“He’s so used to caring for those animals… I don’t think he could make it if not for them,” she said. “I don’t think he’d have anything left to keep him in one piece.”
Thibodeau did not comment. He wasn’t sure whether she had been addressing him or thinking aloud to herself. In either case, he could say nothing except what she would already know — that he wished things were otherwise, wished events hadn’t brought them to where they were right now.
He thought in silence a few moments. When you went fishing for information, you could never predict which facts would take a long cast of the reel to pull in, which ones would jump into your hands, and which would lead you toward a rich bounty of others. After Ricci had reminded him how he’d gotten Erickson to let out that Rob Howell was staying with relatives, Thibodeau had thought it might be a while before they could identify the particular family members and track them down. But that had proven to be as easy as stopping at a gas station to buy the Monday-morning edition of a regional newspaper called the Mountain Journal. Though they had originally picked it up to see what the police and emergency freq chasers might have found out about the crime from early dispatcher-respondent radio exchanges that would flurry over the air before law-enforcement put a stopper on open communications, it had been of far greater help than they’d bargained for. The paper’s freelance police stringer had picked up on the double homicide near the state park in time to get a jump on local television stations, learn where Howell had gone through his homespun contacts, and include the sister’s name and town of residence in his story. Once they read it, Ricci had only needed to call directory information for her phone number and street address.
And so they had found themselves here not two hours after leaving the rescue center. Thibodeau was convinced it was partly just luck that had delivered them to the Wagner family’s front door before a crush of media vans — if it wasn’t profane to use a word such as luck under these circumstances. The violence at the center had taken place on a Sunday morning, when the TV and radio crews were skimpiest, especially in the state’s more remote, unpopulated areas. What had given the Mountain Journal a chance to trump the competition also gave the police some time to go into clamp-down mode and keep the name of Roger Gordian’s daughter from surfacing as part of their investigation… for the time being. With the weekend over, things would start to percolate. The Journal people would want to spread its story around to make certain they got credit for breaking it first. Morgue beat reporters would get on the trail. Big-market newshounds with deeper and wider sources than some country red-bone with a police band radio in his Chevy would smell blood — literally smell blood, Thibodeau thought — and reports would be flying everywhere by the evening news cycle.
He and Ricci were ahead of the pack but Thibodeau believed it wouldn’t be long before the rest caught up. And while Ricci’s gut might fill with acid when he thought about the FBI joining the case, his own concern was having the press toss themselves into the mix. For reasons that didn’t exactly align, both men were very eager to talk to Rob Howell before others got wind of his whereabouts.
As a result, Thibodeau could sense the impatience with which Ricci glanced at their passenger’s pale, exhausted face in the rearview mirror.
“Okay,” Ricci said in his peculiar uninflected tone. “You want to go tell your brother why we’re here?”
Meredith Wagner nodded and reached for her door handle.
“I’ll let you know when he’s ready,” she said.
She went and talked with Howell for a couple of minutes. They saw him abruptly turn toward their parked car, saw him look back at his sister and talk to her some more. Then she waved them over, waited for them to approach, and sort of drifted off along the tennis court’s painted white foul line. Giving them room for privacy, Thibodeau supposed, but remaining close enough to cut short their conversation if Howell became too upset.
“Mister Howell—” Thibodeau began.
“Rob’s fine.” He shook their hands. “Meredith says you work for Julia’s dad. Private security, is it?”
Peripherally aware of the dogs in their circular sprint around the court, Thibodeau nodded, gave him their names, told him how sorry they were for his loss, and explained that what they wanted to ask wouldn’t take long.
“We know you been through everything with the police, ain’t about to put you on that go ’round again,” he said.
Howell cast his sunken eyes down at the ground a moment. Then he raised them to Thibodeau’s face and shrugged. “It’s all right. If it can help you find Julia, I don’t mind.”
Ricci looked at him. “Julia,” he said, “and the people who took what they did from you.”
Howell turned his way.
“My daughter was only six months old,” he said.
Ricci remained tunneled on his eyes, noticing their glazed appearance. Tranquilizers. A CNS depressant. Probably lorazepam.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I got a call from him this morning, you know. The detective in charge. He didn’t want me to talk to anybody about what happened, mentioned you two in particular. In case you showed up at Merry’s.”
“He say why?”
“I guess just what you’d expect,” Howell said. “Something about how they don’t want their investigation compromised by outside parties.”
“You’re allowed to talk to whomever you want. Nothing legal they can do to stop you.”
“I figured that,” Howell said. “And if he’s right and we’re wrong, I can always claim not to remember his words.”
Ricci nodded a little.
“The medication,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Besides,” Ricci said. “We aren’t at Merry’s.”
A faint, desolate smile touched Howell’s lips, revealing little white flecks of dried saliva at their corners. He checked on the dogs with a glance over his shoulder, thrust his hands back into his pockets, and quietly bowed his head toward the synthetic grass again, his thoughts slipping into their own nebulous, faraway space.
“We were at the center before,” Ricci said. “The cops gave us a look around. Probably decided to phone you because I got on their nerves asking questions they didn’t want to answer.”
Howell brought up his head, slowly, working against the heavy resistance of the tranqs.
“What sort of questions?”
“There was blood on the floor of the shop,” Ricci said. “Near the door. The detective was ready to tell me it wasn’t Julia’s, but he wasn’t so ready to tell me the blood came from a dog that’d been shot.”
Howell nodded.
“Vivian,” he said.
“That be one of the rescues?” Thibodeau said.
Another nod.
“Julia favors her. The first day she came to work for me, I remember lecturing her about how our policy’s not to become too attached.” Howell gestured toward the whirling dogs behind him with a slight roll of his shoulder. “Being firm’s how I wound up with five of my own.”
Ricci looked at him. “With all the things the police shared with us, we have to wonder how come they kept quiet about the dog. Vivian.”
Howell’s mouth worked.
“Evidence,” he said after several moments. “She’s just evidence to them. It’s why they won’t let me anywhere near her. They call it a safeguard.”