Nothing To Sniff At (Animal Instincts Book 5) (3 page)

My father had drunk himself into an early grave. My mother, who had never been the most social of women before the disappearance, became a recluse. She rarely left the house these days. She just sat at home and allowed shipping companies to bring her the purchases she made online. What she couldn’t get online, she requested me to deliver.

My brother couldn’t take the notoriety of the situation, and he moved across the country to get away from sorrowful stares and gossip. He hadn’t wanted to live his life as the brother of that missing girl, Susan Fitzpatrick; he’d married and found a career in Denver, and I knew that he would never come back to live in Toledo.

I had stayed here in Toledo and found my own ways to cope.  My sister had been lively and vivacious – and taken. So in order to remain alive and safe, I decided to be nothing like her. I dressed in thrift shop specials and had rarely cut my hair. I’d let my grass grow up around the house, camouflaging it from any people who might want to do me harm. I wanted to be invisible or as close to it as possible. I wanted to be the type of person that no one would ever dream of taking. I wanted to protect myself from Susan’s fate.

In the last few months, due to the ministrations of Sheila Green and my investigation into my sister’s disappearance, I’d begun to change. In a fit of general pissiness, I’d shaved my head and cut my grass. While it could have been a onetime thing, I was beginning to realize that it was a change in me instead. My worldview had changed. It made no difference if I wore Gucci or Goodwill. No one was going to take me. My decision to stay or leave was my own.

Now I had an active lead into my sister’s disappearance, and Sheila wanted me to follow up on it. I understood her point. I had asked her to get the phone log, after learning that she’d left her phone at home the night of the disappearance. It made the act seem premeditated, rather than the random act of a stranger.

The number had been to the Greyhound bus station in Toledo. No one made approximately 15 calls over the course of two weeks to the same bus station without a plan to leave town. Instead of my long-time belief that Susan had been abducted, it now appeared that she’d left of her own volition.

The revelation meant a huge paradigm shift to my world. Instead of thinking that there were evil people in the world who snatch you at a moment’s notice, I now had to rethink my mindset to allow that Susan had left because for whatever reason, she believed that leaving was better than staying. Given the aftermath of her departure, it seemed like a cruel move. I wasn’t sure I wanted to connect with someone who had done so much harm to my family, either by act or by omission. There could have been some point where she’d said, “Hey, I’m alive. Thought you’d want to know.”

Given that she’d likely left because she wanted to, I had to question whether it was in anyone’s best interest to try to find her. She’d be slightly older than me, most likely married with children. I resented that she’d had those things since I’d likely given up my opportunities so far in my life to have those things. The demand for guys who wear thrift shop and don’t cut their hair out of fear was pretty slim.

I wondered how she’d react to talking to me after more than a decade of separation. It would be embarrassing to say the least if I was the reason she’d left. I had no idea what would drive someone to abandon their family. My parents had not been saints, but they fed her and watched over us. While reading the police report, I had uncovered that the police had been called to my house for some domestic disturbances, but I couldn’t imagine that those events were so momentous that she’d had to leave.

Even if I wanted to talk to her, I wasn’t even sure how to find a missing person. She’d have a different name if only by marriage. I had no idea if she’d had a social security number or any other identification which could be used to find her in our interconnected Internet age.

I could tell that Sheila was waiting for me to ask for her help, but I wasn’t to that point yet. This was a very private decision, and I wanted to make it all on my own. I was used to making choices on my own. I still was debating whether or not it would be a good idea to continue this quest. Perhaps I should apply a saying from my own profession: it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

She could tell that she wasn’t going to get much from me in the way of information on the Port Clinton police mission or my missing sister, so she made her excuses to leave fairly early on. I waited for a while longer to make sure she had really left and jumped in the car to head to the breeder’s house. I didn’t want her to tail me to learn what was going on. I’d tell her when the time was right.

The drive was only about twenty minutes, and I thought about how I’d approach this matter. People expected a person who talked to animals to be psychic as well as communicate with animals. I thought one was pretty good, but they always thought I should know everything before being told. Feeling out of sorts, I just opted to go with whatever presented itself to me when I met the man.

