by Kit Frazier
“I read the outline you e-mailed me, and it’s pretty good,” Tanner said, surprising me. “Not bad at all.”
He turned and shut the door, rubbing the back of his neck. “What I don’t like is what you’re not saying.”
I fidgeted, and I knew Tanner caught it.
“Are you working Barnes?”
I blew out a long breath.
“Goddamn it Cauley.” He wasn’t old enough for the vein I saw pulsing in his forehead. “What have you got?”
I crossed my arms. “Are you going to make me turn it over to Shiner?”
“Let me hear what you’ve got and I’ll let you know.”
Sighing, I told him about the vandalism-slash-burglary and the missing Barnes file at my house last night, skillfully omitting the part about the mutilated underwear. I told him about the severed ear, the Customs Agent and the FBI.
“And then there’s the El Patron connection. Why would Diego DeLeon call me up out of the blue to quiz me about some non-existent thing about Scott Barnes? He also asked me point blank about some kind of vixen, and he was blabbing on and on about El Patron.”
I leaned forward. “And here’s the big thing. Agent Logan was surprised that DeLeon knew about the El Patron connection, but he didn’t seem surprised by the connection itself.”
Tanner shook his head, looking at my e-mailed outline. “And you think, what? Barnes is smuggling drugs in with the animals for El Patron?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure the Feds think he’s smuggling something. Why else would two different federal agents give a rat’s rear-end that a washed-up jock keeps threatening suicide? And why are some of the animals neglected and in need of medical attention? Something is wrong, Tanner. I know Scooter, and he’d rather throw himself in front of a burning bus than hurt an animal. And he wouldn’t knowingly break the law.”
“People will do anything given proper motivation,” Tanner said.
I winced, thinking about Scooter’s arrest record for fighting over Selena. At least once in his life, Scooter had broken the law, and he’d done it for Selena. Not a great precedent.
I shook my head. “It’s all connected. Logan as much as admitted it. He said they were all pieces of the puzzle.”
Tanner turned, looking out the window, fiddling with a licorice whip. “You spoke to two agents? In person?”
“Customs and Fed, but it was off the record.”
“Nothing’s off the record,” Tanner grunted, but I knew from the look on his face that Shiner hadn’t been able to get squat on the story, let alone corroborate with two federal agents. Of course, Shiner hadn’t been threatened at gunpoint, burgled or menaced with a severed ear. Nice to know there’s a bright side to everything.
“It is off the record. I won’t use anything they’ve told me in confidence.”
Tanner didn’t say anything, so I decided to press my luck. “The Customs guy said he’d let me tag along when he goes to interview Barnes. He thinks Scooter will talk more freely I mean, he’s called me wanting to talk about whatever’s bothering him before.”
“You want out of obits,” Tanner said, and he didn’t say it kindly.
“I want to know what’s going on,” I said, standing my ground. I knew he was thinking about the journalism hierarchy and the importance of paying your dues. And probably the trouble I’d gotten into at the Journal.
Tanner moved to the glass door of his office, looking out on the second-string reporters pecking away in the Bull Pen. Rolling the licorice stump along his lower lip, he reached down to scratch the dog on the chin.
“So,” I said. “I’ve got the go-ahead on Barnes?”
Tanner turned and looked at me. “You name the dog?”
“Marlowe.”
Tanner nodded. “Take him with you. And keep me posted, goddamn it.”
I would have turned a cartwheel if I remembered how, and I almost kissed Tanner right on the lips, but there was that gummy licorice stump, and also, I’d already gotten myself a bad reputation for kissing my bosses. So I took the dog and high-tailed it out of Tanner’s office before he could change his mind.
Chapter Twelve
The sky was MGM, Technicolor blue, the sun was high and the wind was hot when Marlowe and I hopped into the open Jeep to go see Scooter. I’d checked the weather forecast. Despite the heat, it wasn’t an Ozone Action day, and there wasn’t a gulf hurricane in sight. It wasn’t supposed to rain for another day or two, so I skipped the antihistamine and headed for the open road. A perfect Central Texas summer day.
