Last Ragged Breath (11 page)

Who
is
this man?
Bell wondered, standing in the middle of his home on this cold Sunday morning. More to the point: Was he capable of murder? And if he was, what could have provoked it?

“Better get these pooches outside right quick,” Rhonda said.

One of the dogs sneezed. The others looked at him. Apparently they'd slept right there, snuggled together in the folds of the old couch. They hadn't made a mess. They had persevered through the long dark hours, hours broken up only by the arrival of search teams with too much on their minds to pay attention to pets.

Rhonda led them outside for their communal peeing. It was, she reported to Bell when they returned, copious and prolonged. The look of relief in the dogs' eyes was unmistakable.

“So who's who?” Bell asked, watching the animals warily. They watched her warily right back.

Rhonda was busy rounding up leashes, bowls, blankets, chew toys. She paused to point to each dog and tick off a name: “There's Connie and Elvis—Elvis, you're a troublemaker, aren't you?—and over there is Bruno. PeeWee's the one with the missing ear. Royce says his ear was that way when he got here.”

“Fine.” Bell was restless. She wanted to get back to town.

They headed for the gray barn. Rhonda was in charge of the dogs, so it was Bell's job to wrench open the rickety wooden sliding door, a task requiring two hands. She grimaced at the shriek it made. The windowless space was frustratingly dim, even with the door wide open, and the floor was padded with a thick layer of dirty straw. The walls were lined with junk: three old washing machines; a cracked leather saddle; two bicycles, one minus its handlebars and the other lacking tires; more scum-topped barrels; a hodgepodge of construction equipment and yard implements. Deputy Oakes had roped off the area where he'd found the bloody shovel.

“Hey, there. Good boy,” Rhonda said. Slowly, she moved toward a shadowy corner, from which a pair of eyes watched her. “This must be Utley,” she said. She reached forward and scratched at the tangled thatch of gray and white hair behind the dog's ears; her other hand held the leashes of the four dogs from the house, who waited amiably, pawing at the straw, sniffing it.

Bell looked around. Two other dogs waited along the back wall, regarding her with what seemed to be curiosity, not ill will. She wasn't good with dogs. She figured they could probably tell.

“Here you go,” she said to the closest one. The words came out flat and listless.

“Oh, come on,” Rhonda said. “You can do better'n that, boss. Know you can.”

Still Bell held back. She'd never owned a pet. Her life was too busy, too complicated. Carla had begged for a puppy when she was eight years old, and again when she was nine and ten, but Bell was adamant: No dog. And there was something else: The longer she was a prosecutor, the less Bell trusted animals. Two years ago she'd won a case against the owner of three fighting dogs; the dogs had broken loose from their thick chains and killed a toddler. The year before that, she'd prosecuted a domestic violence case in which a husband had forced his German shepherd to attack his estranged wife, ripping off a large portion of her face. Multiple plastic surgeries later, the victim still wouldn't go out in daylight without a veil. The horrific incidents seemed to validate Bell's instinct to keep all dogs at a distance.

Truth was, she felt the same way about people sometimes.

“These are sweet dogs,” Rhonda said. “They wouldn't hurt anybody. There's no such thing as a bad dog—only humans who don't treat 'em right. Come on, now. Just walk right up and say hello. Put a little oomph in it. Got to get 'em motivated.”

The cold in the barn had begun to penetrate the fabric of Bell's jacket. She couldn't imagine how chilled Rhonda was, in her flimsy clothes.

Oh, hell,
Bell thought, stepping forward.
Here goes
. “Hey, dog. Good girl,” she said. A bit louder this time, with more enthusiasm. The animal closest to her emerged from the dark corner. She was a kind-eyed, broad-chested animal, with a thick coat the color of buttered toast. Her tail made wide looping circles, sweeping the floor with each downward revolution. The tops of her rounded ears were hiked up in anticipation of something new. She whined softly.

“That's Goldie,” Rhonda said. “While you put a leash on her, I'll handle Utley and that other one over there. The bulldog. Name's Ned. He's about a hundred years old, give or take. Won't be any trouble—except for the drool factor. We were warned, remember?”

