by A. W. Gray
Judge Griffin then made the jurors happy by calling it a day, a full hour earlier than the six o’clock she’d previously announced. Both teenage murderers had yet to testify, and Sharon suspected that there would be weekend meetings between the prosecution and young Messrs. Burdette and Leonard, with some fresh script material added to the rehearsals. And Fraterno would have some talks with Linda as well, and if Linda told the truth about Baltimore (which would be like pulling teeth, Sharon thought, getting that cold-blooded lady to ’fess up to anything), the prosecution would find itself in total chaos. Barring an earthquake, Sharon thought, we’re going to win. We have to.
But earthquakes happen, she reminded herself.
It was going to be a long weekend.
37
Sharon bounced into her driveway just at sunset, having stopped off for a sliced beef sandwich at Coulter’s Barbecue and having taken her time about eating. She sat for a moment and listened to the Volvo’s motor tick and cool as loneliness flooded over her. Less than a week had dragged by, and already Sharon missed her little girl terribly. Sheila professed to be having a ball—Sharon had spend an envious half hour last evening listening to a telephone report of how Sheila had dined at Old Warsaw with her aerobics instructor, and had been dying to ask about the juicier part of the date but had restrained herself—but Sharon had noted a slight catch in Sheila’s voice when the subject had turned to Trish away at camp. The truth was that all the big-talk, oh-boy-wait-’til-the-kids-are-in-camp discourse between Sharon and Sheila was just a bunch of hokey, and that the two of them were nothing but a couple of lonesome moms.
As for Sharon’s two weeks of freedom, she’d been too caught up in the Rathermore case to even think about going out. On second thought, that wasn’t quite true. She had been tied up in court, and she hadn’t gone out at night, but her main reason for being such a couch potato was that she simply hadn’t had the right offer. Her only invitations had been in the form of desperate answering-machine messages from Stan Green—whom she’d pointedly ignored each day in court—and she had made up her mind that if the lout of a homicide cop was the only pebble on the beach, then she was destined to a future alone with the old vibrator. But if the right guy should come along, she thought … well, the poor unsuspecting man had best have plenty of staying power in the old sackeroo. Otherwise they were liable to find him stone-cold dead, stretched out on the mattress with a smile tattooed on his face. Sharon giggled softly as she alighted from the Volvo and started across the yard.
The sun was hidden behind the rooftops. Its final rays bathed low-flying clouds in pink and orange, and the porch was in deep twilight shade. Sharon checked her watch as she fumbled for her key. Ten to nine. There’d been a letter from Melanie in yesterday’s mail, and Sharon had carefully set the envelope aside on her dining table for reading when she had plenty of time. She intended to get the letter and take it to her bedroom, and Melanie’s letter was uppermost on her mind as she inserted the key, clicked the tumblers, and pushed the door open. She halted abruptly in the entry hall.
Uncertainty in her tone, she said loudly, “Commander?”
The house was silent as a tomb. There was no answering whimper, no joyous scratching of claws on carpet to signify that the shepherd was lumbering in her direction. No sound at all.
She called out, louder this time, “Commander.”
Her heart was suddenly a lump of ice. It had taken weeks after the incident with the crazy man before she’d been able to walk into the house without being frightened out of her wits, but the terror had gradually subsided. Now the fear returned in a rush. The dog. Where was the freaking dog?
She relaxed as she thought, backyard. Sure, that was it. She recalled opening the door that morning just before she’d left, and Commander scrabbling across the deck to bound down and piss against the swing set. For weeks following the poisoned-meat incident she’d kept him imprisoned inside, but that fear had subsided eventually as well, helped along in no small part by the piles of poop she’d found on the carpet on two different occasions. Commander was nicely housebroken, but he wasn’t Superdog, and eight or ten hours locked up in the house had proven too much for him. She suspected that the carpet soilings were a sign of resentment on his part as well, and for whatever reason she’d taken to putting him outside during the day. She laughed out loud at herself, went down the hall and halfway through the dining room, then screeched to a halt once more. The dread came back in a rush.
