Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (35 page)

As they got closer, Tom heard men shouting encouragement and curses, groaning in disappointment. When he entered the clearing, he crouched behind one of the parked cars and motioned for the other men to get down too. He wanted to watch and listen for a few minutes and get some idea of what they might encounter. The “shed” Pete had described was a good-sized building, maybe forty by thirty feet. No windows. Tin roof. It wasn’t built for human habitation and had probably been constructed specifically for the dogfights. Battery-operated camp lanterns hung on hooks outside the door and in several places around the clearing, probably to make parking easier.

Tom estimated twenty vehicles in the clearing, some of them older trucks and cars, some newer, more expensive cars. These exhibitions of animals tearing each other apart attracted men from the lowest to the highest levels of society. Tom had heard that some spectators would drive a hundred miles or more to gamble on a fight.

A sudden howl made Tom jump. It took him a second to place the sound. It was coming from inside a big van parked next to the building’s door. Another dog joined in. The dogs waiting their turn were getting worked up by the noise of the crowd inside.

Tom waited to see if anybody would come out to silence or check on the dogs in the van. When nobody did, he stood and motioned to his team. He drew in a deep breath and, heart suddenly racing, charged toward the shed. He slammed a booted foot into the door, knocking it open, and ran inside with his gun raised and ready. The other deputies piled in behind him.

Curses and shouts of alarm rose from the men in the room. Several made for the door, but they ran into a barricade of deputies with drawn pistols. Cigarette smoke clouded the air, and the only light came from the lanterns hanging above the fighting pit.

“Face the wall!” Tom yelled. “Now! Put your hands up and keep them where we can see them.”

The deputies shoved men against the walls and started patting them down.

“Cuff everybody,” Tom said. “We’re taking all of them in.”

That was greeted with a chorus of groans. “Aw, come on,” one man protested. “Don’t the cops have anything better to do than keep people from having fun?”

“Shut up, all of you,” Tom said. Scanning the room, he realized with a stab of disappointment that the one man he wanted wasn’t there.

Brandon, frisking the big man named Ellis, called out to Tom from the far side of the room. “Hey, Captain!” He held up a pistol. “This guy was carrying.”

Tom edged past lined-up men to reach Brandon and Ellis. “You in charge tonight?” he asked Ellis.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain.”

“Yeah, and I guess you didn’t notice what was going on here.” Tom looked down into the depression in the dirt floor, where two pit bulls had backed away from each other, distracted by all the activity among the people in the room. One dog’s cheek dripped blood from a torn flap of skin. The other dog cowered against the side of the pit, alternately staring up at the people and licking at a gash in its side. The fight, Tom guessed, hadn’t been underway long before the deputies broke in.

Ellis hadn’t responded to Tom’s remark. Tom demanded, “Where’s Leo?”

“How would I know? He don’t tell me his plans.”

“You work for him. Did he send you over here tonight because he was afraid to show up himself?”

“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Turning away from the man, Tom said, “All right, guys, let’s get these jokers back to the jail and get them booked.”

As the deputies moved the men out one by one, Joe Dolan pushed past them into the building and over to the wire fencing around the pit. “These dogs need a vet,” he told Tom.

“Rachel’s standing by for a call. Did you check on the dogs in the van?”

“Yeah, there’s eight of them in there, in cages. If I can get these two back in there, one of your men could drive the whole lot of them to the pound.”

“Hey, Bran,” Tom called to Brandon, who was shoving Ellis toward the door, “I think you’ll find the keys to that van outside in your guy’s pocket. Lock him in the back of my car, then come help us get these two dogs into the van.”

While the deputies shoved the protesting men into police cars, Joe darted the injured dogs. When they were under, Tom and Joe pushed aside the makeshift gate in the fencing, dropped into the pit and lifted out the tranquilized dogs.

When the animals were in the van and the door was closed, Brandon asked Tom, “Why do you suppose Leo didn’t show up?”

