Upholding the Paw Page 6

  Smokestack opened the glass door of the refrigerated cooler, grabbed three oversize bottles of beer, and handed one to the Switchman and the other to the Conductor. The Switchman would have preferred a different brand, but no sense engaging in a debate when he wanted to remain inconspicuous and move things along ASAP.

  The three headed toward the counter to pay for their beers, Smokestack leading the way. As they stepped up to the register, Smokestack stuck the top of the bottle into his mouth and used his teeth to twist off the cap. Certainly not what four out of five dentists would recommend. He spat the cap into his hand, tossed it into a nearby trash can, and proceeded to drain the entire bottle of beer right there at the counter.

  The clerk frowned, his eyes narrowing behind his lenses. “You can’t drink that here. Don’t you see the sign?” He pointed up to a white sign on the wall behind him that read IT IS A CRIME (MISDEMEANOR) TO CONSUME LIQUOR OR BEER ON THESE PREMISES.

  Smokestack raised his hands, his right one clutching the now-empty bottle. He let out a burbling beer-scented belch and said, “Sorry, man. I’m out of here.”

  As he headed toward the door, the clerk yelled, “Hey! You have to pay for that!”

  The Switchman quickly stepped up to the counter in an attempt at damage control. “I’ve got it.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket.

  Smokestack turned around at the exit, moving backward to push the door open with his back. “Get me a couple of hot dogs, too. With ketchup. And a bag of barbecue chips. And some Oreos.”

  Who did that jackass think he was? The king of England? Nonetheless, the Switchman grabbed a bag of chips and a package of cookies from a nearby display. He waited with forced patience while the clerk used metal tongs to fish two hot dogs off the rotisserie, dropped them into open buns in white paper containers, and retrieved a red squeeze bottle to draw a squiggly line of ketchup down the top of each steaming link.

  The clerk placed the hot dogs on the counter, rang up the purchases, and squinted at the cash register display for the total. “Nineteen eighty-three.”

  The Switchman handed the clerk a twenty, accepted his change, and even put the two pennies in the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny bowl on the counter. He turned and had made three steps toward the door when the clerk called after him.

  “Sir! You forgot your beer!”

  Agh! Way to be inconspicuous.

  He looked back to see the clerk holding up the beer, now wrapped in a small brown paper sack. He held it out to him, the paper crinkling with the movement.

  The Switchman fought the urge to run out the door and never look back. Instead, he took the beer from the man’s hand. “Thanks. I don’t know where my head is.”

  But he did know.

  It was up his butt.

  Had been since the moment he’d agreed to this stupid crime spree.

  Beers and food paid for, the Switchman and the Conductor hurried outside. Smokestack was nowhere to be seen. Dammit!

  The Conductor heaved a frustrated huff. “Where the hell did that imbecile go?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Schooled

  Megan

  As we climbed into my cruiser, Jackson’s cell phone rang with a call from the investigator from the fire department. She tapped the screen to accept the call and put the phone to her ear. “Whatcha got for us?”

  Us, huh? I was flattered she was treating me as an important part of the investigation team rather than merely a chauffer, bodyguard, and dog handler.

  She turned the mouthpiece upward so she could relay the information to me without speaking into the mic. “The video showed a guy in a frog hat setting the fire,” she whispered.

  The unusual hat confirmed my suspicions. The men who’d held up the bank were, in fact, the same ones who’d set the fire.

  Jackson swiveled the phone so that she could speak again with the investigator. “Can you send me the video clip?” She paused a moment. “Thanks.”

  We waited a few seconds until—ping!—the clip finished its voyage through cyberspace and arrived at her phone. We watched on the small screen as a small man in a dark hooded sweatshirt, sunglasses, and a knit hat with bulbous eyes on top trotted up to the Dumpster. He placed an old-fashioned metal gasoline can on the ground at his feet and proceeded to wad up page after page of newspaper and toss them into the bin. When he ran out of paper, he picked up the gas can, unscrewed the top, and sloshed the petroleum over the side of the Dumpster, tossing the can in after it.

  Darn. Any prints he’d left on the can would have been destroyed in the fire.

  Turning his back, he pulled down his jeans, mooned the camera with his pasty ass, and crooked his head to eye the lens while he flipped us the bird.

