Bark of Night

by David Rosenfelt

  “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it and take care of him. He’ll be fine.”

  We arrive at the station house and go in. The desk sergeant unsuccessfully tries to stifle a moan when he sees me; we go back a ways, and while he hates all defense attorneys, I suspect he envisions me in a special kind of hell.

  “You turning yourself in?” he asks.

  “Why?” I ask. “You hoping to strip search me?” Then, “We’re here to see Pete; known as Captain Stanton to ass lickers such as yourself.”

  He starts to retort, thinks better of it, and then calls Pete to tell him we’re here. When he gets off the phone, he just moves his head in the direction of Pete’s office, which is his way of telling me we can go.

  Before we do, I say, “Black. No sugar. And a Diet Coke for my friend. Get a move on, we’re thirsty.”

  We go back to Pete’s office, and when we arrive, he says, “My day is complete.”

  “Pete, this is Dr. Dowling. He’s a professional person, still another example of what you could have become if you had gotten past the seventh grade.”

  He just frowns and shakes hands with Dowling. “What kind of doctor are you?”

  “A veterinarian.”

  Pete nods. “Why am I not surprised?” Then, “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  I give Dowling the floor and he tells the story in pretty much the same manner he told it to me. The only change is that he underplays his obligation to put Truman down once the alleged owner paid the money for it.

  Pete listens to the story and says, “Let me have the guy’s name.”

  “It’s a fake,” I say. “We checked.”

  “Maybe we can do a more detailed check.”

  “The name he gave was Charlie Henderson; he gave a fake address and phone number.”

  “No license plate number?”

  Dowling shakes his head. “No. My receptionist would have had no reason to look.”

  “Okay. Thanks for coming in.”

  “What do you think, Sherlock?” I ask.

  “I think Haley was killed, his dog ran off, and this guy found him.”

  I nod. “So he found the dog, but instead of taking him to the pound or just ignoring him and letting him run stray, he decided to take the dog to a vet, use fake names for himself and the dog, and then pay to have him killed?” I turn to Dowling. “How much did he pay?”

  “One hundred ninety-five dollars. In cash.”

  I nod and turn to Pete. “That makes sense to you? By that I mean, can you imagine a single human being on the planet behaving that way?”

  “Maybe he took the dog into his house and it bit him, or his kid. So he wanted to make sure the dog couldn’t bite anyone else. Who knows? This is a homicide case; I think they handle dog-napping down the hall.”

  Pete clearly wants nothing to do with this, so Dowling and I stand to leave. Before we do, Pete asks, “Where’s the dog now?”

  “You mean my client?” I ask. “He’s in my protective custody.”

  “He’s evidence in the case,” Pete says.

  “We’re willing to come in and talk anytime. In the meantime, I’ll send a copy of his paw prints to forensics.”

  Our son, Ricky, is at summer camp in upstate New York.

  He left two weeks ago, and Laurie bought him enough camp clothing that if they suddenly decide the summer is going to be extended from eight weeks to four years, he will still never have to wear the same outfit twice. Knowing Ricky as I do, when he comes home, 80 percent of the stuff will still have the tags on.

  Laurie says we should both write to him every day, but after three days my conversational well ran dry. Most of my letters now are made up of questions. “How’s camp?” “You playing sports?” You enjoying yourself?” “How’s the food?”

  His answers are incredibly revealing. “Good.” “Yes.” “Yes.” “Okay.” I think Ricky is as bored with the whole letter-writing thing as I am.

  But I have to admit that I am amazed at how much I miss him. Ricky is ten; we adopted him when he was eight. In all that time, I don’t think more than a day or two has gone by without me seeing him, and his absence really makes the house seem empty.

  One other effect that his departure has had is that Laurie and I don’t have to be guarded in our conversation when it comes to talking about a case. We always make an effort not to discuss things like murders in front of him, although I think he unfortunately picks up quite a bit of it anyway.

  Right now Laurie and I are having breakfast, and I’ve just asked, “Why is this bothering me?” I’m talking about the situation with Truman and Pete’s dismissal of him as a factor in the case.

  She thinks for a moment. “It’s possible—and I’m just brainstorming here—that you might be a human being with human emotions.”

  “Come on, let’s be serious.”

  “I mean it, Andy. Your mind, which is a bit warped but always logical, realizes that the situation doesn’t seem to make sense. And you know that to just let it drop, with someone sitting in jail on a murder charge, would be the wrong thing to do.”

  “You think my mind is warped?”

  “Only in the sense that it is abnormal, twisted, and slightly bent.”

  I nod. “Oh, sure, when you put it that way … So what should I do?” I regret the question the moment I ask it, because I know what the answer is going to be.

  “Look into it; see what you can find out,” she says, validating my prediction. “You can do it without becoming too involved. Then when you learn whatever it is you learn, you can decide on your next steps. I’ll even help you.”

  “Okay. But you need to understand one thing: I’m not doing it as a lawyer. I’m doing it as a private citizen.”

  “You are a private citizen,” she says.

  “Exactly. You obviously understand. Where should we start?”

  “With the victim.”

