Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery Read online

  “Theft?” Brody asked.

  “Could be. Or maybe a trophy? Whatever the reason, it could become valuable evidence if it turns up.” Stella pointed to the next items on the grid as she read them aloud. “Her car is missing. There’s no identifiable history of drug involvement. And last, she stalked our second victim.”

  Stella faced her audience. “Let’s talk about that.”

  “The Hartman ranch is adjacent to the national forest and farther north from Ute Canyon Road,” McCoy said, “past the road where you turn off to go to the cabin.”

  Mattie leaned forward. “She would have driven right past the turnoff on her way to school that morning. What if she saw Mike Chadron’s car and decided to follow him?”

  “I think it’s likely,” Stella replied. She turned back to her grid and pointed to the upper right, where she’d written “Injured Dog.” “What is our dog’s name, Mattie?”

  “Belle.”

  “Yes, Miss Belle,” Stella said as she wrote in “Belle” at the top of the grid. “Here’s what we know about Belle. First, she was used as a mule. Second, she was shot with the same gun that shot Grace and Mike Chadron. Which now leads me to jump over to our final spot on the grid . . . the weapon.”

  Stella indicated the far right of the grid where she’d written “Walther P22” at the top. “Ballistics has tied this handgun to all the bullets retrieved from our victims. This information would be invaluable if we knew who fired this weapon, but unfortunately we don’t. Yet.”

  She paused to give them a pointed look and then continued. “This .22-caliber handgun is an interesting little semiautomatic weapon. It’s small and light and so might be carried for self-defense, which, thanks to its serial number, I happen to know is exactly why it was originally purchased.”

  This new information caused a spike in Mattie’s interest.

  “Dr. Dennis Brinkman, a dentist living in Phoenix, purchased the gun and kept it in the glove compartment of his car. In March of this year, he reported it stolen, which a Phoenix detective that I spoke to this morning verified. There’s a report filed, all tidy and legal. His car was broken into while he was playing at a golf tournament there, and the gun was the only thing taken at the time.”

  McCoy turned to Brody. “I wonder if that’s one of the tournaments you went to, Chief Deputy.”

  Mattie saw the back of Brody’s neck flush deep red.

  “They have all kinds of tournaments in Phoenix,” he said. “I’d have to check the dates.”

  “Follow it up,” McCoy said. “I’d like to make sure that gun was truly stolen and out of Brinkman’s hands. See if you played golf with someone who knows him. Let’s verify if his word is reliable.”

  Brody shrugged. “All right.”

  Stella pointed to another spot on the grid. “The most promising evidence we have at the moment is the brass casing that Robo found.”

  Though Robo had relaxed down and laid his head on his front paws, he now lifted his head, pricked his ears, and stared at Stella.

  “Yes, I’m talking about you,” she said, giving Robo a half smile. “Firing pin and ejector marks on the casing show it was fired by this handgun. They’ve taken a fragment of a print off the casing and are running it through AFIS. We can hope for a match.”

  “Wow! Good work, Robo. You, too, Deputy.” McCoy turned to acknowledge Mattie.

  Mattie shrugged slightly and looked down at Robo, who’d broken into a light pant. She hated group recognition, and it appeared to make Robo nervous, too. But she knew that the Automated Fingerprint Identification System might need something larger than a fragment to successfully pull up a match. The system also needed to contain the shooter’s fingerprints, and since the database contained primarily known criminals, a first-time offender might not be in it.

  “Let’s go back to Mike Chadron now and finish him out.” Stella pointed back to the grid under Victim 2. “He and his dogs were seen at the cabin prior to, and the morning of, the Grace Hartman shooting. Trace cocaine was found on the table inside the cabin. Belle was carrying balloons filled with cocaine, and we might infer that those balloons were filled in the cabin. By Chadron? By Grace Hartman? By Chadron’s killer? Anyone else care to take a guess?”

  “From what we’ve learned about Grace Hartman, I believe we can eliminate her,” Mattie said. “I’m convinced she wasn’t the type of person who would abuse her dog, or any dog, for that matter.”

