While it had been long enough that the dog from the photos would likely have passed away, it gave me something to focus on. I thought that if I could offer my services to the family for free, then I might be able to talk to the family more. It seemed like the best bet, and since I’d confirmed that the family had pets, it was a safe bet that the children did as well.
I read a few more pages of the report, but nothing so far in the file gave me any understanding as to why someone would attack Sheila for it. The police seemed to be as baffled by the crime as I was. I dozed for a few hours, sleeping in the chair beside the bed. The nurse came in a few times to check on Sheila, but she slept soundly and without issue.
The next morning came too fast, and I was up at a few minutes after 6am. Another nurse had come in to examine Sheila. I was shunted out of the room, and I headed to the vending machines again for coffee. I took the police file with me and read a few more pages of the questioning while I filled myself with caffeine. I checked my watch and knew that I’d have to go home soon.
The police had next interviewed the Frias family about the crime. Again no one seemed to know any reason why Belinda Frias would be targeted for murder. It seemed impossible to understand. She had a quiet life, and her family claimed that no one had a grudge against the woman.
One aspect that the police did not examine was the possibility that Frias had uncovered something criminal during her rounds to the various houses she cleaned. I knew that merely observing what you see in a person’s house can help you determine what’s going on. Hours of cleaning and putting away things in the home would provide you with a much more detailed look at what went on in the home. I wasn’t sure how to find out Frias’ schedule, but I would definitely work on that as well. It could prove enlightening.
I flipped through the remaining pages of the report, but there was little of interest to me. The police had interviewed two sexual predators who lived in the area. One of them lived only a few houses from where we lived at the time, and where my mother still lived. I was shocked to see the address listed. I couldn’t put a face to the name, but I knew about where on the street the house had to be. Nothing should have surprised me about my childhood anymore, but it sent a shiver of shock up my spine.
I returned to the room. Sheila was up and dressed, looking impatient for something. I kissed her lightly on the cheek and gave her a smile. “How are you feeling?”
“I just want to go home. I need a shower and a change of clothes,” she replied. She did have bed head, but even with my lack of relationship skills, I knew enough to keep that to myself.
“I understand. What did the doctor say?” I looked around but the nurses were not to be seen.
“Waiting on him now,” she replied. She glanced down at the folder in my hand. “No fair. I get knocked on the head and you get to read the file before me. Something’s not right about that.”
I shook my head. “I learned from the best. You’d probably read the file after you called 911, if the roles were reversed.” I gave her a smile to let her know that I was joking. In the times where I’d legitimately been in trouble, Sheila had acted quickly and doggedly.
“Well?” she asked, drawing the word out. She held out a hand for the folder.
I wasn’t sure that she was in the best shape to be reading a police file, but given the circumstances, I didn’t feel I had the right to withhold it from her. She’d been the one to procure it, and she’d been the one who was attacked for it. With a sigh, I gave her the file. “There’s not a lot in there to help.”
“Great,” she said as she flipped through the pages, “I got knocked on the head for nothing. That’s what everyone wants to hear.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure why anyone would care about this file. I mean, it’s good police work, but it’s nothing that’s going to point a finger at any one person. It’s pretty bland as far as investigations go.”
Sheila nodded and flipped the page again. “I’m going to have to agree with you here,” she said finally. “It looks good, but nothing substantial. They went through the motions, but there were no real leads. Those are the worst cases to have. You keep hoping that something will turn up, but no matter how much police work you do, nothing does.”
“I have a few ideas on where to go next, but nothing definite. I’m just going to wing it.” It felt odd for me to tell her this, as normally I was the one waiting at home for her to call with the information. With Sheila not feeling great, I would now have to do the leg work as best as I could.
The doctor finally showed up and cleared Sheila to leave. Much to her chagrin, she was not permitted to work for a few days until her headache cleared up and the swelling went down. She argued with the doctor, but he stood his ground. I was glad to see that he was as stubborn as she was.
So instead of winging it, I now wondered if I had a full-time Watson with me. Sheila was not the type to sit at home and knit, so I knew that she’d be worse than me about getting into trouble with this case. I didn’t know that this was a good thing for the investigation or the relationship, but I didn’t bring that up.
On the way out, while being wheeled along by an orderly, she said to me, “You could use my help. Technically, this is still an open police matter, so my authority would be enough to get you into see some of these people.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it now. Just get some rest.”
She snatched my hand up in hers and squeezed hard. “Nice try. When are you going to go talk to the GIllepsies?” she said, shooting me a stare that was all business. Her silver eyes had turned to a slate gray that told me I shouldn’t mess with her.
“What makes you think that I am going to start with them?” I asked, trying to get my hand back.
“Because you always start with the obvious, and I’m guessing from that answer that you think you have an in of some sorts. They have a pet, I’m guessing. What is it? A ferret? A mouse?”
