Laying Down the Paw

by Diane Kelly

  “A van might have stuck with me,” she said. “That would be unusual for our neighborhood at that time of night.”

  Jackson turned to me. “Anything you’d like to ask, Officer Luz?”

  Giving the late-night timing, this burglary seemed different from the others that had taken place in W1 recently. Were they unrelated? Or could there be a link? The burglars in the other cases hadn’t hurt the homeowners but, of course, the homeowners had all been away on trips during the robberies. There was no telling what could have happened had the residents surprised the burglars like Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss had. And, while Mrs. Prentiss seemed to believe the shooter was the only person involved, there had been at least two men involved in the Harrington robbery.

  I sat forward in my chair. “Are you certain the man who shot you and your husband was alone?”

  “I didn’t hear anyone else in the house,” she said, “and he didn’t call out to anyone or anything like that.”

  “Any chance you’d had a trip planned that you canceled for some reason?”

  “No. Why?”

  “There have been some other burglaries in the area. In those cases, the victims were all out of town when their houses were broken into.”

  When we’d obtained all of the information we could from Mrs. Prentiss, we stood to go. Jackson wished the woman and her husband a speedy and thorough recovery and I nodded in agreement.

  I followed Jackson out the door, turning in the hallway to look back one last time at the fragile woman in the bed. I’ll find the man who hurt you, I silently promised. Don’t you worry.

  I might not have all the clues I needed yet, but I did have one critical thing.

  Dogged determination.

  FIFTY

  HAVING A BLAST WITH BLAST

  Brigit

  Blast’s partner drove Brigit home from breakfast, making a stop by a home improvement store on the way. When they returned to the house, she thought Seth would merely drop her off and leave. She was thrilled when he and Blast stuck around. Zoe wasn’t bad company but, in the end, Zoe was still a cat. She’d rather sharpen her claws on the furniture than chew on toys or shoes. Boring. She pooped in a box inside the house. Uncivilized. And she threw hissy fits when Brigit tried to share her tuna. Stingy.

  While Seth puttered around the house, Brigit and Blast frisked about in the cool air outside. They chased each other around. Wrestled. Sniffed for squirrels. And when they tired of those things, they put their paws to the ground and began to dig.

  FIFTY-ONE

  SUFFER THE CHILDREN

  Dub

  Rather than waste gas driving aimlessly around town, Dub drove to a strip center and parked. He sat there for a few minutes, staring blindly at the window of the closed hair salon. He had no schedule. No plan. He’d love to see Jenna, but she was still grounded. The best they could do was send texts and pics to each other.

  His ringtone sounded and he scrambled to find his phone among the bags in his car. “Hello?”

  A male voice came over the line. “You the guy who does the hauling?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I got a broken refrigerator. Can you take care of that?”

  “I’ll do it for thirty dollars.”

  “I’ll give you fifteen.”

  Dammit, didn’t this guy know Dub needed to eat? To wash his smelly clothes? “Twenty.”

  “Fifteen.” The man didn’t wait to see if Dub would agree, he just went on to give an address.

  Dub drove to the address the man had given him. Together, they loaded the fridge into the back of Dub’s van. The wide appliance barely fit, taking up the entire space. When it was loaded, the man gave him a ten, four singles, and a handful of change.

  Dub returned to the driver’s seat, counted the change, and realized the man had shorted him a nickel. Ugh. He accessed the Internet on his phone to see where he could dispose of the refrigerator. Looked like he could dump the fridge for free at any of the three city sanitation stations. But he’d have to wait until tomorrow. None of the stations was open on Sunday.

  After being stuck in the van all night and most of the morning, Dub wanted to stretch his legs, get a change of scenery. But without money to spend, his options were limited. He couldn’t hang at a restaurant or go to a movie. So he decided to do what teenagers all over America did when they were broke and bored. Hang at the mall.

  He drove to the Shoppes at Chisholm Trail and parked his van outside Macy’s. He held the door open for a mother and daughter to go inside, then followed them into the store. Passing the clothes he couldn’t afford and the cosmetics he didn’t need, he headed out of Macy’s and down the mall walkway to the home theater store. Maybe they’d be playing a movie on one of the big screens.

  He reached the store and, sure enough, one of Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne movies was playing on a fifty-five-inch ultra-HD unit. Score.

  A man in khaki pants and an argyle sweater sat in an oversized chair in front of the screen. He looked like he’d just come from church. Dub took a seat on a recliner-rocker next to him.

  The man glanced over at Dub. “Your wife off spending your hard-earned money, too?”

  Dub forced a chuckle. “Yeah.”

  The two watched the movie for several minutes. Although the salesmen seemed to have no problem with the man in the argyle sweater, Dub noticed that they all seemed to be eyeing him. He knew he looked bad. He’d slept in the sweats so they were wrinkled, and the beard probably made him look homeless—which he supposed he actually was at the moment. Still, what did they think he was going to do, tuck a big-screen television into his pocket and walk out with it?

  A commercial came on, a confusing one for some type of feminine product. The man turned to Dub and struck up a conversation.

