-- Written by Anne
An original story by Anne (akd10_1999) – finally, she’s writing about something she actually knows a little about!
“…
and I still cannot for the life of me understand what you find so enamouring about the
month of October.” A friendly debate was
in full swing as two close friends walked down
“Look around you! See those wispy, high clouds, feel that
fresh, cool breeze!”
“Ahhg. You mean the frost that’s going to do in my
roses!”
“Pessimist!”
“Optimist!”
“Oh, Seth!”
“Admit it, Jessica! You are one of those people who perpetually
see the glass as half full!”
“Seth, sometimes half a glass of
water is half a glass of water,” Jessica said with good-natured exasperation.
“Anyway, do you really mean to tell me that you don’t enjoy the sight of the
trees turned all to gold in the sunlight?”
“I never said that,” Seth
retorted. “I have always appreciated the
sight of sunlight touching gold.”
Jessica didn’t respond; she was
watching as a young woman came out of the grocery store balancing two heavy
bags in her arms. Without warning, one
tipped over and gave way, spilling its contents all over the sidewalk.
Jessica was at her side in two
steps, reaching for the scattered groceries.
“Oh, thank you,” the woman sighed,
setting down her other bag and making a grab for some fruit that was trying to
roll away. “I always try to do
everything in one trip, and it doesn’t always work out.”
Seth had come up to them by this time,
and looked down. “Cat food? Kitty treats?
You have an unusual diet, Miss …”
“
Seth was surprised. “Doctor?” he asked.
“Veterinarian,” she said with a
smile. “My friends call me Tipper. And the cat food and kitty treats are for my
cats, Shakespeare and Dante.”
“Well!” said Seth. “I’m Dr. Hazlitt – people doctor – and this
is Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Jessica,” she amended. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Dr.
Henderson.”
“Oh, please, just Tipper,” she
said. “I’m fairly new around here – only
been around since the beginning of the summer.”
“Yes, I heard Dr. Murphy had taken
on a new associate,” Jessica said. “I’m
surprised we haven’t bumped into each other long before now.”
“Well, the clinic does keep me
pretty busy,” said Tipper. “Anyhow, I
should run along before the boys get into too much trouble at home. Nice meeting both of you!” She hoisted her grocery bags, and headed off
down the street, trying to keep them in better balance.
“Been wondering when Harry was going
to hire someone,” Seth said as they continued on their walk. “That practice keeps him busier than a one
armed paper hanger. She looks awful
young to have children, though.”
Jessica laughed. “I think that by boys she meant the cats,
Seth,” she said.
*******
“Now this will just be a little
skeeter bite.” Tipper pinched a bit of
skin between her patient’s shoulder blades, and had the needle in and out
before the cat even knew it.
“That should hold Socks for another
year, Mrs. Malloy,” she said, marking down the date of vaccination in the
medical record. “Her rabies isn’t due
until next year. We’ll be sending you a
reminder card when the time comes for that.
Otherwise, your cat’s in the bloom of health.”
“Oh, thank you, Dr. Henderson,”
Ideal Malloy said, gathering up the black and white cat in her arms. “Isn’t that good news, Socks baby?” she cooed
to it.
“Janet will take care of your
paperwork up front,” Tipper said, holding open the door of the exam room. “You take care, now, both of you.”
“Oh, we will, Doctor,” Ideal assured
her. “Say good-bye to the nice vet,
Socks!”
Tipper smiled to herself as she
followed them up to the reception area.
The folder was up for her next appointment, she took a minute to glance
through it. Something outside the doors
of the clinic caught her eye, and looking up she saw a man in a suit get out of
a dark car. He approached another man, a
largish man with a dog, and showed him a badge.
The client grew angry; they seemed to be exchanging words.
Tipper and Janet exchanged glances;
the receptionist had seen it too.
“Who’s that?” Tipper asked quietly.
“The big guy with the skinny
dog? That’s Jack Turow,” Janet replied
in a low voice. “Not a pleasant man
under the best of circumstances. I don’t
know what’s going on out there, but Jack’ll be in a right foul mood for it.”
