by David Archer
The questions went on, and after hearing the same ones over and over for an hour or more, Carol called a halt to them. Hobson objected, but Carol got the doctor in, who said Jack was under extreme stress and couldn’t take any more right then. Hobson left in a tizzy, and Sam told Jack he'd be back later. As he left, Carol was talking with Jack about potential plea bargains, but Jack wasn't willing to consider one.
Sam left the hospital and went to see what he could learn about the others who were connected to Animal Partners and had received letters. They were all scheduled to be at Animal Partners that day, so Sam went on down to their building. Janice was there and seemed pretty upset, which was understandable. Sam asked if she was going to keep the place running, and commented that it looked like someone had been tidying up. Even the old stack of magazines was gone.
She nodded. “The committee that runs it has already asked me to take over as interim director, and I'll probably get offered the full-time position. It just isn't the same without Max, but this was his dream, so I'll do all I can to keep it going.”
“That's all you can do, I guess,” Sam said. “I need to ask you some questions, if you're up to it.”
She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Sure. Cops already asked me most of them, anyway, I'm sure.”
“You were the one who found Max, yesterday, right?”
She nodded, and Sam saw tears leaking down her cheeks. “Yeah. He was sitting right here at his desk, just slumped backward. Whoever did it had to have been someone he knew, because they got really close. I've seen gunshot wounds many times, and this one was fired from no more than four or five feet away. On top of that, there was no sign of a fight or anything, and nothing was missing, so it wasn't a robbery. And no, I don't believe Jack killed him. Those two were close.”
Sam waited a moment, then asked, “What about anyone else Max might have had a problem with? I know you and he were close, too; is there an ex-husband that might have had a grudge against him?”
She laughed, but it was sarcastic. “Not hardly,” she said. “My ex was so glad to get rid of me he paid for the divorce and gave me a new car in the deal. He never even met Max, and probably doesn't even know where I live, now. We were in California two years ago when I caught him cheating on me, and we haven't been face-to-face since that night.” She sighed deeply. “The truth is, Max didn't have enemies. I don't think anyone ever disliked him, he was one of the sweetest guys you'd ever have a chance to know.” She grinned. “Hard to believe he was a Navy Seal, and one of the most dangerous guys on the planet.”
That backed up the theory that the killer was someone Max trusted; not too many people could get the drop on a Seal, unless he had no reason to suspect he was in danger.
“Okay,” Sam said, “tell me about the people who got these letters, other than Christy and Jack, and yourself, of course.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Well, Doctor Uhlrich got one. He's about the best thing that's happened to us. He was a MASH surgeon in Vietnam, a career army man, so he saw a lot of war-wounded over his many years of service. He helps out with the vets we work with, and this is all he does now. He's retired, and the fact that he’s also gay made it hard for him in the Army. He knows what it's like to be alone and have no one, so he thinks this is a great program.”
“Okay.”
“Nadine, our secretary, she's been with us about a year now. She's not a volunteer, she gets a paycheck, and to be honest, I don’t think she's worth it. Her fiancé was killed in Afghanistan, he was in the same unit as Jack. She doesn't really talk about it much, but that's the only reason Max hired her.”
Sam nodded. “Okay, who else?”
“Carla Peters. She's our extra dog trainer. She isn't ex-military, but her husband is. They own a security dog-training company, and she works with us as a volunteer. Sweet lady, and I know she doesn't do the things the letter said.”
They chatted a bit more, but Sam wasn't getting anything out of it, so he left a few minutes later. He didn't know what else to do at the moment, so he went to check on Jack. Sam found Christy there with him, and Indie walked in just after Sam did. She'd gone to their house to get Christy a change of clothes and her makeup.
“Well,” Sam said, “I wish I had better news, but so far I'm not coming up with anything earth-shattering. I went by Animal Partners and talked to Janice—she's been made acting director, and by the way, she says there's no way she'd ever believe you're guilty.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Janice is a good woman. She loved Max.”
