Red Dog Saloon (3 page)

The sheriff didn’t really believe Eddie to be a suspect in
the murder. Instead the lawman was more interested in small details he might be
able to provide. Sam had learned by experience that sometimes it just takes one
nugget of information to turn a case.

“So tell me what happened this morning Eddie,” Sam began,
hoping the liquor wasn’t already clouding his memory.

“I don’t know, sheriff,” Eddie replied as he
took another swig of his
drink
. H
is
hands were noticeably shaking.

“When we couldn’t get ahold of Andy at work we got worried
since he never, and I mean never, misses work," Eddie
explained. "Since me and him go back a long way, the foreman asked me
to drop by and check on him.”

Eddie paused and swallowed hard as he recalled the events
of the morning.

“When I first pulled up, I noticed the door was open a bit
and his truck was in the driveway. That seemed odd on such a cold morning for a
man’s door to be open like that, you know,” Eddie recalled. “I went up and
pushed the door but there was something behind it. When I stuck my head inside
the door, there laid Andy, his skull split wide open by that ax.”

Eddie finished his drink in one big swallow and slammed
down his glass.

“It was the most horrible thing I ever saw, sheriff,” Eddie
declared, looking at the lawman, his eyes bloodshot either from the bourbon or
perhaps from mourning the sudden loss of his friend.

“You didn’t see anything else? Think about it now. Did you
see anything at all that you haven’t mentioned?” Sam quizzed. “Take your time
and think. It could be important.”

“No sheriff. When I saw Andy lying there I went right back
out and called the law,” Eddie responded. “I didn’t know if whoever did it
might still be around.”

Sam believed Eddie’s recollection yet at the same time he
seemed almost overly nervous even given what he had just witnessed. Perhaps
there was something else on his mind, something he needed liquor to help cope
with.

“So did you see anything inside, anything on the wall,
anything unusual at all?” Sam
asked
.

The sheriff
wondered
about the bloody writing on the mirror. Had Eddie noticed
it? If so, why had he not mentioned such a glaring detail?

“No sheriff,” Eddie said sheepishly. “Like I said, when I
saw him lying there I just backed out. I mean we not only worked together but
we’d been friends for a long time, pretty well since high school.”

Sam was already aware Eddie and the victim were old friends
since Sam had grown up in the same county with them. Castle County was the kind
of place where everybody knew, or at least knew of, everyone else.

“Yeah, I thought you two were friends,” Sam said as he
stood up to leave “As a matter of fact, you two go way back. Seems like I
remember seeing you all hanging out together back at the old Red Dog and that’s
been more than twenty years. Time flies doesn’t it?”

Eddie’s face went pale white with the sheriff’s reference
to the Red Dog. His odd reaction caught the sheriff’s eye. It
was as if Eddie was suddenly at a loss for words, the wind seemingly knocked
out of him.

“Something wrong, Eddie?” Sam asked.

The lawmen realized he must have hit a nerve with his
reference to the Red Dog. He now suspected his witness had seen more than
he was telling.

“Um, no
sheriff
. I
t’s
just been a long morning,” Eddie stammered nervously as he
stood up to escort the lawman to the door. “I appreciate you coming by though.
If I think of anything else I’ll call you first thing. I promise.”

Sam stepped out the door giving Eddie a long look. The
sheriff could tell he was being hustled
away
.
Eddie’s
demeanor suggested he was eager for the lawman to leave.

“You do that,” Sam said as he left.

Why was Eddie
not telling everything he knew about the
murder
of his friend?
The question would bother
the sheriff all the way to his office that morning, leaving him to mull Eddie’s
odd behavior over his first cup of coffee.

 Eddie looked through his curtains, watching as the
sheriff’s cruiser disappeared out of sight. He poured another
drink
. H
is
buzz was
just starting to arrive. It couldn’t get there fast enough. Eddie needed the
liquor to calm his uncontrollable shaking, his hands trembling like leaves in
the wind. While a two-fisted drinker, Eddie rarely started so early but today
was special. He needed it before he made the call.