“Just as long as they keep it
outside,” Tipper murmured. Then in a
louder voice she called, “Hunter Rawlings?
You’re next!”
*******
When Jack Turow came in with his
dog, his mood wasn’t just right foul, it was positively nasty. Dr. Harry Murphy, the senior veterinarian at
the clinic, marked this when he came in.
“Richard,” he said to one of the
technicians standing nearby, “I may need a hand with this one.”
Richard Pembleton, a big fellow who
was as gentle as a lamb, nodded and disappeared into an exam room.
Dr. Murphy picked up the record and
reviewed it, using the chance to appraise the situation. Jack was in an awful mood, but the dog, a
golden retriever, seemed nice enough.
There was next to nothing about her in the record; apparently this was a
new pet. Harry sighed and called Jack into
the exam room.
“Well, Mr. Turow, I see you’re here
for a new pet check-up,” he said.
“What’s her name?”
“She don’t have a name,” Turow said.
“When did you get her?”
“’Bout a month ago.”
Harry got down on one knee and ran
his hands over the retriever’s coat.
“She’s awfully thin,” he said.
“How much have you been feeding her?”
Turow shrugged. “Can’t really say. Gets fed with my Rotties. Has to do the best she can for herself.”
Harry exchanged looks with Richard,
who stood silently near the door. “Mr.
Turow,” he said, “we have spoken before about the conditions in which you keep
your dogs …”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Turow
shouted. “You are not going to tell me
how to keep my animals!”
Harry Murphy’s patience was at an
end. “Jack, if you don’t treat your dogs
any better than this, I’m going to report you to the SPCA, and let them take
care of this!”
Jack made as if to lunge at the
veterinarian, but before he could take a step, Richard stuck out his arm and
held him back.
“You’ll do no such thing!” he
shouted. “If you or any of your minions
set foot on my property, I’ll kill you!”
“You threaten me,” Harry replied,
“and you’ll be the one who’s sorry.”
Jack grabbed the dog’s leash, and
jerked her out of the room behind him.
Harry came out of the exam room
while Richard cleaned up, rubbing his temples.
Tipper was at the pharmacy desk, pretending to write a prescription.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Just fine,” he replied.
*******
The wind came up in the night,
swirling the leaves that had fallen off the trees as shredded clouds passed
across the face of a Harvest moon.
Jessica was in her dining room, trying to finish a chapter on her laptop
computer before bed. It was slower going
than she would have liked, and so after deleting another whole paragraph that
she just wasn’t happy with, she put the screensaver on and went into the
kitchen for a break.
She had just put the kettle on for
some tea when she heard the faint sound of scratching at the back door followed
by a whine. She paused in what she was
doing, listening intently, but finally dismissed it as a trick of the wind.
Then she heard it again.
Jessica was never one to walk away
from a mystery. She opened the kitchen
door, crossed the back porch, and pushed open the screen door, stepping out
into the windy night.
At first she didn’t see anything,
but then something stirred the dry leaves, and a pair of glowing red eyes
approached her. Then the eyes came into
the light spilled from the kitchen, revealing a very thin, mournful looking
golden retriever.
Jessica’s heart was moved with pity;
she went down on one knee and offered a hand for the dog to sniff. The dog came forward tentatively, put a paw
up onto her hand, and looked up at her with sad puppy eyes.
That did it.
“Oh, I suppose you could come inside
for a little while,” she said at last, and stood aside to let the dog into the
kitchen.
Inside, Jessica appraised the
situation. The retriever was in serious
need of a good meal and probably a good grooming as well. She found some ground beef in the
refrigerator, cooked it up together with some rice, and offered it to the dog,
who accepted it with delight. While she
wolfed down her dinner, Jessica sat beside her and went about picking out the
dry leaves from her coat and untangling it with an old hairbrush.
“I can’t bring myself to let you
back out into a wild night like this,” she said when the dog had finished her
dinner, “so I guess you’ll be spending the night right here. What’s your name, anyway?”
