Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries)
Read Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Online
Authors: Sandra Parshall
| Under the Dog Star |
| Rachel Goddard [4] |
| Sandra Parshall |
| USA (2011) |
of Mason County, Virginia. Pets are vanishing mysteriously and “Missing
Dog” posters cover the waiting room walls at Dr. Rachel Goddard’s
veterinary clinic. A pack of feral canines roams at night, attacking
livestock in a desperate search for food. Now a prominent physician,
Gordon Hall, has been found dead in his yard, his throat torn open.
Sheriff’s Department investigator Tom Bridger believes the killing was
premeditated murder, with a trained attack dog as the weapon.
Are
these seemingly coincidental events related somehow? Tom thinks they
are, and he suspects they’re connected to the resurgence of an old
problem: illegal dog-fighting.
Dr. Hall’s son insists that the
feral dogs killed his father, and he organizes a group of men to find
and shoot the animals. Rachel and her friend Holly Turner make enemies
by trying to rescue the dogs and move them to the sanctuary Holly has
created. Tom, in love with Rachel and worried about her safety, must
divide his time between the feral dog problem, the search for the
dog-fighting operation, and the hunt for Gordon Hall’s killer.
Does
one of Hall’s five children—three adopted, all emotionally starved by
their parents—hold the key to his murder? Why is the youngest Hall child
so frightened that she begs Rachel, a stranger, for help? Tom and
Rachel face two killers, one human and one canine, and discover a more
complex web of lies and brutality than they ever imagined.
Under the Dog Star
A Rachel Goddard Mystery
Sandra Parshall
www.sandraparshall.com
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright © 2011 by Sandra Parshall
First Edition 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2011926958
ISBN: 9781590588789 Hardcover
ISBN: 9781590588802 Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9781615952960 epub
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
For Jerry
As always, I’m grateful to my husband, Jerry Parshall, and my friends Carol Baier and Cat Dubie for their suggestions, critiques, and encouragement. I couldn’t write a book without them.
My friends in the Guppies Chapter of Sisters in Crime are a daily source of support and never fail to relieve the loneliness of the solitary writer.
Dr. Doug Lyle is an invaluable source of information, and I don’t know how anyone can write a mystery novel without his Writer’s Forensics Blog. If I get anything wrong, it’s my fault, not Doug’s.
Special thanks to Ellen Thornwall and Kim Hammond for allowing me to include their pets in this novel.
My editor, Barbara Peters, made this a better book with her insights and suggestions, and the whole crew at Poisoned Pen Press is a pleasure to work with.
Many thanks to the readers who have taken the time to tell me they enjoyed my books. You can’t possibly know how sustaining your praise is in times of self-doubt.
In the silver moonlight, the dogs appeared as a dark mass moving down the hill and across the pasture. They headed straight toward three dozen sheep huddled on a carpet of autumn leaves under an oak.
Tom Bridger aimed his shotgun at the sky and fired.
The blast stopped the dogs for a second. The startled sheep jerked apart, turned and ran.
The largest dog broke from the pack and streaked after the sheep. The rest followed, yelping and baying.
Tom fired into the air again, and again. The dogs didn’t stop until his fourth shot. They milled about in the pasture as if trying to make up their minds whether to stay or go.
Another shotgun blast decided the issue for them. They wheeled around and took off over the hill.
***
Lying in the dark, with Tom’s space in the bed growing cold beside her, Rachel tensed at the sound of gunshots in the distance. She clutched the blanket, bunching it in both fists. She knew Tom wouldn’t shoot to kill, but she also knew he was losing patience after going out night after night to protect his sheep from the feral dog pack.
At the third shot, Rachel’s cat Frank stirred from his spot against her legs and dropped off the bed to hide underneath. From his bed near the door, Tom’s bulldog Billy Bob gave a low growl.
Rachel sat up, hugging her knees. A fourth, then a fifth shot rang out. She waited, but heard no more.
The feral dogs weren’t Rachel’s problem, weren’t her responsibility, but she was a veterinarian and couldn’t be indifferent to their fate. Mason County, in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, had become a dumping ground for pet dogs as unemployment soared in the state and many people lost their homes. They probably thought they’d done the dogs a favor by turning them loose in a rural area, but the animals were hungry and desperate. Struggling to survive, they had formed a pack, and for the last few months they’d roamed the county, stealing eggs and killing chickens in farmyards. Lately they’d attacked a couple of lambs and a calf. If left on their own, they would starve or the farmers would exterminate them.
The ringing telephone jolted Rachel. For a moment she hesitated. She’d moved into Tom’s house a month ago, but the situation still felt tentative, and she was reluctant to answer his home telephone. She had no choice, though. A call at midnight was an emergency, usually a summons from the Sheriff’s Department. As chief deputy and second in command, Tom had to respond. Nobody ever summoned the aging, frail sheriff anymore when trouble arose.
Stretching across the bed, Rachel switched on the lamp and grabbed the receiver.
“Hi, is this Dr. Goddard?” a young female voice asked. “I’m sorry if I woke you up. This is Gail, the dispatcher, calling for Captain Bridger.”
Rachel knew she shouldn’t be surprised that every employee at the department knew she and Tom were living together, but it still made her feel as if she were doing something disreputable in this small, conservative community. “Captain Bridger’s outside right now.” She caught sight of Tom’s cell phone on the bedside table. “And he doesn’t have his phone with him. I can run out and get him, but it’ll take a few minutes. Can I tell him what it’s about?”
“Well, I don’t have a lot of information and I’m not real sure what happened, but Dr. Hall—you know, from the hospital?—he’s dead. Somebody attacked him.”
Rachel gasped when she heard the name. Dr. Gordon Hall, one of Mason County’s most prominent citizens, owned Tri-County General Hospital. The family’s German shepherd was one of Rachel’s patients. “Dr. Hall was attacked? You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am, he’s definitely dead. His wife called it in, and she doesn’t know how it happened. Their kids went looking for him and found him laying in the yard. She’s just about going crazy, screaming and crying. I already sent a couple of deputies to secure the scene, but Captain Bridger needs to get out there.”
“I’ll find him and tell him right away.” Rachel hung up and rushed to get dressed, yanking on jeans, sweater, shoes, raking her thick auburn hair out of her eyes with her fingers. She could imagine Dr. Hall’s wife waiting for the police, probably with her children around her yet feeling suddenly alone in the world.
Billy Bob trotted after Rachel down the stairs and along the hallway. “Sorry, boy,” she said at the back door. “You can’t go this time. Stay.”
She snatched a flashlight from a hook by the door and ran out in search of Tom.
An hour later, dressed in his brown Sheriff’s Department uniform, Tom leaned over the body of Dr. Gordon Hall and trained his Maglite on the man’s ravaged throat. Dr. Gretchen Lauter, Mason County’s medical examiner, crouched on the other side of the corpse. The victim, a tall man in his late fifties, sprawled on his back in deep shadow along the edge of the woods, several hundred feet down a slope from his house. Nothing remained of his throat but a bloody mess.