He sat silently by his phone for a moment trying to focus
his thoughts and decide what he was going to say. While known as the big mouth
amongst his group of friends, the morning’s events left him
uncharacteristically quiet. Fear had robbed him of w
ords.
The
horrifying scene of his friend’s skull sliced wide
open
and
his
blood used
as human ink to spell out an unmistakable message left Eddie petrified. Deep
down in his very soul Eddie knew the meaning of the message.

Eddie gathered his courage and picked up the phone.
His fingers shook so much that he had to concentrate to peck out the
numbers
. T
he
alcohol made
the square digits on the dialing pad a moving target.

He waited impatiently as the phone rang, nervously rapping
his fingers on the coffee table.

“Foster Motors,” came a voice on the other end of the
phone.

The voice was one Eddie knew to be that of Bart Foster, the
ringleader
of their old running
group. He was now
a successful
car salesman and semi-reputable businessman in Easton, the county seat for
Castle County.

“Hello? Anyone there? Foster Motors,” Bart said as he was
about to hang up since he heard no one on the other end of the line.

“Hey Bart,” Eddie stammered. “This is Eddie Young.”

Going quiet on the other end for a moment, Bart hesitated
as if deciding if he wanted to take the call.

“Oh, Eddie, how’s it been?” Bart responded in a
contrived pleasant voice. “It’s been a while.”

“
Yeah
...
it
has,” Eddie agreed. “It’s been a lot of years.”

Bart didn’t know why Eddie was suddenly calling him. They
hadn’t spoken, except in passing, in many years. The businessman assumed his
old pal wanted something from him.

“To what do I owe the honor?” Bart asked. “Are you ready to
trade vehicles? I have some real beauties, all low mileage on the lot. I’ll
give you the old friend’s discount.”

Not really knowing how to transition the conversation,
Eddie cut to the chase.

“Andy’s dead,” Eddie blurted out. “Did you hear me? They
found Andy this morning. He’s dead.”

Putting on a calm tone, since it had also been a long time
since Bart had any dealings with Andy aside from selling him a truck several
years ago, the businessman spoke up.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Bart said. “What happened?”

“What happened?” Eddie asked excitedly. “What happened is
he was murdered last night.”

“Murdered?” Bart responded. “Who would want to kill Andy?
He was a good guy.”

Bart was actually right. Andy was likely the best person
when it came to their former running
group
.
H
e was
the
only one who seemed to have an inkling of a conscience
back in their younger days.

“I don’t know,” Eddie admitted as he put his head in his
hands, running his hand through his thinning hair with the receiver still to
his ear. “I found him this morning after he didn’t come in to work. He had an
ax buried in his head.”

The revelation concerning the heinousness of the crime came
as a surprise. Even with that, Bart still wondered why his long absent friend
would be notifying him like he was next of kin. He would have read about it in
the newspaper the next day even without the advance call. The way Bart figured
it, Andy had gotten himself into trouble and someone had come calling to settle
the issue once and for all.

“That’s horrible,” Bart replied, still using his pleasant
businessman’s voice as he eyed the man outside checking out some of the cars on
his lot. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think you understand, Bart,” Eddie said. “It
doesn’t just involve Andy. It involves all of us - the old gang.”

“Okay Eddie, you’re not making any sense and I have a
customer I need to wait on,” Bart replied. “Why don’t you call me back later
when you’re a little less, you know, drunk.”

“The killer wrote the words Red Dog!” Eddie yelled into the
phone. “It was written in Andy’s own blood! Don’t you understand? Someone
knows! After all this time, someone knows! What are we going to do, Bart?”

Bart forgot about his customer as his mind
raced
. Memories
attacked
his consciousness, pictures appearing before his mind’s
eye like snapshots in time as if
it
had just happened yesterday.

“Are you sure?” Bart asked.

“I saw it with my own eyes!” Eddie confirmed with his voice
quivering. “Well, what are we going to do?”

Taking charge as he always did back in their “wild days,”
Bart responded in an authoritative voice, hoping to snap the drunken Eddie back
to reality.

“The first thing is you need to stop drinking,” Bart
ordered. “And keep your mouth shut. You haven’t told anybody else have you?”

“No. I talked to the sheriff but didn’t tell him I even saw
the writing,” Eddie retorted.

