Dog in the Manger: An Eli Paxton Mystery

by Mike Resnick

  “I think it would be better if I went alone,” I said. “I wouldn’t want Lantz claiming collusion.” Besides, there was no sense both of us getting shot at.

  I could tell he was unhappy about it, but he did his best to hide his feelings, and a few minutes later I was driving south on a local highway. I turned on the radio, hoping to catch the score of the previous night’s Reds game, but all I got was a local newscast talking about three cases of plague that had turned up in some eastern county. Evidently it cropped up from time to time in New Mexico, and the announcer was warning everyone to make sure their dogs were wearing flea collars, and not to pet any wild animals. I remembered reading or hearing somewhere that fleas had carried the Black Plague all over Europe and I wondered idly if dogs ever caught it. Certainly the ones I had just seen would be safe; I doubted if there was a flea anywhere on Nettles’s fifteen acres.

  Suddenly a blue Volvo pulled onto the road and fell into pace behind me for about five miles, but just as I began getting nervous it turned off the road. I switched stations, hoping to find out about the Reds, but the closest I came was some sports commentator trying to decide whether the Suns should draft a point guard or trade their number one pick for a proven backup center. I didn’t see another car the rest of my way to the airport.

  When I got there I found out why the traffic was so sparse. Federated and an outfit called Great Southwest were the only two companies at the whole airport. The strange part was that the building and runways seemed to have been built to handle a lot more business than those two carriers could supply.

  I entered the office, went to the Federated side of it, introduced myself, and asked to speak to the man in charge.

  “You’re looking at him,” said a young man in a T-shirt and jeans.

  “Big place for so few planes,” I commented.

  “Used to be Spook Central,” he replied.

  “CIA?”

  “They had a base in Casa Grande until maybe eighteen months ago. Used to train their pilots and paratroopers here.”

  “And now there’s just Federated and Great Southwest?”

  “Federated and Delta,” he corrected me. “Delta’s been a lot of little feeder lines like Great Southwest. We just haven’t got around to changing the signs yet. What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Paxton. I’m a private investigator.” I flashed my credentials at him. “I’d like to speak to someone who was working here last Sunday.”

  “You’re still looking at him,” he said with a grin. “I haven’t had a day off since April.”

  “At all?”

  “I need the overtime,” he said. “I’m getting married next month.”

  “Were you here when Flight 308 landed?”

  “Yep. We only get two flights a day. I was here for both of ’em.”

  “Was there a dog on the flight?”

  He shook his head. “Old Man Nettles spent about four hours waiting for one, but it wasn’t on board.” He chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so hot!”

  “You sound like he’s a regular customer.”

  “He is.”

  “I would think he’d get better service out of Phoenix.”

  “Oh, he ships them out of Phoenix, all right,” said the young man. “But he likes to receive them here.”

  “How come?”

  “The big airports take a couple of hours to unload their cargo. See, most of it goes on passenger planes, and they have to unload the baggage and the mail first, and then it takes them an hour to cart the stuff over to the freight areas. Now, as you may have noticed, we aren’t exactly the biggest airport in the Western world”—he chuckled again—“so we unload his dogs in just a minute or two.”

  “Is Casa Grande the last stop?” I asked.

  “No. It touches down again in Nogales and then terminates in Monterrey.”

  “That’s in Mexico?”

  “Right.”

  “Is there any chance that the dog stayed on the plane?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, if you’ll pardon the pun. Nettles put up such a fuss that I looked in the hold myself, and there wasn’t any dog. Besides, it wasn’t even on the manifest.”

  “You say Nettles waited four hours for the dog? Why?”

  “The plane was late.”

  “Is that common?” I asked.

  “Not really, but with these little cargo lines, who knows? I’m just passing through anyway, until I can latch on with United or Delta.”

  “Can you find out exactly how late the plane was?” I persisted. I didn’t know what I was getting at, but there weren’t a hell of a lot of other straws to clutch at.

  “I can tell you to the minute,” he said. “It was due to land at 4:30, and it touched down at 8:48. I remember, because I was supposed to have dinner with my girlfriend and her family at six, and I had to stick around until the plane arrived. With two flights a day, we don’t go in for the night shifts. Usually Bill and I—he’s the guy who works the Great Southwest desk on weekends—can cover for each other, but he was off sick last Sunday.”

  An idea began forming in the back of my mind. I still didn’t know what I was getting at, but I decided to follow it up.

  “What was the weather like last Sunday?” I asked him.

  “Same as always: hot as blazes.”

  “No rain or tornadoes or anything?”

  “Tornadoes? In Arizona?” he laughed.

  “In other words, it was good flying weather?” I persisted.

  “It was here,” he responded. “I can’t say what it was like back in Cincinnati or Paducah.”

  “What was the plane’s last stop before Casa Grande?’

  “Artesia, over in New Mexico.”

  “Can you find out for me what time it took off from there on Sunday?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What the hell, it’ll give me a little something to do. We’re not exactly overwhelmed with work today.”