A few minutes later they trooped out of the barn, a motley parade made up of two women, seven dogs, and a crisscrossing confusion of leashes. Rhonda was handling six dogs; Bell, one. Rhonda looked far more comfortable.

*   *   *

“Okay. So I'm keeping Bruno, which means we're done. Everybody's taken care of,” Rhonda said. She smacked the dashboard of Bell's Explorer with satisfaction, which was her way of high-fiving herself. Then she folded up the piece of notebook paper, the one on which she'd been keeping track, penciling lines between dogs' names and the names of friends and relatives. Rhonda had called them all first, naturally, to warn of their approach, but hadn't given too much advance notice. Didn't want to provide time for second thoughts.

She slipped the paper back into her purse. She tickled Bruno's scruffy gray head, which was pushed into the crook of her arm. “We're going to get along fine, you precious little thing,” she said. “You're a sweetie, aren't you?”

They had just pulled out of Hickey Leonard's driveway on the south side of Acker's Gap. Hickey and his wife had agreed to provide a temporary home for Elvis. Bell had seen little of Hickey around the courthouse of late; he was working on a major drug case and spent most of his time on depositions in other counties.

Prior to the stop at Hickey's, Bell and Rhonda had made dog drops at Ken and Michelle Burch's house; Roger Cantrell's trailer; Sharon Morgan's apartment; and Curtis and Annie Wehrle's farm, where they deposited, respectively, Utley, PeeWee, Connie, and Ned.

Bell turned the Explorer back toward the county road. At each home, she had remained in the car while Rhonda went inside, toting one of Royce Dillard's dogs under her arm or leading it by a leash. A few minutes later she would come back out again, giving Bell a thumbs-up sign. Then they'd head to the next location.

“Hold on,” Bell suddenly said. She kept driving, but gave Rhonda a sideways glare.

“What's wrong?”

“You miscounted. There's an extra back there.”

Rhonda turned around. In the rear of the Explorer the round golden hump of a large dog, asleep in a crate, rose and fell with deep, untroubled breathing.

“Oh,” Rhonda said.

The fake surprise was utterly unconvincing, Bell thought, as her irritation increased.

“‘Oh'?”

“Well,” Rhonda said, sounding flustered, “I suppose I thought that maybe, if the need arose, you might—”

“No.”

“We can work real hard on finding another home for her, Bell, but for the time being, it sure seems to me that you might consider opening up your heart to a sweet—”

“No.”

“She's housebroken, boss.”

“Don't care.”

“Well, if you look at it right, this is your duty. She ought to be a protected witness. After all, she's the one who found the body. And she surely won't be any trouble or—”

“No. No. No.”

Rhonda looked down at the small dog in her lap. She used an index finger to make a series of soft squiggly paths through the fur on his back, a gesture that clearly pleased Bruno. “Looks like you're gonna have yourself a roommate, buddy.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake.” Bell shook her head. “You live in a studio apartment above a pizza place, Rhonda. You don't have enough room for
one
dog, much less two. That mutt back there is bigger than your kitchen.”

“We'll manage.”

They rode in silence for another mile. Bell turned onto Shelton Avenue. She sighed a prolonged, exasperated sigh.

“Okay, fine,” Bell said. “I'll keep the dog. But just for a few days, okay? After that, we'll have to figure out something else. It's just temporary.”

 

Chapter Twelve

“A dog. Really.”

Carla's voice on the phone combined skepticism and amusement. Bell always called her daughter on Sunday nights—she called her other times, too, but this was a standing date—and on this particular Sunday night, Bell conveyed a piece of news that clearly surprised the young woman. And delighted her, too.

“Yes, but it's just for a day or so,” Bell quickly added. “Until we can find another place.”

“Geez, Mom. That big old house seems perfect to me. And there's a fenced backyard. Plenty of running room for—What's her name again?”

“Goldie.”

“Right. Goldie. Well, Goldie is one lucky pooch, tell you that.”

Bell took a sip of the Rolling Rock she'd opened just before making the call. Her bare feet were tucked up under her; that was her preferred position when she settled into this beloved old easy chair. The chair had been one of the very first items she had insisted that the movers carry into this house six years ago—ahead of the washer and dryer, or the beds, or the couch, or the boxes that she had packed in a daze back in the condo on Capitol Hill, still reeling from the collapse of her marriage and her decision to return to her hometown.

