Murder in the Dog Days (Maggie Ryan)

by P. M. Carlson

Ernie seemed deeply uneasy now. “Get inside here!” he snapped.

  “Hey, Maggie, honey,” Nick said, “better do what the man says. Got a gun and a dog.”

  Detective Schreiner moved casually out of sight beside the front door. Ernie shrieked, “You call the cops, lady, and these guys are dead! Understand? Or do I have to shoot one to prove I mean it?”

  Schreiner’s cool voice said, “I understand. What do you want?”

  “Get inside here!”

  “Okay.” Cautiously, the sandy-haired detective pulled opened the screen and stepped inside. The dog growled.

  “Sarge, down,” Ernie snapped. Olivia was amazed again at the personality change that came over the muscular shepherd with the different commands. From the crouching menace threatening to lunge at the slightest move, he switched to docile, eager to please. Ernie added sharply to Detective Schreiner, “Go sit down. Not next to your husband. In that rocking chair.”

  Slowly, the detective obeyed. Olivia saw her dark eyes moving in the same quick survey Olivia had taken, marking windows, doors, dog, rifle, beer cans. She sat in the rocker, sandaled feet neatly together, and asked Olivia, “What’s happening?”

  Nick came in quickly, with a guilty-husband air. “Shorry, baby, we’re sloshed. You were right. We asked to use the phone just like you said. To get a tow truck. Din’t we?” he demanded of Ernie. “Din’t we ask for a phone?”

  “Yeah.” Ernie watched them carefully, eyes shifting from Nick to the newcomer. Olivia could feel his discomfort and bewilderment at what to do with all these invaders, could feel his dangerous edginess growing.

  Nick continued, “And we fell down in the door, and he din’t like it. So he made ush stay with thish young lady, whoever she is.”

  “Jesus. You’re too smashed to make sense,” Schreiner said with disgust, rocking back in the chair. The dog growled and looked around, perhaps sharing Ernie’s unease. The detective halted and looked back at Ernie. “Guess he doesn’t like me rocking. So what do you want with us?”

  Olivia watched Ernie puzzle over the question, hunting for an answer that would leave him some options. Finally he nodded to Olivia and said, “Reporter here had some questions. We were waiting for a call and then these two broke in.”

  Everyone looked at Olivia, but she looked only at Ernie. “That’s right,” she said. “We were just waiting for a call.”

  “And these two drunks broke in,” Ernie prompted.

  “Yes. They’re very drunk,” Olivia managed to say.

  “God. You idiots,” muttered Schreiner to Nick and Jerry, and then directed a question to Olivia. “So now we’re waiting for a call? Call from who?”

  Olivia could sense Ernie’s tension bubbling, overheating. She said quickly, “I don’t know. From his boss.”

  Ernie’s mouth twitched in a tiny grin and he seemed to ease down a notch. She’d guessed right, then, it would be okay to tell them what he’d told her.

  “Who’s his boss?” Schreiner asked.

  “I don’t know. We were mostly talking about other stuff. Ernie’s a farmer and a hunter, and he was in Vietnam, so we were just—”

  “Nam?” A quiver of pain seemed to run through Detective Schreiner. Her eyes squeezed closed an instant. Then she looked at Ernie with enthusiasm. “You were in Nam? I was a nurse there.”

  “You’re kidding.” He stared at her, wariness and fascination in his look.

  “18th Surgical, Pleiku.”

  “No shit! We flew out of Pleiku sometimes!”

  “Helicopter pilot?”

  “Roger. First Cavalry.”

  “God. You guys were great. When were you there?”

  “’69, ’70.”

  “I was earlier, ’66 to ’67. You pilots were fantastic! Guys were always telling us how you’d snatch them out of impossible situations. You saved a whole lot of people.”

  That pained grimace pulsed across his face again. “Not all of them.”

  “I know. Me too. Couldn’t save all of them.” With surprising vehemence, the detective added, “Nam sucked.”

  “Still sucks.”

  “Yeah. Still sucks.”

  “Sucks so hard we’ll never get away.”

  Schreiner’s eyes closed again. Olivia, taut with terror that Ernie would freak out again, watched the detective fearfully. Schreiner was tense too, holding the seat edge of her rocking chair with both hands clenched as though fighting pain. She said softly, “We don’t get away. It’s still killing people. Even now.”

