by Lauren Carr
Murphy swallowed. “Benjamin Frost was CIA, and he was doing classified work out in the desert. No one in the unit knew that. He was working under an alias. Yet it became abundantly clear that somehow, someone had blown his cover. After that last ambush, Frost slipped out of the camp in the middle of the night and got out of the country. He managed to get back to the States okay. But when the agency investigated the situation, they found that his whole cover had been burned completely. They never did find out who did it.”
“Is Tawkeel CIA?”
Murphy’s silence answered her question.
“And someone blew his cover,” she replied. “Was Belle Perkins CIA?”
“No,” Murphy said. “But in her last communication with her husband, Chris Turow, she said that something weird was going on there in the platoon and that some stuff had happened on their last outing that she needed to talk to someone at HQ about. Maybe she realized that Frost was CIA, or she identified someone who was slipping intel to the terrorists.”
“Do they know for certain that those strikes on Perkins and Gnarly’s unit had to do with the CIA agent? Maybe they were just done by terrorists who didn’t like trespassers.”
“The strikes stopped as soon as Frost got back to the States.”
“What’s our first stop?”
“CIA.”
She allowed herself to smile. She had never been to the CIA before. “If you don’t mind my saying, it sounds like we have more questions than answers.”
“Welcome to my world, buttercup.”
Being sick had already gotten old. With Gnarly gone, Spencer Manor felt strangely empty, and the phone was ringing off the hook with journalists asking if the German shepherd was a suspect in Nancy Braxton’s murder. Archie’s e-mail was filled with the same questions.
They had to get out of the house, so Mac got dressed to go to the police station so that he could dive into the investigation whether they wanted his help or not. It could have been pure determination that made him feel 90 percent better, or it could’ve been the medication and oxygen from the day before.
Still, Archie insisted on accompanying him just in case he needed her. With her laptop and her research on Braxton Charities in hand, she grabbed the keys to her SUV, and they went to the Spencer police department.
At the desk sergeant’s desk, Tonya informed them that David had gone home to check on Dallas and Storm and to get a nap. With a toss of her head, she directed them to Bogie’s office.
“I hear him on a Skype call with Doc.” With a wink, she warned them to knock on his office’s door before entering. “Last week, I walked in on one of their video calls and found Doc giving Bogie a preview of her new lingerie.”
“I hate it when that happens,” Archie said to Tonya before following Mac to the deputy chief’s office.
Bogie invited them into his office, where Doc’s image was filling his computer screen. Upon seeing them through Bogie’s web cam, she chastised Mac for being out of bed. “You have pneumonia. You aren’t going to get well if you’re out running around.”
“I’ll rest after clearing Gnarly’s name,” Mac said. “Word got out that he was missing last night, and now they’re thinking that he’s some sort of canine serial killer. Did you finish the autopsy on Nancy Braxton?”
“That’s Sheriff Turow’s case,” Bogie said. “And you don’t have to worry about him. He’ll bend over backward to clear Gnarly’s name.”
“The more people working on this, the better.” Mac turned his attention back to the medical examiner on the computer screen. “What’s the cause of death?”
“Blunt-force trauma to the back of the head,” Doc said. “One very hard blow. My guess is with a rock. She had very little water in her lunges. She didn’t drown, but she was near death when she fell face first into the water.”
“If it was only one blow with a rock,” Mac asked, “could she have fallen and hit her head on the rock, making it an accident? Sheriff Turow did say that she had bare feet. Middle of the night. Edge of the lake. She could have slipped in the mud along the shore—”
Doc Washington was shaking her head. “She fell face first. She had abrasions on her knees and hands and elbows. None on her buttocks or back. So she was struck on the back of the head with a rock so hard that it fractured her skull and caused cranial bleeding. As hard as she was hit, she would have been unconscious when she hit the ground. The only reason she didn’t drown was because she bled out first.”
“One hard blow did that?” Mac asked.
“We’re looking for someone who’s strong,” Bogie said.
“And while Gnarly packs quite a punch with his bite, the killer was not a dog,” Doc said with a grin. “Good news, Mac. Our forensics people confirmed that the blood they took off of Gnarly was not human. They also said that the bite marks on the mountain lion do match the impressions that a German shepherd would make.”
“Well, if any dog could take down a mountain lion, it would be Gnarly,” Mac said. “I just wish he hadn’t decided to go missing and take down a mountain lion on the same night that someone he had motive to murder was killed.”
“Are there any human suspects?” Archie asked.
“Does anyone have any idea of what Nancy Braxton was doing out in the middle of the night in her pajamas without a robe or slippers?” Mac asked Bogie.
“I may have a suggestion of where to look,” Doc said. “I found gelatin in her stomach contents.”
“Gelatin?” Mac asked.
“The type used for time-release capsules,” Doc said. “They take up to thirty minutes to digest. Now here’s the interesting part. Since it was apparent that she had taken some medication, I ran a tox screen. There weren’t any meds in her system. Her blood alcohol was point zero six.”
“So she had been drinking and taking…sugar pills?” Mac asked.
