High in Trial

THREE

Hansonville, North Carolina

Twenty-eight hours before the shooting





The sign on the door said “Sheriff” in bold, stenciled letters and below that “Buck Lawson,” written in black marker on a piece of poster paper taped in place. It was just another reminder, as if he needed one, that he wasn’t the real sheriff, and his place in this office was only temporary. Some days that suited him just fine. Other days, like today, it got under his skin like a bad rash.

Buck was currently serving out the unexpired term of Roe Bleckley, who’d been elected sheriff of Hanover County nine consecutive times and whose well-worn boots, to put it mildly, were hard to fill. Roe had retired after a heart attack and it surprised no one that Buck had been tagged to step into the job, not only because he was the senior man on the force, but because, having been married to Roe’s niece Raine for over ten years, he was practically family. The fact that his marriage to Raine had been over long before Roe’s unexpected retirement hadn’t figured into most people’s thinking. Neither, if truth be told, had the possibility that Buck might not want the job.

Buck Lawson was a good law officer, but he hated being sheriff. He hated working fourteen-hour days and spending twelve of them behind a desk. He hated drawing up duty rosters and filling out payroll forms. He hated attending budget meetings. And he hated opening piece after piece of mail addressed to “R.O. Bleckley, Sheriff.”

“Rosie!” He ripped open yet another envelope addressed to the former sheriff, leaned toward the open door, and shouted more loudly, “Rosie!”

Her reply came distantly over the buzz and hum of activity from the outer office. “Yes, your lordship!”

Rosie’s official title was Head Dispatcher, but she’d been with the Sheriff’s Department even longer than Buck and was the only person on board who really knew how everything worked. The budget, as Buck discovered all too soon, didn’t allow for an office manager, so Roe had solved the problem by changing Rosie’s job description, but not her title. It was that kind of creative thinking that was sorely missed around here by everyone, including Buck.

She appeared at the door, a middle-aged woman with a poufy faded-brown hairdo that hadn’t changed in twenty years and too much eye makeup. She wore a wireless telephone headset in one ear and a pair of glasses pushed into her hair. “You bellowed?” she inquired politely.

“Sorry,” he muttered. His former desk had been only steps from hers, and it had been easy to call over to her when he needed something. He couldn’t get used to being stuck back here in the middle of a hallway with a door between him and the department he was supposed to be running. “Did you call Roe to come pick up his mail?”

“I did. He said he’d stop by after lunch.”

Most of the mail that came through the office was official business that Buck would end up handling anyway, but he kept an ongoing stack of personal notices, magazines, brochures and the like addressed to Roe. The man had been in office for thirty years, and it was starting to look as though it would take at least that long to get his address changed on all those mailing lists.

Buck frowned a little as he glanced over the contents of the most recent letter. “You know anything about a felon by the name of Jeremiah Berman?”

“Can’t say that I do,” she replied. “But then, I know so many felons.”

“I wonder why the pardons and paroles board would be notifying Roe about his release.”

“Sounds routine to me. He must have put the guy away.”

“No, it says here, ‘At your request, we are notifying you…’” He gave a little grunt and put the letter aside—in his pile, not Roe’s. “See what you can find out, will you?”

“Sure thing. Do you want me to call the—” He could tell by the way she broke off that she had been about to say “the sheriff.” It was a common slip, and it didn’t even bother him anymore.

“Just pull the file,” he suggested, saving her the embarrassment of correcting herself.

“Will do.” She started to leave and then turned back. “By the way, did you see the election forms I left on your desk?”

“Yeah, I saw them.”

“Did you get a chance to fill them out?”

“Not yet.”

“The deadline for filing is Monday, you know.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to fill them out for you?”

“No, that’s okay.”

She hesitated, looked as though she wanted to say something else, but settled on, “Well, give me a holler when you’re finished. I can run them down to the county clerk’s office in a jiff.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

“Because the deadline’s Monday.”

“Got it.”

“What deadline is that, young lady?” a familiar voice came from behind her, and Rosie broke into a broad smile as she turned.

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” she said and didn’t even bother to correct herself this time. “We were just talking about you.”

“My ears were burning.”