She searched around the dog’s neck
for a collar, and found nothing.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll have to call
you something, so I think I’ll call you
*******
Seth came to Jessica’s house early
the next morning, and breezed into the kitchen without knocking.
“Jessica, I - good Lord above!”
Jessica rushed into the kitchen, and
found Seth in a chair with the golden retriever standing with her front paws on
his knees, licking his face.
“
“Sorry,” said Jessica.
“That animal nearly scared the life
out of me! Jess, since when did you have
a dog?”
“Since last night,” she
replied. “She’s a stray.”
“You can say that again,” Seth
said. “It looks like she hasn’t seen a
square meal in weeks. Well, what are you
going to do about her?”
“I haven’t decided,” said
Jessica. “I imagine that somebody
somewhere is looking for her. I’ve
called Dr. Henderson; she’ll know what to do.”
“Ay-yuh, I imagine she will. Now then,” Seth said, standing and
straightening his jacket, “I was going
to ask you if you had any coffee left over from breakfast. I seem to have run out.”
“Of course,” Jessica said, reaching
for a pair of mugs. “Sit.”
Seth and
*******
After Seth had left, Jessica settled
back down to do some work. She typed while
the dog sat attentively beside her chair, and periodically would toss a ball of
wadded up scrap paper in the direction of the kitchen for
They were so engaged when the
doorbell rang, and
“I know, I heard it,” Jessica said
as she pushed back her chair. “I’m going
as quickly as I can.”
“Morning, Jessica,” Tipper Henderson
said when Jessica opened the door. “I
came over as soon as I got your message.
I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
“Oh, no!” said Jessica. “Please, come in. I didn’t mean to take you away from your
office appointments.”
“No trouble,” Tipper said. “It’s our surgery morning, but it’s a light
day and Dr. Murphy is covering for me.”
She looked down at the dog and caught her breath. ”This
is the stray you called me about?”
“Yes,” said Jessica. She looked closely at the veterinarian and
said, “You know this dog?”
“Actually, yes,” said Tipper. “I saw her just yesterday at the clinic, in
the company of her owner, Jack Turow.”
“Oh!” Jessica exclaimed. “Well, then I should take her back to him
immediately. This was a lot easier than
I thought it would be.”
Tipper put a hand on her arm. “Jessica, wait,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that right away.”
“Why not?”
The young veterinarian sighed. “It’s like this,” she said. “Jack has neglected this dog terribly. Well, I’m sure that’s obvious enough to you
from how thin she is. Anyhow, Jack came
in with her yesterday. Harry – Dr.
Murphy – saw the condition she was in,. and he confronted Jack about it.”
Jessica listened with wide-eyed
attentiveness. “How did Jack take this?”
“Not well. Harry wanted to take the dog away from him –
turn her over to the SPCA – but Jack wouldn’t hear of it. The scene between them got pretty ugly. Jack left without paying his bill.”
“I see,” said Jessica.
“I really shouldn’t be telling you
this,” Tipper said. “It violates client
confidentiality and all that, but I thought it was important that you know, so
that you would see how important it is that the dog remain here with you.”
“But Tipper!” Jessica
protested. “I can’t take this dog! I’m going back to
“I know,” she said. “But it would only be for a few days, just
until we collect the evidence we need to file a cruelty to animals charge
against Turow. We know he’s got a whole
pack of dogs he keeps behind the barn; working with the SPCA, it won’t be hard. Then we can go from there.”
The retriever whimpered
pathetically. Jessica sighed. “All right,” she said, “just for a few days.”
Tipper looked relieved. “Good,” she said. “What have you been calling her?”
“
“She doesn’t have one, actually,” said
Tipper. “Jack never got around to giving
her one. She’s listed in our records as
‘Female Golden, Spayed.’ You go right on
calling her
*******
It was well after hours; everyone
had gone home from the clinic for the night.
But the hospital was not quite deserted – the dark figure of a man came
in through the back door and peered around in the gloom, broken only by a dim
bulb over the door. He checked his
watch, and sighed impatiently.
