The Blue Garou (Detective 'Cadillac' Holland Series Book 1)

by H Hiller

  “Blue? Someone colored a dog blue and give it to Charlie?” Her voice rose an octave as she spoke.

  “Probably the darkest blue they could find.”

  She was silent for a long moment, but stared at me as though she were debating on what to say next.

  “You know about the rou-garou?”

  “It’s the werewolf story the Cajuns tell their kids. There’s a painter who has made a fortune putting blue dogs in his paintings. Do you think there might be some connection?”

  “Hell, yes! Charlie’s granddad used to tell him that the old hound was going to come back and get him if he didn’t behave. That hound turned into his own rou-garou we used to tease him with. It was why he stayed afraid of dogs until he got outta Angola. He saw one of them paintings you was talking about at some gallery on Royal Street and he started collecting them pictures to show he ain’t afraid of dogs no more. He didn’t want anyone to think he was afraid of anyone or anything after he left prison.”

  “So who would know this about him and maybe use it against him?”

  “Anybody what knows Charlie knows about it.” This was much less helpful than the background story had been. Finding my suspect now promised to be a time-consuming process of elimination. I now had a reasonable answer for why the dog had been dyed blue, but Lynley had told a lot of people about his motive for collecting the Rodrique paintings and every one of them was now a suspect. I may as well include the painter, who couldn’t possibly be happy having his art tied to the likes of Charles Lynley.

  “Well thank you for your time,” I sighed and stood up. She remained seated but reached out and clutched my elbow.

  “You really gonna try to find who killed him or you just gonna poke around and call it an accident?”

  “It’s my job to figure this out, Miss Ann. Whatever I may have thought of your grandson’s past, I take my job seriously. If someone was responsible, I’ll find them and then we’ll both have to let the courts have their turn. You don’t think he might have poked that dog with a stick do you?”

  “I’ll poke you if try to make a joke about this,” she snarled. I had not really meant to make the question sound like a joke. “You call me when you find who done this to him.”

  “I sure will.”

  I heard the door chain slide in place behind me. She may have simply wanted to put a face to the name of the man who was charged with finding the killer of one of the city’s most notorious villains, or maybe she just wanted to see if I would make time for her. I did not think she considered her grandson’s violent death to be either untimely or unexpected, other than perhaps the timing and the method.

  I returned to where I had parked my Cadillac coupe. It seemed to have been left undisturbed, but there were now two Black youths in baggy jeans and crisp white T-shirts watching it from the cart rack nearby. They may have actually been engaged in some sort of legitimate activity but they were trying hard to make it look as though they belonged here. Neither of them had a store bag in their cart and both of their heads swiveled to follow my approach.

  The part of my brain that instinctively translates my tactical training and experiences overseas into survival skills in New Orleans kicked in and I began watching the pair much more closely, and to also scan for any additional threats as well. I had been ambushed once too often and swore I never would be taken by surprise again. It’s wonderful being home again, but I never make the mistake of believing that being a cop here makes me any safer than I was tracking down jihadists in Afghanistan or Iraq.

  The oldest of the pair was probably in his mid-twenties and older than the other boy by only a few years. They were both about six foot tall, the same as me. The older one had some muscle and weight on me but the younger one had the brawn of a defensive lineman. The older boy was keeping his hands where I could see them while the youth kept patting his front pants pocket. He was giving away where he carried his weapon.

  “Why you bugging that old woman?” the older youth finally called out to me.

  “What old woman?”

  “Miss Ann. Biggie’s grandma,” the younger one now spoke up.

  “She asked me to come see her.” No harm in their knowing that much.

  “Well you don’t need to come back,” the younger one pressed his luck with me. I stopped in my tracks and faced them from about fifteen feet away. I could clear my holster and drop them both by the time the youth even had his hand out of his pocket, but I didn’t want to start my day, or end theirs, that way if it could be avoided.

  “You do know I’m a cop, right?” I went so far as to point to the badge hanging over my belt, very close to the handgun hanging from my right hip.

  “Yeah. You’ve busted a bunch of my friends on bullshit warrants,” the older one snarled. “You’re the detective the other cops call Cadillac.”

  “What’s your beef in this anyway?”

  “I made a CD with Biggie. He was supposed to release it next week.”

  “Well good luck with that,” I said and opened my car door. They did not move until I had backed out of the parking space. I watched them in my rearview mirror as they started walking across the parking lot, away from Miss Ann’s building.

  SEVEN

  The first planned interview of the day was with the veterinarian whose vaccination tags were attached to the metal choke collar. The collar also held a yellow tag for a sub-dermal microchip someone had placed in the pit-bull’s shoulder.

  The veterinarian's practice was in a building anchoring a pricey strip of shops on Metairie Road, the sort favored by old-money widows in the habit of paying too much and the newly rich for whom the idea of spending an outrageous sum for something made them feel special. This may have been why someone like Biggie Charles would have chosen this vet. Biggie and his fiancé may have figured that having their dog treated by the veterinarian of legitimately rich people would somehow rub legitimacy off on themselves as well.

