Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Read online

  “Oh!” Vicky pressed a hand to her mouth.

  “What?” Tom said. “Do you remember something?”

  “That man whose wife—She died in the hospital and her husband thinks she was mistreated.”

  “He thinks the hospital was responsible for her death?”

  “No, no. She had cancer that had metastasized. There was no hope of saving her. But her husband claims she was tortured, if you can believe that, because she was allowed to experience pain. He’s been threatening a lawsuit, and he keeps turning up wherever Gordon goes and causing a scene.”

  Tom frowned. “We haven’t had any reports about your husband being harassed.”

  “No, because Gordon was too kind a person to get the poor man in trouble on top of everything else he’s going through. I begged Gordon to get the police involved, but he said the husband was working out his grief and would come to terms with it eventually.”

  “What’s his name?” Tom pulled his notebook and a pen from his shirt pocket.

  “Wallace Green. Do you know him?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know Wally.” The man was now raising four children alone. “His wife died about six months ago. Breast cancer, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. It was terribly sad.” Vicky shook her head. “She was so young, and it could have been caught at an early stage if she’d seen a doctor regularly. It’s a tragedy, but Gordon wasn’t at fault in any way. He understood, though, that her husband needed someone to blame for her suffering at the end. With any painful death, there’s always a need to make sense of it. Do you think he could have done this? Turned his dog on Gordon?”

  “I’ll look into it,” Tom said. “Can you think of anybody else with a grudge against your husband?”

  Vicky leaned back, sighed, and closed her eyes as if suddenly overcome with weariness. “I’ll have to think about it. Right now I just—I’m just feeling, you know? It’s hard to think coherently when I’m so emotional.”

  “I understand,” Tom said. “But I do have to look into your husband’s dealings with other people, personal and professional. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell your children not to stand in my way.”

  “I will, Tom, I’ll do that, but Ethan and Soo are both convinced Gordon was killed by those wild dogs, and I don’t know how long it will take for them to see the truth.”

  “If they loved their father, and I’m sure they did, they’ll cooperate and help me find out what really happened.” As they rose to leave the office, Tom asked, “By the way, what’s Leo Riggs doing here?”

  “Oh, he drove Rayanne to work. You know, I had no idea she was even involved with him. I wouldn’t have hired her, I wouldn’t have her working right here in the house, if I’d known. Now he’s helping Ethan organize people to hunt down those dogs.” Vicky sighed. “If Gordon were still alive, Leo Riggs wouldn’t get through the door.”

  “Marcy and David know he’s their uncle, don’t they?” Tom wondered how freely the Halls communicated their contempt for Marcy and David’s birth family to the kids.

  “Yes, of course they know,” Vicky said. “And it’s not as if we have anything against Leo personally. But Marcy and David are our children now.”

  “Do you ever hear from their birth father and his family?” Their black father, their black grandparents. “Have they seen the kids since the adoption?”

  “Of course not.” Vicky seemed astonished that Tom had asked such a question. “It would be too confusing for them to have interaction with those people.”

  It wouldn’t be easy to enforce a lifelong total separation when they all lived in the same small county, where everybody knew the story of the children’s adoption by the Halls. But that didn’t concern Tom unless it had something to do with Hall’s death. His immediate problem was putting a stop to any plans Riggs had to round up his gun-toting pals for a dog hunt.

  When they returned to the living room, Tom realized it was already too late to call a halt. While he and Vicky Hall talked, a dozen men had gathered on the patio, and every one of them held a rifle or shotgun.

  “What’s going on?” Tom demanded of Ethan.

  “Oh, my lord, Ethan,” Vicky exclaimed. “Who are these people? What are they doing on our patio?”

  “I’m getting a search party together,” Ethan said. “We’re going after those dogs, since the Sheriff’s Department doesn’t seem interested in protecting citizens from them.”

  “This is not a good idea,” Tom said.

  “Leo and Rayanne got all their friends together to help,” Ethan said. “These people don’t want the same thing that happened to my father to happen to somebody in their families.”

