by Lauren Carr
Jessica leaned over to one side and peered around the monitor while Mac looked around its other side. Archie stood up and gazed over the top of it.
Sitting at attention, Gnarly cocked his head at them. He uttered a loud bark at the door, commanding them to allow him into his home. He probably thought that breakfast would’ve been nice, too. He was covered in dried blood.
Archie and Jessica sprang into action at the same time. Archie reached the door first.
On the other side of the window, Gnarly’s face, chest, and mane were covered with blood, but he was obviously in good shape, judging by how he was jumping and clawing at the door. As soon as Archie threw open the door, he ran into the kitchen and gulped down most of the water in his bowl. When he was finished, he stuck his snout in his food dish. Finding it empty, he looked over at the door where Mac, Archie, and Jessica were watching him and trying to determine if he’d been hurt. Gnarly looked down at the empty bowl and then back at them. When they didn’t move, the German shepherd sat down and looked once again at the bowl. Then, turning his attention back to them, he barked at them as though he were barking an order.
“Well, as your grandmother used to say,” Mac said to Jessica, “as long as you’re hungry, you must be okay.”
While Archie filled the dog’s food bowl, Mac knelt down in front of him to examine him for wounds suffered in his altercation with the mountain lion. The German shepherd was more interested in filling his tummy than in getting first aid.
Jessica grabbed her cell phone and called Murphy to relay the news. She reached him after two rings. “Good news, honeybuns. Gnarly came home, and he seems to be okay.”
“Great,” Murphy said without humor. “Our news isn’t so good.”
“Is it Storm?”
“No, she’s fine,” Murphy said. “Bogie and I had looped around and were making our way back along the lake in your direction when we found something.”
“Something?”
“Someone, really.”
“Who?”
“Nancy Braxton. She’s dead.”
Chapter Fourteen
David O’Callaghan had gotten only a couple of hours of sleep, but that didn’t matter. A storm was brewing. It would be impossible to keep the news of the death of Nancy Braxton, a philanthropist and political leader and the wife of the Super Bowl–champion quarterback Nathan Braxton, away from the media. Questions and speculation would certainly fly. It would only be a matter of time before Gnarly’s political enemies would discover that he’d been missing at the time of her death, and fingers would be pointed at him.
If it had been any other time, Dallas Walker would have been all over David, wanting to tag along with him to the crime scene, but at the moment, her focus was elsewhere.
By eight o’clock in the morning, the Belgian shepherd was coming out of the anesthesia, and the vet released her. The thick, lovely sable fur around her neck and shoulders and down her back to her shoulder blades had been shaved so that the vet could clean up and stitch her wounds. They had also shaved off patches of fur on both sides of her hips where the mountain lion’s hind claws had dug into her flesh after pouncing on her back. Soon, the vet assured Dallas, the dog’s fur would grow back and would be as thick and as plush as it had been before the fight. Hopefully, Storm wouldn’t have any scars. To keep her from scratching or chewing on her stitches, the vet had fitted her with the cone of shame—a large, white cone collar.
The vet, her assistant, Dallas, and David loaded Storm, who was on a stretcher, into the backseat of David’s police cruiser. Dallas climbed in and rode next to her to keep her quiet. As soon as David pulled up in front of his house, Sheriff Turow and a half dozen sheriff deputies and Spencer police officers met them with a stretcher.
Helping Dallas out of the backseat, Sheriff Turow said, “We’ll take care of Storm.” He took the IV that the vet had sent home with her. “You go get yourself something to eat. Tonya has fresh coffee inside, and we have enough breakfast to feed an army.”
“Tonya made breakfast?” David asked with a cringe. Tonya had never made any bones about being able to or liking to cook.
“Catered by the Spencer Inn,” the sheriff said. “Mac ordered it for everyone as thanks for spending the whole night looking for Gnarly, who showed up at Spencer Manor just in time for breakfast. Grab yourself something to eat fast, O’Callaghan. Doc Washington is already at the crime scene.”