“Let’s keep it that way,” Bart said. “You need to keep your
mouth shut. I don’t want you talking to anybody and that goes doubly true for
Sheriff Delaney. Let me check this thing out.”

Eddie was almost to the point of tears as he fought to hold
it together amidst the fear that was gripping him.

“Who could it be?” Eddie
asked
with
his voice
pleading for an answer - an answer Bart didn’t have.

“I don’t know, Eddie,” Bart admitted. “It’s been a long
time, over twenty years as a matter of fact.”

“It seems like yesterday,” Eddie shot back, his tone
worrying Bart.

“Now listen to me, Eddie,” Bart began sternly. “You sit
tight and toss the liquor bottle. I’ll find out about this thing. We got to hang
together, just like we did back then. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah, yeah Bart, I understand,” Eddie sheepishly
responded
.

He
poured
himself another drink despite his old friend’s admonition.
Eddie wasn't about to put down the bottle. Liquor was the only true friend he
had left.

Bart assured Eddie he would contact him as soon as he
discovered anything. Then, plastering a smile on his face, he went out to meet
his customer, hiding the fact behind his salesman’s grin that a
long
-
buried
ghost
had returned from the grave to haunt him.

Sam
had been a lawman for over a decade and during that time acquired what amounted
to a sixth sense when it came to knowing when people were hiding something from
him. As such he knew Eddie was keeping something close to the vest. His body
language told on him when Sam mentioned the words Red Dog. What could have
caused such a reaction? What was Eddie hiding? And better yet, why would he be
hiding something from law enforcement when they were trying to find who killed
his friend?

The
sheriff poured his second cup of brew as sat at his desk considering the events
of the morning, enjoying the warmth of the Columbian blend, plotting his next
move. Sam realized that the quicker a suspect was generated, the better chance
there was of keeping the murder from the cold case file. He prided himself in
the fact that in his twelve years as Castle County Sheriff there were no
unsolved murders on his ledger. But then it wasn’t like the rural county had a
ground swell of killings. It wasn’t exactly the wild, wild, west.

What
homicides that had happened on Sam’s watch usually had to do with men feuding
over a woman or someone getting shorted on a drug deal. And, even those cases
were few and far between and were easy to solve. When you got down to it,
Castle County was a good place to raise a family. Its rural values were
pervasive throughout the community. Sure, the county had its rebels and
scofflaws just like any town its size but overall most people in Castle County
were just good, decent, God-fearing folks. Unfortunately, given the morning’s
discovery, one of them was also a cold-blooded killer.

Hopefully
the lab boys would be able to shed some light on the murder. They were poring
over the crime scene even as Sam sat in his warm office. While real-life crime
scene investigation was not nearly as cut and dry as one would see on
television, the trace evidence technicians were adept at finding the rare
nuggets needed to make a case. Sam knew if the killer left anything behind,
they would find it. And, given his experience, a criminal always leaves a piece
of himself behind whether it's fingerprints, hair, footprints, tire tracks or
even his own blood. Sam was yet to see the perfect crime.

The
sheriff decided to do some background work on the case while waiting for the
preliminary crime lab report. He would begin with the records department which
was just a short stroll down the hall from his office.

“Are
you the only one here?” Sam asked as he poked his head in the door seeing
Carly, his tall brown-haired records clerk, dressed in a well-fitting knee-length
skirt.

The
shapely clerk was raised up on her tiptoes filing papers in the top
drawer of a cabinet. He had come at a perfect time. She was dressed for
success.

“Yep,
sheriff, it’s just me this morning,” Carly responded, shooting her boss a broad
smile. “I’m all alone.”

“Oh
really, you don’t say?” Sam said. "This must be my lucky day."

He
looked down the hall, making sure no one was nearby before shutting the
door behind him. Shooting the clerk a sly grin, he boldly approached and
removed the papers from her hands, placing them on top of the cabinet.

“How’s
the husband doing nowadays?” Sam asked.

“He’s
all work and no play,” Carly responded, biting her lip as Sam took her in his
arms. “What about you? How’s the wife?”

He
drew Carly to him, kissing her on her cheek, his hands wrapped around her
waist, whispering his answer as he worked his way down her neck.

