by Robin Lamont
“She won’t for long,” assured Hillman. “No one is talking to her and we’ve got some pushback building in the community.”
“We don’t have time for that, Dick. I want the situation in Bragg Falls wrapped up quickly. I’m talking yesterday. In a few days the State Senate is going to pass the re-vamped Agriculture Terrorism Bill.” He shook out his napkin with great satisfaction. “The taking of unauthorized photographs or video at any agricultural facility will carry jail time. So will any distribution of the recordings, which is going to shut down these animal rights groups.”
Hillman was surprised. “I thought it was dead in committee.”
“Nope. Quite alive and approved by the Judiciary Committee.”
“What about Senator Gilbert? I thought he was holding it up.”
“Arnie Gilbert?” Marshfield dismissed the man with a flick of his hand. “Arnie is up for re-election. We gave nearly seventy-five thousand to his campaign.”
“I thought he had a pretty big bankroll himself.”
“Since when has it ever been enough?” chastised Seldon.
Hillman grunted a concession and helped himself to another roll.
“More persuasive, however, I secured him a seat on our Task Force at the Council,” said Marshfield, referring to the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, a corporate funded group that crafted pro-business bills for state and federal legislators. “Now he can have a bigger hand in writing the medical tort reform he’s so keen on.”
“I heard a few corporations have bailed on ALEC. They don’t like some of the bad publicity that’s brewing.”
Marshfield scrutinized his security director for signs that he knew more than he should. At the highest levels of corporate protection, in the shadows behind ALEC, only a handful of men made the rules. Seldon Marshfield was one of them; not even Hillman could have access. The CEO chose to ignore the comment and put Hillman back on defense. “A few more days we’ll be home free. Just get that animal lady out of there and make sure that tape never surfaces. Whatever you have to do.”
***
Jude looked up at the sign: Five Star Body ’n Paint. In the open garage, a young man in a paint splattered uniform was taping a sheet of plastic over the windshield of a sedan. A respirator mask, held in place with a rubber strap, had been pushed to the top of his afro.
“Excuse me, are you the owner?” asked Jude.
The young man grinned. “Just the hired man. Want me to git Mr. Clay for ya?”
“No bother, I’ll find him.”
She didn’t have to since the owner, a red-faced, jowly man in his fifties, strolled out from the office. “Afternoon, how ya’ll doin’ today?” he asked like a man who wanted to do business.
“Not bad. I saw your ad in the paper and wanted to swing by and get an estimate,” said Jude.
“How about we take a look see, then. Where you parked?”
Jude walked him over to the Subaru, which she had left in the semi-shade of a thatch of mimosa trees whose leaves were covered in a light film of spray paint. The first thing Mr. Clay noticed was Finn’s large head sticking out the passenger window.
“He’s a big fella,” he said. “Friendly?” Before Jude could answer, he exclaimed, “Fer cryin’ out loud!” He’d seen the writing on the car. “Who did that?”
“I don’t know,” said Jude.
Clay turned his head sideways to read it. “Your turn … son?” he queried.
Jude sighed. “I hope I don’t have to get the whole car repainted.”
He assessed the damage, closing one eye first, then the other. “We could do just the doors, but I can’t guarantee an exact match on the color. Might be better off with the full job, ma’am.”
“I’ll stick with just the doors. How soon could you do it?”
“We’re finishin’ up a couple tomorrow. Could get to it on Thursday.”
“Now the hard part,” said Jude. “How much?”
Clay chortled, “Bless yer heart. Don’t you worry, we’ll work out somethin’ for your budget. Why’nt you come inside and we kin write it up.”
He headed back to the office and Jude followed, working on an addition problem: this month’s rent plus her Visa bill, and now the cost of this paint job.
Five minutes later, estimate in hand, she crossed the front lot and saw the empty Subaru.
“Finn?” Jude felt the icy nails of fear rake down her back. “Finn?!”
The car was as she had left it, but he was gone. How was that possible? She’d only been inside the office for a few minutes and he couldn’t have gotten out ... the window opening was too small.
“Finn! Here, boy. Come on, boy!” She whistled. Then called again and again. Anger crept into her voice in hopes that he was nearby and simply not responding. She ran to the area behind the auto body shop, then back to the road, praying she wouldn’t find him hit by a car. By this time, the shop owner and his young worker had come out to see about the commotion. Clay scratched his head and offered a couple of implausible scenarios: Finn had squeezed out the window or someone had happened by and fearing the dog was hot inside, let him out. But Jude knew that if he had gotten out he would have come looking for her.
Clay’s young worker finally said, “Maybe somebody took him.”
She had begun to believe that was the only explanation, but his words knocked the breath right out of her.
Chapter 20
Sheriff Ward wasn’t the only one with a sense of déjà vu. Jude could hardly believe that she was here again at headquarters filing her third complaint in as many days. Belva Hinson had her complete a short form and was sympathetic, having two Scottish Terriers of her own. But she explained that the department could not devote resources to finding a lost dog. “They usually turn up,” she said. Jude tried to explain that he wasn’t lost, that someone took Finn and that it was connected to the vandalism of her car and the break-in at her hotel room. Hinson would only go so far as to admit it might have been a “prank” and reasserted her belief from long experience that Finn would turn up.
