by Karen Harper
“You know, you and Vic would get along real well. He suspects everyone, probably even the mailman and paperboy.”
A one-story house with peeling paint came into view. It had a long side section that looked added on and was painted such a clean, new white it made the house itself look even dingier.
“That painted part is the canine wing,” Gabe said. “Sam keeps his dogs under a roof. Sometimes I think he treats them better than people.”
He pulled into a small, turnaround loop and killed the engine. The minute Tess opened her door, she heard barking. “I hope there’s not a guard dog loose,” she said.
“Hasn’t been before. And probably not so a visitor doesn’t get hurt, but one of his dogs. He’s real fussy about who buys and adopts them.”
Just as Tess closed the passenger door, she glimpsed the garbage bag with the mounted pit bull Gabe had put on the floor of the backseat. She imagined it was barking too. She knew he planned to show it to John Hillman but not Sam.
“Maybe he’s asleep or not here,” she said, surprised Sam didn’t realize he had visitors with all the noise.
“I see his truck’s in the old barn over there, but that doesn’t mean—”
Sam came to the door and walked out with a single hound behind him. Tess was relieved to see he was unarmed. She had the funniest feeling about this place, even though it wasn’t familiar to her.
“Hey, Sheriff. Heard you drive in. How you doin’? And that you, Miss Lockwood?”
They all shook hands and went through the usual greetings and small talk. In the old days in the hills, to “set a spell and get caught up” was essential before getting down to business.
“Tess wanted to come along just to say thanks for trying to track her years ago,” Gabe explained since the talk had mostly been between the two men—also hill-country custom. “And I sure appreciate the effort with Boo the other day,” he said, patting the dog on the head. “Hear you found a wounded stag up yonder.”
“Did. Took John and Dane with me, but it died. John won out to claim it, though I get the venison. It was hurtin’ real bad when we got there, so Dane used some of that pain med stuff to get it to stop thrashing around. You know, what he uses on people’s pets in agony so he can set a leg and such.”
As they talked, Tess glanced around. Surely she would have recalled yelping dogs if she’d ever been kept here. But was it at all suspicious that it took Sam a while to come out to greet them, as if maybe he had to hide someone or something first? He and Gabe were talking about trapping, but Gabe managed to get the conversation around to when Sam left the area with John and Dane and when they came back. He was probably going to ask the other two men the same to see if their information matched.
“You got time to come in and set a spell?” Sam asked Gabe, as if she weren’t even there. At least that meant he had nothing to hide inside, didn’t it?
Gabe turned him down, saying he had to get Tess home. “Someone hit her utility pole last night and her place went dark,” Gabe said. “You old boys weren’t out on the road after drinking last night, were you?”
How Sam found that amusing, she wasn’t sure, but somehow Gabe conned his way into looking at the bumper of Sam’s beat-up old truck out in the doorless shed he used as a garage.
Glad the hound Boo didn’t show any interest in her, Tess didn’t go with them but walked closer to the house. A slant-door of an old-fashioned root cellar with a padlock on it caught her interest. In this refrigerator age, root cellars were outdated, and people never locked them.
Checking to be sure the men weren’t looking, Tess bent and knocked on the wood. The root cellar had been repaired with new boards, one with Mason’s Mill stamped on it. She knocked on the wood again. Nothing. No answer, but what did she expect? Sandy Kenton to scream out that she needed help?
“Now, Miss Lockwood,” Sam said when the men ambled back over, “I never would ’spect you trying to get to my best moonshine.”
Tess blushed. He’d seen her. She’d made a mess of this, probably was wrong to insist Gabe bring her.
“I thought it was another place for dogs,” she blurted, probably making herself look even more stupid.
“Bad dogs, you mean?” he said with a wink and a shake of his shaggy head. “Naw, it’s not really moonshine, Sheriff, but I don’t think you came lookin’ for that. Keeps my beer cool, though. Want one, I’ll bet, eh, Sheriff, but not when you’re on duty?”
