Scott used his cell phone to call the county sheriff’s dispatcher. A movement caught his eye as he punched in the speed dial number for the county desk, and he turned quickly, but it was only Duke, the clinic’s huge tabby tomcat. Scott shooed him away from the back door, and wondered how he was going to keep him out of the crime scene. Duke quickly returned and twined around Scott’s legs, purring loudly. They were old friends.
Scott Gordon had only recently been promoted to chief of police, and had no illusions about his abilities as a police officer. He considered himself more of a watchdog than a detective, and he was by no means a skilled crime scene investigator. Since he had established the victim was in fact dead, and it was obviously not from natural causes, he didn’t want to contaminate the scene any more than he already had for those who knew what they were doing. The county sheriff’s office had the resources and the expertise Rose Hill’s small station lacked, and when there was a serious crime in Rose Hill, the county stepped in. Scott told the officer on duty at the county dispatch desk what he had, and the officer forwarded his call to Sarah.
Sarah Albright was the lead homicide investigator for the county sheriff’s department. She had trained at Quantico and worked several years on a violent crimes unit in DC before moving back to the area. Overqualified for her current position and a woman, she could have had a miserable time of it save the county sheriff was an intelligent woman herself, and was confident and secure enough to skillfully manage team members with more specialized expertise than she possessed.
By the time Sarah arrived at the crime scene it was 5:30 a.m., and Scott’s part-time deputy Skip had secured the area with yellow tape.
“What the hell, Gordon?” she said. “When I saw your number I thought maybe I was finally getting that booty call I’ve been dreaming about.”
Scott gave her what facts he had. He had the vet in the patrol car (with the cat Duke, who wasn’t happy about being stuffed into a pet crate), and the man who found the body, Ed Harrison, in Frank’s SUV.
“You probably ruined any evidence there is,” she said, “but we’ll see what we can do.”
Sarah was a petite woman with a shiny cap of dark hair and sharp, dark brown eyes. She, Scott, and a deputy with a camera donned surgical gloves and paper booties and then entered the veterinary office from the front. Scott followed Sarah in at her invitation, and only came forward as she directed him. It was a courtesy he was allowed in at all, and if not for his curiosity and a sense of obligation to the town, he would have preferred to wait outside in the fresh air.
The veterinary clinic was a small cottage conversion with a cinder block addition built on the back. The waiting room and reception area looked clean and tidy, and the examining room and bathroom seemed to be in good order. Sarah pushed open the door that led to the addition that housed the surgery, office, and kennel room, and flipped on the light switch using the end of her pen. Scott took a deep breath before he followed her in, and steeled himself for the smell.
“There’s hardly room to turn around in here,” Sarah said.
The deputy began taking pictures of everything in the room, careful not to step in the puddle of blood. Scott studied the dead man’s bloody profile, now bathed in bright fluorescent light, as Sarah surveyed the scene and spoke into a hand-held digital recorder.
Scott estimated the victim was around six feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds. The hair on his head not gummy with blood was salt-and-pepper gray, in a longish brush cut, as if it were overdue for a trim. He was wearing khaki pants, dark brown leather boots, and an expensive looking dark brown leather coat; a far cry from the durable, insulated canvas coats most of the local men wore, or the puffy nylon ski parkas the college students and tourists wore.
Scott got a whiff of the blood smell and turned his head, hoping Sarah wouldn’t notice.
“What’s wrong, Gordon?” Sarah said with a smirk.
A seemingly idle thought drifted into Scott’s head just then and he stopped to allow it to the forefront. Scott looked at the dead man and mentally applied the features of the person who had come to mind.
“Sarah,” he said.
Sarah clicked off her recorder and fixed him with a dark hawk eye.
“I know who this is,” he said.
Back at the Rose Hill police station, while her assistant supervised the removal of the body from the veterinary office via county morgue van, Sarah led Scott and Ed into the break room.
“Sit down,” Scott urged Ed, fearing the man might fall down if he didn’t sit.
“I need to deliver the papers,” Ed protested, and Scott gently took the keys from his hand.
“We’ll take care of it, Ed.”
Scott stepped outside and instructed Skip not to enter the newspaper office, but to take the bundled papers and make sure every house and business in town got one. With just over a hundred homes within the city limits, it wasn’t that daunting of a task. Scott also asked him to check on the boy who was supposed to deliver them.
This task assigned, Scott poured Ed some coffee, and attempted to stay calm and conversational with the man, who displayed every sign of still being in shock. Ed held the coffee cup in both hands and stared at it, as if dazed. Sarah informed him she was going to tape their conversation and Ed nodded.
Scott experienced a moment of thinking more like Ed’s friend than a police officer, and opened his mouth to suggest Ed might ask for a lawyer to be present, but Sarah began and he let the moment pass, feeling guilty as he did so. She pressed the record button and described who was present and what they were doing. Sarah indicated Scott should begin the questioning.
“Start at the beginning,” Scott said. “Tell me everything you did today, I mean yesterday.”
