by Alan Russell
“When Sirius and I took down Ellis Haines,” I said, “Sirius’s wounds were much more serious than mine, yet he recovered in about a third the time that I did.”
“And with a lot less whining,” said Seth.
“Isn’t that the truth,” I admitted.
Hearing his name, Sirius came over to where we were sitting and decided to grace us with his company. He plopped down on the floor, and a short time later Emily joined him.
“You never mentioned that you were contemplating having a second dog,” said Seth.
“That’s because it wasn’t on my radar.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Emily did,” I said. “I’ve been trying to turn up the heat on the asshole that left her for dead. Whenever I talk to him he’s all smiles, and without admitting his involvement, makes a case for animal fighting, saying that it’s normal, even instinctual. He also likes to make a case that those who are opposed to such activities are hypocrites.”
“The human animal is wonderful at justifying its behavior,” said Seth.
“I’m no exception,” I admitted. “Anyway, late this afternoon it suddenly struck me that just nailing this guy won’t even the scales. Sure, it will get him off the streets, and it might put a dent in Southern California dogfighting, but it won’t atone for what he’s done. That’s when I decided the best way for me to work on the karmic scale of atonement was to love Emily and give her a good life. Besides, that’s the best eff you I could think of to give the bastard that tried to kill her.”
“When did this wisdom suddenly manifest itself in you?” he asked.
“Don’t expect it to linger,” I said.
“You told Lisbet about Emily?” he asked.
I nodded. “She has her reservations, which is to be expected. But what I neglected to tell her was that I didn’t feel I had a choice in the matter.”
“What do you mean?” asked Seth.
“A funny thing happened on my drive home. My subconscious mind directed me on an alternate route that just happened to take me to Angie’s Rescues. That’s why I decided to stop in. At first I just assumed I had been preoccupied with work, but now I’m thinking it was more than that. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it felt like I was being directed to adopt Emily without any delay.”
“You decided, to hell with logic?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
“There’s hope for you.”
“That’s high praise, indeed,” I said. Then I asked, “How about dinner?”
“You really are getting intuitive,” said Seth.
I carefully got down from my bar stool, and managed to navigate through the obstacle course of dogs on my way to the kitchen. After making and delivering two plates of food, I asked Seth, “Another beer?”
“Please,” he said.
I took two beers off ice, flipped their caps, and slid Seth’s along the counter to his waiting hand. Acting like a bartender in an Old West saloon was a totally unnecessary move, but it was something I always enjoyed doing.
The tough part was making it back to my seat. Sometimes, letting sleeping dogs lie is perilous to your health.
“I hope you’re not waiting for me to start eating,” I said as I finally sat down. “As the Italians like to say, Mangia.”
“Buona salute,” said Seth, and translated the words for my sake: “Good health.”
We both ate for a few minutes without talking, but I suppose eating chicken made me think of El Gallo Negro.
“My dogfight suspect started with cockfights,” I said. “In fact, his nickname is the Black Rooster. He’s a successful businessman who runs a junkyard. And what’s a junkyard without junkyard dogs? His training ground is right out in the open.”
“That must feel like a taunt to you.”
I nodded. “He even has a second guise; he supplies guard dogs around LA. Our rooster likes to hide in plain sight. Of course, I’m working on flushing him out.”
When I told Seth about the imminent Crime Stoppers commercial, he more than approved. “I like the irony of him being caged,” he said.
“That’s two of us.”
“What about that other case of yours with the missing fiancé?” he asked.
“It’s taken some unusual turns,” I said, and told him about my two visits to Woodland Hills.
“I think I’m just beginning to understand Mateo Ramos,” I said. “It surprised me that he posed nude on at least two occasions, but he was willing to do anything for Luciana. I’m wondering if that somehow contributed to his death.”
“Any suspects?” asked Seth.
“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” I said, “but I have three persons of interest I’ll be questioning: Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino.”
“Explain,” Seth insisted.
Over a third beer, I did. When I finished, Seth said, “You have been a busy boy.”
“I haven’t even told you about the serial murderer,” I said, “or the case I’m trying to build against Ellis Haines.”
Normally, I like it when Seth does most of the talking. He knows so much about so many things that he’s didactic without even trying. Tonight, though, I was the one exercising my mouth.
“Have you ever found yourself being the odd man out in a conversation because the other two people were speaking a language you didn’t know? That’s how I feel with Haines and the serial murderer who seems to be paying a strange homage to him. The two of them are communicating through crime scene pictures, and through languages I don’t speak.”
“It’s easy to be paranoid in a situation like that,” said Seth.
I nodded. “You’d think they’d no longer have tête-à-têtes with the FBI’s involvement, but I get this feeling that the two of them will still be able to pass along things to one another without the Feds having a full interpretation of what’s being said. Right now, though, that’s only a strong hunch on my part. That’s why I need to try and decipher their language, so that I can do my own interpretations and not be reliant on either Ellis Haines or the FBI. I’ll have to go over the crime scene photos, as well as learn poker lingo. Do you know anything about Texas Hold ’Em poker?”