As she’d left her car and crossed the yard, the only sound she’d heard was the hissing of Mrs. Breedlove’s lawn sprinklers across the street. There’d been the nagging sensation at the back of her mind that something was missing, but she’d been so intent with her thoughts of Melanie that the silence hadn’t registered. Now it did.
Commander always raised a ruckus when she drove up, barking joyously and hurling himself against the side fence. In fact, he was so loud that some of the neighbors had complained, and Sharon had responded with half-hearted promises to do something about the noise. So why had there been total silence out back when she’d come home moments ago? Goose bumps raised on her arms and spiders paraded up and down her backbone.
You dummy, she told herself, the guy’s in jail. Locked up. More than likely headed straight for death row. And of course, heh, heh, he’s the only pervert in the entire city of Dallas, isn’t he?
A knot at the point of her breastbone, every shadow in the house a monster poised to strike, Sharon forced her feet to move. She went into the den. From the kitchen on her right, the refrigerator motor hummed. The back door was closed. She jiggled the handle. Locked tight as a drum. Her fear subsided a bit.
But there was still no sign of Commander. The shepherd should have been right there, about to tear down the door.
Please be all right, you big dumb mutt, Sharon thought. She quickly undid the lock and went out on the deck. Commander lay on his side near the back fence, on the other side of the swing set. His nose was pointed away from her, and he wasn’t moving.
Oh, my dear sweet God, she thought, he isn’t moving.
A sob escaped from her throat as she half ran, half stumbled, across the deck. One of her spike heels wedged itself between the boards; her ankle twisted painfully and she fell headlong. Her pantyhose ripped up the side, and there was a numbing sensation in her hip where she’d jolted against the redwood. She ignored the needles of agony in her ankle, kicked out of her shoes, and scrambled to her feet. She limped across the yard with stiff Bermuda poking her soles at every step. She crouched beside the fallen shepherd and pressed her hand against the side of his neck. His flesh and fur were warm.
Commander whimpered. He raised his head to look at her with big, dark eyes. His tongue lolled downward. His great tail lifted, then thumped the ground.
“Oh. Oh, Commander, are you … ?” Tears streamed down Sharon’s cheeks. She wiped them away, then felt the dog over with firm hands. When she pressed a spot near his collarbone, he yelped in pain.
She bent closer to the dog and gently moved the fur aside. At just the point where Commander’s foreleg joined his shoulder was a small round hole. Blood oozed faintly from the wound. The shepherd tried to lick Sharon’s hand, but the effort was too much. He went limp and snorted.
“Don’t move,” Sharon said. She rose, walked a few steps toward the house, then turned to the dog and extended her hand, palm out. “Just … don’t move.” She retreated quickly up on the deck and into the den. The vet’s emergency number was jotted down in an index finder at her bedside. All but the wounded shepherd forgotten, Sharon climbed the two steps and entered her bedroom.
Her bureau drawers were pulled out. Her underwear—cotton Jockey for Her panties mostly, along with two pair of bikini briefs, one black and one maroon—were scattered at random on the floor. Her only black lace push-up bra lay wadded up in the center of the king-size. There was a dark, round wet spot on the spread
alongside the bra.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, the sound tearing its way out of her throat and vibrating the walls. She placed both hands over her mouth and screamed a second time, backing in terror out of the bedroom and down the steps into the den. She sagged against the paneled wall.
Her gun. Where was her freaking gun? She forced herself to think. The toilet tank, that’s where she’d suspended it, hanging there inside the tank in the small water closet beside her dressing area.
Which is exactly where the lunatic, if he was still around, was probably hiding.
Gritting her teeth, the image of the wounded dog firmly in her mind, she went back into the bedroom and crossed over to her dressing area. The bra and the wet spot on the bed leaped out at her. She paused to firm her resolve, then flung open the latticed door into her dressing room. No one there. She stared dully at her own reflection in the mirror.
