The Dread Line

by Bruce DeSilva

  “The sounds he struggles with are the ones that are the most difficult for native Russian speakers to master.”

  “He grew up in Russia?”

  “Either there or one of the neighboring states, perhaps Belarus or the Ukraine. I could be more definitive if I had a larger sample to work with.”

  “Thank you, Professor Chapman. You’ve been a big help.”

  I ended the call and phoned McCracken.

  “Do you know anybody at Interpol?” I asked.

  “No, but I’ve got a Rhode Island state police source who can reach out to them. What do you need?”

  I filled him in and clicked off.

  The dog’s bowls were empty now, so I opened the back door and let them out. Ten minutes later, I heard them barking and peered out the bedroom window.

  At first I couldn’t find them in the dark. Then I spotted them jitterbugging in the snow, backlit by the headlights of dark car that had stopped by the side of the road. I didn’t like the look of it, so I grabbed a flashlight, flew out the door, and called their names. Rondo ran to me, but as usual Brady ignored my command. As I sprinted down the long driveway, the beam from my flashlight glinting off the snow, the car pulled from the curb and drove away. I pointed the flashlight at it but couldn’t catch the make.

  My first thought was that I hadn’t shaken the tail after all—that McNulty and Vargas now knew where I lived.

  I dashed back inside for two Beggin’ Strips and used them to lure the dogs into the house. Then I removed my two nine millimeters and my shotgun from the gun safe, placed them on the coffee table in the sitting room, and spent a minute or two staring at the street through the bedroom window. The car did not return.

  If it did come back, I could count on Brady and Rondo to hear it first and raise a ruckus, so I returned to the sitting room and checked the loads in my guns. Then I sat on the floor, examined the dogs’ paws, and pried out the snow that was wedged between their pads.

  * * *

  Later that night, Joseph called.

  “You home?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Turn your TV on.”

  “Why?”

  “Something you gotta see on the Channel Ten news tonight.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll know when you see it,” he said, and hung up.

  I tuned in just in time to learn that my old high school pal, Fiona McNerney, had declared her candidacy for a third term as Rhode Island governor. That couldn’t have been it. Joseph didn’t give a shit about politics. Then the anchorwoman informed me that all of Rhode Island’s thirty-nine cities and towns had exhausted their snow-removal budgets for the year. Joseph wouldn’t have cared about that either. Next was an “exclusive update” on the dog burnings in Jamestown. They tried to dress it up with a couple of sound bites from Chief Ragsdale, but the report contained nothing new.

  Finally, the anchorwoman introduced the reliably unreliable Logan Bedford for a puff piece about a local man who’d started a legal online sports-betting business. To my surprise, Joseph had combed his hair and put on a tie for his twenty seconds of fame.

  The anchor ended the broadcast with a warning to stay off the roads. An ice storm was about to hit, and the temperature outside was five below and dropping.

  As I zapped the TV off, the phone rang.

  “So whadda ya think?” Joseph asked.

  “As usual, Logan got half the facts wrong,” I said, “but the publicity might do us some good.”

  “How’d I Iook?”

  “Almost human.”

  “It took more than a half hour for them to record that sound bite from me.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I kept forgetting not to say ‘fuck.’”

  After we signed off, I got up and let the dogs out to pee. About ten minutes later, they started barking again.

  I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of a dark car, its headlights off, stopped by my front fence. In the dim glow of a streetlight, a figure emerged from the driver’s-side door and walked to my gate. It was hard to be sure from this distance, but it looked like he might have been trying to open it.

  I grabbed my Walther from the coffee table, ran outside wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans, and shouted for the dogs. As usual, Rondo came running, and for once Brady did too. I hustled them inside, grabbed the keys to the RAV4, and bolted out the door, not taking the time to grab a jacket. The dark car was gone by the time I reached the front gate. I used the remote to open it and roared down the street.

