With His Dying Breath

by Nancy Hogue

“I came over to the Joneses, you know the man across the street that chased the intruder last night,” Hilda said. She stood at the Brockton’s front door staring at where the garage door would have to be for Jonas Attaway to be able to see it.

  “Yeah,” Jasper nodded to a couple he had helped with a burglary several months ago walking up the steps to the church.

  “Well, I still want to talk to him. Why don’t you meet me there?” Hilda suggested.

  “Gotcha, I’m going back in the church. I’ll see you there.” Jasper walked back into the sanctuary, took his seat and opened up the hymnbook to the song that was playing. Even though he voiced the words, his brain did not hear even one. He had only one thought in his head, who is Jonas Attaway?

  * * *

  Sammi rose early Sunday morning her mind overloaded with scenes and conversations from her past. Wilson would pick her up in an hour to go to the house where Blake was murdered. She dreaded going back there to her home. She couldn’t even think I’m going home since in her heart she had no home. She did not ever want to see blood in her home again. She was very mixed. “I don’t want to go,” she said to herself or to whoever might be eavesdropping in the adjacent apartments. She knew a memory was hidden, and it involved an object on the table. She could not see it through the layers her own body was keeping from her. But what was it? Was the memory from murders of her Mom and Dad’s, her old boyfriend’s or Blake’s? Her old boyfriend’s murder. This was the first time she had thought about Kevin in a very long time.

  The sound of the doorbell brought her back to the present, if only for a moment. “Hi Wilson, I’m ready, let me just get my purse. I’ve still got some coffee. Care for a cup?”

  “No, thank you Samantha. I’ve had my fill for today, but I tell you, it smells good. I’m trying to cut back. Ready?”

  Sammi grabbed her purse and walked out the door. Today she was wearing a pair of jeans and a long sleeved knit top. Getting dressed up would not make herself feel better. Wilson locked the apartment door behind them. “Wilson, do you think we’re doing the right thing, taking me back there?”

  “Are you afraid to go back for some reason?” Wilson noticed her ambience was much younger than her thirty-eight years. She looked like a young girl he was taking to new foster parents.

  “I’m not afraid, I don’t think. I’m actually not sure what emotion I’m feeling. I’m sad that I’ve lost my husband. I’m angry that I’ve been accused. I’m terrified as to who really killed him and why? You know, just a lot of emotions.”

  Wilson opened the car door and buckled her seat belt. Samantha was motionless, like a dummy. He sensed the turbulence in her soul just by looking at her face. Her eyes had no sparkle around her ashen face. She stared at the blank wall of the parking garage as he came around, buckled up and backed the car out into the road. There was nothing moving—no traffic, no pedestrians, not even a branch on a tree. If the situation weren’t so serious, he thought it was like a cartoon where the scenes rolled by as the wheels on the car turned without moving. Samantha was still talking so he turned his attention to her.

  “I have an appointment with River Town Mortuary today at two. Blake won’t be back from Atlanta until Monday, but I’ve still got to make the arrangements. There’s no one else to make them.”

  “I’m sorry, Samantha, that all of this has happened to you. Isn’t there someone who could be with you?”

  “Blake’s parents are deceased. He has two sisters. I talked to them briefly right after Maria left the other morning. It’s strange but neither one of them seemed to care. I don’t even know if they are coming to his funeral.”

  “Do you find that odd?” he asked stopping for a traffic light.

  “Yes, I find it very odd since Blake always seemed to really love them and care for them. I guess they have their reasons. Just right now, I can’t get involved with their situations. His older sister hasn’t been feeling well, and Barbara who is just a year older than Blake has always been in and out of trouble. Nothing bad. She just can’t handle money and doesn’t take care of her bills. She may show up if she thinks there’s something in it for her. Oh, I shouldn’t say that. I’m sorry.”

