Walk a Crooked Line (Jo Larsen Book 2)

by Susan McBride

  “Yes,” a woman replied between sniffles. “It’s Amanda Pearson. You were out at my home yesterday after my Duke went missing . . .”

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. Pearson.”

  The weeping started again, so Jo could pick up only the tail end of a garbled sentence, something along the lines of “some news about Duke.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have been in touch sooner,” Jo said, flinching. “It’s been kind of crazy around here, but I’m sure you want an update.”

  She told Mrs. Pearson that she’d had one of their officers pull prints off the dog tags, recovering only a few barely useable partials. She wasn’t sure it was even worth it to have the owners come by to print for comparison. Finding possible matches on AFIS was a long shot anyway, unless the thief was already in the system.

  She paused as Mrs. Pearson blew her nose. “I want to assure you that we’re still trying our best to find Duke,” she said when the noise had stopped.

  “You don’t need to find him.”

  “What?” Jo asked. “Why?”

  “He’s already been found.”

  Hank couldn’t get back from downtown Dallas fast enough to join her, so Jo took her own car and picked up Amanda Pearson at her home, driving her across county lines to a vet’s office in Celina.

  Not much was said along the way, just enough so that Jo knew where to go. Mrs. Pearson didn’t seem to have much information besides the fact that Duke was in extremely critical shape. He’d been picked up along FM 455. Jo recalled Hank’s story about another dog in critical condition being found on the same farm road about three weeks earlier.

  Maybe it was a coincidence. But she had a gut feeling it wasn’t.

  Within twenty-five minutes, they’d arrived at the clinic of Cynthia Hooks, DVM, in Celina, just off North Preston Road.

  They found a waiting room filled with barking dogs on leads and howling cats in cages. Jo didn’t bother to find a seat. She walked right up to the receptionist and showed her shield and ID. She explained that she’d driven Amanda Pearson, the owner of Duke, the golden retriever who’d been brought in by a Good Samaritan.

  “Do you have proof that he’s yours?” the young woman asked, and Mrs. Pearson nodded, fumbling inside her enormous black bag and producing more than enough paperwork to be convincing.

  The receptionist paged the vet, frowned, and murmured an affirmative before she got up and ushered them into the doctor’s office.

  Jo hardly had time to assess the framed diplomas on the wall or the family photos on the credenza before a bespectacled woman with short gray hair and white lab coat came in, offering her hand to Mrs. Pearson.

  “Oh, my goodness, I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances,” she said, patting the woman’s hands and holding on to them. “Your beautiful golden was made as comfortable as possible, but he left us about fifteen minutes ago. Please know that he was not alone.”

  Mrs. Pearson let out a whimper from low in her throat. “I want to see Duke now,” she said, voice quivering. She’d been fighting back tears for the last half hour, and they suddenly began to fall.

  The vet looked at Jo, as if it was up to her.

  She nodded, despite the full-blown ache in her chest. It was the reason they’d come, after all, to reunite the dog with his human mother.

  The doc grabbed a few tissues from a box near the sink and handed them to Mrs. Pearson, who pushed her glasses into her hair to dab at her eyes.

  “If you’ll both follow me.”

  Dr. Hooks led the way out of her office, up a brief hallway, the cacophony of yapping dogs and mewing cats filling the air and drowning out the elevator music being piped through ceiling speakers.

  Jo held on to Mrs. Pearson’s arm, and the woman leaned into her, like she’d given up pretending to be strong. Jo thought she was holding it together remarkably well, all things considered, but there was fear in her eyes as they approached a door marked SURGICAL SUITE.

  “Excuse me a moment.” Dr. Hooks went in before them, and Jo heard her telling someone, “She’s here.” Then she reappeared to hold the door open wide, and she helped Mrs. Pearson into the room.

  The lights had been dimmed, the room chilled by air-conditioning. Jo breathed in the antiseptic smell mingled with the scent of damp dog, though she doubted either was to blame for the churn of her stomach.

  Mrs. Pearson hung back at first, and Jo touched her arm gently. She had nothing to say, no words to comfort her. She just wanted the woman to know she was there.