  “You hear about that shooting? What a shame, eh?”

  The radio in Dub’s van didn’t work, and he hadn’t seen a newspaper or watched TV in a couple of days now. “There was a shooting?”

  “Yup. A couple came home to their house and caught a burglar red-handed inside. The robber shot the man in the chest and the woman in the back. They’re in the hospital. Last I heard they were both in critical condition.”

  Dub’s stomach twisted. “Where did this happen?”

  Dub knew that Andro stuck to the neighborhoods he was most familiar with to the south of I-30 and west of I-35. Mistletoe Heights. Fairmount. Ryan Place. Park Hill.

  “It was over by Forest Park,” the man said. “In one of those nice older homes behind the zoo.”

  Park Hill.

  “Did they catch the guy?” Please say “yes.” Please say “yes!”

  “No,” the man said. “He got away before the police could get there.”

  The feminine hygiene commercial was over now, replaced by a Cialis commercial, something the man seemed more comfortable with. As he turned his attention back to the big-screen TV, Dub pulled out his phone and accessed the Internet, searching for information about the shooting. He found a short news report issued only three hours before. The information said the police initially responded to a report of gunshots in the area and had noticed a broken window on the side of the house. They found the man and woman inside on the floor. The woman had lost a lot of blood, but was conscious enough to give the police a description of the shooter.

  A young man with light brown skin and curly dark hair, wearing a white hooded sweatshirt with a tornado depicted on the front.

  Holy shit.

  Andro had really gone and done it now.

  FIFTY-TWO

  IDENTITY CRISIS

  Megan

  When I arrived home from interviewing Michelle Prentiss at the hospital, I found Seth at my house. He surprised me by sanding and waxing the dresser drawers, fixing the annoying toilet that wouldn’t stop running, and affixing the loose trim more firmly to the wall.

  “Wow!” I gave him a warm kiss as a thank you. “I didn’t realize you were so handy.”

  “I can fix just
about anything,” he said. “My grandfather was a tank mechanic in Vietnam. A Mister Fixit type. He taught me everything he knows.”

  An unsolicited tidbit of personal information from Seth. Would wonders never cease? I took the revelation to be a sign that, despite his attachment issues, he was beginning to trust me, to open up. I rewarded him with another warm kiss, hoping the gesture would imprint on his subconscious. The more you tell me about yourself, the sooner you’ll get that sleepover.

  When I opened the back door to check on Brigit, I found her rear end sticking up out of the yard. The front two-thirds of her had disappeared inside a freshly dug hole. Evidently the dog was looking for a shortcut to China.

  “Brigit! Bad girl!” I marched over to the hole. The thing was so deep I half expected a hand to pop up through it with a to-go box of vegetable lo mein and a pair of chopsticks.

  Seth stepped up beside me. “Oops. I guess I should’ve kept a better eye on the dogs.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “She knows better than this.”

  She also knew I was a softy who was all bark and no bite. She looked up at me with an insolent grin and did her rebellious up-down screw-you tail wag.

  Brat.

  After another warm kiss, Seth packed up his things and left so I could get some sleep. I brought Brigit inside. I didn’t want her digging a hole so deep she couldn’t get out while I napped.

  Of course sleep didn’t come easy. My mind kept alternating between visions of Mr. Prentiss on life support, his wife in her bed, and the young man in the tornado hoodie. Despite all the facts pointing at the looter as being the burglar and shooter—his history of theft, the physical description, the unusual clothing—my mind kept telling me that we didn’t have the full story. The guy might very well have saved both my life and Brigit’s at the Bag-N-Bottle. Would he then go on to senselessly shoot two people in their own home?

  Maybe he would. Maybe I was being suckered in. Maybe he had simply known that criminals who killed cops were very often given the death penalty, especially here in Texas.

  It was driving me crazy that we hadn’t yet been able to identify him. Who was he? With any luck, we’d soon find out. Jackson had told me they’d informed the media about the tornado hoodie and asked them to instruct viewers to call the police department with any leads.

  The guy might be able to hide from the police. But it was doubtful he could hide from the entire city of Fort Worth.

  * * *

  Monday morning, as I left the house, I passed Frankie on her way in.

  “You look tense,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Between our odd work schedules and her derby bouts, my roommate and I hadn’t been able to exchange two words lately.

  I caught her up to date on the investigation.

  “I heard about that shooting.” She grimaced. “So heartless.”

  Heartless was definitely one word for it. Frustrating was another. I wanted the person who’d done this apprehended and put away. Now.

  “Don’t worry.” She formed a loose fist with her hand and gave my shoulder a playful jab. “You’ll get ’em.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  At work, I led Brigit into the W1 station to get an update on the Prentiss case before I went out on patrol. Melinda had stepped away from her desk, so I headed straight for Detective Jackson’s office. She glanced up as I stopped in her doorway.

  “Any word on Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss?” I asked.

  “No change,” she said with a frown. “No calls, either. I’d hoped someone would have seen the news reports yesterday and phoned in with a tip.”

  “Damn.”

  “Soon as I hear anything,” she said, “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thanks.”