“We found evidence suggesting that she had some pill bottles on her vanity and in her medicine cabinet, but they were all gone,” Bogie said. “Her executive assistant is lying about not knowing anything about them.”
“She might have thought that she was taking meds when she wasn’t,” Mac said. “Now we need to find out what she was taking meds for—or thought she was taking meds for.”
David rolled over in his bed and felt the setting sun’s orange glow on his face. He had told himself that he only needed a couple of hours sleep, which would have made it late afternoon when he woke up. Before lying down to sleep in the heat of the day, he had taken off his shirt so that he could cool off while sleeping on top of his bed’s comforter.
Dallas must have turned off the alarm clock.
He opened his eyes, squinted at the other side of the bed, and saw Storm, her sable head framed in the ugly white cone of shame, looking directly at him.
“What—” Before he could finish his question about how she’d gotten up onto the bed, her tongue shot out directly into his open mouth in midsentence.
With a curse, he sprang up in his bed. “Dallas!”
The clatter of her high heels on the stairs told him that she was on her way. A second later, she rushed into the room with her laptop tucked under her arm. “You okay, sugar?”
“How did she get up on my bed?”
“She jumped, I guess.”
“The doctor said to keep her quiet and to not let her jump around.” David urged Storm off of the bed and into her bed in the corner of the room. “We don’t want her tearing her stitches.”
Hugging her laptop to her chest, Dallas admired how David tenderly checked to make sure that the cone collar was on right and that Storm hadn’t torn any stitches. Bare chested, he was the image of contrast: he was a masculine grown man who was tenderly displaying affection for the injured animal who was completely dependent on them for her well-being after a vicious attack the night before.
Seemingly unaware that she was taking not
ice of his affection for Storm, David asked, “Did you give her the pain medicine?”
“’Bout an hour ago when I gave her supper.”
“Did she eat?” David asked.
Dallas nodded her head. “But the vet said not to give her a lot, because she could get sick so soon after surgery. She was hungry.”
“What about the antibiotic?”
“That’ll be in another hour.” She shot him a wicked grin. “You care ’bout her.”
His brow furrowed, David looked up at her. “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Last week you said she was conniving and manipulative.”
“So’s Gnarly, and I nominated him for mayor.” Satisfied that Storm was on the mend, David rose to his feet and took Dallas into his arms. “I’m very glad she’s okay.”
“She’s not goin’ outside by herself anymore,” Dallas said. “From now on, I’m goin’ out there with her, and I’ll be packin’. Next time someone comes after my Storm, he’s gettin’ a butt full of bullets.”
“I believe it,” David said with a chuckle. When he leaned in to kiss her, he noticed that the laptop she had pressed against her chest was then between them. “Are you still working on the Sandy Burr case?”
She offered him a gesture between a nod of her head and a shrug of her shoulders. “And Nancy Braxton’s murder.”
Rubbing his chin, he realized that he had not shaved that morning. He figured it’d be best to freshen up some before going back to the police department and checking in with Sheriff Turow on the status of the case. He trotted into the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he turned on the water in the sink.
Lying across the bed, Dallas opened up her laptop and called after him. “Doc Washington was streamin’ the debate to y’all last night. Did y’all hear that whale of a lie that Nancy told ’bout goin’ to Somalia and negotiatin’ with pirates for the release of American hostages?”
In the bathroom, David laughed. “Yeah, I heard that.” He bent over the sink to splash warm water onto his face.
Dallas stepped into the doorway and leaned against the frame with her arms folded. “Total lie.”
“But her supporters really don’t care,” David said to her image in the mirror. “Right now, her party is more concerned with having someone from the party be the first woman mayor of Spencer. That’s why the party leaders shredded about a hundred ballots voting for the other candidate. Sure, the people wanted him, and he was from that party—but his genitalia isn’t what’s currently trending.”
“So to translate,” Dallas said, “the possession of a vagina trumps sanity and the wishes of the people.”
Spraying shaving cream into his hand, David nodded his head. “I can actually feel our founding fathers rolling in their graves.” He went about spreading the cream on his face.
“She was a certifiable loon.”
Chuckling, David ran his razor under the water. “I don’t think being a chronic liar means that she’s certifiable. If it did, more than half of the people in Washington would need to be locked up.”
“There’s lyin’, sweetie, and there’s lyin’,” she said. “Everyone lies for a reason. I’ve seen you lie to manipulate a perp and to get him to tell you what he knows. I’ve lied—”
“You lie!” he said with mock shock. He proceeded to shave his face while pausing occasionally to follow her train of thought.
“To sweet-talk my way out of speedin’ tickets or to get my way,” she said. “People lie to spare someone’s feelin’s or to cover up bad things they’ve done or to impress a friend or a perspective friend—and most of the time, those are little white lies that don’t hurt anyone, and people know they’re lyin’ when they tell them. But that’s not Nancy Braxton.” After reminding herself of her murder, she corrected herself. “Or wasn’t her.”
David rinsed the cream and the whiskers from the razor. “What was different about Nancy’s lie last night?”