“He’s a coward and doesn’t want to take a risk,” Tom said. “He’s probably been home with his girlfriend all evening so he can claim he doesn’t have anything to do with the fight. After we get these guys to jail and the dogs to the pound, we’ll go looking for Leo.”

***

Accompanied by Brandon, Tom pulled into the gravel driveway behind Rayanne’s yellow Volkswagen Bug. No lights burned in Leo’s little house. Was Leo even here? Tom didn’t see his car anywhere, but it could be parked behind the house.

They got out and quietly pushed their doors closed. Brandon headed toward the back, his pistol drawn, and Tom walked across the grass to the front door. As he mounted the three wooden steps to the porch, a creak made him stop and hold his breath. No reaction from inside. The floorboards on the porch also creaked under his weight, and he moved quickly to press his back against the house next to the front door. His gun in one hand, he balled the other into a fist and reached sideways to pound on the door.

He waited a few seconds, but no lights came on inside and no one appeared. He banged on the door again and called out, “Leo! Open up! It’s Tom Bridger.”

If Riggs was inside and wanted to run, this was the moment when he would do it. Tom knew Brandon was ready for him at the rear door.

A light came on in the house and spilled through the window to Tom’s right. After a moment he heard a bolt slide back. The front door opened and Rayanne Stuckey blinked at him through the screen door.

“What do you want?” she asked, pushing a mass of blond curls off her face with both hands. She wore a long tee shirt and fuzzy blue slippers.

“I need to see Leo.” Tom faced the door but stayed off to one side to keep out of the line of fire if Leo started shooting from inside.

“He’s not here.” Rayanne yawned, covering her mouth with a hand. “He said he might not be home tonight.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“He stays gone all night and doesn’t tell you where he is?”

“That’s right.” Rayanne folded her arms over her chest, catching enough of the tee shirt to make it ride up and expose a hint of red panties.

“Mind if I come in and make sure of that?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, I do mind. Look, you don’t see his car, do you? He’s not here. What do you want him for, anyway?”

“I think you know.”

“I’m not a mind reader.”

“How often do you talk to your cousin Sylvia?”

A sharp inhalation gave away her surprise, although her expression remained obstinate. “What business is that of yours?” Without giving him a chance to answer, she went on, “You know, I didn’t like the way you talked to me at the Halls’ house. Like I’m some kind of ignorant little hick.”

Tom didn’t respond, but waited to hear what else she might say.

“And your girlfriend’s just as bad,” she went on. “Acting like she can order me around.”

“We’re both worried about Mrs. Hall. She’s in bad shape.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think her kids don’t know it? She’s got family, and she’s got me. You don’t have to go pokin’ your nose in. And your animal doctor friend oughta stick to dogs and cats.”

“Tell me something,” Tom said. “How did you get along with Soo Jinn?”

Rayanne’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talkin’ about now? I’m gettin’ cold standin’ here listenin’ to you.”

“Did you like her?”

“Nobody liked her. Why would I? She treated me like something nasty she stepped in.”

That wasn’t hard to imagine. “I hear she accused you of stealing from the Halls.”

“She accused me of a lot of things,” Rayanne said, her voice turning haughty, “but none of it’s true.”

“Must be hard for somebody like you, working in a place with so many expensive things sitting around. Jewelry, silver—”

“Somebody like me?” she broke in. “What’s that crack supposed to mean?”

“We’ll talk about this again,” Tom said. “Right now, if you know where Leo is, you’d better tell me. If he’s in the house—”

“Oh, for god’s sake, come on in and look if that’ll get rid of you faster.” She pushed the screen door open.

Tom kept his gun in hand as he entered.

