CHAPTER 39
Tracy lowered the tailgate on Dan’s Tahoe while speaking into her cell phone. “This is Detective Tracy Crosswhite, Seattle Homicide,” she said out of habit. Dan slid Rex into the back and handed Tracy the keys. He climbed in with the dog. “I’m reporting a shooting in the six hundred block of Elmwood Avenue in Cedar Grove. Requesting all available units in the area to respond.”
Tracy slammed shut the tailgate and slid into the cab. “Suspect vehicle is likely a truck headed east on Cedar Hollow toward the county road.” She backed quickly down the driveway, bouncing into the street, tires squealing. “Vehicle’s left rear taillight is out.” She removed the phone from her ear and shouted to Dan. “Where am I going?”
“Pine Flat.”
She tossed her phone on the passenger seat and punched the accelerator. Sherlock whined and whimpered. In the rearview mirror Tracy could see him peering over the back seat at his fallen buddy. Dan continued applying pressure to Rex’s wounds, his cell phone wedged between his shoulder and jaw as he carried on his own conversation with the veterinary clinic.
“He’s bleeding from multiple wounds. We’re about seven to eight minutes away.”
“How’s he doing?” Tracy yelled.
“Vet’s going to meet us. I can’t stop the bleeding.” Dan sounded panicked. “Come on, Rex. Hang in there, buddy. Hang in there with me.”
She turned onto the county road and came up quickly behind a slow-moving van. When it didn’t accelerate, she swerved to pass but had to retreat when she saw headlights. An eighteen-wheel truck blew past, creating a rush of wind sufficient to shake the Tahoe. After it had passed, Tracy swerved into the outside lane, saw no headlights, and stepped on the accelerator again. No sooner had she done so when more headlights appeared around the next turn. She had the pedal to the floor and not much distance between her and the oncoming vehicle. When she’d cleared the van’s hood, Tracy swerved back into her lane, eliciting prolonged honks from both vehicles.
She passed two additional cars before reaching the exit for Pine Flat. Dan provided final directions to an A-frame split-log building. She braked, the Tahoe skidding to a stop in a dirt-and-gravel parking lot. Jumping out, she left the engine running. A man and a woman burst out the front door of the clinic as Tracy opened the tailgate. Dan slid out carrying a bloodied Rex, rushing him up the steps into the building.
When Dan went inside Tracy shut off the engine. Though the weather had turned bitterly cold and she was underdressed in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, she remained too amped to sit, too angry to do nothing. She used one of the towels Dan had been using to staunch Rex’s wounds and wiped up the blood in the back of the Tahoe before closing the tailgate. She paced the dirt and gravel and made another call. The dispatcher at the Sheriff’s Office said that Roy Calloway was not in, but a unit had responded to the shooting at Dan’s home. Tracy told the woman she was at the Pine Flat Veterinary Hospital and asked to be kept advised.
She tried to temper her anger so it wouldn’t cloud her thinking. It had been buckshot. She knew from the way the window had shattered and the multiple wounds that Rex had sustained. Tracy had hunted enough deer with her father to know the most important thing now was whether or not one of those pellets had hit a vital organ. She crossed her arms against the cold. The night sky had clouded over, blotting out the stars and calming the wind. A chime hung motionless from the roof eaves.
Tracy paced until the cold began to make her joints ache and her fingers and toes became numb. She climbed the wooden steps to the porch. A yellowed light fixture above the front door emitted a tepid glow. About to go inside, Tracy noticed headlights on the asphalt road and, a moment later, recognized the Suburban that slowed into the parking lot and parked beside Dan’s Tahoe. Roy Calloway stepped out wearing a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a Carhartt jacket. His boots thumped on the wood stairs.
“You come to tell me ‘I told you so’?” she said.
“I came to see if you were all right.”
“I’m all right.”
“How’s the dog?”
She nodded to the clinic. “Don’t know yet.”
“You get a look?”
“Yeah, I got a look. It was a truck,” she said.
“You get a license plate?”
“Too far. They had the lights off.”
“How do you know it was a truck?”
“From the sound of the engine and the height of the brake light off the ground.”
He gave it some thought. “Won’t limit it much, not around here.”
“I know. The left brake light was out, though.”
“That will help.”
“It was a shotgun,” she said. “Buckshot. Some idiot trying to scare us.”
“Dan’s dog may disagree.”
