by Donna Ball
But this was the tricky part. I raised my hand to cue him to readiness, but before I could even draw a breath, he took off like a shot toward the dog walk, leaving me scrambling to catch up. I hate it when that happens.
Of course, a less sanguine handler would be completely thrown by something like that, but the advantage of having tried—and failed—so many times for a clean run was that I was prepared for the fact that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong. I dived for the dog walk and met Cisco there as he raced across the top plank, guiding him with my shoulder, calling, “Easy! Easy!” as he began his descent. And, yes!—all four paws in the yellow contact zone—and I shouted, “Over!” as he tore off toward a series of ninety-degree jumps. I did a rear cross at the tunnel, because Cisco had knocked me off my feet too many times barreling out of the tunnel when I tried to meet him in front. I cut behind him toward the tire, and when he was three quarters of the way through the tunnel, I called, “Tire!” He turned toward the sound of my voice when he emerged and sailed through the tire like a dolphin through a hoop. Am I good or what?
The pause table was the third obstacle from the end, which is kind of a mean trick. The dog is flying high on adrenaline—not to mention the handler—when suddenly he’s required to come to a screeching halt on the table, sit perfectly still for five seconds, and then take off like lightning again on cue. For a dog like Cisco, whose impulse control is not exactly legendary and whose attention span is often measured in microseconds, this can be risky business, to say the least. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move a muscle as I focused on the countdown: Four, three…
And then I heard a familiar bark from outside the ring. Cisco’s ears went up; his head swiveled toward Brinkley. No, no, no…
“Two, go!” called the counter, and before the “o” in “go” died, I shouted, “Here!”
The trick to winning at agility is to outthink your dog. It takes a dog about two seconds to process a verbal command— which is actually faster than it takes a human—so if he’s running at 2.25 yards per second, you have to give the command for the obstacle at least five yards before he has to set his course toward it. This means you often have to give the commands faster than your dog can run. Sometimes that’s possible; sometimes it’s not. Either way, it all happens in a blur.
The last two obstacles were straight-line jumps leading to the finish line, a piece of cake except for the fact that the jumps were positioned behind the table. “Here” was the one word I knew with a fair amount of certainty that Cisco would respond to, even with the temptation of his best friend’s bark to distract him, so I called, “Here!” and, “Over!” in the same breath. Cisco sprang off the table, racing toward me like a jet rocket, just as I spun around to direct him toward the jumps. One of us miscalculated.
He barreled into me full speed, cracking his forehead against my nose before bouncing off. I saw stars. Blood sprayed the sand, and I went down like the proverbial sack of lead.
~*~
FOUR
Twenty-two hours before the shooting
Buck got tied up on a call with one of the commissioners, and he had a conference call with the state police at two. Just before three o’clock, Rosie brought in the schedule of court appearances and a stack of forms for him to initial, which he did without glancing at them. “Did you find the file on that Berman fellow?”
“It was in the basement, from 1993 when the case was closed, before we started putting everything on the computer. You know, if you could get the commissioners to authorize just two clerks, we could start scanning some of that stuff in.”
“Yeah, that and other dreams.” He scrawled his last “BL” and glanced up at her. “Well? Where is it?”
“The sheriff—that is, Mr. Bleckley took it with him.”
He stared at her. “He did what?’
“That’s what you wanted it for, isn’t it? I mean, I didn’t think to ask… I just figured…”
Buck bit down hard on his temper. His back teeth ached with the effort. He pushed up abruptly from the desk and strode toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Lunch.”
“But it’s almost three o’clock!”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Buck…” She sounded worried. “Did I do something wrong?”
He sucked in a breath as he looked back at her and then compressed his lips tightly against the words that wanted to be blurted. In the end all he said was a terse, “Next time, ask.” And, because she was still in the room, he didn’t even get the satisfaction of slamming the door on his way out.
Buck had always found that it took less energy to let his anger go than to hold on to it, and if he got mad about everything that went wrong in this office, he wouldn’t have time to do anything but get mad. By the time he walked the three blocks to Meg’s Diner, he’d calmed considerably. Roe’s SUV was parked in front, just as he figured it would be, which saved him a trip out to the country.
This late in the day Meg wasn’t officially serving, but she looked up from wiping the counter when he came in and called, “Afternoon, Buck. Don’t tell me you’re just now getting around to lunch.”
“I’m afraid so, Meg. What’ve you got left over for a poor starving lawman?”
The place was nearly empty. John Williams, from the bank, was chatting over coffee with Preacher Barton, and a couple of women at a window table lingered over pie. Roe was in a booth, and he looked up, unsurprised, when Buck came in.
“How about I whip you up a club sandwich and a fresh batch of fries?” Meg offered. “I’ve got some blueberry pie, too.”
“Meg, I swear, I’m going to marry you some day.”