And then another figure leaped
forward, and stabbed swiftly with a syringe.
A dog yelped in alarm as the first man reacted to the surprise of the
needle’s pain, then slumped and fell to the floor in a heap.
The shotgun blast, when it came,
went unmarked in the night by any except the cats and the dogs.
*******
Tipper was the first to arrive at
the veterinary clinic the next morning, hoping to get her morning treatments
and some paperwork done before the first appointments of the day. Dawn was just breaking; she got out of her
car, flipped through her keys, and unlocked the back door.
“Hey, guys,” she said cheerfully as
she came into the dog runs. “What’s
hopping? Everyone sleep okay?”
Instead of the usual excited barking
she was used to, she was greeted by an eerie quiet, broken only by anxious
whines. Tipper’s stride slowed; she
looked into the first run, and found its occupant, a German Shepherd, cowering
in the back, his tail between his legs.
“Hey, Shadow, what’s the matter?”
she asked in concern. “Come on, boy,
what’s got you upset?”
Then she turned around, and
shrieked.
*******
Jessica arrived at the clinic as the
“Seth,” she said, “who was it?”
“Hard to say,” said Seth
grimly. “His face was blown off by a
shotgun. But by the look of his clothes
we’re guessing that it was Jack Turow.
See, on his hand there, that’s Jack’s class ring. Never seen him without it.”
“When do you think it happened?”
“Um, somewhere around midnight, I’d
guess. But why here, I haven’t the
faintest idea.”
Mort Metzger had been talking with
Tipper a few paces off; now he came forward to where Seth and Jessica were
standing.
“Not a great way to start the
morning, Mrs. F,” he said. “How did you
get down here so fast?”
“Well, Tipper called me right after
she called you.”
“Figures. Okay, boys,” he said to the EMTs, “you can
bring him out.”
The ambulance workers got on either
end of the body board holding the shrouded corpse, and lifted. As they did, an arm flopped down, and the
chunky class ring slipped off its finger and bounced on the floor.
“Andy,” Mort said, “would you grab
that and bag it? We’ll add it to Jack’s
personal effects.”
Jessica went over to where Tipper
was standing in a corner by herself, her arms wrapped around herself.
“Tipper,” she said, putting a
comforting hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”
The veterinarian managed a wan
smile. “I guess so,” she said. “It was a pretty big shock. And he was just here two days ago!”
“Yeah,” said Jessica, thinking. “Tipper, you told me yesterday that Jack had
an argument with Dr. Murphy and stormed out of the clinic without paying. Was there anything else unusual about his
visit?”
“Well … I wasn’t actually in the
room, you see. I was kind of listening
from the pharmacy,” Tipper said. “But
before, when Jack was coming in, I remember seeing a man in a suit approach him
in the parking lot. He had some sort of
badge – looked like a fed. Whatever they
were talking about, it didn’t make Jack happy.”
Tipper bit her lip and sighed.
“And to top everything off, now Richard’s disappeared.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “Richard?”
“One of our technicians,” Tipper
explained. “He loves animals, he never
misses a day of work. But he hasn’t
shown up today, and we can’t raise him at home.
I already told the Sheriff.”
*******
Mort swung by Jessica’s house when
he had finished the initial paperwork, and found her in the kitchen, cleaning
up the breakfast dishes she had abandoned.
“Hey, Mrs. F,” he said. “Hiya,
Pooch.”
“Oh, come on in, Mort,” Jessica
said, hanging up her dishtowel. “I don’t
think you’ve met Jack Turow’s dog.”
“Jack Turow’s dog?” Mort said. “How did you get hold of Jack Turow’s dog?”
“Well, believe it or not, she ran
away from Jack and ended up here as a stray,” Jessica said.
“Speaking of Jack, I was just
heading over to his place. Want to
come?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. Then she looked down at
Mort bent down and scratched the
retriever behind the ears. “A canine
unit, huh? Well, I guess it couldn’t
hurt.”
*******
Jack Turow lived on a small farm
that had fallen into shambles, and now produced little more than weeds. Most of its outbuildings had fallen down,
though the barn was still fairly sound.