I’d fished Fiennes’s card from my purse and called him on my new cell phone and left a voice mail when I got his message system.
Technically, I’d agreed that Fiennes and I would go talk to Scooter together, but Tanner had finally given me the green light and I wasn’t about to wait around for a bureaucrat, no matter how hot, to decide to answer his cell.
I could always fill all the necessary Feds in on the details later, I rationalized. In the mean time, maybe I could get Scooter to tell me what kind of trouble warranted the interest of at least two branches of the United States government. I was having a hard time thinking the El Patron connection was legit, but I would ask about that, too.
Besides, if I got to Scooter before the Feds, he and I could sit down and work out a plan to get him out of whatever it was he’d gotten himself into before we got the Feds involved.
“The man takes care of bunnies for a living, how bad could the trouble be?” I said to Marlowe.
Marlowe sat in the passenger seat, eyes front. No undignified hanging out the door, no tongue lolling in the slipstream. The wind whipped his fur to a frenzy, and the dog looked as happy as any mammal had the right to be. The feeling was contagious.
I cranked the radio up to decimate and sang along when Bonnie Raitt wailed Let’s Give “em Somethin” to Talk About and I smiled when Marlowe howled along. It could have been a critique on my vocal stylings, but I prefer to think we were sharing a moment. At any rate, we soared down Ranch Road 620 South, on our way to The Blue Parrot.
“You’re going to love this place,” I told Marlowe as we pulled into Scooter’s parking lot. “They have mice and parrots and rabbits and these funny little goats that faint.”
No sooner than I’d said the words, a streak of unease spidered up my spine. The parking lot in front of The Blue Parrot was empty. No double-parked Beemers of the young and privileged, no nicely dressed techies hauling bags of designer dog chow to their idling SUVs.
“Well,” I said to Marlowe as I cut the motor and the Jeep rattled to a halt. “Miranda and her team at the Journal seem to have put our old friend out of business.”
I tried the door. Locked, but no Closed sign in the window. Through the plate glass, I could see the lights were out. Scooter’s parrot wasn’t sitting on the perch next to the cash register.
“Where are all the animals?” I said to Marlowe. He didn’t answer.
“Well, then. It’s our civic duty to check it out.”
The building was surrounded by a row of dense boxwood bushes, so there as no clear access to the windows. I squeezed behind the bushes and inched my way along the limestone ledge of the foundation to peer into a pane. Nothing.
Inside, the pet shop was dark and unnaturally quiet, but I noticed something else. Doors to the large cages were open, and there were no animals in sight. I wondered if the Bug had been by and taken the animals back to his place…
Bang!
Sharp white fangs in a wide pink mouth hit the window.
I heard a scream. It might have been me.
Arms flailing, I fell backward into the bush. Marlowe stood over me, his dark, almond-shaped eyes looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Flat on my back and stuck in the bush, I looked up to the window. A capuchin monkey perched on the inside sill, screaming simian swears at me through the pane.
“Jeez!” I swore back, trying to get hold of something that wasn’t sharp so I could pull myself to my f
eet. I was tangled in the bramble, so I rolled over, branches poking and scratching, until I could crawl out from underneath the bush.
Spitting out a mouthful of leaves, I stared back at the monkey. “What are you doing loose?”
I went the back door and banged hard. “Scooter? Are you in there?”
When I hit the door, the room erupted in shrieks and screams. The sounds of animals under duress.
“Shit, Marlowe, how did they get loose? It sounds like they’re going Lord of the Flies in there.” Marlowe shifted from paw to paw, growling low in his throat.
“Scooter?” I yelled through the door.
Nothing.
With a growing sense of dread, I fished my new cell phone out of my purse and dialed the number to The Blue Parrot. No answer.
“Scooter!” I yelled at the door. Heaving back, I hit it with my shoulder. The door didn’t bust down like it does in the movies, but I would probably have another neat little bruise to add to my collection.