  I settled down to wait while he called Artesia on the phone. He hung up a moment later and walked over to me with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “They landed there at 3:15 and took off at 3:30, right on schedule.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?” he replied. “Now, what the hell do you suppose made them take five hours to get here? It’s a sixty-minute trip, tops. In fact, they usually leave Artesia late and make up the time on the way over.”

  It was a pretty good question. I was damned if I knew the answer, but I knew who would.

  “How can I get in touch with the pilots?” I asked.

  “One of them was Todd Binder, a local guy. He always lays over here. His house is just about ten miles up the road. The other guy, his name’s Riccardo something-or-other. He takes it the rest of the way alone. I suppose he must live down in Mexico somewhere.”

  “I’d better start with Binder then,” I said. “Where can I find him?”

  “It’s very strange, you looking for him just now,” he said, frowning. “It’s a hell of a coincidence.”

  I felt like a batter who sees a high hard one coming right toward his head and can’t do a damned thing about it.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Binder’s dead.”

  His eyes widened. “How did you know? He died in a car crash less than half an hour after he got off the plane last Sunday.”

  5.

  I got directions to the local police station and drove there as soon as I left Federated. Like most of the Arizona buildings I had seen, it was long, low, muted in color, and a lot cooler inside than it looked. I walked in, expecting the kind of dirt and clutter and confusion I was used to back in Cincinnati and Chicago, but found only polished floors, whitewashed plaster walls, paintings of Bill Clinton and Barry Goldwater, and a main room that had a refurbished magistrate’s desk framed by two long counters. There were a few offices off to one side, and I knew there had to be a lock-up somewhere, though I couldn’t spot it. A tall, thin man with bushy
blond hair and a large moustache was sitting at the desk.

  I walked over to him.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Paxton,” he replied. “We’ve been expecting you.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. Will you follow me, please?”

  He stepped out from behind the desk and led me into one of the offices. It was empty, and he told me to have a seat.

  I did so, and he left. After a few minutes had passed I began thumbing through a copy of Arizona Hiqhways, which I found atop a file cabinet. It was a lovely piece of work, and I wondered how the hell they had managed to fill it with new stuff every month for the fifty or sixty years it had been in business. I soon became so engrossed in it that I wasn’t aware anyone had come into the room until I heard a polite cough.

  I put the magazine down and found myself facing a short, powerfully built cop with pale blue eyes and curly hair the color of desert sand.

  “Mr. Paxton?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m Michael Pratt,” he said, extending his hand. “I have a feeling that I’m the person you came here to see.”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “Are you attached to the detective bureau?”

  “I am the detective bureau,” he said with a laugh, sitting down on a vinyl swivel chair behind a steel desk.

  “Oh?”

  He nodded his head. “That’s why I told the young man at the airport to send you here. I knew if you got that far you’d be coming to me next.”

  “How did you know I was going there at all?”

  “When you put in your somewhat curious call to the station this morning, we immediately checked with your friend Simmons in Cincinnati to make sure you weren’t just some kind of a nut. He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he did know that you had been hired to find a missing show dog. Since the only missing show dog in these parts belongs to Maurice Nettles, they turned it over to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m investigating the death of Todd Binder, and I’m sure you want to ask me about it.”

  He was grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

  “You don’t think he died accidentally?” I asked.

  “Hell, no,” he said, still smiling. “Do you?”

  “Not a chance,” I replied.

  “I know why I don’t think so,” he said. “Suppose you tell me why you don’t.”

  “Because everyone who had anything to do with Nettles’s dog since it was delivered to the airport in Cincinnati is dead or missing.”

  “I thought it wasn’t shipped,” he said.

  “It was.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I’ve got an eyewitness back in Cincinnati,” I replied.

  Suddenly he looked alert. “You’ve got someone who actually saw the dog loaded onto the plane?”

  “Not quite,” I explained. “But I’ve got a paid receipt from the airline proving that a shipping crate was purchased, and I’ve got a witness who had coffee with the kennel girl at the airport. She’ll swear the dog was no longer in the car and that the girl said she had just shipped it off .”

  “That’s very interesting, Mr. Paxton,” he said. “Very interesting indeed.” Pratt swiveled his chair and stared out at the desert for a long minute. Then he turned back to me. “How many people do you think have died in this case?”

  “Three that I know about.”

  “Why were they killed?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion,” I said truthfully.

  “I noticed that you were almost the fourth,” he said. “I hope you paid Avis the extra ten bucks for insurance.”

  “You’ve been following me?”

  “No, I saw it parked out front—and if I can’t spot a bullet hole in a window I’d better go back to ticketing tourists.” He paused and lit a Camel. “Any idea who it was?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “What were they driving?”

  “I was too busy ducking and trying to stay on the road to notice.” He raised his eyebrows. “Believe me, I’m not holding anything back. I’m not getting paid enough to go around getting shot at. If I knew who did it, I’d be filing a complaint right now.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question now?”

