Taking On Lucinda

by Frank Martorana

  “Whose wife suddenly died after talking to the brother of the police chief,” Aubrey said.

  Merrill shrugged, held out his hands palms up. “In a farm accident.”

  “That was no accident! You know it. What about the break-in attempt at my hotel room?”

  “No connection to anything yet.”

  Aubrey wove her fingers together across the back of her neck and groaned. “Can’t you at least bring May-May in for questioning?”

  “Again? Yeah, I could do that,” Merrill said. “I’d get the same list of witnesses to his whereabouts as before.”

  “What about a tail? Some kind of surveillance?”

  Merrill shook his head as much as to say even the suggestion was asinine. “This town is not LA. We don’t have an army of undercover agents poised and ready to set up a stakeout.”

  “Then what the hell can you do?”

  “We’re working on it!”

  “Take it easy, you two,” Kent said. He massaged the lidocaine tingle along his brow. “I keep thinking about what Tammy said about the dog men starting the fire at Copithorn because they wanted to distract another humane group that was pestering them.”

  “Yeah,” Aubrey said, bringing that back into focus. “She couldn’t remember the name of it.”

  “Right.”

  “But she said May-May had been reading a magazine about them.”

  “She said he wanted to know his enemy.”

  “Exactly!” Kent turned to his brother. “There you have it.”

  Merrill showed a blank look. “Have what?”

  “A starting place. A direction. If we can find that magazine, we’ll know who the other humane group is.”

  “Then we can see what they had on May-May.” Aubrey said.

  Kent slid off the exam table, stepped over to Merrill, and tapped him on the shoulder. “And do you want to know something else?”

  “What?” Merrill said, knowing his brother would tell him anyway.

  “I know right where that magazine is.”

  Aubrey snapped her fingers. “I do too!”

  Her eyes met Kent’s, and in unison they said, “On May-May’s kitchen table.”

  The first hint of red was appearing in the eastern sky when Kent guided his truck between ruts along the driveway to May-May’s farmhouse. The embarrassment of having to drive his truck around town with a dented grill and plastic duct-taped over his rear window was salt in his wounds.

  He talked heatedly to Lucinda. “So I lied to Aubrey and Merrill! There was no other way. They weren’t about to let me come up here alone. Not after what May-May pulled last night.”

  He touched two crisp white gauze pads that covered his sutured forehead. He felt a sharp pain when the stitches pulled and quickly took his hand away.

  “Merrill can’t come up here and get that magazine without a warrant. That would take forever and tip May-May off to boot. I’m at home resting like the doctor ordered, right? I’ll tell them the truth later.”

  He pulled to a stop well away from the house and shut off his lights.

  May-May’s truck was parked with its front bumper within a few inches of the porch, eliminating every step possible between the cab and his bed. A light was on in the kitchen. Kent stepped onto the porch and peered in through the door as he and Aubrey had done. No one visible. Remembering the noisy door, he lifted it over the rough floor as he opened it. He listened again. All quiet. Three steps to the table, still covered with grimy magazines.

  As quietly as he could, he began sifting through old issues of Sports Afield, Ammo, and Penthouse, taking unwanted periodicals off the pile and setting them in a chair. For close to ten minutes, he sorted and found no information to reveal the second humane group’s identity.

  He was down to the last third of the pile when he heard a double metallic click behind him and froze.

  “You just don’t know when to quit, do you, brother?” came May-May’s voice from the doorway of the room where he and Aubrey had found Tammy a few days before. A lethal viciousness in his tone told Kent, without looking, that there was a gun trained on him. Cocked and safety off, it was ready to blow away the back of his head or rip through his midsection.

  He turned slowly, raising his hands as he pivoted. “I’d say I deserve a little more than this,” he pointed to his forehead, “and a death threat. If that’s what you mean.”

  May-May eased himself farther into the kitchen, .357 Magnum first.

