by Dale Mayer
“Kids, can you show me where you last saw the dog?” Hedi tried to move them away from the obvious power play.
The oldest girl walked toward the door, calling to her brother and sisters. The four of them ran outside.
Outside Hedi stopped for a second and took several deep breaths. Every time she came here she knew she was taking her life in her hands. At some point, Jed would go over the line, and she would pay the price. She’d thought for sure it was today. That look in his eyes was just blood-spitting mad.
As she stood here, a little hand slipped into hers. She looked down to see Molly, her eyes still nervous as she crept close and hung on to Hedi’s leg. “Is Daddy feeling better now?”
“I think Daddy will feel much better for quite a while,” she said. At least she hoped so. As long as he believed Pierce’s threat, Jed would behave himself, at least for a bit.
She’d tried to get their mom to leave him, but Jed was just as much of a threat to her if she lived with him or not. In fact, he threatened to do away with her and take the kids and go visit his grandpappy somewhere in the north country. She didn’t even know what that meant, but, as a threat, it was pretty effective.
Molly stepped up onto the porch again to be with her. She leaned up and said, “Do you know that man?”
“No, not particularly,” Hedi said. “Why?”
Molly looked back toward the door, where the two men were still in their line of vision. “My dad is scared of him.”
“Is that good or bad?” Hedi asked curiously.
“It’s good,” Molly said, and then she darted toward the barn. “The dog was here.”
“Do you know when she came here? Or how she got here?”
“Daddy just said he would keep her for a while. She’d be good for getting meat.”
Hedi nodded slowly. “You know that’s not a good way to hunt animals, right?”
“There’s no good way to hunt animals,” Molly said. “But Daddy says we have to have meat, that he doesn’t have any money and that we need to eat somehow.”
“True enough,” Hedi said. “Come on. Show me where she was kept.”
She followed the kids toward the barn, hoping it was okay to leave Pierce and Jed alone. Maybe without any women around to see his humiliation, Jed would show a little more fire so Pierce could punch it out of him. She was all about Pierce dominating this drunken excuse for a father and a husband. The problem was, the next time he got a hold of a bottle, Jed would be pretty damn ugly. And, if he remembered this, it would just be a meaner version of pretty damn ugly.
At the barn, the kids led her to a couple dog runs. They were all empty at the moment but large enough to have kept something Salem-size.
“Do you know how long ago the dog disappeared?”
They just shrugged. Time had very little meaning for kids. But it sounded like Jed had had the dog since the dog supposedly escaped from the police yard up until Salem ran away. Which meant that either Ross or Jed was responsible for cutting the fence and letting her out. And that was interesting in itself. Then again the sheriff might have done so himself to get rid of the dog.
“Has your dad had any other dogs?”
The kids shook their heads.
“Has he ever kept any people in the barn?” She didn’t know why, but she’d had to ask that question. After all, if Jed abused his wife and four kids, then abused Salem, what’s to stop him from branching out, like into human trafficking? That downward spiral Jed was in could lead to all kinds of criminal activity.
The kids shook their heads again.
Hearing their answers, sheer relief washed through her. She still didn’t know if Jed was evil through and through or if he was just a misguided soul who had fallen down a deep, dark well of abuse and addiction and was taking out his ills on those he should have loved the most, on those who could have loved him the most. He still had no excuse for abusing his family, then Salem.
Hedi looked around the area. “Looks like the dog would have been quite comfortable here.”
“It was nice to see her,” Molly said. “I didn’t like the way Daddy treated her, and she didn’t like Daddy at all.”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” Hedi said.
“Is that man taking the dog away?”
“I think so,” Hedi said. “I don’t know who she legally belongs to, but I think he has some kind of a claim to her.”
“I hope he does then. I liked the dog. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Hedi smiled at the little girl and picked her up, hating that she was out here stumbling around in bare feet. But then, as she looked at the other kids, she saw they were barefoot too. “I should have had you put your shoes on before I brought you outside,” Hedi said sorrowfully. “Your feet will get all scratched up.”
