Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (8 page)

The sight of the ravaged landscape, with the dragline towering over all of it like a monstrous praying mantis, made Tom clench his jaw in helpless anger. Mason County had little to offer beyond its beauty, and even that was being sliced away with every pass of the earthmovers and mining machines.

Reaching the point where the scraped-bare land leveled off, Tom paused to catch his breath. This day felt endless, and he was so tired from a night without sleep that his body ached all over. Brandon, ten years younger, had been awake just as long but didn’t seem bothered by the lack of rest.

Tom looked around for Wallace Green, the man who was angry because his wife had suffered in Dr. Gordon Hall’s hospital. This was a relatively small surface mining operation, with no more than a dozen men on site. A single dragline excavator, its crane reaching fifteen stories into the air, moved a massive bucket along an open coal seam, breaking up the black mineral and tearing it loose with the kind of racket Tom would expect from a fifty-car pileup at high speed. Eight or nine industrial trucks brimmed with coal, and several more sat ready to be filled. The trucks would carry the coal away to a tipple, where it would be washed and dumped into rail cars for transport out of the county.

Wallace Green, tall and lanky, leaned against one of the empty trucks with his arms folded. Coal dust coated him from his hair to his boots, leaving only the area around his eyes clean behind protective goggles.

Tom waved to get his attention. Green was probably wearing earplugs, but even without them he wouldn’t hear anything above the noise of the machinery. Tom moved closer, wishing with every step that he had some protection for his own ears.

Green caught sight of the deputies and pushed away from the truck, watching them approach.

Tom stuck out a hand. Green hesitated a moment, wiped his hand on his filthy jeans, and accepted the handshake. His gritty palm left black smudges on Tom’s. Removing one earplug, Green angled his head to catch Tom’s shouted words. “I need to ask you some questions.”

“About what?” Green yelled back. “I’m workin’. I’m about to make a run to the tipple.”

“This won’t take long.” Christ, Tom thought, why didn’t I wait and go to his house tonight? Brandon grimaced as if the noise was causing physical pain. “Where were you last night, Wally?”

Green cast a worried glance toward a man in a hard-hat who stood a hundred yards away, watching them. The supervisor, Tom guessed. Bringing his gaze back to Tom, Green shouted, “Home with my kids. Why?”

“Was anybody else there? Did anybody call you on the phone?”

Green narrowed his eyes. “No. What’re you gettin’ at?”

“Have you heard about Gordon Hall?”

The excavator lifted its bucket off the coal seam, swung it around and dumped the coal into a truck with a rumble like thunder. Then, abruptly, the noise ceased. In the sudden silence, Tom’s ears rang.

He repeated his question.

“I heard he got tore up by that pack of wild dogs.” One corner of Green’s lips lifted in a smirk. “What a way to go, huh? Suited him, if you ask me. But what’re you talkin’ to me about it for?”

“You’ve been making threats against Hall the last few months.”

Green scowled. “Threats? I was tryin’ to get the man to own up to what he done to my wife. Him and that hospital and everybody in it.”

“Exactly what is it you think they did to your wife?”

“What I
think
? It’s what I
know.
They let her die screamin’ from the pain. They tortured her. Wouldn’t do a damn thing to help her ’cause high and mighty Dr. Gordon Hall didn’t like
abusing
pain medicine.” As he spoke, Green grew more and more agitated, scraping his fingers through his hair, letting loose a cloud of black dust. “She was dyin’, for god’s sake. She didn’t have no chance of gettin’ better. It would’ve been a blessin’ if she had enough morphine to get addicted, ’cause it would’ve been enough to stop the pain.”

Green paused, pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his shirt pocket, lit a fresh cigarette with trembling hands.

Tom observed him for a moment, then said, “You hated him.”

“Yeah, I hated the son of a bitch. What’s that got to do with anything? He’s dead and gone now, and I hope he died screamin’, I hope he died feelin’ the worst pain he ever felt in his sorry life.”

“I think he probably did,” Tom said.