  “You don’t deserve shit. You come sneaking around here twice now like you own the place.” His voice rose. “You don’t, you know. I do!”

  Kent did not move a muscle.

  “And I’m getting sick and tired of your meddling. Dammit all! I tried to make that clear to you last night.”

  “What the hell are you going to do, May-May? Kill everybody who tries to stop you from fighting dogs again?” He didn’t care if May-May had a gun. “You can’t! There are just too many Tammys around. Even you ought to be able to see that.”

  May-May’s expression froze for a second and then broke into an evil grin. “You must be confused. Tammy got run over by a tractor. Remember?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m willing to kill you or anyone else who gets in my way, Kent. You bet I am. You’re so goddamn high and mighty, Mr. Animal Doctor. You don’t know shit. I’m the one with the gun pointed at your belly. Don’t forget that.” May-May stepped closer, holding the giant revolver within six inches of Kent’s navel. “I’ve got help this time. Powerful help. You can’t stop me. Merrill can’t. Even your FOAM chick— the one I still plan to fuck— can’t stop me.”

  Kent exploded. He slammed his left fist into the back of May-May’s wrist. The .357 discharged a round that grazed Kent’s leather belt then flew from the big man’s grip and across the table of magazines. In the split second May-May’s glance followed it, Kent drove his fist into his larynx.

  May-May grabbed his throat with one hand through his beard. He gasped. Stared wild-eyed at Kent. He teetered, flailing his other hand wildly toward his half brother.

  Kent swung a right cross to May-May’s jaw. “That’s for last night!” The impact stopped May-May again, rocked him on his heels.

  Kent felt himself releasing years of suppressed rage. He buried his fist in May-May’s soft belly, and his brother retched. “That’s for Tammy!”

  May-May dropped to his knees. A kick to the side of his head rendered him unconscious and sprawled on the kitchen floor.

  Kent towered over May-May. For a long moment, he stood trembling, silently staring at his motionless brother. Then, almost inaudibly, he said, “That last one was for Mom.”

  Kent renewed his search for the magazine that would reveal the identity of a second humane group, all the while glancing for movement from May-May. Minutes later, he uncovered a dog-eared periodical. Its cover was creased and warped by coffee-cup rings. Even so, Kent could make out the title: the Councilman, US Animal Protection Council Quarterly. Triumphantly, he thumped the nose of the sad-eyed dog pictured on the cover.

  He heard a soft moan and looked over to see May-May rustling back to consciousness. Kent watched him, studied him, wondering what had caused this man with half the same blood as him and Merrill to take the low road. What factors in the man’s life had twisted his interest in animals into a brutal disregard for them? He was pondering that thought when his eyes involuntarily shifted focus to a cracked brown leather satchel barely visible among an assortment of cooking pots on a low shelf just inches from May-May’s head.

  He snatched it up and read the brass nameplate to confirm what he already knew: Aaron Whitmore.

  “May-May, you bastard.”

  He stepped over May-May’s slowly writhing body, planning to kick him again. Why bother? He had what he came for, the name of the other humane agency and a bonus,
physical evidence tying May-May to Aaron’s death. He needed to find Merrill.

  Chapter 23

  As usual, the air in Merrill’s office reminded Kent of an autoclave. “Can’t you turn the heat down in here?” He stepped to a window and tried to open it.

  “It’s jammed,” Merrill said.

  “And you complain about my clinic?”

  He had already spent close to half an hour defending himself against their onslaught for venturing back to May-May’s farm.

  “It was worth it. I was able to find the magazine! Now we know who the other humane group is.”

  Aubrey fried him with her eyes. “Okay, let’s forget what an utterly stupid, dangerous thing you did. So you found the magazine. Let’s go with that.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  It was time for his ace in the hole. He reached down next to his chair, lifted a Big-K bag onto his lap. Earlier, when they had gathered for the meeting, he had brushed off their inquiries as to what was in the bag. Now all eyes were drawn to it.