“That
old hag, she ain’t no fun either,” Sam retorted. “We ought to run away
together.”

The
sound of the door opening surprised the couple as Sam was still working his
clerk’s neck. Carly tried to quickly push him away as she saw her assistant
clerk, Wanda Robertson, come in. The clerk, letting out a disgusted sigh,
wasted no time speaking up.

“Why
don’t you two get a room?” Wanda said as she stood at the door
watching the intertwined couple. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you two are
married to each other the way you carry on. Men usually reserve that for their
mistresses, sheriff.”

Sam
smiled at Wanda, not bothering to take his hands off his wife’s hips.

“My
fuddy-duddy wife won’t let me get a girlfriend on the side so I guess I’ll have
to settle,” Sam quipped as Carly gave him a flirtatious slap across his cheek.

“That
kind of crap will get you a sexual harassment suit,” Carly warned her husband
of over twenty years as she went back to filing papers.

Carly,
still a head-turner even after she celebrated her fortieth birthday a short
time before, was a key part of the operation at the sheriff’s department.
His wife knew where to lay her hands on any document, record or warrant in
the whole building. Sam hired his wife for the job shortly after being elected
the first time. He beat the county’s new nepotism policy which would have
prevented him from bringing his wife on board. She was the best hire he ever
made.

“To
what do we owe the pleasure of the high sheriff coming down here to the
dungeon?” Carly asked as she finished putting away the files. “Why aren’t you
out finding the hardened criminal that killed poor Andy Crouch?”

“Hey
lady, you stick to filing the papers and I’ll stick to enforcing the law in
Castle County,” Sam retorted. “Speaking of which, do you have anything on our
victim?”

Walking
over to another filing cabinet, Carly reached in and pulled out a file handing
it to her husband.

“That’s
his jacket,” Carly said. “It’s pretty light.”

Sam
thumbed through the small file and discovered some petty arrests over the
years, most alcohol-related. A couple of public drunks, a drunk driving
conviction and a marijuana arrest were all that showed up in his file.

“How
about Eddie Young? Do we have anything on him?” Sam asked.

His
wife again demonstrated her uncanny ability to immediately fish out any
file from the stacked-up records room. Sam wasn't even sure where he left his
car keys.

Eddie's record
was much like that of Andy’s. All of his arrests had to do with
alcohol. One of his public intoxications came on the same evening as one
of those in Andy’s record suggesting the pair were partying together that
night.

“How
far back do we go in here?” Sam asked.

“In
theory a person’s record should go from when they reached legal age but in
reality we don’t have a whole lot prior to you taking office,” Carly admitted.
“Your predecessor didn’t have a top notch records clerk like me.”

“True,
you’re a shoo-in for employee of the year,” Sam winked as he handed her back
the file, waving good-bye as he headed back to his office.

“I’d
sure hope so,” Carly chirped as he walked away. “I’m sleeping with the boss.”

“The
early report is back,” came the voice of Sam’s Chief Investigator Bo Davis, the
stocky red-faced country boy filing in beside the sheriff as he walked back
down the hall toward his office. “The crime lab guys are heading in to your
office right now.”

“Did
they find anything for us?” Sam asked.

“Don’t
know,” Bo responded with his southern drawl. “I did a walk around out there and
didn’t find nothing. Talked to the neighbors and they didn’t hear nothing
either. It’s pretty quiet out in those parts and noise carries down in that hollow
where our boy lived. Whoever did it did it real quiet-like but then busting
open a man’s skull with an ax don’t make much noise.”

Sam
and his investigator arrived at his office just as members of the state crime
team walked in. Their faces told the sheriff their search was
uneventful.

“Well,
do we have anything?” Sam asked in a hopeful voice.

“Nothing,”
responded lead detective Bryce Gonder. “The place is as clean as I’ve ever seen
a crime scene.”

“Are
you saying there’s absolutely nothing?” Sam asked.

“I’m
saying we went over the house with a fine-toothed comb,” Gonder responded in an
irritated tone. “There’s not a fingerprint, footprint, tire track, or even a
hair follicle there. It’s almost like someone floated in there, killed the guy,
and floated back out.”

