Bark M for Murder Read online

  “For the time being. Now, get your coat.”

  I got my coat.

  Charley jumped up on the armchair, sniffed the bullet hole, and began barking and digging at it with his front paws.

  “Charley, leave it,” Cady said, but he kept digging. “You’re an expert,” she turned to me. “Why’s he doing that?”

  I’d seen abusive or insensitive trainers use a shake-can to scare a defenseless puppy, most of whom will cautiously sniff the offending object once the trainer is out of range. So the way I figured it, the gunshot had frightened Charley, which is why he’d been playing tug with my pants—to relieve his nervous tension. Now that he felt more secure, he was checking out the bullet hole by digging and barking at it.

  Anyway, that was my theory, but I just said: “I have no idea.”

  “Well, you’re a dog trainer. Make him stop.”

  “Sure.”

  I clapped my hands and praised Charley in a high, silly voice. He leapt down, came over, and jumped up to my shin.

  “Huh,” she said. “What’d you just do?”

  “I interrupted him with a neutral sound distraction and then praised him, using a high, silly voice.”

  “And that’s all it takes to get him to stop him barking?”

  “Yeah, in a situation like this, anyway. And it works better than shouting ‘No!” in any situation.“

  “Couldn’t you have just told me that over the phone?”

  I shrugged. “People don’t usually believe it until they see it in action.”

  She shook her head in disbelief, praised the dog, then said, “Come to mama, Charley.”

  He ran over to her. She picked him up with her free hand, grabbed her coat, then .45ed me toward the door.

  We went out to my car. Cady had me get in the passenger side, made me crawl over to the driver’s seat while she got in, still holding the gun. She tossed the keys and I backed out of the driveway, making a mental note about the make, model, and plate number of what I assumed was Earl’s car, a battered tan Toyota that hadn’t been parked out front when I’d arrived. The car had a Maine license plate and I was able to memorize the first three characters—H67.

  I drove out of town, with Cady holding the dog in her lap and the gun on me. “Turn here,” she would say, or “slow down,” until we got past the Belfast city limits and onto Lincolnville Road. She sat slightly sideways, with her knees and the gun pointed in my direction—and damnit, she still looked astonishing, even over the barrel of an automatic. Charley was curled up in her lap now, fast asleep and happy.

  “Are you really a detective?” she said after a while.

  “Yeah, my fiancee is the State Medical Examiner. I’m her consultant in criminology. So, now you know that I’m a law enforcement officer, and you know that you can’t get away with this, so why are you risking jail time for this guy Earl?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She shook her head. Her hair fell pretty across her eyes and she brushed it back with the steel of the gun. “Let’s just say I owe him.”

  “Owe him, how?”

  She shook her head again but didn’t answer me. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s not like I’m going to actually do anything to you. I just needed to give Earl a chance to get away.”

  “Still,” I said, “you’re committing a felony.”

  She shook her head, smiled. “You won’t file a complaint against me. And even if you did, I’d get off anyway.”

  I chewed my lower lip. She was probably right.

  After a while she said, “I’m a paralegal so I know what a criminologist does.”

  “A paralegal? That takes a bit of study.”

  “Well, I’m not dumb. Of course, all I ever really wanted to be was an actress but…” She touched her scar.

  “You could have it removed.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Still, with my face scarred like this, maybe I could do some edgy, independent films, you know, like Sundance-type stuff?”

  “Uh-huh. So why are you stuck here in Maine instead of living in New York or Los Angeles?”

  “It takes money.” She stared out the window then looked back at me. “So, you analyze the criminal mind, huh?” I said I did. “Well,” she snorted, “don’t waste your time on Earl’s. He hasn’t got one. It’s his cousin, Joe Bruno.” She squinted at me. “You never heard of him? He’s an evil bastard but Earl worships him. He’d do anything for Bruno.”

  “No, the only Joe Bruno I know of is a republican state senator from New York. I suppose some people think he’s an evil bastard, but they’re democrats, mostly.”

  She scowled. “Sure, make jokes. Meanwhile Earl’s ruining my life again, just like he always has.” She looked at me. “If you’re a detective then how come you didn’t have a gun?”

  I laughed. “I told you I’m retired. There’s not much call for most dog trainers to carry a gun around with them.”

  “I wish you’d had one; you coulda shot Earl for me.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t say that. He actually saved my ass once, the dumb sonovabitch.” It was an epithet, but the tone in her voice made it sound like a line from a love song.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  She looked out at the road. “Not really.”

  Time passed; she sighed and elaborated: Earl’s father ran off when Earl was ten and his older cousin, Joe Bruno, took Earl under his wing. She described Bruno as a low-life scumbag who taught Earl how to shoplift, break into stores, hot-wire a car, shoot a gun, and a lot of other useless stuff.