Inside the house, Tonya placed a hot mug of coffee in Dallas’ hands. Dallas hadn’t realized that they were cold until she felt the warmth of the fresh coffee. “How are you doing, Dallas?”
Watching the men carrying Storm into the house and placing her carefully on the dog bed that had been supplemented with an old comforter for added comfort, Dallas said, “I know you must think I’m silly. After all, Storm is just a dog.”
“You’re not the least bit silly,” Tonya said.
Dallas tore her attention from Storm to look at Tonya, who was smiling softly. “I have four dogs, and I’m closer to all of them than I am to my own children. I keep threatening to leave my house to them.”
“Your dogs?”
“They have more common sense and are more self-sufficient than any of my kids.”
Dallas was still making sense of that news when David came up on her other side to kiss her on the cheek. He had made a sandwich out of the food that had been delivered by the Spencer Inn and had wrapped it in a paper towel.
“I gotta go, hon,” he said. “Nancy Braxton’s body was found down the road. Turow and I need to get out in front of this before it hits the news.” He cocked his head at her. “Are you okay?”
With a shuddering breath, she nodded her head.
“She probably needs some sleep.” Tonya wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m willing to bet she was up all night.” She gestured for him to be on his way. “I’ll stay with her and take care of Storm. You go do your thing, Chief. Don’t you worry. I’ve got this covered.”
Shooting a grateful grin in Tonya’s direction, David hugged Dallas and kissed her again before trotting out the door after Sheriff Turow.
Juggling his breakfast as he drove, David followed the sheriff’s cruiser along the lakeshore road to a turnoff a little over a mile from his house. The dirt road had been carved through the brush and ended near a makeshift boat launch frequented by small fishing boats. It was off the beaten trail, and only those familiar with the area knew about it. A gravel footpath from the Glendale Road Bridge ran along the lake’s shoreline to the cove where David lived.
When they approached the crime scene, they found that some Spencer police officers, led by Bogie, had already strung up crime-scene tape to cut off vehicles’ access to the area, which forced David and Sheriff Turow to park behind the medical examiner’s SUV on the opposite side of the road.
After making their way down the rutted dirt road, Sheriff Turow and David came upon Murphy Thornton, who was looking surprisingly fresh after spending the night searching through the woods. He was sitting with his legs crossed on top of a tree stump frequently used for fishing from the shore. As he texted on his cell phone, he leaned over with an elbow resting on each knee, and he seemed to be effortlessly pressing his knees down flat. Because he was the son of a prosecuting attorney and had experience with criminal investigations, Murphy was sitting away from the crime scene in order to not contaminate it—he was leaving it to Bogie and the local police.
“’Bout time you guys got here,” he said with a grin while thumbing away on his phone. “I thought Bogie was going to have to solve this case by himself.”
“Don’t be a smartass, Thornton,” David said while glancing beyond Murphy to where Sheriff Turow was conferring with Bogie and Doc.
“You do know Gnarly’s home?” One of his eyebrows arched while he cast David a sideways glance out of the corner of his blue eyes.
&n
bsp; David nodded his head. “Turow told me.”
“He showed up at Spencer Manor about thirty minutes ago.” Murphy jerked his thumb in the direction of the medical examiner. “Doc says Braxton died about seven hours ago, and she’s got bite marks on her. Gnarly would have gone right past here to go home, and no one knows where he was when she was killed.”
David crossed his arms in a sign of defiance. “Gnarly would not have killed her unless she was coming after him or someone he loved.”
“Try telling the media supporting Nancy Braxton that,” Murphy said with a grin that indicated that he was playing with the police chief’s mind. “Word is already out on social media about Gnarly being missing last night. Once people find out that his political opponent is dead—” He shook his head. “Does Gnarly have an alibi?”
