Death & Honey Page 4
“I’m counting it as not doing my job. And look, I know you’re trying to get me to go out on a date. I appreciate that you care.”
Starbuck said.
“I know, buddy. And I’m grateful to you both. You’re the best of friends. But you don’t need to worry about it. I have you and I have the work. Right now, that’s perfect for me.”
On the one paw, I trust Atticus about most things. On the other paw, he doesn’t see himself like I do. He’s been hurting ever since that Ragnarok business. It was really bad for a little while, but he has been getting better. On the third paw, there’s only so much I can do. On the fourth paw, I gotta try.
We got to the Paringa Archery Club about seven centuries later. Atticus was going to do the camouflage thing and just steal whatever information he needed, but he had to “shitcan that plan,” he said, because the police were there.
“We’d better play this like I don’t have any abilities except a keen mind and a roguish grin.”
Atticus shrugged. “I can live with it. But I don’t think I want a citation from Constable Fosse if he’s in there. Much as I hate to do it, I think I’m going to need to put you two on a leash until we are through with this business. Otherwise, they’re going to give me grief about it.”
That required a backtrack and some lost time, but he bought a couple of cheap leashes and held the silly things in his hand as we walked into the lobby of the archery club. The police were still there but on their way out. We nearly ran smack into Inspector Badgely and Constable Fosse.
“Oh! Pardon me, Mr. Molloy. What are you doing here?”
“Afternoon, Inspector. Thought I might inquire about skilled archers in the area, since one of them took a shot at me and the late Mr. Howe.”
She did that eyebrow thing again, raising just one of them. “You’re investigating on your own?”
“Well, I felt personally attacked because an arrow did move at terminal velocity through the space my head was occupying only a moment before. Did you find out anything?”
She kept the eyebrow raised but added in an upturned corner of her mouth on the same side. She found Atticus amusing. Hey, maybe she liked him too! I was pretty sure he liked her. I can never tell for certain, though, until humans actually mash their faces together and breathe heavily. Once you get to the heavy breathing and face-mashing, it’s a done deal, but up until that point, I maintain my belief that human mating habits are stupid.
“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
“Come on, Inspector, I’m not the press. I’m trying to help.”
“I’m well aware. I was able to contact Detective Ibarra in Portland. She says you’re annoyingly helpful and very good with dogs.”
“Oh, well, it’s not me that’s good so much as the dogs who are good. These two guys are extraordinarily good boys.”
“I’ve noticed. And you have them leashed now, which tells me you heed warnings when they’re given. What are their names?”
Atticus introduced us and we wagged our tails for the inspector and she held out her hand for us to sniff. Humans do that because they think they’re being polite, and it’s okay, I guess, but if they’d just let us sniff their asses, we’d figure out things a whole lot faster.
Underneath the traces of cinnamon and teriyaki sauce and coffee that she’d no doubt consumed at some point during the day, Inspector Badgely smelled like she was a tiny bit stressed out and maybe excited about something. Perhaps she was excited about a new lead in the investigation. Or perhaps she was excited to see Atticus again. More likely she was excited to see us because she was definitely a dog person. She gave us a couple of scritches behind the ears each and I could tell she wanted to lean in and do more but she was in a formal work situation and couldn’t do as she wished.
“Have Oberon and Starbuck found anything interesting?”
“I think so. How about you, Inspector? Find anything interesting here?”
“A short list of people capable of firing those shots from a very cooperative manager. What did your hounds find?”
“The scent trail of someone who was not the police leading from the body of William Howe to a space where he probably shot at both Mr. Howe and myself, and then back to the shoulder of a roadside where he got into a vehicle and drove away.”
The inspector’s face lost its faint amusement and became serious. “You’re saying they know what the killer smells like.”
“Yes. Not admissible in court, probably, so you’d need to find some other evidence to get a conviction, but they can accurately point the finger, as Detective Ibarra can confirm from our last case. If any of the archers on your list were in those woods, my hounds will be able to identify him.”
“Where was this car parked?”
“I can show you.”
“Will you show Constable Fosse instead? I need to track down this list of names.”
“Of course. Will you let Oberon and Starbuck give those people a sniff?”
“I will. Thank you, Mr. Molloy. I should have given you my card earlier. That was an oversight. Here you go.”
She pulled a white rectangle with some words on it out of her vest and offered it to Atticus. It was a bit awkward since he had only the one hand and that was already filled with the ends of our leashes, but he reached out and took it with his fingertips.
Inspector Rose Badgely. Her name is Rose.
Oh, stop it.
“Thanks very much, Inspector,” Atticus said aloud.
