By Dog Alone: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 2

by Charles Wendt

  “We don’t have anything connecting the stabbing in town with the events of the school. But we’re still running background checks on all the deceased. Including some other guy who apparently suffered a heart attack getting a truck stuck out there. None of the seven carried identification which is very suspicious. It will be early next week before we’ve figured out who they are, traced down their aliases and determined relationships with each other.”

  “I wish you well anyway,” nodded Barker. “Safe drive home. Let me know if you break anything open.”

  Miles rose and started toward the door as a redheaded nurse came in carrying a tray. He turned back toward Barker.

  “One last thing. Nothing showed on her physical examination but our victim counselor,” Miles shrugged to himself, “didn’t think everything was quite right with our abduction victim. Call it a woman’s intuition or gut instinct. She couldn’t put her finger on it, and maybe it’s nothing. But if I were a bored small town cop needing something to poke around in while convalescing…” He cocked his wrist with the palm up, and disappeared around the door jam.

  But Barker had already turned away, “Mrs. Harper, I wouldn’t have expected to see you.”

  “I hope our hero patient isn’t trying to get back to work too early,” Arabell teased.

  “Some might accuse you of the same thing. Can you sit a moment?”

  She sat down the lunch tray on the bedtable and pulled away the cellophane. It wasn’t substantial looking. Even for hospital food.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your husband. He looked out for a lot of people here, and was very well respected. We all liked him. And you know cops,” said Barker making a sideways head movement. “We don’t like that many political people.”

  She sat down in the chair Agent Miles had vacated with welling eyes.

  “Thanks. It was really hard, but at least all his family is here. We had the service yesterday, and even though Doctor Potter offered me more time I wanted to get back into a routine for my sanity.”

  “How’s your girl holding up?”

  Arabell nodded, “As well as you could expect, I guess. They were pretty close. Justin was a great father and his family adores her being named for an old favorite Irish matriarch. I’m trying to keep her in a routine as well. Going hacking with her friends in the fixture was the usual on Sunday. It’s only a few miles to trailer her horse over to the school, and I won’t have to drive the rig for her much longer. The biggest factor is getting her to slow down and take her time on wide turns.

  The city benefits are enough to get her through the two years to graduate from Fox Ridge. I think she needs to be with her friends with Justin gone. We’ll have to pick a state college, but we’ll make it when I sell the farm then. It’s more than I can keep up with by myself anyway. Maybe move to an apartment in town if I can find any.”

  “What about her horse?”

  “Indy will probably stay at the school. It’s hard to find good school horses. So many girls have no riding experience when they show up. It’s tough for Helmut to find forgiving horses which are sound and still have lots of years left. I know Abriella won’t want to give him up, but he’ll be very well loved there. And not having a horse will give her a lot more options when she’s getting her career started. Whatever that happens to be.”

  “I think she’ll make a great attorney,” encouraged Barker.

  “Maybe one day,” said Arabell rising.

  “I think she’s a damn good attorney right now,” he said softly to himself. But she was already rounding the door to check in on Master Bartholomew. Johnbull’s voice echoed down the hall in greeting, followed by several of the hunt ladies in a roar of chatter. It sounded like a party.

  Barker looked at the lunch in disgust, and picked up the phone by the bedside. He dialed, and counted the rings. After six, they finally picked up.

  “Westburg Police Command Center, this is Officer Johny Temple. How may I assist you?”

  “It’s Barker. And if you ever fail to pick up the phone by the second ring again I’m going to put my boot so far up your ass we’re going to have to do the three-legged walk to the emergency room to have surgically removed. You got me?”

  But what he was really trying to decide was at what time, maybe three months from now, would it be appropriate to ask Arabell if she’d like to go get a cup of coffee.