“Very little, I’m afraid,” Seth said.
“I’ve been studying all the nicknames for cards and suits,” I said, “and how they fit into the game. It’s like trying to understand the nuances of a foreign language.”
“It would probably be easier for you to learn those nuances by playing the game, rather than by reading about playing the game. Maybe you should spend some time in a card room.”
“You know how to make a small fortune playing cards?” I asked.
He knew the punch line and said, “You start with a large fortune.”
“WC Fields once said, ‘I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol, and wild women. The other half I wasted.’”
“I imagine that line was a thousand years old,” said Seth, “before WC Fields appropriated it.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
“Black aces and black eights,” Seth suddenly said.
“What about them?”
“I just remembered those four cards are called ‘the dead man’s hand.’”
“Why?”
“Legend has it that those were the cards in Wild Bill Hickok’s last poker hand. He was shot and killed in Deadwood while playing poker, and never got to collect on that last big pot.”
“What was his hole card?”
“I don’t know if he was even dealt a hole card.”
“So Hickok might have died waiting for a full house.”
“Maybe so.”
I reached down and took turns scratching Sirius and Emily. My dogs were happy to be included in the conversation. My dogs, I thought. Emily was already part of the family, part of the household, part of our full house.
“They call a king-nine ‘the dog hand,’” I said. “Or at least that’s one of the names for it.”
“Your lucky ca
rds,” said Seth.
Or were they? I thought. In the back of my mind, there was some image that wanted to come to the fore but eluded me.
“Not against pocket aces,” I said.
Chapter Nineteen
Beware Enterprises That Require New Clothes
I suspected I might have a fire dream, as the onset of my PTSD seems to occur when I’m unsettled. Because of that, I dreaded the prospect of sleep, but on this night I had only the dreams of the innocent.
As usual, Sirius slept on the floor next to the bed. Emily decided her place was at the foot of the bed. Her pain meds must have offered her relief, because, like me, she slept through the night.
In the morning I gave each of my charges a piece of chicken jerky, and then stuffed a few more pieces in my pockets to use as rewards while doing obedience training. Because of Emily’s injuries, I limited her activities, focusing her workout in a very limited area. I didn’t stint on praise, though, and tried to make her abbreviated training fun. As her wounds healed, I would continue to challenge her more and more.
The stitches on her skin, and all the scabs from the healing gashes, were playing havoc on her coat. I rubbed some Vitamin E oil on the rough, scaly areas, and Emily tried to reward me with mostly unsuccessful licks because of the barrier of her e-collar.
I was thinking of having a second cup of coffee, when my cell phone rang. The display told me Heather Moreland was calling.
“Your girl has been doing great,” I said, jumping right into what I thought was the expected conversation.
It took Heather a second to respond. “That’s so good to hear,” she said.
Checking on the welfare of Emily, I realized, was clearly not the primary reason for her morning call.
“I don’t mean to bother you, Detective,” Heather said, “but I guess I’m calling to ask you what we should do.”
“What happened?”
“Every night, the shelter closes at six o’clock, and then reopens again at eight in the morning. We have volunteers who are on property after the shelter closes, as well as before it opens. Those same volunteers take home animals that need watching at night. Most of our animals, though, don’t leave the shelter. Because of that, we have a security service that periodically patrols our property. In addition to that, we have CCTV cameras. We don’t have signage yet advertising those cameras; that’s on my to-do list. And because the cameras aren’t spotlighted in any way, they’re easy to overlook. That’s what I think happened last night. Our visitor didn’t know he was being recorded.”
“When did your trespasser show up?”
“Just after ten. I’m hoping you can come in and look at the footage. You’ll see that it shows an individual with a dark hoodie closed tightly around his face. I say ‘his’ because the intruder appears to be a man, even though I suppose it could be a woman.”
“Did he steal or vandalize anything?”
“Not that the footage shows. And that’s not what was upsetting. I called you because he was armed with a gun. In fact, you’ll see the way he moves around makes it look like he’s a hit man. There’s even one of those silencers on the end of his gun.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I am. I’ve looked at the footage several times.”
“I’ll be there within the hour,” I said.
I debated bringing the dogs with me, but decided to leave them on their own for the morning. Thus far Emily hadn’t exhibited any desire to chew on anything other than some of Sirius’s toys. The two dogs were also getting along better than I could have hoped. Sirius now had a little sister and a playmate.
The traffic was heavy, and I almost didn’t make it to the shelter in the promised hour. During my drive, I thought about the shelter’s late-night visitor. I wasn’t surprised that someone might have been casing the shelter and looking for an easy score, but the intruder’s walking around with an exposed gun, especially one with a suppressor, made no sense to me. Being caught in possession of a suppressor brings a felony charge in the state of California. And why would you have a suppressor on your gun at an animal shelter? Had the intruder expected to use his gun? And if so, who or what had he planned to shoot?