  “Even now,” Ernie agreed, and looked at Olivia. “This lady was asking about Cap’n Corky. He thought he’d got away. Dead now.”

  Olivia, panicky, wondered if she was supposed to say something. But Schreiner, tense or not, was in there quicker. “Because of Nam?”

  “You better believe because of Nam. God.” Ernie wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. His right never left the trigger, Olivia saw. The rifle was propped on the TV, still aimed at Nick, who blinked stupidly every few minutes but didn’t move. Jerry was faking sleep, snoring gently. Ernie said, “I thought then it would be over. I thought, hey Mike, we got even. But it didn’t—” He looked at Schreiner, bewildered. “It’s not over. It’s worse.”

  “Yeah. Goes on and on. They were in Nam with you? Corky and Mike?”

  “Mike was, yeah. We flew a lot of missions together. Got through some heavy, heavy stuff together.” He frowned out the window toward the far woods. “That guy was like a brother to me. Great big guy, liked to clown around. I had this snapshot of him trying to look like Elvis. He signed it ‘To Ernie Grant from the King.’” Ernie grinned a little, shaking his head at the memory. “But a serious pilot. Taught me how to get out of LZ’s no one else could get out of. How to spot Charlie’s traps before landing on them. He knew everything about that war. He was the one I was betting on. He’d survive.”

  “Yeah, I knew a couple like that,” Schreiner said. “They knew every trick in Charlie’s book.”

  “Yeah. Well, it wasn’t Charlie that wasted Mike. I mean, maybe Charlie fired the bullets but anyone could of seen it and avoided the problem. Anyone except that asshole Cap’n Corky Lewis.”

  “I see.” Detective Schreiner sounded weary. Her right hand still gripped the chair seat by her knee but her left moved up to push hair from her eyes. “So Lewis blew it.”

  “He was an idiot! He’d only been in country a little while, and here he comes, fresh out of officer school, and we’re all supposed to take orders from him. He’d had some good helicopter training in the U.S. but he didn’t know shit about combat. And we’d been flying missions ten months, and we tried to tell him, but this idiot—” Ernie broke off, struggling to control himself. Still lying down, Sarge wriggled and muttered but Ernie ignored him.

  Detective Schreiner said, “Yeah. Happened to us too. New chief comes in, all of a sudden we’re supposed to be polishing the tent flaps instead of setting up IVs.”

  “That way for you too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fucking Army.”

  “Yeah.” Schreiner’s hand passed over her eyes again. “So what did Lewis do?”

  “Should of been routine. Some platoon was under attack and they asked us for five Hueys to get them out. They had a secure landing zone, and they sent up smoke to show us where it was. Okay. Off we went. I was flying second in formation after Bright Boy Corky Lewis. No problem, it was full daylight. I could see the smoke drifting downwind, I could see the goddamn landing zone. I couldseeit! I couldsee that LZ!”

  Olivia sat very still, trying to measure Ernie’s mood. The others were quiet too: Nick, looking sleepy although Olivia could sense his tension; Jerry, snoring lightly on the carpet; Detective Schreiner, as taut as Ernie, a strange current running between them. Olivia realized that Schreiner had found Ernie’s weak point. What he was talking about tugged at him, distracted him from his task of keeping dog and rifle deployed. But Olivia remained fearful. She knew the tiniest wrong move could trigge
r Ernie’s destructive rage.

  Ernie was looking out at the woods again, still gripped by the past. His right hand was steady on the rifle but his left clenched and unclenched in anger. “So Cap’n Corky headed for the smoke. Mike got on the radio and told him the target LZ we wanted was in the clearing beyond the ravine. ‘Negative,’ says Cap’n Corky, ‘I see the smoke.’ ‘Negative,’ said Mike, ‘the target is upwind of that smoke.’ And Cap’n Corky comes back saying, ‘I’m in charge here.’”

  “That was always the answer,” said Schreiner bitterly. “Anytime I asked why we were doing some asshole thing or other, the answer boiled down to ‘Shut up, I’m in charge here.’ Guess they didn’t have any other answers.”

  “Yeah.” Ernie was still looking at the faraway woods.

  “So Cap’n Corky landed in the wrong place.”