“I talked with her about the others who got the letters. One thing that struck me was that she said the doctor is gay; Indie made a good point that this whole thing with the letters smells like a woman's handiwork. I'm wondering if that might include a gay doctor?”
“Doc Uhlrich? Nah, he ain't like that, no way. He's one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, and he don't even act like a queer, you know what I mean? If I didn't know it from working with Max, I'd never have guessed. It ain't him.”
“Okay. What about the secretary? What can you tell me about her?”
Jack looked lost. “Nadine? I don't know her at all, not really. She's there a lot, but I don't really talk to her.”
“Okay, I’d have thought you would. Janice said her fiancé was in your unit, and was killed in Afghanistan.”
“Fiancé? When was this?”
Sam shrugged. “Must have been over a year ago, she's been there that long. According to Janice, the only reason she got the job was because her fiancé was supposed to have been close to you.”
Jack closed his eyes in concentration. “There was a guy about a year, year and two months ago, was killed by accident, friendly fire. I wasn't there, but I knew him. Brian Cooper, that was his name, but he wasn't never engaged. He had some woman that was stalkin' him, as I recall, and didn't want nothin' to do with women 'til he got out, he said.”
Indie looked at Sam, and motioned for him to follow her out of the room. Sam told Jack and his wife he'd be back in touch, and walked out with her.
On the way to the parking lot, Indie asked, “Are we thinking the same thing?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I need to talk to the secretary, but I need you to do some digging for me, first.” Sam told her what he had in mind, and she got into the Ridgeline to head for home and her computer.
Sam called Karen Parks at her office and ran over what he was planning with her. The case was out of a different district so she couldn't actually get involved or help much, but she said it sounded like Sam's logic was pretty sound. By the time he left, he was fairly sure he was on the right track.
Sam got back to the office and Indie showed him what she'd managed to find.
“I turned Herman loose on it,” she said. “Check this out.”
Sam stared at the monitor for a couple of minutes, then looked at his wife. “Call Mom,” he said. “Have her and Kim pick up Kenzie and keep her overnight.”
8
It was almost four PM by the time Sam was ready to put it all into play. He had Indie call Nadine, the secretary, and tell her they needed her help to clear up some anomalous information in Animal Partners' records, and that she might be helpful in proving that Janice was fiddling with the books. She said she'd be only too glad to help, and would be right over. When she got there, Sam apologized and said he'd be tied up for a bit, and asked Indie to keep her company while he finished up some paperwork.
Nadine was not an extremely pretty woman, but she wasn't ugly, either. Indie asked her where she'd gotten the dress she was wearing, and the two of them started chatting like old friends.
“It just looks stunning on you!” Indie said, buttering her up. “I'm too darn skinny for a dress like that, y'know? Not enough junk in this trunk, but that makes your butt look awesome.” She sighed. “You don't know what I'd give to have a body like yours!”
“Oh, girl,” Nadine said, “you best be careful what you wish for. You get this kinda bum
p goin' on, you ain't got nothing but men, all over you, all hours of the day and night. It may look like a blessing, but it's a curse, baby, it's a curse!”
“You know, I can see that,” Indie said, and Sam smiled, as the thought ran through his mind that she deserved an Oscar. “Is that how you met your fiancé? What was his name?”
“Brian. He was just the most wonderful man! I thought I was gonna die when he got killed, but you know, he saved his entire unit that day. He was the only one who stood up and started shooting back at the snipers, and everyone else got out alive because of him. He was a real hero, and I miss him every single day.”
“That's so sad, but you must be so proud of him, too. When were you supposed to be married?”
“Oh, that's the saddest part. He was supposed to come home only two days later, on leave, and we had this big wedding all planned out. Over a hundred people were gonna be there. It was so beautiful, and the cake was over six feet tall! I had this wedding dress all made special for me; his daddy paid for it, it cost over three thousand dollars!”