As long as she was doing something, Jude was able to keep from imagining all the terrible things that could have happened to him. As she searched along the road where the auto body shop was located, a mile in each direction, she kept expecting Finn to come bounding around the corner at any moment. Every movement caught her eye and she’d stop and wait … just in case. In town she went into every storefront and asked, “Have you seen my dog?” In many blank faces she could see that it was as though she had inquired about a lost wallet or set of keys. They didn’t understand that Finn was a piece of her heart. Her best friend, her rock, her protector. Jude sometimes had to struggle to keep him from becoming a human surrogate – she respected his animal-ness too much. And he rewarded her not just with unconditional love and loyalty, but by being a living reminder of the ability of animals to feel pain, fear, and joy. Finn was everything that steadied and renewed her motivation to fight for all of them.
She mounted a one-woman search party, stopping off at the motel in case he had found his way back there. She made up a flyer with his photo, description, and an offer of a reward, then had copies run off at a print shop at the mall. More trouble ensued when she began to post them around town.
At the hardware and feed store, an assistant manager declined her request to pin a flyer to the bulletin board in the vestibule.
“We don’t let folks do that kind of thing,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” challenged Jude. “What are these?” She pointed to business cards and printed notices that offered everything from babysitting services to used cars to firewood.
He crossed his arms, revealing damp sweat stains at the armpits. “That’s advertising,” he proclaimed.
“So? I’m offering a reward, that’s advertising.”
Th
e assistant widened his stance and reiterated his position. “No can do. Yours is different.”
Jude stormed out hoping that it was just this particular fellow being difficult. But a few other establishments on the block gave her the same treatment, and although she suspected the real reason, it didn’t become entirely clear until she got to Roy Mears’s diner.
“Why if it ain’t the animal rights lady,” he said when she came through the door.
Paying no attention to his sneer, she held up a copy of the flyer. “Mr. Mears, would you mind if I taped this up?”
“Damn right, I’d mind.” He turned his back on her to flip a hamburger on the grill.
“Please. This has nothing to do with the plant,” Jude entreated. “This is about my missing dog. It’s personal.”
“I’ll tell you what’s personal,” he shot back. “How you come here looking to put folks out of work. That’s personal to me.”
Letting her anger flare, Jude burst out, “I’m not looking to put anyone out of work. I came here to try and set some things right because apparently no one else really cares.”
At that, Mears turned mean. He lifted the sizzling hamburger patty on his long spatula and shoved it in Jude’s face. “So whiles you’re waitin’ on us to really care, how about a nice hamburger? A nice, juicy piece of cow flesh, running with blood and ripped right off its nice, fat ass.”
Disgusted, Jude turned her head away and muttered, “Jerk.”
Mears jabbed the spatula at her again. “I heard that. Get the fuck out of here, you terrorist bitch.”
Outside on the sidewalk, she found herself shaking and had to grab hold of a parking meter to keep her legs from giving way. Oh God, they despise me. Please, please, don’t let them hurt Finn. He didn’t do anything to them.
The town’s obvious hostility hurried her along on Main Street. She worked her way down one side of the street, then the other, attaching flyers to telephone poles and slipping them under the wiper blades of parked cars. It wasn’t long before she felt a presence behind her. She looked back and saw a familiar figure in a camouflage cap and coveralls following her – the same man who’d mimed shooting her and Daniel Vargas the other day. He ambled behind, hands in pockets, staying half a block back. He waited across the street while she asked to post a flyer inside a few stores, and was still watching her when she went into the convenience mart at the gas station.
The woman at the counter was a relief from the cold shoulder she had been getting. In fact, not only did she say she’d take a flyer home with her and show it to her neighbors, she offered a further suggestion.
“Did you stop by the paper?” she queried.
“The paper?”
“Sure ’nuff. The Bragg Falls Chronicle has offices down off of Third Street, which is two blocks that’a way. There’s never much happens around here, so they don’t got a whole lot of news.” A grin deepened the spidery lines around her eyes into creases. “Might be your missing dog is a big story. Just kidding, but maybe they can print sump’n up for you.”
“Thanks. One more favor if I could.” Jude looked over her shoulder and spotted the man in the cap talking to someone in a pickup truck at one of the pumps. “You have an exit out back I can use?”
If she’d been driving, she would have missed it, but on foot Jude spotted the twelve-inch plaque for the Chronicle mounted on the side door of what appeared to be a residential home. She pushed it open and went up the narrow staircase to the newspaper offices, housed in a couple of renovated bedrooms on the second floor.
In the front office sat Caroline’s boyfriend Jack Delaney, whom she’d last seen on the ridge overlooking the plant. He was dressed in the same black t-shirt and jeans, but now his hair was pulled back from his face with a rubber band. He sat with his feet up on the desk, a sketch pad in his lap and a drawing pen in his ink-stained fingers. So engrossed in his design, he hadn’t heard Jude’s footsteps on the stairs.