  “How about Mike Chadron?” Stella asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Mattie replied. “The vet thinks he took good care of his dogs, but he’s also showed up with more cash than usual lately.”

  “He could do it, all right,” Brody said.

  “And you know that because . . .” Stella said.

  “Came from poor white trash, lived on the west side. He worked as a cook at the local greasy spoon. Had ambition to get ahead, make a living off his dogs. Had the motive and the opportunity. Yeah, he could do it.”

  Brody’s reference to poor white trash made Mattie uncomfortable. A lot of good people lived on the west side. But she held her tongue; now wasn’t the time for a debate.

  “Okay,” Stella said. “Let’s say that Chadron participated in drug running. Let’s say that he was using his own dogs as mules. How did Grace Hartman’s dog end up with cocaine in her belly?”

  “What if Mike did it after Grace was killed?” Mattie asked. “He had a dog bite on his hand. Maybe it didn’t come from one of his dogs. Maybe it came from Belle, and that’s how she got away.”

  McCoy nodded. “What if Grace was driving to school, spotted Mike Chadron, followed him up to the cabin, and ran into someone involved in bagging the cocaine? That someone might’ve killed her and then killed Mike, the only witness, a day later.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking,” Stella said, giving them her too-sweet smile. “Now, just a couple more points here. One, Chadron’s truck was parked in a shed on his property, but his trailer and dogs are still missing. God knows what happened to those poor creatures. And two, both the box of rat poison and the packets of cocaine that we found at his house were wiped clean. No fingerprints at all. Why would a person wipe these items clean and then leave them in spots where we’d be most likely to find them? They were planted.”

  Mattie agreed with Stella’s reasoning, and she decided she might have jumped at too quick a conclusion that Mike Chadron tried to poison Robo. She felt some guilt for wanting to kick a dead man’s ass, but only a small amount, because it still looked like the guy had abused his own dogs and possibly Belle, too.

  “So,” Sheriff McCoy said. “What’s our focus?”

  Looking reflective, Stella said, “We’ve got to stay on this drug trafficking lead. That means we’ve got to follow the money. Identify anyone who seems to have come into a windfall lately. Talk with people who might be users or dealers. Mattie, you went out to the hot springs. What did you find out?”

  “The new owner at Valley Vista hot springs seems worth checking out. His name is Dean Hornsby.” Stella wrote that down on her board while McCoy appeared to record it in his notebook. “He seemed to overreact when I asked him about his business. Seemed too sensitive. Acted like a man with something to hide.”

  “Nah,” Brody said. “I stopped in there and met him a while back. The guy’s an idiot, but he’s not the drug-boss type.”

  “Okay . . .” Stella raised her eyebrows at Mattie, inviting a response.

  “He says he’s from Phoenix, as is our murder weapon,” Mattie said. “And drug traffic through here started after he moved to town.”

  “I’ll check him out,” Stella said. “Anyone else?”

  Mattie noticed a muscle bulge at Brody’s jaw as he clenched it. “Local lawyer,” he said. “Justin McClelland. Drives around in a brand-new Caddie with plates that say, ‘Hot Shot.’ Moved to town a year ago, set up a law office. Not much business here, but looks like he can afford an expensive new car.”

  “O
kay,” Stella said, writing down the name. “I’ll check him out, too.”

  Mattie added to the list. “There’s Tommy O’Malley, a local teen. I talked to him yesterday. Denies any knowledge, but rumor has it that he might sell drugs, smokes pot, but no known report of cocaine use.”

  “Got a juvie record?” Stella said.

  “No, just littering and loitering, small-town troublemaking. No arrests yet.”

  Brody muttered, “Soft.”

  Mattie ignored him and went on. “Money’s tight with the family, and he says he and his dad just found work. I’ll follow up on that and find out if it’s legitimate work or not.”

  “Let’s poke around some before we jump on him. It’s unlikely he’s a drug boss, but he may be on the verge of getting involved on some level. Mattie, can you take the lead on him?”

  “Sure. We’ve already mixed it up a time or two. I can take him.”

  “See what you can find out about his new place of employment, and see if you can uncover a cocaine connection. Since he’s a minor, let’s keep him off the board but still keep him in our sights,” Stella said. “Anyone else?”