  I drove more than a mile before I spotted taillights about a hundred yards ahead, cruising south on North Main Road. It was nearly midnight now, no other cars on the road. Chances were good that this was the car I’d seen at my gate. I still couldn’t catch the make, but it wasn’t the Camry that had followed me earlier. I hit the gas to close the gap between us, then thought better of it. I backed off, snapped off my headlights and followed at a distance.

  When the car turned right on Frigate Street, I sped up and made the turn in time to catch its taillights as it cut left on Beacon. It was moving slowly now, prowling a residential area of modest family homes. Inside most of them, the lights were off. Outside, the wind picked up, and a freezing rain began to fall. In a minute or two, my windshield wipers clogged with ice.

  The car turned left on Garboard Street, then right on Keel Avenue. There, the driver snapped off his headlights, rolled forward a few more yards, and braked at the side of the road. For a minute or two, nothing stirred. Then the driver’s door opened, and a man stepped out. He must have switched off his dome light, because the interior of the car stayed dark. I was certain now that he was up to no good. He had something dangling from his left hand. A length of rope, or maybe a dog leash.

  He got down on his haunches and stretched out his right hand. There must have been something tempting in it, because a medium-size dog scampered toward him through the snow. The man stuck something in the animal’s mouth, attached the rope or leash to the collar, and led the pooch into the car. He didn’t turn his lights on again until he rolled out of the neighborhood and turned south on North Main. I kept mine off and followed.

  He skirted the island’s business district and picked up Southwest Avenue. Five minutes and several turns later, he pulled into a deserted, half-plowed parking lot at Fort Wetherill State Park—the place where Crispy had been set on fire in September. And there, he stopped.

  The park, which overlooks the bay’s east passage and the entrance to Newport Harbor, had been the site of an earthen-work fortification during the American Revolution. Later, it held a gun battery that guarded Narragansett Bay during both world wars. Now, the gun emplacements and bunkers lay in ruins, the stone walls plastered with graffiti. There was no good reason for anyone to be out here on this bitterly cold stormy night.

  I left my car out of sight on Fort Wetherill Road and crept into the parking lot. Twenty yards later, my hair and T-shirt were caked with ice, and my teeth began to chatter. Ahead, I saw the car door open. A small man stepped out and yanked the dog from the car. I got within thirty feet of him before he spun at the sound of my shoes crunching the brittle snow cover.

  “Some weather we’re having,” I said. “You picked a hell of a night to take your dog for a walk in the park.”

  34

  I couldn’t make out Alexander Cargill’s expression in the dark, but I saw the dog straining at the leash.

  “There’s a sapling behind you,” I said. “Tie the dog to it. Then empty your pockets and place the contents on the hood of your car.”

  “Fuck you. You’re not a cop.”

  “Too bad for you, Alexander. A cop might rough you up a little for mouthing off. I’ve got half a mind to shoot you.”

  He glared at me and didn’t move.

  The ice was falling harder now, like blades stabbing my skin. I was shivering. My hands and feet felt numb. I raised the hem of my T-shirt and gave Alexander a look at my gun. His eyes
widened at the sight of it, and he started to do what he’d been told.

  “Walk the dog to the tree, Alexander. Drag him again and you’ll be one sorry-ass little creep.” A half hour ago, he’d stalked Brady and Rondo. It could have been one of them at the end of that leash.

  Alexander secured the dog, dug into his pants pockets, and tossed his car keys and wallet onto the car.

  “And your jacket pockets?”

  “They’re empty.”

  “Turn around and place your hands on the roof.”

  As he turned, I kicked his legs apart. “Anything sharp in your pockets? A knife? A needle?”

  He didn’t speak.

  I patted him down, felt something hard in the right pocket of his parka, dipped my hand in, and pulled out a can of Ronson lighter fluid.

  “What were you planning to do with this, Alexander?”

  “I didn’t even know it was in there.”

  “Where’d you get the dog?”

  “Adopted him from the pound.”