Moments later, the pistol in her grasp, Sharon sat on her bed and called the vet. He agreed to meet her at the clinic. She hung up, grabbed a blanket from the linen closet, and returned to the yard. After she’d wrapped Commander in the blanket, she heaved him up in her arms and, staggering under the weight, bore him through the house and out to the car. As she laid him tenderly down in the backseat, Commander made another valiant effort to lick her hand.
Sharon sipped lukewarm coffee dregs heated in a microwave, and fixed her gaze on the veterinarian. “How long?” she said. She was seated on a high wooden stool near the counter separating the waiting room from the reception desk. On the wall were framed skeletal charts, cat and dog, and on the counter was a plaster of paris model of a dog’s teeth. There was a faint odor of flea powder.
The vet’s name was Bob Reasor. He was mid-thirties with coal black hair swept around to hang rakishly over one eye, and he wore yellow gym shorts and a maroon Texas A&M T-shirt. He was a friendly, even-tempered sort, but tended to become miffed if anyone referred to him as Dr. Bob. Reasor was a bachelor and, along with almost every veterinarian in the entire state of Texas, an Aggie. When Sharon had first brought Commander in for shots, just a month after Reasor had opened the clinic, he’d tried a couple of passes. She’d been flattered, but she’d had her schedule and he’d had his, and that had been that.
A shoulder-to-butt X-ray of Commander’s insides hung on a lighted rack, and Reasor indicated the hip joint with a pointer. “Next time I go to Vegas I’d like to take him along,” Reasor said. “See that?”
Sharon squinted at a dark spot on the film. “How long, Bob?” she said.
“From here”—Reasor swung the tip of the pointer to touch the shoulder beside the entry wound—“to here”—then returned the indicator to the dark spot—“the bastard traveled, and didn’t hit a thing. Couldn’t have missed his heart by more than a centimeter, his left lung by even less. Odds of that happening …” He shook his head in wonder. “Phenomenal.”
Sharon sipped more coffee. The stuff tasted terrible, but she barely noticed. It would help keep her awake. All weekend if necessary. “He’s not in any danger, huh?” she said.
Reasor pursed thin lips. “Nah. Couple of days. You’d better trot out a blanket or put a pile of rags in the corner. He needs to stay quiet.”
“Must have been a small-caliber, not to exit.”
“Not necessarily,” Reasor said.
Sharon cocked her head inquisitively.
“Commander weighs what, eighty pounds?” he said.
She nodded. “Close.”
“I’d guess a .38 or even a .45,” he said. “The impact knocks him back so that the slug remains in him. Anything smaller, say a .22, would tear right through. A human, anything over a hundred and twenty pounds, even a .38 will exit.”
“You should try forensics,” Sharon said. She was being overly cool and knew it. When she’d first come in she’d been almost hysterical, but now that she knew Commander wasn’t on the critical list, she was overreacting on the opposite side of the emotional scale.
“I thought about it,” Reasor said, laying the pointer aside. “I ever tell you I had a criminology minor?”
“Several times. Are you going to do surgery?”
He crossed his forearms on the counter. “I wouldn’t advise it. If the bullet was going to interfere with his walk or pinch a nerve or something, yeah. This one I’d leave right where it is. If it shifts around we can operate later.”
She stood and drained the remnants from her cup. “Can I see him before I go?”
“Sure. You know the way. I’ve got a couple of things to put up.” Reasor knelt to slide the pointer into a drawer and flipped the switch to douse the light on the X-ray viewer.
Sharon went down a short corridor, passed through an examining room, and entered the clinic’s boarding area. She still was in her stocking feet, and stepped carefully around a puddle of urine on the concrete. She passed two cages which held kittens, then stopped to peer inside the open gate on the third cage at Commander. He lay on a small foam mattress. His tail thumped in greeting, though he made no effort to rise.
Sharon scratched the shepherd between the ears. “You take it easy, old-timer,” she said. “You can’t understand this, you big dumb mutt. But don’t you dare die, you hear? I might not get over it, and I know Melanie wouldn’t.”
Sharon said emotionlessly into the phone, “I know you’re at home, Mr. Teeter. That’s why I called your house.”