  CHAPTER—32

  Kelton Jager and Azrael waited in Abriella’s barn that Sunday evening. He and his dog had slept away the boiling afternoon in the tall grass of the surrounding cattle pasture under the fleeting shade of some maple trees. He’d wanted to stay close to her home but keep a low profile. They’d made it well north of the state police search area Wednesday morning, and then circumvented the town around its west side over the course of several nights. The repellent woven into his cloth’s fibers helped with the ticks, but even then he knew he’d have to give him and his dog a good going over later with so much time on the ground.

  She arrived at dusk to feed her horse and goats before turning them out for the night, surprised and happy to find him waiting for her. He politely resisted her invitation to go up to the house, especially since he’d seen her mom leave for work earlier. Abriella teared up talking about the loss of her dad. Kelton empathized with losing his childhood mentor, Police Sergeant Hesp, but he’d been quite a few years older than Abriella then and the retired cop hadn’t been a close blood relative.

  The events of the last several days had shaken the confidence of a young women back to that of a girl facing an uncertain future. He was patient and supportive, a friend instead of boyfriend, as she got out all the emotions haunting her. Then Abriella apologized to him for leading him on before, sobbing as he held her sitting on the hay bales. Abriella said she and her friends felt bad because all they accomplished riding out was getting Johnbull into trouble. He assured her it wasn’t true, reminding her it gave him time to get away rather than having to escort Holly. It took a good quarter of an hour before the crying subsided, her search to regain mental balance exhausting her.

  She shared a final piece of information with him before he fled town. When the police questionings were over, and everyone was back in the house, Elizabeth had led an intervention with Holly. It began with the message Kate had seen on the phone, and bonded together by their shared ordeal, Holly told all. The man Kelton had been looking for was Johann Grunfeld and he’d been just as evil as Kelton suspected. Fortunately, he'd backed off somewhat with all the turmoil, but the girls knew he’d be back with his seedy blackmail.

  It was full dark when he left. The goodbye had been long, and he’d hugged her close for an awkward amount of time before slipping away into the night.

  Kelton’s iPhone gave him internet access which gave him a Westburg phonebook. That in turn provided the home address for Johann Grunfeld. It was a long walk, located well south of Main Street on the west side of town, but in the direction he intended to go.

  The Victorian mansion sported a sweeping covered porch surrounded in wisteria vines and a turret capped with an eight-sided witch’s hat. A wheelchair ramp flanked the left side of the front steps. Fish scale shingles accented the gables and even from the street Kelton could tell the windows were of thick leaded glass. The garage was a detached carriage house. The grounds were about a half-acre, a huge lot by downtown standards, surrounded by a four-foot brick wall with a privacy hedge of crepe myrtles and magnolia trees. The wrought iron gate at the top of the drive was closed.

  They went over the wall, Azrael clearing it in a simple bound, and pushed through the landscaping. Stray fireflies danced to yard cricket songs, and a dog barked several houses down. The grass was trimmed with no decaying clippings; there were no twigs or leaves on the lawn despite numerous trees from the same era of the house. It was a well-kept and a well to do neighborhood, beyond late on a Sunday night. No one was about.

  The carriage house’s backdoor, facing the stepping stones to the house, was
both unlocked and slightly ajar. He and Azrael slipped inside, smelling the dusty wood and automotive oil. The large Ford Excursion nearly filled the old carriage house, parked to one side to have enough room for the driver to fully open his door. His iPhone flashlight showed him rusty tools with wooden handles laced with cobwebs above the scarred workbench. On a peg was a small coil of horse hair rope.

  The dawn light of summer came well before the buzz of stirring civilization, but Kelton and Azrael were awake when they heard the back door of the house close and the hard soled shoes on the paver stones. The carriage house door opened with a soft creak, and Johann came in wearing his customary gray vest and carrying a briefcase. The banker felt the coarse noose under his jaw much too late.

  The line went over a rafter, and after a brief grapple, Kelton pulled the man by his neck until his shiny black shoes flailed a couple of feet above the worn concrete. Johann’s fingers dug at the rope about his neck, trying to get underneath, but it was too tight with the weight of his body upon it. Azrael sat in front of the strangling figure, panting with bright eyes. It took a couple of minutes for the body to still, and just a bit more for the gurgling to stop.

