Bending the Paw Read online

  “Where are you going?” Frankie called. “We were hoping you and Seth might want to hang out and watch a movie with us.”

  “Detective Jackson called me and Brigit in.”

  “Say no more,” she said, waving us off. She knew time was of the essence if Brigit and I had been summoned when we were supposed to be off duty. “We’ll catch up later.”

  By then, I’d have even more than my engagement to catch her up on, though girl talk and a grisly crime would make an odd combination of topics. I could only wonder what, exactly, I’d have to tell her about the investigation Detective Jackson had summoned me to. The term “grisly” could cover a lot of ground. Smashed skulls. Gaping exit wounds. Severed limbs. Eek. Every cell in my body squirmed at that last thought.

  My furry partner and I headed off, and a mere five minutes later we turned onto May Street, the siren silent on our cruiser but the lights flashing. Like many of the neighborhoods in my south-central beat, the area comprised a mix of older houses in need of work, charming renovated homes, and new construction built on the proverbial gravesites of older residences that had been neglected too long to be economically updated and instead had been razed. Though it was too dark for me to easily read the house numbers, I didn’t need to look at the address I’d jotted down to tell which house Detective Jackson had called from. The yard was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. A Hyundai Kona SUV sat in the driveway beside a red Ford Fusion sedan. A Fort Worth PD cruiser, Detective Jackson’s unmarked sedan, and a crime scene van were parked at the curb.

  After making a U-turn at the next intersection, I eased my squad car into the lineup, retrieved Brigit from the back, and attached her lead. As I turned my attention to the house and my eyes adjusted to the limited outdoor lighting, I could see the place was one of the renovated structures, a single-story house sporting a coat of paint that bordered the line between yellow and green, like the inside of a not-quite-ripe avocado. While the trim bore classic white paint, the door was painted an attractive, contrasting bright red.

  My former partner, Derek “The Big Dick” Mackey, stood on the sidewalk just outside the cordon tape, a clipboard in his hand. Looked like he’d been assigned the task of maintaining the scene, documenting those who moved in and out of the perimeter. Derek had red hair, bulging muscles, and big cojones, at least in the metaphorical sense. I had no idea how big his boys were in actuality, and I had no interest in finding out. Once upon a time, I’d used my Taser to send a well-deserved jolt of electricity to his groin region. The lewd bastard had made one crude joke too many and I’d lost my cool. Luckily for me, while my use of my Taser on my partner was grounds for dismissal, so was Derek’s unprofessional language. Derek was buddy-buddy with the chief, and the chief didn’t want to see his golden boy lose his job, so he’d had no choice but to let my offense slide, too. He’d reassigned me to work with Brigit. Though I’d resisted at first, sure the dog would be a burden, I’d soon learned she was the best partner an officer could ask for. She was hardworking and incredibly intelligent. While she was a sweet pet off the job, on duty she could summon her inner wolf to convince a suspect to quickly surrender. She’d saved me time, energy, and even my life.

  Derek scoffed and smirked. “Well, well,” he said, his breath creating a fog in the cold night air. “If it isn’t the hairy bitch and her dog.”

  Thanks to a recent waxing at the salon, I was only as hairy as I was supposed to be and, frankly, being called a bitch by The Big Dick was an indirect compliment. It meant he considered me formidable. I didn’t bother to greet him, just gestured for him to hand me the clipboard so I could sign myself and Brigit in.

  “It’s a bloodbath in there,” he said. “Someone must’ve got their throat slit from ear to ear. Probably looked like a Pez candy dispenser when it was all over.” He ran his index finger across his throat and threw his head back, imitating the device.

  Though his creepy description caused fresh dread to slither up my spine, I ignored him once more. He was trying to psych me out. Jerk. Besides, from the way he’d phrased things, it sounded like he hadn’t got a good look at the victim or victims. Rather than the usual blue paper booties made to prevent officers from contaminating a crime scene, Derek handed me a white pair made of heavy-duty impermeable Tyvek intended to protect the wearer from biohazards. Not a good sign.

  I slid the booties on over my tactical shoes and wagged my fingers. “Give me four for Brigit.”

  Derek handed me four more booties. I slid them over Brigit’s paws, securing them with short stretches of cordon tape I laced around the tops. When I finished, the dog resembled an Old West saloon girl wearing thigh-high stockings. She didn’t seem to like the feel, and lifted her paws up and down in an awkward prance, but at least she didn’t use her teeth to try to pull them off. I lifted the cordon tape and ducked under it, leading my partner along with me.

  As Brigit and I approached the house, Detective Jackson opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch to brief me. She wore a navy pantsuit paired with a cream-colored turtleneck, professional yet utilitarian attire. Her usual perky braids were gone tonight, her hair instead left natural, framing her face in loose black curls. As one of the few female detectives in the department, she served as a role model for me. She was also a mentor, having pulled me into earlier investigations once she learned that I hoped to become a detective one day and she realized how determined and hardworking I was.

  While my eyes went straight to a small, jagged crack in the front window-pane, her eyes apparently went straight to my ring. “You’re engaged,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  Leave it to the eagle-eyed detective to notice. I shifted my gaze to meet hers. “As of an hour ago.”

