Chapter Twenty
“Half the town was looking for that dog, Karl.”
What a mess. What a fucking mess. Drew was holding a hysterical Tina in the backyard of one of the Emerys’ neighbors. Nearly every distance runner at River Bend High had shown up and needed to be kept back. Luke and Zoe were sitting with Cherie, keeping her from breaking down as much as they could. And Karl Emery stood beside Jo, hands on hips and words flying.
“You shouldn’t have told the kids to look for the damn dog.”
“Keep your voice down!” she said in a rough whisper.
He stepped closer.
“You’re overstepping your position, and now my kid is going to have nightmares for God only knows how long.”
Jo’s eyes skirted over to Drew. The kid looked like he was keeping it together. Probably for Tina.
Mr. Miller, Cherie’s brother, arrived with a giant bedsheet and proceeded to tack the thing up around the scene.
Every time Jo’s sight landed on the dog, her stomach twisted.
Jo put on her bitch voice, made sure Karl heard it. “Quit your pissing match, Karl, and put your cop hat on. I need my deputy right now, not a pissed off father of a nearly eighteen-year-old son. This is a clusterfuck of a mess, and the last thing we need right now is the town seeing us at odds.” Jo nearly never pulled rank, but she did now. “Put your personal feelings aside and do your job or gather your son and walk away.” She’d already put in a call requesting Stan to help with the investigation. He was less than thirty minutes away and didn’t have the personal connection with Cherie Miller, her dogs . . . or have any children on her track team that she’d asked to help look for the dog.
If Karl walked away now, she’d encourage a weeklong vacation for the man. Considering he’d been the one to make the dog mess bigger while she was out of town, he wasn’t on the top of the list of compassionate neighbors.
Karl glared, obviously torn.
“Jo?” Mr. Miller called her over to help block the scene from lookie-loos.
When they were done, Jo forced her eyes on the scene. She needed her camera. If this were a person, she’d need to call in forensics from Waterville, or maybe Eugene. She considered it, even though the dog wouldn’t be considered a homicide. Animal cruelty and a misdemeanor if the culprit was found. That would be the extent of charges filed.
The damage went way beyond that.
It took a special kind of sociopath to steal a dog and hang it from a tree. The kind she didn’t want roaming among the citizens of River Bend. Knowing who was capable of this crime had become her number one priority.
“Keep anyone from coming back here,” she told Karl. “I’m getting the camera.”
She walked through the backyard of a home and to her car, parked in the street.
Neighbors watched and muttered among themselves.
By the time she returned, the number of people standing around had doubled.
She needed to do this quickly. Snap a few pictures, remove the dog from the woods, question the neighbors, Tina, and Drew.
Jo waved off approaching bystanders and moved to get the hard stuff done first.
Karl waited, hands on his belt, anger in his face.
She moved around the sheet and aimed her camera. Blocking out the image, she moved around the brush, snapped pictures of the ground.
“This is awful,” Mr. Miller said by her side.
Karl stood with his back to them.
“Who could do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” Jo insisted.
“Hi, Stan. You didn’t need to rush over,” she heard Karl greet the man before Stan walked around the sheet.
A hand moved the sheet aside, and Stan froze. “Holy shit.”
Jo met his eyes.
“What . . .”
“More like who,” Jo corrected him.
“Is this one of Cherie’s dogs?”
“Yeah.”
Stan glanced behind him. “Who found it?”
“A couple of my track kids. I asked them to fan out and search for a missing dog. This isn’t what I thought they’d find.” She’d not make that mistake again. Even finding the dog deceased on the side of the road would have been a better outcome than this.
He motioned to the camera in her hand. “Are you done with the pictures?”
Jo looked around, snapped a couple more. “I’m good.”
“Okay. Let’s get her out of there.”
Stan was tall. He removed his utility knife from his belt and proceeded to cut Jezebel down. The weight of the dog hit the ground with a thud.
Jo hoped no one was close enough to have heard it.
Mr. Miller winced.
Jo took a few more pictures, rolled the dog over, and took a few more.
Then she laid her hand on the head of the animal and gritted her back teeth together.
“Did you call animal control?” Stan asked.
“What for? The dog’s dead. This was done on purpose. Cause of death is irrelevant. Animal control will simply lay pressure on Cherie to move her dogs faster. We’d be better off calling in a doctor to prescribe the lady some Xanax.”