Ed took a deep breath and blinked several times, as if he were just waking up. He took a moment to concentrate before he spoke.
“I had to approve the final proofs of the paper for the printer, so I worked on those for most of the morning. I called in some corrections and approved the updated pages online. I checked out the new antique store, to see how the renovations were progressing. I wanted to interview the owners, but they weren’t around. Hannah stopped by to place an ad for a new stray she had taken to the vet’s. I went over to take a picture of it. Then I went to the diner for lunch. Theo was there. We got into an argument.”
”What about?”
“Theo asked about my dog Goudy and I told him he died last fall. I made the mistake of telling him about the stray Hannah had picked up, saying if no one answered the ad for it I was going to adopt him. Theo said he’d lost a dog a few months ago, asked me what it looked like, so I told him it was a black lab. He said, ‘That’s my dog.’”
“Theo has a dog breeding business,” Scott told Sarah, who rebuked him with a sharp look.
“It’s no secret how Theo treats his dogs,” Ed told Sarah. “He keeps them kenneled all the time and they barely get fed or let out to run. I couldn’t stand the thought of him getting another one. I told him it wasn’t a purebred; it was just an old stray.”
“What was Theo’s response?” Scott asked.
“He said he would see about that.”
“And then?”
“Well, I guess you could say we had words.”
“Did the fight get physical?”
“No.”
“Did Theo threaten you?”
“He said he’d like to tear my head off just to spit down my throat. I guess you could call that a threat.”
“Did you say anything that might have been interpreted as a threat?”
Ed looked at Scott with a perplexed expression.
“Well, I might have. When Theo said I’d get that dog over his dead body, I said that was perfectly fine with me.”
“And then what happened?”
“Pauline told us to get out. Theo was still yelling at Pauline when I left.”
“What did you do next?”
“I drove out to the lake and put a line
in the water. I wasn’t dressed warm enough, so I left as soon as the sun went down, about 5:00. I got back to town around 5:30. I did some laundry, ate some dinner, watched the news, spent a couple hours in the Thorn, and then went back home to bed.”
“Who was at the Thorn?”
“The usual bunch; Patrick was bartending, Mandy was waitressing, Ian was entertaining tourists. I talked to a few people, watched part of a basketball game, and had a couple beers.”
“Was Theo at the Thorn?”
“Not while I was there.”
“Did you go anywhere else?”
“Not until 4:00 this morning, when I drove to work.”
“So the diner was the last place you saw Theo.”
“Why are you so interested in Theo?” Ed asked, and looked at Scott in bewilderment. “You think Theo killed that guy?”
“What time were you at the bar?”
“From eight ‘til ten,” Ed said.
“Was there anybody with you afterward?”
“No,” Ed said, and then the realization that he was being questioned as a suspect finally dawned on him. His face lost what color it had regained. He looked at Scott, and then at Sarah.
“I didn’t kill that guy, I found that guy.”
Sarah said, “The victim didn’t commit suicide by whacking himself on top of the head, Mr. Harrison. This is a homicide investigation, and we have to question everyone this way.”
Ed looked back at Scott, crossed his arms over his chest, and sat back in his chair, defenses now firmly in place. Scott took a deep breath and tried to do a credible job of interrogating his best friend.
“Anybody call you while you were at home this evening?”
“Drew called me right before I went to the Thorn,” Ed said. “He had neutered the stray in the afternoon and wanted to let me know the dog was waking up from the anesthetic. He said I could come get him in the morning.”
“And after that?”
“Nobody.”
“Why did you go to the vet’s office so early this morning?”
“To look in the back window, to see if the dog was okay.”
“And then?”
“I saw the door bashed in and the body on the floor, so I came and got you. The dog’s gone.”
His voice quavered slightly.
“We’ll find the dog,” Scott told him.
Ed just shook his head and seemed to struggle not to give in to his emotions. He turned to Sarah.
“Just because I had a noisy disagreement with the town bully yesterday and then found a dead guy this morning doesn’t mean I’m a murderous psychopath.”
“Do you own a baseball bat?” she asked him.
“I have some sports equipment at my house, and there are probably some bats. I play softball in the summer.”
“Ed and I play on a league team,” Scott told Sarah, and started to say something else when Sarah interrupted, loudly, saying, “Did you kill him, Ed?”
“What?” Ed responded.
“Theo,” Sarah said to Ed. “Did you kill Theo?”
All the blood seemed to drain out of Ed’s face, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he fell sideways to the floor.
“Jesus,” Sarah said. “Why are all the men in this town so sensitive?”
Scott insisted Ed be taken to the twenty-four-hour medical clinic out by the highway, even though Ed said he was fine. Holding an icepack to the goose egg raising up on the side of his head just above his eye, Ed allowed Frank to lead him to the squad car.
“He could sue you,” Sarah said, as she watched the squad car pull away.
“He won’t,” Scott said.
“What are you so pissed about?” Sarah asked.
Scott clenched his jaw and said nothing.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” she asked.
“I’ve known Ed my whole life,” Scott said. “There’s not a straighter arrow in this town.”