David wanted to slap the dimples off of Murphy’s handsome face. Grumbling about how no one had a right to look that good after a night of thrashing through the deep woods, David brushed past him to join Doc, Bogie, and Sheriff Turow where Nancy Braxton was lying face down in the water. Her bare feet and legs, encased in filthy white, silky pajamas, were spread in the dirt and weeds of the shore, and her upper body was resting in the water. Her clothes were soiled with muddy lake water, grass stains, and blood. They were torn, and it looked like an animal had ripped them open to gnaw on her bloated flesh.
Without the medical examiner pointing it out, David saw the bloody wound at the back of Nancy Braxton’s head.
“Murphy said that the time of death was around one in the morning?” David asked. “Do you know the cause yet?”
“Not an animal attack,” Doc said while shooting a glance in the young man’s direction. “Murphy was pulling your leg.”
David held up his finger. “Hold that thought.” He crossed over to the tree stump where Murphy was still texting away and delivered a slap to the back of his head. Scrambling to keep hold of his phone with one hand, Murphy grabbed the back of his head with the other. “Quit being a smartass.”
After David rejoined the group surrounding the dead body, Doc gestured at the bloody wound in the back of Nancy’s head. “I won’t know until I open her up, but it could be either blunt-force trauma or drowning or a combination of the two. The bite marks were made by a scavenger hours after she was already dead. See the lack of blood around the bite marks? She’s been lying here facedown for a while. You’ll notice that the blood drained away from her back, where the bite marks are, and settled in her front and abdomen. Yet the blood from the wound to the back of her head soaked her hair. She was alive when she was struck in the back of the head.”
David glanced around where the politician was lying and up onto the shore, looking for a rock with blood on it or for anything else that could’ve been used as a weapon. Taking note of Nancy Braxton’s bruised and scraped, bare feet, he asked if she could have slipped along the muddy shoreline and fallen, hit her head on a rock, and, in a daze, passed out and drowned. “Could it have been an accident?”
With a knowing grin, Doc Washington shrugged her shoulders.
“I know. You need to open her up first.”
David saw Murphy bring his cell phone to his ear, opting to cease texting to take a call instead. He unfolded his legs and stood up from the tree stump to move down the footpath and farther away from them.
Rising to his feet, David looked up and down the shoreline. They were at least two and a half miles along the shore from where Nancy Braxton’s estate was located, and then her home was another half of a mile straight up a rocky cliff.
Glancing back down at Nancy’s lifeless body, David took note of her lack of a bathrobe and slippers. “She could have been dumped here.” Squatting down to examine her feet, he said, “She was walking around outside in her bare feet.” Freshly disturbed gravel and broken weeds indicated a recent struggle in the same spot where her body had been found. “There was a struggle here recently.”
“Based on lividity,” Doc said, “she died here.”
“What was she doing here in the middle of the night without a robe or slippers?” David asked.
“Good question,” Sheriff Turow said.
Finished with his phone call, Murphy approached them.
“Anybody notify her family yet?” David asked Bogie.
“No,” Bogie said. “We decided to let you and Turow have all the fun. By the way, no one has reported her missing either.”
Murphy cleared his throat. “As much fun as I’m having right now, is it possible for someone to give me a ride back to Spencer Manor? I need to get back to Washington—today.”
After directing David to go on to the Braxtons’ estate to break the news, Sheriff Turow offered to drive Murphy back.
With a crook of his finger, Murphy led Sheriff Turow and David away from where Doc and Bogie were examining the body. “I just talked to my commanding officer. She read through your wife’s case file last night, Turow, and has ordered me back to Washington to take over the case.”
“Did your CO find something?” Hope came to Sheriff Turow’s eyes.
“She noticed a similarity in Sergeant Perkins’ case and a case we’re already working on,” Murphy said. “That’s all I can tell you.”
Sheriff Turow eased his police cruiser between two groups camped outside of the entrance of Spencer Manor. On one side of the road, picketers were proclaiming their support of Gnarly. They were donning shirts with Gnarly’s face on them that read “I love Gnarly,” “Vote for Gnarly,” and “He’s Not Snarly, Vote for Gnarly.” They further made their point by waving signs that read “Innocent until Proven Guilty,” and “Vast Human Conspiracy.”
