THE TREACHEROUS TEDDY
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / September 2009
Copyright © 2009 by John J. Lamb.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-13998-1
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Dedicated to the memory of our sweet and beloved
four-footed kids . . .
Baby Bear, Kristen Noel, Laddy (AKA Kitchener),
and Cammie
One
I like the gentle patter of raindrops against the window. The sound is soothing, but tonight it made me edgy.
It was early evening on a Thursday in the first week of November, and after nearly three weeks of unseasonably warm and dry weather in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a light rain had begun to fall. I was upstairs in our workroom, putting the finishing touches on my newest teddy bear, while unsuccessfully trying to keep my mind off the fact that the first few hours of a rainstorm turns the roads as slick as a politician’s answer to an unwelcome question. Ordinarily, I don’t worry about highway conditions while sitting at home, but tonight my wife, Ashleigh, was out in a patrol car, working as an auxiliary deputy for the Massanutten County Sheriff’s Office.
I glanced at the police scanner on the shelf above the big worktable. The device had been quiet for about the past ten minutes, but I knew the silence couldn’t last. Gene Kelly sang in the rain, but folks around here speed in the rain, and it’s the rare storm that doesn’t produce at least one horrific traffic collision that looks as if a tactical nuclear weapon caused the damage. As a consequence, I knew it was merely a matter of time until the sheriff’s dispatcher sent Ash out to a major crash scene. Then I’d have something new to fret about.
I realized that I was learning something my wife had discovered more than twenty-seven years ago: being married to a cop was often scary. Unfortunately, I wasn’t handling the stress as well as she had.
My name is Brad Lyon and I used to be a homicide inspector with the San Francisco Police Department until a murder suspect’s BFB—big freaking bullet—pretty much destroyed my left shin. The orthopedic surgeon did what he could to repair the damage and I diligently rehabbed my leg, but it was a long and painful exercise in futility. I was forced into early retirement from the PD three years ago when it became clear that I’d always have a bad limp and need a cane if I wanted to walk any more than a few feet. Afterward, we’d relocated to Ash’s hometown of Remmelkemp Mill, Virginia, where we now lived in a hundred-year-old farmhouse beside the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. Then, under her gentle tutelage, I’d followed my wife into an improbable yet satisfying second career as a teddy bear artist.
I wasn’t the only one reinventing my life, however.
Over the past two years, Ash and I had assisted the local sheriff’s office with a couple of murder investigations, and those experiences had whetted my wife’s previously unsuspected appetite for police work. She’d become a volunteer deputy sheriff and quickly demonstrated that she was a born street cop. Indeed, her performance was so outstanding that Tina Barron, the sheriff of Massanutten County and a good friend of ours, had recently asked my wife to join the force as a full-time deputy.
Ash had declined the offer, but I knew my wife was utterly hooked on cop work. Our discussions over morning coffee were once mostly about teddy bears and the shows we were going to attend. Now the topics were just as likely to be interrogation techniques or crime scene analysis, as my wife picked my brain. I just hoped she hadn’t passed on the permanent position with the sheriff’s office because she thought I’d be unhappy with our reversed roles.
That wasn’t the case. In fact, I was damn proud of her and wanted to provide her with the same opportunity she’d given me when we were first married. Back then, Ash had put her life and personal goals on hold to raise our two children, who are now grown and I’m glad to report are self-sufficient and successful adults. Our son, Christopher, is a vintner at a winery in Missouri, while his older sister, Heather, followed in my footsteps and is a detective with SFPD. Ash deserves all the credit for how our kids turned out. She managed our household while I pursued a rewarding career. It was finally her turn to chase a dream and I’d support her in whatever way I could, which I suppose included learning to deal with my apprehensions.