  For the first time, Wilson noticed a change in her expression. “Samantha, you have nothing to be sorry about. No need to apologize.” He saw the beginning of a smile on her lips but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  Wilson turned his car into the subdivision and Samantha marveled at the cherry trees in bloom. She loved this street this time of year. Neighbors planted the cherry trees right at the curb to form a canopy for cars driving down the street. It was beautiful. The air was crisp with a touch of warmth hinting at how hot the south would be in just a few months, possibly weeks. She wished Blake were there with her. They both loved this time of year. Oh, Blake, who did this to us?

  Wilson turned on to Sleepy Meadows Court, and there it was her house, no longer a home. The police crime tape stretched around the entire yard as neighbors continued to gawk and take pictures. The dried blood on the front door looked like New York’s inner city streets where kids spray-painted graffiti on vacant buildings. Wilson eased the car around to the back of the house trying to keep her gaze from the front. “Wait, here, Samantha. I need to go through the side door and open the garage from the control box.”

  “Okay, Wilson, I’ll be right here.” She scanned the grounds.

  “It will take just a second.”

  “I’m okay, thank you.” Samantha opened her door and stood outside. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty” She smiled as she saw her two tuxedo cats and the playful tabby running toward her familiar voice.

  * * *

  Hilda pulled out of the Jones’ driveway as a silver sedan pulled to the curb. She recognized Samantha Brockton but could not see who was driving. She stopped the car to see what was going on. Wilson introduced himself and Hilda told him about the events of the previous evening. Samantha captivated, as a small child, walked up the drive to pick up her cats. Hilda observed her body language and the girlish voice in speaking to them. Her sleuthing instincts told her this woman is not a murderer. She knew it was someone calling himself Jonas Attaway but chose not to reveal this to Wilson Lopez not yet. There was still the recording of Blake Brockton’s final words pointing the finger at his wife!

  Samantha reluctantly entered through the back door of the house. Her anticipation scanned the room looking for the culprit that killed her husband. She smelled leftover fear and felt the hair on her arms stand. The kitchen was dark and cold and smelly. There were dying flowers in a vase on the dinette table and coffee grounds spilled on the kitchen floor. She saw two empty glasses and pencil shavings in the sink. She slowly walked into the dining room where two Chippendale chairs were upside down and the china cabinet beveled glass was cracked. Items missing from the mantel included a photo of her and Blake on their first date.

  “Wilson, what was, the person who did this, what were they looking for?” Then she spied the dining room table. Something was missing from the table.

  “It wasn’t like this Thursday?”

  “No, well, I didn’t get into the dining room, but look at this mess, coffee grounds, dirty dishes, no, Wilson, this is different.”

  Staring at the table for a moment, she said, “Blake’s keys! I remember seeing them because he would never drop his keys on that cherry table. Never!”

  “Where did they go?” he asked, scanning a sheet of paper. “No mention of keys here.”

  “And also, Wilson, Blake always had a pad, you know a little booklet type pad with him. He carried it in his shirt pocket mostly to remember a meeting or somebody’s name. He was forever talking to people and then making notes of those conversations. I saw it that day, too and it’s not here either.”

  “No mention of that either, Samantha. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Blake always, I mean always, left that on his desk when he emptied his pockets.”

  “Wilson, what if the intruder was
in the house when Blake got home? He would have come in the front door and maybe sensed something. His keys jingled you know. He had so many on that ring of his. His car key was on a single ring. But, he carried a lot of keys on another ring. I’m not sure what they were for. So he put them on the table to be quieter.”

  “Maybe, Samantha. Could be one theory. Let’s go through the rooms and look for them. Look under furniture, too, just in case they were knocked off and kicked in the traffic through the house.”

  “Wilson, where is Blake’s car?”

  Chapter 18

  Cain and JJ pulled into the Monitor parking lot about two forty after the meeting with Everett Christian. She left Chip a message, and said she would call him later. She chatted with the security guard while signing the visitor’s log, and they took the elevator up to his office. Cain opened the safe and spread out all of the notes from the day before.

  “OK, baby, here you go. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You keep your cell phone handy. Call me if anything suspicious happens. I’m going to tell the guard to not let anybody up here. OK?”

