Hometown Homicide Page 5

  Unless—Why would a woman be that publicity shy? Frankie’s imagination worked overtime, conjuring scenarios.

  She and Dr. Kelly hoped Howie could dredge up a few more facts about the woman. He probably knew more than he thought he did, considering Denise had trusted him to look after her place when she was away. They were friends, he’d said. So why had Denise not told him she was leaving?

  “I hope I’m wrong,” Frankie said aloud, causing Banner to shift his attention away from the wheat fields passing in a blur.

  He may as well have been saying, “Huh?”

  “Wrong about Shine’s owner being in trouble, I mean.” Reaching across the seat, she ruffled the Samoyed’s pricked ears. “But I don’t think I am.”

  No, and Dr. Kelly shared her foreboding. Well, and why not? Evidence of some kind of nefarious goings-on stood out clearly, once they’d opened their eyes. The worst part appeared to be in convincing the law of their suspicions and for them to take action. Notoriously short of people and funds, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office had pretty much blown the veterinarian off when she called to report an act of animal cruelty in the matter of Shine’s injuries. They even refused to file a missing person report. The deputy taking her call hadn’t laughed at her—quite—but he hadn’t said they’d investigate, either. Not without something more concrete than a wounded dog and an apartment with personal stuff left behind when the occupant moved out.

  “Are you insinuating Ms. Rider shot her own dog?” Dr. Kelly’s fair skin turned red. Her phone was on speaker, so Frankie heard every word.

  “It’s been done,” the officer replied and added wearily, “nothing new about that.”

  Dr. Kelly and Frankie could rail against the shortsightedness all they wanted. The police needed more to go on before they’d stir a muscle.

  Howie’s side of the duplex appeared deserted when Frankie pulled onto her half of the driveway. Probably out for his afternoon libation, she thought. His help in discovering more about Shine’s owner would have to wait.

  No matter. As she jumped into and out of the shower in under five minutes flat, it occurred to her to ask Jesselyn’s sister if she knew anything else about Denise Rider. Anything at all. Before renting to her, Vic had asked Frankie about a source of income, along with a bunch of other stuff. Denise must’ve filled out the same form.

  But questioning Vic would have gone on a to-do list because Frankie didn’t have time to pursue the matter anymore today. Already in danger of being late on her second day of work, and with her short hair still damp from the shower, she grabbed up her car keys from where they sat atop Denise and Shine’s picture. At the same time, her belly rumbled, reminding her she’d had nothing to eat today.

  Hunger gnawed at her stomach in surprising intensity.

  How in God’s name could she neglect eating? A kind of despair claimed her. Stupid, crappy hole in the head! What else might she ignore to her own detriment?

  A quick glance at her watch told her she had only a few minutes to spare. Too late for food now. Snatching up a pencil, Frankie scrawled instructions to herself across the bottom of the plain paper photocopy. Info about Denise Rider? Ask Howie or Victoria tomorrow.

  Frankie started for the door just as the first deep roll of thunder reverberated overhead. The lights flickered. Banner, a dumbfounded expression on his face, let out a little howl. The next clap of thunder sent him dashing past her, paws sliding across the vinyl floor. Zipping out of the kitchen and down the hall to the bedroom, he forced his head and shoulders into the not-quite-large-enough space under the bed. His tail quivered, swishing the floor outside the draped bedspread at a new peal of thunder.

  “Banner, my darling boy,” Frankie said, following him, “you are such a puss. We don’t have time for this.” Not that she liked the racket either. The closest reverberation reminded her too much of bombs and explosions. It was all she could do not to duck and join him.

  Still, she couldn’t resist reaching over and tweaking the dog’s tail where it stuck out from under the bed. He made a kind of hiccup low in his throat and jumped, whacking his head on the bed springs.

  Frankie snickered. “Come out of there, you big baby. Listen—the thunder is dying away already.”

  A lie.