Inside, the animals were going crazy. Outside, Marlowe was in a full-fledged snarl, scrabbling hard at the steel door.
I should call the police and let them handle it, but what would I say? Animals were rioting at the exotic pet store? Probably they’d just tell me to call the Humane Society.
I slipped Marlowe’s leash over the knob at the back door and searched the ground for something big enough to break the window. I knew it was a bad idea, but I have a long history of being impervious to good sense.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I flipped open my cell and dialed 911.
“Austin 911, what is your emergency?” droned the voice on the line.
“There’s a woman breaking into the pet store on Ranch Road 620.”
I disconnected.
I climbed over the bush, reared back and hit the window with the rock. The window cracked but didn’t break.
I bet Bruce Willis would have broken it on the first try. I hit the window two more times and made a good-sized jagged hole. Levering myself between the ledge and the bush, I kicked the rest of the glass and made a hole big enough to get through.
“Scooter?” I yelled. “Bug? Anybody?”
Boosting off the ledge, I vaulted through the window, getting a handful of glass splinters from the shattered pane. Landing, my foot struck something wiggly.
“Blast it!” I swore, teetering briefly before I slipped and fell face first on the linoleum. The giant lizard on the other end of the wiggling tail swung around, hissing and spitting.
I did what any sane person would do. I screamed. Outside, Marlowe went wild.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, the lizard scuttled away and I pushed up on my hands, mindful of the glass splinters, and feeling like I’d been thrown into reality show depraved enough for the Fox network.
The sound of skittering claws beneath a toppled store fixture sent my skin crawling. Colorful birds perched freely along bookshelves and store displays, and a white cockatoo flipped his orange crest at me from atop the silent ceiling fan. I didn’t see Sam, Scooter’s blue macaw.
The monkey continued his chiding, and I froze. All the cages were broken, overturned and empty.
The musky smell of free ranging animals was overwhelming, but I smelled something else, too. Thick and oppressive, almost sweet. In college I’d worked at an emergency vet clinic, and once I’d cared for a schnauzer that’d temporarily won a fight with a pit bull. Temporarily, because the schnauzer got a galloping case of gangrene from the bite wound in his neck. The dog literally rotted to death. Rotting flesh is a smell you never forget.
Like the calm before a storm, the animals went quiet, and then
Crash!
The remaining glass in the pane shattered as Marlowe leapt through the broken window, torn leash flying like a thin, tattered flag.
“Marlowe, no!” I shouted. The dog landed in front of me, teeth bared at the monkey.
Faced with a snarling, sixty-pound dog, the monkey scampered behind a case of monkey chow. It could have been a blood bath, but Marlowe screeched to a halt, turned and came back. Like a sentry, he circled me twice and then sat, staring at me expectantly.
“Who are you?” I said to the dog. If Mia’s cat was Cleopatra in a previous life, it was entirely possible that Marlowe was John Wayne.
Marlowe rose, sniffing the floor like a bloodhound.
I blew out a breath, flinching at the glass splinters prickling my palms.
“Good grief,” I said. “Will you look at this place?”
Marlowe didn’t appear to be bothered with the animals. His mind was clearly on something else. He disappeared down an aisle of broken aquariums.
In the near distance, Marlowe yelped three strange little barks from deep inside the pet store. Scooter’s office.
The little hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
“What is it, boy?” I said, but my voice quavered.
Maneuvering around upended cages, I moved toward Marlowe, toward Scooter’s office. With each step, my feet felt heavier, my heart rose in my chest and the odor of rotting schnauzer grew thicker.
“Marlowe? What is it?”
When I pushed the door wide, I saw what it was. Marlowe was standing alert, ears pricked, legs braced, almost in a pointer stance.
Scooter was seated in his ergonomically correct computer chair, his handsome, blond head slumped forward.
My breath caught in my throat.
Dried blood covered his mouse pad and crusted where it had pooled on the floor, most likely from the deep gash that spanned the width of his wrist. Beside the keyboard was an empty bottle of bourbon and a sharp-looking hunting knife, blade extended. It was coated with crusted blood.