There was more small talk, all between Gabe and Sam, followed by some back-slapping. Tess walked ahead and got in the cruiser.
“Sorry I screwed that up,” she said the minute Gabe got back in.
“Almost.”
“No marks or dents on his truck, right?”
“Nope.”
“Do you really think he uses that old root cellar for storing beer?”
“No way to know without a search warrant, and the Falls County judge I use would never give me one on what I know.”
“I promise to keep even quieter—that is, say next to nothing—at Hillman’s place.”
“Tess, you did fine. But didn’t you hear what Sam divulged about Dane? I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before. The man uses veterinarian drugs. They not only cover pain, but could cause amnesia, I’ll bet. Somehow I’ve got to find out what Dane uses, check into that.”
He pulled out of the crooked driveway, and they started down the hill. “I see what you mean,” she said. “A long shot, but—”
“But I’m desperate. And maybe it’s not just that you were too young or traumatized so you didn’t recall details of your captivity. I had a friend who had a colonoscopy—he was dreading it—but they gave him an IV that didn’t knock him out so that he could follow orders, but it kept him from recalling the details of the unpleasant procedure afterward.”
“And those needle marks on my arms, like I was some kind of junkie.”
At the bottom of the hill, she almost thought she heard the barking of those dogs again. But there was some other sound, more muted and distant than her memory of the corn harvester, but—
She turned toward him, twisting in her seat belt.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what? That sound? It’s just a train. Coal trains come through here real regular, you know that. Why? You look upset.”
“Scared. I feel scared, and it’s just a distant train. Sounds really stick with me, even when I can’t get any visual memories. One of the books Miss Etta gave me about childhood traumas said smells or sounds could trigger a buried memory. Gabe, I think I remember the sounds of a train, and there’s no tracks in earshot of my house here or where I live in Michigan. But I don’t think the sounds from a train carry to Dane’s place either.”
“I’m starting to think we need a field trip to Chillicothe,” he said as they turned out onto a paved road. “I need to talk to the vet who gave Dane the initial alibi, because I remember my dad saying she lived near a train track. I could ask her about vet drugs without quizzing Dane. And I’ve got something else to check on there too, looking into someone’s past who has a record of molesting little girls.”
“Someone who lives here now?”
“Yeah. Let’s just save that until later. I don’t want you to go to Dane’s with me, Tess, but let’s go see what Hillman has to say about that stuffed dog in the backseat. Just don’t wander off if you see any buried rooms with padlocks and new wood, okay? Hearing the train narrows down where you might have been held around here to about fifty square miles instead of a hundred. Something’s going to break these cases loose. I only hope it’s not too late for the other girls.”
15
Tess was relieved to see that John Hillman’s driveway and house were a far cry from the creepiness of Sam’s. Everything looked well kept and newly painted. The driveway was a
short, straight one off State Route 104 to Chillicothe. A neatly lettered sign read Hillman’s Taxidermy and had a stag’s head on it. She wondered if Mr. Hillman would sell the new stag’s head or keep it. Thoughts of mounted stag heads with those liquid eyes and that rack of pointed antlers made her uncomfortable.
But where had she seen mounted stag heads? She couldn’t recall anything specific.
“When you said I wouldn’t like this place—that it was a house of horrors—I pictured it back in the woods like Sam Jeffers’s house,” she told Gabe.
“I didn’t mean horrors linked to you. I just meant you might not like what you see inside, depending on what he’s working on. Even though he hangs around with some of the backwoods boys, Hillman’s a modern businessman. He advertises in the Chillicothe Gazette, and this location on a busy road helps promote his services too. People are in and out of here all the time.”
Gabe took the mounted pit bull out of the backseat, got rid of the plastic bag, then held the dog under his arm as they went up to the side door with another Taxidermy sign hanging over it. He rang the bell. Tess jumped when the sound of it was not a chime but an animal’s roar.
