Authors: Donna Ball
Ginny gave a little snort of amusement as she set a bar on the ground between two
stanchions at the number six cone. “Doesn’t surprise me a bit. She’s a lawyer, and
she’s probably got Neil tied up six ways from Sunday. He’ll be lucky if he walks away
from this with his shirt. She probably only got together with Neil in the first place
for his training skills.” She grinned and offered, before I could ask, “She’s president
of the agility club, so naturally it’s all been a big scandal. Everyone’s gossiping.”
“Well,” I said, “the season’s just started. There’s plenty of time for Flame to get
her MACH.”
“Not if they want to qualify for the Standard Cup,” Ginny said. “Entries have to be
in by May first. And there isn’t another sanctioned trial in the region before then.”
“Wow,” I said. “I hope he’s able to run tomorrow, then.”
And that was when I remembered something odd. When Neil had first gotten up from his
fall, he favored his right leg. But when he walked away from me just now, he favored
his left.
Odd.
* * *
I was feeling pretty confident about the course. There was only one tricky part requiring
a front cross between the tire jump and the A-frame, but my nemesis and Cisco’s, the
dog walk, was the first obstacle, and I knew if we could get that out of the way we’d
be okay. I’d checked the schedule, and we were in the first group. This was good news
and bad news. The good news was that the course would still be fresh in my mind and
there’d be no time for nerves to build up in me or boredom to build up in Cisco. The
bad news was there would be very little time for warming up.
It was a big group, and the judge’s last group of the morning, so she didn’t waste
any time as she called us all in for the briefing. In the novice classes the judges
usually go out of their way to be welcoming and friendly, but as you move up through
the levels they figure you don’t need quite as much encouragement to stay in the game.
They do, however, generally take a moment to welcome the competitors at the beginning
and wish them luck at the end. This one did neither. She informed us tersely of the
set course time, reminded us to be on deck when the dog ahead of us reached the broad
jump, and told us that a sit, not a down, would be required on the pause table. She
gave us six minutes to walk the course— not five, not ten—and that was it. We were
a pretty frantic group trotting around the obstacles, waving our arms and muttering
to ourselves, plotting out our strategies in our heads. I was happier than ever to
have
had
the extra time in the ring that setting up the course allowed me.
I took Cisco for a quick potty walk, turned my pockets inside out—a superstitious
habit I have, just to make sure I don’t accidently walk into the ring with liver treats
or a training clicker in my pocket—blew a kiss to Miles, and got into line with the
other dogs in my jump height. I have another superstition, which involves a few quiet
moments with Cisco before a run, visualizing the course in my head and whispering
the commands out loud to Cisco. My friend Sonny, who claims to be an animal communicator
of sorts, says when I do this Cisco actually memorizes the course. Given the number
of off-course faults he generally racks up, this seems unlikely. But any sports psychologist
will tell you the most powerful way to improve your game is to visualize a perfect
run, and saying the commands out loud not only helps me remember them in order, but
hopefully puts Cisco in training mode. This time, however, my hope was moot. Cisco
had eyes for no one but Brinkley, who was two dogs ahead of us in line, and even I
had to laugh when Brinkley began his run and Cisco barked every time he made a jump,
just as though he was cheering him on.
I’d been working on Cisco’s start-line stay all winter and it was the one thing of
which I was fairly confident—particularly now that Brinkley was safely out of sight
and no one else with whom Cisco would rather be was there to distract him. Being able
to leave your dog at the start line and meet him somewhere along the course is a huge
advantage when you have a fast dog who operates on visual cues, because no two-legged
human can hope to keep up with a four-legged dog, and it was vital Cisco be able to
see me at all times. I tossed his leash to the gate steward and put him in a sit facing
the first obstacle. His brown-eyed gaze was focused alertly on me as I strode toward
the elevated bridge of the dog walk, pas
t
it, and turned to face him. With every step I repeated,
Stay, stay, stay
… in my head. My spirits soared when I turned and saw he was still where I left him.
Already, the taste of victory was sweet on my tongue. Our first run of the season
was going to be a winner, I could feel it.
But this was the tricky part. I raised my hand to cue him to readiness, but before
I could even draw a breath, he took off like a shot toward the dog walk, leaving me
scrambling to catch up. I hate it when that happens.
Of course, a less sanguine handler would be completely thrown by something like that,
but the advantage of having tried—and failed—so many times for a clean run was that
I was prepared for the fact that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong. I dived
for the dog walk and met Cisco there as he raced across the top plank, guiding him
with my shoulder, calling, “Easy! Easy!” as he began his descent. And, yes!—all four
paws in the yellow contact zone—and I shouted, “Over!” as he tore off toward a series
of ninety-degree jumps. I did a rear cross at the tunnel, because Cisco had knocked
me off my feet too many times barreling out of the tunnel when I tried to meet him
in front. I cut behind him toward the tire, and when he was three quarters of the
way through the tunnel, I called, “Tire!” He turned toward the sound of my voice when
he emerged and sailed through the tire like a dolphin through a hoop. Am I good or
what?
The pause table was the third obstacle from the end, which is kind of a mean trick.
The dog is flying high on adrenaline—not to mention the handler—when suddenly he’s
required to come to a screeching halt on the table, sit perfectly still for five seconds,
and then take off like lightning again on cue. For a dog like Cisco, whose impulse
control is not exactly legendary and whose attention span is often measured in microseconds,
this can be risky business, to say the least. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him.
I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move a muscle as I focused on the countdown:
Four, three
…
And then I heard a familiar bark from outside the ring. Cisco’s ears went up; his
head swiveled toward Brinkley.
