Hometown Homicide Read online

  “The expensive kind?” Jesselyn spoke a little slower, too, as if she were puzzled.

  “Yes. This Denise didn’t stint on either her dog or herself. And there’s people food left in the fridge, including a T-bone steak with today’s outdate. Then there’s a bunch of stuff in the cupboards, books, CDs, DVDs, and even a fully functioning iPod—although I don’t care much for her taste in music. Really, Jesselyn. It looks to me like she plans on coming back.”

  Jesselyn made a little humming noise.

  Although she hadn’t meant to say anything, Frankie added, “And that’s still not all.”

  “What else?”

  “Somebody broke in here last night and pretty much trashed the place. Ripped up the couch, threw things around, tore pages out of books and smashed some CDs and DVDs. He—they—broke a window in the back door to get in.” She’d found that right after Howie left.

  Jesselyn’s breath drew in sharply. “Did you call Gabe Zantos?”

  “Who?”

  “Hawkesford’s district deputy. You know, the guy living in your grandmother’s house. Your house. The reason you’re stuck in that crappy duplex.” Impatience came through.

  “Oh.” Had the cop who talked to Maggie yesterday at the station been this Gabe character? Despair swept over her. How could she have forgotten her own renter’s name?

  As though to press the question home, flashes of light blurred the vision in her right eye, an all too common phenomenon in the last several months. An eye migraine, her ophthalmologist termed it, no doubt caused by her head injury. It should get better soon, or so the doctor assured her.

  Frankie pressed two fingers firmly an inch above her eye. “Too late to call him now, I guess. Everything’s cleaned up. Anyway, Howie and I, we both think the trashing part was just some kids. It’s the other, the things Denise left here, that bothers me. I’d hate to have her come home in the middle of the night and find me sleeping in her bed.”

  At this, Jesselyn laughed. “Well, yeah. A regular Goldilocks moment. But don’t forget she told Vic she was leaving. I wouldn’t worry about her coming back unexpectedly if I were you. And you’re right. Kids probably did the trashing. Was anything taken?”

  “How would I know?” Frankie paused, worry nagging at her, and decided to take Howie’s advice. “Jesselyn, would you ask Vic if I can get new locks? I don’t really want any surprise visitors.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’ll call her.” Jesselyn’s prompt agreement eased Frankie’s mind.

  Excitement mixed with apprehension—blast those eye migraines, anyway—built as she checked the fence around the back yard before leaving for work. The chicken wire strung around tilted posts didn’t look strong enough to keep out a determined coyote, but usually, any rickety old thing would hold Banner. Bless his heart, he inclined more toward sniffing and ambling than climbing, fighting, or digging.

  Besides, the weather was good. A fiberglass roof sheltered the rather shabby concrete patio, and he had easy access to his crate, which she set near the back door. He’d be fine on his own. Maybe Howie would check on him later if she asked nicely.

  “Be a good boy.” She stroked the dog’s head and filled a big bowl of fresh water, placing it next to the back door for him. “I’ll be back before you miss me.”

  But Banner didn’t stay to watch her leave—a first in the time they’d been together. He turned, trotting across the yard toward the trees, his nose lifted into the breeze.

  Chapter 3

  We replenish our supplies at Kootenai Medical Center after every run.”

  They were in the station where Lew was showing Frankie around the station and explaining procedure.

  “Here’s the list of supplies stocked in the ambulance at all times. We keep a running tab of what we’ve used and what needs replaced.” He pointed to a clipboard with a standard looking order form on it. Affixed to a hook super-glued inside the ambulance, a pen dangled from a string beside the clipboard.

  “When you run out of something, don’t forget to mark it down,” he continued. “Like Chris. He’s a good kid and a fair EMT, but he’s forgetful as all hell.”

  Frankie nodded, careful to concentrate as she stowed the information in her memory banks. This kind of thing became easier with time, but she wasn’t up to par yet.