I forced myself to concentrate on the Bernina sewing machine and the small pieces of black fabric that I was stitching together to create a miniature sports jacket for Bear-atio Caine, my teddy bear incarnation of the crime lab lieutenant played by David Caruso in the television program
CSI: Miami
. Back when I first started creating stuffed animals, I came up with the somewhat quirky idea of making bears modeled after characters from cop TV shows and movies. I never expected there’d be a huge demand for my “Claw and Order Collection,” and I was right. Still, I was having fun, and my bears had found a modest following among collectors who either were married to cops or worked in law enforcement.
Made from reddish-orange mohair and standing twenty inches tall, Bear-atio Caine was the most challenging bear I’d ever undertaken to create. It was my first effort using a Loc-Line mechanism—essentially a plastic skeleton, which allowed greater freedom in posing a teddy bear, especially the head. This extra flexibility was vital. When Caruso plays the sad-eyed detective on television, one of his signature stylistic touches is to tilt his head at a variety of peculiar angles. I wanted Bear-atio to be capable of this same macawlike suppleness.
I finished sewing the jacket pieces together, carefully folded the collar and lapels into their proper positions, and put the tiny garment on the bear. Even by my own harsh standards, I had to admit the jacket looked pretty good. All I had left to do was make some miniature black slacks, affix a pair of tiny sunglasses on the bear’s muzzle, and then pose Bear-atio with his paws on his hips—another delicious Caruso acting tic. Bear-atio would be finished in time for the teddy bear show we were hosting at the church community center in town on Saturday.
The scanner emitted the tiny bleep that signaled the beginning of a radio transmission. It was Ash, though the device’s small speaker made her voice sound tinny. She said, “Mike-Eleven to dispatch.”
“Go ahead,” said the dispatcher, sounding bored. I knew the dispatcher’s name was Gloria, and she liked to spend her shifts doing crossword puzzles.
“I’m making a traffic stop on a red Nissan Sentra.” Ash read off the Nissan’s license plate and said her location was on Port Republic Road, about a half mile east of Doe Hill Road.
Our Old English sheepdog, Kitchener, was lying at my feet. He’d become so accustomed to hearing Ash’s disembodied voice coming from the little box that he didn’t even bother to lift his head to look at the scanner anymore. I envied his laid-back attitude. Then again, maybe he’d have been more attentive if he knew how many accounts of cop killings begin with the words
The officer was making a routine traffic stop
.
After a few seconds of silence, Gloria came on the air and said, “Dispatch to Mike-Eleven, I need you to clear your stop. We have a priority call.”
“Will do. Go ahead with the information,” said Ash.
“Negative. Give me a call on your cell phone and I’ll explain.”
“Affirmative.”
“Now, that’s interesting, Kitch,” I said, reaching down to scratch him behind his ear. “Usually, the only reason you dispatch a call over the phone is because you think a suspect is monitoring the police radio and you don’t want to let him know the cops are on the way to his location.”
Kitch cocked his head and gave me a questioning look. It was obvious he’d picked up on my fresh surge of uneasiness. It’s been my experience that the kind of crook who eavesdrops on police radio frequencies is also a prime candidate to resist or flee the cops. My first instinct was to warn Ash of the potential danger, so I sat up and reached for the portable telephone on the table. Then I withdrew my hand, suddenly feeling chastened. If I called Ash to kibitz about how she approached the call, it would say that I didn’t trust her abilities, which I did. My wife was a good cop, and I realized it would probably be best if I turned the scanner off and stopped obsessing over her safety.
Yet I could no more do that than dance a Highland fling, so I returned my attention to Bear-atio, who still needed a pair of pants. Using the fabric tape measure, I confirmed that my mohair sleuth’s waist size was twelve inches and that trouser length would be about ten inches. Meanwhile, the scanner remained silent and I had to assume that Ash had received her instructions and was on her way to the call.
I unfolded some more of the same black fabric from which I’d made the bear’s jacket and smoothed it out before laying down the first of two pieces of a tissue-paper clothing pattern. Once the pattern was pinned to the fabric, I used one of our pairs of razor-sharp scissors to begin cutting out the piece. That’s when the radio emitted a bleep.