  “Sarah?” Dr. Hooks asked, motioning at the vet tech who sat beside the table upon which the dog lay, a blanket atop him.

  The ponytailed woman in scrubs quickly hopped off her stool and reached for Mrs. Pearson’s hand, guiding her toward her boy. Jo stayed in the room just long enough to see the woman stroking him, murmuring to him in the sweetest of voices.

  Tears sprang to Jo’s eyes, a pain in her chest as real and raw as the one she’d felt upon seeing Kelly Amster’s body on the grass.

  “Detective?”

  She felt a touch on her elbow.

  Dr. Hooks whispered, “Let’s leave them alone for a bit.”

  Jo swiped at her cheeks and followed the woman outside the room, waiting in the hallway as the door was closed partway.

  “What the hell happened to him?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “Was he hit by a car?”

  “He was hit by something,” the vet said quietly. “If it was a car, it hit him more than once. His skull is fractured in several places. Ribs are broken. The pelvis is fractured. I don’t know if he managed to crawl to the highway or if he was dumped there.”

  “Was he used as bait in a dogfight?”

  “I didn’t find bite marks. He wasn’t attacked by another dog or even a pack of dogs,” Dr. Hooks assured her. “He was battered, plain and simple.”

  “Battered? Like beaten?”

  The vet blew out a breath. “That’s my guess.”

  “What could do that much damage?”

  “I don’t know. A tire iron, a shovel.” Dr. Hooks frowned. “I started out my career at a rescue organization, and I saw some pretty horrific cases of abuse that ranked right up there with this.”

  “You really believe someone did this?” Jo asked.

  “Oh, believing’s the easy part.” Dr. Hooks sniffed. “Sadly, these days, anything’s possible. You must know that as well as anyone.”

  Oh, yeah, she knew.

  Jo forced herself to breathe.

  She thought of what Hank had told her, about another missing pup that had turned up near death in Celina, and she asked the vet, “Have you come across any similar cases recently? Any other dogs found in this condition?”

  “Not at my clinic, no. I would’ve reported it.” Dr. Hooks cocked her head. “But I read a sidebar about keeping pets safe in the local paper three weeks back. It mentioned a dog found on the side of the Farm to Market road, said he looked like he’d been hit by a Mack truck. When I saw Duke, I did have to wonder if the two dogs were connected in some way . . .”

  She stopped, jerking her head toward the door of the surgical suite.

  “Oh, my baby, my sweet, sweet baby . . .”

  Jo turned, too, her heart breaking all over again at the agonized sobs of a woman whose whole world had just been blown to dust.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jo ended up leaving Mrs. Pearson at Dr. Hooks’s clinic in Celina. She didn’t want to, but the older woman insisted on staying with her beloved Duke and riding with him in the van that would transport him back to his personal vet in Plainfield. Dr. Hooks even volunteered to accompany them, making sure Mrs. Pearson was returned home thereafter.

  “I’m so sorry we couldn’t find him sooner,” Jo told Mrs. Pearson, feeling like she’d failed her and Duke, that she’d been too slow to save a life.

  “Just tell me you’ll get the sons of bitches who did this,” the woman said, gripping Jo’s hands so tightly. “Promise you’ll do that.”
>
  She started to say, “I’ll try,” only to stop herself, reminded of the movie quote on Bridget’s T-shirt. Do or do not . . . There is no try.

  Damn Yoda.

  “I will,” she said, not making excuses. “I’ll get them.”

  “Good. You find them, and you kick their asses to kingdom come.” Mrs. Pearson nodded, patting her hands before letting them go.

  Kick their asses to kingdom come.

  Jo put that at the top of her to-do list.

  Before she left Celina, she asked Dr. Hooks to e-mail copies of any records she’d generated in her examination of Duke. Then Jo walked out the door, hesitating at her car.

  She stood for a minute in the parking lot, heat rising from the asphalt, baking her feet through her shoes, and she looked up at the blue sky, sniffing away tears that didn’t want to stop falling.

  It’s just a dog, she tried to tell herself. A dog, not a child.

