Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 3

  “If it can hold dogs, I want you to use it.”

  “Another thing is, I’ve caught strays, but I’ve never had to catch a whole big bunch of dogs that are all scared of people.”

  Oh, great. The dogcatcher didn’t know how to catch dogs. “Do it one at a time,” Tom said. “Rachel will help you. And we need to find out what happened to Gordon Hall’s shepherd. Until we do, at least some people are going to believe Hall’s death was just a case of a dog turning on its owner.”

  “I think somebody stole him,” Dolan said. “I think Dr. Hall got killed because somebody was trying to steal his dog.”

  “Somebody tried to steal Thor while Gordon was right there?” Dr. Lauter put in. “Wouldn’t that be a little, well, stupid?”

  “Maybe the shepherd was off-leash and the thief didn’t see Dr. Hall until he tried to stop his dog from being grabbed,” Dolan said. “I think all the pets that have disappeared have been stolen. The thief had his own dog with him last night, and when Hall tried to stop him, the thief sicced his dog on Hall.”

  Tom considered this but quickly discarded the theory. It didn’t jibe with what was on the answering machine tape. To Dolan, he said, “So why are pet dogs being stolen?”

  Dolan leaned forward, shoulders hunched and elbows on the table. “You want to know what I really think?”

  “What?”

  Dolan lowered his voice. “I think they’re being sacrificed.”

  “Sacrificed?” Tom frowned. “What are you talking about? Sacrificed for what?”

  Dolan’s voice dropped further, to a whisper. “Devil worship. A satanic cult.”

  Tom exchanged a look with Dr. Lauter, who raised an eyebrow quizzically. He asked Dolan, “Are you serious?”

  “You bet I am. Animal sacrifice is part of their worship services, their black mass. They—”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Tom rose. Ushering Dr. Lauter ahead of him, he walked out before Dolan could get started again on his theory.

  Devil worship. Black masses. A feral dog pack. A killer using a dog as a murder weapon. What next?

  The answer waited for him in the squad room.

  Lily Barker and Sergeant Dennis Murray were deep in conversation at his desk. Tom wanted to retreat before Mrs. Barker spotted him, but he didn’t act quickly enough. She rose, a long red caftan rippling around her angular figure. A striking black woman in her sixties, she stood almost as tall as Tom.

  “Hey, Tom,” Dennis said, “Mrs. Barker wanted to talk to you about Dr. Hall’s death.” He pushed his chronically slipping wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose, his hand barely concealing a smirk of amusement.

  “You’ve got some information for me?” Tom asked her. A feeling, an intuition, a mysterious image that came to you in a dream? The woman claimed to possess what mountain people called “the sight”—but although she’d guessed correctly in a general way about a couple of past crimes, Tom couldn’t take her seriously. He didn’t want to invite her back to his office.

  The resignation in her slight smile told him he’d allowed his impatience to show. “I won’t keep you from your work, Captain Bridger,” she said, “but I felt compelled to warn you that there is a great deal more to Dr. Hall’s death than might be readily apparent.”

  “And what would that—Wait a minute. You’re connected to the Halls, aren’t you? Through Raymond Porter? He’s your nephew or cousin?”

  “Raymond is my cousin Lucinda’s son. And yes, he is Marcy and David’s natural father.”

  Tom frowned, realizing that he hadn’t considered the possible involvement of Raymond Porter in Hall’s murder. David and Marcy’s birth mother, a white woman named Jewel Riggs, had never married their black father. When Jewel died of a drug overdose eight or nine years ago, Gordon and Vicky Hall quickly adopted the children. Tom hadn’t heard anything about their father kicking up a fuss over the adoption or trying to reclaim the kids, but that didn’t mean he was happy with the arrangement.

  “Where is Raymond now?” Tom asked. “Is he back in the county?”

  The look Mrs. Barker gave him combined sorrow and reproach. “No, Captain, he’s not here. He’s in Richmond, and he was in Richmond at the time Dr. Hall was killed. You went to high school with Raymond, didn’t you? If you know him at all, you know he is incapable of committing murder.”

