by Sam Masters
The director nods. “It could be, but said ‘unknown’ also bust into a barn and ripped a dozen pups to pieces.”
“Still possible.” The VP sits back undaunted and crosses his arms.
“A couple of hours later,” Jackson continues, “a correctional officer’s German shepherd turned on him while he was out with a group of ten prisoners. Facts get a bit messy here, but it seems the dog killed the handler then attacked another officer before a prisoner shot it dead.”
Molton’s not sure he heard that properly. “A prisoner shot it?”
“Yes, sir. As I said, the facts are not really clear. It seems some kind of altercation had been under way when the dog kicked off; a prisoner grabbed an officer’s gun and shot it. Took three bullets to kill the thing.”
“Hang on a minute.” Cornwell sees another chance to be picky. “We’ve got three deaths by animal or animals unknown in one location and another by a German shepherd, which, unless I’m unusually mistaken, has actually been trained to turn violent when prisoners get rowdy and physical.”
“Yes sir, but—”
“Don, regardless of them both happening in places that have Jackson in their names, I don’t think either of these can seriously be attributed to Chinese war games.”
Molton nods. “I agree.”
“Sir, General Zhang specifically warned that—”
Molton cuts him off. “I understand that the call from Zhang last night flagged deaths in Florida, but I think we’re being too easily spooked here.” He sits back and puts the briefing sheets down. “To be honest, Don, I’m relieved that this is all you brought to us. My big fear last night was that you were going to come in here today and read off a long list of attacks and deaths.”
“Add these deaths to those in Miami and I’m afraid you have your list, Mr. President.”
Molton is still not buying it. “Hell, Don, you’re starting to talk like a journalist. We’ve got a spike in dog-related deaths, that’s all. Like someone said, these things are unpredictable. There’s a bunch all at once and then none for ages. Over the year things even out.”
The NIA director shuts his file.
He knows they’re wrong.
He also knows that at the moment he doesn’t have enough proof to make the two most powerful men in the country change their minds. “Thanks for your time, gentlemen. I’ll update you if there are further serious developments in Florida or if there is any more communication from Zhang.”
Cornwell has a point to make before the director goes. “Clint’s remark about you talking like a journalist made me think.” He glances toward the President, then back at Jackson. “The press are going to start panic stories about dog attacks. We need to make sure no one in our administration comments. Same with the law enforcement and medical people, we don’t want them saying crazy things either. There can’t be any leaks on our discussions or data compiled.”
Molton nods. “Can you have the White House press team briefed accordingly?”
“Sure,” says the VP. “Consider it done.”
The President can tell Jackson is biting his tongue. “Don, I appreciate your diligence in bringing your concerns to us. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. I’ve got the French president and his wife arriving this afternoon, and a state dinner tonight, so I’m going to be tied up, but don’t hesitate to contact Pat if you need to.”
“Thank you.” The NIA director shoots Cornwell a look on his way to the door. “I suspect we’ll be talking later, Mr. Vice President.”
51
Miami
Ghost is usually pretty good at fitting faces to voices, but in the case of the CIA agent sitting in his captain’s office, he’s got it hopelessly wrong.
When he’d taken Gwendolyn Harries’s call in his car, she’d been sharp, officious, and mature. He’d imagined her as one of the army of pencil-thin, mid-thirties, dynamic go-getters that the Agency likes to recruit.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Agent Harries turns out to be a small, chubby brunette with a boyish haircut. She’s wearing an unflattering, gray suit and unfashionably chunky heels.
Cummings walks her to the door. “Agent Harries, meet Lieutenant Walton. Ghost is heading up our investigations into the recent dog attacks and he’ll look after you now. Thanks for stopping by.” He shuts his door after they shake hands,
“This needn’t take long,” Agent Harries says, then frowns. “Did your captain just call you Ghost?”
“He did. Let’s go down the corridor, there’s an interview room we can use. You want anything, coffee, water?”
