Bark M for Murder

by An Anthology

  I laughed. “I know what it means, honey, I just think it’s quite a coincidence.” I turned to Sinclair. “How many shots were fired?”

  “Just two, she says. The motel manager and a couple guests confirmed that. But the squatty one”—he gave a nod to Bruno—“has a through-and-through, probably from a .45. The other guy”— he looked over at Earl—“was shot between the eyes with a smaller caliber. Which fits with what Bruno’s packing. The bullet’s probably still inside that one’s skull.”

  “You mean his brainpan,” I said, looking at Earl.

  “His brainpan?”

  “Just quoting something he said about me earlier. Did you find it?”

  “Find what?”

  “The through-and-through.”

  “Nope. Our witness said the window might’ve been open.”

  “It ‘might’ have been open?” I shook my head. “Mind if I check out the memorabilia?” He gave me a questioning look and I said, “I can’t remember the last time I saw a Colt .45 automatic and a Smith & Wesson revolver used in a crime.”

  “True enough,” he said then reached inside his jacket and handed me a pair of Pliofilm gloves. After I’d put them on I knelt down and took the Colt from Earl’s hand. I ejected the clip and counted the cartridges. Three rounds were spent. I put the clip back, handed the gun to Sinclair, who put it in an evidence bag. Then I checked the chambers in Bruno’s .32. Unlike Earl’s gun, only two of its bullets had been fired.

  While I was examining the hardware, Sinclair was giving me details about the bank robbery: It happened shortly after ten. An armored car made their usual weekly delivery around nine-thirty. Witnesses say two men came in wearing masks and held up the place. There was a driver, waiting out front in a blue sedan. We haven’t got the make or license number yet.“

  “Probably stolen,” I offered.

  “Yeah, but there’s a security tape from the ATM. The Feebs have it,” he said, referring to the FBI. “Meanwhile, the robbers got away with over two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Wow. Which one of them shot the guard?”

  “He was shot once with a .32,” he nodded at Bruno, “so it was probably the little guy. Unless they switched guns.”

  “Huh,” I said. “This Bruno’s thrifty with his ammo.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Where’s Cady Clark?”

  “Outside, sitting in my cruiser.”

  “Has she got the dog with her?”

  “Yeah. He’s kinda loud for such a little guy.”

  “I know,” I chuckled. “What’d you get from her?”

  He scratched his neck. “That’s hard to say.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s so—I don’t know—just looking at her makes it hard for a guy to think clearly.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said and felt Jamie suddenly glancing up at me. I didn’t acknowledge that I knew she was watching me, waiting for my reply, I just said, “That’s how I feel whenever I look at Jamie.”

  “Nice save, Jack,” she said, then went back to checking the liver temp, pulling a meat thermometer from a hole she’d made in the dead man’s side. “He’s been dead about two or three hours,” she said. “And who exactly is this woman?”

  “Cady Clark?” I shrugged. “Anew client.”

  “And two of her boyfriends just happened to rob a bank today while you were at her house for a dog training session?”

  “One is her ex-husband. The other she doesn’t care for much. And, yeah, quite a coincidence, huh?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Not usually, but they happen sometimes.”

  She shook her head, not in disagreement but disbelief. “Well, it seems to me they’re starting to proliferate in this case.” She sighed. “I’d just finished the preliminary on Robert Parrish earlier, and now there are two more bodies.”

  I said, “Robert Parrish?”

  She nodded. “The bank guard.”

  Sinclair said, “He’s a retired Bangor cop. Got a wife, three grown kids, seven grandkids.”

  “Ah, that’s rough,” I said. “Let’s talk to Cady Clark.”

  “I already gave my statement,” she said, standing outside Sinclair’s cruiser, holding Charley in her arms. The skin under her eye had been redecorated: there was a new cut on her cheek, about half an inch in length, just at the bottom edge of her scar. “The detective even made me write it all down.”

  “Pretend I can’t read,” I told her.

  She looked at Sinclair then at me. “Fine,” she huffed.

  She said she’d come home and found Earl still tied up. She’d untied him, given him back the .45, and told him to leave. He said he couldn’t go until Bruno and the getaway driver showed up.

  “The split was prearranged to happen at your house?”

  “Yeah, it was Earl’s idea, not mine. I didn’t know—”

  “Okay, go on.”

  She glared at me, stroked Charley, and went on: They got a call from the driver, whom she didn’t know. He was paranoid and wanted to meet them at the motel.

  “Uh-huh. And how did you happen to come along?”

  “Once again,” she sighed, tiredly, “that was Earl’s idea. Plus, I was worried about what Bruno might do.”