  Lovely.

  Thrown off kilter by the awkward stance, the idiot wobbled for a moment and attempted to spread his legs to regain his balance. With his pants around his knees, he had no luck. He fell to his side on the asphalt.

  Detective Jackson chuffed. “This doofus is the criminal mastermind who pulled off a bank heist?”

  We continued to watch as the man extracted a joint from a zipper pocket of his loose-fitting windbreaker and lit it with a plastic lighter. He smiled at the camera and took a long, deep puff, burning the joint down to a nub in a matter of seconds.

  “Chris Vogel might be a Boy Scout,” Jackson said, “but this moron sure isn’t.”

  “He does have an impressive lung capacity, though,” I noted.

  His toke complete, the guy tossed the smoking nub over his shoulder and into the open Dumpster. As a wall of flame shot up behind him, he dove to the trash-strewn asphalt. Evidently he hadn’t expected such an instant inferno. We watched as he pushed himself up on all fours and scuttled out of camera range.

  Although the video gave us a look at the guy and his chubby butt cheeks, it offered nothing to help us identify him. Was it too much to ask that his name and home address be tattooed on his ass?

  “Who do you want to visit first?” I asked the detective.

  “Scheck,” she replied.

  Had I been in charge, I would’ve made the same call. If Vogel was the nice guy everyone claimed he was, it was unlikely he’d team up with a pot-smoking, ass-waggling arsonist. Then again, people could be unpredictable. Especially people who’d suffered recent emotional trauma.

  We set off again, guided by the robotic female voice of my GPS system. Unfortunately, that voice was quickly drowned out by Brigit’s insistent woof-woof-woofs! The only way to shut the dog up would be to fill her mouth with food.

  Making a quick detour through a fast-food drive-thru, I bought Brigit two orders of chicken nuggets for lunch. Jackson ordered a burger, fries, and a soda. I’d make do with the tomato, avocado, and sprouts sandwich I’d packed this morning. It was hard enough maintaining a healthy weight when I spent most of the day sitting on my rear end in my cruiser. No sense exacerbating the problem with a poor diet.

  As I drove on, Jackson dropped the nuggets over the top rail of Brigit’s enclosure. “Here you go, doggie.”

  My partner greedily wolfed the nuggets down, smacking loudly behind us.

  A male dispatcher’s voice came over my shoulder-mounted radio. “Officer Luz?”

  I pushed the button. “Yes?”

  “Got some news for you and Detective Jackson. The chopper located the stolen bus.”

  I pressed the mic button again. “Where?”

  “Here.”

  Here? “What do you mean ‘here?’”

  The dispatcher came back. “Here here. At the W1 Division. The thing’s sitting out there in broad daylight in the parking lot.”

  Ditching a stolen vehicle at a police station? That takes some nerve.

  Jackson grabbed the mic from my dash and spoke into it. “Call crime scene and get a team of techs on it,” she instructed the dispatcher. “We’ll be right there.”

  She returned the mic to the dash. “Let’s see if that bus will tell us anything.”

  I dr
ove to the station and pulled up next to the bus, which had been left right next to my blue Smart Car. The door had been left open. The driver would have had to touch the lever to open the door. Chances were he’d left no prints, though. They robbers had been smart enough to wear gloves to the bank and it was likely they’d been smart enough to keep them on.

  Detective Jackson made a quick trip into the station for latex gloves and paper booties. After we were properly attired so as not to contaminate the crime scene, we boarded the bus. In the first row of seats we found the thieves’ discarded hats and a rumpled navy blue hoodie, as well as two windbreakers, one medium size and one large. The medium-size jacket was black with a small San Antonio Spurs emblem on the front breast pocket and a bigger team logo on the back. The sports motif explained why one of the witnesses had thought the men were wearing jerseys.

  Jackson held the blue hoodie out to me. “Take a whiff of this.”

  I leaned in and sniffed. Sure enough, the jacket smelled like smoke, with undertones of gasoline and weed. “I can see how Serena picked up on the smell.”

  “Odd that Grant didn’t mention it,” Jackson said, arching a brow.

  “Maybe he couldn’t detect the scent over all that cologne he was wearing.”