Normally Sheila didn’t make fun of my business, but when she was in a bad mood or apparently in pain, she could be sarcastic about my work. I advertise myself as someone who speaks to pets. I get people who want to find out why their dog is unhappy or their cat is not acting right, and I tell them why this is by talking to their pet.
The clients think that I actually speak to their pets by way of oral communication; however, the truth is that I do communicate with them in a manner. I observe the pet. I observe the surroundings. I observe the owner..Then I make some sophisticated inferences from what I know about pets, mainly from having them and spending hours watching them. I then tell the owner the answer to their questions.
If the dog isn’t eating and is not very active, they’re depressed. I look for signs that something has changed in the environment. Maybe a new baby or a new apartment or a new boyfriend. Changes to routine are likely to impact the pet’s mental health. The same for when a dog is happy. I can see the signs of good treatment and a happy dog. Through these methods, I’ve built up a good business for myself.
Of course it didn’t hurt that when I was involved in a few murder cases that I used my knowledge of pets to deduce the correct answer to the crime. The newspapers had been kind to me, and while Sheila saw through my act, she usually played along with the routine just to be kind. However, under certain circumstances, she had an edge to her conversations.
Of course, she was observant enough to know my methods, and she’d practically deduced my plan of attack for reaching out to the Gillespies. I should have known that she would know what I planned to do. In previous cases when there wasn’t a conflict of interest, she’d actually tutored me on proper investigative techniques.
So instead of taking Sheila home to rest, she accompanied me back to my house. I let the dogs out, fed them, and then opted to take them on a walk. While we were gone, Sheila was propped up on the sofa, accompanied by The Countess who purred contentedly while Sheila read the police report.
I was unnerved on many levels. First, The Co
untess never takes to anyone new. She barely responds to me, and I feed her. Secondly, Sheila looked very at home in my living room, and the thought gave me wild racings of the imagination. I wasn’t sure I was ready for those thoughts, so I tried to put them out of my head. Not to mention that it struck me that she’d almost been killed last night, and the thought that she was only human like the rest of us was something of a revelation, given that she’d saved me on more than one occasion.
We returned. The Corgis were exhausted and flopped down on the floor like two panting bear rugs. The effect was adorable. Sheila looked at me. “That dog has to be dead by now.”
“Bess is only six months,” I said with mock indignation, “but if you’re talking about the Gillespie dog, yeah I’m banking on them having gotten a replacement for it.”
“While you’re talking about the old dog, you might want to ask why it didn’t bark its head off while Frias was getting fileted.” Sheila shut the folder with a snap and threw it on the coffee table.
I was still in awe of her powers of deduction. Sometimes I wanted to take her into business with me. She would have made a fortune. However, those same skills made her a first-rate detective as well, and she loved her job.
I nodded, not even trying to fake the fact that I’d totally missed the obvious issue. While the dogs loved everyone who came into the house, they would have freaked at the first sight of blood. The screams of a dying woman would have definitely set them on edge.
“Do you think that’s why you were knocked out? They didn’t want you to see that piece of information?”
“No, because you would have come to the same conclusion about the dog – at some point,” she added almost as an afterthought. “So they would have come after you too, but they didn’t. The police report is missing the autopsy findings. That would include the tox screen and the precise details of the killing. There are also a couple of interviews that are missing too. The cover has an index, and if you cross-reference you can see that some of the pages are gone.”
“Couldn’t it be something simple like falling out of the folder?” I thought of my own filing system and how weak it was.
“It could. Time’s gone by, but it seems unlikely. The interviews maybe, but the autopsy is usually attached to the folder, so I’m thinking someone must have taken it. It couldn’t have easily fallen out.”
“So that points to Siever again?” I asked.
“Possibly. More than likely,” she said, pausing between words. “That would mean that you’re right. If he’s interfering in your sister’s investigation and in this investigation, then more than likely it’s because the two cases are related. I don’t see him as the type to just go through and randomly botch things up. He’s been overly involved in this case since he’s retired. Down to dating your mother as well.”
I cringed when she said that. While I knew it was true, I didn’t like the thought of a police officer who was more than likely involved in a cover-up of my sister’s disappearance being in league with my mother.
I went upstairs and got a quick shower and then returned to the living room. I’d spent the entire time thinking about her comments about the police reports. The obvious answer to her original question was that the dog knew the killer, but there were other possible answers. The dog could have been trained not to bark or had a bark collar on or even muzzled if it was violent. I don’t encourage any of these techniques, since dogs “speaking” to me is one way in which I learn what the dogs are thinking.
Sheila had tried to comb out her hair, but it still showed that she’d slept wrong on it last night. I wasn’t quite sure how she would fit my image of business owner and marketer if I approached a house with a woman who had clearly been assaulted and hadn’t had time to clean up.
“I’ll stay in the car unless you need me,” she said. “Your shtick depends on looking the part.”