  “You want to know about Todd Binder,” said Pratt.

  “Right.”

  “There’s not much to tell. His car went off the road, crashed into one hell of a rock formation, and burst into flames. There wasn’t an awful lot left of him. We identified him from his bridgework and a ring.”

  “What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?” I asked.

  “He was in a rented car.”

  “So what?”

  “Binder only lived fifteen minutes from the airport,” said Pratt. “Why not call home for a ride, like he always did? Or if he thought no one would be home, why not get a taxi, which would have cost him maybe a quarter as much? There has to be a reason for that car. My guess is that somebody rented it for him because they didn’t want any witnesses.”

  “Sloppy,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Almost too sloppy,” I repeated. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I do know that we’re not dealing with any amateurs. The first two murders were so slick that I’m never going to get the Cincinnati police to believe they were anything but accidents. These guys have stolen what I gather is the most easily identifiable dog in the whole damned country, and I haven’t been able to turn up a single lead on it. They’ve tampered with an airline’s cargo manifest, and the only people who can prove it are dead or missing. Take it from me, these people are good—and I find it out of character for them to kill Binder in a rented car. Hell, it’s so sloppy maybe he did rent it himself for some legitimate reason.”

  Pratt had been listening with rapt attention. When I finished speaking, he asked me to wait, left the office, and returned a minute later with a six-pack of Bud Lights.

  “Relax and enjoy yourself, Mr. Paxton,” he said, taking his seat. “We’ve got a lot to talk about this morning.”

  He asked me to begin at the beginning, and I told him everything I had done and everyone that I had spoken to, while he made little notes on a pad of legal paper. When I was done he had me go over some points he wasn’t clear about and made still more notes.

  Finally he looked up.

  “It’s not good enough,” he said at last.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your case,” he said. “You haven’t got enough hard evidence of an interstate crime to call in the Feds yet. There are too many assumptions, too tenuous a chain of reasoning, and not enough verifiable facts. Oh, I’ll talk to them about it, but I can guarantee in advance they’re going to laugh right in my face.”

  “I know,” I said. I’d had my share of dealings with J. Edgar’s legacy to a grateful nation, too. “Is there any chance of an autopsy on Binder?”

  Pratt shook his head. “Impossible. What’s left of him can be buried in a briefcase.”

  “So, rented car or no rented car, he’s going to wind up officially as an accident,” I said grimly.

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” replied Pratt. “It depends on what we can dig up.”

  “We? ”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I never said I didn’t buy your story, just that the Feds wouldn’t. Besides, do you know what my work has consisted of for the past seven months? Two house robberies and an arson case. Just for a change I’d like to feel that I was earning my pay.”

  “An honest cop,” I said with a smile.

  “Two of them,” he answered. “I ran a check on you this morning. You were a damned fine policeman, Mr. Paxton.”

  “As long as you feel that way about it, start calling me Eli,” I said. “And as long as you know what happens to honest cops, maybe you’d better keep your nose clean and stick around ’til your pensio
n comes due.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to be sticking my neck out the way you are,” he assured me. “For one thing, my jurisdiction ends about thirty miles from here. But I can help you in another way: I can tie in to any police computer in the United States and act as an information conduit for you.”

  “That will be more helpful than you can imagine,” I told him.

  Pratt poured a fresh beer in his glass and took a long swallow. “I’m glad we can work together, Eli. Most of the private eyes out here would have dummied up the second I started asking questions.”

  “Most of them have read too many bad detective novels,” I responded. “I’m getting paid to find a dog, nothing more, and I don’t appreciate getting shot at. So if we can help each other out, and the presence of our boys in blue can keep potential killers at arm’s length, I’m happy to cooperate. Besides, if this thing’s half as big as I’m starting to think it is, I’m going to need all the help I can get. And if we can get the FBI interested, so much the better.”

  “No wonder they don’t want you back in Chicago,” he said with a chuckle. “You make too much sense.”

  We went over his notes again, discussing various aspects of the case for the next twenty minutes. The one thing that kept troubling me was the way Todd Binder had died.

  “I think I’ve got an idea,” Pratt said at last. “Your main objection is that Binder’s death was too sloppy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe we’re using the wrong adjective,” he suggested. “Maybe it was too hasty.”

  I thought it over for a couple of minutes. “I think you may be on to something,” I said. “At least, it makes sense if the murders have something to do with those four missing hours between Artesia and Casa Grande. The people in Cincinnati didn’t know what happened, so their deaths could be arranged a little more carefully. But Binder was the pilot: he had to know, so they had to eliminate him before he could talk to anyone.”

  I considered it a little longer, and the first flush of excitement I had felt began to subside.

  “It still doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If Binder was being forced to do something against his will, or they were simply afraid he had a loose tongue, why do whatever they did on Sunday? Why not wait and do it some other day, when he wasn’t working? Why kill Dent and Raith at all? And I’ve still got my same old problem: What the hell does the dog have to do with it?”