CHAPTER—14
Holly Healy swatted at a bug as she slept on the porch of the house. She liked sleeping out on the porch. Unfortunately, it was hot; much too warm for a blanket which made the mosquitos no fun. But the other girls had retreated to the air conditioning inside, which allowed her to have space without their noses pushing into her business. Kate was the worse.
She cracked an eye out at the field and saw that it was definitely light out, but still too early for things to be stirring. Even the birds weren’t singing quite yet. Today would be hell. Monday was a running day for the team which sucked and their team captain, Jordan, who lived next door was keeping a close eye on her. The dew was thick with all the summer humidity. Their shoes would get soaked, causing socks to rub and blister her feet despite trying to stay on the dry perimeter road. Holly felt certain she would not do well on her geometry quiz despite the extra time in the library either. The grade was on a curve and her selfish housemates were busting it for some reason. That would surely put her in Mrs. Grant’s office. And finally, not only had Mr. Grunfeld’s photographs made her feel degraded, the couple hundred dollars were nowhere close to getting her a horse to ride this fall.
Holly closed her eyes again, but the anxiety and a full bladder kept her from being able to get back to sleep. When the tractor started over at the barn she gave up, gathered her empty soda can and candy wrapper from Full Cry Market, and went inside. No one else was up thankfully, so she went in the downstairs powder room. With morning hockey practice, there was no point in taking a shower until later.
In the “kitchen corner” of the common room she saw the flip chart paper by the table and groaned. She didn’t know how they were doing it or why they weren’t including her, but clique Elizabeth looked like they were ready to kill another curve today. And they had morning study hall while she had to go run. It wasn’t fair. She stole one of Vicky’s Special K bars in a cupboard. Not only was she hungry, she just had a need to put one over on them.
Her phone beeped with a text message. The number wasn’t in her directory, so no name came up with it. But she figured it was Mr. Grunfeld by the context. He was the only one talking to her anyway. Other messages were reminders from coach about practice, or Kate nagging her.
It read, “Can you come today after classes?”
She typed back, “No. Have practice.”
Her phone beeped again as she finished the last bites of the bar. It was a picture attachment so she tapped with her finger to download the image. Holly’s stomach soured.
The image was her laying on the loveseat with her head over the armrest and blond hair hanging. Her arched back emphasized her breasts and her eyes were closed. The plaid skirt was flipped up some to show her long thigh clad in hose and she held the long dark chocolate dildo between her legs like it was about to penetrate her.
Her phone beeped again, “Do you want Mrs. Grant to see this? Or the other students?”
A tear came to her eye as she replied on the touchpad, “Can’t. Have practice.”
A few moments went by, and she thought about what the impact would be if the picture wound up being distributed. Her stepfather wouldn’t allow her to come home. That would mean he would have to deal with her and find a new place to ship her off to that her mom would approve of, when he could simply write a check for Fox Ridge School each semester. The humiliation would be unbearable. Her mom would be disappointed; Holly couldn’t take the thought of the embarrassment. Which meant she’d have to run away from here with no money on her own, or maybe kill herself.
The next text came, “Disappointing to have to send picture out.”
Followed by another text, “Unless…”
And then the phone was silent. A third message didn’t come. She sat at the kitchen table, oblivious to scattered brownie crumbs that stuck to her arms as she braced them on the table to steady her shaking hands.
She typed, “Unless what?”
Holly pinched her lips with her teeth, staring at the tiny screen. She didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until her lungs screamed for air, and she tasted a trickle of blood as she unclenched her jaw to breath. Her heart surged and slowed as it regulated the interruption in oxygen flow.
“Send me a picture,” read the next message.
That wasn’t so bad. She could do that. A second message came in before she could type a response.
“Of your naked breasts.”
Her entire body froze, muscles tense as she sat in the kitchen chair. Then she shivered as the cold sweat ran along her spine. Holly tried to apply simple logic between the alternatives. There was one world where everyone would point and laugh as pranksters left sex toys in her classroom chair or gym locker. Or life could be like today’s lonely world with merely one more picture of her in it that she didn’t want anyone to see. In safety classes, she’d been told that sexting was very dangerous. Now she understood why, even if it hadn’t been a sexting picture per say trapping her. Holly knew she was on a slippery slope and being manipulated. She resented it while considering the alternatives, and decided to try and minimize the downside by making it hard to tell the picture was of her.
Outracing melting resolve, she raised her night t-shirt in one hand, taking a close-up holding the phone with the other. The picture was a clear image, clinical like a medical text book, and unless you knew about the tiny freckle, impossible to distinguish from anyone else. She hit send, pressing the button hard enough her knuckles flashed white despite her tanned skin.
Then she grabbed her bag and ran out the back door toward the school’s locker room in the rear basement of the main building.
Bobby McFife watched as Sergeant Barker stood at the podium in the station briefing room. He looked perturbed, but then that was the way the sergeant always looked. A half dozen other officers filed in to slouch in scattered chairs. Monday and Thursday morning always brought full staffs unless someone had to be in court.