  “Bruno was one of those types where if there was a right way or a wrong way to do things, he’d go the wrong way just for the hell of it.”

  “Sounds like he might have sociopathic tendencies.”

  “I don’t know what you’d call it. Anyway, he’d been in jail a few times for petty stuff and he decided it would be to his advantage to have an underage accomplice like Earl to take the rap for any future crimes or shenanigans.”

  “And Earl went for it?”

  “Are you kidding? He did it all the time. In fact, he loved doing it. It was only a matter of time, though, before some overzealous judge decided enough was enough and put him in jail instead of another juvie hall. He was seventeen.”

  There was something off-key about the way her grammar veered from criminal slang to legalese and back again.

  We came to the village of Dog Island Corner; a church, a gas station /general store. I slowed to twenty-five, went through the intersection, then picked up speed again.

  Cady checked her watch. Charley snuffled, shifted around a bit, then went back to sleep.

  I looked at her knowing that such sheer beauty as hers has its own gravity. I think she knew this too and had used it to pull Earl into her orbit the same way Bruno used Earl’s youthful need for a father figure to get him to always take the rap for his crimes. The thought galled me. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not crazy about dumb crooks who threaten to put a bullet in my brainpan, but if Cady’s bio on Earl was true, then his whole raison d’etre, crookwise, was based on honor and loyalty, two things I admire in anyone, even a moron.

  I let out a harsh breath then said, “The next thing you’ll tell me is that Earl only robbed the bank in order to pay for your eye surgery, or your cancer treatment or—”

  Defiantly: “And what if one of those things is true?”

  I laughed bitterly. “If it is, don’t tell me about it while I’m driving. My tears might cloud the road.”

  “Bastard! Why are you such a hard-ass all of a sudden?”

  “Hey, I’m sorry, but when people start pointing guns and threatening to kill me, I tend to lose my natural vivacity.”

  “Your natural what?”

  “Never mind. It just means I start feeling antisocial.”

  Silence held the car for a while then she said, “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I certainly never asked Earl to rob that bank.”

  “Maybe not. Bu
t we both know he did it for you.”

  “That’s true.” She spoke the words so sadly that I almost had some sympathy for her. Almost.

  By now we’d gone about five miles past Dog Island Corner. She checked her watch and told me to pull over to the irrigation ditch, leave the keys in the ignition, and get out. I did, and stood in the dead leaves by the side of the road.

  She crawled over to the driver’s seat. “I’m not a bad person,” she said through the window. “I distracted Earl earlier when he had the gun on you, remember?”

  “Yeah, I think you did that to protect Charley, not me.”

  “No, I didn’t. I knew Earl wouldn’ta shot Charley. He loves dogs.”

  “Huh, no kidding…” I was starting to like this punk Earl, lizard face and all.

  “Yeah, the dumb sonovabitch,” she said. “He just got out of jail a few weeks ago and he has to do this. I only hope that—”

  I took the bait. “What?”

  “That him and Bruno don’t kill each other over it.”

  “Why? I thought Earl idolized Bruno.”

  She didn’t say anything; she just shook her head again.

  Then she and Charley took off, with the little dog barking at me, his voice smearing the distance, and I was left alone at eleven-thirty on a bright October morning to hoof it back to Dog Island Corner to try to find a pay phone.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said to a blue jay who seemed to be listening, “I’m screening all my prospective clients a lot more closely from now on.”

  “Yeah, right,” he seemed to say, but it was mostly just derisive chirping.

  I made the 911 call at the general store, gave them the make and partial plate number of Earl’s car, and my location, and in short order I was picked up by Jamie’s ex-uncle-in-law, Rockland County Sheriff Horace Flynn, a big-boned, big-bellied, salt-and-pepper mustached tough guy with a soft spot for Jamie. He drove me back to Cady’s place in hopes that she’d driven my car back there. She had.

  We also found a couple of Belfast and Bangor RD. cars parked out front. Earl’s car was still out front too, but Cady and Earl were long gone.

  The cops were doing the usual cop things: searching the house, yard, and garage, dusting for prints, extracting the bullet that had wounded the armchair so ballistics could see if it matched the one that had killed the bank guard, etc.

  My keys were on the dinette table next to a note that read: “Sorry Jack, thanks for your help with Charley.”

  I gave my statement, once to a Belfast detective, and then again to a state police investigator, who showed up while I was finishing my first go-through.

  When I was finally done I drove back to the kennel with Cady Clark’s voice in my head: “That dumb sonovabitch,” she’d said, as if reciting the words to a love song.

  Jamie’s cell phone woke me around one a.m.

  “Honey,” I said, nudging her.

  She mumbled something vaguely disagreeable in her sleep.

  I reached across her to the nightstand, fumbled the phone out of her handbag, and held it next to her ear so she could hear it ring. She groaned and turned over.