Roe was a round, balding man with an easy disposition and a quick smile. He’d lost a little weight since the doctor and his wife had forced him into a heart-healthy diet, but the most striking change in his appearance over the past year was the simple absence of a uniform. These days he spent most of his time trying to coordinate a volunteer cold-case squad for the neighboring mountain communities, and his uniform was typically jeans and a sweater. Even Buck sometimes had to blink before he recognized his former boss without his khakis.

Roe came into the office, and before Rosie could settle down for a nice chat with her former boss, Buck reminded her, “You want to see about that file?”

She looked puzzled for a moment and then remembered. “Right on it.”

Roe said, “So how’s everything in the law-and-order game?”

“Understaffed, overworked, underpaid.” Buck picked up the stack of mail and handed it to him.

“Sounds about right.” Roe took the mail and glanced through it without interest. “Finding plenty of spare time for all that paperwork, are you?”

“Not by half.” Buck got up and crossed to the coffee maker on a small table next to the door—perhaps the only perk of the job. He poured a cup and offered it to Roe, who shook his head.

“Guess that’s why you haven’t gotten around to filing the election forms yet,” Roe observed.

Buck ignored that and took the coffee cup back to his desk. “Say, Roe, what do you know about a felon named…” He took up the letter from the pardons and parole board and glanced at it. “Berman?”

“Not a thing that I can recall.”

Buck handed Roe the letter and watched the other man’s face change as he read it. It wasn’t a dramatic change—just a flicker of recognition, a passing shade of concern, and then, perhaps the most telling sign of all, a deliberate smoothing of his features into neutral. His only comment was, “Huh.”

“Did you send him up?” Buck pressed.

“Never met the man.”

“It’s not like they were releasing him back into our neck of the woods. Says there his last known residence was Georgia.”

“So it does.” He glanced again at the letter and couldn’t quite hide the small frown that creased his brow as he read the date. “Looks like he got out almost three weeks ago. When did this get here, anyhow?”

“Just today. I guess they get backed up on paperwork up at the parole board, too.” He looked at his former boss intensely. “What’s going on, Roe?”

“Nothing,” Roe said, folding the letter. “Probably nothing.” Then he looked at Buck. “Listen, if you don’t mind a piece of advice…”

Buck managed to keep a straight face. Since he’d taken over the job, he had gotten more advice from Roe on how to do it than he’d counted on, asked for, or needed.

“You need to hire yourself another deputy,” Roe said.

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“You’ve been down two since you took over the job. You’ve got the budget.”

“Yeah, I know.” Buck frowned thoughtfully as he sipped his coffee. “Mind if I ask you something?” Without waiting for a reply, he went on. “What do you think about bringing Wyn back?”

Roe’s silence was about what he had expected and the only answer he needed.

Wyn had been Buck’s partner back when Buck was still a deputy and Roe was in charge. They’d ridden together for three years before they realized their feelings for each other went beyond professional, and even though Buck had been separated from Raine at the time, it was their involvement that led to the final divorce. When he took over as sheriff, Wyn voluntarily left the force, and town, for a security job an hour away. Since then they’d been driving back and forth to see each other on weekends and after shift, and Buck was more than ready to make some changes.

He said, “She’s thinking about moving back to town.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s she going to be living?”

“With me.”

Roe’s expression remained detached. “Reckon you all will be getting married, then.”

Buck couldn’t prevent a small flash of alarm, even though he half-suspected the comment was just Roe’s way of needling him. He said carefully, “I can’t say we’ve gone that far in our thinking.”

“Well, maybe you ought to. She’s a good woman. A good woman deserves somebody who’ll put a little thought into the matter before asking her to turn her life upside down.”

Buck knew he was treading on uncertain ground. He had, after all, married and divorced Roe’s only niece, not once, but twice, and he imagined there had been more than one heated conversation behind closed doors about that. So he said, “Mostly right now I’m just wondering what the rest of the boys would think if she came back to work here.”

Roe nodded, his expression carefully concealed. “She was a good deputy. Well-liked on the force.”

“Yeah, she was.”

“I reckon they’d just be glad to have their days off back.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“But it’s a small town, Buck. Something like this… well, it’s not going to win you the election.”

Buck blew out a breath. “Right.”

“I’d think about it if I was you.”

“Right.”