  Slowly, with as much suspense as he could fold into his voice, he said, “I forgot to tell you about one other thing I found at May-May’s.”

  Aubrey and Merrill stared at the bag, brows furrowed, and said nothing.

  “You want to know what I’ve got in here?”

  Both nodded.

  Kent lifted Aaron’s leather satchel from the bag.

  Aubrey’s expression remained blank, but Merrill’s eyes widened with instant recognition. He reached across his desk and let his fingers play over the coarse cowhide of the ancient briefcase. Years of daily use had withered it to parchment, like Aaron’s own skin. Only the brass nameplate still shone with its owner’s name. The men at the police station had given it to Aaron when he got the chief slot back in the sixties. It became as much his trademark as his shield.

  “Holy shit!”

  “My sentiment, exactly!”

  Aubrey flashed glances at both men and back to the satchel. “What’s that?”

  “Aaron Whitmore’s briefcase.”

  “It was at May-May’s farm?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow.”

  He let them stare at it, too dumbstruck to ask the obvious.

  “Guess what’s in it,” he said at last.

  Neither offered a suggestion.

  He unfastened two buckles, folded back the flaps. He reached in and extracted a sheaf of typed pages. Held it up. “Aaron’s upcoming article.”

  He slid off the paper clip that secured the pages and cleared his throat. He read aloud:

  There Is an Arena in Our Woods

  Aaron Whitmore, staff writer

  This week I’m going to ask for indulgence on the part of my regular readers. I’m going to veer from my usual topics in this column…matters related to the proud traditions of hunting and fishing. I do not do this casually. However, we sportsmen have a problem that must be addressed. Only we can resolve it. It is outside the game commission’s jurisdiction. The police can’t stop it. I know—I was a policeman for three decades. Oh, they would try, and maybe they would score a few minor victories, but they would not win. This travesty will continue until you, the compassionate, animal-loving people of Jefferson, close ranks, leaving it no quarter. If you choose to look the other way, or God forbid, participate in it, the curse is here to stay.

  Close to a year ago now, I was holed away in my cabin on Cuyler Lake staring at the frighteningly blank sheet in my typewriter and wringing my hands.

  Like all good newshounds, I was monitoring the airwaves with my scanner. I listened impatiently, hoping for that elusive scintilla of an idea. Something I could mold into an article. Maybe a fisherman bragging about a near-record brown trout or a conservation officer calling in a poaching incident. Anything that would provide me with a few columns to flop on my editor’s desk before Friday’s noon deadline. But there was nothing that night, just the incessant drone of truckers up on the interstate two valleys over. Their voices bounced off low clouds and ricocheted down into my cabin like hail on a tin roof, abrasive and tedious, until a strange conversation faded in. A chill ran up my spine like a wet-footed spider. Broken fragments of male voices. Two at first, then several more, too garbled to recognize. “…dog meet tonight…usual place…convoy at nine thirty…”

  For the longest time, that scrap of conversation played in my head, and I tried in earnest to convince myself that the speaker meant “dog meat,” not “dog meet.” Not that the former would have done much to relieve my consternation.

  A few weeks after that, another incident occurred that removed all question.

  It happened last spring—early May. I was hiking at dusk, owling as I went, trying to locate a flock of roosting turkeys to hunt the next morning. Before I realized it, I was clear around the lake from my cabin, and the last reds of sunset were fading to pewter. That didn’t bother me. I know the area like the back of my hand. Half a mile, over two knolls, and I would break out of the woods onto a dirt road. From there I would have an easy hike and be at my cabin in an hour.

  The first leg of my trek went as anticipated. Within a few minutes, I was walking briskly down the grassed-in, two-rut road, enjoying the darkness and misty-sweet smells of nature emerging from winter. Suddenly there were noises, distant at first, but louder as I approached.

  I slowed and then stopped, cocked my head, and listened. They were crowd sounds—revving engines, rambunctious chatter, and laughter. Occasional cheers went up from what sounded like at least a hundred people.