“There were no curtains, Roy. I was sitting in front of the kitchen window. If they’d wanted to kill me they had a clean shot to do it. It was just a shot across the bow. The media has everyone in town stirred up. You know anything about that?”
Calloway scratched at the back of his neck. “I’ll have my deputies make some inquiries, try to find out if anyone was out drinking and spouting off.”
“That might not limit the pool much either.”
“I sent Finlay over to the house. Told him to call Mack at the lumberyard to get some plywood and board up the window.”
“Thanks. I’ll let Dan know.” She reached for the door to enter the hospital.
“Tracy?”
She really didn’t want to hear what he had to say or get into an argument. At the moment, she just wanted to get in out of the cold and find out how Rex was doing. But she turned and faced him. Calloway looked to be struggling to find words, which was unlike him. After a moment, he said, “Your father was one of my best friends. I’m not saying it’s the same thing, but there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about him and Sarah.”
“Then you should have found the person who killed them.”
“I did.”
“The evidence suggests otherwise.”
“You can’t always trust the evidence,” he said.
“I don’t.”
He looked like he was going to get angry, which was his way. Then he just looked tired, and for the first time, Roy Calloway looked old. His voice grew soft. “Some of us couldn’t run off, Tracy. Some of us had to stay here. We had jobs to do. We had a town to think of, a place that people still called home. And it was a good place to live until then. Folks just wanted to put it behind them and move on.”
“Doesn’t look like any of us got very far,” she said.
He showed her his palms. “What do you want from me?”
They were well beyond this. The conversation was going nowhere and she was starting to get a chill. “Nothing,” she said and started again for the door.
“Your father . . .”
She took her hand off the knob. DeAngelo Finn had also invoked her father’s name that afternoon. “What, Roy? My father what?”
Calloway bit at his lower lip. “Tell Dan I’m real sorry about the dog,” he said, and started down the steps.
From the look on Dan’s face, Tracy was convinced Rex had died. He sat in the reception area with his elbows propped on his knees, his hands beneath his chin. Sherlock lay on the floor in front of him, head resting on his paws, eyes looking up from beneath a worried brow.
“Have you heard anything?” she asked.
Dan shook his head.
“Calloway just came by,” she said. “He’s going to ask around, see if anyone was mouthing off. And he’s going to get someone to board up the window.”
Dan didn’t respond.
“You want a cup of coffee?” Tracy asked.
“No,” he said.
She sat in the chair beside him, the silence uncomfortable. After a minute, she reached out and touched his arm. “Dan, I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have brought you into this. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.”
Dan stared at the floor, seemingly giving her words consideration.
“Look if you want to bow out . . .”
Dan turned his head and looked at her. “I got involved because a childhood friend asked me to take a look. I took the case though because what I found didn’t make sense, and it appears that an innocent man may have been railroaded. If that’s true it means someone got away with murder, someone who lived or still lives in this town. I’ve chosen to live here again. This is my home now, Tracy, for better or for worse, and it was better once, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was,” she said, recalling that Calloway and DeAngelo Finn had said very much the same thing.
“I’m not trying to get back what we had growing up. I know that was a long time ago, but maybe . . .” He blew out a breath. “I don’t know.”
Tracy didn’t push him. They sat in silence.
Forty-five minutes after they’d brought Rex in, an interior door to the left of the reception counter opened and the veterinarian entered. Tall and rangy, he looked like he was seventeen. He made Tracy feel old. She and Dan stood. Sherlock lurched to his feet.
“You got some dog there, Mr. O’Leary.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“It looked worse than it is. The buckshot did some damage, but it was mostly superficial, in part because he’s so darn muscular.”
Dan heaved a sigh of relief, removed his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His voice shook. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
“We’re going to keep him sedated to keep him quiet. We can do that better here. I’d say maybe day after tomorrow you can take him home, if you think you can keep him down.”
“I have a hearing starting. I’m afraid I’m not going to be home much the next few days.”
“We can keep him here. Just let us know what you decide.” The veterinarian took Sherlock’s head in his hands. “You want to see your buddy now?”
Sherlock’s tail began to whip the air. He shook free his head, ears flopping and chain collar rattling. He and Dan followed the veterinarian, but Tracy held back, feeling this was not her place. Sherlock stopped and looked back at her in question, but Dan continued through the door without stopping.