The chair was torn, dilapidated, printed with stains of mysterious origins—
And let's
keep
them mysterious,
Bell had muttered to herself, when she'd first spotted it in a Goodwill store in central West Virginia when she was nineteen years old—and dozens of holes worn right through the fabric to the meager bit of stuffing beneath. It dominated her living room. The rest of the furniture, fairly new, seemed to be sinking slowly down to the level of the chair, instead of the other way around. Bell didn't mind. This chair had seen her through the milestones, good and bad, of her adult life: marriage, motherhood, divorce, relocation, election to prosecuting attorney, and one passionate love affair, the kind upon which she still couldn't quite close the door, even though Clay Meckling now lived four states and many mountains away.

The chair had been here for her on the painful day two and a half years ago when Carla decided to go live with her father, Bell's ex-husband, Sam, and finish high school there. And on the morning last year when Bell's sister Shirley showed up. Shirley, paroled from prison, had lived with Bell for a few months before moving in with her boyfriend, a musician named Bobo Bolland. Things had settled down now for Shirley; she was holding her own in the world.

Bell had been sitting in this very chair six months ago—with her feet tucked under her, same as now—when she received the call from Sammy Burdette, a county commissioner, telling her that Nick Fogelsong had just announced he wasn't running for reelection.
Can't be,
she'd said, stunned and blindsided.
Bet me,
had been Burdette's saucy reply. His chuckle of superiority had very nearly put her over the edge.

“Mom? You there?”

“Sorry, sweetie. I'm here. Just distracted. How's the job? You're working out in Bethesda, right? I hope the commute's not too bad.”

“You're changing the subject. I want to hear about Goldie.”

Goldie
. Jesus, yes. She had a pet now. Another living creature here in the house.

Bell stood up. She'd left the dog in the kitchen, eating the chow that Bell had slung into a plastic mixing bowl. She had picked up a small bag of dog food at Lymon's that afternoon. She didn't go so far as to buy an actual dog dish, being as how Goldie's days around here were numbered. A mixing bowl would do. She could sterilize it with bleach after Goldie had moved on.

She didn't know much about dogs, but she knew enough to realize you weren't supposed to leave a strange animal unattended in your kitchen just a few hours after you'd brought it home. “I'm checking on her right now,” Bell said hastily into the phone as she hurried through the hall toward the kitchen. She was envisioning chewed-up chairs, an upended table, and multiple piles of excrement dotting the linoleum like exhibits at an avant-garde art gallery. Bell realized the irrationality of her apprehension—surely she would've heard the commotion of clattering furniture?—but still had persuaded herself that the amiable Goldie might suddenly turn into a demon of destructiveness.

She rounded the corner. Goldie was lying on her side in the middle of the floor, her slightly rounder belly rising and falling contentedly. The bowl was empty. Spotting Bell, Goldie lifted her big head. Her tail thumped on the floor. Chairs, table, linoleum—everything was fine.

“Good girl,” Bell said. It was the only thing she could think of to say.

Carla laughed. “Unless that was directed at me, it sounds like you two are getting along great. So what's she like? Text me a picture, okay? I'd love to see her.”

“Sure.” Bell pulled out one of the dinette chairs and sat down. To her surprise, Goldie hoisted herself up and trotted over to sit alongside her, pushing a soft yellow head into Bell's lap. The tail softly brushed the floor. “But remember, sweetie—I'm not keeping her very long,” Bell said. “She's just here for a little while, until Rhonda can find her another home. And anyway, she belongs to Royce Dillard.”

“But he's in big trouble. Right?”

“We're not going to talk about that.” When Carla had decided to move back in with Sam, Bell made a pact with her: They would avoid discussion of Bell's cases. Carla already knew too much about the dark side of life, from the days when she resided here in Acker's Gap, daughter of a prosecutor; Bell wanted her to have a chance to forget all that. Carla lived in a different place now. A place that wasn't shadowed as massively and relentlessly by tragedy as it was by mountains.