“No, I’m good.”
He shows her inside.
She takes a seat without being asked and flops her black leather shoulder bag on the table in order to fish out a pen and notebook.
“So what brings you all the way from Langley?”
“I’m not based in Langley. I was just over at the head office for catch-up meetings when this dog thing broke. I work from our field office in North Miami Beach.” She clicks the top of her pen, “So what’s the latest?”
“We’ve just started setting up a team—mainly admin—to process intel on the attacks. I got an interesting call from the vet who attended the Kathy Morgan case, the one we initially spoke about, and also the boy who died on the soccer field just down the coast—”
“This is Teale, right?” She glances down at notes she’s taken from her bag. “Sandra Teale.”
“Right.” As he’s answering, Annie Swanson passes the interview room window. “Hang on a second.” He rushes out the door to catch her. “Annie, you got a name and address yet on the dog that killed the boy in Key Biscayne?”
“Came in half an hour ago.” The blond detective sees he’s got someone in the interview room. “You want it now or later?”
“CIA,” he whispers. “Give me a minute.”
“Got you.”
“Thanks.” Ghost returns to the interview room. “Where was I?”
“Teale.”
“Oh, yeah. She thinks both dogs had too much adrenaline in their systems. It somehow made them hyperaggressive.”
Harries scribbles a line of squiggles in perfect shorthand. “She say how that came to be?”
“No. I don’t think she knows yet. She’s checking the medical records of the first dog and will do the same with the second when I send her the owner details.”
“Both dogs were microchipped?”
“Yeah. Responsible owners. And the vet said both animals were kept in good health too.”
“I’ll go see Teale straight after this.”
“Does she know that?”
Harries smiles and closes her notebook. “I don’t like appointments. I find people act differently when they know you are coming.”
“That’s true.” Ghost turns to the door as Detective Swanson enters and slips him a folded piece of paper. “Thanks, Annie. This is Agent Harries—I think you both spoke on the phone.”
The blonde sticks out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Annie raises an eyebrow to Ghost as she drifts away.
He reads her note aloud. “‘Rottweiler that killed the kid playing soccer belongs to a local character named Dwayne Artunes. He’s a hip-hop artist, lives fifteen minutes from Teale’s surgery.’ ” He looks at the CIA agent. “You want to come rap on his door with me?”
52
Merritt Island, Florida
Realtor Fran Ennis eats her lunchtime pastrami sandwich and slugs from a bottle of Coke Zero as she drives to her first and only job of the day.
She has a good feeling about this one.
It’s been a month since she sold anything of note, but in the last twenty-four hours she’s booked four viewings for two of her biggest properties. That’s nothing compared with five
years ago, when she would sell three houses a week, but at least it’s a clear sign that things are looking up.
And about time too.
The recession has seen the forty-year-old Fran divorced and forced to sell her own family home. So she’s hoping the couple she’s about to meet are what they say they are—cash buyers looking to do a quick deal.
The property she’s selling is Old Temperance Farm. It’s a spread of seventeen acres that has just become too much for Josh Whitting, the childless seventy-year-old who wants to sell up and move to somewhere smaller—about sixteen and a half acres smaller. Luckily for Fran, she’s got just the place that would suit him too. And in her wildest dreams she’s hoping to close both sales this week.
Josh is something of a raggedy curmudgeon. He doesn’t have time for anyone but the horses, chickens, and dogs he keeps around the place, so Fran has persuaded him to let her do the viewing on her own, while he spends the morning in town. Only, as she pulls into the long drive, she realizes he seems to have forgotten. His filthy old pickup is there and it’s left mud and manure all over the place.
Fran is just about to rush inside and ask him to move it when a black Range Rover Sport crunches its way into the brick-paved yard.
The Dixons are here.
Clive and Suzie.
He’s a sports agent and she’s a secretary. They live in Tampa and are looking for a place in the country as a second home.
Cash buyers.