The house was in need of paint; weathered steps led up to a front door
that was unlatched.
Jack had lived alone, but though he
had not been the paragon of housekeepers, it was plain to see that someone had
been there before them and ransacked the place upside down. Jessica let
“A bunch of bills,” Mort said from
the desk, “but not a whole lot else.
What did you find?”
“Nothing,” said Jessica,
disappointed. “You would think that in
all this mess there would be something.”
“Well,” said Mort, “I’ll call Andy
to get the forensics guys up here. Maybe
they can lift some fingerprints.”
Jessica looked down and said, “What
have you got there, girl? Here – give it
to me.”
The dog willingly let her take the
paper, her tail wagging. Jessica
smoothed it out and looked at it.
“What’ve you got?” Mort asked,
looking over her shoulder.
“It looks like a notice from the
Internal Revenue Service,” Jessica said.
“It was mailed from
“Well, hopefully forensics will turn
up something,” the Sheriff said as they came out of the house.
“Look,” said Jessica.
At the foot of the long driveway
there was a black car, with a balding man in a suit leaning against it. When he saw them, he got in and drove away.
“Who the hell was that?” Mort asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jessica, “but I
would bet a royalty check that it’s the same person Tipper Henderson said
talking to Jack two days before his death.”
*******
“Sheriff,” said Andy when Mort and
Jessica returned to the sheriff’s office, “the autopsy report came in.”
“Great, let’s have a look,” said
Mort, taking the folder and scanning its contents. “Whoa, take a look at this,” he said, and
passed it to Jessica.
Jessica took it and frowned. “It says that there was pentobarbital in
Jack’s bloodstream exceeding lethal levels.”
“Must have been some syringe,” Mort
commented.
“Well, not necessarily. But what strikes me as odd is that according
to the coroner, the cause of death was due to the pentobarbital, not the
shotgun blast.”
“So?”
“So if Jack was already dead from
the pentobarbital injection, why go through the trouble of shooting him with a
shotgun, and risk somebody hearing it?”
Mort shrugged. “Maybe they wanted to make sure he was dead.”
“Possible, though with this level of
barbiturate that was hardly in doubt,” Jessica said. “It makes me wonder …”
Mort sighed. “I know what’s coming,” he said, “but I’ll
ask anyway: makes you wonder what?”
“Whether the body Tipper found
really was Jack Turow’s.”
*******
“Dr. Murphy,” Mort said when he and
Jessica returned to the clinic, “the autopsy report showed high levels of
pentobarbital in the victim’s blood.
Now, that’s the sort of thing that could be found around an animal
hospital, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Harry said. “We use it commonly for pet euthanasia. It’s a very powerful, fast acting
barbiturate.”
“Who has access to it?”
“Well, any of the staff members,”
Harry said. “We keep it locked in a
cabinet, so anyone with a set of keys to the clinic could get at it.”
“What about someone without keys?”
Harry thought about this. “The lock is old, I admit,” he said. “We’ve been talking about getting it
changed. I suppose it’s not impossible
that someone was able to break it.”
“Maybe someone didn’t have to,” Mort
said.
“Sheriff,” said the veterinarian,
“it’s hardly a secret that I had an argument with Mr. Turow when he came in
with his new dog two days before he was killed.
Frankly I’d be surprised if the entire waiting room didn’t hear the
whole thing. But I didn’t kill him.”
“You did threaten him, though.”
“With legal action, yes, after he
threatened me. But I was only interested
in the welfare of his animals, not in revenge.”
“Dr. Murphy,” Jessica asked
suddenly, “do you have any idea why
he adopted this new dog?”
“I have no idea,” Harry said. “His chief interest is in Rottweilers, not
retrievers. Frankly, I’m surprised he
even bothered to bring her in. He’s not
stupid; he knew she was in poor shape, and that I would have to say something
about it.”
“Almost as if he were looking for an
excuse to quarrel,” Jessica said, half to herself.