  Unconvinced, Banner shuffled around until his black nose peeked out. Still, with a little encouragement and a lot of promises, at her command, he fought his way from under bed until he sat close to her—on her foot, to be precise. Sheepish now, his head hung, and his tongue lolled as she gave him a hug. “There’s just no explaining to you, is there, that you don’t need to be afraid of the thunder? It’s the lightning that’ll get you.”

  Banner whimpered as he followed her to the door. At the last minute, Frankie decided to take him with her to work, hurrying him through a downpour out to the pickup. No way would she leave the terrified dog on his own in a strange house. No way. Lew, Karl, and the crew would just have to put up with him.

  What Karl or anyone else thought turned out to be a nonstarter. Maggie Owens, staying overtime to run the dispatch desk was the only person at the station. “They’re all at a traffic accident a couple miles south of here,” she informed Frankie even as she bustled into the restroom and came back with a handful of paper towels. She put them to use rubbing the rain from Banner’s glistening white coat, apparently not noticing Frankie suffered from a like degree of wetness. “Marc and Chris have the new ambulance out on that one. Report said the car caught fire, so Karl took the pumper truck, too, with Darryl Holland and a couple other boys.”

  With no change of expression, she added, “This dog is shaking like a leaf. What have you been doing to him?”

  Frankie snorted as a particularly close roll of thunder made Banner flinch.

  “Oh.” Maggie nodded. “I see. He doesn’t like storms.”

  An understatement.

  “No, he doesn’t.” Frankie, smelling the rich aroma of fresh coffee, brushed past Maggie, and went into the lunch room. The pot was still gurgling as she reached down a clean pottery cup from a collection beside the coffee maker. “Do I ever need this.” She poured a cup and took a scalding sip.

  An open package of Oreos sat on the counter. Frankie crammed one into her mouth and took an extra to munch.

  Maggie finished her self-imposed dog-drying task. “You look tired, Frankie. Couldn’t sleep last night? Pretty common when you start a new job. My husband always says…”

  Frankie lost the rest of Maggie’s rambling dissertation on adjusting to employment as she watched Lew pull into the parking lot and run through the rain into the station. He looked distinctly sour and out of sorts. This shift might not turn out as warm and fuzzy as the previous night’s.

  “Damnedest thing,” he said. “Almost had to call the ambulance out for me. Some dumbass kid pulling out of a driveway came within an inch of broadsiding me.”

  Just as Maggie opened her mouth—to ask for particulars, Frankie supposed—the computer switchboard lit up. Maggie slid into her chair as the report came in, fingers on the keys and typing at breakneck speed. At the same time, their siren blared a summons. The call, it turned out, was for them, Frankie and Lew. A wreck on Highway 95, a half-mile south of Cecil B. Harmon Road.

  Lew screwed his ball cap down and jerked on a pair of yellow coveralls hanging from a rack by the garage. “Saddle up,” he snapped at Frankie. “Move it.”

  In less than thirty seconds, Banner left in Maggie’s tender care, they were underway, Lew complaining about being stuck with the back-up bus.

  “Lousy weather brings out every idiot on the road,” he muttered. “Need new wiper blades for this rig, Frankie. Put them on the list.”

  Lacking note paper, Frankie tried to embed the words in her brain. “Got it.” She crossed her fingers.

  Face a little tense Lew peered through the wall of rain streaming in heavy rivers down the windshield. The wind still howled with crop-flattening force, shaking the heavy ambulance and blowing the
faulty wipers askew.

  Dispatch reported sketchy information about the accident. Word had come in from a good Samaritan with a cell phone saying he’d seen a car overturned in the ditch. The state police had a unit enroute to the scene with an ETA only a minute or two less than their own. Their own resident deputy, Gabe Zantos, came on and reported he was available if they needed him. Lew replied he’d get back with him.

  Frankie held onto the edge of the seat as Lew made the turn onto the highway and sped north. She was sweating inside her own yellow breakout gear, not only because they were horribly hot in the oppressive atmosphere, but because she hated these road conditions. The rain and wind reminded her too much of the dust and wind prevalent in Afghanistan. Better Lew at the wheel than her.

  She peered out into an afternoon as dark as most nights. “How much farther?”