  “Then I should apologize for my timing.”

  “Not necessary.” After all, she was not the one who chose tonight to commit a heinous crime.

  “It’s ugly in there,” she warned, getting down to business and giving me a pointed look that told me to prepare myself. “Blood everywhere. Try not to step in it.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and squeaked, “How many victims are there and how do they look?” Knowing what to expect would make it would be easier to cope when I saw the body or bodies.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Huh? “I don’t understand.”

  “The amount of blood tells me it must have come from more than one person. But as for victims? Whoever they were, they’re gone now.”

  “Gone?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no bodies. A married couple lives here, Shelby and Greg Olsen. The wife came home from having dinner and drinks with her single coworkers and found the kitchen covered in blood. Her husband’s cell phone and wallet were lying on the floor. Both he and his car are missing. It’s an older-model Volkswagen Jetta. No OnStar service. They bought it used for cash.”

  In other words, there was no tracking device placed in the car by a lender intent on monitoring the location of its collateral, no immediate way to locate the car.

  Jackson exhaled sharply. “I’ve sent out an alert to all departments in North Texas to be on the lookout for the vehicle. With any luck, someone will spot it.”

  It seemed odd a married couple wouldn’t spend Valentine’s Day together. A happily married couple, anyway. Could the two have been having problems? Often, when a person was killed, especially in their own home, the culprit was the spouse or another family member who resided with them. “The couple didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day together?”

  “No,” Jackson said. “Mr. Olsen is an assistant manager at a movie theater. Since Valentine’s is a big date night, he had to work this evening. That’s why Shelby went out without him. He texted her an hour ago to let her know he was heading home. That’s the last she heard from him. Shelby’s coworker, Regina, followed her home. Regina was going to pet sit while the Olsens took a trip to Fredericksburg this weekend.”

  Fredericksburg was a q
uaint town in the Texas hill country, known for its scenery, wineries, and charming bed-and-breakfast accommodations. The town would provide the perfect romantic getaway for a couple who’d been forced to postpone their Valentine’s Day celebration.

  The detective went on. “Shelby was going to introduce Regina to the dog tonight and show her what to do. But when they came inside, they found the kitchen covered in blood.”

  “So Mrs. Olsen was with other people all day?”

  “She says she arrived at the office around eight thirty, ate her lunch in the break room, and was with coworkers from the time she left work until now. Regina is still in there with her.”

  “Could it be a burglary gone awry?” Burglars sometimes became killers when they were caught in the act and panicked.

  “Again,” Jackson said, “your guess is as good as mine. The only things Shelby has noticed missing are her husband’s green winter coat and her own purple hat and scarf. They were all hanging on a coat rack inside. My guess is the attackers might have taken them to cover up the fact that their clothes were covered in blood. Shelby says Greg often makes the cash deposits for the movie theater. I spoke by phone with the other manager on duty tonight. He confirmed Greg made a deposit of around twelve-hundred dollars late this afternoon. It’s possible Greg was targeted because he has access to the theater’s safe. Shelby said he mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he thought he might have been followed from the theater to the bank, but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t give her any details about the car or who was in it. The other manager working tonight said Greg mentioned the incident to the general manager, too, but said only that it was a silver or gray vehicle. He didn’t get the make or model, or a good look at who was inside.”

  “You think whoever came here planned to force Greg back to the theater after it closed to swipe the cash?”

  “Exactly. Of course it’s just a theory at this point. Greg has no history of violence. For now, we’re operating on the assumption that he was the victim, not the perpetrator. We’ll have to run labs on the blood to know for sure. We’ve got officers stationed inside the theater in case anyone shows up to rob the place, but if that was the original plan my guess is they won’t go through with it. Anyone with a half a brain would realize that we’d be on to them.”

  True. But a lot of criminals were like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. No brain at all. At this point, it seemed the only thing that we could conclude for certain was that Mrs. Olsen didn’t kill her husband. Not herself, anyway. There was always the chance she’d hired someone to do it, or that someone with an interest in seeing Mr. Olsen meet his maker had taken it upon themselves to do the dirty deed.

  Jackson went on. “We need to figure out what happened in there, where whoever was in that kitchen went after they left the house.”

  That was the detective’s cue for us to go inside and see if we could trail from the crime scene to the escape route. Of course, by “us” I really meant Brigit. Her nose was an incredible tool. I was merely along for the ride, to interpret her signals and make sure she didn’t inadvertently follow a trail across a busy street or into a dangerous situation. Yep, while I was referred to as her handler, I was really more of her sidekick and caretaker.

  Detective Jackson turned to open the door, and I held tight to Brigit’s leash, keeping her close by my side. We followed the detective into a boxy foyer. A wide, open doorway sat to the left. A temporary plastic curtain had been affixed to the doorway to shield the room from view. The curtain swung forward slightly as we closed the front door, creating a gap that gave me a glimpse into the living room before it fell back into place. A heavy brass coat tree had fallen over onto the floor, one of its hooks causing the break I’d seen in the front window. Beyond the coat tree, a crime scene technician crouched with a flashlight to search for evidence on the floor, which was hardwood and dotted with faint, bloody paw prints.