“Except you, of course,” she said.
“No,” Scott stated, “including me.”
“I thought you were the oldest living Boy Scout in America,” Sarah said. “I thought you were your mama’s little altar boy.”
“What’s your plan now?” Scott asked.
“Let’s get the other one done,” she said, “and then we’ll go from there.”
Veterinarian Andrew Rosen seemed keyed up and jumpy as he recounted his Saturday. Scott knew the man was in his early thirties, had purchased the practice from the previous owner’s widow the summer before, and had moved to Rose Hill from Philadelphia, where he had worked in an emergency veterinary clinic. Animal control officer Hannah Campbell knew him the best of anyone, and she’d told him Drew was a ‘crunchy granola Peace Corps’ type with a friendly, laid back personality. She got on well with him, which had not been the case with the former vet.
During Drew’s recitation of the events of his day, Scott did not interrupt him until he mentioned Theo stopped in his office.
“What did he want?”
“He heard I had a stray black lab and thought it might be one of his.”
“How did he seem?”
“Same as always,” Drew shrugged, “rude, impatient, insulting.”
“Theo’s a client?” Sarah asked.
“He has a dog breeding business, and pays me a certain amount per month to provide medical treatment.”
“Does he take good care of his dogs?”
“I haven’t seen any evidence of abuse,” he said.
“Ever heard about any abuse?”
“I think Hannah may have heard complaints about him. She keeps an eye on all the animals in these parts. She’d deal with it if there were.”
“Any chance the lab you neutered could have been one of Theo’s?”
“This lab has a huge white star on his chest.”
“Meaning?”
“The standards for purebred labs allow for a small white spot on the chest, even though it’s not desirable, but this guy has a huge splotch. A breeder wouldn’t want to replicate that.”
“Was he satisfied the dog was not his?”
“No. He demanded to see the dog; he got pretty loud. I had other patients waiting so just to get rid of him I told him the dog wasn’t on the premises. He argued with me for a few minutes, then left.”
“Did you feel threatened at all? Physically, I mean.”
“I have a second degree black belt in Taekwondo, so I feel confident in most situations. If you stand up to bullies like Theo they usually back down.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“He said he ought to beat the hell out of me. I told him I didn’t think violence solved anything between civilized people, but I was certainly willing to defend myself, so he cursed me and left.”
“Has there ever been any physical contact between the two of you?”
“No, none.”
Scott watched him closely but couldn’t tell if he was lying.
“Anything else unusual happen during the day?”
“I don’t take appointments after noon on Saturdays, so my receptionist went home. I neutered the stray, cleaned up, did some paperwork, and got caught up on e-mails.”
“You did the surgery without any assistance?”
“Hannah was there. She assists me with surgeries and in return I vet all her strays. She left about 2:00”
“Ed said you called him.”
“When the dog started coming out of the anesthetic. I knew Ed wanted to adopt him and was concerned about him.”
“What time was it?”
“Between 7:30 and 8:00. I left the office shortly after, and took the dog home with me.”
“Why didn’t you leave the dog in the kennel?”
“There were no other boarders, so it meant I could keep an eye on him at home and not have to come back into the office on Sunday, today.”
“Did you tell Ed you were taking the dog home?”
“I don’t think so. I think I decided to do it af
ter I called him.”
“Did anybody else come to the surgery while you were there last night?”
“No, nobody.”
“Anybody see you leave?”
“I can’t remember seeing anyone. Someone in the apartments over the insurance office was having a loud party, and I could hear their music as I left.”
“And you went straight home.”
“The dog was still pretty groggy.”
“And you stayed home all evening.”
“After I left the office I was home until your deputy came by.”
“Any reason you can think of why someone would want to break into your surgery?”
“Some of the animal tranquilizers are popular with addicts.”
“You reported nothing was taken, though.”
“Skip let me see inside the drugs cabinet and everything was the way I left it.”
“When was the last time you inventoried the cabinet?”
“Yesterday afternoon, actually, while I was killing time waiting for the dog to wake up.”
“Any previous break-ins?”
“Not while I’ve been there.”
“Anyone besides Theo giving you any trouble lately?”
Scott noticed some color rise into Drew’s cheeks, just subtly. He felt Sarah stir beside him and knew she noticed too.
“No,” he said. “Other than Theo being so thoroughly unpleasant, everyone else has been very kind.”
“Ever had a malpractice lawsuit filed against you?”
“No,” Drew said, “and I hope I never will.”
Whatever uncomfortable feelings the subject of threats had brought up were subdued, and Drew was as cooperative and calm as it was possible to be with a dead man in his clinic.
“When Skip took you in to review the contents of the drug safe, you saw the body. Did you recognize the man?”
“No,” said Drew. “I did not recognize him.”
“What do you think?” Sarah asked Scott.
Drew had reviewed and signed his statement, and one of her deputies had escorted him back to his home.
“If everyone who ever had a fight with Theo Eldridge is a suspect, we may as well start at one end of town and interview everyone,” Scott replied.
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