A Reckoning in the Back Country

by Terry Shames

  Maybe it’s because Lewis Wilkins’s body was found back in this desolate wasteland behind the homes, but it seems gloomier than ever back here. Overnight rain left muddy areas and puddles, and we slog through them silently until we come to the spot where the body was found. The area is trampled and strewn with remains of the forensic details—a stray glove, evidence markers, yellow tape, and cigarette butts.

  “I don’t see why people don’t clean up after themselves,” Maria says.

  “It was a gruesome scene. I expect people wanted to get out of here as soon as they could.”

  “Still.” She pauses, hands on her hips, and takes a good look around. She looks behind her. “How far in does this thicket go?”

  “It’s several miles to the Burton highway, over to the southwest, but I don’t know how far back it goes before you hit pastureland. You know this all used to be swampland before the dam was built that formed the lake.”

  “Gives me the creeps,” she says.

  To tease her I tell her the story of the child that was supposedly dragged away by a panther in the 1930s.

  “Oh, thanks, I really needed to hear that,” she says. She stops abruptly. “Listen. What is that?”

  I listen, but don’t hear anything, and I tell her so. “You’re just spooked. What do you think it was?”

  “It’s a dog howling.”

  Goosebumps rise along my arms as I remember the dog howls I heard the night I went out to check on Wilkins’s SUV and found his cell phone. I’m glad we left Dusty in the car, so I don’t have to worry if a pack of dogs comes our way. Although the dogs that attacked Wilkins didn’t do it at random, there’s still the possibility that packs of dogs roam back here.

  Maria must be thinking the same thing, because she unsnaps her gun holster so she can get to the weapon fast. She rests her hand on it. “How far to where you found Dusty’s mother?”

  “Right up the way here. The body isn’t there anymore. The vet took her away.”

  We forge on. I hope to goodness we don’t find another body, or dead puppies. I’m glad there’s some sun today, though it keeps dipping behind clouds, and chilled shadows take over. Another three hundred yards, and I recognize the area where the dog’s body was. “Right over here.” Broken and stomped weed mark where the body was. Again, Maria looks around intently.

  “Let’s go farther,” she says. “We need to see what that dog was howling about.”

  We’ve walked a half mile farther when the brush gets thicker. The rough trail we’ve been following almost disappears. I go first to push aside branches and stomp out a path. We’re not talking. Circumstances seem to call for quiet. The going is tougher here. We scare up a copperhead that spooks both of us, even though it slithers away into the brush.

  “Snakes!” Maria says under breath. “I’m ready to turn back.”

  “No, we need to keep going. Smell that?” I don’t know how long I’ve been aware of a foul smell, but a shiver of breeze brings a strong whiff. Something dead. There’s a body of some kind around here.

  “Wait a minute,” Maria says. She digs around in her pockets and comes out with a tube of hand cream. She squirts a little on her finger and rubs it under her nose. She hands it to me and I do the same, though I’m not sure which is worse, the sweet citrus smell or the citrus combined with rotting meat.

  We round a corner and come upon a large, dilapidated shed, with the door hanging open. It’s the source of the foul smell. As we approach, a mangy mutt comes slinking out the door and when he sees us he takes off through the brush. Maria jumps. “What the hell!”

  Maria and I exchange glances. “I’ll go check inside,” I say. “You stay here.”

  “Take this,” she says, and hands me the Smith and Wesson. I hold it at my side as I approach the shed.

  “Anybody here?” I call out.

  A few steps from the door, I hear a familiar sound. Flies have found whatever is inside. “Hello!” Nothing.

  I peer in the window, but it’s so crusted with grime that I can’t see anything. I ease over to the door, get out my penlight, and shine it inside. It takes me a minute for my eyes to adjust, and when they do, I recoil. Two large animal carcasses lie inside the shed. I take out my handkerchief, hold it to my mouth, and move closer. I’m looking at the bodies of two of the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen. Their hair is white, like the tufts of hair I found near Wilkins’s body.