  Tom and Raymond hadn’t been best buds, but except for an occasional foray into drug use, Raymond had seemed like an ordinary nice guy. It was a stretch to imagine him turning a killer dog loose on somebody. But Tom knew better than to write off the nice guys. They could be the most dangerous of all.

  “If Raymond happens to come visiting, tell him I’d like to see him.” Tom rose. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “Before you dismiss me, Captain, I’d like to tell you what brought me here today.”

  Tom suppressed a weary sigh. “You’ve got something for me?”

  “Not hard cold facts, no, I’m sorry. But I feel very strongly—”

  Right, Tom thought. Here we go.

  “—that something evil is happening in Mason County.” Mrs. Barker tilted her chin. “It took root under the dog star, and now it flourishes in hidden places. It must be stopped before more lives are lost.”

  ***

  Rachel paused in the doorway of the pharmacy room and watched Dr. Jim Sullivan transfer vials and bottles from the cabinets to his leather case. Sullivan, the clinic’s large animal vet, traveled to his patients instead of the other way around, and Rachel wasn’t used to seeing him at the animal hospital during the work day. Lately, though, he’d been in more often, and taken an unusually large stash of supplies—surgical materials, bandages, medications.

  Without looking up, Sullivan asked, “Can I help you with something, Dr. Goddard?”

  As he always did, he somehow made her feel like the underling dealing with an authority figure. He was in his fifties, more than twenty years her senior, with gray hair and the leathery skin of a man who spent too much time outdoors in every kind of weather. His superior air always threw Rachel off a little. You’re the boss, she reminded herself. She owned the clinic. Sullivan worked for her.

  “Have you been seeing a higher than normal rate of illness and injury?” she asked.

  “Naw, I’m just running low on everything. I’ve been restocking a little at a time. Didn’t want to clean you out all at once.”

  He still didn’t look at her. That was the most irritating thing about the man. Rachel couldn’t recall him ever making direct eye contact with her. “If you’ll give me a list,” she said, “I’ll order supplies especially for you.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve got everything I need now.” Sullivan closed the drug cabinet and locked it. He flipped open the log book and began to enter the medications he was taking.

  Sullivan had his own key to the drug cabinet, and a key to the clinic’s back door, because he usually came in after hours. Rachel felt uneasy about this situation, but she couldn’t justify taking away his keys and forcing him to requisition supplies through her. After a fire had damaged the clinic’s rear wall the previous January, and the door was replaced, she’d reluctantly handed over a key to the new lock to Sullivan. He had worked here for three decades before Rachel bought the place a year and a half ago, and he had his own way of doing things. As long as he accounted for his time and turned in the fees he collected from clients, she couldn’t find fault with his work. And yet—

  She pushed the thought away and said, “I was wondering if you’d help out at the animal sanctuary Holly Turner’s creating. We want to get those feral dogs into the shelter, and we’ll need to do a health evaluation on every animal that’s brought in.”

  Sullivan’s harsh laugh startled her. Was he laughing at her or at the very idea of what she’d proposed?

  Snapping his case shut, Sullivan said, “What’s the point of putting dogs like that into a shelter?”

  “The point is to save their lives. I don’t want them to starve to dea
th, or end up getting shot. They can be rehabilitated. We can try to find homes for them.”

  He chuckled, a humorless and derisive sound, and shook his head. “Look, Dr. Goddard—”

  “Rachel,” she put in. “Please. Isn’t it about time you started calling me Rachel?”

  “I don’t see that it makes any difference what I call you.” His gaze flicked toward her face, skidded away. “I was about to say, most of the animals I treat are going to end up on somebody’s dinner plate. I keep them healthy so they can be slaughtered and cut into pieces and cooked and eaten. I learned a long time ago not to get dewy-eyed and sentimental about any animal. Least of all a bunch of dogs that have already been ruined.”

  “But don’t you think we should at least try—”

  “You can do whatever you want to.” Sullivan hefted his case and faced her, but instead of meeting her eyes he looked over her right shoulder at the wall beyond. “In my opinion, those dogs ought to be put down when they’re caught. They’re damaged. Nobody’s going to want them, and I don’t see the point of making them live in cages the rest of their lives. Sorry, but I can’t be part of your rescue fantasy.”