  Jackson motioned for me to follow her down the hallway to the right, which led to the bedrooms. As was routine procedure, she’d moved witnesses out of the primary crime scene to prevent them from further contaminating the evidence.

  The door to the first bedroom was open. A number of cardboard boxes were stacked in the back corner, all of them marked with the words GUEST ROOM. The bedroom was spare and unadorned, the only furniture a queen-sized bed covered by a colorful crocheted afghan and a short, empty bookcase. A full-figured, thirtyish Latina sat on the edge of the bed. I took her to be Regina. Her arm was draped over the shoulders of a tall, willowy woman with silky-straight strawberry blond hair. The woman’s face was blotchy and tear-stained, much like Gabby’s had been only minutes before. I pegged her as Shelby Olsen. Shelby looked to be in her late thirties, slightly older than her coworker. She wore black heels with a black pencil skirt and a fitted pink sweater, stylish office attire. She clutched both her cell phone and a French bulldog, and stared down at the floor in front of her as if in a daze. When the dog spotted Brigit, she wagged her tail, raised her smushed snout, and issued a friendly greeting: Yip-yip!

  Brigit, who’d been trained to ignore such distractions when on duty, cast a quick glance the dog’s way, offered one side-to-side swish of her tail so as not to be rude, and looked up at me, awaiting instruction. Shelby Olsen looked up at me, too, her blue eyes wide with worry.

  Detective Jackson stepped over to the woman and gave a quick introduction. “Mrs. Olsen, this is Officer Megan Luz and her K-9 Brigit. They’re going to see if they can trail from the kitchen and determine where whoever was in there went next. Okay?”

  Shelby nodded. I didn’t bother with a direct greeting and neither did she. There was no need for formalities in this horrific situation, and the sooner Brigit and I got to work, the sooner Detective Jackson could figure out what had happened here.

  The detective escorted me back down the hall and past the curtain, where she gestured to another wide doorway at the rear of the living room. Through it, I could see into the nicely renovated kitchen. The countertops were white quartz with gray-blue streaks running through them, the backsplash was a busy blue-and-gray mosaic tile, and the floors were durable vinyl plank in pale gray arranged in a herringbone pattern. But the stylish remodel job was overshadowed by the fact that every single surface seemed to sport splashes, puddles, or pools of blood.

  Shortening Brigit’s leash to keep her right by my side, I led her through the living room. The Olsens had an inordinate number of framed photographs on their walls and bookshelves, their smiling faces amid ever-changing backdrops evidencing many happy times spent together in a variety of vacation locales. They’d posed in front of the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago, commonly known as “The Bean.” In front of the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. At the rim of the Grand Canyon. While Shelby’s straight, strawberry-blonde hair gave her a distinctive look, her husband had no especially distinguishing features. Average height, average build, average looking with a clean-shaven face and medium brown hair. By all appearances, the two were living the happily-ever-after every couple hopes for. Shelby was already distraught, but I could only imagine the inconsolable grief she’d feel once this initial shock wore off. Seth and I had only just become engaged, but already I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I didn’t even want to think how I’d feel if he’d been senselessly and violently taken from me.

  I continued to the kitchen threshold and stopped to take a closer look. Up close like this, I could see the term “bloodbath” had been an understatement. My leg bones seemed to melt as I took in the image, and I had to put an arm on the door jamb to support myself.

  The room looked like a lesson in forensics, displaying every type of bloodstain pattern possible. Impact angles with spear-shaped ends and tails that showed the direction in which the blood was traveling at the moment of impact. Cast-off patterns with round spots becoming increasingly oval-shaped as they traveled in a line, showing where blood was cast off from a swinging object, in this case most likely a sharp ins
trument used to stab Greg Olsen. Contact patterns where a bloody object, such as a shoe, came in contact with an otherwise unstained surface. A dotted line of blood drops marking the path a bleeding person or an object dripping blood took across a room. The most disturbing pattern however, was the one on the far wall near the table. The large volume of blood surrounded by flow patterns, radial spikes, and droplets indicated a high-pressure arterial spurt, very likely from a slit throat. The thought brought my hand reflexively to my neck as I swallowed hard, not wanting to imagine what it was like to suffer such an injury.

  The blood displayed various degrees of viscosity. Some of the thin spatter on the walls, refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher had dried completely. Other spots on flat surfaces had dried around the edges, but remained wet in the center, forming miniature domes due to surface tension. The various puddles and patterns were designated with numbered plastic evidence markers, thirty-seven in all. Given the volume of blood, I reached the same conclusion Jackson had, that the blood must have come from more than one source.

  A cell phone lay in one of the puddles, its screen shattered. Beside it lay an open wallet. The corners of a couple of one-dollar bills peeked out from the cash compartment. Two plastic cards were nestled into the card slots. The face of a smiling but otherwise unremarkable man with brown hair peered out from a driver’s license tucked behind the clear plastic window. His eyes seemed to lock on mine. My stomach squirmed as if trying to hide behind another organ and my vertebrae turned from bone into ice cubes.