The Dread Line

by Bruce DeSilva

  “September eighth was the day after Labor Day,” I said. “The holiday is one of the booziest of the year. I for one got totally wasted.”

  “I believe Mr. McGowan was in full command of his faculties.”

  “Then why do you suppose he failed to notice a man in a ski mask?”

  “The gunman didn’t pull it on until he stepped into the vault.”

  “You know this how?” I asked.

  “From our surveillance cameras.”

  “Did they capture the guy’s face as he passed through the lobby?”

  “No. He knew how to turn his head to avoid them. And when he passed directly in front of one of them, he held a handkerchief over his nose as if he were fighting a cold.”

  “May I review the surveillance video?”

  “The police have it,” she said.

  “Is there video from inside the vault?”

  “No. There aren’t any cameras there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Safe deposit box customers expect a measure of privacy. Would you care to speak with Mr. McGowan?”

  “Maybe later.” I sat silently and thought for a moment.

  “Doesn’t this robbery strike you as awfully high-risk?”

  “How so?” she asked.

  “What if another employee had stepped into the vault when it was going down?”

  “It’s against policy for anyone else to enter the vault when a safe deposit box is being opened.” She paused for a beat, then added, “I guess the robber must have known that, too.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “What did he manage to steal?”

  “Jewelry. Very valuable pieces, as I understand it. The customer has provided a list, along with photographs of each item, to the police.”

  “Including the necklace the customer was returning to the box?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The robber removed it from the customer’s suit jacket pocket.”

  “Interesting. That suggests he knew it was there.”

  “So it would seem,” she said.

  “And the customer’s name?’

  “Why?”

  “Obviously I need to talk to him.”

  “I’m not at liberty,” she said, “but I can ask if he would be willing to meet with you.”

  “Could you call him now, please?”

  “If you would step out for a moment,” she said.

  So I did, taking a seat in one of the visitor’s chairs in the bank lobby.

  It felt good to finally have an interesting case. Until now, my work for McCracken had consisted of delivering summonses in civil suits, investigating employee pilfering at a Walmart, doing background checks on a handful of Raytheon Company job applicants, and tracking down a couple of sad sacks who were delinquent on their child support payments. I was still reveling in my good fortune when Mrs. Carson stepped out of the office and tapped me on the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The customer declined your request for an audience.”

  “An audience? Is that your word or his?”

  “His.”

  “Who the hell does he think he is, Prince Charles?”

  3

  Mister Ed, my year–old metallic–blue Ford Mustang, taunted me whenever I flouted Rhode Island tradition and obeyed the speed limit. He was doing it now, his 420-horsepower five-liter V-8 neighing “Chicken!” as I dawdled across Narragansett Bay’s west passage on the majestic Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge. I cranked up the volume on the sound system and let B. B. King’s guitar drown him out. I was as big a scofflaw as anyone, but with the top down on this fine fall afternoon, I saw no reason to hurry.

  When the bridge disappeared in my rearview mirror, I swerved south on Tower Hill Road and headed for Curtis Corner in the sleepy village of Peace Dale. It was more than a year since I’d been down this way, and I was surprised by what I found. Judging by the look of its new home, the Animal Rescue League of Southern Rhode Island had found some generous benefactors.

  I pushed through the front door and strolled past a wall of glass. Behind it, a space larger than my sitting room was crawling with cats. A few other felines peeked out from the bars of wire cages, perhaps because they were recovering from injuries, perhaps because they were bad-tempered.

  Just ahead, a young woman in a peasant blouse, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, sat behind a receptionist’s desk. She rose to greet me.

  “Good morning, sir,” she said. “I’m Tracy O’Malley, the shelter manager. Is this your first visit to our new facility?”

  “It is.”

  “Impressed?”

  “I am. It’s swankier than the Atlantic House hotel.”

  She laughed. “The building is six thousand square feet. We have individual kennels for dogs, a quarantine area, a community meeting room, a food preparation space, offices on the second floor, and a grassy, fenced yard where dogs can socialize outside. Oh, and I believe you’ve seen our cat playroom.”

  “Sweet,” I said. “How much did all this cost?”

  “One point eight million.”

  I whistled. “How’d you manage to pay for all this, Ms. O’Malley?”

  “Oh, please. Call me Tracy. About a third of the money was bequeathed to us in the will of a local animal lover. The rest came from a fund-raising campaign.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “When it comes to homeless animals,” she said, “people can be very giving. Would you like a tour?”

  “What I’d like,” I said, “is to find a good dog.”

  She beamed and said, “Please come with me.”

  We turned and entered a large airy space lined with windows on the right and a long row of roomy wire dog kennels on the left. The occupants started yipping.

  Tracy stood near the doorway and watched me as I strolled slowly past the kennels. About a third of the dogs appeared to be purebreds. A few were pups, but most looked full-grown. Only the golden retriever was an old-timer, the hair around his muzzle geezer-white. They all looked healthy and well cared for. The ASPCA wouldn’t be shooting any of those mournful animal cruelty TV commercials here, I thought.

  When I got to the end of the line, I turned back and squatted beside a kennel that caged a well-muscled mutt who looked vaguely like a German shepherd.