  Leo Riggs, who still lurked just inside the French doors as if hesitant to venture farther into the expensively furnished room, kept his eyes focused on the carpet. When Tom glanced at Rayanne Stuckey, she dropped her gaze.

  “The Sheriff’s Department and the animal warden are going to deal with those dogs, probably starting tonight,” Tom said. “I don’t want a mob of people roaming around with guns, especially not at the same time we’re—”

  “A mob?” Ethan cut in. “That’s how you describe people who are trying to protect their families from a menace that’s running loose in the county?”

  “Those dogs didn’t kill your father, Ethan.”

  “Nobody’s shown me any proof of that.”

  With some effort, Tom kept his voice level. “I want you to come into headquarters and listen to the answering machine tape. And you can read the autopsy report when we get it. It won’t be pleasant, but it ought to give you the proof you need.”

  “If the dog pack didn’t kill him,” Soo Jin said, stepping forward, “then who—or what—did?”

  “I’ll do my best to find out. All this nonsense—” Tom waved a hand at the men milling about on the patio. “—just confuses the issue. And it’s going to use up police manpower that could be put to better use elsewhere. If I have to assign deputies to make sure this bunch doesn’t accidentally shoot somebody, that’s fewer officers I have to investigate your father’s death.”

  “Don’t worry about baby-sitting us,” Ethan said. “We don’t need any deputies along to slow us down.”

  Tom focused on Riggs. “Don’t get mixed up in this, Leo. If somebody gets hurt, it’ll be on your head.”

  Riggs shrank back against the wall and hunched his slight shoulders, making Tom think of the Uriah Heep character out of Dickens. He couldn’t see any resemblance to David and Marcy in this man’s sharp features and closely cropped brown hair. “I’m not lookin’ to stir up trouble, Captain. Ethan here asked me to do a favor and I couldn’t rightly say no. Dr. Hall was a good man. I appreciate what him and Mrs. Hall are doin’ for my sister’s kids.”

  Tom heard Vicky‘s sharp inhalation.

  Riggs hung his head, as if fully aware that Vicky was reacting to the reminder of their connection.

  Tom pushed open the French doors and stepped onto the patio. The men gathered there all turned to face him and fell silent.

  “I know you guys mean well,” he told them, “but I can’t allow this hunt.”

  He could see resistance and hostility take hold in their eyes, but no one responded.

  Ethan, following him out, said, “If people allow us on their property, you have nothing to say about it.”

  Mumbling started among the assembled men.

  “Listen to me,” Tom said. “This is getting to be—”

  “Hey, look!” one of the men cried. He pointed toward the woods.

  Tom followed his gesture. Down at the bottom of the slope, an animal had emerged from the woods and was limping toward the house.

  “Oh my god,” Ethan exclaimed. “It’s Thor. It’s Dad’s dog.”

  He started running, with Tom right behind him.

  Chapter Five

  The German shepherd cringed when Tom and Ethan approached.

  “My god,” Ethan said, the color draining from his face. “Look at him. What’
s happened to him?”

  Several layers of tape bound the old dog’s muzzle. Forced to breathe only through his nose, he labored to pull in enough air, his sides contracting and expanding in a ragged rhythm. In place of his collar, a length of rope dangled from his neck. Dried blood encrusted one hind leg, and Tom saw bite wounds on his neck, shoulders, and back.

  “We’ll figure out what happened to him later,” he said. “Right now we need to cut that tape off so he can breathe and get him up to the house.”

  Ethan knelt and held out a hand to the dog. “Come on, boy,” he coaxed.

  The dog backed away.

  “He’s scared to death.” Tom pulled out the latex gloves he always carried in a pocket and tugged them on. He didn’t want to smudge any fingerprints that might be on the tape. “Take it slow.”

  “Hey, Thor, come on, boy,” Ethan crooned. “I’ll bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? We’ll take care of you. Come on, Thor. Come to me, boy.”

  Thor cast longing eyes toward the house on the hill, toward safety, but he hung back, whining. Tom had to admire Ethan’s patience with the dog. He coaxed Thor until the animal’s rigid body began to relax. He limped forward, one inch at a time. When he was within reach Ethan closed his arms around the dog.

