewise been obscured by the hoodie, but the looter's legs had definitely been thin.

Jackson pulled up a photo of Stefan Nicolescu on her phone. Given that he was wearing his post office uniform, the picture appeared to be a photo taken for a work ID. Obviously, the detective had taken my concerns seriously and followed up on the man. She showed the picture to Mrs. Prentiss. “Is this the guy?”

Mrs. Prentiss looked at the phone and shook her head. “No. I hate to say this, but if I had seen the man who shot us under different circumstances I would say he was attractive.”

A violent criminal with good looks. It just didn't seem right. Still, everything that this woman was telling me pointed to the looter. He'd been scruffy, sure, but still what most women would consider handsome.

“What about this man?” Jackson pulled out a folded copy of the black-and-white sketch of the murder suspect, opened it up, and showed it to Mrs. Prentiss.

The woman nodded, fresh tears in her eyes. “That's a very good likeness. Who is he?”

“That's the problem,” the detective said. “We don't know. But maybe you can tell us something that will help us narrow it down.”

She continued with her usual line of questions. Who knew that Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss were going to be out Saturday evening? Had they had any work done at their house lately, any repairmen in their home? Did they employ someone to take care of their lawn or clean their house? Had she seen anyone unusual in the neighborhood recently? Did she notice any cars parked near her house when they pulled up? Maybe a truck or van?

The responses gave us little to go on. They'd had no work done at their house in recent weeks. While they had a professional lawn care service, they'd put services on hold for the winter and none of the workers had been to their house since late October, when the grass went dormant. They hired a housekeeper, but she had been with them for years with no problems. Mrs. Prentiss hadn't noticed anyone unusual in the area. There might have been a vehicle of some sort parked across the street and down a ways, but since it sat past their house they hadn't paid it much attention. She didn't think it had been a black van though.

“A van might have stuck with me,” she said. “That would be unusual for our neighborhood at that time of night.”

Jackson turned to me. “Anything you'd like to ask, Officer Luz?”

Giving the late-night timing, this burglary seemed different from the others that had taken place in W1 recently. Were they unrelated? Or could there be a link? The burglars in the other cases hadn't hurt the homeowners but, of course, the homeowners had all been away on trips during the robberies. There was no telling what could have happened had the residents surprised the burglars like Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss had. And, while Mrs. Prentiss seemed to believe the shooter was the only person involved, there had been at least two men involved in the Harrington robbery.

I sat forward in my chair. “Are you certain the man who shot you and your husband was alone?”

“I didn't hear anyone else in the house,” she said, “and he didn't call out to anyone or anything like that.”

“Any chance you'd had a trip planned that you canceled for some reason?”

“No. Why?”

“There have been some other burglaries in the area. In those cases, the victims were all out of town when their houses were broken into.”

When we'd obtained all of the information we could from Mrs. Prentiss, we stood to go. Jackson wished the woman and her husband a speedy and thorough recovery and I nodded in agreement.

I followed Jackson out the door, turning in the hallway to look back one last time at the fragile woman in the bed.
I'll find the man who hurt you,
I silently promised.
Don't you worry.

I might not have all the clues I needed yet, but I did have one critical thing.

Dogged determination.

 

FIFTY

HAVING A BLAST WITH BLAST

Brigit

Blast's partner drove Brigit home from breakfast, making a stop by a home improvement store on the way. When they returned to the house, she thought Seth would merely drop her off and leave. She was thrilled when he and Blast stuck around. Zoe wasn't bad company but, in the end, Zoe was still a cat. She'd rather sharpen her claws on the furniture than chew on toys or shoes.
Boring.
She pooped in a box inside the house.
Uncivilized.
And she threw hissy fits when Brigit tried to share her tuna.
Stingy.