Providing the town full police coverage with someone always on duty, in a small department, was a considerable challenge. It had to be “risk based,” which meant having more officers on when there was more likely to be trouble as in Saturday night instead of the early hours of Monday morning. Sergeant Barker’s innovation had been the staggered shifts. Instead of working 5 eights, they worked 4 eights and 2 fours. This sucked if you wanted to go somewhere for the weekend.
But as the department was fond of saying, that’s what vacation was for and the union made for a pretty good vacation package among other things. Also, Westburg didn’t get many real calls so if you were out and visible, you couldn’t do much wrong. Not many jobs allowed you to do your shopping on the clock. Another plus, was the city supervisor not being big on collecting revenue through tickets. Barker rode them about looking sharp, being responsive and quick, and acting appropriately. But he never busted their chops over traffic infraction quotas.
Barker’s strategy allowed the assignment of multiple extra officers to peak crime periods during the day and having less when not much was going on, like after midnight on the weekdays. Some people are surprised to learn that peak crime periods are not typically in the middle of the night. There’s no one out and about to commit a crime on. Also, most people are home which makes it a lousy time for a burglar to break in. This is especially true in the south, where more likely than not, the homeowner would have a gun. This meant Bobby had been home by midnight last night. The schedule was also designed that all hands were together twice a week for talking about key information or discussing issues, even if some folks were going off shift.
“Let’s get started,” Barker said in a soft voice, and everyone stopped their small chats and brought their eyes to the front.
“The good news is we have the thug that was terrorizing Main Street and Fox Ridge School in hospital custody. It may be a few days before the doctor lets him wake up. They are concerned with some swelling on the brain. Actually, their prognosis for him is pretty poor. McFife positi
vely identified him as the man who resisted arrest on Saturday afternoon after Mr. Grunfeld’s tip. The bad news is the dog that sent Bobby to the hospital is still out there somewhere. Some of the teachers have called to say multiple students claim to have seen that monster on school grounds. Everyone must have seen the blurb on the news this morning.
This means, with all other things being equal, we are concentrating on the northeast sector. McFife, get out to the school and the land around it and see if you can get that dog. It’s a menace, and people are calling in with sightings. Most are bogus with the wrong description or an impossible location. Women are worried about their children, farmers their livestock. The sooner we put that beast down, the better.
Murphy, work the town’s northern sector. Johnson, you have the east. I want to ensure you are both near McFife in case backup is needed. If you see it, don’t open fire in town. Call McFife with the dog catching equipment. We’ll try and push nonemergency calls from other sectors off until tomorrow, but if you do get sent on one get yourself back in support distance as soon as possible.
Any questions?”
There never were, thought Bobby. Barker’s instructions were plenty clear if you were going on shift, and if you were going off you just wanted to go home.
Within a few minutes, he was starting his truck and heading toward Full Cry Market. A redheaded teen girl leaving with a large plastic store bag gave him a disgusted look as he came through the door for his coffee and breakfast sandwich. Then it was north to Stirrup Cup Road.
He knew the guy in the hospital wasn’t the same guy, but the real homeless guy living out of a backpack had surly drifted on after a couple of days and quick solves looked good for the department. Those types of people typically didn’t like trouble and didn’t stick around afterward, so McFife didn’t worry about him trying to set the record straight. The dog wouldn’t be a hard case to solve either in a like fashion. He’d find a stray shepherd before long, and take it to the pound for euthanasia. No lawyers or witnesses, just a simple execution to close out another file. It’s not like it could speak up to tell anyone any different.
Bobby McFife turned on to Stirrup Cup Road into the fixture toward the hunt’s clubhouse. He passed a silver Oldsmobile on the side of the road and continued down to the parking area. Caring less about ecological damage, he left the parking area and pulled a car’s length into the trees to surround the vehicle with shade from all sides. Then he lowered the windows so he didn’t get too hot, reclined the seat, and went to sleep knowing the tracker in the vehicle would show him right where his boss said he was supposed to be.
Johnbull Sesay scrubbed stainless steel food dishes on the side of the kennel after the morning feed. He ate every meal off a clean plate and felt his hounds should too. He was a realist and knew his hounds didn’t care. But that wasn’t important to him, because he cared. It didn’t take long; a drop of dish soap and three circles with the pad of steel wool. Repeat forty times for twenty couples of hounds. He rinsed them all at once and let them dry in the sun on a rack he’d fashioned from plastic soda packing crates. Full Cry Market always had a bunch stacked out back waiting for Coke or Pepsi to take them away. They’d never miss them.
He had nowhere else to go and was grateful to have a home here. Johnbull hadn’t always been a dog person. His career had started with stealing cars and getting a whopper of a sentence. The chain gang about wore his body out, swinging picks and shovels cleaning out rural drainage ditches along roadsides. Then a bored guard had accidently dropped the leash to the bloodhound who was also equally as bored. Johnbull grabbed it just in time to save it from being hit by a car. The driver had been the warden, coming out to see for himself how things were progressing. His new job had been the prison kennel master and when finally released, Johnbull carried with him a letter of recommendation.