  I turned to head out to my cruiser, Brigit at my heels. As I came up the hall, two white men stepped up to the reception desk. One was tall and slender, the other short and pudgy. Both were dressed in business casual attire. The shorter man held a tablet covered in a striped sleeve.

  Melinda appeared, a stack of papers in her hand, and dropped into her desk chair, sliding the documents into her inbox. “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  Brigit and I were almost out the door when I heard one of them say, “We’re here about the robbery in Park Hill. We think we might know the person who did it.”

  I did a prompt about-face, inadvertently yanking Brigit back with me. She gave me an irritated, confused look but followed me back into the building.

  While Melinda contacted the detective on the intercom, I introduced myself to the men. “I’ve been assisting in the investigation.”

  The taller man introduced himself to me as Trent, the shorter one as Wesley. When Melinda gave me the word, I led them back to Detective Jackson’s office.

  The detective was standing behind her desk when we arrived, though she stepped around it to shake hands with the men and exchange introductions. She gestured to her two wing chairs. “Have a seat, please.”

  The two men sat down, their expressions anxious and reluctant, their posture rigid. With no other chairs in the room, I settled for leaning back against Jackson’s credenza. Brigit sat at my feet.

  Jackson readied her pen and notepad. “The receptionist told me you might know who the man was who burglarized the Prentiss home?”

  “Yes,” said Wesley, exchanging a glance with Trent. “Only he’s not a man. He’s a boy.”

  “Our foster son,” Trent said, a moment later clarifying with, “Our former foster son, I guess you’d say. He ran away from our house in Fairmount about two weeks ago. He left a message on our answering machine saying he was going back to be with family in Memphis. We reported the situation to the social worker at Child Protective Services.”

  “What makes you think it was him?” the detective asked.

  Wesley unzipped the tablet sleeve, removed the device, and pulled up a photo. “This.”

  He held up the screen. Pictured were the two men before us. Between them was the young man I’d seen at the Bag-N-Bottle. Though his face was clean shaven in the photograph, there was no mistaking his thin physique, his telltale cowlick, and the white hoodie depicting a twirling tornado. I felt both vindicated and sick at the same time.

  Jackson glanced up at me. I nodded, letting her know the photo was the man—or boy—I’d seen.

  The detective asked Wes to e-mail the photograph to her. “I’ll take this to the victims, see if they can make a positive ID.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Wade Chandler Mayhew,” Wes said. “He’s fifteen, but he can pass for much older if he skips a shave. He’s got quite a bit of facial hair for a boy his age.”

  Trent spoke now. “He got the hoodie when he played basketball for Gainesville State School.”

  Though I’d dealt with only a few juveniles during my tenure as a cop, I knew the state school in Gainesville served boys with felony records. “Why did he spend time in Gainesville?”

  “Burglaries and drug possession,” Trent said.

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Meth,” Trent said. “But as far as we could tell he had no involvement with drugs while he lived with us.”

  Jackson cut a glance my way. How many times had we heard parents adamantly defend their children’s innocence when their kids were clearly guilty of one thing or another? Too many. Teenagers could be chameleons, being one person at home and another person entirely elsewhere.

  “Any violent crimes?” I asked.

  “No,” Wes said. “We wouldn’t have agreed to take him in if he’d had a violent record. He never seemed to get out of control, either. I mean, he had the normal teenage angst, but he was surprisingly well adjusted given his history.” He went on to tell us that the boy, whom they called Dub, had been released from a halfway house a few months prior, then come to live with the two of them. “We really don’t understand what happened. He seemed happy at our place. He was thriving, doing well in school, had
a sweet girlfriend. He’d even landed a role in an upcoming theater performance. He was really proud about that and excited.”

  “Could he have gotten back into drugs?” I asked.

  “I guess anything is possible,” Wes said, “but I don’t see how. We kept pretty close tabs on him and I searched his room regularly. He didn’t know about that, of course. Or at least I assume he didn’t. But he never exhibited any of the usual symptoms. He wasn’t unusually moody or tired or glassy-eyed or anything like that. And he seemed very motivated.”

  The detective chimed in again. “Did you ever hear back from CPS?”

  Wes nodded. “We’ve checked in with them several times. The social worker called all of Dub’s extended family back in Memphis. None of them have heard from him. They said that his mother had a falling-out with them years ago and the family is estranged.”

  “So the assumption is the Memphis story was a fabrication,” Jackson said, “a cover-up.”

  “It looks that way,” Trent said, “but we don’t know for what.”

  The detective leaned back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. “You can’t identify an incident that might have upset him? Triggered something in him?”

  “No,” the two men said in unison.

  I cocked my head, thinking. “Is it possible something happened at school? Something you didn’t know about?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Wes said, “but we tried to create an open and nonjudgmental environment for him. We encouraged him to be honest with us, just as we were with him.”

  Trent reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone and charger. “This was Dub’s phone. It shows his call history. I don’t know if that will be helpful or not. We tried all of the numbers in his contacts after he left, hoping we might find him at a friend’s house but we didn’t have any luck.”