Shoot the Dog

by Brad Smith

  Marvin took a sip of coffee. “He’ll come back when he’s ready. Not before.”

  Claire wasn’t about to tell Marvin what she suspected. She didn’t need him tipping Ronnie off. She got to her feet and put five dollars on the table. “Maybe when he does, I can help him out.”

  “How can you help him?” Marvin demanded. “I told you—he has a broken heart.”

  “Didn’t you say he was looking to see his future?”

  Marvin nodded, watching her warily.

  “I have some ideas about that,” Claire said.

  • • •

  Virgil hooked the Massey tractor to the four-furrow plow and pulled it out of the machine shed into the yard, where he went about greasing the fittings and checking the shares and the coulters. One share needed replacing but he had a couple of extras in the shed. It was a little before noon when he drove the tractor onto the wheat field, scattering a flock of Canadian geese who were cleaning up the fallen heads of grain the combine had missed. Virgil dropped the hydraulics and the moldboards landed with a clunk. He had traveled maybe fifty yards when the plow, refusing to cut the baked clay, kicked up out of the ground, releasing the shares but a second too late. He broke a runner where the board met the frame.

  Back in the yard, he removed the damaged runner and took it into the machine shed to weld it. Tom Stempler, who’d owned the farm before Virgil, had left a lot of tools behind, and one of the things Virgil had inherited was an ancient 110-volt welder. He’d taught himself to weld, and although he wasn’t particularly accomplished at it, he could usually do a serviceable job if he took his time, and time was something he had today, as it was obvious he would not be doing any plowing until the ground softened.

  It was hot in the shed and as he worked his mind kept returning to Olivia Burns. There had been something rattling around in the back of his brain for some time now, a piece of information that for some reason remained just beyond his reach. As he worked at the runner, grinding the damaged area into a V that would hold the weld, he was reminded of his playing days, his last couple of years with the Mud Hens. As catcher, one of his jobs every night was to go over the charts of the hitters they would face the next day. It was a solitary and thankless task, but Virgil took pride in it. Being prepared was a part of his job, and it could prove the difference between a win and a loss. But every now and then, he would feel like he missed something, and leading up to game time he would have a nagging feeling that there was something in front of his eyes that hadn’t registered in his brain. Sometimes nothing would come of the feeling but there were occasions when it would come back to haunt him. Some kid, just up from Single-A ball and hitting a buck eighty, would step up to the plate and rip the first fastball he saw over the fence to win the game. And Virgil, in hindsight, would look at the kid’s scouting report from the minors and see that he was known as a dead-red fastball hitter. They should have thrown him nothing but junk.

  After welding the runner and bolting it back onto the plow, he drove the tractor into the shed. He wouldn’t be plowing the wheat field until rain came, and who knew when that would be. It wasn’t a big concern; as a rule he would have waited for fall to plow the field anyway but this year he thought he would get a jump on things. The weather intervened, as it usually did.

  He had the remainder of the previous night’s pizza for lunch. When he was finished, he was heading out the door, thinking he would service his hay mower, when the phone rang. He went back inside to pick up the receiver and heard Tommy Alamosa’s voice.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m about to grease my mower,” Virgil said. “Getting ready for my second cut.”

  “Speaking of second cuts,” Tommy said, “they’ve decided they need a shot of the two gals racing away from the cabin in the buckboard. You know, before we film them heading into the fort later on.”

  “They want to shoot it today?”

  “They do,” Tommy said. “They need to film something because there was a scheduling screwup and the Indians never showed. Hard to shoot an Indian attack with no Indians. This should only take a couple hours. I’ll make sure you get paid for a full day. What do you think?”

  “I think my mower can wait.”

  “Talk it over with Bob and Nelly,” Tommy said.

  Virgil told him he’d be there in an hour and hung up. As he drove into the hills, with the Percherons in the trailer behind him, the nagging feeling he’d been experiencing, the feeling he was missing something, grew stronger, and it was coupled with his growing concern about Claire. Virgil didn’t like the thought of her bracing Ronnie Red Hawk, even though she had another officer with her. Virgil had even thought of volunteering to tag along, but he knew she would never go for that. The only time she’d involved Virgil in one of her investigations was when she’d been investigating him.