  Lew moved on, showing her the locked drug storage bin. “I’ve got a key,” he said, “and if I’m not on shift, whoever is in charge will have one too. That’ll be you as soon as you pass your trial month. Only the paramedic or the EMT in charge has a key.”

  “All right.” For the first time since her shift started, the mention of drugs reminded Frankie of the break-in at her duplex. “Do you have a lot of that here? People trying to steal your drugs, I mean?”

  “Nah.” Lew leaped from the ambulance’s open rear doors to the garage floor. “Most everybody knows we keep the drugs locked away. So far nobody’s gone after any of us for the key, but you never can tell.” He scowled. “Stay on your toes. Don’t flash the key around or leave it in plain sight. Not ever.”

  “No, sir,” she said stiffly. Toes, huh? Had anybody told him she only had half as many as most people?

  Lew beckoned to her, so she jumped out, taking care to land on her good foot. She didn’t think he noticed anything out of the way.

  “You ever drive one of these buses?” He opened the ambulance driver’s side door for Frankie to peer inside.

  “Not this model.” How much different could it be from the deuce-n-half, after all? Or even a grain truck. “I’ll manage.” She crossed her fingers.

  Tuesday evening being one of the slower nights of the week, she spent an uninterrupted hour standing in front of a big area map nailed to the firehouse wall. Topographically correct, the terrain was familiar from when she lived in Hawkesford—mostly. The most obvious changes were the names. New residents, all strangers to her, clustered around the upscale community along the lakeshore.

  “Doctors, lawyers, big money people,” Lew told her. “Lording it over all us peons. They visit the casino, but don’t do a lot of business in town.”

  The rural contingent, farmers, most of whom she knew, scattered over the rest of the county west to the state line, east to Benewah, and south to the Palouse. They did do business in the community.

  Marking the duplex she’d rented, she particularly noticed how the woods behind it had thickened in the last few years. Second-growth timber, the trees had grown almost to logging size with a lot of underbrush. She’d have to keep Banner out of there—his thick white fur was prone to picking up burrs, stickers, and dirt, let alone ticks.

  Their first call of the evening shift came from a frantic mother who lived down at the lake, some four miles out of town, proving the wealthy weren’t above the need for help.

  One of the volunteer firemen was manning the dispatch station this evening. A tall man about her own age with big hands—and sporting a big, rough gold nugget ring on one thick finger—he filled Maggie’s swivel chair to overflowing. He keyed the alarm and relayed the particulars while Lew fired up the ambulance. Frankie hopped into the passenger seat, her heart racing.

  Lew showed no emotion. “Tell me where I should go and what we should do when we get there,” he told her.

  A test.

  Frankie blanked for a second then, to her relief, the information sorted through her brain. “South on Bay Road,” she said, “and take the right-hand fork at the Coleburg’s farm, then right again on Shore Lane.”

  The medical emergency concerned a five-year-old who’d stuck a stone up her—

  “Well,” as Lew told the dispatcher an hour later, when they’d returned to the station, “let’s just say it wasn’t her nose.”

  The dispatcher guffawed, and even Lew’s lips twitched.

  Around two in the morning, another call came in, this time to the south side of Hawkesford to a shabby little house near Frankie’s duplex where a man and woman had gotten into a heated... er... discussion. The ma
n’s head, laid open by a profusely bleeding gash, had a knot swollen to the size of a turkey egg.

  “Whaddya think?” Lew yelled over the woman’s wails of, “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.”

  Funny, since she’d used a cast iron skillet, which still lay on the cracked vinyl floor beside the man’s head.

  Frankie didn’t think Lew’s question referred to the weapon, however.

  “Stitches.” Frankie probed the swelling, her fingers light and gentle. The guy, dark like Howie St. James, opened bleary eyes. She checked his pupil size.

  “Pretty sure he has a concussion. An X-ray might be a good idea,” she added. “And I guess we’d better let the tribal police know.”

  Lew grunted, his lips taking a faint upturn. “Let’s load him up.”

  By three-thirty a.m. they were back at the station. At four-thirty they made a run for a kid with a fractured leg, having been kicked by a cow at the morning milking. A high school sophomore and determined to show toughness, the upcoming football season fretted him more than the pain of his leg.