*******
That night it rained, one of those
wind-swept nights that come in Autumn.
Jessica sat up in bed, trying to read, but the weather and her mixed-up
thoughts distracted her, and she couldn’t concentrate. After reading the same paragraph over again
for the third time, she gave up, and tossed the book aside. She sighed, took off her reading glasses to
lay on her bedside table, and gave herself over to the rain and to her
thoughts.
Jack Turow had many people with
possible motives to kill him, that was for sure. But the fact that the body had been so
disfigured for no reason and the “coincidental” disappearance of the burly
veterinary technician continued to make her question whether it really was Jack
who had been murdered. What if it was no
coincidence at all? What if the victim
was, in fact, the missing tech?
Who, then, she thought to herself,
would want to kill such a gentle person as Richard Pembleton? The technician had no enemies, no reason to
be hated to the point that he invited violence upon himself. The killing could hardly have been a mistake,
happening where it did. But no ready
answer to her plaintive “Why?” came to mind.
A gust of wind shook the house,
driving the rain against the windowpanes.
Jessica shuddered; the lonely sound of the howling wind made her feel
cold, despite being wrapped in quilts.
She heard the sound of toenails
clicking on the wood of the stairs, and presently
Jessica laughed as the dog licked
her face. “Stop,
“
She sat back and listened as the
rain beat against the windows and drummed on the roof, stroking the sleeping
dog, no longer cold, but wrapped in the warmth of contentment.
*******
The phone rang on Mort’s desk early
the next morning.
“Metzger … Yeah. … What? You’re kidding me. … You’re sure about that. … Okay, thanks.” He hung up and looked at Andy, who was
working at the computer. “Would someone
like to explain to me how she knows these things?” he asked rhetorically.
Andy merely smiled, shook his head,
and went back to his data entry.
*******
“Okay, Mrs. F, you were right,” Mort
said when he brought the news to Jessica at home. Seth was there having breakfast, and
“I think it’s probably Richard
Pembleton, the clinic’s technician,” Jessica said, handing Mort a fresh cup of
coffee. “He’s been missing now for over
twenty-four hours.”
“We’re checking up on that,” said
Mort.
“So what are you saying, Jess?” Seth
asked, spreading raspberry jam on a biscuit.
“That the killer used the gun on his victim to hide who he was killing?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,”
she replied. “The shotgun blast to the
face, the victim being dressed in Jack’s clothes – it all points to someone
trying very hard to make us think that it was Jack who was killed.”
Seth put down his biscuit. “But if you’re right …” he began.
“It brings us to an interesting
question – where is Jack Turow?” Mort
finished for him.
Jessica nodded mutely.
The thoughtful silence was broken a
moment later when Seth looked down at his plate and let out an
exclamation. “Hey!” he said. “My biscuit!
What in the name of …”
Mort and Jessica stared at the empty
plate and broke into laughter, while
“Very funny,” he growled at the dog.
*******
Tipper’s description of the “fed”
she had seen Jack Turow talking to was more than enough for Andy to locate him
and invite him over to the sheriff’s office for a chat.
“So let me get this straight,” Mort
said to Agent Todd Fuller of the Internal Revenue Service. “The IRS knew that Turow was cheating on his
taxes for five years, and it took you this long to track him down?”
Fuller looked affronted. “A thorough investigation takes a certain
amount of time, Sheriff,” he said loftily.
“In the case of Mr. Turow, the methods of his tax evasion were intricate
enough to require more time to collect the evidence we needed. But however long it takes, the Internal
Revenue Service always gets its man.”
“I thought that was the FBI,” Mort
said.
Fuller smiled thinly. “Far be it for me to criticize another government agency,” he said, “but if the FBI had half the tenacity of the IRS, there’d be no such thing as a Ten Most Wanted list.”
********
Meantime, Jessica was sitting in her
kitchen, pondering the envelope she had brought with her from Jack Turow’s
house.
“
She counted back on one hand,
ticking off the days. “Sixteenth,
seventeenth, eighteenth … oh, my.”