I was glad that Brate had given me the contact information, because the breeder’s name was Michael Johnson. I’m sure that there had to be thousands of them in Ohio, and whatever my “powers” I couldn’t have narrowed a Google search to find him.

I pulled up in front of a rather plain ranch home in the south-western section of Toledo. I was more used to seeing farms and lots of land when it came to breeders. They needed room to let the puppies romp around. The small home surprised me. I wondered if Brate had given me the right address.

I got out and went to the front door. An older man greeted me at the door. He was about my height, but was slightly stooped with fingers that twisted out at painful angles. I wasn’t sure how he’d even operated the door to open it. Even more so, I wondered how he managed to handle a litter of puppies at any one time.

“Mr. Johnson?” I asked.

“Yeah. Who wants to know?” He didn’t look happy to see me, and I wondered again if I had the right address, though it seemed more likely given his acknowledgement of the name. I assumed he had some sort of help with the house and the dogs.

“Officer Brate and Dr. Michelson sent me to see you.” Nothing said official like using the names of police officers in the conversation.

“Huh,” was all I got in return.

“There’s a problem.” I opted to go with the direct approach here. There was no funny business with this man. I would be forthright with him and hope for the best. “Barkley’s been replaced with another dog, and they both thought that you might be of some assistance. The dog is a near match for Barkley which made the doctor think that another Beagle that was sired here might be the stand-in for Barkley.”

“That’s possible,” he conceded. He gave me a small shrug.

“Is there a way to tell if one of the other pups could be the replacement dog? Do you have those kind of records?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I keep good records. Come on.”

He motioned with his hand, and I followed him. We entered the house and went down the long hallway to a bedroom that had been converted into an office. There were several filing cabinets along the far wall and a large mahogany desk was on the wall nearest to us. He sat down there and pulled the computer keyboard to him. He began to type, which was a slow process consisting of a single finger locating and pressing each key.

“I put in parameters to find all the dogs whelped here who are within two years of Barkley, male, and had the same markings. I got a list of four names here.”He’d almost given a speech to me here, considering his behavior.

“That’s great. Could you print it out for me?” I eyed the laser printer in the corner of the desk and knew that he could.

He pressed a few more keys and the paper whirred out. He handed it to me.

“You let me know when you find that dog. He was a good boy, and no one should do that to him. I keep an eye on all of my pups. Some breeders don’t care once they sell them, but I do.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, taking the list and heading out.

As I sat in the car, I pondered the breeder’s words. Up until now, I had considered that Barkley was alive, but just taken. Now I wondered if the man knew something that I didn’t, or perhaps he just had a more cynical approach to life. It was quite possible that Barkley was dead, killed for some reason that I had yet to uncover. I had to admit that it was an easy solution, but then again nothing in this case so far had been easy. Swapping out one dog for another was not the simplest method to getting a dog off of your tracks. It seemed like a humane choice, one that cared about the dog as well as the crime. I could only hope that Barkley would still be alive when we found him.

Even if the dogs were switched, the deceit would be discovered at some point in the near future and then the same investigation would begin. So either the dognapper had needed a very small window of opportunity to do something involving drugs or dead bodies or else he had planned to switch the dogs back at some point. I hoped for Barkley’s sake that it was the latter.

I knew for certain that I wouldn’t find anything just sitting here in the man’s driveway. He’d given me my next big lead, and I decided to follow it. There were four names on the list. Two of them were out of town. One was in Seattle and another was in Holland, Michigan. For now, I decided to go with the assumption that they were not suspects. If I couldn’t find my answers in the two remaining dogs, then I’d look into these dogs. Given that I’d only received one hundred dollars from Brate, I wouldn’t have enough to fly to Seattle. I barely had enough to buy the gas needed to drive around Toledo, so cross-country trips were out of the question.

I plugged the addresses into my GPS and mapped out a route to visit both homes. I figured that a random drive-by might tell me what I needed to know. If I saw a neutered Beagle who responded to the name “Barkley,” I had a match and a culprit. I wasn’t exactly sure what the perp would be arrested for. I was certain what the crime would be called for taking a police dog and replacing it with another dog. Something to do with obstruction of justice or stealing police property, but it would be a difficult case to prove.