“Meantime…” Roe tilted his head meaningfully toward the desk. “Get busy and file those forms.”

“Yeah. Right.”

It wasn’t until after he was gone that Buck realized Roe had taken the letter from the parole board with him.

And why shouldn’t he? After all, the letter had been addressed to him.

Sheriff Bleckley.

* * *

Putting on an agility trial is hard work and the sponsoring club never has enough volunteers so I like to help out whenever I can. But that’s not the only reason I’m among the first to lend a hand when it comes time to set up the ring for a new course. For one thing, volunteering to help guarantees acceptance into most trials, and in a trial as popular as this one, that’s a huge advantage. In addition, it not only offers a sneak preview of the course to come; it also gives me extra time to familiarize myself with the ring and plan my strategy in my head. I could definitely use every advantage I could get, but that was only part of the reason I was anxious to help out this time. Neil and Flame were still on the floor, and being the naturally curious person that I am, I hoped to get the inside scoop on their last run before they got away.

He was in an intense conversation with a young woman with her dark ponytail threaded through the back of her baseball cap like mine and gorgeous legs that were prominently displayed in white shorts and high-tech running shoes. Reticence has never been one of my problems, so I put a big smile on my face and approached confidently, and by the time I realized they were in the midst of a furious argument, it was too late to alter my course.

I heard the girl say shortly, “Do you think I’m blind? I saw what you did and you’re not going to get away with it. And if you think I’m going to stand by and let you ruin Flame’s career—”

“You’ve got bigger problems than Flame’s career if you think I’m stupid enough to believe that’s all you’re worried about,” he returned tightly. “I don’t play by your rules anymore, sweetheart, just in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“We’ve got a contract, big boy,” she retorted in a tone thick with anger, “and you know I’ve got the chops to enforce it. If you screw with me I’ll have everything you own, including your reputation.”

“Look at me. I’m trembling,” he returned. Red spots of anger started to appear on his neck. “I ran her, didn’t I? I gave it my best and fullest effort, to quote your precious contract, and if you have any doubts you just ask any one of the spectators that were cheering in the stands. It was an accident, and nothing you can do will prove otherwise.” His smile was cold. “These things happen. It’s all part of the game.”

She said lowly, “You fool. You have no idea what you’ve done.”

To which he replied, “I know exactly what I’ve done, and now you know what I’m capable of, you selfish—” Then he noticed me and stopped abruptly, looking both annoyed and embarrassed. There was nothing I could do but pretend I had heard nothing.

“Great run,” I congratulated him brightly. “That silent handling is unbelievable. What a shame about the finish. What happened?”

The girl spun and stalked away, and the eyes that followed her had enough venom in them to choke a snake. With an effort, he dragged his attention back to me. “Refusal,” he said briefly.

I forced a laugh. “Yeah, I saw. She was going straight for the finish line, though. I could’ve sworn she was going to make it. She’s such an incredible dog.”

The fastest way to any dog lover’s heart is to compliment his dog, so it didn’t surprise me to see Neil’s expression soften. “Yes, she is,” he agreed, glancing down fondly at the little dog at his side. She sat at his side with her eyes fixed upon him with the same rapt attention she had displayed at the start line. “She probably got spooked when I fell.”

“But she took half the course after that. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t until she was almost at the finish line that she turned back. I wonder what happened.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know and she’s not talking. Anyway, there’s always tomorrow.”

“That’s the good thing about a three-day,” I agreed. “I hope your leg is better.”

He winced, as though being reminded of the injury brought back pain he’d forgotten, and he reached down to rub his knee. “Yeah, I twisted my knee a little. I’ll ice it. It’ll be okay.”

“If not,” I suggested with a grin, “you could just stand at the start line and tell her what to do.”

It took him a moment to respond, and then it was with an absent smile that told me I’d overstayed my welcome. His eyes were watching someone over my shoulder, and I didn’t have to look beyond the cold anger in them to guess who it was. He said, “I guess. Excuse me, will you?”

He dropped his hand to his side with a gesture that was so quick and so small even I had trouble seeing it, and Flame fell into a perfect heel as he strode away, following the girl with the ponytail.