  “Hello, girl,” I said.

  She whined, wagged her tail, and pressed her muzzle against the wire.

  I talked quietly to her for a while, then moved to a cage that held a huge dog with a large head and a barrel chest. He was mostly black with a white blaze, chest, and paws and with rust-colored markings on his legs and along the sides of his mouth. Before I could squat, he reared up on his hind legs, braced front paws the size of oven mitts on the wire, and stared into my eyes.

  “Who’s this guy, Tracy?”

  “That’s Brady,” she said. “He’s a Berner. A Bernese mountain dog. We don’t often get one of those here.”

  “Named after Tom Brady?”

  “Could be. He already had the name when we got him.”

  “Hi, Brady,” I said. He stuck a tongue that Kiss’s lead singer would envy through the wire and tried to lick me.

  “I take it you want a big dog,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “Then you should also take a look at Rondo.”

  “Named after Rajon Rondo?”

  “Yeah. I stuck him with that. I’m a big Celtics fan, and I was really mad when they traded him to the Mavericks.”

  “He doesn’t look very big,” I said as I squatted in front of his kennel.

  “He will be. Probably bigger than the Berner. He’s only ten weeks old. Just look at the size of those paws.”

  She unlatched the kennel door and reached for him. Rondo retreated a couple of steps and yapped at her. After a moment, he cautiously approached the door and stuck his head out. He was mostly black with a white blaze, a white chest and legs, a shawl of black-and-white mottling across the shoulders, and an amoeba-shaped patch of white on
his rump.

  “What kind of dog is he?” I asked.

  “He’s a mixed breed.”

  “A mix of what?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say his mother was a Newfoundland and his father was a brontosaurus.”

  Rondo was venturing out of the cage now. I noticed that he had another splash of white at the tip of his tail. He looked up at me with a goofy grin and wagged that tail with enough torque to bash a baseball over Fenway Park’s green monster. Then he crawled into my lap and pressed his muzzle against my chest.

  “A marriage made in heaven?” Tracy asked.

  “Except for one thing,” I said.

  “What?”

  “A huge stray tabby has been leaving his kills on my porch. I’m looking for a dog who can discourage him, but until Rondo gets bigger, he’s just going to look like prey.”

  Tracy folded her arms across her chest and gave me a stern look. “Is that the only reason you want a dog?”

  “Of course not. I’ve been wanting to get one ever since I moved into a house on Jamestown last April.”

  “You want the Berner, then?”

  “I’m thinking on it.”

  “He’s a beautiful boy,” she said. “The George Clooney of dogs. Why don’t you take him for a walk in the yard, see how you get along?”

  So I did. I promptly discovered that Brady knew how to come, sit, and stay and that he loved playing tug-of-war with a pull toy made of rope. When he exhausted me with his pulling, I decided to teach him how to high-five. He mastered it in less than ten minutes. The whole time we were together, his eyes rarely left mine.

  Nearly an hour passed before Tracy ventured out to see how we were doing.

  “How old is he?” I asked.

  “Six months and a few days.”

  “So he’s going to get bigger?”

  “Oh, sure. He weighs about seventy-five pounds now. When he’s full grown at eighteen months, he should be a good hundred and twenty. Maybe more.”

  “I want him,” I said as I led the big guy inside. “I’ll take good care of him, Tracy. I promise.”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  She put Brady back inside his kennel, led me upstairs to her office, and handed me a form containing fifteen personal questions designed to determine my fitness as a pet owner.

  “I just want a dog,” I said. “I’m not trying to adopt a baby.”

  She laughed as if she thought I was kidding. “After you fill this out,” she said, “I’d like to pay a visit to your home to make sure it’s suitable for such a large animal.”

  “Okay,” I said, and got to work on the form.

  When I was done, she gave it a quick once-over. “You’re a private detective?” she asked. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Normally, we require a donation of a hundred and fifty dollars for a purebred dog,” she said, “but if you’re willing to look into something for us, I could waive the fee.”

  “Look into what?”

  “Please come with me,” she said.

  I followed her downstairs to the quarantine area, where she opened a wire crate and coaxed its occupant out onto the floor.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  She was about the size of a collie, her body wrapped in a bright yellow bandage and her head encased in a plastic cone to stop her from tearing the dressing off.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “Somebody doused her with a flammable liquid and set her on fire.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “She has second- and third-degree burns over thirty percent of her body,” she said. “And she lost her left eye.”

  “Will she live?”

  “Too early to say.”

  “Where and when did this happen, Tracy?”

  “Last Thursday at Fort Wetherill State Park in Jamestown. She’d be dead already if she hadn’t dashed into the surf to douse the flames. A passerby found her whimpering on the rocks and brought her here.”

  “Who the hell would do something like this?”

  “That,” she said, “is what I’m hoping you can find out.”

  “Aren’t the police looking into it?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t seem to be a high priority for them.”

  I took out my cell phone and snapped a photo of the victim. “Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “And Mr. Mulligan?”

  “Yes?”

  “She’s the third one on the island since late August. The other two didn’t make it.”