“Was I that obvious?” I asked, feeling a bit guilty. After all, she had been attacked in the process of getting information for me. I felt I owed her a great deal at this point.
“Not bad, but I already knew that from looking at myself in the mirror.”
I helped her get into the car, and we drove to the Gillespie boy’s house. Of course, he was a man; it had been over a dozen years. He’d been older than Susan at the time of her disappearance, so he had to be crossing thirty by now. He lived in Library Village, a small neighborhood in Toledo and not too far from me. I pulled up in front of the address I’d found courtesy of Google and took a deep breath.
Per my routine, I didn’t start at the Gillespie house. He would have been suspicious of that – if he was even home to see. I started at a house two doors down from his home. The house obviously had a big dog as I could see from the street that the storm door had been bowed out slightly. Big paw prints muddied the path to the door. A woman answered the door, and I introduced myself. I offered a quick demonstration of my pet talking services to her and gave her the opportunity to ask a question of her dog.
The dog, a Great Dane, came barreling into the room. He licked both my hands before I could step back. He jumped up on me. I didn’t budge, because I’d grown somewhat used to this behavior, though it was poor form. The dog looked me in the face and finding nothing there, he sat down with a thud.
“This is Marcus,” the woman said. “He’s our baby. I guess my one question would be what could we do to make him happier?”
I looked at the anxious manner and the boundless energy, and answered. “Long walks or perhaps a dog park where he can run? He says that he gets bored here, and he’d like to be out more.”
The woman was impressed with the answer, and I made an appointment to see her and Marcus during the following week. Not bad for an investigation, I thought.
The house between the Great Dane and the Gillespie home was empty, so I trotted down to that home, hoping that someone was home.
A man answered the door. He was shorter than I was as well as thinner. He had short blond hair and blue eyes that watched me warily. He was dressed in a suit that fit him well, and I suspected that he was on his way out to somewhere so I hoped that I could make my spiel interesting enough for him to stay around a few minutes.
I looked at his face, seeing if I could recognize him, but nothing stood out. For the most part, my high school years had been a blur. After Susan’s disappearance, I had withdrawn into my own little world. Other people were just something to be feared and avoided. So I doubted that I could have pointed out anyone from my high school in a line-up.
I started my spiel when he interrupted me. “You’re the guy whose sister was kidnapped. Fitz, Fitzpatrick, right?”
So much for an opening line. I nodded. “Sorry. I’m bad with names,” I said, being somewhat honest.
He held out a hand. “Adam, Adam Gillespie. I was a few years older than you, but my sister Amy was the same age as your sister.”
I nodded like I remembered him, even though I still had no clue. I’d found over the years that it was easier this way. People would just come up and ask what I’d heard about my sister or if they’d solved her murder. Of course, everyone made the assumption that she would have found her way home after all these years if she’d still been alive. Still their insensitivity continued to shock me.
It was no wonder that my brother had moved to Denver; he didn’t have to put up with the well-meaning questions and nosy inquisitors. I had stayed, but built up a wall around myself to keep the questions from hurting. Everyone does something to keep the pain under control.
Today they didn’t hurt at all, because I knew that if I asked the right questions, Susan would be free to come home in the near future. So I tolerated the questions and comments from Adam with pleasure.
“Did they ever find her?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, the police still don’t know what happened. No one does.” I was staying inside the lines of the truth here. “It’s hard not knowing.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I can imagine.
So what brings you here? I know you didn’t come here to rehash the past. What can I do for you?”
I decided to change up my strategy. He’d brought up family crimes, so I decided to pay it back. “I remember you now. Didn’t something happen at your house? Like a gang killing or something?” I made it vague enough to sound like I was just remembering, when in fact I could have cited date, time and outside temperature. Photos of the crime scene were in the car if I needed them.
A darkness clouded his face. “Yeah, our maid was killed there.”
I shrugged, like I knew I’d been close. “Yeah, that was it. What happened there? Did the police ever find the killer?”
He looked at me for a long minute before answering. I wondered if he knew about my work with the police in solving crimes. If he’d seen me on the news, then possibly he wasn’t buying my act at the moment. On the other hand though, his first comments had been about my sister’s disappearance rather than about my more recent activities. Maybe he’d missed the news reports and just remembered me as the scared kid who had attended school with him.
“I’d really rather not talk about it. It was a long time ago, and nothing good comes from revisiting the past.” He shrugged as if he already knew the cognitive dissonance of what he’d asked me and what he said just now. Some people were like that. It was fine to ask about other people’s problems, but they guarded their own.
“Well, I really didn’t come to talk about that,” I said, jumping into my spiel on talking to pets. He listened and nodded a few times. I hadn’t seen a dog at the door, which meant it was likely that he didn’t have a dog. No dog in the world can resist a doorbell and a stranger at the door.
SLEEPING DOGS (Animal Instincts Book 6) Page 3