Canine Christmas (13 page)

Regaining my feet and choking up on his lead, I pulled him outside. In the open air they both stopped making their terrified sounds and stood hassling for breath. I limped over to the low curb of the sidewalk, rubbing my tailbone. I sat down gingerly and Jasmine joined me. We were also panting and trying to regain our breath.

“What happened?” She sounded awed by what she'd seen.

“Blood,” I said shortly, gazing out at the people milling around behind the tape. Sheriff Scroggins and Tom were on their way toward us. I'd have to explain again to them, so I was waiting for them to arrive.

Sheriff Scroggins squatted, so we were more or less eye to eye. He looked concerned. Tom remained standing slightly behind the sheriff.

“Blood,” I began. “So much blood. I could even smell it and the dogs got their large muzzles full of the scent. The heat in there just intensified the odor. They went bananas. They smelled death, or maybe they know that so much blood means death. They are very sensitive to human suffering.”

While I was speaking I happened to glance at Tom. He was sporting a smirk, making a movement in the air that signaled he had also chalked up a score. It only took me seconds to remember. He had been by my side more than two years ago when two of my bloodhounds had refused to enter a car where a man had died from his throat being cut. When I had opened the car door, they had leaped back nervously from the blood smell and bolted. The bastard remembered and let us go in there uninformed.

My ire was so great I felt like I was choking. I had to move.

“The dogs need water,” I said in a strangled voice to Jasmine.

She followed after me, trying to keep up with my angry stride.

“What gives?” she asked quietly when we arrived at the van. She could see I was very angry.

“Tom sent us into the store deliberately, knowing the dogs would be spooked. He saw the same thing happen sometime back. Never fear, he'll pay dearly for that rotten trick.”

“Good,” she agreed.

“Let's put away Ashley and Caesar. They've had it for today. Luckily we held back Mark Anthony and Miz Melanie.”

We returned to the front of the store where the sheriff and Lyons were standing.

“Sheriff Scroggins, I'll need four men. Two with me, and two to go with Jasmine.

“Jasmine, start Miz Melanie at the door. We have a fifty-fifty chance she'll pick up black jacket's scent. I'll use red shirt's cap.”

Lyons came trotting back across the tarmac with three deputies in tow. One was plump with salt-and-pepper hair. He had to be fifty. I pointed at the two young deputies and told them to stay with Jasmine.

“You other two come with me,” I said, not using Tom's name or rank.

“One drives and the other stays at least ten yards behind us, in case the dogs have to double back. That way you won't contaminate the trail.”

I was praying that some scent was left on the ground; the wind was picking up. I put the opened Ziploc under Mark Anthony's nose. He buried his muzzle inside the bag, taking deep sniffs of the cap. I pulled out two pieces of deer jerky and held them under his nose. He gobbled them down.

“Seek, Mark Anthony, seek!”

He bent his head and started working. Nose down, he ranged eight feet or more in a loose figure eight, trying to locate the odor that he was seeking. A blood-hound's long flapping ears are important tools. They are natural funnels that scoop up the scent around him and send it to his nose.

Suddenly, Mark Anthony's tail became a metronome, swinging back and forth with his own personal rhythm. He tugged on the lead, urging me to give him slack. I followed along behind, wanting to believe that he had picked up the scent so quickly, but I was doubtful. He had never been fast on the scent.

He hurried around the store and turned right on brown dried grass that crunched with each step. Discarded litter lay scattered among the weeds. The verge was twelve feet wide between the convenience store's south side and the wall of a hardware store. It ran back about forty feet where two large trash Dumpsters sat side by side facing the alley.

Mark Anthony turned left into the alley. We walked several feet down the road before I glanced back. Miz Melanie appeared and turned
right
, stopping in front of one of the Dumpsters. Both lids were thrown back and they were overflowing with trash.

Miz Melanie stood on her hind legs scratching her front toenails against the metal, trying to climb its vertical surface.

I pulled Mark Anthony off the scent trail and went back to watch. Jasmine shortened the lead by coiling it several times and waved a deputy forward. He started past her to peer in the Dumpster, but she called him back sharply, handing him the lead.