Green nodded with satisfaction. Tom felt sorry for the guy and hoped to hell he had nothing to do with Hall’s death. Green’s kids had already lost one parent and shouldn’t have to lose the other. “You own a dog, don’t you? A big one?”

Green pulled on the cigarette, inhaling deeply, and blew out smoke. “Yeah, a shepherd-lab mix. What about it?”

“The medical examiner says Gordon Hall was killed by one dog, not a pack. And I believe the dog’s owner was there. The dog was doing what his owner told him to do.”

Green stared at Tom, his face slack with surprise. After a moment he took a deep drag on his cigarette. His words came out on a stream of smoke. “What reason have you got to think that? I heard there wasn’t nobody around to see what happened.”

“Really? Is that what everybody’s saying?” Tom asked. “That there weren’t any witnesses?”

Green frowned. “You sayin’ there was?”

“I can’t give out that information right now,” Tom said. “I’d like to stop by your house and take a look at your dog and get a DNA sample. All I need to do is stick a Q-tip in his mouth.”

Green’s gaze jumped from Tom to Brandon and back. “The hell you will. You leave my dog alone. You can’t go on my property without me givin’ the okay. And I’m not givin’ it. You understand me?”

“What I understand,” Tom said, “is that you seem to be afraid of something. What is it you don’t want me to find out, Wally?”

Green closed in, pointing a shaking finger at Tom. “You leave my dog alone.”

Brandon held up a hand. “Hey, cool it, man. Back off.”

“Why don’t you hassle that Rasey boy?” Green said. “He’s always spoutin’ off about how he’s gonna get even with Dr. Hall.”

“Pete Rasey? What’s he got against Gordon Hall?”

Green shook his head. “Some detective you are. The Rasey kid and Hall’s girl, they’ve been goin’ at it hot and heavy for a long time now. What I heard, Hall said he’d kill Pete Rasey if he come sniffin’ around that girl again, and Pete made some threats right back.”

“Are you talking about Beth Hall?” Tom asked.

“They ain’t got but one
real
daughter. Now you leave me alone. I got to work. I can’t stand around all day talkin’ to you.”

Green ditched his cigarette, ground it under his boot heel, and stomped off.

Chapter Seven

Rachel climbed into the animal warden’s van and dropped to her knees to examine the four cages. She latched each cage door in turn and pushed and pulled, testing their strength. Rachel doubted they could catch as many as four dogs at once, but she wanted to be ready if they got lucky.

“Everything look okay?” Dolan asked when she hopped out onto the parking lot at the animal hospital.

A couple with a white cat in a carrier had paused on their way in to see what was happening. Rachel smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. “I’ll be right in.”

Looking a little embarrassed to be caught rubbernecking, the couple took their pet into the clinic.

Dolan slammed the rear door of the van shut. “This is gonna take time, you know, getting all of them. We’ll be out every night for a while. I’ll be honest with you, that pack of lunatics with guns scares the bejeezus out of me. You sure Tom’s coming with us tonight?”

“We’ll meet you after dinner,” Rachel assured him. But how much protection would Tom provide? Ethan Hall and his followers hadn’t been swayed by his authority when he confronted them at the Hall house. In the dark, when no one could see his uniform, badge and gun, Tom would be as vulnerable as Rachel and Joe.

***

When Tom and Brandon arrived at the Rasey house, Peter Rasey’s muscular torso was bent over the engine of a vintage black Thunderbird convertible that sat on the driveway.

“Nice car,” Brandon commented. “Seems a little out of place around here.”

The small rambler wore a shell of vinyl siding that might have been white when it was new but had long since taken on a gray cast. The front yard consisted mostly of crabgrass and dust, littered with fallen leaves. Weeds poked through cracks on the concrete driveway.

Tom parked the car and he and Brandon got out, slamming their doors. The boy pulled his head out from under the Thunderbird’s hood and turned to look at the visitors. His jaw went slack at the sight of them.

“Hey, Pete,” Tom called.

