“What about Guy Paul Morin? Steven Truscott? Donald Marshall?”
“Those were…”
“Isolated cases? I don’t think so. Listen. It’s not that I don’t have faith in you, but I know what kind of pressure you guys are under when somebody’s been killed. I just want to make sure that Francy has the best chance, okay?”
“If Francy Travers didn’t kill her husband, we’ll find that out and find the person who did,” he said, smiling with an assurance I just could not accept.
“I’m not so sure,” I said.
Becker’s smile vanished. His eyes (green with little gold flecks in them) got darker.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” he said. “I’m glad you have so much confidence in me and in the system. You’d better just hope, in that case, that you never find yourself in court. You might, you know.”
“That sounds like another threat, Becker,” I said. “I just love your tactics. No wonder you guys get the wrong man so often. I can just see people falling over themselves in their eagerness to give you information.” I backed away from him and poked my head around the door of room 402.
“See you later, Spit,” I said. “I’m going to go save a dog, then talk to my fiancé. Mind you aim for the bedpan.” With that I headed off down the hall, pausing for a moment to glare at Becker. He was white-faced, and I figured that he’d never want to speak to me again. A pity, really, but then he was a cop.
Fourteen
I drove that ramshackle rattletrap
hellbent for elsewhere
leaving you sleeping.
—Shepherd’s Pie
When I let Lug-nut off his chain, he looked at me like I was crazy. As usual, he had barked his head off when I pulled up in the truck, and he kept on barking until he recognized me, which was when I was roughly three feet away. I wondered if he might be slightly myopic, which would account for some of his aggression.
I had been trying to decide, on my way over to the Travers’ place, whether or not it would be a smart idea to take the dog over to the cabin. After all, he was used to his own territory, and I had no stomach for keeping an animal tied up. There was no guarantee that he would be interested in sticking around my place, except perhaps for the fact that I would be feeding him.
When I pulled into the driveway, I knew immediately that I would be taking him home, no matter what. He looked impossibly lonely. The house was cold and abandoned, just like Lug-nut, and there was a yellow band of POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape over the front door. Any territory would be better than this.
I spoke to him softly, rubbed his tummy for a while and then unclipped his chain. That was when he gave me the “you must be crazy” look. The unexpected freedom confused the hell out of him. He made a sort of “chase me” dash for about a metre, then stopped, whirled around and cringed. I didn’t say anything, just watched him. Then he came back to his feed bowl and sniffed at it in a hopeful way.
“Soon, soon,” I said. I picked up the water bowl and filled it at the outside tap. Lug-nut inhaled it, and I had to refill it twice before he had enough. I had planned to feed him from the food bag under Francy’s kitchen sink, but I didn’t relish the thought of sneaking past the police tape. There might be a hidden camera in there or something, and they might decide I was returning to the scene of the crime. On the other hand, I didn’t have much extra cash, and dog food is expensive.
“What do you think, dog?” I said. “Should we do a spot of B&E?” He wagged his tail, which I took to be permission from the only available resident. He followed me up to the door, which the police had very kindly left unlocked. I ducked under the tape, but Lug-nut refused to come in, although I assured him it was okay. He just sat there on the doorstep, whining and shivering. Maybe he had some sixth sense about what had happened there, or maybe he could smell the blood, I don’t know.
“Hey, it’s okay, Luggy,” I said, patting his ugly head. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. Just don’t go anywhere, okay? Stay!” The word was obviously a recognizable command. He lay down immediately, his head between his paws, looking up at me. “Good dog!” I said. Great White Dog Wrangler. That’s me. I went inside.
The kitchen was just as I had last seen it. The police hadn’t done any friendly housecleaning, and the bloodstains on the floor had darkened to a rust-colour, which was much easier to cope with than the fresh puddles I had slipped in the day before.
There was a stomach-churning, coppery smell in the air, though, and I breathed through my mouth.
The beer bottles were still on the table, although there seemed to be fewer than there were before. Becker and Morrison must have taken some of them away as evidence. I knew that at least a few of the bottles would have Francy’s prints on them, and I felt very afraid for her. The remaining few showed traces of a grey-ish powder, which I assumed was fingerprinting dust, just like in the movies. The whole scene was like a movie set, actually, as if the crew had just stepped away to go on a lunch break. It was spooky.
I glanced at the rack beside the door and John’s shotgun was missing, but that didn’t mean much. The police certainly would have taken the gun with them to do tests on, if it had still been there when we discovered the scene.
The teapot was dry as a bone, of course. I checked.
I tiptoed to the kitchen cupboard, uneasy in this empty, eerie house where John’s violent death was still very much a reality. The house would probably never be the same, to Francy, anyway, if she ever got the chance to come back to it. I had spent a lot of time with her in this kitchen, sitting at the big table, sorting herbs and gabbing, talking about pregnancy and babies, Francy’s commercial art business and my puppets. We never spoke about the past. We rarely talked about John, or about Francy’s life before Cedar Falls. She was one of those people who lived in the moment, completely. I only hoped that the “moment” she was in now, presumably at Aunt Susan’s, wasn’t as awful as this kitchen was.
I opened the cupboard door with the edges of my fingernails and hauled out Lug-nut’s kibble. John had been obsessive about not letting anybody feed the dog but him, so taking the food was almost like stealing from the dead. He had been an uncomfortable man to be around—continually seething with some wrong, imagined or otherwise. I had always felt that he was on the very edge of exploding and had he been there I would not even have gone near the cupboard. I remembered Spit’s ghost story and imagined John’s spectre, enraged at my trespassing, flapping around my head like an angry vulture.
I was just standing up, with the heavy bag cradled in my arms, when I heard something upstairs. Just the creak of a floorboard, maybe, but it was enough for me. I beat it so fast out the front door, I forgot about the police tape and broke through it like Donovan Bailey winning a gold.
Lug-nut was right there where I had left him and wagged his tail as I burst through the tape, but he did not get up.
“Ummm, good boy, Luggy,” I said. He still lay there like a coiled spring. John, for all his neglect of the dog, had certainly trained him well. There must be a magic word.
“Ummm… that’s all right. You can get up now.” Nothing. “It’s okay, Lug-nut!” I said with some exasperation and he leaped about two feet in the air and started running in circles around me. That was it, then. “Okay.” Simple enough. I would have to watch what I said around him, though. There was probably some secret command lodged in his doggy brain that would send him off into attack mode.
Now that I was outside, I laughed at myself for being spooked. If there had been anybody in the house, Lug-nut would have let me know. The overhead creak was probably just the old house settling on its foundations.
I walked sedately to the truck and after I had deposited the dog food in the back with the grain, I returned to