  “No you didn’t. I was fifty yards behind you when you snatched him.”

  He turned, then, and laughed at me. “No you weren’t. I saw you snatch it. I figured you might be the guy who’s been setting dogs on fire, so I followed you here.”

  “That’s how you want to play it?”

  “Your word against mine, shithead. Believe me, you don’t want to go to war with my family’s money. What’s it to you, anyway? Why the fuck do you care about some stupid dog.”

  And that’s when I hit him—a left hook to the ribs and a right cross to the jaw. He crumbled, his lights out before he hit the ground.

  The moment unfolded in slow motion. I sensed what was about to happen and grabbed for him. My useless fingers slid off the collar of his coat. He tipped over backward and landed hard, his skull cracking on the edge of a cinder block–size chunk of ice that had been thrown up by a snowplow. In seconds, there was a lot of blood.

  I squatted and felt the side of his neck. I couldn’t find a pulse. Was that because my fingers were numb or because he didn’t have one? There was no way to know. I bent close and couldn’t hear him breathing. More than the cold made me shiver now.

  I sucked in a lungful of bitter air to stave off the panic and tried to think. Where was the can of lighter fluid? It had gone flying when I slugged him. Had I left my fingerprints on it? I got down on my hands and knees and groped around in the dark, but I couldn’t find it. Had I handled anything else? I didn’t think so.

  I stood over him and dropped my hand to the butt of my gun. If he lived, he’d have a story to tell the police. A story about being assaulted by a dog-killing psychotic named Mulligan. Maybe the smart thing was to finish him off. But I’d never killed anybody. I didn’t know if I had it in me. My hand was so frozen now that I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to squeeze the trigger. I don’t know how long I stood there, paralyzed, trying to figure out what to do.

  But I was not thinking clearly. The shivering was uncontrollable now. It dawned on me that hypothermia must be setting in. Finally, I turned and ran for my car, my Reeboks leaving tracks in the snow. But my legs weren’t working right. I’d gone several yards before I realized I was running in the wrong direction.

  When I reached the car, I couldn’t get the door open. That confused me. I kept staring at it. Finally, I realized that it was frozen shut, coated with a glaze of ice. I kicked it to crack it open.

  My hands were so numb that I had trouble inserting the key in the ignition. When I finally did, the engine sputtered and died. My chest tightened with panic. I worked the starter three more times before it caught …

  As the heater kicked in, my mind gradually began to clear. I’d meant to drive home. What was I doing on the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge? When I got to the end of it, I pulled off the road. Was Alexander really dead? I fumbled to open the glove box, pulled out a fresh burner phone, and punched in a number.

  “Jamestown PD, Officer Crowley speaking.”

  “There’s an injured man lying beside a car in the parking lot at Wetherill State Park. There’s a dog with him, too. You need to get somebody out there.”

  “Your name sir?” he asked, and I hung up.

  When I got home, Brady and Rondo greeted me as if nothing had happened. I rubbed them behind the ears, sat on the floor in front of the wood stove, stripped off my icy sweatshirt, and placed it on the coals. Then I pulled off my running shoes and fed them into the fire. I added a couple of sticks of wood, watched the flames rise, and felt the chilblains burning my nose and fingers.

  Once I’d thawed out, I took my hammer from the utility closet, placed the phone I’d used on the floor, and smashed it to pieces. Then I gathered the shards and added them to the fire.

  Next morning, my fingers were red and swollen and my toes weren’t doing much better. I downed two cups of coffee and fed the dogs. Then I fetched a garden trowel from my shed and used it to scoop the ashes into four Ziploc freezer bags. I scraped the snow away from a spot near my driveway, found four baseball-size rocks, and added them to the bags.

  I carried them to the water’s edge and hurled the evidence of my crime into the bay.