“Place the loop over your wrist and wrap it three times. Don't, under any condition, turn it loose.”

She watched carefully as he followed her instructions. She caught the top of the Dumpster and pulled herself up until her body was balanced against the Dumpster, near her pelvis. Balancing there on her left hand, she reached into a pocket with her right and pulled out a baggie. She drew up her right knee and leaned precariously over the messy contents. I held my breath. If she tumbled in she would have to be fumigated, the garbage smelled ripe. She held up the gun carefully with two covered fingers on the very end of the barrel.

“Yes!” I cried, giving her a pumped fist salute. I hurried over and helped by removing the gun from her lowered hand. She then slid down gracefully. Her two deputies gave a few halfhearted ragged-spaced claps that sounded derisive. She did a graceful curtsy in rebuttal.

It was a cheap knockoff, a Saturday night special. Cradling it in the plastic, I carefully broke open the cylinder. Two rounds were missing. Jasmine and I were grinning with delight. Our fifty-fifty chance just jumped to the max. She had Black Jacket's scent.

Jasmine retrieved the lead and dropped to her knees, crooning into Miz Melanie's ear while she hugged her neck.

“My big baby is so smart. Good girl, good girl!”

She fumbled in her pocket and produced a generous handful of jerky.

Lyons walked up, acting as if he wanted to snatch the gun from my grasp. It's a good thing he didn't try. I would've probably shot him with it. I walked over to the youngest deputy who looked as if he just started shaving and laid it gently in his hands.

“Take this back to Sheriff Scroggins. Tell him to send two units back to follow behind us. You drive for Jasmine and ask the older deputy to come with me. Lyons will drive behind me.”

“Hold it, Pete. Give me the gun.” Lyons couldn't hold still for this, his ego was smarting.

The deputy glanced at me.

I gave Lyons a cool smile and verbally pounced.

“Tell him to do as I said or Jasmine and I load the dogs and go home. Now!” I put a nice little snap in my voice.

He reluctantly nodded his head to Pete. He looked ready to chew nails.

“Remember to stay at least ten yards behind me where you belong,” I snarled. “Have you forgotten we have two murderers to catch?”

I strode away without looking back. I led Mark Anthony back to where I had pulled him off the scent trail. I patiently let him smell the cap, fed him jerky, and again gave him the command to seek. It took him a while before he seemed to lock onto the scent.

This gave me time to glance back to make sure that everyone was set to go. The deputy with the salt-and-pepper-colored hair was trudging a few yards behind me, and Lyons was creeping along behind in his wake. The trail had split and Jasmine was trailing in the opposite direction with her escort. It was time for a radio check.

When Jasmine and I trailed together we turned to a seldom-used channel and kept the transmissions very short. We used the regular channels to converse with the lawmen. We also choose cutesy names to further confuse. A lot of people in this neck of the woods carefully monitor all channels: pot growers, DEA, moonshiners, ATF, retirees living in the boonies, hunters (and hunters' wives that want to make sure the hubby is out there training that bluetick hound that cost an arm and a leg and not off somewhere boozing or floozying).

“Trouble to Double. Over.”

She had lowered the pitch of her voice. Over the tinny speaker, it was hard to tell she was female.

“Double here. Be careful. Don't be a hero. Call on contact. Over.” I made my voice rough and husky.

“Same back at you. Over and out.”

Mark Anthony was having trouble with the trail of scent. He ran sideways from the structure straight across the alley. It was the wind. It had scattered the scent all to hell and gone. This search just might end with a whimper, not a bang. Bad analogy to think bang. Success maybe, or roar; never bang. My perp up to this point still had his gun.

When I checked, and Salt-and-Pepper was still walking behind me, I motioned him forward and introduced myself. He told me his name was Donald Augustine. He was older than I had guessed. Hearing better diction than I expected, I asked him if he was local.

He hailed from Tallahassee, Florida. His wife was born and raised here. After he had put in twenty years on the police force and taken retirement with a nothing pension, his wife wanted to move back to her hometown. After six months of idleness and finding that he couldn't live on the small check, and gaining twenty pounds from his altered routine, he became a deputy here two years ago. Told me with a chuckle that he had to hurry up and get killed while on duty because compulsory retirement was fifty-five, which was six months away.