  When he arrived on set, the crew had already pulled the buckboard from the barn and had it in place in front of the cabin. Tommy Alamosa walked over as Virgil was hitching up the team.

  “I want to run them first,” Virgil said. “Get them used to it.”

  “Sure,” Tommy said. “They’ll head up that rise and disappear over the hill. We’re only talking a couple hundred yards or so.”

  “Who’s going to be in the buckboard for the actual shot? It’ll cost you a lot of money to get me in a dress.”

  “Nobody wants to see that. We got a stuntwoman says she can handle a team. And Georgia’s stand-in is going to ride with her.”

  “All right,” Virgil said, tugging on the traces. “Let’s do it.”

  He took Bob and Nelly around the field a couple times, urging them first into a trot, then a lope. By the time he pulled back into the yard, the crew was set up and ready to shoot. It took the better part of two hours, moving the cameras to shoot from different angles, but the horses were fine, even breaking into a gallop occasionally when called upon.

  The director was nowhere to be seen; they called it second unit stuff with Tommy running the show. Between takes, Virgil carried water to the horses and fed them a little grain. As they finished the final shot, he heard footsteps and turned to see Kari Karson approaching, dressed in her frontier dress but without the wig or bonnet.

  “Hey cowboy,” she said.

  “Hello.”

  “They about done?”

  “I think so,” Virgil said. “What’s up?”

  Kari pointed her chin toward the two horses. “They want a shot of me and the kid running from the cabin to the buckboard.”

  “Through a hail of arrows?”

  “Something like that. I wanted to drive your horses but they wouldn’t let me.” She smiled. “Guess I’ll have to wait until you invite me to your farm.”

  Virgil smiled.

  “You’ve got a good smile, cowboy.”

  Virgil shifted topics. “Did you hear anything about your friend?”

  “No.”

  “It wasn’t an OD. The heroin was bad.”

  Kari stared at the ground for a moment before looking up at him. “Who told you that?”

  “I got it from a good source. Red Hawk allegedly has a history with this. I thought you should know. You’re probably doing the smart thing, staying away from him.”

  Kari ran her hand across her forehead, her eyes darting back and forth. “Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “Nicole didn’t get the heroin from Red Hawk.”

  “I thought you didn’t know where she got it.”

  “I knew,” Kari said. “She brought it from LA. She was supposed to bring Ecstasy but she couldn’t score. So she bought a gram of smack from some sketchy dude on the Strip. I wouldn’t touch the shit, but she said she always wanted to try it.”

  “You said she never did needles,” Virgil reminded her.

  “She never did. She said she was going to smoke it. But she must have changed her mind. That was Nicole.”

  “And why didn’t you tell the police this?”

&
nbsp; Kari looked at the ground again, as if not knowing where else to cast her eyes. She sighed before looking back at Virgil. “I told you before. I need to be on my best behavior here. This is my comeback movie, and I don’t need any scandal. Telling the cops wouldn’t have helped Nicole any at that point. So I pretended I didn’t know anything about any heroin.”

  Virgil heard Tommy yell cut, and he turned to watch as the team came trotting back across the field, the stuntwoman handling the reins with one hand while lighting a cigarette with the other. Virgil turned to Kari.

  “You’re saying it was accidental?”

  “I guess it was,” Kari said. She looked earnestly at Virgil a moment, as if trying to convince him that this time she really was telling the truth. “I have to go get ready. This is so fucked up, man.”

  Virgil watched her walk away and then stepped through the fence and went over to the team. Both horses were sweating heavily in the thick humidity. He took them by the harness and led them toward the open gate. Tommy met him as he passed through.

  “I’ll rub them down,” Virgil said. “I hear you want them for another shot.”

  “Stationary,” Tommy said. “Standing outside the cabin. But yeah—they’ll have to be dried off. Take your time. We have to set up.”