The big black dog seemed to come from nowhere, rocketing around Pete’s car and down the driveway. Brandon yanked his door open again and stepped behind it. Tom drew his pistol and leaned over the cruiser’s hood, the gun leveled at the charging dog.

“Don’t shoot him!” Pete yelled. “Bruno! Stop it!”

The dog halted abruptly, ten feet from the cruiser. His body quivering, he issued a low growl. Saliva dripped from one corner of his mouth. He looked like a cross between a rottweiler and a shepherd, with a shepherd’s larger ears and long legs and a rottweiler’s heavy body and square-jawed face.

“Call him off,” Tom told Pete, “and get him tied up.”

The dog bared its teeth and raised the volume on its growl.

“
Now!
” Tom ordered. “He comes at us again, we’ll shoot to kill.”

Scowling at the deputies, the boy stalked down the driveway and grabbed the dog’s collar. The animal yelped when Pete yanked him backward. “What do you want?” the boy demanded.

“Get the dog under control, then we’ll talk.”

Pete mumbled something Tom didn’t catch. He dragged the dog toward a maple tree that had a chain looped around it. Pete attached a hook at the end of the chain to the dog’s collar. Returning to his car, he repeated, “What do you want?”

After signaling Brandon to hang back and keep an eye on the dog, Tom moved up the driveway, taking his time. Pete watched him with wary blue eyes. The boy’s frayed jeans and old tee shirt bore indelible traces of past grease marks, and Tom guessed these were clothes his mother made him put on when he was working on his car. But with his dark blond hair, perfect features, and toned athlete’s body, this kid would look great in rags. He was the kind of boy who attracted droves of girls and always had followers hoping to bask in the glow of his popularity. Tom had trouble imagining him with the bland, quiet Beth Hall.

Tom ignored Pete’s twice-asked question and the steady growls from the dog. He circled the Thunderbird, appraising the vehicle. It was a two-door Super Coupe, last made in the early 1990s, with a long, low front end and a sloped roof. The gleaming black paint and black seats were in perfect condition. “This is a great car. You’ve put a lot of labor into it.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Pete mumbled.

His run-in with Tom a few months earlier was probably still fresh in the boy’s mind. Tom’s own blood pressure went up every time he remembered the night Pete harassed Rachel following a raucous community meeting.
I should have locked the punk up for that.

He forced himself to smile and keep his tone amiable. “It’s a good feeling to fix up an old car like this. Now you’ve really got something special.”

One corner of Pete’s mouth twitched as if it wanted to broaden into a grin at the compliment. Shrugging again, he said, “My dad says I could probably get a new car for what I’ve put into this one.” He cast a prideful gaze over the Thunderbird and added, “But I got my own special ride here. It’s
u-nique.
”

“I’ll bet the girls like it, too.” A little male bonding might help things along.

Pete’s sharp laugh combined disdain and self-assurance. “Oh man, yeah. They go a little crazy over it.”

Looking in at the back seat, Tom wondered if Beth Hall had ever gone a little crazy right there. “You got a special girl?”

Pete hesitated, his expression sobering into wariness again. “Why do you want to know that?”

“Just wondering. Is there some reason you don’t want to tell me?”

The boy glanced down the driveway at Brandon and back at Tom as if calculating his chances of escape. “Nobody special.”

Tom leaned against the car’s front fender and crossed his arms. “You’ve got something going with Beth Hall, don’t you?”

Pete winced. His gaze slid toward the dog, and it responded as if summoned, straining against the chain and barking. “Where’d you hear that?”

“It’s pretty much common knowledge, isn’t it? And everybody seems to know how her dad felt about it.”

Pete swung his eyes back to Tom. He opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it and pivoted toward the house. “Mom!” he yelled, sounding like a scared kid. “Mom, come out here!”

Tom almost laughed.

In a minute Babs Rasey appeared at the screen door, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. When she saw Tom, she pushed open the door. “What’s going on?” she asked, coming down the front steps. She was a foot shorter than her son, a handsome rather than a pretty woman, with wavy ash blond hair. She paused beside Pete and asked Tom, “What are you doing out here?”