  At six, Frankie went home, exhausted beyond belief.

  The duplex was surrounded by early morning peace. Birds stirred in the woods behind the building, somewhere a diesel engine grumbled awake. A dog barked a few houses over. At Howie’s place, the window shades were drawn down tight.

  After a short, though effusive greeting, Banner took off on a quick circuit around the yard out back of the duplex. He raced along the wire fence with his tail straight out behind him and his ears laid back.

  “What’s up, lovey?” Frankie called the dog, a little impatient with his antics. “Come on in. I’m tired. I want to go to bed.” When he ignored her, she went inside, washed her face, and donned sleep shorts and a tee before going after him again. She had to physically lead him in.

  “What in the world is the matter with you? Strange place getting to you?”

  Banner emitted a soft whine.

  “Yeah.” She sat on the side of the bed and checked the clock. “Me, too. I don’t blame you. Feels weird here, doesn’t it? Like a premonition—” She stopped, thinking, don’t go there. Too much like a couple times in Afghanistan when visions of tragedy had visited her—and then come true. Including the one that cost her part of a foot and a plate in the head.

  “Kind of stinks in here, too, doesn’t it? I’ll get some air fresheners this afternoon and open up all the windows.”

  She removed the prosthesis doing duty for her missing toes and patted the side of the bed, inviting Banner up. He launched himself, all right, but instead of snuggling against her like he usually did, he sniffed, circled, scratched an ear, lay down, got up, and jumped back to the floor.

  “All right, I get it,” she said, disappointed. “But be quiet.”

  The command held for all of four and a half hours.

  A snuffling noise accompanied by a cold, wet nose in her ear snapped Frankie awake, her heart pounding.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Banner had deigned to join her on the bed at some point as she slept. At the sound of her voice, he bounded over and straddled her recumbent form, peering down with concerned black eyes.

  Groggy with sleep, she pushed him off her chest. “Go away.”

  Squinting, she peered at the digital clock’s glowing red numerals and groaned. Eleven-thirty a.m. Too early by far.

  Banner, stepping over her as he lurched from the bed, managed to poke his toenails through the thin blanket into her belly.

  “Ouch.” Determined to ignore the dog, she closed her eyes. A moment later, the sound of those same toenails on the uncarpeted floor brought them open again. “Will you kindly stop your damn pacing?”

  Flipping over, she attempted to shut out his click, click, infernal clicking. Adding to her aggravation, sunlight crept around the edges of the ill-fitting mini-blinds, brightening the bedroom beyond tolerance. She drew the blanket over her head. The relief lasted approximately one full minute before she couldn’t stand it anymore. The apartment was already hot inside, bringing out the unpleasant odor.

  She sat up, her nose wrinkling. “Phew. Gross. This whole bed stinks like—”

  Dammit. Blood. The smell reminded her of blood.

  Banner’s insistent whine demanded attention. Ever mindful of his comfort, she got up to let him out, fully intending to return to bed. She needed to be sharp for her shift at work tonight, not so tired her abused brain refused to function. It already had too many problems.

  The dog’s behavior thwarted this plan. Frankie frowned as he pushed her aside and dashed out the back door. Far from simply lifting his leg, he raced to the rickety chicken-wire fence separating the yard from the woods directly behind it. The trees grew so close a few Ponderosa pine branches, their needles smelling of resin in the noon heat, overlapped the neglected lawn.

  Banner jumped against the chicken wire and set to barking. Loudly. Uncharacteristically. Persistently.

  The fence swayed under his weight.

  Wide awake now, as well as puzzled, Frankie watched him paw at the dirt under the bottom wire. “Stop that.”

  Ignoring her, he lifted his head and sniffed the hot breeze, then went back to digging, soil, weeds, and tufts of grass flying out behind him.

  “What is it, Banner? What’s gotten into you?”

  She started across the yard, hardly aware of her jerky gait compensating for her missing toes. From the corner of her eye, she saw Howie open his back door and peer out before walking onto the patio.