  Stella waited and then continued when there was no response. “We’ve still got a BOLO out on the dog trailer and our first victim’s car. If we find the dog trailer, maybe we’ll find the dogs, but it’s probably too late to determine whether or not they’ve been used as mules. What’s your take on that, Mattie?”

  “Twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If they ate meat tainted with salmonella, sooner.”

  “So we’re at forty-eight hours this morning.” Stella screwed up her face in a grimace. “They’ve pooped out the cocaine by now.”

  Mattie agreed. “Most likely.”

  “We’ve still got Belle.”

  Again, Robo raised his head to look at Stella.

  “What, now you know your girlfriend’s name, too?” she asked him, and then went back to business. “I agree with Sheriff McCoy that we need to look for any connections between Dr. Dennis Brinkman, that Phoenix golf tournament, and Timber Creek. I’ll work that angle, ask this Mr. Hornsby if he plays golf, and Brody, you see if you can come up with something, too.”

  As Mattie noticed Brody’s neck flush red again, she realized with a start that if this were a poker game, she’d been observing a series of “tells” in the man throughout the meeting.

  Interesting.

  “I still need Cobb on patrol this afternoon,” Brody said.

  “I’ve got it,” Mattie said. “That’ll work out fine. I need one more contact with the O’Malley family today anyway.”

  Brody turned to stare at her in his “big boss” sort of way, but Mattie responded with a little shrug to indicate she couldn’t care less, and he turned back to Stella.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “For now,” she said. “We’ve got a good case building here, troops, even if we don’t have someone to arrest yet. We’re making some good progress.”

  On their way out of the report room, Rainbow stopped them by holding up one finger. Taking her phone from her ear and pressing the hold button, she said, “Sheriff, I’ve got that ranger you’ve been talking to, Sandy Benson, on line one. She says she needs to speak with you ASAP. She’s got urgent news. I don’t know what about, she didn’t want to tell me.”

  “Wait here,” McCoy told the group, hurrying to his office. “I’ll take it in here, Rainbow.”

  Mattie felt like she’d been left hanging. She glanced at Brody, curious if she could observe another strange reaction, but he had gone to his in basket and was shuffling through his mail. Stella opened a notebook she carried and started making notes, presumably from the meeting.

  When her gaze traveled to Rainbow, the dispatcher smiled and asked, “Do you have time for lunch, Mattie?”

  Stella glanced her way and raised one brow.

  “No, I’ll have to grab something on the run.”

  “I wondered if you wanted to sit here, you know, if you brought your lunch with you today and didn’t want to eat in the car or back in your office or something. I thought we could just sit here and talk, you know, pass the time.”

  Mattie liked to eat lunch alone, but Rainbow looked so hopeful that she hated to disappoint her. “Maybe another time.”

  Stella pursed her lips with distaste and went back to her notebook. Thankfully, the sheriff came out of his office to break the tension.

  “Good news,” he said, his face set with purpose. “A ranger found Grace Hartman’s car. I’ve got a location. Deputy Cobb, I want you and Robo to come with us. Detective, you ride with me.”

  Brody glared at Mattie.

  “I’ll get back on patrol as soon as I return to town,” she said. “I’ll report back in.”

  McCoy looked at Brody and spoke in a voice that discouraged argument. “We need the dog’s nose to check out this car for even the slightest amount of drugs. This is priority for the K-9 unit. I think we can be a car short on patrol for a few hours.”

  “You’re the boss,” Brody muttered as he headed toward his office, and this time Mattie could see that the red flush on his neck suffused his face. The man was as mad as a hornet.

  Chapter 19

  As she drove toward the mountains to get to the car’s location, Mattie searched her memory, trying to connect her observations of Brody’s stress indicators with specific points in the discussion. Although she couldn’t vouch for exact detail, she remembered that the chief deputy’s mannerisms had demonstrated tension from the very beginning of the meeting. That in itself didn’t seem too unusual, since Brody had always been wound pretty tight. The man could crack walnuts with those jaws of his.

  But the telling signs began when Sheriff McCoy pointed out that Brody had played golf in Phoenix during the same month the dentist’s gun had gone missing.