Cana, who had been lying at her
feet, raised her head. Jessica bent down
to pat her.
“Cana, my dear, I have to go,” she
said. “Be a good girl, hm?” And she grabbed her denim windbreaker and
headed out the back door.
Cana got to her feet and watched her
go. Jessica had left the kitchen door
open; it was a warm day. The retriever
whined, then nudged open the screen door and left on an errand of her own.
*******
A dog’s frantic bark made Tipper
look up sharply from her leaf raking.
She looked over her fence, and was surprised to see Cana racing up the
street,
“Come here, girl! Come here!” she said, opening the gate as the
golden retriever dashed into her yard.
Cana came skidding to a stop in
front of her, panting heavily.
“What’s wrong?” Tipper asked. “Where’s Jessica?”
Cana lifted a paw into the
veterinarian’s hand, and whimpered.
Tipper looked into the dog’s mournful eyes, and understood.
*******
Mort was surprised to see Tipper
burst into his office unexpectedly, Cana following close upon her heels.
“Sheriff,” the veterinarian said
breathlessly, “we have a problem.”
*******
Jessica came to Jack Turow’s farm as
the sun’s rays were beginning to level in the late afternoon. She walked her bicycle up the rutted
driveway, looking carefully for any signs of life, but to all appearances the
place was deserted. She approached the
barn, leaned the bike up against the weathered boards, and headed for the
double doors. Suddenly she looked down –
in the mud there were a set of fresh footprints, definitely made since the rain
the night before. At the door, muddy
prints could be seen on the cracked concrete, leading inside.
“Interesting,” she thought, and
followed them in.
The barn itself held nothing
remarkable, only rusting farm machinery, bales of musty hay, and cracked
plastic buckets holding a variety of smaller tools. Finding nothing of interest in the main area,
she moved toward the back, where Tipper had told her Turow was accustomed to
keeping his animals.
The dog runs were housed in a shed
built onto the back of the barn. It was
dark, and dusty, and littered with cast-off rags, rusting tin cans, and other
debris. The runs themselves were
enclosures about six feet long, made of varying sizes of rusted chain link
fencing running from floor to ceiling; none of them were currently holding any
dogs. Jessica cast the narrow beam of
her flashlight around the area, taking all of this in. At one end of the shed was a work bench
covered with papers and boxes, and she tentatively took a step toward this to
have a closer look.
She had scarcely taken three paces
when a shape loomed up beside her, and strong fingers wrapped around her
wrist. Jessica gave a cry and tried to
pull away, but the vise-like grip only tightened, twisting until she dropped
the flashlight to the dirt floor. Her
attacker did not let her go, but flung her into one of the empty dog runs and
slammed the door shut with a loud clang.
“That should hold you,” a harsh
voice said. Jessica turned to face him
as he raised the flashlight to his face.
“Jack Turow,” she said, trying to
catch her breath. “What a surprise.”
“Oh, it’s hardly that, Mrs.
Fletcher,” Turow said. “I know you a
little better than that. The fact is,
you’ve suspected for quite some time that I was actually alive.”
There was really no point in
attempting any sort of pretense. “Yes.”
“And once that became plain, it then
became obvious who killed the unfortunate technician,” Turow went on. “I’m curious – what led you to believe that
the murdered man was not who he first seemed to be?”
“It was the way the body had been
dressed,” she said. “It was plain that
it was nothing more than a disguise put on for diversion.”
“But how could that be? The disguise was so complete, so perfect!”
Jessica shook her head. “Not quite,” she said. “When the body was picked up by the EMTs,
your characteristic class ring fell off the man’s finger. Not only was the ring surprisingly loose on
his hand, but his finger bore no impression from it – which it certainly
should, if, as everyone knows, you had worn it since high school.”
“Very clever,” Turow said, impressed
despite himself. “It’s really too bad
you won’t have a chance to tell anyone else about it.” And Jessica’s heart skipped a beat as he
pulled a loaded gun out of his pocket.