Molly looked at her in surprise. “Our shoes are only for going to town and for school. We’re not allowed to ruin them out here.”
“Ah, you only have one pair of shoes each?” she asked.
“Yes,” Molly said. “Daddy said we don’t have any money.”
“No, I imagine it’s tough times right now.”
Hedi led the way back to the house, an anger burning deep inside. Although it might be tough times, these kids had no shoes, and that asshole of a father had money for booze. And that dropped her back to thinking whether they made moonshine in the proverbial back forty.
She thought they had twenty-acres out here, but it was woodland acres. You couldn’t grow anything without bringing in truckloads of good dirt. So all kinds of stuff went on in these back corners that the sheriff’s office or the police department never had a chance to see.
As she walked toward the front door, she could hear the two men talking. Jed now stood on his feet, and Pierce faced him, apparently reading him the riot act. But Jed’s head was hunkered down, his shoulders were slanted in, and he leaned forward, taking the verbal beating Pierce dished out.
She stopped the kids from going in because she was just too damn happy to see this and didn’t want to interrupt Pierce.
When Pierce fell silent, he turned and looked at her through the screen door. He motioned for her to come in. She pulled the door open and stepped in the house, putting Molly on the floor. “Jed, you need to get these kids a second pair of shoes or boots to wear outside.”
He lifted his tired gaze and stared at her. “There ain’t no money for shoes.”
“I heard Jacky down at the gas station was looking for a hand.”
Jed’s lip curled.
She held up a finger and pointed it at him. “Don’t you let your pride get the better of you,” she snapped. “A job is a job.”
“He won’t pay enough to put food on my table.”
“He’s paying more than doing nothing but sitting here and drinking booze that could have paid for shoes.” She studied his gaze to confirm her suspicions. She stepped closer. “Unless you’re making it yourself out in the back illegally.”
He just raised his eyebrows and stared her down. “We ain’t doing nothing like that,” he said stoutly.
“Right,” she snapped. “Like I believe you.”
He gave her an almost injured look, as if to say he was the most innocent man in the world. But no man who beat his wife and kids and a dog was innocent.
She turned to walk back to the front door, then paused and looked at Jed. “Whether Pierce is here or not, the next time you point a gun at me, you better be prepared to shoot it because I’ll fire first.” And she walked out, letting the door snap closed behind her.
When she heard it open again, she knew it was Pierce. She walked to her cruiser and got in. She didn’t give him a chance to speak. She slammed the door shut, turned on the engine and backed out, deliberately avoiding his gaze.
She didn’t know why she was being difficult. Part of it was because he’d done something she couldn’t do. It was something she was supposed to do as a deputy, but some things the badge just wouldn’t change. Jed would never
listen to a woman.
And she headed off down the road.
Pierce was in the truck and on her tail almost immediately. He couldn’t get anything else from Jed about where the dog was. The kids had spent a few minutes telling him the dog just disappeared not too long ago. But Pierce knew something was going on when he watched Hedi, the lovely deputy, get in her car and take off. He figured she was either heading back to talk to the sheriff about whatever it was or, better yet, she’d ponder over it a bit herself.
Now he had something to wonder about. It had damn-near broken his frozen solid heart when he saw Jed lift that rifle and point, and then slam it directly against her shoulder. When he found out the damn thing had been fully loaded, he was beyond furious. But she’d stared down Jed, calm and collected as could be. Pierce had seen the fine shimmer of sweat on her forehead and knew she understood just how close she’d come to getting shot today.
Was that what her life was like? Dealing with these kinds of assholes? He remembered the sheriff had just brushed it off, saying Jed was harmless. But nobody who tried to shoot a deputy or even threatened a deputy was harmless.