I ran to join the other volunteers in the ring, got my instructions and my course map, and paired with Ginny to set up the jumps. She was a cute girl in her late twenties with short blond hair and a personality as chatty as her mother’s. I introduced myself and congratulated her on a clean run.

“Gunny’s just starting out in agility,” she admitted, “but he is good, isn’t he? Of course, he’ll never be another Flame, but then I’m no Neil Kellog. Have you ever taken one of his workshops? He’s brilliant. He has his dogs trained to these hand signals he learned in the army. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every obstacle has a number and he holds up that number of fingers to send them over. Of course he uses voice commands, too, for some of the dogs, and in an emergency, like he did just now. Is number three a wing jump or a broad jump?”

For a moment I thought she was still talking about hand signals, but then I glanced at the course map and replied, “Wing.”

We dragged the two supports into place and moved on. “I couldn’t believe she refused the finish line,” Ginny went on. “And then to back-jump? I’ll bet Neil was mad. He always plays to win, and usually does, too. Win, that is. But to not even qualify?” She gave a small shake of her head. “Crazy. On the other hand…” She brightened. “That opens up the field for somebody else to win high in trial.” Like I said, she was as chatty as her mother.

“He seemed to be taking it pretty well, though,” I observed, dragging the opening of the tunnel to face the A-frame. “It was the woman who was mad. Who is she, anyway?”

Ginny set the number cone beside the tunnel. “That’s his girlfriend, Marcie. Ex-girlfriend, I should say. They’re both in our agility club. And she should be mad. Neil’s running both Flame and Bryte this weekend, but Flame’s her dog, and she was counting on that MACH.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “I’ve never seen anyone but Neil run her.”

“They co-own Flame and most of the other dogs,” said Ginny. “She’s the breeder. He’s the trainer. I think she’s always resented it a little that Neil got all the glory, and of course, now that they’re not together anymore, it’ll be a mess trying to assign custody of the dogs.”

To anyone but a dog person, that might sound strange. But in the case of competition dogs, even more than conformation show dogs, this was serious business.

“She said something about a contract.”

Ginny gave a little snort of amusement as she set a bar on the ground between two stanchions at the number six cone. “Doesn’t surprise me a bit. She’s a lawyer, and she’s probably got Neil tied up six ways from Sunday. He’ll be lucky if he walks away from this with his shirt. She probably only got together with Neil in the first place for his training skills.” She grinned and offered, before I could ask, “She’s president of the agility club, so naturally it’s all been a big scandal. Everyone’s gossiping.”

“Well,” I said, “the season’s just started. There’s plenty of time for Flame to get her MACH.”

“Not if they want to qualify for the Standard Cup,” Ginny said. “Entries have to be in by May first. And there isn’t another sanctioned trial in the region before then.”

“Wow,” I said. “I hope he’s able to run tomorrow, then.”

And that was when I remembered something odd. When Neil had first gotten up from his fall, he favored his right leg. But when he walked away from me just now, he favored his left.

Odd.



* * *



I was feeling pretty confident about the course. There was only one tricky part requiring a front cross between the tire jump and the A-frame, but my nemesis and Cisco’s, the dog walk, was the first obstacle, and I knew if we could get that out of the way we’d be okay. I’d checked the schedule, and we were in the first group. This was good news and bad news. The good news was that the course would still be fresh in my mind and there’d be no time for nerves to build up in me or boredom to build up in Cisco. The bad news was there would be very little time for warming up.

It was a big group, and the judge’s last group of the morning, so she didn’t waste any time as she called us all in for the briefing. In the novice classes the judges usually go out of their way to be welcoming and friendly, but as you move up through the levels they figure you don’t need quite as much encouragement to stay in the game. They do, however, generally take a moment to welcome the competitors at the beginning and wish them luck at the end. This one did neither. She informed us tersely of the set course time, reminded us to be on deck when the dog ahead of us reached the broad jump, and told us that a sit, not a down, would be required on the pause table. She gave us six minutes to walk the course— not five, not ten—and that was it. We were a pretty frantic group trotting around the obstacles, waving our arms and muttering to ourselves, plotting out our strategies in our heads. I was happier than ever to have had the extra time in the ring that setting up the course allowed me.