  “Somethin’ the matter with your dog?” he called.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him act like this before.” She stopped, reluctant for Howie to watch her moving or maybe see her mangled foot. Then she decided it didn’t matter because Banner swiftly excavated a hole big enough to squeeze himself through. Which he did, again ignoring her command of “Banner, come.”

  Frankie kept going, barefoot or no, hoofing it after the dog who’d slithered under the fence and with a flash of his waving white tail, disappeared into the woods.

  What in the world was wrong with him?

  At the fence, she stopped, telling herself, “Damned if I’m crawling under that thing.” No, but with only a few scratches from broken wires, including a bloody scrape along her shin, she succeeded in forcing the dilapidated thing down far enough to scramble over. Banner’s frantic barks led her into the trees, following the sound. Running and stumbling over uneven ground, prickly dry pine needles and the occasional pinecone stabbed her feet.

  About a hundred feet into the woods, she spied the dog. He’d quit running, even quit barking and seemed to be intent on nosing a pile of white rags mottled with rusty brown streaks.

  The pile, to her disgust, was moving.

  “Banner!” Frankie huffed toward him. “You leave that alone. If you get sprayed by a skunk, so help me God I’ll—”

  Only it wasn’t a skunk. Or an albino rat. Or a pile of rags infested with wiggly maggots.

  It was a dog. A small white dog. It had been shot.

  Chapter 4

  Frankie grabbed Banner’s ruff, dragging him away from where he nosed the quivering heap of wounded dog. “Okay,” she told him. “I’ve got it. Stand back. I’ll take it from here.”

  Banner cocked his head to one side and, as though understanding her words, allowed her to push in front of him. He sat down a couple feet away, whining now and again deep in his throat as though asking a question.

  Frankie knelt beside the small dog, a cobby munchin with curly white hair. White, except, of course, for the blood-soaked parts, dried now and stiff. With gentle fingers, she pushed up the animal’s lip to see its gums. Gray. Not a good sign if she remembered correctly. It, a female, she noted with one part of her mind, whimpered, a whisper of sound. Hazy brown eyes slitted open.

  “Poor baby.” She ran her hands over its body. Blood had spilled over much of its head and chest and turned one floppy ear rust colored.

  She separated the
dog’s hair where most of the blood had gathered. Her stomach lurched as she spied the wound, a raw gash between shoulder and neck and a hole in the ear leather where a cluster of maggots wriggled.

  Her earlier guess hadn’t been so far off.

  Pure rage flared through her. “Some dirty sonofa—”

  The animal’s condition was no accident. A deliberate shot, the bullet had passed through muscle and skin and, although Frankie felt no broken bones, the dog had bled profusely. Too much, leaving the dog near death, even though the bleeding had stopped some time ago.

  From over her head, a voice said in a revolted tone, “Hey! That’s Denise’s dog. That’s her bitchin.”

  Frankie went sprawling, catching herself on one hand. In her anger, she hadn’t heard Howie’s approach.

  “Denise’s dog?” She turned to him, noting the worried expression that settled over his face.

  “Yeah. Who would do such a thing? A nice little dog like this?” He sounded horrified, sad, appalled.

  “Not Denise?”

  “Oh, God, no. Not Denise. She’s gaga over this dog.”

  The dog’s legs twitched. Her tongue, dry-looking, poked between black lips, and she made a weak snuffling sound. Banner stood up, the fur on his back on end.

  “Okay.” Frankie laid a calming hand on his head. “I’m on it.” She looked up. “Denise’s dog or not, I’m taking it to a vet.”

  “Can’t you do anything for it? You know, being a paramedic an’ all?”

  “She. The dog is a she. And no, I can’t. She needs a transfusion, something for shock, something for infection, surgery to close her wounds.”

  Howie nodded. “Think it—she’ll—live?”

  Frankie shrugged. “Maybe, if she can hold on just a bit longer.” Two, no three, days since Denise left. “She must be a tough little cookie.”