  So what about Brody being in Phoenix? Her own shoulders tightened as she continued to think along that line. If Brody had stolen that gun, then he might have used it to kill Grace Hartman and Mike Chadron. It was unthinkable, but she couldn’t keep it out of her head.

  Where had Brody been on Friday morning between eight and ten o’clock, the time period when Grace was killed? She went over the morning to recall where she’d been herself. Seven o’clock—report. She’d been there, but Sheriff McCoy had led report that day. As far as she could remember, Brody hadn’t been at the station at all. She felt a moment of vague light-headedness as the blood drained from her face. Surely not. Surely Brody couldn’t be involved with these crimes.

  What would be his motive? Was he involved with drug running? No one could get rich on a deputy’s salary, but you could still earn a good living. A dirty cop wasn’t unheard of, but Brody?

  It would be easy enough to look at the duty roster from the week to check Brody’s schedule, and she planned to do it as soon as she returned to the station. Realizing that a slight thrum, like the vibration of a guitar string, had begun to quiver inside her, she took a deep breath to calm down. Thankfully, they’d reached the turnoff to Ute Canyon, and the sheriff was booking it in his Jeep, staying well ahead of her. She’d have to pay attention to her driving if she was going to keep up.

  Twenty minutes of climbing and hairpin turns later, they drove past the cabin and up the road another mile. The sheriff stopped behind a light-green SUV with a US Forest Service logo on the door, which was parked at the entry into a rugged logging trail that looked like it was no longer in use. Sandy Benson stood by her vehicle.

  “You’d better climb into the back, Deputy,” McCoy said, getting out of his vehicle and opening the back door. “I don’t think your patrol car can make it in there.”

  “Let me get my equipment,” Mattie said.

  Making sure to remember all her supplies, she gathered them up and loaded them into the back compartment of the Jeep. Then, after snapping a leash on Robo, she led him to the back seat, where he jumped in easily, getting more excited by the minute and panting like crazy. Stella stayed in the fr
ont passenger seat.

  Typically, police vehicles were designed with washable seats in back and a steel mesh grill to separate the driver from the bad guys, but the sheriff’s Jeep lacked these modifications. It was decked out like any standard Jeep Grand Cherokee except for the law enforcement technology in front. Although her surroundings promoted comfort, Mattie sat on the edge of her seat.

  “How much farther?” she asked.

  “About a half mile in.”

  They followed the ranger’s SUV along a narrow two-track filled with potholes; sharp stones; and half-buried, small boulders. Branches screeched against the side of the vehicle, sounding much like fingernails on a chalkboard. Mattie put an arm around Robo to brace him as the Jeep bumped along, tipping side to side.

  As they approached a steep, rocky grade, Stella glanced back over her shoulder. “Hold on, Robo.”

  Mattie gave her a quick smile, acknowledging the detective’s concern for her dog. “He is,” she said, gripping him as the front end rose at a steep angle and then jolted into a small chasm. The engine growled and the four-wheel drive gripped as the Jeep maneuvered the deep erosion in the track.

  After a grueling ride that made Mattie’s teeth rattle, the sheriff pulled to a stop behind Sandy Benson. She’d reached a point where they could glimpse the sheen of a red vehicle partially hidden behind pine trees.

  “Great work, Sandy,” McCoy said as they all unloaded from the vehicles. “It took a lot of effort to locate this one. It’s well hidden.”

  Benson approached their vehicle. “It was a team effort, and we were determined to find this car. But it also took some luck, since we came down this trail once before but stopped back there where the road’s washed out. We didn’t think someone could navigate this little SUV over something that deep. Must have been really motivated.”

  “I expect so,” McCoy said. “Let’s get your equipment, Deputy, and go on over there.”

  Mattie strapped on her utility belt, gave Robo some water, and then put on his working collar. Robo settled in immediately and followed her at heel. McCoy carried Stella’s kit, a hard-sided container that looked like the kind of tool case you’d buy at a hardware store. Behind the trees, they found Grace Hartman’s brand-new, dark-red Honda CR-V looking none the worse for wear.