  “OK, Daddy, I’ll be fine.”

  JJ went right to work. She made huge labels of each clue by date and time and taped them to the wall above the worktable. Two hours later, she was still studying her findings. She shuffled the timelines into categories and discovered nothing. She put everything in alphabetical order and found nothing. Then an idea! She took the comic strip and broke each frame down picture-by-picture and word-by-word. The dog’s name Gumdrop stared her in the face. Gumdrop had to be the link. She scrambled the letters and a few words popped out — proud, gum, dog, grump, up – nothing but words with no connection to Mr. Brockton’s murder.

  She scrambled Skinmore and got monikers which meant nothing to her. Smaller words were sermon, miners and a few other words she didn’t know. Nothing of the words meant anything in the comic strip.

  She wanted so badly to help her dad, now she had failed him. He wouldn’t think so but she knew she had failed him. Staring out the office window, wallowing in her disappointment, she watched cars turning around to keep from waiting on the train, which crawled through this section of town. Me too, people. Who has the patience to wait on a three-mile freight train through the middle of town? The parade of tourists walking through the park mesmerized her on this Sunday afternoon obviously sightseers out snapping photos of the gorgeous cherry trees and tulips in full bloom. Oh, I wish Chip and I were out there!

  As she turned back to watch the train pass by, her heart rate picked up a little. Oh gosh! She said as boxcars crept by. She went to her worktable and looked at the individual comic strips mounted on construction paper.

  She gathered each comic strip with Gumdrop and enlarged them on the copy machine. In every frame, where he was near a trashcan or a dumpster, graffiti was somewhere in the frame.

  Five days before the murder the graffiti simply said, BB2DY, written with very small and crooked letters. The next issue Gumdrop was trying to stop a garbage truck with the numbers 911 on the door. Nine eleven could be emergency, could be the New York towers, 911 was in 2001 almost eleven years ago. Could be anything, oh well she thought and went to the next one.

  Another issue showed four frames — city workers emptying the garbage, and then pouring the garbage as a strong wind blew the trash around. In the third frame, they all have a puzzled look. The fourth frame showed the garbage truck riding down the street with trash blowing everywhere and Gumdrop peeing on a fire hydrant. Looking closer with her magnifying glass, she noticed the papers flying down the street had crooked letters written upside down or backwards on each of them.

  JJ wrote the letters N O R L E B on a sheet of paper. She Googled norleb. Several hits brought up nothing pertinent—a sportswear line made in England, a bicycle touring company, a publication for the space industry. Nothing that meant anything to her. She scrambled and unscrambled the letters and got nobler boner, loner, noble. Again, nothing that really rang a bell.

  “Hi,” she said as her dad entered the office. “Dad, do these letters mean anything to you and she showed him the cartoon.

  He called off each letter, “No, to you?” He laid the paper down.

  “No, I’m afraid not, I did an Internet search but didn’t come up with anything.” Still staring at the letters, her excitement rose. “Wait a minute, they’re backward.” She flipped it upside down, “Dad, what about BelRon. That’s where Sarah’s dad works, that new plant. He was sick the night of the fire. Thank goodness! Dad look at this cartoon.” She picked up the sheet with the fire hydrant.

  “Slow down, hon, what you got here?” JJ spent the next thirty minutes going through the graffiti that was readable once enlarged. For the first time, Cain thought they were on to something. BB2DY surely meant that Blake Brockton was going to die only the person responsible for his murder would know that. The BelRon plant had exploded in a massive fire. Now the cartoon two days before the fire shows the dog at the fire hydrant.

  “You think it means something?”

  “Of course, it does! Honey you may have just solved the mystery?”

  He stared at her board with all of her detective work as his cell phone rang.

  “Yes, right now is perfect. I’m in the office…thanks Detective Marabell…Hilda…see you in a few minutes.”

  “Dad, do you mind if I leave now? Sara and I talked about going out to the airport. Her mom’s working at the FBO.”