  I knelt on the floor and looked into the wounded dog’s one good eye. “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “We’re calling her Crispy.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that.

  “When you deal with this kind of viciousness,” Tracy said, “a little black humor helps get you through the day.”

  “If I remember correctly,” I said, “you can get two years in prison and be fined up to a thousand dollars for animal cruelty in Rhode Island.”

  “Yes, but the creeps usually get off with a two-hundred-dollar fine.”

  I looked down at the broken dog as she struggled to wag her tail. “That,” I said, “isn’t nearly enough.”

  4

  “Jamestown PD. Officer Clark speaking.”

  “Good morning, Officer. Is Chief Ragsdale in?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Mulligan. I’m a private detective.”

  “Does he know you?”

  “We’re old friends,” I lied.

  “He’s not in his office right now, but I can take a message.”

  “Know where I can find him?”

  “I imagine he’s having lunch at the usual place.”

  “What place would that be?”

  “If he’s a friend of yours, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  “I said old friend. It’s been a while since I got in touch.”

  “Try the Narragansett Café,” he said. “The chef, Mike Watson, serves the best burgers in the state.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I drove to the island’s quaint three-block commercial strip on Narragansett Avenue, parked in front of the barn-red café, and pushed through the front door. To my right, a half dozen people sat on stools arranged around a large, oblong bar. By the back wall, two middle-aged women were playing eight ball on a green felt pool table. To my left, a dozen diners hunched over rude wooden tables laden with crab cakes, burgers, and fries. Behind them, an empty bandstand.

  The dark wood-paneled walls were plastered with posters trumpeting the virtues of the Tim Taylor Blues Band, Big Cat Blues, Sarah and the Tall Boys, and a bunch of other acts I’d never heard of. A dry-erase board listed coming attractions. Roomful of Blues, my favorite New England band, was scheduled for Saturday night.

  My eyes roamed over the clientele. All wore civilian clothes, mostly shorts and cargo pants, but only one, a tall lanky dude in a Hawaiian shirt, had a semi-auto strapped to his hip. He clutched a cheeseburger in one big red hand and a half-full glass of beer in the other.

  I wandered over to the bar and studied the logos on the tap handles: Blue Moon, Buzzards Bay, and Samuel Adams. “A Sam Adams draft, please,” I said. “And a glass of whatever Chief Ragsdale is having.”

  The bartender drew my beer, filled another glass with Blue Moon, and stuck an orange slice on the rim. I tossed twelve bucks on the bar, wound my way between the diners, and clunked the drinks on the table where the chief was eating alone.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  He turned his steel-gray eyes on me, then glanced around the room. “There’s plenty of empty stools at the bar, bud.”

  “True,” I said, “but I’m in a mood for conversation.”

  “That’s what bartenders are for.”

  “What’s the barkeep’s name?”

  “Lyle.”

  “Hey, Lyle,” I shouted. “Heard anything about the armed robbery at the Pell Savings and Trus
t?”

  The murmuring from the diners faded, and all eyes turned toward me.

  “Jesus!” Ragsdale said. “Shut the hell up and sit your ass down.”

  So I did.

  The chief drained his beer, reached for the fresh one I’d bought him, and gave me a hard look. “Who the hell are you, and how do you know about the incident at the bank?”

  “Love the shirt,” I said. “Is that standard issue at the Jamestown PD?”

  “I asked you a question, bud. And keep your voice down.”

  I opened my wallet, slid out my PI license, and tossed it on the table. He glanced at it, not bothering to pick it up.

  “Huh.… Who hired you?”

  “The bank manager.”

  “Why?’

  “Apparently she’s not satisfied with the progress of your investigation.”

  “Me neither,” he said.

  “So you’re nowhere on this?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “Not a damn thing till I have you checked out.”

  I nodded.

  Ragsdale slid a cell phone from his shirt pocket and hit speed dial. “Clark? It’s the chief. Got a few minutes to run a check for me?… The name is Liam S. A. Mulligan. Claims he’s an operative for McCracken and Associates, some PI outfit up in Providence.… Oh, he told you that, did he?… Hell, no. I just met the asshole. Ring me back when you’ve got something.”

  He ended the call, scowled at me, went back to his burger, and munched in silence. After five minutes or so, I returned to the bar and ordered us both another round. By the time I got back to the table, the chief had downed the first beer I’d bought him and hauled himself to his feet.

  “Clark says you check out,” he said. “Meet me at the station in thirty minutes.”

  I sat down and took my time with the Sam Adams. When it was gone, I tried a sip of the Blue Moon, got up, and walked out, leaving the fruity wheat beer on the table.

  * * *

  Ragsdale leaned back in his fake-leather office chair and thunked his sky-blue Converse All Stars on his desk blotter. The only other items on the desk were a laptop, a family photo, and a Spanish cedar humidor.

  “So?” I said.

  “So I’m trying to decide whether you’re gonna be helpful or just another pain in my ass.”

  I slipped a San Cristóbal de la Habana from my shirt pocket and placed it on the desk. He reached for it, studied the gold-and-brown cigar band, and raised an eyebrow.