Heather was waiting for me in her office. Angie was with her, and the two were staying close to one another. Each was being protective. I imagined seeing a man with a gun had brought back bad memories for Heather. She had survived a prolonged encounter with a monster.
She smiled at my appearance and pretended not to have been shaken by the invasion of her workplace, but her unsteadiness could be seen in her right foot’s unconscious tap dance.
“I’m having to rethink the idea of any of our volunteers being here by themselves,” she told me.
And Heather’s being here by herself, I thought.
“After we talked,” I said, “the first thing that struck me was that your intruder might have been looking for veterinary drugs, like ketamine or morphine or diazepam. Even animal steroids are targeted by thieves.”
“Kate doesn’t leave any prescription drugs here,” said Heather.
“You might want to post signs saying there are no drugs on the property,” I said.
“You think that’s what our trespasser was looking for?” she asked, sounding hopeful.
“I think that’s more likely than someone coming here after hours to get a puppy. But I’d like to see the tape before jumping to conclusions.”
Heather had me sit at her desk while she downloaded footage from the night before. Angie came over and joined me. First she took a few good sniffs of me, determined exactly what I’d been doing all morning, and then she stuck her big, drooling mug on my slacks. Well, Thoreau did say we should beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. Having a bloodhound essentially eliminates ever attempting such enterprises.
The laptop finally lit up, and I found myself following the movements of the trespasser. As Heather had told me, the prowler was wearing a hoodie that completely shrouded his features. There was something masculine, though, about his movements, and I agreed with Heather’s assumption that he was male. He looked to be of medium height and build. As he approached the dog compound, he reached into the folds of his hoodie and pulled out his gun. By its shape, the gun appeared to be a semiautomatic nine-millimeter; what was unmistakable was the sound suppressor attached to it.
Different cameras showed his walk through the dog compound. He stopped and looked at every cage and enclosure, studying the dogs within.
He moved, I thought, like the angel of death.
Instead of raising the roof at the intruder’s movements, most of the dogs remained silent in his presence. Maybe they sensed that death was walking among them. In a few frames it appeared that the dogs slunk back into the recesses of their cages; only a few lunged and barked, choosing to fight in the absence of a chance for flight.
On two occasions the prowler brought out a penlight and shined it into the interior of a cage.
“What the hell is he looking for?” I said aloud.
“That’s what I kept asking myself,” said Heather.
“Do you know which animals occupied the cages that he was illuminating?”
“The first cage was Tony’s,” said Heather. “We call him Tony the Tiger because of his dark striping.”
“What kind of dog is he?”
“Judging from his looks, he’s mostly boxer.”
“And the second cage?”
“Lotta is in there. We like to say she’s a whole lotta dog.”
“What breed?”
“We think she’s Rhodesian ridgeback and pit bull.”
I continued watching the intruder. It almost looked as if he was making rounds. When he finished walking through the dog compound, he made his way over to the quarantine area, checking on the dogs there.
He didn’t try and open storage closets, nor did he make an attempt to break into the vet’s office. His sole interest seemed to be in the dogs. When he finished his wal
kthrough, the man hid his handgun inside his hoodie, and then made his way out of the shelter.
“Do you have cameras out in your parking lot?” I asked.
“We have one camera,” Heather said. “He didn’t park on our grounds.”
“So either he lives in the neighborhood or he knew enough to park away from the place he was casing.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “My hope is that he doesn’t live nearby.”
“Not the kind of neighbor you’d want,” I agreed.
“Do you still think he might have been after drugs?” she asked.
I shook my head. “If this had been a burglary, he would have taken anything of value he could find.”
“So what was his purpose here?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m sort of at a loss as to what I should do,” she said.
Angie must have heard her uncertainty; she left my side to join her mistress.
“I’d start by putting up more lighting,” I said. “That’s a great initial deterrent. And I’d increase your signage. Advertise that you have surveillance cameras and that there are armed security patrols. Tell would-be thieves you don’t have anything they’d want. Post that there are no veterinary drugs on the property, as well as no money on the premises.”
Heather took notes. The prospect of taking action seemed to put her more at ease.
“Can you send this footage as a file to my computer?” I asked. “And if so, can I forward that file?”
“Neither of those things should be a problem,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“I want to study the footage some more,” I said. “And I want to get the file to our techs. They’ll be able to make a positive identification on what kind of handgun our intruder was carrying, as well as the sound suppressor. It’s also possible that they’ll be able to break down the frames and get us a face shot of the prowler. Or maybe they’ll pick up on a scar or tattoo we couldn’t see.”
“I’ll send it to your LAPD email,” she said.
“Good,” I said.
Heather kept running her hand through Angie’s coat. I didn’t want to give her false reassurance, but I did want to comfort her. You can’t come out on the other side of what she went through without feeling the world is a less secure place than you once imagined.