Sam stood up and said he had to go to the bathroom, then slipped through the door that led into the main house. A moment later he came back out, and Nadine froze when she saw the elderly couple who followed him into the office.
“Nadine,” Sam said, “you know Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, right? Your almost in-laws?”
Mr. Cooper took one look at Nadine and turned gray with anger. “You are the most vicious liar, woman!” he said vehemently. “Our boy hated you for the things you did to him!”
His wife walked past him and got right in Nadine's face. “Our son was never engaged to you. He went out with you one time, and you wouldn't leave him alone after that, telling people all these lies about how it was love at first sight, and how he asked you to marry him on your first date. He got a restraining order to keep you away from him. How could you say these things?”
Sam broke up the reunion. “Folks, are you sure your son never had a real relationship with this woman? That’s a pretty serious accusation.”
Mrs. Cooper turned to face him. “He couldn't stand her! When he left to go on his tour of duty, we started getting these threatening letters, all typed out, and they called us all sorts of filthy things. We always thought it was her, but we couldn't prove it. Then, when Brian got killed—and it wasn't by saving his unit, it was an accident when one of his buddies' gun went off and hit him in the head—‘friendly fire’ accident, they call that—all of a sudden the letters stopped coming.” She turned back to Nadine. “But I know this much—if he was still alive, this is the last woman he'd ever want anything to do with! He wouldn't have married her if she was the last woman on earth!”
Nadine screamed, “That's a lie! He loved me, I know he did! The Army killed him, and that's what took him away from me! You people, you did everything you could to keep us apart, but he was always comin' to see me when you weren't around, cause he loved me!”
“You're insane!” shouted Mr. Cooper. “Our son couldn't stand you!”
“You're the crazy ones,” Nadine retorted, “he loved me. He freakin' loved me and he hated you because you wanted to keep us apart. He wanted to marry me, but he told me how you said I wasn't good enough! You made him join the Army, and it got him killed, and now I'm the one doing what's right. I'm gonna destroy all of those bastards who killed my Brian.”
“Your Brian?” shouted Mrs. Cooper. “He was never your Brian!”
Nadine screamed then, and snatched up Indie's letter opener from her desk, brandishing it like a weapon, lunging at Mrs. Cooper. Sam tried to intercept, but wasn't close enough, so he shouted a warning.
Indie screamed, then, a kung fu-type scream, and threw herself between the two women. For a split second Sam would have sworn he saw the dagger plunge into her, but it was only an illusion; Indie had baited Nadine, and when she tried to stab at her, Indie grabbed the blade from her hand as she kicked out with one foot and knocked the crazed woman to the floor.
Sam moved then, landing on top of Nadine with one knee in her chest, knocking the breath from her and keeping her down.
“Call Karen!” Sam yelled at Indie, and she snatched up the phone and dialed 911. The operator said officers would respond immediately, and then patched her through to Karen Parks.
“Karen,” she said. “We've got the killer here at Sam's office! Can you come and handle this?”
She said she'd be there in five minutes, and she wasn't late. She arrested Nadine for attacking Mrs. Cooper and inciting trouble, but she had to call Hobson to come into the city and make the charge for Max's murder.
Hobson met them all at the precinct, but he refused to charge Nadine for the murder of Max Hernandez without proof of her guilt. Since she lived in the city, it took Karen's help to get a search warrant for her place, but by midnight there was still no trace of the murder weapon. Without that, Hobson said he would not dismiss charges against Jack, nor charge Nadine with anything.
“Karen made the arrest for the assault on Mrs. Cooper,” Sam told Jack and Christy by phone that evening, “and that’ll at least keep her in jail for the moment. Meanwhile, I’m not going to give up trying to find evidence to prove she murdered Max.”
Unfortunately, he was no closer to proving Jack was innocent of Max's murder, and Nadine wasn't about to confess. Sam was still sure it had been her, but he couldn't identify a motive. Why would she kill him, when he hadn't been anywhere near Afghanistan when Brian was killed?