Just then a flash of gold burst
through the door and intervened, tackling Turow and knocking him flat on the
ground. When the dust settled, there was
Cana standing over him, her teeth bared and her golden fur all on end. Turow tried to sit up, but the sound of a
sharp click from the doorway gave him pause:
Tipper Henderson stood there with a loaded tranquilizer gun in her
hands, leveled straight at him.
“You’ve got a choice, Mr. Turow,”
she said in a cold, icy voice as Mort and Andy came up behind her. “You can leave with the Sheriff on your feet,
or he can drag you out of here fast asleep.
Up to you.”
*******
Turow sat sullenly in a chair in
Mort’s office, handcuffs on his wrists.
“You’re a real piece of work,” Mort
said. “We’ve got you for murder,
attempted murder, and tax evasion, not to mention a few counts of cruelty to
animals. But what I want to know is,
what did you have against Richard Pembleton?”
Turow refused to answer, so Jessica
spoke up. “Nothing,” she said, as Seth and Tipper looked on. “Richard Pembleton was a convenient pawn that
Mr. Turow used toward his own purpose.
“The IRS had caught up with Jack
over his tax evasion, and he needed to disappear. What better way to throw everyone off the
track than to be found dead? He
contacted Richard, probably with an anonymous phone call, and arranged to meet
him at the clinic. The locks are old; he
had no trouble getting there first and picking his way inside and into the
clinic’s drug cabinet. He used
pentobarbital for two reasons: because
it would immobilize his victim so he could get a clean shot at the face, and
because it would cast suspicion on Dr. Murphy or one of his staff.
“When Richard was dead, Jack dressed
him in his clothes, right down to the characteristic class ring, then used the
shotgun to disfigure him. He thought
confusion over identification would buy him enough time to ransack his own
house and disappear.”
“And it would have, too!” Turow
snarled, breaking his silence, “if that damn ring hadn’t slipped off the guy’s
finger.”
Jessica shook her head. “That wasn’t the only thing,” she said. “When the Sheriff and I went to your farm the
first time, we found an envelope from the Internal Revenue Service regional
office in Boston. It was postmarked
three days earlier, and it was opened.
Now, it takes at least three days for a first class letter to get here
from Boston, so it must have been delivered that day – several hours after your
alleged ‘death.’ Who had brought it
in? For that matter, who had opened it?”
Turow’s face now turned red with
rage. “I got rid of that letter!” he
said. “Where did you find it?”
“We didn’t,” said Jessica
mildly. “Cana did.”
Turow looked at the golden retriever
in shock. “The dog?”
“Yeah, Jack, you were outsmarted by
a dog,” Mort said. “Kind of sad, isn’t
it. Andy, get him out of here, would
ya?”
“Now that that’s over,” Seth said as
Andy led Turow away, “the only question remaining is who is going to provide a
home for this lonely, orphaned dog? I
think she’d be perfect for you, Jess.”
Jessica held up her hands. “Oh, no,
Seth,” she said. “Not with me still
going back and forth to New York. I love
her, but it just wouldn’t be fair to her.”
“What about you, Sheriff?” the
veterinarian asked. “You have room, and
you don’t travel much.”
Mort got down on one knee next to
the dog. “I don’t know …”
Cana whimpered and lifted a paw into
his hand.
“Seems to me you may not have much
choice in the matter, Mort,” Seth observed.
“Young Cana seems to have chosen you.”
Mort smiled under the deluge of
affection and gave in. “All right,” he
said. “Adelle’s wanted a dog ever since we moved up here anyway.”
Jessica was delighted. “I think she’ll be very happy with you,” she
said.
“Well, Sheriff,” said Tipper, “she’s
your dog now, choose a name for her.”
Mort rubbed the dog’s head and
thought about it, while the others looked on in anticipation.
“Jessie,” he said at last, grinning.
Jessica’s eyes blazed. “WHAT?”
“Oh, not after you, Mrs. F,” Mort
said, but from the twinkle in his eye she knew full well he was lying.
Jessie licked Mort’s face with
enthusiasm, endorsing her new name wholeheartedly, and the bond was sealed.