Meg, who was easily twice his age, winked at him and replied, “I’m not going to wait forever, you handsome thing,” as she disappeared into the kitchen. Buck made his way over to Roe, stopping to speak to John and the preacher and nodding pleasantly toward the women at the window table. They smiled back at him.
He slid into the booth opposite Roe. “You know you can go to jail for stealing official government documents.”
Roe leaned back against the seat with a small frown. He closed the file and pushed it toward Buck. “I just wanted to see if it made any more sense now than it did back then.”
Buck turned a couple of pages. “Looks pretty straightforward to me. Felony murder, pled to second degree, thirty years, served twenty. No ballistics?”
Roe shook his head. “We never found the bullet.”
“Two eyewitnesses.”
“Yeah.”
They both knew that in the case of violent crimes eyewitness reports could be among the least reliable evidence of all.
Buck glanced through the reports submitted by the arresting officer in Georgia and flipped over to the suspect’s statement. Halfway through, he smothered a mirthless snort of laughter. “If I was going to try to alibi out, I believe I’d come up with something better than I was on my way home from selling crack to Smokey Beardsley at the time of the robbery.” He glanced up at Roe. “Checked out, did it?”
Roe rubbed his nose, his lips quirking dryly. “About like you’d expect. Keep reading.”
Meg placed a mug of coffee in front of Buck and topped off Roe’s from the pot she carried. Buck thanked her and she said, “It’ll just be another minute on those fries, hon.” The room had already begun to fill with the aroma of hot grease.
Meg went back to the kitchen, calling good-bye to the two ladies as the bell over the door announced their departure. Buck read on, paused, and read it again. He glanced at Roe. “Hit and run, huh? Did an accident report ever come in?”
The other man shook his head. “He says it was just a fender bender, no injuries. Maybe no damage. The other party might not have wanted to turn it in to their insurance, or might not have wanted it on their record for whatever reason. Could have been some kid in daddy’s car…” He shrugged. “Lots of reasons.”
Roe shook his head. “He said he didn’t see the driver, but swore up and down he could identify the passenger. There’s a description there.”
Buck glanced at it. “Pretty generic. Still, if he could’ve found whoever was in the other car, that would have corroborated his timeline. And with everything else circumstantial…” He shrugged. “I can’t see him serving time. I’m guessing you never found the other car?”
“Never looked,” said Roe. “By the time we got around to it, he’d pled out.”
Police matters in a small town never moved with quite the same efficiency that they did on television crime dramas. Buck flipped through the file once more, then looked up at Roe. “What am I missing here? Some passing cokehead commits armed robbery on his way home from dealing drugs, no other connections here… What made you put in a notification request? You got some reason to think he might come back here? What’s special about this guy?”
Roe sipped his coffee. “Yeah, I wondered the same thing at the time. I wasn’t the one who wanted to keep tabs on him. It was Jon.”
Buck frowned a little. “Judge Stockton?”
“He was the judge on the case.”
Buck thought about that while Meg set a tall club sandwich and a steaming plate of fries in front of him. “You boys need anything else right now? I’ve got some sweet tea if you get tired of that coffee.”
“Thanks, Meg, it looks great.”
Buck reached for the bottle of ketchup on the table as Meg departed, and he said, “So did this dude Berman threaten him or what?”
“Not in open court. That would’ve gone on the record. He just came to me real quiet like a day or two later and asked would I do him a favor and let him know when the man got out.”
“Wonder why,” said Buck.
“I asked. Never did get an answer.”
“Maybe he knew the family.”
“Maybe.”
Buck ate in silence for a while. Then he said, “So do you think you got the right man?”
Roe leaned back again in his seat and released a quiet breath. “I don’t know.” His tone was heavy. “At the time I did. You know how it is. We get a handful of violent crimes a year around here, most of them drug-related. We put it out over the wire and within the hour the Georgia boys picked up a DUI matching his description, same kind of damage to the front fender, a wad of cash and a thirty-eight in the glove box… Looked like a wrap to me. You don’t go chasing after the maybes when you’ve got a suspect sitting in your cell. Maybe that’s not right. But that’s the way it is.”
Buck chewed thoughtfully. “You said ‘at the time’ you thought you had the right man. Something happen to change your mind?”
He hesitated, then shook his head, frowning at the file on the table between them. “Nope,” he said. “I didn’t see a thing in that file to make me think we got the wrong man.” He drained his cup and stood. “Or that we got the right one, either.”
Buck swallowed quickly. “Hey, wait a minute. That’s it? Judge Stockton wanted to keep an eye on this guy. He must’ve had his reasons. Don’t you think we should do some kind of follow-up?”
“I don’t know what. Jon is the one who wanted to keep up with him, and he’s dead. I guess his reasons died with him.”
“Maybe.” Buck put down the sandwich and opened the front flap of the file again. “But I think I’ll give his parole officer a call anyway.”
“You do what you think’s best.” Roe smiled and clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “That’s why they’re paying you the sheriff’s money, son, not me.”