“I have black collection bags in the back of my car, I’ll get one. I can take the dog to Waterville if you’d like, make it easier on Cherie.”
“Get the bag, I’ll talk to her.”
In her years as sheriff, Jo had never needed to tell a loved one that someone had died. The benefits of a small town and a population that normally took care of one another. Although Cherie knew her pet was gone, the circumstances of the dog’s death were horrific.
Talking to Cherie about her dog left Jo raw and at the same time pissed her off to the point of seeing red.
“You found what?” Gill was on the phone with Jo. They had gotten in the habit of texting or calling at the end of their day. On occasion he’d send a flirty text midmorning, followed up with something sexy by the afternoon . . . and then on to a how was your day conversation by the evening.
“My dog problem has turned criminal,” Jo said.
“Someone hung her?”
“From a tree not far from where the owner lives.”
Jo’s strained voice told him a lot.
“People who torture animals are a special breed of monster.”
“I know. I talked to all the neighbors, the ones who complained in the first place . . . you know what I got?”
“Tell me.”
“A round-the-clock feeding team for the puppies that no longer have a mother. And neighbors willing to step up and house the dogs until permanent homes can be found.”
“They don’t sound like your suspects.”
“No, they don’t.”
“I know you have this, but if you need to talk it out, I’m here.”
He heard her sigh over the phone. “Do you ever get that sixth sense thing going . . . the one that tells you something is way off?”
“I get it all the time.”
“Do you ever ignore it?”
“Never.”
“Me either.” Jo sighed again. “Tell me about your day.”
He and Shauna had two more small-time dealers they were following in hopes of finding their source. Gill kept the details short, not used to talking about his cases with anyone but his partner or his boss. He knew he could speak in confidence with Jo but always worked in some sort of silence to avoid possible leaks in his cases.
“What are your weekend plans?” Gill asked, hoping to lure her in his neck of Oregon for an overnight stay.
“Starting guns and timers,” she said.
It took Gill a minute for her words to register. “Track meet.”
“Yeah. River Bend High has an annual invitational that brings in about a dozen teams to compete. It’s our big fundraiser. I’ll be helping with setup on Friday, and the meet is all day Saturday.”
“Looks like I’ll see you Sunday morning.”
“You don’t have to drive all the way—”
He cut her off. “Teenagers party on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday is better for me.”
“Gill, it’s a long way.”
“Jo, I want to see you.”
“But—”
“Do you know when the last time I drove two hours for a date was?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Never.”
There was a pause on her end. “Why now?”
“Walk into your bathroom.”
“What?”
“Just do it. Walk into your bathroom.” He waited for thirty seconds. “You there?”
“I feel stupid.”
She was there.
“Are you looking in the mirror?”
She sighed . . . an annoyed sigh that translated over the miles.
“Now take your hair out of that rubber band.”
“How do you know my hair is in a rubber band?”
“Is it?”
She sighed again.
Gill laughed.
“I need a haircut,” she said.
“Haircut aside, look at yourself. Tell me what you see.”
Women never saw what men saw. He was fairly certain of how she’d answer his questions.
“I see a washed-up thirty-year-old with dark circles under her eyes.”
“You know what I see?”
Jo barked out a laugh. “A washed-up thirty-year-old with dark circles under her eyes and a rack.”
The thought of her rack warmed his belly. “I do see your rack.”
Jo laughed.
“I see,” he started. “I see your smile under sexy, tired eyes that dilate into a deep, soulful blue when I’m kissing you. I see a woman who works hard and isn’t afraid to sweat for all the right reasons. I see a firm body with a soft rack that turns me on in ways I didn’t know existed.”
“Gill—”
“I’m not done. I see a caring woman who is pissed off she cares so much and doesn’t know how to control it. I see compassion, integrity, and loyalty.”
“Gill—” Her voice was soft.
“I see,” he didn’t let her finish, “all the qualities in a woman a man like me can want.” He hadn’t meant to be so open about his own feelings but left them on the table.
There was a long pause before Jo said anything. “Two people in our profession getting together is a recipe for disaster.”
“Good thing we like danger.”
“You should find some demure debutante who needs you to take care of her.”
He thought of an ex-lover and quickly shook that memory away. “You need me, you just don’t know it yet.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s okay, you’ll catch on.”
Jo laughed, and he could see the smile on her face if he closed his eyes.