I liked him. He hadn't lost the twenty pounds, but with Sheriff Scroggins in charge he didn't have to worry about his weight for another six months. We talked as Mark Anthony whined in frustration at frequently losing the scent.

Suddenly he tugged forward, impatient with being tethered and wanting to hustle. I waved Deputy Augustine back with a smile and we took off again.

I checked out the houses, small businesses, and alleys we were passing. Gilsford County had 16,000 residents. Collins had 13,000 within the city limits. So the other three thousand in the county were the people who lived on the edge of Okefenokee Swamp or in isolated homes scattered among the hundreds of thousands of acres of planted pines. Lots of pine trees and only a few people.

Mark Anthony turned off the alley into small backyards and weedy empty lots. After going through the first yard, Lyons's unit was staying a street over or one behind, trying to keep track of our progress. When the people on the small roads, faces peeking from windows and bodies standing and sitting on porches, became predominately black, I motioned for Augustine to join me.

“Blacks don't appreciate whites chasing black men through their yards. Have you noticed how quiet the streets have become and no one is yelling greetings? Stay alert. Unsnap your holster and if we have to enter a house, you go in with your gun in your hand and stay in
front
of the dog and me. Keep your voice down. Sound does funny things in this kind of wind. Some places we won't be able to hear each other from six feet away. In others, they can hear us for several blocks. The bloodhound's name is Mark Anthony. If something happens to me, grab his lead and don't let go. Running free, he would be dead in five minutes. I hold you personally responsible for his safety. I'll return from the grave to get you, if he dies.”

“Shades of Julius Caesar,” he whispered.

“Nope,” I returned softly. “That's the name of the other dog I worked with earlier.”

“I swear to protect you and your noble beast until death,” he vowed, hand on his badge, and a smile hovering on his lips.

“Now you're talking!”

We were walking within a six-foot gap between two brick buildings. The wind was screaming around the corners like a banshee wailing of impending death. Here I go again, referring to death. I had to quit relying on ancient history, wives' tales, and southern adages in my thoughts, but what was left?

No windows marred the three-storied symmetrical layers of old crumbling bricks. I felt the clutch of claustrophobia. It was close in here, and old crumbling bricks have a bad habit of falling down eventually. Could be today, right about now. I guess the lower scent was out of the wind because Mark Anthony picked up speed, and I pounded along matching his progress. I couldn't get out of these confining walls fast enough. We left Augustine in the shade.

We burst out into an open alley and Mark Anthony stopped on a dime. I guessed he had lost the scent. I glanced around to scope out the landscape. A tall building was directly in front of us with boarded up windows and nothing on either side but weeds. Even the parking lot had weeds in the potholes and cracks in the tarmac.

A short brick fence about fifty feet in length was a foot off the easement for the alley and directly in front of the building's front door. I turned back to see if Augustine had cleared the alley, just as Mark Anthony threw back his head and poured forth a loud baying. Red shirt was very near. Mark Anthony was celebrating!

Bloodhounds run mute. Only when they are almost on their target do they unleash that loud mournful bay, so beautiful to a man-trailer's ears.

I was mesmerized with Mark Anthony's vocal announcement of his accomplishment. At the edge of my vision I saw half a brick pop off into space. It came from the side of the building we had just run past. In that same instant I heard the shot.

“Run!” I screamed to Mark Anthony.

I was jerking him mightily, almost losing my balance. He was slow to react. It took a few seconds for him to process the rarely used command through his large skull and remember its meaning; but it seemed to take eons before he moved the way I was trying to pull him. He was still baying when I dove the last six feet and ended up with him standing over me dripping slobber.

Ignoring the numbing pain in my funny bone where I had rapped my elbow on the low wall, I grabbed him by his harness and jerked his right front leg out from under him, flopping him prone. I lay above him whispering frantically into his ear.

“Hush, hush, low, low, no, no.” It was the command for silent trailing and not baying over his joyous victory. I wanted him to lie still and shut the hell up. I was also giving him the signal for silence, by pushing down firmly on his large head with my aching right arm. He finally got my message.