  “Just hold him there for a minute,” Tom said. He extracted his Swiss army knife from his pants pocket and stepped forward slowly. As if realizing he was being freed of the restraint, Thor stood still while Tom slit the tape and eased it off. He folded it and stuck it in his pants pocket, hoping he wasn’t obliterating any fingerprints in the process.

  “Let’s get him home now,” Tom said. The dog was too big for either of them to carry up the slope. Thor would have to walk on his own, despite his injured leg.

  On the way up, with Thor limping between them, Tom pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and called Rachel.

  By the time they reached the patio, Vicky had stepped out, along with Soo Jin, Beth, David and Marcy. “Dr. Goddard’s on her way,” Tom told Vicky.

  She dropped to her knees before the dog and caressed his head. Thor licked her cheek. “Oh, you poor baby. I’ve been so worried about you.”

  The crowd of men on the patio stood back, guns in their hands, and watched silently.

  Looking up at Tom, Vicky said, “He’s so old and feeble he couldn’t defend himself against that vicious dog. Just look at all these wounds.”

  Yeah, Tom thought, but that vicious dog didn’t tape Thor’s mouth shut and tie a rope around his neck.

  ***

  Half an hour later, Rachel knelt beside the dog in Gordon Hall’s home office, where Thor’s big bed occupied a corner. While her children crowded the doorway, Vicky Hall sat on the sofa, blotting a continuous flow of tears with the handkerchief Tom had given her.

  Tom crouched beside Rachel, ready to help restrain Thor if he reacted while she tended his wounds. The rope and the taped muzzle were undeniable evidence that someone had held the dog overnight and had plans for him. Memories, the kind Tom didn’t like to dwell on, flooded his mind. Memories of dogs he and other deputies had confiscated from fighting operations. After every raid, Tom spent weeks trying to shake the images.

  “Would somebody bring Thor a bowl of fresh drinking water, please?” Rachel asked the assembled Halls.

  Young Marcy raised her hand as if responding to a teacher’s request. She wheeled around and disappeared. Less than a minute later she returned, carrying a dog bowl brimming with water. She presented it to Rachel with a brief, shy smile.

  “Thank you.” Rachel rewarded the girl with her own warm smile as she took the bowl.

  Before she began her exam, she allowed Thor to take a few laps of water, then removed the dish and set it a couple of feet away. “Let’s see if he keeps that down, then he can have some more,” she said. “Mrs. Hall, would you get him something to eat? Just a little to start, a quarter cup, and bring a spoon with it.”

  After Vicky pushed past her children in the doorway and went off to the kitchen, Rachel pulled back Thor’s blood-matted hair to get a better look at his wounds. He remained still and quiet. “His skin’s ripped open,” Rachel told Tom, “but I don’t see any deep puncture wounds. He should be okay.”

  Tom spoke quietly. “You know, I’m starting to think…”

  When his words trailed off, Rachel prompted, “What? What are you thinking?”

  Conscious of the Hall children a few feet away, Tom said, “I’ll explain later. Don’t let me slow you down.”

  Vicky brought in the canned dog food and fed tiny amounts to Thor on a spoon to distract him while Rachel treated his wounds. Tom stood back and took in the family’s reactions. Marcy and Beth, standing just inside the door, grimaced as Rachel wove a needle and black suture thread in and out of the dog’s torn skin, but Soo Jin craned her neck to get a better view. David leaned in the doorway, wearing a sullen teenager’s scowl. Ethan stood rigid, hands jammed in his pockets, his face blank.

  Her work finished, Rachel sat back on her heels and asked Vicky, “Can you look after him here? I don’t want to stress him any more by moving him, but if you can’t manage him here I’ll take him to the animal hospital.”

  “I’m a nurse,” Vicky said. “I can take care of him.”

  “Mother,” Soo Jin said, “I don’t want you to exhaust yourself.”

  “Your father loved this dog,” Vicky said. “I can’t help Gordon, but I can help Thor. Now all of you go find something else to occupy yourselves. Thor needs peace and quiet.”