  They have been here some time and are bloated, but I can make out powerful chests and backs. Their heads are massive, with muscular jaws, which is where the flies have settled—because the jaws are black with blood. I’ll put my money on the blood being Lewis Wilkins’s.

  I back out of the shed and find myself a little unsteady from the sight and smell. I give my head a hard shake and go over to Maria.

  “Whoa,” she says. “You need to sit down?”

  “No, I’m all right. It’s putrid in there. Let’s get back, away from the smell.”

  I tell her what I found. “Doc England is going to earn his stipend on this one.” He is paid to examine animals in suspicious circumstances.

  “Yeah, what is it the state gives him in their generosity, forty bucks?”

  “Something like that.” I look at my cell phone. “No coverage. Let’s get on back and call him.”

  “You want me to stay here?”

  “I don’t see the point. They’ve been in that shed a while. If someone was going to clear them out, they would already have done it.”

  When I call Doc England to tell him about the dogs, he says he needs to finish up a couple of things and he’ll meet me at the site as soon as he can. “I’ll stay here and meet him,” I say. “Then he can take me back to the station. No need for both of us to traipse back out there. And there’s something I haven’t gotten around to I’d like you to take care of.”

  She gives me “the look.” “It’s something annoying, isn’t it?”

  “Tedious. You’re better at things like this than I am.”

  “That’s what men always say when they’re foisting off a job on a woman. It’s like Tom Sawyer.”

  “Would you rather go back to that scene?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “I guess not.”

  I tell her where to find Wilkins’s cell phone in my desk, and tell her I haven’t gone through his phone calls to figure out which were legitimate calls and which were telemarketers. “Anybody who called Wilkins and didn’t leave a voicemail, I’d like to know who they were.”

  “You think somebody called intending to say, ‘Meet me here so I can kill you?’ and didn’t bother to leave a message?”

  “Very funny. It’s got to be done, that’s all.”

  “All right, boss.” She calls me that when she’s feeling sulky. “But it’s already four o’clock and I’m leaving at five.”

  “That’s fine. An hour ought to give you plenty of time.” To appease her, I tell her I’ll leave the puppy with her, and that cheers her up. “I’ll come by and get him at your place.”

  When England arrives, he grumbles about having to walk a mile back into the brush to examine dead dogs, but when we get there, he’s all business. “These are cane corsos! I wonder what they were doing around here.”

  “What are cane corsos? All I know is they’re as big as a bear.”

  “They’re about the most dangerous dog you can get. They’ve been bred as guard dogs and attack dogs, and as a result they aren’t good pets unless somebody really knows what they’re doing when they train them. I wouldn’t trust one myself.”

  “Kind of like pit bulls?”

  “Worse. I don’t know why anyone would keep one, and I sure don’t know what these are doing around here.”

  I’ve brought a powerful flashlight and a battery-powered lantern back from the squad car, and I set those up for light. Doc crouches next to one of the dogs and has his own flashlight that he shines on the muzzle where blood has dried, and then moves the light to examine the head. “Look at this.” He
points to a matted area behind one dog’s ear. “This one was shot.” He lifts the dog’s head. “Shine your flashlight here.”

  I shine it on the underside of the dog’s head.

  “No exit wound.”

  “Probably small-caliber, maybe a hollow-point. I’m going to have to ask you to try to retrieve it for a potential match if we get a suspect with a weapon.”

  “I understand,” he says. He stands up and gazes down at the dogs. “Nasty business.” He retrieves his case from outside. “You might want to stay outside for this. I’m not going to try to make it a delicate job. In and out.”

  It takes him ten minutes. He comes out and has the flattened bullet in a plastic bag. “Bullet looks like a flower,” he says.

  “Hollow-point,” I say. “Probably a 9mm. It could be from a lot of different weapons, but likely a handgun.”