From the looks of it, the kids were not so much abused as neglected. Then again, some beatings were done where the damage couldn’t be seen. Hedi had said Jed was hitting the kids, and Pierce trusted her. Now he had to do something about it. And about protecting the wife too.
But he was here to first follow up on Salem’s fate. He wasn’t too happy with what he had heard. It sounded like she’d been mistreated for a long time and had done her best to get away from her abusers, like any other animal, human or four-legged.
Up ahead he watched as the deputy pulled off on the shoulder and shut off the engine. He pulled in behind her and hopped out. She didn’t get out but sat in the car, having rolled down her window.
“Are you following me?” she asked bluntly.
He grinned. “No, it’s the only way back, the direction we came in.”
She nodded. “It is. But you don’t have to be quite so close. I’m fine, you know?”
He studied her intently for a long moment. “You shouldn’t be,” he said just as bluntly. “You could have died today.”
“It’s part of the job.” There was a note of fatigue in her voice. “I’m the only one who will talk to Jed.”
“None of the other deputies will? Are they men?”
She nodded. “That’s one of the sheriff’s big beefs. There shouldn’t be women deputies. We’re all supposed to sit at home and bake apple pies,” she snapped, repeating the sheriff’s earlier words. “It doesn’t matter that female deputies are found the world over. As far as he’s concerned, in his county, that ain’t happening.”
Pierce nodded. “It doesn’t mean he’s right, just means he’s an asshole and a sexist. The thing is, guys should go out there, and they should give Jed a good shakedown every time he pulls shit like that. What happens if you tell the sheriff what happened today?”
“He’ll say I handled it wrong, and what did I expect? How I couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to lose my livelihood and be dependent on a wife.” Her tone was dry, but she said it almost in a routine way, as if she’d said it time and time again. Then she had.
“Your sheriff really doesn’t like you, does he?”
“He doesn’t like very many people,” she said. “The fact that I am his deputy is just adding insult to it.”
“Then he’s an idiot.” Pierce’s tone was hard. “He needs to move into the new age.”
“Maybe,” she said, staring out at the countryside around them. “But, just because you and I say so, won’t make it happen.” She glanced back up at Pierce.
He had to agree. “What do you know about the dog?” he asked.
“Why do you care so much about her?” she countered.
He hesitated, wondering how much he could tell her. Then he realized, no longer being in the military, this wasn’t a secret mission. He squatted in front of her door, and she opened it to see him better.
“Salem was a War Dog. She spent a lot of time training. She saved lives in Afghanistan,” he said. “We send the War Dogs home with their handlers for a better life. She’d been injured and had a terrible time recovering. Pete was also injured, as you know. Then she lost Pete. Even though he’s still alive and fighting the good fight, he can’t do it with her at his side. As a general rule, War Dogs are well taken care of, but somehow Salem fell through the cracks. We’re not supposed to get attached to our dogs while we’re over there, but it’s unavoidable. I certainly loved mine, and I know most of the handlers loved theirs. In this case, I was asked to track down Salem when somebody in the division realized Pete couldn’t possibly be looking after Salem. She should have been handed to another person capable of looking after her.”
Hedi frowned at him. “Seriously, you’re from the government?”
“I’m here on the behest of a commander from that department in the military,” he said, “but the job came through Titanium Corp, which is a group of former military SEALs now trying to help people like me, and, in this case, dogs like Salem, find a new and better life.”
She latched on to what he had accidently slipped out. “Like you?”
He shrugged. “I came stateside almost ready for a metal box,” he said. “I spent a long time in a hospital. In the meantime, my beloved wife …” His words carried a cynical tone. “… found somebody better, divorced me, and, in the process, somehow I lost my home and everything else. My dog was killed on the same mission that injured me.” His voice halted for a moment. “So I didn’t even have the comfort of knowing Trigger was at my side. And, to be honest, like Pete, I couldn’t have looked after her for the first while. I was in pretty rough shape.”