  Virgil led the team into the shade of the barn and unhitched them. He needed to rub them down and brush them.

  And he needed to get in touch with Claire. He knew her home number but he also knew she wasn’t there. Her cell phone was a work number and the department had changed it a couple of weeks ago. He had it written down back at the farmhouse. It would have to wait.

  Once he had the horses cooled off, he gave them more water and hitched them to the buckboard again. After positioning them in the yard, he stood and waited impatiently for the crew to set up the shot. He wanted to be out of there. As they were getting near, a transport van pulled up and Georgia, in costume, got out, looking at a pink cell phone in her hand. Seeing Virgil, she put the phone away and headed straight for him.

  “Hello, Virgil.”

  “Hi.”

  “I’m doing a scene with Bob and Nelly. So cool.”

  “That’s all they’ve been talking about.”

  “I just bet.”

  A few minutes later Kari appeared, in wig and bonnet now, walking toward the cabin, and then Tommy called for Georgia. She started over, then stopped and held out her cell phone to Virgil. “Can you hold this for me?”

  Virgil took it and he watched as they blocked the scene they were about to shoot, the two actresses breaking from the cabin, running across the yard, and jumping into the buckboard. The scene was simple enough but Virgil knew it would take an hour or more to shoot and reset and shoot again. And again. He was anxious to be on the road. The nagging feeling was growing stronger.

  Then he looked down at the little girl’s cell phone in his hand and the feeling went away.

  TWENTY

  Virgil watched as the two actresses ran out of the cabin and down the steps to the buckboard a total of a dozen times, the action shot from three different angles, before Tommy Alamosa was happy with the footage. When they were finished, Virgil moved over at once to unhitch the horses, keeping his eye on Georgia, who was standing on the front porch of the cabin, talking to one of the crew. Kari had headed off toward her trailer the moment they had the shot, apparently done for the day. Virgil pulled the martingales from the team and waited for the crew member to leave.

  “Georgia,” he said when the man stepped away. “You want to help with the horses?”

  The little girl looked over. “Sure!”

  Virgil slipped halters on both the Percherons and clipped a nylon lead on each. He let Georgia walk Bob over to the trailer and he followed with the mare. After they’d loaded both horses, he shut the tailgate before reaching into his shirt pocket for the pink cell phone and handing it over.

  “I almost forgot,” Georgia said.

  “Do you remember the day you first rode Bob?” Virgil asked.

  “Of course.”

  “We talked about Olivia,” Virgil said. “And you told me how much you liked her.”

  “I remember.”

  “You told me she gave you her cell number, and that she asked you not to give it to anybody else.”

  “And I didn’t,” Georgia assured him.

  “I know you didn’t,” Virgil said and he paused. “You didn’t by chance write that number down, did you?”

  “No.”

  Virgil exhaled heavily and turned to check the safety chains on the trailer. It had been worth a try.

  “Why would I write it down?” the little girl asked. “I put it in my phone.”

  Virgil turned back to her. “And you still have it in your phone?”

  “Yeah. I never thought to delete it.”

  “I know you made a promise but if you could give it to me, it might help the people who are investigating the case,” Virgil said.

  Georgia grew quiet for a long moment while she considered what to do. Virgil could see it was a moral dilemma for the kid. No wonder he liked her so much. “I think you’re somebody she would give her number to anyway,” she decided.

  “Why, thank you, Georgia.”

  “You are welcome, Virgil.”

  • • •

  When he got back to the farm, Virgil pulled the truck and trailer up to the house and went inside to call Claire’s cell. It rang a half-dozen times and went to voice mail. Virgil hated those damn things but for once he left a message, asking her to call him.

  He went out into the yard and unloaded Bob and Nelly, moving quickly, not wanting to be away from the phone when she called. He turned the horses out to pasture, then went back to the house, where he sat on the front porch drinking a beer and waiting for the phone to ring, all the while thinking there was nothing in the world so futile as waiting for a goddamn phone call. But in this, he had no choice. After an hour, he called her cell again and left another message. Then he opened a second beer.