“Black bear recording,” Gabe said as John Hillman, wearing a leather apron and goggles shoved up on his forehead, opened the door.
“Hey, Sheriff. And, Ann—oh, sorry, guess not,” he said, squinting at Tess. “Hey—I was wondering what happened to that pit bull!” He reached out and stroked the dog’s head. “Some jerk stole that right off my back porch when I had it out so the glue could dry. Glad you got it back for me. Come on in, both of you.”
“John, this is Tess Lockwood,” Gabe said, and made formal introductions, though the man seemed more interested in the mounted dog than her. “Someone left this in her backyard.”
“That right?” he said, leading them into a large workroom. “It belongs to Jonas Simons, Ann’s brother. It’s one of his favorite dogs, named Sikkem, died real sudden.”
“Sic ’em, huh?” Gabe said. “I don’t see a mark on his fur. I’ll bet you did a good job patching him up. One of his fighting dogs?”
“Fighting dogs?” Hillman echoed, looking overly dramatic, Tess thought. “Don’t know a thing about that. But why would someone leave it in your yard, Tess?” he said, turning to her and narrowing his eyes.
“That’s what we’d like to find out,” she said, keeping her attention on him rather than looking around as she had done at first.
This place smelled strange, sharp, like turpentine, and the heads of dead animals peered down from all four walls. A large vat behind Hillman was making strange sounds, and he had a big, bloody pelt stretched out on the worktable behind him. Worse, a collection of what must be glass eyes stared at her from a clear vase on the table. Around the room, plastic carvings of different animals were displayed in great detail—including veins and muscle ridges—with various stages of their own hides pinned to them.
She had not expected to see carvings that looked almost like works of art. Nor was John Hillman what she’d expected. He was slim with a closely clipped beard unlike his friend Sam Jeffers’s long one. He was younger than she’d expected too, maybe in his late thirties. Unlike Sam, he didn’t “talk country” but sounded educated with a touch of a Southern drawl. What a weird trio of friends Dane, Sam and John made. Was the foundation of their friendship animals, dead or alive?
“So this dog belongs to Jonas,” Gabe said. “Those Simons boys are pretty antsy about my relationship with Ann. All I need is them siccing a dog like this on me.”
“Better watch crossing that trio of bubbas,” Hillman said with a laugh. He looked at Tess again just as she noticed a shelf with a row of animal skulls, including one that looked newly scraped and cleaned. Either still wet or polished, it seemed to gleam.
“You don’t use the real skulls,” she observed.
“No. Even if there are antlers, they’re preserved and screwed onto a plastic skull. Not to brag, but there’s a lot of workmanship and even artistry that goes into shaping and carving the underlying forms. A lot of planning and care not to make a mistake. You’re only as good as your last carcass, like we say. In sheriff lingo, that’s you’re only as good as your last case or capture, right, Gabe?”
Hillman sounded as though he was goading Gabe. Or rubbing it in that here he was, running down a stolen, stuffed pit bull instead of tracking lost girls. Or was she reading this all wrong?
“This is a piece of evidence, so I need to keep it for a while,” Gabe said, when Hillman reached for it. “If someone’s harassing Tess, I need to know who and why. I’ll have Jonas stop around and fill out a stolen property form to get it back.”
“He owes me for the work on it, and if he doesn’t get it back, I bet he won’t pay,” Hillman said, sounding upset.
“Got you,” Gabe said, and started for the door with Tess right behind him.
She was surprised to feel the tension between the two men when she had expected them to get along. Yet Gabe had acted as if it were old home week with Sam. Did he just play different men—suspects—different ways? Since he hadn’t asked this man about his alibi for last night, she figured he must consider that new stag carcass proof of where he’d been.
At the door Gabe turned to Hillman. “Next time someone steals your property, report it, will you, John? Otherwise I have to assume you’re the last one in possession of it when it turns up where it shouldn’t be.”
“I just got home this morning from a trip with Sam Jeffers and Dane Thompson,” the taxidermist said.
