by H Hiller
“So, how's Taz?”
“Well, he’s definitely a pit bull.” Roger grinned and shook my hand. I must have looked confused about what he was trying to tell me, so he elaborated. “I took him out for a walk through the holding pens and he was way too interested in the other dogs. We passed close to a beagle mix and he made an attempt to attack it, which is not unusual for any pit bull. Then I let him get near one of the German shepherd bitches. He lunged at the shepherd. Taz is all about being the alpha dog anywhere he goes.”
“Does any of that tell anything else about Taz?” This was a lot like conversations I found myself in with people that have a deep understanding of the complexities of beer or wine. I know something they are telling me is significant, but not what or why.
“It’s pretty strange. You said this was a show dog, but show dogs are trained to be better behaved around other dogs. This fella just completely dominates them.”
I had moved next to the kennel and was looking at Taz as though it were the first time I had really seen the dog. He had been properly cleaned now, and the brown two-tone coat made him look almost as though he had a leopard in his lineage. Roger explained that it was called a merle coat, and was fairly rare among pit bulls.
“I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to watch Taz.” I was very sincere about this as I had no idea what I might have done had he not agreed to do so.
“The pay has a lot to do with it.” Tulip had unilaterally offered to pay him two hundred dollars a day, which I could probably bill to NOPD, but she also added a generous amount of trade at the bistro to sweeten the deal. “Are we ready to load him up?”
“I had an idea on the way over here.” I paused before pursuing the thought. I did not want Roger thinking the dog was fine and I was the one out of my mind. “I want to wrap the kennel before we load it. The dog traveled that way from where it was picked up and I want to see how it responds to the isolation.”
“That makes sense. I’ll bet he just lies down and takes a nap.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, he won’t have any visual stimulation and he’ll have a hard time smelling anything besides the paper we wrap him in. He’ll feel trapped and that usually makes them withdraw.”
All we had to work with was adhesive tape and a copy of the day’s newspaper, but we wound up with a double thickness of paper that approximated the wrapping paper Taz had been trapped beneath until he made his murderous lunge from the cage. Roger’s prediction of the dog becoming withdrawn proved correct as we wheeled the dog through the hallways to the loading dock. The two of us had no difficulty loading the kenneled dog, which made no sound during the entire drive to my mother’s house.
I apologized to Roger that I would be taking a circuitous route to our destination. I was driving the Cadillac wagon and would have easily outrun anyone following me with its powerful motor and suspension if need be, even the Lincoln Navigator. I was less concerned about concealing where I had taken the dog than I was with protecting my mother from anyone who might be intent on harming Taz. She was already unhappy about the situation, and having an attack on her home was the very last thing I needed to have further upset her. Roger was driving a decades-old Dodge pickup truck but stayed right behind me.
My father had purchased the property my mother now called home with the advance from his first big publishing deal. I refer to its design as “Ill Considered-Post Katrina.” It’s a two-storey masonry structure covered in white stucco, with lots of glass, built on a slab foundation in an area that took a twenty foot hurricane storm surge. The renovation expenses after Hurricane Katrina had been higher than the original construction cost. All the same, it had been a very restful place to recuperate after I left the hospital. It has great views of historic Fort Pike, a heavy brick structure built after the War of 1812, and the Rigolets waterway connecting Lake Catherine to Lake Borne, and the Gulf of Mexico beyond. My father used to tell me we could actually ride his fishing boat from our dock to where he grew up in Missouri, all we had to do was cross Lake Ponchartrain to the Industrial Canal and head up the Mississippi River. I think we might have enjoyed the time together.
I feel my mother was manipulated into moving here rather than rebuilding our home in Lakeview, which had been fifty yards from the levee breach that destroyed the neighborhood. I initially thought she was being sentimental, or had some lingering fear about the new levees, but it turned out that she had moved here on the advice of her on-line psychic. The psychic had said she would be “close to the answer” to my father’s disappearance. Neither of us understood what this last part meant, but her neighbors were all either retired police officers that had served with my father or were active duty ones with weekend camps, so I had to agree she was likely to be pretty safe living in such an isolated area.
Tony and I still occasionally use the two bedroom apartment over the empty boathouse. My father’s fishing boat was washed away by the storm surge and my mother, never a fan of boats and especially with no love for deep sea fishing, did not bother to replace it. It is almost a thirty yard walk between the boat house and the main house. Most of the furnishings I decorated with were chosen for their comfort, but none will be missed when the next hurricane swallows them up. I gave Roger the two minute tour and showed him the groceries Tulip had our mother’s housekeeper stock earlier in the day. I warned him to expect a visit from the “lady of the manor” at some point. Roger immediately took possession of the spare bedroom and pulled a cold drink from the stocked refrigerator.
“Here are the files that Taz’s veterinarian and dog breeder gave me Saturday.” I handed Roger the files I had been dragging around with me. He just nodded and tossed them on the kitchen table.
“I'll look at them and call you if there’s anything interesting.” I don’t think either of us expected to find the answer to the pit bull’s actions in either set of files.