“We’ll talk soon,” she said with a small grin, and politely said goodbye to me and Starbuck before leaving us there with Constable Fosse, who was still very pink and swole.
Bad Bee-havior
ATTICUS POCKETED THE inspector’s card and looked expectantly at the constable.
“Got room for all of us in your vehicle, Constable?” he asked.
“I think you’ll all fit in the back,” he said. We did, but it was not my favorite ride ever. Constable Fosse was into health food and vegetables, and his car smelled like balsamic vinegar and the ghosts of sad salads.
Atticus gave some directions and then tried to get the constable to share what they had found out about Big Dead Bill, but the constable claimed not to know anything since it was Sergeant Naseer who’d been on that duty.
Starbuck and I stuck our heads out the window once Atticus convinced the constable to roll it down and we could take in some relieved breaths of air free of balsamic vinegar. Soon, we were back at the spot where the murderer had parked and the constable called out a forensic team while Atticus walked him through the scent path we found to the crime scene and where the villain had most likely stood to shoot William Howe in the back. He got a call from Inspector Badgely as we were returning to the car.
“Would you ask Mr. Molloy if he’d be willing to swing by someone’s house and have his hounds give the resident a sniff to see if he’s the guilty one?”
I heard that even though Constable Fosse had the phone up to his ear. When he relayed the request, Atticus wondered aloud why the resident wouldn’t be at the station.
“He’s refusing to come down, which is within his rights so long as we don’t have a warrant. He might have a legitimate reason for refusing, but his refusal might also point to a bit of guilt. We just need to eliminate him as a suspect.”
Atticus agreed and soon we were on the road again, crammed into the constable’s sad saladmobile. We drove to an eastern suburb of Launceston called Ravenswood, and Atticus asked the constable about his fitness regimen. The constable happily described it in detail f
or the entire drive, and all Atticus had to do was grunt in approval at appropriate intervals.
We rolled up to a fairly modest home in a neighborhood of similar homes. It had a nice tree out front with some happy birds in it, but Atticus said we weren’t allowed to pee on it. The constable waited in the car while Atticus took us to the door. He rang the bell and we sat down next to him, waiting.
The door opened a crack and a scowling white man answered, peering first at Atticus and then at us. “Yes?”
“Hi, Jude Fothergill?”
“Yes, who are you?”
“We haven’t met. I’m Connor, a friend of a friend over at the archery club.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“Are you sure?” Atticus said, and while he was just stalling for time, Starbuck and I inched forward and took some big whiffs of the air coming out of the house. There were English muffins in there, somewhere, freshly toasted, and maybe Jude was annoyed that we had interrupted his tea time. Or maybe he was just a disagreeable sort. Regardless, we got what we needed.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Jude was saying.
“Oh! Well, never mind, then,” Atticus said. “Sorry to trouble you. We’ll be off.” We started walking away and the door opened a bit wider behind us.
“Hey! Wait a minute. Why are you here? How did you know my name?”
“It was a mistake! My apologies,” Atticus called over his shoulder, and he didn’t respond to Jude’s repeated demands that he stop and explain himself.
“Well, he might be a vegetarian,” Atticus guessed.
“I’d agree with that. But his diet may or may not be a part of it. I think he simply prefers privacy and is suspicious of the outside world, which are perfectly legitimate explanations for why he refused to come to the police station.”
Constable Fosse informed us that the inspector had a lineup ready and waiting at the station, which included three archery experts from the list. We were to head down and give them a whiff. Atticus asked the constable about his nutrition next, so we had to listen him talk about salad as well as smell his old ghost salads. It seemed like a very long drive.
We got to the police station and Inspector Rose Badgely smiled when she saw us come in. I looked up at Atticus and he had gone a little goofy about the mouth. Yeah, he was twitterpated or hot to trot or whatever. But he would probably never mash faces with Inspector Badgely because he felt he had to work, and of course I didn’t know Inspector Badgely well enough to figure out if she liked Atticus back. Even if she did, she probably felt she had to keep things formal and professional too.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Molloy,” she said, confirming that she was going to stick to the formality…for now.
“Glad to help.”
“If you will follow me? We have four men in a room and I’d like to simply have you walk on in there with your dogs. Two of them are master archers named at the club who have agreed to come in. Two are random strangers. Hopefully, if one of them is the culprit, we’ll see some kind of reaction. Your dogs won’t bite anyone, will they?”
“No, they won’t,” Atticus said, and then added privately, Please don’t bite anyone or even bark if you find the right person. A small growl will be sufficient to signal your disapproval. Okay?