  “That would be your area,” he says. “I can tell you it looks like whoever did this shot the dogs at pretty close range. There’s gunshot residue around the bullet hole.” I wonder how he knows this, but he seems to know all kinds of things from being a country veterinarian. “I could send somebody to haul the carcasses out of here.”

  I ponder for a minute whether I ought to get a crime scene investigation out here. Whoever shot these dogs likely had a hand in Wilkins’s murder. They might have left a footprint, but between the rain we’ve had, and Doc England and me tromping through here, there’s likely nothing left to find.

  I notice that England has taken a device a little larger than a cell phone out of his bag and is approaching the dogs. “What are you doing?”

  “It could be that whoever owned them had a microchip put in them. I’m going to scan them to find out.”

  He turns on the device and starts moving it around on the dog’s head and neck. Suddenly the device pings. “Bingo. The microchip will tell you where the dogs came from.” He gets up and shows me the device. There’s a number on the small screen. “With this we can find out who registered this dog, and where they live.”

  “Is it a national registry?”

  “Every company has a different way of doing it, but they’re all on a national database. You’d be surprised how many dogs go missing. This makes it a lot easier to find them. I was going to suggest you get that pup of yours chipped when he gets old enough to start wandering around.”

  I feel a flutter of excitement. This feels like the first real lead in the case.

  On our way back to headquarters, as we pass the marina, Dooley’s truck pulls out in front of us. Dooley’s son, Bobby, is in the truck with him. Loretta told me that Margaret’s kids had gone over to visit Dooley’s kids Thanksgiving night. It might not be a bad idea to ask Bobby what they talked about, in case they said something to their friends that they may not say to me.

  Maria is still in the office when I get back, because she wants to know what I found out. I fill her in, and she has the same feeling I did, that this may finally give us a lead.

  Dusty and I get in my pickup and head for home. I’m grateful that I don’t have anything to do tonight, and I’m looking forward to spending an evening by myself. But it’s not to be. Apparently Jenny Sandstone has been watching for me, and before I’m even up the steps she calls out from her yard.

  I meet her halfway. It’s dark by now. She still has on her work clothes. She’s a lawyer over in Bobtail, and always wears suits. “I want you to come over and have a glass of wine with me,” she says. “We need to talk.”

  I know what she wants to talk about, and I don’t want to get into it. But she’s a good friend, and if I’m going to confide in anybody, she’s the best candidate. “Let me get some fresh clothes on. I’ve been dealing with . . . well, I’ll tell you when I come over. Want me to bring anything?”

  “Just bring yourself. I opened a fine pinot noir.”

  For the first couple of years Jenny lived next door, we were strangers. She keeps a couple of horses, and I refused to let her use my tank to water them because I didn’t care for horses and didn’t like that she had taken it for granted I’d say yes. That kept us estranged.

  Now I think with embarrassment of how stubborn I was. We’ve been good friends for a while. I helped her through a hard time after her mamma passed away. One of the things we share is that we both like good wine. She introduced me to a wine club, and we get together every so often to share a good bottle of wine and gossip. I bought a sausage the other day and I’ll take that over to add to our usual snack of cheese and crackers.

  It’s been a while since we spent an evening together, so first we catch up on small talk. She tells me about a case she’s working on that’s driving her crazy, and I bring her up to date on the Wilkins case. But finally, two glasses in, she says, “I guess you know I didn’t call you over here to discuss our jobs.”

  “I figure you want to talk about my relationship with Wendy Gleason.” I find it hard to meet her eye, so I take a sip of wine. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve gotten myself in a situation.”

  “According to my friend Jessica, that’s exactly what you’ve gotten yourself in.”

  “You know I really like Ellen.”

  “So do I.” She pauses, looking aghast. “You mean that’s all there is to it? You just like her?”

  I feel antsy being pinned down. “What do you want me to say?”

  She sighs and shakes her head. We’re sitting in her living room, the site of many difficult scenes between us several months ago as she wrestled with her past. I’m used to being the one to give advice, not get it. “This is a small town, Samuel. You can’t play fast and loose with the ladies without it getting around. I think you should figure out what you’re up to before you hurt Ellen.”