A man’s voice said, “Game Warden Unit Five-Seventy-Eight to Mike-Eleven, the poaching suspect just spotted me and he’s rabbiting.”
Ash replied, “Copy and I’m in the vicinity. Where do you want me?”
“The track he’s on comes out right where Kobler Hollow Road loops back against the base of the mountain. Can you intercept?”
“Affirmative. Confirming the suspect vehicle is a black, older-model Dodge pickup truck? Anything else I should know?”
“At least one gun in the truck, but Chet is peaceable.”
“Nice to know. I’m just coming up on Kobler Hollow Road now. ETA is less than two minutes.” Ash sounded as if she were enjoying herself.
“Which means she’ll get to the road before you do, Chet.” The game warden was now obviously talking to the fleeing hunter. “I know you’re listening to us, so do yourself a favor. Shut it down when you get to the road. You’ve got a load of trouble as it is.”
I allowed myself to relax a tiny bit, now that I knew the nature of Ash’s mysterious call. Though the poacher was armed, I knew the chances were effectively nil that he’d violently resist the cops. There was no reason to. Hunting is an integral part of the culture around here, so local juries seldom convict anyone for poaching. I involuntarily glanced toward the east-facing window. Kobler Hollow was across the river and about three miles away, at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a tiny agricultural community that, despite its proximity to the busy U.S. Highway 340 and Remmelkemp Mill, felt isolated.
The scanner chirruped and then I sat bolt upright in the chair as Ash half-shouted, “Mike-Eleven to dispatch, my car was just sideswiped!”
“Are you injured?” asked the dispatcher.
“Negative, and now it’s a hit-and-run. I’m in pursuit,” Ash said loudly so that she could be heard over the patrol car’s yelping siren. “We’re northbound on Kobler Hollow Road, heading toward Highway Three-Forty.”
“Mike-Eleven, did Chet hit you with his pickup?” demanded the game warden.
“No, it was a dark blue Saab sedan with a partial license of Three-Bravo-Juliet. I don’t think they were Virginia plates. Do you need me to come back there?”
“Negative. Hit-and-run on a sheriff’s cruiser trumps a poaching charge. We’ll get Chet some other day.”
“Mike-Eleven, your location now?” the dispatcher asked.
“I’m about a hundred yards behind the suspect vehicle, which is turning . . . northbound onto Highway Three-Forty,” said Ash, who sounded a little calmer.
“Copy. Mike-Six is still on his call at Rockingham Memorial Hospital, so I’m notifying the state police to roll back-up.”
“Copy.”
Ash didn’t sound concerned that there wasn’t another police unit immediately available to assist her, but it scared me. I’m not certain why, but I went over and pushed the window open. Maybe I needed confirmation from my own ears that this potentially lethal drama was unfolding while I sat snug in our home making a teddy bear. If so, I received the proof immediately. Off to the east, over the sound of the rain, I could faintly hear a yelping police siren. Talk about feeling useless.
Ash came on the radio again. “Still in pursuit, speed . . . over a hundred, and we’re just passing Island Ford Road.”
“Passing Island Ford Road. Be advised, the closest state police unit is coming from Mount Video,” the dispatcher replied, using the local pronunciation for Montevideo, a community about ten miles to the west.
“Then I guess I’ll have to stick with this guy until backup arrives,” said Ash. “We’re coming up on an eighteen-wheeler and . . . stand by . . . oh!”
The next few seconds of silence were simply torturous. I could no longer hear the siren outside and didn’t know whether that meant Ash’s car was now out of earshot or had just been involved in a wreck. Slamming the window shut, I grabbed the phone and began to punch in the numbers for the private line into the county’s emergency services communications center. I knew I was overreacting, but I was going to tell Gloria to put down her freaking crossword puzzle book and radio my wife to check on her safety.