“Are you up to a little experiment?”
“Sure, what do you have in mind?”
“I was thinking about having Taz attack one of us.” Roger turned so he could see if I was serious. “I am willing to bet that he won't.”
“That’s not a very safe bet, you know.”
We went back downstairs and pulled the still wrapped kennel from my station wagon and set it on the ground. Roger set about removing the heavy newspaper wrapping while I watched the dog’s reaction to its new surroundings. Taz blinked in the bright light but still made nary a sound. He remained curled in the center of the cage, watching us with interest but not intent.
“If he does attack me, he's going for you next. Neither of us is trained as his alpha, so we are both fair game if he goes for the neck.”
“Ah, but I brought a gun. Did you?” I was glad to have found someone as reckless with this idea as I was so I did not have to trick him into helping with this stunt.
Roger snapped the lead onto Taz and gently pulled him from the kennel. The dog gave a long, open-mouthed stretch and then sat down to wait for whatever came next. We both extended open hands towards his nose, one at a time, and neither of us were worthy of more than passing interest. He did, though, lick Roger's hand. The hand that feeds him, no doubt, I tried to joke. I paced off a distance two steps longer than the combined length of my extended arm and the heavy leash holding the pit bull.
“Okay, let's try this then.” My arms were at my sides and my pistol was gripped in my right hand, cocked and ready if necessary.
“Taz. Stand.” Roger gave each direction in an even tone. The dog stood up, letting us know that it was open to following commands given by someone it had not been trained to obey. Roger and I exchanged nods and he proceeded. “Taz. Attack.”
There is a certain relief when a stupid idea fails miserably and nobody is hurt. Roger tried a couple of other commands, and even tried repeating the orders in French, Dutch, Spanish, and German. He explained that some trainers taught the owners to give commands in languages that the average person attacking them
would not think to use. Taz never once took up the slack in the leash and we both thought it odd that a defensive animal would refuse to follow even basic commands. We had to assume he had been trained to obey only Biggie. The problem with that theory was that the dog and its victim were not very well acquainted, at least according to the breeder.
Roger moved closer and took an empty swing at my face, but Taz still gave no real reaction. Roger finally resorted to making an open handed slap towards Taz himself, and the dog would have taken any level of smacking we chose to give it, because there was absolutely no indication that there would have been any sort of defense or retaliation on the dog's part. It seemed to accept that any human was its personal alpha.
“What we seem to have here is the Manchurian Candidate of dogs.”
“I don't suppose the dead guy wore any sort of cologne?” Roger seemed full of suggestions. “Maybe this attack was a sensory response. Something had to set him off.”
“Maybe so. I'll ask the coroner. I doubt that it made it into his report but that may well be what they used to get the dog to single Biggie out.”
“Well that and the fact he was alone in the car, right?”
I glanced at my Brietling watch as I walked back to my Cadillac. It was almost five o'clock. I could drive back into the city or I could go over to the main house and have the conversation in which my mother would link what she had already told Tulip was my “obsession with the dog case” with the lack of progress on resolving my father’s disappearance. It took only a second to choose to retreat rather than fight, and I headed back to town as fast as I could get out of the driveway.
FOURTEEN
I decided to stop by the NOPD crime lab because I had heard nothing from them on the forensic evidence collected the night of Biggie’s death. The department’s laboratory and evidence rooms had been utterly destroyed and compromised by the flood waters after Katrina. Even so, their new facility had been built on the lakefront near the University of New Orleans. The important parts of the operation had been built well above the likely crest of future storm waters, now that that depth had been determined.
I actually made pretty good time and was able to drop off the dog collar at the evidence locker and still catch my two favorite forensic technicians, a pair of females in their late twenties named Christen and Julie, before they left for the day. Christen was from somewhere near Eunice. She had the caramel coloring of and thick black hair of a Creole, and an accent that only a fellow Cajun could completely understand. Julie was a recent Florida transplant, a blonde with a figure she maintained through kick boxing. The two were wise beyond their years when it came to processing evidence. They had grown up watching forensics-based television shows and held themselves to the standards of their imaginary heroes.
“What do you have for me, ladies?” I asked them as I entered the office.
“It looks like the deceased may have bled out,” Christen said when she handed me the autopsy report. “We just got the vehicle so it will be a while before we have anything you don’t already know.”
Biggie Charles's ruined SUV would certainly give them a lot of blood evidence to work with. I had only glanced into the interior of the vehicle Friday night, when Biggie Charles was still sitting in a pool of his own blood and shredded flesh.
The two techs and I took the elevator to their garage and I took a fresh look at the crime scene in the Land Rover. The crimson arterial spray had now dried to the tinted the windows and windshield. The early spray patterns had been strong enough to reach the front and rear windows and across the headliner. A pool of blood coated the cargo area. The back seat and floorboards looked like someone had simply emptied buckets from a slaughter house on them. One thin spot in the gore marked where Biggie had been seated. The door to the gift-wrapped kennel was wide open, with a large piece of silver wrapping paper still attached.
“What became of the dog, by the way?” Julie wondered.