  Sullivan walked out and left Rachel, her face burning, unsure whether she was embarrassed or angry.

  Chapter Four

  Ethan Hall didn’t so much ask to see Tom as summon him to the Hall house for an audience. “I want a full accounting of what you’re doing about my father’s death,” the Halls’ oldest son said on the phone. “I’ll be expecting you within the hour.”

  He hung up before Tom could reply. Dropping the receiver back into its cradle on his office desk, Tom gave a moment’s cranky consideration to ignoring Ethan’s command. The guy had always been an arrogant punk. Ethan was in his mid-twenties now, a med school dropout, and he worked as a regional rep for a medical supplies company, but he was as self-important as his physician father had been.

  He was also a son whose father had just died under horrifying circumstances, so he had to be cut some slack. Tom was planning to head out to the Hall house again this morning in any case.

  He pushed away from his desk and rose. It was such a mild late-September day that he left his uniform jacket hanging from a hook on the back of the office door.

  ***

  The Halls’ big Georgian house looked deceptively peaceful, with the mellow morning sunlight warming the red brick and reflecting off the rows of windows. Red and yellow leaves drifted down from massive oaks and maples. Tom pulled into the brick-paved parking circle next to Ethan Hall’s black Lexus and climbed out of his cruiser. As he mounted the front steps, a bluejay in a tall holly next to the door gave a squawk of alarm and burst into flight.

  Tom had barely touched the brass knocker when Ethan yanked the door open. He cut off Tom’s greeting. “I want you to know that I hold the county officials, including the Sheriff’s Department, entirely responsible for my father’s death. If any of you were doing your jobs, those dogs would have been caught and disposed of months ago.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Tom said. “The dog pack didn’t kill your father. Hasn’t anyone told you about the answering machine tape?”

  Ethan’s sister Soo Jin joined him at the door, crossed her arms and regarded Tom with cold dark eyes. “Everybody says there were no other voices on the tape. Maybe it’s easier for you to deny the dogs killed him—”

  “Easier?” Tom shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t say a murder investigation is easier than tracking down a few dogs. Look, I know you’re both upset, you’re trying to come to terms with your loss—”

  “Don’t patronize us,” Soo Jin said. “We’ll be watching every step you take, and we’ll make sure you do what needs to be done.”

  “Nobody has to force me to do my job.”

  The two of them glared at him. Their contemptuous expressions were all they had in common. Ethan, his parents’ natural son, looked like a younger version of Gordon Hall, with a boyish face, wavy brown hair and brown eyes. Soo Jin, several years younger than Ethan and now in medical school, had been adopted as a baby from a Korean orphanage. Her shining black hair fell to her shoulders around a square face with prominent cheekbones.

  “Tom?” Vicky Hall called from the living room. “I’m in here.”

  “Do you two mind if I come in?” Tom stepped into the foyer, forcing Ethan and Soo Jin to get out of his way.

  They trailed him to the living room, with Ethan hissing over Tom’s shoulder, “I don’t want you grilling her and upsetting her even more. She’s having enough trouble coping with this.”

  Tom ignored him and joined Vicky Hall, who was plucking faded flowers from a vase atop a cabinet. Although she had dressed in slacks and a blouse and combed her lusterless hair back from her face, the attempt to keep up normal behavior patterns only succeeded in emphasizing her dire condition. Her clothes swallowed her skeletal body, and without a tightly cinched belt her slacks might have slid to the floor. Her hands trembled when she thrust the rejected flowers at Rayanne Stuckey, the family’s housekeeper.

  Rayanne, a sharp-featured woman in her early thirties with bleached blond curls, took the discarded blooms as Vicky pulled them out of the vase.

  “Oh, they’re all beyond saving,” Vicky said. She shoved the vase itself, sloshing water and still half full of flowers, at Rayanne. “Get rid of them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Rayanne struggled to grasp the big vase while holding onto the half-dozen stems already in her hands. One flower slipped from her grasp, and Tom heard her whisper, “Oh, shit.” When he retrieved it and stuck it into the vase she threw a vague, distracted glance his way and didn’t thank him.