  But that didn’t work.

  A life was a life, and they mattered, every single one of them.

  With the exception of the assholes who took lives, like they were nothing. Those didn’t matter, not to her. Not at all.

  Keep going. This isn’t over, she told herself, sucking in a deep breath and filling her lungs with muggy air. It didn’t exactly feel good, but it helped enough that she could calmly settle herself into the driver’s seat. She started the car, turning on the police band, listening to a bit of chatter about a shoplifting suspect nabbed at the Warehouse Club for slipping prime rib beneath a fake baby in a stroller.

  Jo pulled out of the lot, her head hurting. Her heart hurt, too.

  Two deaths in two days—a teenage girl with a lost soul and a lost dog as beloved as any child. Maybe that shouldn’t have been grief enough, not for a cop who’d worked the city beat for ten years. But she’d gotten used to a slower pace in Plainfield, to a body count measured in months, not in days or even weeks.

  Hank liked to say she was a dog with a bone. Sometimes he even called her a hard-ass. And, sure, she played it on occasion, convincing everyone but herself that she could handle any horror without flinching. But, at her core, she wasn’t hard at all. She wasn’t Superman but Lois Lane, falling through the sky, vulnerable and all too mortal. She shared the grief of the survivors. She felt the pain of the victims, because it was her pain. It would never let go.

  She liked to tell herself it made her a better cop, a better advocate. But, the truth of the matter was, she’d spent her childhood putting walls around herself, hiding how she felt, keeping in the most horrid and hurtful of secrets. She’d trained herself to be stoic, except her armor had cracks; and the more she lived and breathed, the more they showed.

  If there was anything that therapy—and being with Adam as well—had taught her, it was that, if she didn’t allow herself to feel, she was as good as dead. Sometimes it made her job harder when her heart got too involved. It became a crusade—a cause, not a case. But was that really so bad?

  Only if it clouded her judgment, she told herself. Only if it made her miss the details. And that, she didn’t want to do.

  If she was going to keep her promise to Amanda Pearson, what she needed was a clear head, not a catch in her throat.

  So she pulled herself together, donning her suit of armor, dinged as it was, and ten minutes into her drive back to Plainfield, when she glanced in her rearview mirror, her eyes were bone-dry.

  She was back within the Plainfield city limits when her cell phone rang.

  “Where are you, partner?” It was Hank.

  “I’m nearly at the station,” she told him, the phone stuck in a cupholder so she could keep both hands on the wheel. “I left you a message about going to Celina with Amanda Pearson. Duke was found along FM 455, just like that other dog your pal at Animal Services told you about.”

  “Jesus, Larsen. Is he okay?”

  “No. He’s not okay, Hank.”

  “Well, damn.” Her partner sighed. “This is starting to sound like something, you know? Not just some puppy resale ring.”

  “I know.”

  “So what’ve we got? Did anyone do an autopsy on Duke?”

  “I’ve got the Celina vet sending us exam records,” she told him as she sailed through an intersection on a green light and put on her right blinker, ready to turn into the parking lot. “Maybe Adam can look them over.”

  “How’s Mrs. Pearson?”

  “She’s beside herself.”

  “Any sign of that other pup, the one you got a call about last night? The German shepherd?”

  “No.”

  Hank was so quiet, she thought she’d lost him.

  “Where are you?” she asked, imagining him in the old Ford, stuck in traffic somewhere on the Dallas tollway. “Did you drop off Kelly’s underwear at the crime lab?”

  “I did, and I’m still here.”

  “Okay,” she said, wondering why he wasn’t on his way back. “What’s up?”

  “I saw your boyfriend. He said he didn’t get assigned Kelly’s case, but he’s offered to assist so maybe we’d get answers faster.”

  “So you’re hanging out with Adam?” she said.

  “I thought I’d stick around for the autopsy.”

  “Really?” Jo knew how he hated attending postmortems.

  “I might have some questions,” he said. “It’s easier to ask them during the post than to decipher the reports. You okay for a few hours without me?”