  The owner of the practice looked to me to be one of those men over the age of sixty who have chosen liposuction over actual exercise, hair plugs over a receding hairline, and who spend hours in a tanning bed to give a nice glow to their plastic surgery. The second impression was that of a very successful man with a thriving business. I was counting on his balancing the protection of that reputation against any sort of privacy issues he might harbor towards that of a deceased convicted felon.

  “Good morning, I'm Doctor John, but not the famous one.” He laughed at his own practiced joke for the locals before leading me into a vacant treatment room. “How may I help you, Detective?”

  “I need some information on a dog you treated recently,” I said and placed the evidence bag with the collar on the examination table. He looked at it, frowned, and looked up at me.

  “This is the about the pit bull from last night. Right?”

  “Yep. What can you tell me about the dog?”

  “Not much you don’t already know. It is a mature, pure-bred American Bull Terrier weighing about seventy pounds. The animal is healthy and a good example of the breed. Tyshika told me that it was trained as a guard dog, but all I can say to that is that the animal was well behaved and responded well to orders. It just needed some flea and heartworm medicine, and we also re-assigned its microchip.”

  “What I have really been wondering was why Biggie’s fiancé chose you in the first place. Why do you suppose she picked yours out of all the practices in the city?”

  His hesitation betrayed the lie even before he spoke.

  “I really have no idea. I would guess she saw our ad in the Yellow Pages.”

  “Does she strike you as a Yellow Pages sort of person?” I figured he would come closer to the truth on his next try.

  “I know the owner of the kennel.”

  “Is there any reason to hide that?”

  “Jerome Washington was suspected of being involved in dog fights a few years ago.” I waited for him to explain the rest of whatever he was trying not to say. “It could n
ever be proved, and he moved his kennels to the Northshore after Hurricane Katrina. I understand that he is doing quite well there.”

  “How would any suspicion of his involvement in dog fighting splash back on you?”

  “I was the kennel’s veterinarian when Jerry started out. I had a smaller practice then and he was a steady customer. None of the dogs he brought me ever showed any injuries consistent with any sort of fighting. I did, though, sell him medical supplies so he could treat his own animals. Whether these supplies were used to treat the injuries he did not bring me is not something I could say one way or the other.”

  “And certainly would not speculate on now, right?”

  “No, I would not.”

  “Did Tyshika bring the dog in alone?”

  “It was Tyshika and some huge guy she said was her boyfriend's bodyguard. She told me the dog was going to be a surprise present. I guess it really was a surprise.”

  “Yeah, that's what I said.”

  EIGHT

  The second, and last, interview I planned to conduct over the weekend was with the kennel which had sold and trained the pit bull. I figured I could build a working profile of Taz based on speaking with those who had been around the dog the most. There was no reason to change the methods I had used to sort out human situations just because my prime suspect had two extra legs.

  The drive from the city took nearly an hour, partly from the usual Saturday traffic jam at the Lakeside Mall on Veterans Highway and partly from the seemingly never-ending construction meant to relieve that congestion. The second half hour was spent driving through spotty rain on the four lane roadway spanning Lake Pontchartrain.

  Alpha Dog Kennels had moved from Downman Road, in the heart of the mostly Black part of town known as New Orleans East, to the very center of post-Katrina white flight. The business was now on the outskirts of Mandeville. The town’s population had exploded following Hurricane Katrina as people with both too little trust in levees and very large insurance settlements came looking for a fresh start on higher ground. It would seem that Jerome Washington had read the graffiti on the wall and saw his opportunity to go from being a suspected dog fighter to the respectable purveyor of premium canine protection.

  I did not really know what to expect of the kennel. I had never been to a real kennel, only to the pound, and my parents had never allowed me to have a dog. My father always said that if we really wanted to protect our house then we should get a goose, because nobody ever sneaks up on a goose. I do not think my father ever considered the possibility of having a dog merely as a companion, but he was most likely right in the belief that neither of his children would ever properly care for a pet. I was surprised, then, to find that the place looked like the campus of a prosperous junior college. There was a nicely carved wooden sign at the entrance from the highway featuring the name Alpha Dog Kennel and a German shepherd carved from a cypress log. The parking lot held more family cars and mini-vans than tricked out SUVs and sedans with absurd rims and gaudy paint jobs, but there were both types of vehicles in abundance and the only parking space I could find was well away from the front door.

  An attractive young blonde in her mid-twenties, whose polo shirt and teeth were both white enough to set off her summer tan, asked me to sign in and assured me someone would be right with me. I did so and flashed my badge and detective credentials with practiced discreetness and asked to speak with Mr. Washington. The trick to being discreet is to be sure nobody is nearby when you plop your gold detective badge onto the granite counter, and to smile really big before you make them think you are about to drag their boss off in shiny handcuffs before a roomful of paying customers.

  “Mr. Jerry, code one at the main lobby.”

  I figured that someone as used to police officers as this man probably was would have some sort of warning in place, even when he seemed to be legitimate. I wondered if there was a code imbedded in his being paged as ‘Mr. Jerry’ instead of ‘Mr. Washington.’