~*~
FIVE
Twenty-one hours before the shooting
My mother used to say that you can learn more from playing games than from anything else in life, as long as you pay attention. For example, from chess you learn patience, from tennis you learn how to keep your eye on the ball, from soccer and basketball you learn no one wins by himself, and from football you learn good financial planning because your career will very likely be short. I’ve learned a lot from running agility, but perhaps the most important thing is not to give up until you cross the finish line, because in this game it really isn’t over until it’s over.
The average person might think that once your dog has knocked you off your feet and given you a bloody nose the game is over and, all things considered, that might be a good time to give up. But the average person, not having competed with Cisco for almost two years, would have no way of knowing that we’d been in much worse spots than that. I barely hit the ground before I sprang up again, shouting Cisco on. Cisco took the last two jumps and crossed the finish line on his way to answer Brinkley’s tempting call, and that’s how I came now to hold a blue ribbon in my hand. Not red, not green, but blue. In dogs, as in life, you don’t always have to be the best to win; sometimes all it takes is for everyone else to be worse than you are. And sometimes the gods just smile on you. Cisco and I had taken first place in our jump height, and I suspect the reason was a combination of the two.
“It’s probably not broken,” Miles said, gently placing a paper towel-wrapped plastic bag of ice across the bridge of my nose, “but you’re going to have a shiner. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the emergency room?”
I just grinned at him, hugging my furry golden hero with one arm while I admired the blue ribbon I held in the other hand. “Did you see him? He was a magic dog! Like lightning! Did I tell you what our time was? 58.3! And that’s with the course fault, which means he really ran it in 53.3 seconds! What do you think of that?”
“I think you may have a concussion. You sound delirious.”
I laughed and hugged Cisco again. Cisco obligingly swiped my face with his tongue and grinned at me proudly. He knew he’d done good.
Miles sank into a camp chair beside me and scooped out a soft drink from the cooler. We’d returned to our temporary day campsite in the shady open-air livestock barn, where I’d snagged one of the private stalls by being there before the gates opened that morning. The stalls were clean and concrete floored, big enough for four or five dogs and a couple of people in each one, along with crates, coolers, camp chairs, and all the other paraphernalia required for a dog show. And, most importantly, they were gated, so Cisco could wander around free while we were there. It was almost as good as having an RV. Cisco’s travel bag, with his training treats, toys, collapsible bowls, pick-up bags, a chamois square for drying muddy paws, and space blanket to serve as sunshade or wind block, plus a battery-operated fan in case the weather turned hot, sat atop his crate. Next to it was my travel bag, with sunblock, insect repellent, extra socks, a spare Golden Retriever Club of America sweatshirt, first aid kit, emergency shoelaces, and a couple protein bars. I never knew how long my day would last at one of these big trials, so it paid to come prepared.
Behind us was a big grassy field for exercising dogs, liberally dotted with waste cans and signs reminding people to pick up after their dogs. A couple of people were tossing flying discs or balls for their dogs; others were practicing attention exercises or sit-stays. At the edge of the field, minivans and SUVs were parked, most with their hatchback doors open and crated dogs inside. Some of the dogs were seasoned veterans who knew the value of conserving their energy; others, mostly border collies, passed the time in frantic barking.
“The first trial we ever competed in,” I said happily, “Cisco ran half the course and then jumped in the ring steward’s lap.”
“I take it you’re not supposed to do that.”
“Not if you don’t want to get disqualified. It’s considered a major off-course.” I ruffled Cisco’s ears affectionately. “Last year I was running Mischief when Cisco broke out of his
crate and ran the entire course by himself. Fastest time of the day. Of course, he didn’t exactly run the course the judge had laid out, and we were excused for the rest of the trial, but that’s when I knew he really had a talent for agility. We’ve come a long way.”
“Doesn’t surprise me a bit.” He popped the top on the soft drink and passed it to me, then took another for himself. “I always back the winner.” He turned on his phone. “You looked really good,” he added, “up until the crash. Do you want to see the video?”
I removed the ice pack from my face and leaned over to watch the video. It was pure poetry in motion up until, as Miles pointed out, the last five seconds or so. I couldn’t help grinning as I relived our triumph and wincing when it got to the end. I knew it was only by the grace of God and the judge’s good mood that the collision had resulted in a mere five points off for bad handling rather than an elimination, which is what I’d assumed the judge would call when I went down. If I hadn’t gotten up and finished the course anyway, that’s exactly what would have happened.
Miles pressed a button on the phone. “Just sent it to Mel. She wanted to know how Cisco did.”
I dug in my travel bag for Cisco’s brush. “Wait, you should send her a picture.”
I was making it a point to chronicle our big weekend on Facebook and had already posted pictures of our arrival at the hotel, loading up the SUV, arriving at the fairgrounds, our crating area in the livestock barn, our practice jumps, and many of the dogs who were competing against us. I would post the picture of our blue ribbon double the size of the other photos, but Melanie deserved the first look.