  I am constantly surprised, even though no one else is, by the amount of information that is available online. You can find out anything about anyone or anything at any time. I have no idea who puts it all out there, or why they do, but it’s there.

  Of course, even when it comes to computer searches, there are different levels and abilities. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest and best, I’m a one. On a scale of one to fifty, with fifty being the highest and best, I’m still a one.

  If Ricky were home, I could turn to him. Even at his young age, he has already forgotten more about computers and technology than I will ever know about them. But since we don’t like to talk murders in front of him, I tend to shy away from having him research them.

  I could also just ask Laurie, who sits somewhere between Ricky and me in the tech-savvy rankings.

  But instead I call Sam Willis. Sam is my accountant, but that is just his day job. He is also my computer guy, possessing all the skills necessary to perform the legal and other-than-legal work my practice often requires.

  Simply put, Sam is a genius hacker, capable of accessing anything, anywhere. This task is beneath him; it’s like asking Messi or Ronaldo to play a game of kick the can.

  But when I ask him for the rundown on the deceased Mr. Haley, he seems anxious to help. Sam loves when I take cases almost as much as I hate taking them, so we balance each other out.

  “Sam, while you’re at it, see what you can find out about Joey Gamble. He’s been arrested for the crime; you can probably find out his address from newspaper accounts.”

  “You got it, Chief.”

  “‘Chief’? Sam, you’re not a cop. You’re an accountant. It’s why you carry a pencil instead of a gun.”

  “Don’t kill the dream, Andy. Don’t kill the dream.”

  Once I’ve sent Sam on his mission, I head down to Dr. Dowling’s to pick up Truman. I’ve convinced Dr. Dowling that he is not breaking the law by letting Truman live, though I doubt that he would have had the heart to put down a healthy, innocent dog anyway.

  As I’m leaving, he
once again asks me to confirm that this is okay.

  “The guy signed a contract with you using a fake name, so there is no legally binding contract.”

  “He paid for it.”

  “So donate the money to the Humane Society. Trust me on this.”

  He does trust me, so I leave with Truman and take him down to the Tara Foundation. Willie is out, but his wife, Sondra, is watching over things. Both of them are incredibly dedicated.

  “He’s adorable, Andy,” she says, a sentiment which I share. “How long will he be with us?”

  “Hard to say, but best not to place him until his ownership issue is fully resolved.”

  She nods. “Okay. We’ll see to it that he has a bunch of friends to play with.”

  I nod. “Good; he’s been through a rough time. Give him anything he wants; put it on my tab.”

  The setting was a little weird, which by this point was to be expected.

  As George Adams pulled up, he saw what was obviously an abandoned playground. A swing set, a seesaw, and some other equipment that had obviously not been used in a very long time sat in the weeds, rusting and rotting.

  Some people might have taken a moment to reflect on the scene, possibly realizing, maybe with some sadness, that at one point this setting would have been filled with the laughter of small children under the watchful eyes of their doting parents.

  Those people were not George Adams.

  George didn’t like kids; he never had. One of the things George didn’t like about them was that they grew up to be adults, and George didn’t like adults either. George was not a particularly sociable person.

  Probably the main reason George had gotten married for a second time was that the new wife, Denise, didn’t want kids either. It had been one of the reasons George dumped his previous wife; she had claimed not to be fulfilled without a little brat running around. Let her go fulfill herself somewhere else.

  But Denise did like dogs, and even though George didn’t, he was going to go along with it. Because he loved Denise.

  It turned out to be a big mistake.

  There was a small stand that looked like at one point it had sold ice cream, or popcorn, or whatever the hell else little kids forced their parents to buy. But now it looked weather-beaten and about to fall over.

  That’s where George walked to, because that’s where the guy who wanted to be called Mister said they would meet. George knew that his name was Frank Silvio; Tony Longo had found that out long ago, and then George had checked Silvio out.

  But if Silvio wanted to be called Mister, George didn’t care one way or the other. He would call him whatever the hell he wanted. That was for the same reason that he didn’t mind waiting for Silvio even though he was late to show up at the playground.

  Whatever Silvio did was fine, because Silvio was bringing the money.

  It was only the second half of the money; the first fifty thousand had been paid in advance. George thought back to the day he had first been approached by Silvio. It was at a McDonald’s in Haddonfield; he was eating alone when Silvio sat down in his booth and put a thousand dollars in hundreds on the table.

  He told George that if he wanted to talk about getting much more, he’d be waiting in his car outside. If not, George could just use the money to buy about five hundred Big Macs.

  George hadn’t agonized over the decision; he almost beat Silvio to his car. And Silvio didn’t beat around the bush; he started by saying he had an offer to make, which he had already cleared with George’s boss, Fat Tony Longo.

  Silvio had obviously done research on George and knew he was an enforcer for Longo in the Philly area. And he knew that for a hundred grand in cash, fifty of it up front, George wouldn’t hesitate to commit a murder.

  Hell, he’d have done it for half that.

  George had only been at the playground for ten minutes when Silvio pulled up. He was carrying a briefcase; it looked like the same make and model that had contained the first fifty grand.