“And that’s when you saw this pit bull was gone?”
“No, it was gone a few days before, but the fact that I was on the overnight trip was why I didn’t report it earlier. You got some agenda besides this dead dog, Sheriff? Like maybe kidnap victim number one here?” he said with a glance at Tess.
“When a kidnap case has never been solved, you trace any trail, whether one with a hound dog on it or a stuffed pit bull. I’ll keep this until I talk to Jonas and then you two can work out the payment for the dog.”
Hillman said something Tess didn’t catch and closed the door pretty loud and fast behind them.
“Sorry that got kind of tense,” Gabe said as he put the dog in the back of the cruiser again and they got in. “I needed to rattle a couple of cages, flush someone out by making myself the target, not you. Jonas may have taken his dog back without paying so that he could scare you off. If so, maybe it’s because he thinks I’m more interested in you than Ann.”
“As they see it, Ann’s in love with you and the three of them are her protectors.”
“Yeah. They aren’t the brightest guys around here, but I don’t want them bothering you or screwing things up. I almost hope one of the three musketeers put it there to get you away from here, instead of the kidnapper—yet I don’t want to use you for bait.”
“At least the Simons brothers are too young to have had anything to do with my abduction,” Tess said as she fastened her seat belt. “Besides, I’m not to blame if they see you stepping away from Ann, because it’s not that way between you and me.”
“No?” Gabe said. It was not so much a question, more a challenge.
Gabe backed the cruiser out and headed toward the road. He was frowning, but she was getting used to his moods now. She figured he wasn’t angry but worried. Maybe just thinking. As she was. About them, but she couldn’t face talking about that now. Until things were settled, a relationship was impossible. Even if the case was solved, the abductor found, it was still impossible. She just wanted to head home to Michigan.
Desperate for a change of subject when he kept shooting sharp looks at her that she felt clear down in the pit of her belly, she spoke. “Don’t you think John Hillman is too young to have been involved in my abduction?”
“He’s deceptive in more ways than one. I swear he’
s financing the floating dogfight ring the Simons boys run in the hills. I’d have found it by now if they didn’t have someone with brains behind it, who keeps moving its location. Hillman’s over fifty, just doesn’t look his age, like he’s been preserving his own skin and shape. He was a drinking buddy of your dad’s way back when. He was such a ladies’ man you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Hillman, you mean, not my father?”
“Yeah, right.”
“But Hillman’s being a ladies’ man doesn’t tie into kidnapping young girls, does it?”
“Nope. It’s just that I don’t trust him—or Sam, or Dane—and it really ticks me off I can’t nail them on anything. I’m going to drop you at home, look around the place again before I leave you to head on over to Dane’s. Later this afternoon, I’m heading to Chillicothe to call on Dane’s lady-friend vet. I won’t even fight you and Vic about not taking you. Her place is near the railroad tracks, and you have some memory of that, so I’ll let you look around while I talk to her, see if her house jogs any memories. Then I’ll drop you off at a restaurant or someplace safe while I do another interview I don’t want you involved in. Deal?”
“Yes. Anything to help. And I feel safest when I’m with you.”
He looked at her. Their gazes locked for a moment until he turned back to the road again. He started to say something, then evidently changed him mind as they passed Dane’s house and headed for hers.
Tess glanced in the rearview mirror at the pet cemetery, but her gaze caught the snarling expression of the dead pit bull on the backseat as if it were chasing them.
* * *
Gabe didn’t like leaving Tess alone, even in broad daylight, but after dropping her off and looking around her house inside and out, he drove alone to Dane’s. After he parked, he had to wait for him to finish with a client. Jim Cargrove, the town banker, had brought in his new Great Dane pup to be neutered.
“Best breed around, Great Danes,” Dane said, making a lame joke when he saw Gabe sitting in his waiting room after Jim had left. But Dane’s eyes widened and his head jerked when he saw the stuffed pit bull in the next seat.