  Her children reluctantly turned away, one by one. Rachel gave Vicky a bottle of antibiotics for the dog. When Tom and Rachel left the room, Vicky was sitting cross-legged on the carpet next to Thor, stroking him. Tom couldn’t help wondering if she had given any of her suddenly fatherless children a fraction of the attention she lavished on her husband’s pet.

  In the hallway, Tom told Rachel, “I want to talk to you before you leave, but first I need to deal with that mob on the patio.”

  “There’s a mob on the patio?” Rachel said. “Why?”

  “It’s a bunch of idiots with guns who think the feral dogs killed Gordon Hall. They want to hunt down the dogs and kill them.”

  “What?” Rachel exclaimed.

  “Aw, Christ. Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?”

  “I want to talk to these people. Which way is the patio?”

  “Oh, no. Don’t even think about it. I’ll handle them.”

  “But I can tell them—”

  “You can’t tell them anything they’ll want to hear, believe me. Stay out of it. All right?”

  Rachel blew out an impatient sigh. “All right, all right.”

  When Tom opened the French doors from the living room onto the patio, the armed men greeted him with truculent silence. Ethan, looking pale and shaken, followed Tom outside and stood with the men.

  “I want all of you to go home and put away your guns,” Tom said. “The Sheriff’s Department and the animal warden will deal with the dog pack.”

  The men muttered, a drone of discontent that produced no clear words Tom could make out. One man, though, spoke up. Tom knew the guy, a sharp-nosed runt named Larry Randolph who had been hauled in a few times for assault after drunken Saturday night fights with his wife. His wife inevitably came around the next morning begging for his release and claiming the fight had been entirely her fault. “All you’ve been doin’ is actin’ like it’s not any kind of a problem to have a pack of wild dogs runnin’ loose. If you’d been doin’ your job, this boy’s dad would still be alive.” He gestured at Ethan.

  A chorus of voices rose in agreement. Ethan looked down at his feet.

  “The dogs didn’t kill Dr. Hall,” Tom said. “All the evidence—”

  “The hell they didn’t,” Randolph said. “We got to protect our families, if you won’t do it. I don’t want my kids gettin’ attacked by those dogs. We need to get rid of every last one of them.”

  Tom was about to answer when
Rachel stepped onto the patio. “We’re going to trap the dogs, starting tonight,” she said.

  “Rachel, go back inside,” Tom said. Why couldn’t she stay out of this? She had no authority that these men would recognize. “Please.”

  She went on, “There’s a shelter being built on the old McClure property, and it’s ready now to house some animals. We’ll trap them and take them there.”

  “Then what?” one of the men asked.

  “Yeah,” put in another. “You gonna feed ’em and pamper them like they’s somebody’s housepets?”

  “They were pets,” Rachel said. “They could be again, after they’re rehabilitated.”

  “Rehabilitated?” Randolph exclaimed. He looked around at the men, an incredulous half-smile on his face. “You hear that? She’s gonna rehabilitate a bunch of killer dogs.”

  The other men responded with derisive laughter.

  Tom could see Rachel winding up to fire back a hot response. He gripped her arm and spoke in a low growl. “Get back inside. You’re making matters worse.”

  She threw an outraged look at him, but she spun and stepped back in, closing the French doors after her.

  “You sure you can handle that woman of yours?” Randolph asked. The others laughed. “She’d better be careful if she’s goin’ out at night lookin’ for them dogs. We’re gonna be shootin’ anything that moves.”

  “Did I hear you right?” Tom stepped closer, looming over the man. “Did you just threaten to shoot Dr. Goddard?”

  “I said what I meant. You take it any way you want to.” Jutting his chin, Randolph tried to hold his challenging posture, but he didn’t have Tom’s staying power. After a few seconds under Tom’s glare, Randolph broke eye contact and scraped a hand over his stubbly chin.

  “If anything happens to her,” Tom said, “I’m coming straight for you.”

  “Nobody’s threatening your girlfriend,” Ethan said. “We just want to get rid of those animals.”