  He sipped at the cold Budweiser and considered what to do while wondering why Claire hadn’t called back. She was never without her cell phone and not hearing back from her was making Virgil nervous. He hadn’t been comfortable with her going after Ronnie Red Hawk in the first place. Now Virgil had two key pieces of information that she needed. The first was that Red Hawk was, in all likelihood, not responsible for Nicole Huntsman’s death. The second was a phone number that could, conversely, tie Red Hawk to the murder of Olivia Burns.

  Of course, that was just speculation on Virgil’s part. The phone number might reveal nothing. Maybe Olivia had been talking to her mother that night. Or her doctor or her accountant or her acting coach. But would she be talking to any of those people around midnight, and moments before she was killed?

  After downing the second beer, he’d had enough of waiting and he got into his truck and drove to Claire’s house in Kingston. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well and was home, with her phone turned off. She wasn’t there, and Virgil wasn’t surprised. It had been a long shot. Sitting in his truck in front of her house, he wondered what to do next. Tracking down cell phones and servers wasn’t exactly in Virgil’s skill set. Claire could do it but Claire wasn’t around and Virgil was becoming more worried by the moment about her. He couldn’t wait. He needed someone who knew what to do, and he needed them now. He started the truck and headed north.

  Buddy Townes wasn’t home, but his Cadillac was in the driveway with a flat tire on the right rear, and his aluminum boat was tied to the creaky dock along the riverbank. On his previous visits to Buddy’s place, Virgil had noticed a roadhouse a few hundred yards farther along the river road. Virgil knew Buddy well enough by now that tracking him down didn’t require a whole lot of deductive reasoning.

  He was sitting at a table with four other men, drinking a pitcher of draft beer and playing bullshit poker with one-dollar bills. By the stack of singles in front of Buddy, Virgil guessed he was doing all right. Th
e place was typical, more of a sports bar than a restaurant, with lots of TV screens and two pool tables at the back. The special of the day, scrawled on a blackboard just inside the front door, was a cheeseburger and fries.

  Virgil nodded to Buddy when he entered and sat at the bar to order a beer. He didn’t want to join Buddy and his friends, where he wouldn’t be able to speak freely. Buddy stayed at the table until the pitcher there was empty, making sure he got his fair share, then he wandered over to Virgil, tucking the wad of bills in his shirt pocket as he sat down.

  “Here you are again,” he said. “You’re not in love with me, are you?”

  “Nope, but I’ll buy you a beer,” Virgil said.

  “Buy me a beer and tell me what you’re up to, because it looks like you’re about to bust a gut.”

  So Virgil did both, the buying and the telling. When he was done he produced a receipt from Woodstock Saddlery, on the back of which he’d written the cell number Olivia Burns had given Georgia. Virgil smoothed the wrinkles from the paper and laid it on the bar.

  Buddy looked from the receipt to Virgil. “And what is it you intend to do with that?”

  “Well,” Virgil said uncertainly. “Apparently there’s a way you can find out who called that number. And what day and what time. So how do I do that?”

  “How do you do it?” Buddy asked. “You don’t do it.”

  “Then who does?”

  Buddy laughed and took a drink of beer. “Look at you, going toe-to-toe with modern technology. You’re like Dan Quayle at a spelling bee.”

  “Well, maybe I need a sophisticated guy like you to enlighten me,” Virgil said. “A sophisticated guy who’s holding his pants up with a piece of rope.”

  Buddy looked down at his waist, at the frayed length of twine tied with a reef knot around his dirty khaki trousers. “My belt broke,” he explained.

  “I don’t care,” Virgil told him.

  Buddy picked up the scrap of paper. “First thing you need to do is find out the server for this number. Then you request the usage records for whatever date you want. When you find an incoming number you want to identify, then you go to that server and request that info.” Buddy had another drink. “The problem is—you need a warrant to do all of this. Which is why you can’t do it, Virgil. You do realize you’re not a police officer.”