“Scooter?” I said, but my voice rang hollow. “Scott!”
I moved toward him and a blur of blue feathers burst in front of me. Sam spread his enormous wings at me, shrieking like a banshee. Marlowe growled, the fur along his back bristling.
“Hey, buddy,” I said to the bird, carefully sidestepping the sharp talons and big beak. “I’m just going to see if he’s all right.”
I edged closer, trying not to gag at the smell. Scooter’s once-stunning blue eyes were milky and lifeless.
“Oh, Scooter.” Grimacing, I reached for him, feeling for a pulse at his throat. He had both ears, but his skin felt unnaturally cold when I touched him. His stiff body toppled to the side.
I screamed.
Sam screamed. The computer beeped, the hard drive whirred, and the Word program blinked into focus. “By the time you read this, I’ll be gone…”
I couldn’t move.
Dim, dust-moted light from the windows cast long shadows over Scooter’s ashen face. The computer’s screen saver scrolled in continuum, as though waiting for its owner to finish whatever he’d been working on. Just another day at the office. Except for the dead body.
I don’t know when I heard the sirens, and I didn’t hear Logan enter the pet store, but I felt his hand, large and warm on my shoulder. My knees buckled and he caught me, his arms strong around me. He smelled clean, like soap and leather, and I could feel the hard line of his shoulder holster tucked beneath his right arm. With his left hand, he patted my back, hesitantly at first, and then he pressed his cheek to the top of my head.
“You okay?” he said.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Come on.” He ushered me toward the back door.
“No,” I whispered hoarsely. “Bathroom.”
He got a pained look on his face, and said, “Can’t. We’ve got to treat this like a crime scene.”
I realized then that crime scene techs were combing the place, and my stomach lurched. Logan led me outside and gallantly turned away as I heaved and wretched and wished I’d never been born in a world where things like this were allowed to happen.
Chapter Thirteen
“Thank you for bringing me home,” I said. I couldn’t stop shaking, even as I stepped into the familiarity of my little house. Logan had pac
ked me and the dog into his Bureau car and driven us back to the bungalow.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Every time I see you I seem to be throwing up.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a way with women. And if I remember correctly, you didn’t actually throw up last time.”
I almost laughed at that, and to my horror, burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re in shock.” Logan pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from inside his jacket.
I blew my nose. “Last year I aced two Criminology courses and held my own through three semesters of Forensic Science. I’ve been on ride-a-longs with APD and the boys at the substation love showing me the Blood Book.”
“Blood Book?”
“Forensic shots of burned bodies, decapitated heads, severed penises.” I shook my head.
Logan nodded. “Not the same, is it?”
“No,” I said. “My dad was a detective with APD, but he always kept that kind of thing at the office.”
In my living room, Muse perched on the back of the sofa, bitching vociferously. Since Marlowe’s appearance in the house, Muse had gone underground, probably plotting her revenge. Marlowe’s ears perked, and before I could say a word, the dog dove for the cat. I suddenly realized that this was their first, official meeting. I was not in the mood.
Muse lifted straight into the air as though she’d been yanked by stunt wires. She came down on the dog’s head, and the heat was on.
There was a tumble of fur as the dog rolled, the cat orbiting about him, claws and teeth bared. When both animals righted themselves on all fours, Muse’s sharp teeth sank into Marlowe’s upper lip. The dog growled with a bit of a lisp.
“Stop.” Logan’s voice thundered through the living room.
The cat and dog froze as though they’d been handed an edict from God. The cat let go of the dog’s lip. After a long moment of glaring at each other, Muse flipped her tail and stalked back to the bedroom. Marlowe circled Logan twice then lay at his feet.
I stared at Logan. One of these days, I was going to ask him how he did that.
Logan sniffed the air. “Did somebody break into your house again?”
“My aunt’s cat probably peed in the ficus. She does that when she doesn’t get her way.”