  I moved a few feet away from the counter, allowing paying clients to conduct their business. I watched the driveway, in case her page had been the Abandon Ship cue, and also the double French doors leading through the back of the building that the receptionist had begun to watch out of the corner of her eye.

  The kennel owner came into the building through these doors barely a moment later, smiling broadly as we exchanged a firm handshake. He must have been remarkably young when he first started Alpha Dog because he looked to me to be barely in his thirties. He was shaved bald, with a very close trimmed goatee and medium chocolate colored skin over a muscular but average sized frame. We were almost eye to eye in height, and he moved very confidently into what could be a potentially nasty meeting. He surprised me by showing absolutely nothing but a genuine interest in answering my questions. His palm was dry and there was not the least sign of concern in his eyes.

  “Jerry Washington,” he said. It occurred to me that using ‘Jerry’ as a name probably worked better with his clients on this side of the lake than ‘Jerome. ’

  “Detective Holland.” I showed him my badge. “I’m here about Taz.”

  “Yesterday’s dog attack?” He seemed relieved that this was why I was there. The efficient girl at the desk handed him a manila folder and he quickly passed it to me. “These are copies of our records on the pit bull. We knew the dog as Roux, because of its dark fur, and I must confess that we were all quite surprised.”

  “That Biggie changed the dog’s name or that it killed him?”

  “I knew he changed the name to Taz. He said he loved the Tasmanian devil character from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.” Jerry gave a bemused shrug. “What surprised us was that it attacked him. I was most surprised that it actually killed him.”

  Jerry was deliberately steering me outside, away from any client's earshot. I trailed along in order to get a better feel for the operation. The rear of the main building opened onto a well-manicured courtyard. A fountain was set at the end of the courtyard, which was backed by the pine trees meant to obscure the view of the buildings housing the kennels. A dozen dogs and their owners were on the paver-stone patio we crossed to reach the fountain.

  “The secret to dog training is to train the owner,” Jerry said when he noticed my interest in the group. “The animal just wants to please its owner. The owner needs to decide what he expects of the animal, and then how to convey that desire consistently. People ruin the training every time they make exceptions. If you tell your dog to stay off the sofa then never let them on the sofa. Do you really think even Lassie understood what an exception was?”

  “No, but Lassie never ripped anyone’s throat out that I can recall. You said the attack was a surprise. What surprised you about a guard dog making an attack?”

  “Other than killing its owner?”

  “Well, how long had he owned the dog? I recall it was a birthday present.”

  “Everyone is required to take at least a basic course, such as these people are taking with their animal, before we complete a sale. It would be irresponsible to turn a trained defensive animal loose with anyone not trained to handle such a creature.”

  “So Biggie trained with this dog?”

  “They were acquainted.” Jerry was suddenly hedging. “The truth is they had only done four of the twenty hours we require. I got a message from his office asking if we could gift wrap the dog so it could be given to him as a surprise birthday present. I don’t remember who left the message. Mr. Lynley was supposed to leave the dog in its kennel and bring it back today when he took part in their training class. It would not have stayed with them until the training was complete. All the same, Mr. Lynley knew how to behave around the dog.”

  “And how should Biggie have acted? Did he forget something?”

  “He should have made no sudden aggressive moves, especially towards the dog. No teasing the dog. No acting less than the alpha. If he excited the animal and then acted afraid of it, this might be the result.”

/>   “What do you suppose the odds on that kind of scenario would be?”

  “I would not have thought this would happen. I really have no idea why the dog would have attacked without provocation, or why Charles was unable to control it.”

  “Some of that might have to do with the nature of his injuries.” Jerry gave me a confused look. “It looks like one of the first bites may have been to Biggie’s crotch. I would think that if he went to grab what was left of his manhood then his throat would be an easy target. Do you actually train these dogs to go for a man's crotch?”

  The kennel owner gave a soft laugh, leaving me unsure if it was a laugh at the image or the question.

  “No. That actually makes the dog vulnerable, as it puts its head in a very easy position to be struck.”

  Jerry brought his hands straight down to demonstrate. That act may have been harder in a seated position, but so would the attack.

  “Did he ever mention he had been bitten by a dog when he was a kid?”

  “No. I would have discouraged his getting a pit bull had I known. I would have suggested he get himself a Setter or something a lot mellower than a terrier.”

  “And how is it that you had Biggie Charles as a customer?” I knew the answer to this question, but thought it would be interesting to see what he said.

  “My trainer’s sister is his fiancée. Was, I mean.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Feel about what?”

  “Your trainer knowing a guy like Biggie Charles.”

  “I would have much less business if I was choosy about my customers. I didn’t care one way or the other as long it didn’t impact our business.”

  “And did it ever affect your business?”

  “Not until last night. Don't get me wrong. I was no pal of Charles Lynley, and I know what he did to go to Angola. But he was making a good name for himself, the same as me, and I had to give him props for that,” the kennel owner finally stopped my line of questioning.