  Rayanne marched out of the room with a sour twist to her lips, as if she couldn’t wait to dispose of her burden. Ethan and Soo Jin stationed themselves on either side of their mother, and Tom got the strong message that they were there to protect Vicky from him. For the first time Tom noticed someone whose presence puzzled him—Leo Riggs, who owned a local car repair shop, stood by the French doors with his slight shoulders hunched under a sweatshirt and his hands jammed into the pockets of grease-streaked jeans. Leo was David and Marcy’s uncle, their birth mother’s brother, but he was the last person Tom would expect to find in the Hall house. Leo’s eyes met Tom’s briefly, then shifted away.

  Vicky was saying something about her husband hating the sight of half-dead flowers around the house.

  Turning his attention back to her, Tom asked, “Can I speak to you privately?”

  “About what?” Ethan demanded. “There’s nothing you have to say to my mother that you can’t say in front of me.”

  “Oh, Ethan, don’t be ridiculous,” Vicky said. “Yes, of course we can speak privately. Children, would you—No, wait, let’s just go into Gordon’s home office.”

  “Mom,” Ethan protested.

  At the same time, Soo Jin said, “Mother, you need someone with you when you speak to the police.”

  “What makes you think that?” Tom asked her. “I’m not accusing your mother of a crime. This isn’t an interrogation.”

  Soo Jin took a breath and drew herself up as if trying to stand taller before Tom’s six-feet-plus. “Then what is it, exactly? Hasn’t she already told you everything she remembers?”

  “Why do you want to put her through it again?” Ethan added.

  “Will you two stop it?” Vicky said. “The last thing I need is all this carping. Now go away and let us talk.”

  Ethan and Soo Jin reacted to their mother’s reprimand with the shocked expressions of kids who thought they’d been scolded unfairly. Instead of doing as she asked, the brother and sister trailed Vicky and Tom out of the living room and down the hall. Vicky led Tom into her husband’s home office. He shut the door in Ethan and Soo Jin’s faces.

  “You’ll have to excuse them.” Vicky sank onto a small sofa as if coming to rest after a long, exhausting journey. Against the dark green upholstery, her skin had a pale grayish cast. “This is so hard o
n all of us. They’re just striking out because they feel helpless, and I suppose a policeman makes a convenient target.”

  “Are you all right?” Tom rolled the desk chair over to the sofa and sat facing her. “Do you need to see your doctor?”

  She shook her head. “I feel as if I need dialysis again already, but I just had a treatment yesterday and I’m not due again until tomorrow.”

  “If you need it—”

  “I’ll call the doctor in a little while if I don’t feel better.” She sat forward, clasped her bony hands in her lap, and fixed her attention on Tom. “Now. How can I help you?”

  “You can start by telling me that you realize your husband wasn’t killed by the feral dog pack.”

  “If that’s the opinion of the medical experts, I believe it without question. But Gordon was killed by a dog, wasn’t he?”

  “By one dog. If the rest of the pack had been there—”

  “They would have joined in. They would have torn him apart.” Her voice broke on the last words.

  At least one member of the Hall family had accepted the truth. “It was one dog, and someone was with it. Its owner, another person.”

  “Who stood by and let his dog kill my husband.” A tear trickled down her right cheek.

  “That’s what it sounded like.” Tom hoped she could hold herself together long enough to get through this interview. “It could have been an accidental encounter that went bad, but it was on your land, well inside the property line where you wouldn’t expect to see other people with their dogs. I believe it was a planned attack. It was murder.”

  A shudder ran through Vicky, shook her thin shoulders. “Why would somebody do such a thing?”

  “Do you know of anybody with a grievance against your husband? Has anything happened lately that stands out in your mind?”

  “Gordon was a good man,” she said. “He was generous, always trying to help people. Everybody loved him.”

  Was Hall’s wife really as blind to his faults as she pretended? “He ran a hospital. He had lots of employees, the hospital has lots of patients. There must have been people who had disagreements with him. This isn’t the time to hold anything back. Can you think of somebody he’d fired, somebody whose relative died at the hospital—”