  “Of course I am,” she told him, prickling a bit, although she realized he wasn’t questioning her ability, merely doing his best impression of an overly protective brother. “Call me if you learn anything that can’t wait.”

  “You got it.”

  She hung up, then cut off the ignition. Grabbing keys and phone, she went inside. She checked to see if the captain was in yet—he wasn’t—and then almost ran headfirst into Bridget.

  “There you are!” the young woman said, appearing out of nowhere. “I’ve been trying to hunt you down. Got a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  Bridget beamed, her eyes shining behind the sturdy black glasses. She had her dark hair shoved under a knit cap with a peace sign patch, even though forecasters were predicting another near-triple-digit day. Her graphic T-shirt de jour featured Princess Leia and the words Girls Run the Galaxy. She was definitely rocking the hipster-tech-geek look, and it made Jo like her all the more.

  “Come into my lair, though it’s sadly lacking in dragons,” Bridget said, rolling her chair through the door into the server room.

  Jo didn’t feel as bothered by the noise of the server this time around. It was a nice distraction, helping to drown out Amanda Pearson’s devastated cries, still on repeat in her head.

  Bridget had pilfered a small stool from somewhere, and she indicated Jo should sit. It was a tight squeeze when she pulled it up beside Bridget’s chair at the table that held the trinity of monitors.

  “What’d you find?” Jo asked.

  “Little appetizers,” she told her. “Not the main course yet, I’m afraid.”

  “I like appetizers.”

  “Good.”

  Kelly’s laptop was still hooked up like an ICU patient, and Jo noticed a Facebook page featured prominently. But it wasn’t Kelly’s. The banner background was the Texas flag, painted on the tailgate of a pickup trick. To the left was the group identifier: the Posse, it said.

  “They call themselves the Posse, and they think they’re thugs underneath all that white bread. Stupid rich kids who figure they’ll get away with anything.”

  Jo thought of what Cassie had told her, about Trey Eldon and his squad. Was this their gang?

  “What’s the Posse?” she asked Bridget, trying to square how it fit in with Kelly Amster and their investigation.

  “You asked me to look into Trey Eldon on social media, right? So I did a search for his name, and this came up through a few intriguing tags that were cached on Facebook.”

  “Is it a group he’s in?
” She leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the administrator information and the tiny roster of members before Bridget changed the image on the screens.

  “First things first, okay? Let’s focus on Kelly Amster, since I’ve been working on her social media presence all morning. I reset her passwords, which was the easiest part. Finding anything that explains her death is going to be trickier.” Bridget clicked her mouse so that one of the screens showed an Instagram account. “Here’s what I found on her Insta. Looks like a bunch of pics with her bestie up until about a month ago.”

  She scrolled through large photos with Kelly’s freckled face pressed alongside Cassie Marks’s pimpled cheeks and spiral curls. The captions were simple, lots of things like, Froyo with my bestie, and pics of painted toes and fingers alongside descriptions: Green mani-pedis! Each notation was followed by hashtags like #BFFs and #chillaxing.

  “She liked clothes, I guess, because she has lots of pics of shoes and blinged-out mannequins in store windows. There’s the occasional cute puppy or squirrel upside down on a bird feeder,” Bridget said as she continued to scroll. “But something changed around the first weekend of August. It’s like the happy pics dried up after this one.”

  She stopped moving the page up and down when she got to a selfie taken in a mirror. It showed Kelly in a slim blue dress that hugged her body all the way down to her knees. Beneath, Jo glimpsed sneakers on her feet.

  In the caption, two hashtags: #partydress and #bignight.

  There was the infamous blue dress again, the one Kelly had worn to Trey’s party and that had mysteriously disappeared.

  “Hold it there,” Jo said, noting comments to @kellyam:

  More like #slutdress, one said.

  #askingforit, said another.

  Both were posted by Anonymous.

  “Can you trace those?”

  “Just to the Instagram accounts,” Bridget told her. “But they weren’t tied into any other social media accounts, and if they used fake names and fake phone numbers . . .”

  “It’ll make it that much harder to find them,” Jo filled in.

  “Yeah,” Bridget said.

  “Is there more?”