  As was obviously his style, Silvio came right to the point. “Tell me everything.”

  George shrugged, a combination of nonchalance and obvious pride. “Nothing to tell. I came in through the back door, picked the lock in no time. One shot in the back, another in the head to make sure. Then I took the items and threw open some drawers to make it look like the place had been gone through. Then I took some of the other things. Just like we talked about.”

  “Where is it?”

  “You mean the computer and the video stuff?”

  Silvio nodded. “That’s what I mean.”

  “It’s in my car. And I got that card out of the camera also.”

  “Good. So there were no problems?” Silvio asked.

  “Nah. He never knew what hit him. I went out the way I came in.”

  “What about the dog?”

  George just about did a double take. “How did you know about that?”

  “What about the dog?” The tone in Silvio’s voice made it obvious that he was doing the questioning, not the answering.

  “The guy had a dog; I think one of those bulldogs. My wife wants one of them, so I grabbed it. I got it back to the apartment and in the morning the piece of garbage bit me on the hand. So I had him killed.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Nah, I took him to a vet.” The irony is that George, having just killed the dog’s owner, never considered killing the dog himself. “I used a fake name and the dog didn’t have a tag or collar or anything. No way to trace him.”

  Silvio already had all this information; he just wanted to see what George would say. He also knew things George didn’t know. He knew that George’s wife, Denise, had already been killed, and the fifty grand advance had been recovered from George’s house. And he knew that George was soon going to follow Denise to the great beyond.

  And just like the guy George had killed, George never knew what hit him.

  James Haley was not Steven Spielberg.

  I know this because included in Sam’s comprehensive online rundown on Haley is a trailer for his upcoming documentary, The World Below, which was shot on the west coast of Florida.

  Actually, it looks like the film is more about getting to that “world below”; it’s an examination of scuba and sponge diving. Based on the trailer, which is only about ninety seconds long, the documentary doesn’t seem to have a point of view on the sport (if scuba diving is, in fact, a sport), but rather promises to present its good and bad aspects.

  I’ve never understood diving, though I admit that could be because I’ve never tried it. That lack of understanding is not likely to change, because if there is one thing in this world that I am certain of, it is that I am never going to try it.

  If I were to go to a Caribbean beach resort, which I almost never do, I would have two basic options. One would be to lie under an umbrella by the pool, reading and sipping piña coladas. When I tired of that, I could amble into the casino, play some blackjack, and sip more piña coladas.

  Or I could dive into eighty feet of water, which is about seventy-four feet taller than I am, standing on my toes. I could stick a large plastic thing in my mouth and place what looks like a two-ton tank on my back when I jump into the ocean. Heavy things like that are what mobsters put on bodies to make sure they don’t come to the surface.

  Then, once submerged in all that water, and assuming I could still breathe, I could hope that the pressure does not cause my eyeballs to explode. Then I could be on the lookout for all kinds of sharks and other killer fish. Even normal fish give me the creeps; if I order one in a restaurant, I make them fillet it and remove the head before bringing it to me. If they don’t, I can feel the eyes staring at me, and I know the fish is thinking, You win this round, pal, but when you go scuba diving, your ass is mine. That’s my turf.

  All this time I could hope that the guy who filled the tanks didn’t skimp on the air and instead filled them to the top, because if he didn’t, I could find myself sucking on whate
ver is the opposite of air.

  The trailer spends at least half its time on sponge diving, which is different in that the thing in the diver’s mouth is attached by a hose to a pump on a boat. He also wears a full bodysuit and a metal helmet, which makes him look like the Creature from the Something Lagoon.

  All of this means that the mouth thing, the suit, the hose, and the pump all have to be working flawlessly in order for the diver to continue breathing.

  I have never in my life owned a device that always worked flawlessly, and in this case I would be counting on four? I don’t think so.

  Of course, if I was the amateur diver, I probably would not know the person driving the boat, since we might have just met. For all I know, he could be totally nuts and might start racing the boat all over the place, thereby dragging me along by my teeth.

  And if everything worked great, the upside is that I’d wind up with a free sponge? I believe there are easier ways to get sponges, at reasonable cost, with no chance of dying.

  All in all, the bottom of the ocean is, to me, a world that would gradually turn into a nightmare. I can imagine myself suffocating and starting to panic as I came to the realization that escaping this foreign place was impossible. The only similar experience I have ever had was when Laurie took me to an IKEA.

  The documentary footage seems for the most part unremarkable. It points out the dangers of unscrupulous and untrained instructors, looking to make a quick buck off of unsuspecting newcomers to the sport. But it also speaks to the beauty of the undersea world and the uniqueness of the experience.

  According to Sam, the actual film when completed will be available on video but will never have a theatrical run. Of course, now that the filmmaker is dead, I would imagine the finishing of the film and its release are somewhat up in the air, or underwater.

  Sam provided me with another video, a finished project that Haley seems to have shot a couple of years ago. It’s another documentary, this one about a California town that has literally run out of well water. The people living there woke up one morning and turned on their taps, and nothing happened.