The first house was in Library Village, a small community on the west side of Toledo that had been named after the West Toledo Branch of the library. It has been designated a historical area, but unlike many such neighborhoods, the houses are smaller and more affordable than some of the other such areas in Toledo. It didn’t seem a likely place for a dognapping, but I wasn’t sure what area of town did seem likely.

I pulled up in front of the house listed on my paper. No dogs or people outside. I was going to have to be more direct. I got out of the car and walked up the front sidewalk to the door.

The door opened before I even knocked. “We don’t want anything,” the man said before I could even speak. He was probably in his late 30s with a beard that had begun to gray. Dark colored bags under his eyes made it appear like he hadn’t slept in a while. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans.

I cleared my throat to speak. “I’m not selling anything. I actually just had a question about your dog, if you don’t mind.”

“What about him?” the man asked, still looking at me suspiciously. I don’t think that I’d ever had a door-to-door salesman who sold dog products, but he looked like I was about to be the first. He kept a firm hand on the edge of the door.

“Your breeder, Mr. Johnson, said you would give him a reference. I’m thinking about buying a Beagle from him, and I always like to know something about the breeder before I do. Are you happy with the dog? Was the breeder okay to deal with?”

The man opened the door wider. “Have a look for yourself.” A Beagle came walking to the door. He barked several times, and I bent down to say hello and get a closer look at the dog. Two features ruled him out almost immediately. His front paw was white, which was unlike the photos I’d seen of Barkley. Additionally, he had a small knick out of his right ear, which looked quite old. This dog definitely wasn’t the one I was looking for. My skills of observation definitely came in handy with this case.

“So you’re happy with the breeder?” I asked.

The man nodded. “Sure. He was great, and the dog’s great too. You could do much worse.”

I quickly thanked him for his time and walked back to my car. I could feel the man watching me leave, but I didn’t look back. No use in giving him any more suspicions.

I consulted my GPS again, and I headed off to Onyx, a neighborhood that had begun as a home for German and Slavic peoples in the heart of Toledo. Now it was another centrally located neighborhood in town.

The house here was boxier and less cared for. Small patches of weeds had died with the onset of winter, leaving clumps of large, gristled weeds. I pulled up and looked around. The backyard was fenced in, and a Beagle was barking up a storm at the section of chain-link nearest to me. I got out of the car and walked over to him, which only served to make him bark louder. I bent down as I had with the previous dog, but this Beagle looked much more promising. In matching the characteristics I’d memorized of the dog, he looked like a match for Barkley.

“Good dog. Good Barkley.”

At the mention of the name, the Beagle’s eyes met mine, and I knew I had found the missing police dog. While I know that I can’t actually talk to pets (even though my ads say something to the contrary,) in that moment, I heard his pleas for help as clearly as if he’d spoken to me. He needed my help.

I thought about taking him with me, but that would only have made the situation worse. First, I would be committing a crime, and while I cared deeply for the plight of any dog, I had no desire to go to jail for this case. I liked my life a little too much to give it up for a dog. Secondly, if I took the dog, the people who had swapped Barkley for the fake would know that the game was up. We’d likely never find out what they’d planned on doing or how they planned on doing it. I felt like a heel, but I had to let him stay here.

I looked around for information about the owner, anything that might help me understand why they would have taken the dog, but I couldn’t find anything to help me out. I knew that at some point in the very near future, I would be expected to talk to Barkley to find out why this had occurred. The more information that I had, the easier it would be to find a plausible explanation for the events. However, this yard and house was not telling me a thing except I needed to leave before I got caught playing with a dog. While normally people accepted that from strangers, I had a hunch that in this case, there would be repercussions.

Barkley whimpered as I got up and walked back to my car. I called Brate from my cellphone in the car, but as luck would have it, he’d only given me his number at the station. When he didn’t answer there, I called the general police station number and learned that he had the day off. Just my luck. Apparently, he hadn’t thought that I’d get to the bottom of the situation quite so quickly. I made a note to be more thorough next time with my client information.

I thought about making a fuss to get his home number, but even if I succeeded, I knew that the other Port Clinton officers would remember the incident. Given what Brate had told me, I didn’t want to stick out or be visible in any way to the station. So I thanked them and hung up. Barkley would have to wait for another day to be rescued.

I imagined that I could hear Barkley whimper as I drove away.