  35

  That day and the next, I closely monitored the news. Only the “Save Our Dogs” Facebook page carried any mention of the events at Fort Wetherill, reporting that a missing three-year-old dog named Augie had been recovered there and returned to its owner. Either Chief Ragsdale was keeping the lid on or Cargill had made a miraculous recovery and scooted before the cops showed up. I didn’t believe in miracles.

  On Friday afternoon, the swelling and redness had subsided, so I decided to pay Ragsdale a visit. I entered his office, placed two Cuban cigars on his desk, and sat.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “Dmitry Souza.”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s his story?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not here about Alexander Cargill?”

  “Why would I be?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “The kid’s in intensive care with a fractured skull. The family asked me not to release anything, but I thought you might have heard.”

  “Jesus! How bad is it?”

  “Real bad. The doc who operated on him at Rhode Island Hospital says he might never wake up. Might be best if he doesn’t, because there’s a lot of brain damage. His father can’t accept that, so he’s having the kid air-lifted to Johns Hopkins.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “It’s not clear. Maybe an accident. Maybe an assault.”

  “Can you run it down for me?”

  “At twelve thirty-eight A.M. Tuesday, an anonymous caller reported seeing an injured man in a parking lot. The responding officer found Cargill lying faceup beside his car. The lot was a river of icy ruts, so at first we figured he slipped and hit his head. But at the hospital they found a fresh bruise on his jaw.”

  “Maybe he banged his face on the car when he fell.”

  “I thought of that, but I don’t believe that’s how it went down.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “A dog that had gone missing from Keel Avenue late Monday night was tied to a tree a few yards away. And when we looked under the car, we found a full can of Ronson lighter fluid.”

  “I saw Clara Martin’s post about a dog found at Fort Wetherill.”

  “That would be the one.”

  I pretended to think about that for a minute. “You’re saying Alexander Cargill’s our dog killer?”

  “Yup.”

  “But he offered a big reward for the person responsible.”

  “Good cover story.”

  “Is it possible he stumbled on the real dog killer and got beaten up?”

  “Not likely. The weather was brutal that night. No way he was just driving around down there.”

  “Maybe he spotted a suspicious car and followed it into the pa
rk.”

  “That’s how his father wants to spin it. Says his kid must have intervened to save the dog and paid a price for being a Good Samaritan.”

  “But?”

  “But we found dog hair inside his car. The state crime lab says it was shed by several different animals, but most of it was a match for the dog we found tied to the tree.”

  “I’ll be darned.”

  “One more thing. His wallet and keys were on the hood, as if somebody made him empty his pockets.”

  “So you’re thinking somebody else was there.”

  “Looks like. My best guess is that one of Jenks’s vigilantes caught him as he was about to set fire to the dog and slugged him. Jenks had two cars on the road that night, two men in each car.”

  “Question them yet?”

  “Went at them hard, but they all vouch for each other. Of course they would do that, whether they were there or not.”

  “Any fingerprints on the Ronson can?”

  “Nothing usable.”

  I tried not to look relieved. “Any tire tracks or footprints?”

  “The first responders tromped all over the scene, so we couldn’t make any sense of what we found. Besides, the freezing rain that fell that night mucked everything up.”

  Turns out, I hadn’t needed to burn my shoes after all.

  Ragsdale picked up one of the cigars I’d brought him and ran it under his nose, giving us both a moment to collect our thoughts.

  “Now that we know what Alexander is capable of,” he said, “I’m more convinced than ever that he killed Belinda Veiga.”

  “Probably,” I said, “but I’ve got another suspect that might be worth a look.”

  “Who?”

  “Souza.”

  “Dmitry? No fucking way. He was Belinda’s best friend.”

  “And her partner in crime,” I said.

  Ragsdale folded his arms across his chest. “You’ve uncovered something new on the jewelry heist?”

  “I have.”

  “Spill it.”

  “You first. A few weeks ago, you told me you’ve known Dmitry all his life. What’s his story?”

  “It’s a doozy.”

  “I’m listening.”