  I watched her for a moment as she slept, with her face scrunched in slumber like a little kid’s. Even so, talk about long-limbed and gorgeous, Cady Clark had nothing on Jamie.

  “I’ll call him tomorrow,” she mumbled in her sleep.

  I chuckled, gently. “You’ll call who?”

  “Okay, I will,” she softly agreed, nodding slightly.

  I laughed outright, opened the phone, and said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Cutter is currently napping. Can I help you?”

  “Jack?” It was Flynn’s voice.

  “Oh, hi, Sheriff. What’s up?”

  “There’s been a shooting. Is Jamie there?”

  “Yeah, but it’ll take me a while to wake her up. Do you want to hang on a minute? Or twelve?”

  “No. Just tell her we’ve got two bodies waiting for her at the Pine Woods Motel in Wiscasset.”

  “Okay. Who got shot?”

  “Looks like Joe Bruno and Earl Brown shot each other.”

  “No kidding. Were Cady Clark and her dog with them?”

  “Mattera fact, yeah. She’s okay but that damn dog won’t shut up. Anyway, it looks like these two tied her to a chair with duct tape before they had their little shoot-out.”

  “Huh. Okay, Sheriff. We’ll be there in about an hour.”

  He gave me the location—about a mile south of Wiscasset on U.S. 1—then said, “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. You’ll see a lot of police vehicles out front.”

  He was right. The motel was set back from the highway, with individual cabins spersed among the pines the motel was named for. There were about a dozen official cars all told, parked along the highway or in the dirt in front of the motel office, and even between the cabins. Most of the cars were State Police cruisers along with Wiscasset and Bangor PD cars; some were unmarked black FBI vehicles, distinguished by federal plates. There were also a couple of sheriff’s Jeeps.

  A few curious motel guests and cynical reporters (who’d brought along their own coffee) were camped out behind the yellow tape, which allowed the cops to run around unhindered. The reporters were busy snapping pictures or capturing video images of the “death cabin.” The motel guests just gawked.

  Jamie and I waded through the activity and up to the porch of the death cabin, where we spoke to Greg Sinclair—a plainclothes state police detective, a few inches shorter than Jamie (she’s 5’ll“), with a thatch of straw hair and a doughy face. I’d worked a case with him before. He was smart and had a wise-ass sense of humor, both of which reminded me of me. While they palavered I stood there and inhaled the fresh, wild scent of a Maine pine forest on an autumn night.

  Sinclair poked his head inside the cabin and said to the four-man forensic team, “Let’s give the ME the room, guys.”

  They gathered their gear and left; Jamie went in.

  Sinclair asked if I’d mind coming inside too, to take a gander at the scene. “It looks pretty open and shut,” he said, as we followed Jamie inside, “but we might be missing something you could pick up with your famous eagle eye.”

  “It’s two a.m.,” I grumped, “I need coffee not flattery.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get you some.”

  “Eh, that’s okay.”

  The cabin had plain pine boards for both walls and floor, though the floorboards had at least been varnished—albeit with just one coat, and that not recent. There were two full-size beds, fully made, with no headboards. A tired nightstand sat between them, with an old lamp and rotary phone sitting on it. There was a hazy mirror on the opposite wall, and a low bureau with a twenty-year-old TV chained to it. There was a simple wooden chair, with a padded cushion that might have matched the drapes at one point. Strips of duct tape were stuck to the legs and arms. To the left was a door-less closet with nothing hanging in it, and to the right was a bathroom with a hook-and-eye “lock.” On the far side of the beds were two small windows. One gave a view—I supposed—of the pines. The other held an antique air conditioner. On the floor beneath it was a space heater, with a partially corroded chrome face.

  Jamie knelt next to Joe Bruno’s body, which sat slumped next to the front window, his weight holding the flowered drapes apart. His legs were spread out on the wooden floor, his back against the wall, his chin on his right shoulder. He had a .32 Smith & Wesson revolver in his right hand and a bullet hole in his chest. A red rivulet ran down his shirt to the pine floorboards. He was shortish, black-haired, toad-faced, with a dark complexion and beady eyes, still open. His black, glazed eyes had that weird expression the dead have of almost looking at you, but not quite. I shivered, once.

  I looked over at Earl’s frail body, which was facing Bruno’s. At least his eyes were closed so they weren’t giving me the creeps. He was slumped against the foot of the far bed, both arms flung at his side, a Colt .45 automatic still in h
is bony right hand. He had a perfectly round red hole right between, and slightly above, his eyes. There were stippling marks around the wound.

  I asked, “So, how’d it happen?”

  “Our witness was tied to the chair with duct tape when the motel manager found her. She said these two had a dispute over how to split the money from the bank robbery. They pulled their guns and shot each other simultaneously.”

  “Simultaneously?”

  Jamie glanced up with a teasing look in her brown eyes and said, “It means they shot each other at the same time.”