Disappointed
the evidence techs would not be able to provide even a shred of evidence, Sam centered
on the murder weapon.

“Okay,
what about the ax?” Sam asked. “What do we know about that?”

“From
what we can tell, the ax belonged to the victim,” Gonder revealed. “He had a
wood burning stove inside his house and there was a fresh wood pile around
back. We’re assuming the ax used to kill him was also used to chop the wood he
was using for his stove. And, before you ask, the ax was clean of prints. The
killer either wore gloves or wiped it clean.”

“What’s
your guess for our perpetrator?” Sam asked. “Man, woman, big, small, what are
we looking for?”

“That
ax was filed razor sharp so pretty well any adult of average strength could
have swung it with enough power to cause the fatal injury,” Gonder answered.
“The ax caught him right on top of the skull and penetrated several inches into
his brain. He was dead before he hit the floor.”

“Okay
then, what about the blood on the mirror?” Sam asked.

“That
was the victim's blood,” Gonder replied. “The killer probably used
his or her finger to spell out the words on the mirror. Once again, there were
no viable fingerprints since it was smeared on the mirror.”

Sam
leaned back in his chair realizing they would have to solve the case the old-fashioned
way, that being good detective work since modern science wasn’t going to bail
them out.

“So,
in other words …” Sam began, only to be cut off by Gonder.

“There’s
nothing,” Gonder interjected. “Whoever did this was very efficient.”

Thanking
the crime scene team, Sam walked them to the parking lot before returning to
his office where Bo still sat.

“What
do you make of the killer writing Red Dog on the mirror?” Bo asked before Sam
could even sit down at his desk. “Seems a mighty odd thing for a man to do
while he’s standing around a house with the corpse of the man he just killed.”

“Around
here the words Red Dog can mean only one thing, that being the old bar that
used to sit over on East Ridge Highway,” Sam said with certainty. “Now why
anybody would reference a bar that has been gone for over twenty years at the
scene of a murder is beyond me unless they had some long lasting issues.”

“I
never got to go there,” Bo said matter of factly. “I always thought of trying
to sneak in when I was a teenager but then the place burned down when I was
still too young.”

“You
didn’t miss anything, Bo,” Sam declared. “It was a redneck saloon where nothing
good ever happened. As a matter of fact a lot of bad things happened there. A
decent person wouldn’t be caught dead in that dive.”

“What
about you? Did you ever go?” Bo shot back.

“Oh
yeah, I went a time or two,” Sam admitted, a bit embarrassed he had darkened
the Red Dog door. “But it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Just a bunch of brawlers
and drunks hung out there looking for trouble. Going out there was more of a
rite of passage, showing your buddies you had guts enough to walk into the Red
Dog.”

“That
takes us right back to the question of the Red Dog,” Bo noted. “Why take the
time to write that message after splitting a guy’s head in two?”

“You
just answered your own question,” Sam said. “It was a message, perhaps a
threat. Whoever did it felt it was important enough to delay their departure
from the scene of the crime. As for their choice of words, I’m hoping an old
friend can help me out on that one.”

“An
old friend? Who's that?” Bo asked.

“Well,
I think I’m going to get me a little lunch and then I’m going to drive out and
see my predecessor, Bill Foster,” Sam declared. “He was sheriff in Castle
County back during the Red Dog’s heyday. Maybe he recalls an old feud or bad
blood from back then that could have led to the murder.”

Bill
Foster was not only Sam’s predecessor as sheriff but he had served as the
county’s chief law enforcement officer for nearly a quarter-century before
retiring twelve years ago. His decision not to seek a seventh term of office
left every political hopeful in Castle County scrambling to toss their hat in
the ring. No less than ten candidates sought election to Foster’s
seat.

Prior
to the announcement of his retirement, no one had dared run against the veteran
sheriff in three elections. Whether it was due to intimidation or just
reluctance to throw their money away on a hopeless campaign, no one lifted a
finger to try to unseat the incumbent during his final terms of office.

The
popular old-school lawman dispensed a brand of justice that while, fine for its
time, had run its course with the changing of times. His retirement was
well-timed. His strong-handed tactics, in the modern climate of litigation,
would have surely seen Castle County sued several times over if he were still
in office.