Johnbull had regarded its value as dubious at first. The warden’s stature was considerable, and that the man had even written it for an inmate said more than any printed words. At the end of the day though, despite lauding his discipline, attention to detail and high work ethic, it was still written on prison letterhead. After a few jobs at animal shelters and rescues, he found his way to the Westburg Hunt. Greg had been the lead whipper-in then, one who rounded up hounds separated from the pack while hunting.
The hunt needed more help, the type that it was hard to get paying members to volunteer for when they’d rather be enjoying a hunt breakfast or having a drink after several hours of hard riding. When the hounds returned, paws needed inspected for thorns and torn pads. Often mud and thistles needed to be washed or brushed away. Also, Kennels needed power washed of waste and straw bedding put down for the cooler nights of fall; a job best done when the hunting was going on and the runs were empty. Johnbull had applied in person, and Greg had called the past kennels and the warden to check his references.
That had been some twenty-five years ago. To say he and Greg had gotten on since then would be an understatement. Johnbull had never been particularly ambitious. He’d just wanted to find some place to fit in. Some would tell him he’d settled for the bottom. In some ways, maybe he had. But he also had something that he’d never had as a young man. Something he’d never had the few months working custodian for an office building or unloading boxes at a warehouse. That was true genuine respect. Greg wasn’t shy about expressing it and it made him feel good.
The hounds bayed, which was unusual after feeding, but sometimes members came out to do some work on the clubhouse or just trailered over with their horse for a hack. He kept his focus, arranging his dishes on the rack to be dry for the next feed. When he finished, he’d been curious to note the animal control truck parked in the woods. It kind of looked like the brakes had failed and it had gone into the woods until hitting a tree.
That would have suited Johnbull just fine. Ex-cons were seldom law enforcement officer advocates, and on top of that the dog catcher rode him pretty hard with bogus periodic inspections. Once or twice over the years, Greg had used his influence to get him to lay off. So, for Bobby McFife to be there and not harassing him over the care of his hounds was quite curious. He walked over, and craned his neck around as he approached the vehicle. Bobby was sitting on the front seat with his head back against the rest. A few more cautious steps, and Johnbull could hear the hefty man snoring.
He wanted to mess with him, but choices were limited. A picture sent to newspaper would be good, but his old phone didn’t have a camera. Johnbull thought a moment, and then reached into his pocket for his handkerchief. Kneeling at the rear of the vehicle, he spread the small cloth and piled upon it a handful of leaves. Then he wrapped it up, and using it as a plug, gently forced it into the truck’s exhaust pipe trying not to shake the vehicle.
Then Johnbull returned to the kennel building, mounted his F-150, and made his way back to the hospital to check on Greg.
CHAPTER—15
Kenny Martin rode shotgun in the stretched Lincoln Town Car. The back wasn’t done up for a traveling Hollywood party however. It was more a mobile office for Mr. Marcelo Armesto, complete with bulletproof glass and sides due to his rivals. The vehicle had been a custom project, but not terribly unique in regard to such things. Executives working overseas worried about being kidnapped or diplomats in countries experiencing social unrest had similar requirements. It wasn’t a James Bond-mobile with smoke screens or ejector seats. It merely gave the passenger three full feet of leg room but lousy gas mileage due to the weight of its armor and solid rubber tires.
“Mr. Armesto, we’re about twenty minutes out from Westburg,” informed Kenny. He rubbed away sleep in his eyes. They’d left the district early to beat the Monday morning commuter traffic even though they were going in the opposite direction.
Alberto grunted from the back seat and Kenny returned his eyes scanning to the front. Esteban drove on, impassive behind the wraparound sunglasses. Sitting up front, thought Kenny, definitely put him in with the hired help rather than
one of the organization’s insiders. A very well paid hired help, he was a skilled crooked attorney after all, but still not invited to the comfortable sanctuary of the backseat. He heard a few more papers being rustled before Mr. Armesto spoke.
“I want to see the property firsthand before we move onto local details.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Kenny as he used Google maps on his phone to start navigation. He turned the volume off so it wouldn’t irritate his boss, and relied upon whispering the screen’s instructions to Esteban himself. State Route 715 was a rural road, but decently straight and they were making good time despite traveling perfectly at the speed limit. Mr. Armesto considered that cheap insurance against police meddling and unwanted questions.
Kenny’s phone beeped and he looked at the text message.
“Mr. Armesto, they’ve located Bruno. He was admitted to Westburg hospital last night, is unconscious and in the intensive care unit. Some type of skull injury.”
Marcelo closed his planner and folded away the travel desk. He stared out the passenger side window with his chin on his hand watching the trees and rolling fields fly past the window.
“So not only is Bruno in custody, the target will attend tonight’s meeting after all.”
Kenny advised, “We have other assets to send for and there’s still time. A car accident on the drive over from the school perhaps?”
Mr. Armesto returned to staring out the window for a few seconds before turning back to Kenny.
“No. It’s a small town. We’re already suspicious by hitting both targets in a single weekend. A third “hit and run” would be even more so. And if our guy stays on the scene he won’t be merely cited for a traffic accident. He could be arrested and leaned on for conspiracy. It’s too easy for them to connect the dots when the only other dots are cows on the road or unpaid parking tickets.
By Dog Alone: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 2 Page 13