She nodded slowly. “You look fairly healthy now.”
“I am,” he said, “or at least as good as I’ll get. We received a dozen files of dogs potentially in trouble that had gone missing or were in bad situations. The military didn’t know what their fate was, and so they asked Titanium Corp if somebody had time to volunteer to check them out.”
“Have you found any of them yet?” she asked.
“We only started a little bit ago,” he said. “Ethan, a former K9 trainer, went looking for the first one. He found him guarding a drug lab and being trained to kill intruders.” At her gasp he nodded grimly. “And you know what happens to dogs that kill humans.” His voice was bleak. “Ethan got there in time to rescue four shepherds from that fate. He has now taken all four on. Plus I believe, from what I last heard, he adopted a fifth one, who just lost her leg and had no place to go and will need special care. He’s decided to build his own group of trained dogs.”
“Is that what you’re looking to do, bring this one back to him?”
Pierce shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do at the moment. The first thing is to get the dog, make sure she’s safe and cared for. She saved a lot of lives and spent a lot of years in service for her country. She deserves better than being tossed into this shithole and being used to track down deer, for God’s sake. Man’s got guns. He should be out there with a hunting license and hunting them humanely.”
“It’s not even hunting season,” she said. “Something else the sheriff doesn’t give a damn about.”
“Sounds like you need a new sheriff,” Pierce snapped.
“We do. Indeed, we do,” she said. “But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Public sentiment has to be swayed.”
“Is everybody for the sheriff, or are they all just afraid of him?”
She frowned. “You picked that up pretty fast. I’d say seventy percent are afraid of him. Of the others, ten percent are for him, like Jed. And the rest just don’t give a damn because they don’t think it matters what they say or do.”
“It sounds like politics everywhere,” he said. “Still, that doesn’t change the fact the sheriff isn’t doing his job. People are getting away with all kinds of criminal acts, an
d the whole county will end up in a bad way very soon.” He motioned back at the house. “Hopefully Jed will lay off the kids and the wife for a while. But nothing will stop a man for long who’s hell-bent on destroying himself and the world around him.”
“That’s too bad,” she said. “I was so hoping he would go on the straight and narrow.” There was a note of humor in her voice. “You’re pretty damn scary when you want to be.”
His lips kicked up at the corner. “I can be,” he agreed. “When the time warrants it. And I’m wondering what the hell we’re supposed to do about that piece of shit sheriff you’ve got here.”
“As soon as you figure it out, you tell me because I haven’t a clue.”
“How many other deputies do you have?”
“Two. And, before you ask, they’re both like him.”
“So how did you get the job?”
She rolled her eyes. “The mayor thought it was a good idea, a woman-initiative thing. I think they both thought I’d be stuck at a desk, making coffee for the guys when they came in from their hard work,” she snapped. “But, as soon as they gave me the deputy badge, I was the first one out the door, patrolling the trouble spots. I knew what deputies did. I was raised by a sheriff. My dad isn’t terribly impressed I’m a deputy, but he’s even less impressed with the sheriff who replaced him.”
“Why did your dad step down, or was he forced out in an election?”
“Car accident,” she said succinctly. “He’s better, but he’s not 100 percent. He withdrew from his position, which is when they brought in our current sheriff.”
“Do you think the voting was fair?”
“They put him in, but I don’t think they expected what they got. They should have though. He’s been in this community a long time. My father was horrified. He felt for sure the people would have understood and known better, but the sheriff was a smooth talker back then. He doesn’t give a shit about being a smooth talker now. He runs this place like he’s a god.”
“Except he can’t seem to keep you in line.”
“No. I’ve placed a couple complaints above his head,” she said, “so he’s worried about me. He doesn’t know how much trouble I’ll be for him, so he lets me do my stuff. He rarely calls on me, only sends me out on jobs if he thinks something’ll scare me away, instead of jobs he thinks I can handle. Other than that, we try to avoid each other.”