I took Cisco for a quick potty walk, turned my pockets inside out—a superstitious habit I have, just to make sure I don’t accidently walk into the ring with liver treats or a training clicker in my pocket—blew a kiss to Miles, and got into line with the other dogs in my jump height. I have another superstition, which involves a few quiet moments with Cisco before a run, visualizing the course in my head and whispering the commands out loud to Cisco. My friend Sonny, who claims to be an animal communicator of sorts, says when I do this Cisco actually memorizes the course. Given the number of off-course faults he generally racks up, this seems unlikely. But any sports psychologist will tell you the most powerful way to improve your game is to visualize a perfect run, and saying the commands out loud not only helps me remember them in order, but hopefully puts Cisco in training mode. This time, however, my hope was moot. Cisco had eyes for no one but Brinkley, who was two dogs ahead of us in line, and even I had to laugh when Brinkley began his run and Cisco barked every time he made a jump, just as though he was cheering him on.

I’d been working on Cisco’s start-line stay all winter and it was the one thing of which I was fairly confident—particularly now that Brinkley was safely out of sight and no one else with whom Cisco would rather be was there to distract him. Being able to leave your dog at the start line and meet him somewhere along the course is a huge advantage when you have a fast dog who operates on visual cues, because no two-legged human can hope to keep up with a four-legged dog, and it was vital Cisco be able to see me at all times. I tossed his leash to the gate steward and put him in a sit facing the first obstacle. His brown-eyed gaze was focused alertly on me as I strode toward the elevated bridge of the dog walk, past it, and turned to face him. With every step I repeated, Stay, stay, stay… in my head. My spirits soared when I turned and saw he was still where I left him. Already, the taste of victory was sweet on my tongue. Our first run of the season was going to be a winner, I could feel it.

But this was the tricky part. I raised my hand to cue him to readiness, but before I could even draw a breath, he took off like a shot toward the dog walk, leaving me scrambling to catch up. I hate it when that happens.

Of course, a less sanguine handler would be completely thrown by something like that, but the advantage of having tried—and failed—so many times for a clean run was that I was prepared for the fact that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong. I dived for the dog walk and met Cisco there as he raced across the top plank, guiding him with my shoulder, calling, “Easy! Easy!” as he began his descent. And, yes!—all four paws in the yellow contact zone—and I shouted, “Over!” as he tore off toward a series of ninety-degree jumps. I did a rear cross at the tunnel, because Cisco had knocked me off my feet too many times barreling out of the tunnel when I tried to meet him in front. I cut behind him toward the tire, and when he was three quarters of the way through the tunnel, I called, “Tire!” He turned toward the sound of my voice when he emerged and sailed through the tire like a dolphin through a hoop. Am I good or what?

The pause table was the third obstacle from the end, which is kind of a mean trick. The dog is flying high on adrenaline—not to mention the handler—when suddenly he’s required to come to a screeching halt on the table, sit perfectly still for five seconds, and then take off like lightning again on cue. For a dog like Cisco, whose impulse control is not exactly legendary and whose attention span is often measured in microseconds, this can be risky business, to say the least. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move a muscle as I focused on the countdown: Four, three…

And then I heard a familiar bark from outside the ring. Cisco’s ears went up; his head swiveled toward Brinkley. No, no, no…

“Two, go!” called the counter, and before the “o” in “go” died, I shouted, “Here!”

The trick to winning at agility is to outthink your dog. It takes a dog about two seconds to process a verbal command— which is actually faster than it takes a human—so if he’s running at 2.25 yards per second, you have to give the command for the obstacle at least five yards before he has to set his course toward it. This means you often have to give the commands faster than your dog can run. Sometimes that’s possible; sometimes it’s not. Either way, it all happens in a blur.

The last two obstacles were straight-line jumps leading to the finish line, a piece of cake except for the fact that the jumps were positioned behind the table. “Here” was the one word I knew with a fair amount of certainty that Cisco would respond to, even with the temptation of his best friend’s bark to distract him, so I called, “Here!” and, “Over!” in the same breath. Cisco sprang off the table, racing toward me like a jet rocket, just as I spun around to direct him toward the jumps. One of us miscalculated.

He barreled into me full speed, cracking his forehead against my nose before bouncing off. I saw stars. Blood sprayed the sand, and I went down like the proverbial sack of lead.



~*~