“Jack?”
His feet swung off the desk in guilty admission, but when he saw who it was, his slumping posture let her know that he regretted this minimal show of respect.
“I’m Jude, you remember? We met in the woods the other day. You’re Caroline’s friend.”
“Yeah.”
She wasn’t sure which of her statements he was acknowledging, but pressed forward. “Do you work here?”
“Yeah.”
“Is the paper daily, weekly, what?”
“Why?”
“I want to put in an ad or a notice.”
“Awright.”
After a pause, Jude asked irritably, “Are you able to put a whole sentence together? With a subject and a verb and everything? My dog is missing and I want to get him back as quickly as possible.”
Seemingly unmoved by her sarcasm, he peered at her through half-closed eyes. “Same dog you had? The one Caroline likes so much?”
“Yeah, you jealous?”
He scoffed in response.
“When is the soonest I can get an ad in?”
“The print version comes out once a week. But we do an online issue every day.”
“Okay, can I get it in for tomorrow?”
Jack reluctantly put his pad on the desk and swiveled in his chair to face a computer. “If you don’t care about design or fonts or anything, just tell me what you want it to say. You have a picture?”
When she handed him a flyer, he said curtly, “No, I mean digital.”
“I have one on my phone. I can send it to you.”
He pulled up a form on the computer and his fingers hovered over the keys. “What do you want to say? Keep it under two hundred characters.”
“I guess … lost dog, dark brown except for some light brown fur on his muzzle and over his eyes. A little bit of white on his neck and chest, and some on his legs. He has a limp, his right hind leg. Let’s see … his ears flop over. He’s got a very … noble face.” Her voice cracked with emotion and she looked away in embarrassment.
“With spaces, you’re over two hundred characters,” Jack announced flatly.
“Fine,” flashed Jude. “Just say, ‘Stolen dog. Reward for return. No questions asked.’ What’s the matter with you, anyway? I thought you were a friend of Caroline’s, or are you also part of the militia trying to run me out of town?”
Chastened by her outburst, he tapped out the text on the keys, then eyed her over his shoulder. “It’s just I don’t trust a lot of people.”
“That makes two of us,” replied Jude.
“Was he really stolen?” asked Jack in a more conciliatory tone. “Was it because of D&M … you know, did somebody take your dog as payback because of your investigation?”
“Yes, I believe they did.”
“It’s a shitty thing to do,” he said. “But I’m not surprised. You know, everyone in town in some way or other depends on the plant, including my dad with this paper. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing a good thing. Bragg Falls is my home and all, but well … me and Caroline think it’s a really filthy place to live, physically and morally. Last year, there was blood and pig shit and who knows what leeching into the creek, killed everything in it. Someone from the big ole United States government came down and made the plant pay a fine – the equivalent of a corporate speeding ticket. Still no fish in that creek. Can’t swim there, can’t even get close to it or you get sick. But somebody’s making money!” Jack smiled and began to sing in soft, mocking tones, “Oh beautiful, for spacious skies for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains–”
The door to the next room opened and a man with Jack’s build plus fifty pounds stood glowering in the doorway.
His son paled and the bravado fell away. He made as if they were in the middle of a transaction. “So, we’ll put it in like an ad. That’s forty-five, check or cash.”
Jude pulled out
her wallet, but saw she was short. “Do you take credit cards?” she asked.
Mr. Delaney answered for his son, “Not unless you have an account.” The way he looked at her, Jude suspected he knew who she was. He confirmed it when he turned to Jack and asked pointedly, “Did you finish the layout on the second page? I have to get home and change. Your mom and I are having dinner with the Warshauers tonight.”
Jack actually blushed at the mention of his parents’ relationship with the plant manager, but he said only, “It’s done, Dad.”
The elder Delaney backed into his office but left the door open.
“There’s an ATM about three blocks over,” Jack advised.
“I know where it is. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” said Jude. “You’ll stick around?”
“Yeah, but make it quick. As you heard, my father’s in a hurry. Big dinner plans.”
She raced down the steps and along the sidewalks to the bank. At the ATM, she punched in her PIN number and retrieved the cash. But as she turned to go back, she came face to face with the man in the camouflage cap. Up close, Jude could see his deeply pockmarked skin and in the curl of his lip the years of torment from his peers that had nurtured a cruel streak.
“You looking for these?” he snickered, holding up a handful of flyers that he’d ripped down from the telephone poles. “Poor baby poochie is lost?”
“Get out of my way.” Jude tried to move around him, but he sidestepped in front of her. She looked around but there was no one on the street.
“You don’t listen too good, do you?” he asked.
“I listen fine. I just don’t respond to threats.”
He backed her up with his hands on her shoulders and pressed her into the brick wall of the bank. “Yeah, well, maybe you should.”
“Get your hands off me,” she warned.
“Or what?” he asked. Using his forearm to hold her, he moved one hand down to her breast and stepped in to push his pelvis into hers.
Jude let him get just close enough and then rammed her knee into his groin. She ducked under his falling torso to avoid a collision as he lurched forward, dropping to his knees and grabbing at his crotch.