  “I’d like to do that. Figure it out, I mean.”

  “I don’t care which one you choose. I thought Wendy was a hoot the other night. It was the first time I met her. She seems like a free spirit, and I like that.”

  “Jenny, that’s the problem. I’m really attracted to her. She’s easy to be with. She’s impulsive and funny and . . . all right, I’ll come out and say it. She’s sexy.”

  “All the things Ellen isn’t.”

  “Yes, but Ellen has a lot of qualities I value. She’s generous and warm and she’s . . .” I sigh. It’s not enough.

  Jenny’s eyebrows are up to her hairline. “That’s it? That’s all you can say for Ellen? How about that she’s been through a lot and has managed to make a life for herself? That’s admirable. How about that she is an artist? Even if you don’t like the work she does, you at least ought to value that. It gives you something in common.” She laughs. “Listen to me. I said I wasn’t on either woman’s side, but I’m making a case for her.”

  “I’m listening. The thing is, what you said about Wendy, that she’s a free spirit. That’s what appeals to me. But I feel protective of Ellen. She is steady and . . .”

  “Unexciting, is that it?”

  I nod, feeling like a schoolboy in the principal’s office. “I know I need to tell Ellen that I met Wendy and that I’m not sure what my plans are. But she’s been gone and she just got back.” I’m not used to feeling wrongheaded, and it makes me defensive. “I only met Wendy last week.”

  “Does she know about Ellen?”

  “Yes. We talked about that. She’s actually going away for a couple of weeks to give me a chance to work it out.”

  “Ahhhh.” Jenny’s eyes narrow. “She’s a sly one.”

  “What do you mean, sly? She’s giving me space.”

  “Oh, listen to you, all hip psychology.” She primps her lips. “I need some space.”

  “You’re right. I promise I’ll discuss it with Ellen right away.”

  “And you don’t need to look like a scolded dog. Man up!”

  CHAPTER 22

  At headquarters the next morning I call Dooley’s place and he tells me his son went out fishing early, but that he’ll be back by ten o’clock. I’m just hanging up the phone when it ri
ngs.

  “Craddock? This is Harley Lundsford. You better get on out to my place. I’ve caught me a couple of criminals.”

  “What kind of criminals?”

  “The dog-stealing type.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They’re tied up in my barn. Now are you going to come out, or not?”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t hurt them.” Lundsford talks a lot about his love of guns, and I don’t want him to get any ideas about shooting whoever he’s got tied up.

  Maria is walking in the door when I leave. I tell her where I’m going. “How are you getting along with those phone numbers on Wilkins’s cell phone?”

  “I think I’m done. I went back three months. How far back did you want me to go?”

  “Three months should be plenty. Did you find anything?”

  “I don’t know for sure. He didn’t make many phone calls. There were a few calls from his son and his wife, and one from Dooley. And some business calls. There were a few I couldn’t identify. I thought maybe I’d listen to voicemail messages. Listen for anything odd. Are we legal here?”

  “His wife gave me the okay.”

  “I’m going to finish that now unless you want me to go along with you.”

  I hear the reluctance in her voice. She’s met Lundsford and finds him offensive. He made it clear he doesn’t have much use for “ladies” in law enforcement. “No, I’ll be okay. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “All right, you go off and have fun while I’m stuck here playing with this cell phone. And good luck with Lundsford.”

  Lundsford’s place is in the middle of nowhere. Not that Jarrett Creek is “somewhere,” but it’s at least on the map. To get to Lundsford’s you have to go out past the cemetery, north of the lake, and keep heading west. But when you get there, you’ll never find a tidier farm. He raises turkeys, ducks, and chickens, and although he will never get rich, he seems to make a good living. His wife is his bookkeeper, and he has a disabled son whom I’ve met only a couple of times, but who Lundsford says is “the duck whisperer.”