Assistant DA Ed Teeter assumed a suspicious tone. “How did you get my number?”
“It was tough, you know?” Sharon said. “You’re not listed in the phone book.” It was all the information she was going to give; she’d gotten Teeter’s home number from her old friend Doris in DA personnel. Doris had been glad to help, and had even driven to the office to look the number up, but also had cautioned Sharon not to let the cat out of the bag. If anyone found out, Doris had said, heads would roll.
“That’s right, miss, I’m not,” Teeter said. “I don’t want calls at eleven o’clock on Friday night.”
Sharon was seated on her Spanish-style sofa, watching through her deck-side window while the smaller of two Dallas Police patrolmen inspected her back fence. His partner was up in the bedroom, looking around. Same two cops, she thought. Tall One and Shorty, Frick and Frack. Sharon had originally changed into an oversize T-shirt and jean cutoffs, but when the cops had driven up and had both given her the once-over, she’d gone in the back and put on loose-fitting western jeans. She said to Teeter, “Well, I do hate to bother you. But I don’t like people shooting my dog and breaking in my house to fondle my underwear, either.”
“Who is this?” Teeter spoke in a slightly boozy slur. Likely he’d been having a bedtime toddy.
“Sharon Hays.”
There was a pregnant pause, after which Teeter said, “Oh.”
“Oh,” Sharon said back. “I’ve already checked at the jail, so I already know Mr. Brie is on the street. My only question is, what in hell is wrong with you people?”
“Hey, Miss Hays, I know it bothers you—”
“Ha.”
“—for this to happen. There was sort of a mix-up.”
“Oh, really,” Sharon said.
“Now we’re going to … I’ll have an indictment whipped up the first of next week for the break-in at your house.”
“To take to the grand jury on Thursday,” Sharon said. “And if he’s happened to have moved across the street, your people won’t even pick him up. They’ll put him on the computer and hope he gets arrested for something else. Maybe he’ll trip over my body as he’s leaving my house, huh? Then you might catch him.”
“We don’t take these things lightly,” Teeter said.
“That’s nice to know. You do read the paper, don’t you?”
“Not much of it. The golf scores. I skip over the crime news—half the time the reporters get the facts all wrong.
You should know that from being a prosecutor yourself.”
“Well, one thing they do have right in today’s editions,” Sharon said, “is that we’re having a trial. Right underneath your office, on the sixth floor.”
“I know that,” Teeter said. “The Rathermore trial. What I meant is, if you give them any interviews you’re usually misquoted all to hell.”
“What I’m leading up to,” Sharon said, “is that both Dallas Morning News crime-beat people are covering the trial. And if I call the jail on Monday afternoon and find out that Mr. Brie’s still not in custody, I’m going to call a press conference. Misquoted or not, I’m going to tell them the whole story about Mr. Brie, and that you people are sitting around on your collective butts and not doing anything to put him out of circulation.”
Teeter breathed over the phone, not saying anything.
“I hope I’m making myself clear,” Sharon said. “And in addition to telling them about Mr. Brie, I’m going to tell them about Mr. Breyer.”
“Milton Breyer?”
“I don’t mean the ice cream Breyers, Mr. Teeter.” Sharon paused as the tall patrolman came in and sat on the loveseat, clipboard in hand. Then she said, “I’ve got to go now. If you don’t know what it is I might tell the press about Mr. Breyer, ask him. My broad hint is that it might have to do with what went on just before I quit the DA. In the meantime, I’m going to see if I can stay alive until Monday. Goodbye, Mr. Teeter.” She hung up and faced the policeman. As she did, Shorty came in the back door and sat beside his tall, thin partner.
The thin policeman licked his lips. “Looks like you’ve got a real weirdo here, Miss Hays.”
Sharon had averted her gaze from the bra on her bedspread every time she’d gone upstairs, once before she’d taken Commander to the vet and twice to change clothes. “You really think so?” she said.
“The crime-scene people are on their way,” Skinny said. “In the meantime, if you’re up to it … Have you noticed anything missing?”