On the other side of the road were townspeople demanding that Gnarly be banned because he was a threat to the community. Their signs had Gnarly’s picture with blood dripping from his mouth on them.
Journalists rushed from one side of the road to the other with their microphones and cameras in search of newsworthy sound bites.
As the sheriff rolled past the crowds, he saw Bernie and Hap front and center of the pro-Gnarly group with a horde of journalists in front of them.
“We all know what this is,” Bernie said into the microphones. “This is nothing more than a vast human conspiracy, and we won’t stand for it!” Bernie and Hap shook their fists at the group across the street. The supporters behind them chanted, “He’s not snarly! Vote for Gnarly!”
Upon seeing the sheriff’s cruiser, journalists shouted out questions about Gnarly killing his handler and about how had he disappeared the night before. They asked whether such a vicious dog with a history of murder should be permitted in Spencer.
“The sad part,” Murphy said to the sheriff, “is that since Belle’s mission with Gnarly is classified, we’re unable to tell the media the truth about what happened.”
By the time Murphy and Sheriff Turow climbed out of the cruiser, Bernie and Hap’s group had changed their song. “Gnarly! Gnarly! Gnarly!”
When Murphy saw the cameras recording their walk inside, he pulled his ball cap down on his head, adjusted his sunglasses, and turned his back to them.
“You look better than you did last night,” Sheriff Turow said, pleasantly surprised to see Mac up and about.
“Nothing like a murder case to get Dad on the mend,” Jessica said while hugging Murphy.
“We think we found the dirt on Nancy Braxton’s charitable foundation.” Mac waved the report so that the sheriff could see it. “It could be what Sandy Burr discovered during his investigation.”
“Speaking of investigations,” Murphy said, “I need to go back to Washington today.”
“Why?” Jessica’s question came out as a whine.
“CO thinks she found something in Belle Perkins’ murder case,” Murphy said. “She wants me to take over the case.”
“Will it clear Gnarly’s name?” Mac asked.
/> At the sound of his name, Gnarly trotted down the stairs from the master bedroom. In his mouth, he was carrying the toy squirrel that the sheriff had given him earlier. Upon seeing the sheriff, the dog stopped in front of him and sat down.
“We’ll definitely clear Gnarly’s name and identify Belle Perkins’ killer,” Murphy said. “Which leads to a request from my CO.” Squatting down next to Gnarly, he petted the German shepherd from the top of his head down his back. “She wants me to bring Gnarly back with me.”
“Why?” Even Mac was shocked by the defensive tone in his question. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feared that Gnarly would not return if he went to Washington.
“Gnarly is a witness,” Murphy said to the sheriff over his shoulder. “He was there when Belle Perkins was killed. Dogs’ sense of smell is forty times stronger than ours. He was the first one on the scene—before any of the evidence was disturbed.”
“Even if he was asleep at the time of the murder,” Mac said, “Gnarly could have smelled the killer’s scent on Belle, and he could be able to identify him from that scent.”
“A couple of members of Belle’s unit stated that Gnarly went nuts when everyone entered her tent after he found the body,” Sheriff Turow said. “One of the men who knew dogs very well calmed him down. Gnarly was so upset that everyone was afraid of him, so he was crated from then until he arrived back in the States.”
“He probably went nuts because he smelled the killer when he entered the crime scene with the rest of Belle’s team,” Mac said.
“But no one understood that he was identifying his handler’s killer.” Archie reached out to stroke the dog’s ears.
“I’ll listen to you, Gnarly.” Murphy looked deep into Gnarly’s almond-shaped eyes.
Chapter Fifteen
Considering that he hadn’t gone to bed, David found it hard to believe that it wasn’t quite nine thirty in the morning when he pulled up to the closed gates of the Braxtons’ estate and pressed the security button.