  “Couple miles.” Lew’s gaze never strayed from the road. The emergency lights flashing on top of the ambulance glared off the rain-wet highway. Their siren warned an old beater of a pickup creeping along at thirty-miles-an-hour to get out of their way.

  Were they never going to get to the scene? Frankie squinted through the rain and steady beat of the windshield wipers. Consciously, she knew only a few minutes had passed since the call, even though it seemed much longer. Wind buffeted the ambulance.

  Ed Bennett, the ISP officer, had flares out when they arrived, glowing beacons warning motorists of the accident. He stood on the road above the ditched car with rain dripping from his hat brim and smoking a cigarette he held inside his hand.

  Frankie sprang from the ambulance as soon as Lew stopped, ran around to the back, and grabbed the medical bag.

  Rain splattered on her uncovered head, the drops striking like ice pellets.

  “How many victims?” she asked Bennett.

  “Just one.” He grimaced. “But he’s a humdinger. Bleeding like a stuck hog. Squealing like one, too. You’d better double-glove and put on ear muffs.”

  “Ear muffs?”

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  Lew, grunting, said, “Hand me the bag,” and taking it from her, slid down the embankment to lead the way.

  As far as wrecks went, Frankie supposed this one could’ve been far worse. The first report had been a little erroneous, for the car, a late-model Cadillac Escalade, wasn’t completely overturned. Judging by the crunched front-end and the passenger’s side quarter-panels, it had gone over the shoulder and hit the ditch pretty hard.

  As long as his seatbelt had been fastened and the airbags worked, the victim should’ve been okay. Of course, Frankie reminded herself, you never can tell for sure until you take a look. Sometimes—

  She cut off the memory before it could take hold.

  In the slash/slash of the lights atop the patrol car and ambulance, she could see the lone occupant. To her relief, he was sitting up, wiping his face.

  Also yammering a blue-streak and cussing up a storm.

  Dribbles of blood had splashed onto the beige leather and suede upholstery inside the Cadillac. The deflated airbag flopped dismally over the top of the steering wheel. Lew swung open the driver’s door and held it against the wind.

  “Damn well time some of you people got here,” the patient grumbled, snuffling through a profusely bloodied nose. “Thought maybe you were waiting for the Saudis to start selling snow cones instead of oil.”

  “Take it easy, sir,” Frankie said. As Lew stood back, allowing her to take point, she bent into the car, using her most soothing, professional voice. She pulled on gloves—a single pair, not double. “You’ll be all right. We’ll have you out of here in a jiffy.”

  Opening the medical bag, she found a splint and fitted it around the man’s neck as a precaution against spinal injury. A blood pressure cuff velcroed onto his left arm took a reading that was a bit high, though not outrageously so, considering. She counted his pulse, rapid, strong. Her flashlight flicked a couple of times in each of his eyes. Pupils normal and reactive to the glare.

  “Do you hurt anywhere, sir? Legs, arms, back?”

  “Christ on a crutch! Of course, I hurt. All over. What do you think? Take a look at this car. Take a look at my nose. I could’ve had my eyes put out with all the glass flying around in here.”

  She ducked in time to avoid a waving fist, which he used to punctuate his words. His legs and arms must be all right, considering they moved just fine. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another police vehicle—this one a four-wheel drive SUV—pull up, lights flashing. A man got out.

  “The glass is tempered safety glass, sir.” Frankie broke open a package of sterile gauze pads and swabbed at the blood coating the lower half of his face. “You’ll be glad to know it fragments into beebees instead of shards. Did you hit your nose on the steering wheel?”

  “What? Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. No. Must’ve been the airbag exploding. Good God Almighty, look at this mess! Blood and glass all over everywhere. What’s a goddamn airbag good for, anyway? Made the car cost more, and still busted my nose.”

  In Frankie’s humble opinion, it was too bad he hadn’t hit his mouth instead of his nose. Not to be unsympathetic, but she’d just as soon he shut up and quit hollering in her ear—or at least say something helpful. In Afghanistan—

  Her mind shied away from memories of the wounded there. Agonized cries for help. Cursing. Silence.