  Kelton tied the end of the rope off on a nearby stud to leave him dangling. The workbench had an old stool. He put it under the body on its side.

  Then Kelton looked up at the vacant bulging eyes and snarled in a whisper, “Don’t send someone to put a noose about my dog’s neck ever again, or take liberties with young girls.”

  Minutes later, they were darting down the deserted street toward the west side of town and country lanes. Cutting over to Main Street, Kelton let the pace fall off to a lively walk to draw less attention. He reckoned it could be as late as 9:00 am, or later, before bank employees were concerned enough of where the boss was to call his home. It represented a head start of at least four hours, plenty long enough to disappear into the windy rural roads. If they came looking for him at all. Text messages and naughty photos bound to be found by investigating police made a compelling case for suicide.

  It was Abriella in Kelton’s thoughts as much as Johann and Holly. A denied longing which made him ache while he wrestled with moral hypocrisy. What did it mean to declare Johann evil, and declare himself not to be so? On what basis? The black asphalt snakes he followed provided much time for exercising his budding philosophy. He lacked eloquence with words, so resorted to simple and base language befitting a soldier.

  What separates good men from evil men, he reasoned, is not an absence of primal drives feeding the pleasures of self at the expense of others. Those desires to procreate, to control one’s destiny, to be able to live without hardships occupy any man. Without them, Darwinism removed him from the gene pool many eons ago. People pretend these impulses don’t exist, keeping them locked away in the dark cellars of men’s minds and does not mention them for fear of vicious condemnation from the rest of society. Civilization pretends to act shocked when such motives escape their chained trunk, or feign surprise that someone is capable of such acts when in truth, everyone is quite capable. Society has become so afraid in acknowledging the existence of these dark secrets, mankind has lost his ability to discuss and explore issues with a free and open mind.

  Goodness isn’t made of ignorance, nor can man be good when denying the very character of his nature. Rather, good men are the ones with the control over their affairs to face their base primal drives and subordinate them to a higher idea. An idea, that when one is interacting with others, both parties must benefit and enthusiastically commit to the transaction, or it can’t be described as an absolute good act.

  Kelton loved Abriella. It wasn’t a mature love of adults developed over a long and ever growing relationship; it was a teenage infatuation type love. Appropriate for her. The type that he was supposed to have naturally grown out of by now but hadn’t been given the chance to. A part of his personal development stunted by four years at war and the isolated preparations proceeding it, when most others his age had become quite refined in managing their relationships. But it was a genuine feeling nonetheless he made no excuses for.

  However, their respective destinies weren’t aligned. Kelton considered what it would mean to stop wandering and build a relationship with her. Azrael could maybe be happy working from a set base instead of the open road. His finances wouldn’t last long paying for dates though, and when she graduated from Fox Ridge, real life would begin. He’d never get a real job as an engineer, in a recession, half a decade out of school with no real experience. Any menial job wouldn’t put a decent roof over her head, support a horse or put her through school.

  Kelton knew the other stuff he had to offer, besides mere money, was not necessarily what she was seeking either. She was at an age when her goals were constantly forming and evolving in that beautiful maelstrom of late adolescent life. Disrupting that natural process, solely for his own wants, couldn’t be considered a good act. And outlaw or not, he still aspired to being a good man.

  So, whatever it was he sought, he acknowledged to himself it wasn’t here, and resumed his walking. His shepherd trotted happily alongside, but Kelton felt none of the usual adventure lust. His soul was clouded with a heavy heart. For the first time, despite the bond with Azrael, he was lonely. But, for now at least, he’d have to live by dog alone.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charles Wendt is a former United States Air Force Civil Engineering officer, who lives with his wife on a farm in central Virginia. He enjoys horseback riding, dog training and shooting. When not busy providing process engineering consulting services, he is working on Kelton’s and Azrael’s next adventure. Please visit him on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Charles-Wendt-1073232879427462/?ref=bookmarks

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