“Never happened,” Dallas said. “I very simply fact-checked her story with one of my connections in Washington and learned that there was no meetin’ with the secretary of state. No detail sent to Somalia. No snipers who shot up that airfield and no meetin’ with pirates.”
“Everyone knew Nancy Braxton was a liar.”
“But it’s the reason she lied,” Dallas said. “It goes beyond tryin’ to strut while sittin’ down.”
He stopped with the razor in midair. “Huh?”
“Tryin’ to impress voters,” she said. “Watchin’ Nancy last night, I think she really believed some of those things she said.”
“She believed she went to Somalia and negotiated the release of hostages from pirates?”
Rolling her eyes with deep thought, Dallas said, “I think she believed she was worthy of the greatness associated with doing such a great deed. She started lyin’ to build herself up in the eyes of voters and those she needed to support her. But then her lies grew and got bolder—”
“Like the Somali-pirates-and-sniper lie,” David said.
“Her chronic lyin’ was probably enabled by her party and by her supporters, who never called her on them—until it became plain to see that she was a few pickles short of a barrel.” She paused to take a breath. “So I did some checkin’ with a few of my resources in psychiatry.”
“You really believe she was psychologically unstable?” David tried not to laugh.
“I think she was certifiably delusional,” Dallas said in a serious tone.
Finished shaving, David rinsed the last of the shaving cream from his face. Contemplating her statement, he patted his face dry and followed her into the bedroom, where she sat on the bed. While they had been out of the room, Storm had jumped up onto the bed and curled up on the pillows.
“Let’s say you’re right, and Nancy Braxton was emotionally unstable,” David said. “Besides chronically lying to make herself seem more important and accomplished than she really was, what other symptoms would she have displayed?”
“Well,” Dallas said, “based on what I learned, I believe she suffered from delusions of grandeur.”
David sat on the bed next to her. “I’ve run into suspects with delusions of grandeur. They think they’re the president or Jesus Christ or—”
“You don’t necessarily think you’re someone great or famous or attached to someone who’s famous or great,” Dallas said. “You can think you’re destined to achieve those things. Other symptoms are narcissism—”
“She had that all right.”
“Paranoia,” Dallas said.
“I think she had that, too,” David said. “Okay, so let’s say that she had that and that she had maybe been diagnosed by a doctor. Are there meds she could have taken for that?”
“Antipsychotic meds,” Dallas said with a nod of her head.
Chapter Seventeen
Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Because she had dressed casually for travel, Jessica felt underdressed when she walked across the great seal on the floor of the front entrance of the Central Intelligence Agency. She especially felt like she didn’t belong because she had a hundred-pound German shepherd on a leash.
Before driving through the front gates of the massive compound in the wooded area of Northern Virginia, Murphy had pulled into the CIA visitors’ center, where they had all presented identification. Even Gnarly had had the microchip inside his neck scanned to confirm that he had been a military K-9.
Jessica couldn’t fight the grin that came to her face when the officer behind the desk gave her a visitor’s badge that indicated that she had a limited security clearance. It was better than no clearance at all. The distinction made her feel official and closer to Murphy’s prestigious position as a Phantom.
As a Phantom, he’d had extensive clearance granted to him by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so he alread
y had the necessary badges for entrance into the hub of the nation’s secrets. His badge even granted him access to a special visitor’s parking space in front of the building’s main entrance.
Familiar with the building, Murphy escorted Jessica and Gnarly through the front doors and across the seal toward the security scanners. Sensing that this was not Murphy’s first visit to the CIA headquarters, she wondered how often he had walked through those doors, whom he’d visited, and why.
One of the security officers took Gnarly’s leash and led him around the gates. Not wanting to miss a trick, they ran a metal detector over the canine and took note of his microchip, comparing the identification number to the one that had been put into the system by the visitors’ center.
Yep, it was the same dog. No switch had occurred during the four-minute drive between the visitors’ center and the main entrance.
The security protocol was not missed by Gnarly, who Jessica saw stand, sit, and heel like the highly trained canine he had been.
“Beautiful dog,” the security guard said with admiration when he handed Gnarly’s leash back to Jessica. “I see by his ID number that he’s done a couple of tours overseas and trained in multiple areas. Only the smartest dogs can specialize in everything.”
“That’s what makes him special,” Jessica said while stroking Gnarly.
Murphy led them around a wall of windows that looked out onto a courtyard, past a cafeteria, and then up an escalator to a set of elevators. By the time they stopped to wait for the elevators, Jessica was breathing hard. “This place is huge.”
Murphy smiled. “This business keeps you in shape, buttercup.”
“Hey, I haven’t heard you complain about my shape yet.”
The elevator doors opened and revealed that it was packed with employees. Noting that it was close to five o’clock, Jessica concluded that they were going home for the day. Many noticed Gnarly.
“Is that a bomb-sniffing dog?” a woman asked Jessica.
“He’s multitrained,” Jessica said, repeating what the security guard had said when he’d seen Gnarly’s profile.