“We’ll be watching. My understanding is that the killer took a shot at you and your dogs were in sight as well, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“So he should recognize you when you enter. We’ll see.”
She asked us to wait outside a door while she ducked into another one.
Presumably, Atticus said.
Science.
I’ll have to check.
Constable Fosse said we were clear and he opened the door. We walked in on leashes to smell four dudes. They all looked surprised, so I don’t know how the inspector could tell one from the other.
Two of the men had darker skin tones and two were white guys. The closest man said, “What’s all this, then?” and Constable Fosse said it was nothing to worry about, we were harmless dogs and were just going to give them a quick sniff.
“Look, droogs, I don’t like dogs,” the first man said. “Like, really, when I was a kid, there was this episode, and I still have some scars.”
“They won’t hurt you,” Atticus told the man. “I promise.”
“Well, keep them on a tight leash at least.”
Atticus took up some slack but didn’t pull our leashes tight. It only took a few sniffs to eliminate him.
The first man who didn’t like dogs said, “Oh, shit!” even though we weren’t growling at him.
The man who tried to kill Atticus sneered at us and said, “What? You’d better control your mutts, lad,” he said, and then I growled louder, because we were not mutts.
“Move on to the next, fellas,” Atticus said, and then privately said, We need to eliminate man number four. But after that, you can growl at three again as we exit. “Hup!” he grunted, which is a thing that dog trainers always do, so Atticus says it to make other humans think we’re just trained and he can’t really talk to us.
We sniffed at the last man and he definitely wasn’t the guy. He smelled like soap and toothpaste. We backed away from him and then growled at the white guy again.
“You tried to kill me earlier,” Atticus whispered. “But you missed. You’re gonna get got, though. I promise.”
The man didn’t say anything but his face went dark gray and blotchy in my sight, which meant he was blushing red. I could smell the anger on him, too. He was dressed in high-end walkabout gear from some catalog: crisp and clean khakis, buttery leather hiking boots with no dirt on them, a wide belt tooled with some sort of vine-like pattern, and a dark gray—probably deep red—kerchief around his neck. He looked middle-aged and a tiny bit jowly with blond hair and a neatly trimmed mustache grown to the edges of his mouth. He looked fit but wasn’t swole like Constable Fosse. Under his bottom lip he had let the hair grow and shaped it into a V, but his chin was clean-shaven. His face looked accustomed to scowling. Atticus led us out as the constable loudly thanked us and said that would be all, opening the door for us.
Out in the hallway, the constable asked us to wait. The inspector joined us in the hallway shortly thereafter.
“So they’re sure it’s the third man? The white man?”
“One hundred percent. They don’t growl like that for nothing. Who is he?”
Inspector Badgely blinked and hesitated, debating whether she should tell us anything, but I guess having cleared those ca
ses in Oregon helped her decide in our favor. “His name is Royston Saxby.”
“For real? His parents actually did that?” The inspector tried to stifle a smile and largely failed, but she only nodded. Atticus shook his head. “No wonder he’s murderous, then.”
“I wanted you to know that we won’t be able to keep him, short of getting a confession out of him. We have no witnesses to the actual crime. But we’ll see what his alibi is and maybe we can learn a thing or two besides, if you’d like to sit in on the interview. You can observe from that room.” She hooked a thumb at the door from which she’d just emerged.
“Thanks.”
“What did you say to him? It was too low to make out.”
“Just that I knew it was him.”
“Well, that made him mad. He’s acting guilty, but that’s not enough to convict. We don’t have any idea why he’d want to do this.”
“Did you find anything out about William Howe from Melbourne?”
The inspector shrugged. “He’s a barista at some tiny espresso joint in Melbourne. No assets, no criminal record, no strong family ties. No obvious reason that he should be here or be killed for it. We’re trying to find someone who might know why he was in Tasmania.”
“This will be interesting, then,” Atticus said.
We scooted into the room and there was a big window that let us see into the other one. That was the one-way mirror made with science. Royston Saxby was fuming and the other three men had kind of drawn away from him, trying to look bored but really wanting to get out of there. They got their wish when the inspector opened the door and thanked them, telling them they were free to go. “Except you, Roy,” she said to the killer, and he bared his teeth at her.
“It’s Royston. Mr. Saxby to you.”
Atticus chuckled and said to us privately since there was a constable in the room with us, She called him Roy on purpose to see if he got mad, and he did.
Not necessarily. She just wants to learn what motivates him. From that exchange we can tell he’s used to being in charge and wants to assert his superiority. He’s better than mere Roys, you see. He’s Royston. He’s unique! Special! And the police should feel ashamed for pestering someone as important as he is!