  “Yeah? So how’d you get tied up?”

  “The driver was already here. He freaked when he saw me, even though I didn’t know him.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. I told you I’d never met him before. Anyway, to calm him down Bruno duct-taped me to the chair. I wasn’t happy about the idea.” She touched her cheek. “That’s how I got this,” she said, meaning the cut.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Bruno. Earl wasn’t too happy about it either. Him and Bruno had a big argument over it, they pulled out their guns, shot each other, and then the driver—”

  “Don’t tell me. He ran off with the money.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were tied up with duct tape this whole time?”

  “Of course. I heard his car start, then I started screaming and the motel manager came in to free me.”

  “I guess you were right to be worried earlier about those two killing each other. Let’s go back inside the cabin.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to show me exactly how everything happened.”

  “Do I have to?” She looked at Sinclair. “He’s not a real cop, right? He just dabbles, so he says.”

  He shrugged. “I think it’s a good idea. Besides, you’ll want to stay on Jack’s good side. He hasn’t pressed charges yet for how you kidnapped him at gunpoint this morning.”

  “But I had to do that,” she told him. “You don’t know what Earl’s like when he’s mad.” She turned to me; her eyes were soft, pleading. “If I go back inside and tell you how it happened, you won’t press charges?”

  I drew my gaze away from hers and said to Sinclair, “I guess it could be argued that she saved my life this morning.”

  He shrugged and nodded.

  Cady shifted Charley in her arms, squeezed my left hand with her right, and thanked me profusely.

  “Yeah, don’t get extravagant,” I advised.

  She huffed. “There you go again, Mr. Hard-ass.”

  “That’s me. Let’s go back inside the cabin.”

  We went back inside the cabin. Jamie looked up at Cady then gave me an eyebrow shrug to indicate that the girl really was a looker. I hadn’t paid much attention to this fact while we’d been out in the dark, but now her fair hair and skin seemed to gather what little light there was in the room and focus it on her green eyes until they were all you could see.

  I found myself staring at her, not listening.

  She was pointing to the chair where she’d been held prisoner, then to the two bodies. I came to myself again and realized that her story sounded even more implausible now that we were inside the cabin. I was about to point this out to her when
she suddenly stopped talking, pulled out her cell phone, and opened it.

  “Hello?” Pause. “Oh, hi, Amanda. Hang on a sec.” She cupped her hand over the phone. “It’s my sister, Amanda. She heard something on the news. I need to tell her I’m okay.”

  “Funny,” I said, “I didn’t hear it ring.”

  “It’s on vibrate.” She held it up for me see.

  I couldn’t determine anything by looking at it, but I don’t know much about cell phones. Dumbly, I said, “Okay.”

  “Can I go into the bathroom and talk to her a minute?”

  “The bathroom?”

  She glared and handed me the dog. “I want to talk to her in private. Besides, I have to pee. I can do both, can’t I?”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” I said, holding on to the poodle.

  “Thanks. Take care of Charley,” she said, then went into the bathroom, talking on the cell phone with her sister.

  I said to Sinclair, “This reminds me of a story.”

  He smiled. “From your days in New York?”

  “No, it’s a story about a tribe of Indians and the local weather forecast.”

  I told him the one about the new Indian chief whose tribe asks him if it’s going to be a cold winter. He doesn’t know but tells the tribe to collect lots of firewood, just in case, then goes into town the next day and calls the weather service to get the official forecast. They tell him that it really is going to be a cold winter. This goes on for several weeks, the tribe collecting firewood, the weather service predicting a colder and colder winter, until one day the chief asks them how they know what the winter will be like.

  “Oh, we use a number of scientific indicators,” they say. “Though, to be honest, the real tip-off is that the local Indians are collecting firewood like crazy.”

  Sinclair laughed. “Well, I don’t know if present-day Indians still go around collecting firewood, but what’s it mean?”

  “Some do, I would imagine. It beats paying for it at the general store. And it means that you have to be careful where you get your information from.”

  “Meaning what, exactly? That our witness is lying?”

  “Well, for one thing, she told you the gunfight happened over an argument about how to split the money. Now she’s saying it was over Bruno wanting to tie her up. So she’s either got a faulty memory or else, yeah, she’s lying.”

  “You think she might’ve done the shooting?”

  “It’s a possibility. I noticed some stippling marks around Earl’s wound, but Bruno’s jacket is clean.”

  “So they were shot from different distances?”