The rest of it was fairly easy to figure out: Nadine had been infatuated with Brian Cooper, but he’d wanted nothing to do with her, so she created a world of fantasy in which they were lovers. She was undoubtedly a sick, neurotic woman, so self-deluded that she’d probably convinced herself that they really were going to get married one day. When Brian was killed by friendly fire, however, she'd lost hold of the last of her sanity and decided to harass and destroy as many of the people she considered responsible as possible.
Somehow she knew Jack had been in his unit, and that alone was enough for her to try to make him one of those responsible for Brian's death. Jack was involved with Animal Partners, so she weaseled her way in and bided her time. By the time she felt ready to strike out at him, she was connecting everyone at Animal Partners to Brian's death, as well, so one day she began her poison letter campaign. There were probably far more letters than they would ever know about, but since she was out of the poison pen business, those people could go on with their lives and put it behind them.
Sam needed to get to the bottom of it before Jack and Christy could have any hope of normal lives, and it was driving him nuts that he wasn't able to figure it out. Could it be that Nadine had a thing for Max, and was jealous of his relationship with Janice? No one had ever thought so. What about her psychosis? Maybe she attributed some of the guilt for Brian's death to Max just because he was Jack's friend? Still, that didn't make Sam feel like he was onto something that would hold up.
Sam and Indie got home around two AM, but Sam wasn't ready to go to bed. Indie, exhausted, kissed him good night and went to their room, but Sam sat on the couch in the living room and turned on the television. An old rerun of Supernatural was on, and Sam had always liked the program so he watched it as he thought about ways to prove Jack innocent.
In that episode, the only witness to a couple of unusual deaths is a dog, so Dean uses an ancient Indian incantation to give himself the ability to speak to the dog—and ends up thinking like one. He finds himself unable to resist chasing a thrown ball or stick, and wants to chase cars so bad he can taste it. He even eyeballs a poodle lustfully for a moment, until his brother gets him to focus.
If only I had that power, Sam thought to himself. I could ask dogs to spy for me on all kinds of things, and probably be able to use my own nose to track people down. That would be so awesome.
Sam drifted off to sleep just as the dog that was helping Dean tried to tell him that dogs aren't really pets, but were put here on earth for some myst
erious purpose. Unfortunately, the spell wore off just as he was about to find out what that purpose was, leaving Dean even more frustrated than ever.
Indie kissed him awake, and Sam opened one eye to find her sitting on the couch beside where he lay. He smiled at her, and she kissed him again.
“So, what's on the agenda for today?” she asked. “Any idea where we go from here?”
Sam started to shake his head, but suddenly the memory of the episode he had watched the night before played through his mind, and he sat up so quickly he almost knocked her off onto the floor.
“Freddie!” Sam said. “I need Freddie!” He rushed through a shower and got dressed, and Indie handed him his morning coffee.
“What's so important about seeing the dog?” she asked as Sam guzzled it down.
“Just a hunch,” Sam said, “but I think Freddie might be the key to solving this whole case. Jack always took Freddie with him to Animal Partners, right? That means Freddie probably knows everyone there, including Nadine.”
Indie eyed him curiously. “And that helps you how?”
“That's the part I haven't worked out yet. Come on, let's go!”
Freddie was still at the Veterinary Hospital, so Sam called to say he was coming to see him. The receptionist asked if Sam was the man who said he'd pay the bill, and Sam admitted it, so she told him he could pick him up if he brought a check. Sam snatched one from his desk and told Indie to make it out.
They took the Corvette. Sam got them there in record time, barely avoiding a ticket only because the cop who saw him speeding couldn't get turned around in time to chase him down. Sam was parking when his phone went off. It was Karen.
“Hey, Karen,” Sam said, “what's up?”
“What's up is I just got a call from the chief of police, telling me to ‘tell that psycho private dick to slow his damn car down,’ so I’m delivering the message. What are you doing out on Montrose at eighty miles an hour?”