  Cain asked, “What’s an FBO?”

  “Daddy,” she laughed, “You know, the people who run the airport.”

  He smiled. He knew exactly what the FBO was, and he knew of her love of flying. “Ok, hon, you gotta promise me to be careful. Is someone taking y’all flying?”

  “No sir, not today, probably too windy.”

  “Well, call me later. Be careful out there.”

  “I will daddy, love you.” She pushed the button for the elevator having heard that warning before!

  Hilda arrived at the Monitor’s parking lot just as JJ was exiting the building. They had never personally met although JJ recognized her from newspaper clippings.

  “Detective Marabell, hi, I’m JJ, Cain Matthews’ daughter.”

  “JJ, so nice to meet you. What’s got you down here on this beautiful day? And please, call me Hilda.”

  She smiled, “Oh, I’ve just been going over some stuff with dad, the clues he’s been getting about Mr. Brockton’s murder. I’ve never been involved in a murder investigation before. I like to watch the shows on TV, you know, CSI, and all that, so I find it all pretty interesting.”

  “JJ, I’m sure your dad appreciates your help but remember this is no TV show. You be careful what you do and who you talk to about it.”

  “Oh, I will. I don’t talk about my dad’s job. And I even have strange calls warning me to be careful but I haven’t told my dad about them. He would worry too much.”

  “What? What do you mean strange calls?”

  “Miss Hilda, I’ll go back up with you to Dad’s office. I guess I need to tell him, I just need to call my friend, Sara.” She punched “3” on her cell phone and left her best friend a voicemail that she was running late. Jasper Nelson pulled in and parked beside Hilda. They all rode up to the third floor together.

  Chapter 19

  Monday, March 19, 5 a.m.

  For once, I’m glad today is Monday, Hilda thought, as she stumbled to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee almost tripping over her cat’s food dish. Sunday was wasted as far as detective work went. Neither she nor Jasper could get in touch with anyone.

  The meeting with Cain Matthews went well, she thought. Although, there are twice as many questions now. She may not have given the meeting about the clues as much attention as she should have. How does the Jonas Attaway character fit into the fire she kept asking herself? She needed to hear the 911 call on the bomb threat. That wasn’t her case but she needed to hear the voice behind the call. “All of this is tied together, I just
know it,” she said to her elderly cat as she poured out more food.

  Today she would reach Lois about the bowtie, the Jonses, the Youngs and the, uh, the vet about the dog, she asked herself. No one could be reached on Sunday.

  Hilda waved to her precious tabby at the window and backed out of her garage at five forty-five heading for the office. She was aware of the stranger watching her from behind a neighbor’s car. While appearing to be on a regular patrol, another police nabbed the lurker, put him in handcuffs and into the backseat of the police car. Hilda had noticed him as she picked up her morning paper and again from the kitchen sink and called it in.

  “Okay, guys, thanks, let me know what you get out of him,” she said and headed out for the station.

  The day was crisp with shallow ground fog moving across the river. She made a mental comparison that the murder’s identify was obscured in a fog bank. Tuning into the early morning news shows, she prepared her to do list.

  At nine fifteen, she checked the first item off her list. A vet in a nearby town reported that a client brought in a basset hound with a cut foot. In fact, they had just left about fifteen minutes ago. At least the client thought he was injured because of the blood. After an examination, he found one foot had dried blood in the toes and the other had dried blood on the pads. The vet found nothing, no glass, no thorn, and no broken skin. He deduced the dog had caught a rabbit or something in his back yard not suspecting human blood.

  “Looks like him to me,” the vet said about a photo of Jonas Attaway’s basset hound.

  Next was to visit the dog’s owners in Barnesville. He gave Hilda their address knowing the couple would not mind. I hope they drove home, she mumbled.

  Hilda pulled into the drive and could see the basset hound at the fence gate. He is a pretty dog and so friendly. Be easy for someone to load him up and take it somewhere. The owners expected Hilda after a call from the vet and invited her inside.