“Taz, that’s the dog’s name, is doing great. He’s with a handler at my mom’s house.” Both girls stopped what they were doing and looked at me.
“The dog is still alive?” Julie’s eyes went wide. “At your mom’s house? Your mom’s?”
“Why didn't they shoot it on the spot?” Christen wondered.
“I took it into custody as a material witness.” They laughed at this explanation, so I felt compelled to explain further. “The theory is that the dog was trained to kill its victim. I am trying to see who trained it to kill and who used it for the purpose. It may be the same person, but it almost has to be two or three people. I'll tell you something funny, though. We have not been able to get the dog to attack anyone else since I took it from this vehicle.”
“Maybe it's just faking it, so it can plead insanity.” Julie said this and laughed. “Or maybe it just hated riding in a Land Rover.”
“So, the dog is witness, evidence, and murderer?” Christen asked for confirmation of my theory and then just shook her head.
“Yep. So, what does the car tell you right now?”
“We think the dog went for the crotch first, but was pushed away and focused on the victim's neck. There were bite marks on Biggie's arms and hands so he held it off for a while. See that big splotch of blood across the windshield? The dog almost had to have been in front of him when it attacked to get that blood pattern.”
I helped Julie remove the kennel from the rear of the vehicle. This time I paid particular attention to the heavy travel kennel the dog had been in. There was a layer of ripped up wrapping paper over the entire kennel. Biggie would not have seen the dog, or its level of agitation, until he opened that door. Opening the door would have occupied one hand, and he would not have been in a position to defend himself if the dog had charged out of the kennel and over the back seat. The momentum of this lunge, coupled with Biggie's almost certain surprise, would have given the dog maybe as long as five seconds before Biggie was able to try to defend himself. The fight was probably over in less than half that time. The dog certainly didn’t need to get in front of Biggie to bite his throat.
Julie was the one who first noticed the amount of paper still attached to the kennel’s door. Something had ripped nearly half the gift wrap from the front of the cage in opening the door. The three of us all agreed that we would have torn just enough of a hole to see the dog if it had begun acting agitated, and no more than what was necessary to open the door. This looked more like the door had been forced open from the inside.
“Well look here,” Julie said and took a couple of photographs of the door to the kennel. The latch meant to hold the kennel door closed was pulled back. The wrapping paper still covered that portion of the cage so it was all but certain Biggie had not pulled the catch open to free the dog. The only thing that seems to have been holding the door closed at all was the pressure of the thin wrapping paper against the cage.
Biggie would not have had time to unbuckle his seat belt and turn to face the kennel as the carrier’s door came flying open. The question now seemed to be what had made the dog come flying out of the cage in such a murderous rage? Biggie would have been a sitting duck no matter where he was when that cage door opened. The dog probably came over the seat in a dark blue flash. The color of the dog would have probably distracted Biggie for a few valuable seconds. The bites to Biggie's left hand and forearm meant he realized the pit bull's intentions and fought back as it attacked him. Biggie may have tried to shove the dog down and away, which would perhaps explain why the initial attack was at crotch level. The shock and pain of such an injury would have been enough to take the fight out of Biggie, or any man, and left him nearly defenseless against the fatal neck wound.
“Did you find a handgun?” It occurred to me that I would have tried to shoot any dog attacking me if I were armed. I had no doubt that Biggie Charles, convicted felon or not, had a gun close by at all times.
“There was an automatic in the glove box.” Julie held up an evidence bag with the handgun and its fu
ll magazine inside, and the loose round from the chamber. “We haven't printed it yet.”
“That would have been a long reach. I wonder why it wasn’t in the center console.”
“I put mine in the console when I am driving,” Christen weighed in.
“What else did you find?”
“Just this.” Christen held up another evidence bag, containing a single recordable CD. “It was in the CD player, and the player was on during the attack.”
“It might be interesting to hear the soundtrack to this mess.” I doubted it was a collection of classical music. “Can I get a copy?”
“Sure.” Christen headed off to make a duplicate of the CD for me. Julie and I continued poking around in the vehicle. There were no drugs or liquor in the glove box or the center console; in fact, the center console was empty. I have never seen an empty center console.
“Oh, this is good.” Julie stepped back from the open rear hatch and took a photograph of something sticking out of the pooled blood and then pulled it out of the vehicle. We studied the item under the bright overhead lights of the crime lab's garage.
It was a ridiculously large sized birthday card, but it was in scale to the kennel it had likely been attached to. The card was still in the envelope so Julie carefully removed the card and then took a photograph before opening the card so we could read the inscription:
Hope you get everything you deserve,
Tyshika
“That's going to come back to haunt her, huh?” Julie almost laughed. It was a most unfortunate choice of words for anyone to have written, assuming Tyshika wasn’t actually involved in Biggie’s murder.
Christen returned with the CD copy, and a form for me to fill out. I tucked the CD into my messenger bag while Julie showed her partner the greeting card.
“How soon can I get a copy of your report?”
“The preliminary one will be available in the morning, the final one by the weekend. I can email them to you if you want,” Julie offered.