  A teenage drinking party, I thought with a nostalgic chuckle. Some things never change. I’d keep to the shadows until well past. They’d never know I’d found them out. There was a time—way back when—as a young cop, I might have shut them down, but that was then…not anymore. I am older now. And slower. And smarter.

  I hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps to circumvent the rowdies when my newsman curiosity grabbed me like a bear pulling salmon from shallow water. Against my better judgment, I crept toward a clearing where the revelry originated. I was in my stalking mode, crouched, soft silent footsteps, eyes and ears scanning. I ducked beneath a bush and beheld a sight that knocked the wind out of my lungs with as much force as the time I fell out of my tree stand. The moonlight played off a sea of four-wheel-drive vehicles—big mothers, little ones, jacked up, low-slung, beat-up, pristine—like the parking lot at the dirt track on a Saturday night. This was no high school beer party.

  At that moment, a hideous sound that I had not heard in years turned my backbone into a ramrod. It was a mix of guttural gnashing noise, high-pitched whines, and shouts from the crowd, all coming from a long-forgotten barn fifty yards away.

  I hunched there trembling as if I’d been standing through hours of sleet and wind on a deer stand. I stared at the decrepit building, hating it for what it concealed. Light slipped through cracks in its weathered board walls like a giant tin lantern. When people moved inside, the rays shifted. But the sounds, the horrid sounds, ripped at my ears until I thought my head would explode. A moan escaped my lips between clenched teeth. I took one last look at the parked vehicles, shook my head slowly, spit into the damp leaves.

  I will never forget that makeshift arena, or how it blighted our community. I swore, then and there, I would do everything in my power to see that you do not forget it either.

  Kent looked up from Aaron’s pages at the pair of spellbound faces. “ There’s more. You can read the rest on your own. Pretty nasty stuff. Aaron had it all figured out. He was going to expose May-May and ruin his big-money connection’s plan for a national championship.”

  “It got him killed,” Merrill said.

  “But what I can’t figure out is how he let a guy like May-May lure him out to a place like the boat launch in the middle of the night. He was a cop. He knew May-May. He had to realize it was crazy dangerous
.”

  Merrill nodded. “Why didn’t he just go ahead and print his article and the hell with it?”

  All three stared at the pages. No one answered.

  Finally Aubrey asked, “What do we do now?”

  Kent reached to the edge of Merrill’s desk, picked up the USAPC magazine, and tossed it to lie directly in front of his brother.

  “What about contacting them? See if they have anything.”

  Merrill leaned forward slowly, took up the periodical, and studied its cover. “What’s the name of this watchdog group again?”

  “The USAPC, United States Animal Protection Council,” Aubrey said. “They are by far the largest and best funded of any group in the animal rights movement.”

  “Great! A big group of rich bleeding hearts.”

  “Actually, they’re much more mainstream than most groups. They’ve been around since the fifties. It’s a good bet they are the ones after May-May and company. FOAM has worked with them on a number of campaigns. Sometimes they try to steal the show a little too much, but…hey, they’re all right.”

  Merrill leafed through a few pages.

  “I can get you some names and numbers to start with,” Aubrey said.

  Merrill flipped a few more. “Says here they’re headquartered in Washington, DC.” Then he acknowledged her offer. “That would be helpful. You get me some names, and I’ll follow up on them.”

  Aubrey made a call to FOAM’s home office in LA, and by midafternoon the Jefferson Police Department fax machine was rattling away: names of USAPC officers with phone numbers, copies of several back issues of the USAPC quarterly bulletin, similar to the one from May-May’s, and a summary of Aubrey’s previous contacts at USAPC with opinions as to how helpful they might be.

  Merrill took the packet into his office, perused it, and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of background material Aubrey’s cronies had amassed. He took a few minutes figuring where to start and then decided the top seemed like the logical spot. He dialed the number for USAPC in Washington.