  “Yeah. Like I say, Mike and I were right behind him in the second Huey. He touched down, we touched down, and then Charlie opened up. Heavy, heavy fire. Well, he bounced right up again. Guess he’d finally figured out that this wasn’t the secure landing the platoon told us about. And I bounced up too, and the guys behind never landed, so we were out of it in just minutes. I knew we’d taken some rounds but the ship was okay. So I looked over at Mike to make some remark. And—and Mike was slumped over, blood all over his flak jacket. Well, I broke formation and tore all the way back to the Evac hospital. The crew chief and I grabbed Mike and ran him inside. But—but it was already too late.”

  Ernie’s voice was thick, his eyes closed. Detective Schreiner edged forward in the rocker. She said, “And I bet that bastard Corky Lewis wasn’t hurt.”

  “Not a scratch,” Ernie choked out.

  “What did you do?”

  He cleared his throat. “Me? I got drunk. They say I was waving an M16 around and they had to tie me down. I stayed drunk two days. Cap’n Corky stayed out of reach. The instant I was fit to fly he saw to it I was off to other parts. And then after a few days word came that my dad had died. So they sent me home.”

  “And they said, it’s over, forget it.” Schreiner was watching him closely, watching the weapon too. But her voice was alive with scorn. “Told you to forget your dead buddies, forget Mike. Told you they didn’t die in vain, forget them.”

  A choked whimper from Ernie. “Yeah—but Mike—see, I thought Mike would want—he would of done it for me, you see.”

  “Yeah, I see,” Schreiner said. Her arms trembled with the effort of the grip on the chair seat. “Me, I would have wanted to hunt down Cap’n Corky. Blow the bastard away.”

  “Yeah. In a plane, just like Mike. And leave him Mike’s photo so he’d know why. I thought then it would be over. So I could get on with my life. But—” Ernie’s hands went to his face and his shoulders shuddered. Detective Schreiner edged off her chair, still crouched but ready to move. Olivia realized that Nick had imperceptibly moved forward too. Sarge was growling uneasily but Ernie didn’t notice.

  “Mike’s photo,” murmured the detective. “So Corky Lewis knew why.”

  “I thought it would be over,” Ernie whimpered. “But Cap’n Corky stuck Mike’s photo in his jacket. And that damn reporter found it, and my name was on it—” His hands fell from his face to the rifle again.

  “But you wanted Corky Lewis to see the photo.” Detective Schreiner’s glance flicked to the window, nervously, Olivia thought. “That’s why you had to take the chance.”

  “Yeah, and he said he’d keep it quiet, but—”

  The thin whine of a siren crescendoed to a scream. Tires crackled on the sodden gravel outside. Olivia’s world fractured into kaleidoscopic chaos. Everything happened at once.

  Ernie screamed, “Cops! You bastards! You called the cops!”

  Schreiner grabbed at her own ankle.

  Ernie’s hands lifted the rifle, found the trigger.

  A hunting boot sailed through the air and smashed against Ernie’s head.

  A shot.

  Another shot.

  Nick sprang sideways from the sofa, caroming off the windowsill and up onto the bookcase to kick the rifle from Ernie’s hand.

  Blood spattered on Nick and Ernie as they disappeared together, falling behind the bookcase.

  Schreiner was running toward them.

  Ernie shrieked, “Sarge! Take ‘em!”

  Jerry’s body hit Olivia’s like a bony feather bed, knocking her down into the sofa, sheltering her.

  Over Jerry’s shoulder she saw Sarge lunge for Nick and the detective. Somehow Schreiner, turning, had a gun in her hand. She fired once, twice, three times. The quick blasts caught the animal in mid-stride, so that his body jerked in the air, spurting blood, until it thudded against the TV and slid to the carpet.

  Schreiner knelt behind the bookcase, disappearing from Olivia’s view.

  Heavy footsteps thumped on the porch. “Police! Don’t move!”

  “Police are here already, Winky,” said Schreiner’s calm voice. “But we could sure use an ambulance.”

  19

  Olivia took a deep shuddering breath of relief and disintegrated into a fit of coughing.

  “Liv. Hey, Livid, are you okay?” Jerry implored. He pulled back from sheltering her to kneel on the sofa, still half-astride her, hands behind him, his face furrowed with worry.

  “Jerry, my love,” she gasped between coughs, “you stink!”

  “I what? Oh.” He looked down at his stained and reeking shirt. “Yeah, guess I do. But Nick said sacrificing my new bottle of Jack Daniel’s would add a convincing touch. Here.” He turned his back. “Untie this Boy Scout knot of yours and I’ll do something about it.”