No, no, no
…
“Two, go!” called the counter, and before the “o” in “go” died, I shouted, “Here!”
The trick to winning at agility is to outthink your dog. It takes a dog about two
seconds to process a verbal command— which is actually faster than it takes a human—so
if he’s running at 2.25 yards per second, you have to give the command for the obstacle
at least five yards before he has to set his course toward it. This means you often
have to give the commands faster than your dog can run. Sometimes that’s possible;
sometimes it’s not. Either way, it all happens in a blur.
The last two obstacles were straight-line jumps leading to the finish line, a piece
of cake except for the fact that the jumps were positioned behind the table. “Here”
was the one word I knew with a fair amount of certainty that Cisco would respond to,
even with the temptation of his best friend’s bark to distract him, so I called, “Here!”
and, “Over!” in the same breath. Cisco sprang off the table, racing toward me like
a jet rocket, just as I spun around to direct him toward the jumps. One of us miscalculated.
He barreled into me full speed, cracking his forehead against my nose before bouncing
off. I saw stars. Blood sprayed the sand, and I went down like the proverbial sack
of lead.
~*~
FOUR
Twenty-two hours before the shooting
B
uck got tied up on a call with one of the commissioners, and he had a conference call
with the state police at two. Just before three o’clock, Rosie brought in the schedule
of court appearances and a stack of forms for him to initial, which he did without
glancing at them. “Did you find the file on that Berman fellow?”
“It was in the basement, from 1993 when the case was closed, before we started putting
everything on the computer. You know, if you could get the commissioners to authorize
just two clerks, we could start scanning some of that stuff in.”
“Yeah, that and other dreams.” He scrawled his last “BL” and glanced up at her. “Well?
Where is it?”
“The sheriff—that is, Mr. Bleckley took it with him.”
He stared at her. “He did what?’
“That’s what you wanted it for, isn’t it? I mean, I didn’t think to ask… I just figured…”
Buck bit down hard on his temper. His back teeth ached with the effort. He pushed
up abruptly from the desk and strode toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Lunch.”
“But it’s almost three o’clock!”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Buck…” She sounded worried. “Did I do something wrong?”
He sucked in a breath as he looked back at her and then compressed his lips tightly
against the words that wanted to be blurted. In the end all he said was a terse, “Next
time, ask.” And, because she was still in the room, he didn’t even get the satisfaction
of slamming the door on his way out.
Buck had always found that it took less energy to let his anger go than to hold on
to it, and if he got mad about everything that went wrong in this office, he wouldn’t
have time to do anything but get mad. By the time he walked the three blocks to Meg’s
Diner, he’d calmed considerably. Roe’s SUV was parked in front, just as he figured
it would be, which saved him a trip out to the country.
This late in the day Meg wasn’t officially serving, but she looked up from wiping
the counter when he came in and called, “Afternoon, Buck. Don’t tell me you’re just
now getting around to lunch.”
“I’m afraid so, Meg. What’ve you got left over for a poor starving lawman?”
The place was nearly empty. John Williams, from the bank, was chatting over coffee
with Preacher Barton, and a couple of women at a window table lingered over pie. Roe
was in a booth, and he looked up, unsurprised, when Buck came in.
“How about I whip you up a club sandwich and a fresh batch of fries?” Meg offered.
“I’ve got some blueberry pie, too.”
“Meg, I swear, I’m going to marry you some day.”
Meg, who was easily twice his age, winked at him and replied, “I’m not going to wait
forever, you handsome thing,” as she disappeared into the kitchen. Buck made his way
over to Roe, stopping to speak to John and the preacher and nodding pleasantly toward
the women at the window table. They smiled back at him.
He slid into the booth opposite Roe. “You know you can go to jail for stealing official
government documents.”
Roe leaned back against the seat with a small frown. He closed the file and pushed
it toward Buck. “I just wanted to see if it made any more sense now than it did back
then.”
Buck turned a couple of pages. “Looks pretty straightforward to me. Felony murder,
pled to second degree, thirty years, served twenty. No ballistics?”
Roe shook his head. “We never found the bullet.”
“Two eyewitnesses.”
“Yeah.”
They both knew that in the case of violent crimes eyewitness reports could be among
the least reliable evidence of all.
Buck glanced through the reports submitted by the arresting officer in Georgia and
flipped over to the suspect’s statement. Halfway through, he smothered a mirthless
snort of laughter. “If I was going to try to alibi out, I believe I’d come up with
something better than I was on my way home from selling crack to Smokey Beardsley
at the time of the robbery.” He glanced up at Roe. “Checked out, did it?”
Roe rubbed his nose, his lips quirking dryly. “About like you’d expect. Keep reading.”
Meg placed a mug of coffee in front of Buck and topped off Roe’s from the pot she
carried. Buck thanked her and she said, “It’ll just be another minute on those fries,
hon.” The room had already begun to fill with the aroma of hot grease.
Meg went back to the kitchen, calling good-bye to the two ladies as the bell over
the door announced their departure. Buck read on, paused, and read it again. He glanced
at Roe. “Hit and run, huh? Did an accident report ever come in?”
The other man shook his head. “He says it was just a fender bender, no injuries. Maybe
no damage. The other party might not have wanted to turn it in
to their insurance, or might not have wanted it on their record for whatever reason.
Could have been some kid in daddy’s car…” He shrugged. “Lots of reasons.”
“So he drove up from Georgia about five o’clock that afternoon, stopped at the Cash-n-Carry
for gas and kept the receipt, spent an hour or two visiting his good buddy Smokey,
and was sixty miles away, sideswiping a green sedan, by
nine
-o’clock, when the robbery happened. No ideas on the other driver?”