  “Maybe. Forensics will tell us more once they determine the trajectory of the bullets. Another thing, the bullets don’t add up. Bruno shot the guard once and Earl once. That fits because there are two bullets missing from his revolver. Earl shot Cady’s armchair this morning, but he only shot Bruno once, too. So why are three bullets missing from his gun?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t fully loaded?”

  “I don’t think so. You don’t go out to rob a bank with a half-loaded gun.”

  “We could check the girl’s hands for GSR. We already did it with the two victims, though, and they tested positive.”

  That put a bit of a crimp in my theory. I looked over at the bathroom door. I could hear the water running.

  “Meanwhile,” I said, “this guy Bruno seems to be the ringleader, which means he’d most likely be the one to handle the cash until the split takes place, not the driver.”

  “You think she might’ve been the driver?”

  “I doubt it. You’ll want to check her alibi to be sure. But her story about why she ended up here and what went down is just screwy. Who was the first officer here tonight?”

  “Mike Delgado.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  He made an apologetic face. “He wasn’t feeling well. He threw up in the bushes outside and had to go home.”

  “What is he, a rookie?”

  “No. He used to be on the Bangor PD. In fact, he and Robert Parrish were partners at one time.”

  I sighed. “Okay,” I said, “that’s one too many.”

  “One too many what?”

  Jamie, who had finished with Bruno’s body for the time being, said, “He means it’s one coincidence too many.”

  “Exactly,” I said. I looked at the bathroom door again, stood up, put Charley on the bed, and said, “Cady?”

  There was no reply. I went to the door and knocked on it. Still no reply, just the sound of water running.

  “Cady, you in there?”

  Sinclair stood up and said, “Ah, hell. What’d she do, go through the window on us?”

  “It sure seems like it,” I said as I took out my driver’s license and flipped the hook up and went in. The faucet was running, the window was wide open, and the green-and-white striped curtain was fluttering prettily in the October breeze.

  I heard Charley barking and turned back to the bedroom. He was on the bed, barking and digging at the bedcovers.

  Sinclair got on the radio and told dispatch what had happened, giving them a description of Bruno’s car.

  “Wait,” I said. “Where’d you get the description?”

  “The girl gave it to us,” he said, then shook his head in disgust. “Probably a phony, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, going to the bed. “Like practically everything else she told us. The thing is, I was starting to get suspicious about her story when her cell phone rang.”

  Jamie stood up, dusted her knees, pulled off her gloves, and said, “Then why’d you let her go into the bathroom alone?”

  “Because she let me hold her dog; it didn’t occur to me—”

  “—that she’d go without him.”

  Sinclair went outside to let the rest of the crew know about Cady’s disappearance.

  Jamie said, “She sure played you, Jack.”

  “That she did. I wonder how she knew I was on to her.”

  “Probably because you have a terrible poker face.”

  “That so?” I said defensively. “Then how come I always beat Otis Barnes and his cronies at our Thursday night games?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Because none of them are pretty young women. She used her looks to throw you off guard.”

  “What can I say? When you’re right, you’re right.”

  Sinclair came back in. “We’ve got everyone out combing the area for her.”

  “Good,” I said. “And you’d better have someone find Delgado and bring him back in too.”

  He nodded sadly. “I hope he’s not in on this.”

  Charley was still digging at the covers. I pulled them back to reveal a nice round bullet hole in the mattress.

  “Huh,” said Sinclair, scratching his neck. “Why the hell would someone shoot the bed?”

  I puzzled it out a bit and said, “My guess would be that if she shot these two but wanted it to look like they’d shot each other, then after Earl was dead, she’d want to hold his hand around the gun, fire it into the bed, which would—”

  “—leave gunshot residue on his hands. Smart.” He thought it over. “Why not do that with Bruno’s gun as well?”

  “She might not have had time; she might not have thought she needed to. Not if Bruno shot the bank guard earlier.”

  “This is an awful lot of speculation,” Jamie said as she put her Pliofilm gloves into an evidence bag and sealed it.

  “True enough,” I replied.

  She put on another pair of gloves and knelt next to Earl’s body. She put two fingers to his neck for a moment, then looked up at Sinclair. “Urn, detective? Did anybody actually check to make sure these two were both dead or was that just more speculation?”

  “No, I checked them myself,” Sinclair said. “Why?”

  “Because this one’s still got a pulse.”

  Chapter 2

  Give My Umbrella to the Rain Dogs

  Earl was rushed to Rockland Memorial and put on life su
pport. He was in a coma, though he still had some good brain function. The doctors gave him a fifty-fifty chance.

  “If he makes it,” Sinclair said after we got the report, “maybe we can get him to finger Cady Clark for the killing.”