The Holy Grail.
Fran reminds herself of all the basics as she gets out of the car and heads to the house with front door keys in hand.
“Hello!” she shouts to get their attention. “I’m Fran Ennis of Taylor, Cook, and Ennis.” She beams her best sales smile as they wave and head her way. “What a great view! Did you see the beach on the way down? Isn’t it amazing?”
“No.” Thirty-year-old Clive Dixon is sullen-faced as he shakes her hand. “I was on a call.”
“I saw it.” Suzie Dixon sticks out a hand to shake, and with it Fran has a glimmer of hope that they aren’t both assholes of the highest order. “Your office’s directions were very good.”
“I’m so glad.” Fran smiles at them both. They seem an unlikely couple. Little and large. He’s tall and heavy, sweating in a black suit, and looks like he spends a lot of late nights in bars. His twenty-six-year-old wife is just the opposite. Painfully thin, dressed in a little floral print dress, and wearing so much makeup she looks like she’s been fashioned out of wax.
Fran opens the big round-topped front door to the farm and instantly wishes she’d sent a cleaning team around. She knew the old guy’s place would smell musty but she never expected a stink like this. “Come on in. Forgive the smell; I think Mr. Whitting’s septic tank needs emptying.”
Suzie Dixon pinches her nose.
“Sorry about that.” Fran professionally pushes on. “The stairs up ahead of you are made from wood off the land and have an interesting history. They’re the main stairs for the use of the master and mistress of the house.” She pauses to let the grandeur of the statement sink in. “Old Temperance Farm used to have servants, so they have another set at the back of the house, leading from the kitchen to an upstairs laundry and ironing room.” She is about to pile on another layer of historic polish when she hears a thump on the floor above.
Heavy movement on bare boards.
Her heart sinks.
Josh is obviously knocking around and is going to ruin things.
Clive Dixon’s heard it as well but jumps to a different conclusion. “Is that the owner? Is someone else being shown around?” He seems annoyed. “Your office promised me we were the only people interested. We’ve driven all the way over from—”
The agent doesn’t get the chance to finish his rebuke.
The head of a big rottweiler appears at the top of the stairs.
Dangling from its mouth are strips of what looks like brown and pink rags that it’s been shaking and playing with.
“Mr. Whitting’s dog,” explains Fran, with some relief.
A second black rottweiler appears. Pulling along half its master’s bloody torso.
“Holy fuck.” Clive Dixon turns and runs for the door.
The first dog bounds downstairs and leaps onto his back.
The second drops Whitting’s remains and follows.
Fran Ennis pulls frantically at the front door.
She gets it open.
But only an inch.
There’s a terrifying roar.
Both dogs are on them. Biting and snarling at their legs and backs. Ripping and clawing flesh and bone.
53
Miami Beach
Dwayne Artunes’s place is like one of those you drool over on Cribs.
Long drive, big house, a pool large enough to breed whales in, and a driveway full of luxury convertibles, an SUV, Harley, and pink Hummer.
Ghost holds his ID in front of the rapper’s mirrored shades as they stand at the front door. “Lieutenant Walton, and this is Gwen Harries. We’ve come to talk about your dog, Dwayne.”
“Not my dawg no more, but c’mon in, man.” He pulls the door wide, gold bracelets jangling at the end of a bare muscled arm bulging from a white vest.
Ghost and Harries walk a hallway of white walls and marble floor tiles.
The sound of gunfire stops them.
Dwayne sees them freeze and folds up laughing. “COD, man! My homies are online kicking ass.” The barefoot rapper is still hooting as he leads them through to a lounge as big as basketball court.
A group of black guys are curled up on white leather sofas, gripping gold PS4 controllers and whooping every time they chalk up another kill.
No one looks at Ghost and Harries, not even the young girls in cropped tops and hot pants sitting on the white shag pile at the guys’ feet.
Dwayne guides them into a conservatory that looks out onto his Olympic-sized pool. “So you found Melissa’s fucking dawg?”