  The only apparent injury this man had was the broken nose. That much had been obvious even to him. He may have had previous experience with such an injury because before she could prevent him, he reached up and wrenched at the offending appendage. Cartilage grated, making her wince with annoyed sympathy.

  “Sir,” she protested, “please don’t do that. You may do yourself more harm.”

  Not to mention getting the whole emergency services team in trouble if something went wrong and he filed suit against them.

  He moaned aloud, permitting her to pull his hands down. Fresh blood rolled down his face. She made a clicking sound with tongue against teeth and tried to pack his nose with gauze, standard practice, only to have him brush her off.

  “Leave it,” he said. “It’s all right. I don’t want that stuff stuck in my head.”

  “It’ll help stop the bleeding.”

  “No.”

  “Your eyes are already turning black.” Frankie derived a little satisfaction in the warning. Give the obnoxious devil something real to complain about, she thought.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he said and then mercifully fell silent. He looked pallid and ghostly under the car’s dome light. She dabbed at his face with more of the gauze, applying light pressure to a couple small cuts.

  Outside, she heard Lew talking to somebody before he poked his head in the door beside her. “How is he, Frankie? Think he can answer a few questions? Bennett’s directing traffic past us, but Deputy Zantos is here.”

  The injured man answered for himself. “Hell, yes, I can answer questions. My goddamn nose is broke, not my vocal cords.”

  She couldn’t help murmuring a little something under her breath that caused him to give her a sharp look.

  “What?” he asked.

  Frankie gave herself a mental slap. “Sorry. Talking to myself,” she said.

  A man in a tan uniform hunkered down beside the car, his knees burrowing into the sopping wet weed patch beside the Cadillac’s doorframe. He ignored the discomfort, pulling a pen and an accident report form from under his uniform jacket where he’d been keeping them dry.

  “Now then, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said, “I’m going to take the accident report. I’ll need your driver’s license, address, and phone number if you don’t mind. And then you can tell me what happened.”

  It wasn’t until he said, “Mr. Pettigrew,” that the penny dropped, and Frankie recognized her patient as Jesselyn’s older brother. At one time, she’d had a huge crush on him, but he’d changed a lot with the passing years. When she lived in Hawkesford as a girl, he’d often been around. Not so no
w. Jesselyn said he lived in Spokane and drove between his home in the city and the old family homestead to do the farming. He spent spring, summer and fall working the Pettigrew land belonging to his elderly father, Big Mike Pettigrew.

  That had been his destination tonight, Pettigrew said. “I saw the storm brewing early this afternoon. The old man’s had a lot of trouble getting around the last couple of years, taken some bad falls lately. Most of the neighbors blame me for his trouble, God only knows why seeing as how he has two frigging daughters living right here in Hawkesford. You’d think they could look in on him once in a while, but no. It always falls to me.

  “Anyway, I got worried about him, and it’s a damn good thing I did. The old fart hadn’t so much as latched the barn doors, let alone put away his patio furniture. If I hadn’t come, stuff would’ve been blown from here to hell and back. He’d have been on the horn starting about four a.m. yelling at me to come gather his junk for him.”

  It took a puzzled moment for Frankie to catch up, Russ Pettigrew’s complaint putting a new twist on things. She could have sworn Jesselyn had said she spent a lot of time at the farm helping her dad out. It seemed strange for Russ to say he was the one old Mr. Pettigrew depended on to take care of the odd chore or two.

  Sibling rivalry, she supposed. Or just Russ’s bad mood.

  A fresh flow of blood spurted from his nose, heavy enough to cause Frankie extra concern. “Can’t this wait?” she asked the cop. “He should take it easy.”

  The cop glanced at her. “Quicker if we do it now.”

  His hazel eyes were black-lashed and beautiful, she noted, her attention caught. Also, he was young to be a district deputy.

  Russ snuffled through his swollen nose. “Right. Get it over with, Zantos. Where was I? Oh yeah, what with one thing and another, I took off too late to beat the weather home. Guess I should have sat out the storm, kept the old poop company.”