  Olivia complied, still coughing. He stripped off the shirt and threw it into the far corner. “But are you okay, Liv?”

  The air was a little better now. Olivia fought down her coughs and tried to think, am I okay? In fact she felt pretty nauseated. Not just Jerry’s powerful aroma. Not just the scrambled eggs lumped in her stomach. More like seasickness, the sense that a solid dependable world had betrayed her. She said, “I don’t know. Where’s Ernie?”

  “It’s okay, the cops have him.” Jerry became very professional, studying her face, expert fingers running over her cheek and chin. “Headache?” he asked.

  “A little. And nausea. Is Nick okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s standing up again. Some blood on his shirt next to the Jack Daniel’s. I’ll check him next.” He peered into her eyes in a cold, unromantic way. “Pupils okay.”

  She risked a peek past him at the room. Four uniformed cops plus a couple of plainclothes detectives she remembered from the Colbys’. The pudgy one, Gabe something. And the older guy. Nick was there too, leaning against the wall, looking alert enough. They all seemed interested in something on the other side of the bookcase room-divider. Probably Ernie, and Schreiner. The dog lay crumpled at the foot of the television. Ernie’s three empty beer cans, miraculously untouched, still sat upright by his chair. Olivia shuddered.

  Jerry said, “You got hit hard.”

  “He socked me in the jaw.”

  A wave of hatred washed across Jerry’s face even as his fingers continued their professional exploration of her jaw. He said calmly enough, “Doesn’t seem to be broken. He hit you on the forehead too.”

  “The forehead?” she asked in surprise, and ran her fingers across her brow. He was right, there was a definitely a bump, definitely tender. “No,” she said. “He only hit me once, when he thought I’d called the cops. This must have happened when the van went in the ditch.”

  In the background, the police stood looking down at whoever was on the other side of the bookcase. A thin little voice asked, “Sarge. Nurse, is Sarge all right?”

  “Take it easy, soldier,” soothed Schreiner’s voice. Olivia had never heard it so warm. “He’s comfortable. Just relax, we’ll get you fixed up soon.”

  The thin voice said, “After I blew up Cap’n Corky’s plane I was going to shoot myself too. But Mitch said no, Mike would wan
t me to do something worthwhile.” It was Ernie, Olivia realized with a shiver. But he sounded like a little kid.

  “I bet Mitch will come talk to you,” Schreiner said. “You’ll have to go to the hospital but I bet he’ll see you there.”

  “Nurse?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You shot me, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. You were about to fire on our own guys. You’re okay now.”

  “I thought they might be ours.” He sounded very sleepy. “Hard to tell the friendlies from the others sometimes.”

  “Yeah, these were friendlies. Listen, the ambulance is coming. You take it easy, and I’ll see you in the hospital.”

  Olivia heard the approaching siren, the bustle as cops ran to get patrol cars out of the way of the ambulance. Nick moved out of their path and came to sit on the far end of the sofa. “You hurt?” Jerry asked him.

  “No. Schreiner’s shot stopped him in time. His went into the ceiling.” He pointed his chin at the corner of the ceiling nearest the archway, and Olivia saw the cracked and shattered plaster.

  Jerry peered into Olivia’s eyes to check her pupils once again, then sat next to her. He put a lanky bare arm around her shoulders. Slowly, normality was seeping back. She murmured, “I was so scared.”

  “Me too,” said Jerry darkly.

  “The dog and the rifle. He was such a good shot! He hit the van from the porch when I tried to drive away.”

  “Yeah,” said Nick. “We inspected that tire. That’s when we knew we needed a special gimmick to get in.”

  “You shouldn’t have come in.”

  “Maybe not,” Jerry said. “But I figured, one guy with a rifle, and three of us—besides, you looked so scared. But I hadn’t figured on that dog.”

  “Yeah.” Olivia shivered.

  Jerry glanced at her and added grimly, “And I hadn’t figured it was really two against two.”

  “Hey, easy, Jerry,” warned Nick.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Olivia.

  “You tied us up for real, kiddo.” Anger lurked behind Jerry’s even tone.

  “But he told me to!” She was astonished at his implication.

  “And if he’d told you to shoot us? Handed over his rifle and told you to do that? Would you have done it? Gone over like Patty Hearst?”