Harries fishes for the notebook in the shoulder bag. “Melissa who?”
“Melissa out-on-her-ass-bitch, for fuckin’ around with Jimmy Jay, that’s who.”
Ghost tries to help. “Your ex. We talking wife or girlfriend?”
“Wife?” He doubles up laughing again. “Man, I’d never marry that bitch. Not if she was the last pussy on earth.”
“And the dog was hers?”
“Yeah. I said that. I threw her cheating ass out and then she rang an’ asked if Tyson had come back here coz he’d run off.”
“When was this?”
He shrugs. “Fuck man, I don’t know. Days ago. Two, I think.”
Ghost reaches into a jacket and pulls out one of the less gruesome postmortem photographs from the soccer field. “Is this Tyson?”
Dwayne snatches the print and holds it up to the light but doesn’t take his shades off. “Looks like it. What you do, shoot the ugly fucker?” He hands it back.
“Actually we did. But only after it bit a young kid to death.”
“Fuck, man, really?
“Yeah, really. So we need to speak to Melissa. You got a follow-up address and number for her?”
“I got one.” He nods to Harries’s notebook. “Give me that pen and paper.”
She flips the page so he can’t see her note and hands it over with her rollerball.
Dwayne writes on the clean sheet. “She’s a cheatin’ bitch but she loved that fuckin’ dawg. Go easy on her, man.”
“We’ll give her your regards,” says Harries.
Ghost takes the notebook.
“That it?” asks Dwayne. “You need anythin’ else before you go?”
Harries clears her throat with a hesitant cough. “Yeah, I do. Was that the latest Call of Duty your boys were playing?”
The rapper smiles. “Hell
no. That was an unreleased beta version, sister. Guy who runs the studio’s a friend of mine.”
Her eyes light up. “Then I’d really like a turn.”
54
Allapattah, Miami
The nine-mile drive from Miami Beach to Melissa Clay’s place takes Ghost less than twenty minutes.
He parks the Dodge outside the run-down shack and rings the front bell while Harries slides round the back.
There’s no answer.
The CIA agent shouts around to him. “She’s back here.”
Ghost treads thin gravel down the side of the house and finds Harries staring at a young black woman in a gray tracksuit, crashed out on shabby rattan sofa on the back porch.
“Totally wasted, by the looks of her.” She picks up a saucer full of stubbed out spliffs and holds it so he can see the cause. “Doped to the eyeballs.”
Ghost slides the young woman’s legs off the sofa and sits her up. “Melissa, I’m a cop. I need you to wake up and get yourself together. I have to talk to you about your dog.”
Melissa’s head wobbles, her eyes flicker open for a second and she smiles at him.
“She’s not just baked,” he says. “I think she’s taken something else as well.” He looks at her arms but can’t find any track marks. “Probably Valium or some type of diazepam. Can you come and watch her while I look around inside?”
“Sure.” Harries props Melissa upright and then sits alongside her.
Ghost pushes the screen door open.
The dark kitchen is buzzing with flies. They’re feasting on a waste bin overflowing with takeout food. The sink is full of unwashed dishes and soiled pans caked in green mold. The small counter is stacked with unwashed plates and open tin cans that couldn’t be pushed into the waste bin. There are dozens of beer cans lying on the floor, along with an empty tequila bottle.
On a wall opposite the sink Ghost finds several cute photographs of the rottweiler as a puppy, pinned to a corkboard. There’s a signed photo of Dwayne Artunes too, with a big heart drawn in black felt tip. Melissa has stuck a small kitchen knife through the top of his head.
Ghost searches her cupboards and drawers. One is full of old guarantees for kitchen appliances and a mix of bills. In the middle of them all he finds the dog’s vet records. Turns out it was chipped at Julio’s Veterinary Practitioners in Overtown, the same place the Wood dog was done. He speed-dials Annie Swanson.