The interior smelled faintly of popcorn and butter. A snack before bedtime, maybe. The living room was so bare it was hard to believe anybody lived here. No magazines, no books, none of the clutter of daily life. The kitchen and bathroom were spotless, without so much as a potholder or a shampoo bottle in sight. The obsessively clean, spare look of the place reminded Tom of Leo’s business office at his garage. In the bedroom, a kingsize bed took up so much space that the chest of drawers had been moved out into the short hallway. Only one side of the bed was rumpled.

Tom walked through every room and checked out the dirt-floor cellar to satisfy himself that Leo wasn’t lurking anywhere. In the kitchen, he rapped on the locked back door and called out, “Hey, Bran, he’s not here. Go on back to the car.”

As they drove away in the cruiser, Brandon said, “Maybe the guys had better luck at his mom and dad’s place.”

Tom had sent two deputies to the home of Leo’s parents at the same time he and Brandon had come to Leo’s house. “I doubt it. If he’s gone into hiding, that’s too obvious a place. My guess is that he’s hunkered down wherever he keeps his fighters.”

When they found Leo Riggs, Tom believed, they would also find the dog that had torn out Gordon Hall’s throat.

Chapter Thirty-seven

At three in the morning, Rachel drew the final stitch into a firm knot and clipped the thread. The unconscious pit bull on the operating table breathed evenly, at peace for the moment.

After examining the two fighters’ injuries at the pound, she had asked Joe to move them to the animal hospital, where she had all the supplies she needed for surgical repair of wounds. She worked without the assistance of a tech, in an eerily silent clinic that would be bustling with people and animals in a few hours.

Like the other dog whose wounds she had treated, this one was so thin that Rachel easily lifted him and carried him to a cage. After arranging him in a comfortable position and adjusting his IV, she stroked the dog’s head, something she might not be able to do when he was awake. While she was working on them, she could stay focused and keep her emotions in check. But she felt the rage building in her, and if she gave in to it she’d be ready to kill somebody.

When she walked out to the reception area, she found Tom, not Joe, leaning against the front desk.

“Hey,” he said. “Joe wanted to get back to the pound. How are the patients doing?”

“They’ll be all right. Their biggest problem is that they’re seriously malnourished.”

“Fighters are kept lean and hungry,” Tom said. “Makes them meaner.”

“If they get plenty to eat and they’re treated well, we might be able to save most of them.”

“Rachel, come on,” Tom said. “Who’s going to want these dogs?”

“We can’t just assume that nobody will want them. We have to give them a chance.” Tom squeezed her shoulder, an acknowledgment of her feelings that annoyed her because it felt like condescension. She pulled away from his touch. “They’re not going to be put down. I’ll go to court to stop it if I have to.”

Tom opened his mouth to say something but apparently thought better of it.

“I’m staying here for a while to keep an eye on them,” she said. “I’ll be okay. Nobody can get in unless I open the door from the inside. What are you going to do next?”

“We need to find the base for the fighting operation. Pete Rasey’s never seen where the dogs are kept, but he says Leo has about twenty fighting dogs right now, so we only picked up half of them tonight.”

“What about the stolen pets?” Rachel asked, her gaze shifting beyond Tom to the lost-dog posters on the waiting room walls.

“Pete thinks some of them are still alive because Leo told him he had all he needed for a while. But we have to find Leo before he destroys all the evidence.”

Rachel pictured Riggs shooting dogs, strangling them, bashing in their heads, dumping them into a burial pit. A shudder moved through her. “What did Pete say about the one we caught, the alpha male? Was he trained to attack people, like his litter mate?”

“That one was used in fights. The other dog’s the one we’re after. I think if we can find it we’ll be able to match it to the DNA we got off Hall’s body.”

“And that makes Leo Riggs guilty of murder under the law?” Rachel asked.

“As surely as if he’d used a gun to kill Gordon Hall. His weapon just happened to be a dog. I hope we can—” Tom broke off when his cell phone bleated from his jacket pocket. He fished it out, answered and listened. “Aw, god, no,” he groaned. “All right. I’ll leave right now.”