  “Or maybe the three robbers were friends of his and he didn’t want to offer us any information that might help us identify them.”

  It was possible. With any luck, we’d soon find some clues that would point clearly to one suspect or another.

  We searched through the pockets of the jackets and checked the tags on the jackets and hats for any names or initials that might have been written on them. Unfortunately, we found nothing that would lead us immediately to the men. I did, however, find something interesting in the right pocket of the hoodie. A funnel-shape piece of black plastic. My first thought was that it was some type of eyepiece, like one that might belong on a telescope, but on closer examination I saw no lens in either end. I held it out to the detective. “What’s this? A mouthpiece for a crack pipe?”

  Jackson took the unidentified object and held it in front of her face, turning it this way and that as she squinted at it. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t see any drug residue on it. Could it be part of a toy gun?”

  “I suppose it’s possible.” After all, robbers were sometimes known to use toy guns in holdups. Panicked victims didn’t generally take a close look at the weapons.

  “Whatever it is,” Jackson concluded, “I bet it’s what the robber used to make Dawson and Serena think he had a handgun in his pocket.” She placed it in her palm and held it out. “Snap a photo. This could be a clue.”

  I pulled out my cell phone and took an up-close snapshot of the plastic funnel thingy.

  We searched the rest of the bus, but found no sunglasses. No mittens or gloves, either. Looked like our targets still had those items in their possession.

  As we exited the bus, a crime scene van pulled up next to it. Two male techs emerged.

  “Check the steering wheel and door lever for prints,” Jackson said. She held up the plastic piece. “But see what you can get from this first. It belongs to one of the men we’re looking for.”

  One of the techs whipped out a small plastic evidence bag and held it open while Jackson dropped the funnel-shape thing into it. “We’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got anything,” he told her.

  We thanked the men and returned to my patrol car. In ten minutes, we pulled up in front of Arthur Scheck’s home, the left side of a long-neglected duplex. The yellow paint had faded to a dull, urine color and at least half of the evergreen bushes in front of the place failed to live up to their names, instead sporting dead, reddish-brown needles.

  I left Brigit in the cruiser with the windows cracked and followed Detective Jackson up the sidewalk to the front porch. The curtains were open on the window that flanked the porch, giving us a bead on a television tuned to an episode of Pawn Stars. The open blinds also meant anyone who’d been in the room would have seen us pull up to the curb. I only hoped there weren’t three men crouched below the window ready to open fire on us.

  While I kept my fingers near the gun at my waist and my eyes on the window, Jackson raised a hand and rapped forcefully on the front door. Rap-rap-rap-rap.

  A few seconds later, a woman dressed in a wrinkled pink nightshirt emerged from a hallway and lurched into the living room. Judging from the wild mess of coppery hair on her head, her droopy face, and her haphazard gait, we’d woken her from a nap. She stopped for a second or two when she saw me watching her through the window, her expression puzzled. She continued on to the door, and we heard the sounds of her fighting the deadbolt. “Give me a second!” she called through the door. “This lock is stubborn.”

  We turned ourselves sideways on either side of the doorframe, making ourselves smaller targets just in case the woman was pulling a fast one. There was a thud as she apparently threw herself against the door on the other side, then a shlick as the bolt slid aside. She opened the door wide and kept one hand on it while resting the other on the frame. “Hello,” she croaked, following her words with a throat-clearing cough.

  “We’re looking for Arthur Scheck,” the detective said.

  The woman glanced over at a mantle clock on the fireplace: 2:07. “You just missed him. He leaves for work at one thirty. What’s this about?”

  “Who are you?” Jackson asked, ignoring the woman’s question.

  “His wife,” the woman said.

  Jackson’s eyes roamed over the living room. “Anybody else live here with you two?”

  “No. Only me and Arthur.”

  “You look like you were sleeping.” I pointed to the television. “Why is the TV on if you were in bed and your husband’s not home?” Could it be that she was lying to us and he was actually hiding somewhere in the house?

  “For safety reasons,” she said. “I work nights and sleep during the day. We keep the television on so it sounds like someone’s home.”

  Her explanation sounded reasonable. She’d also offered it without hesitation, a sign that it was the truth.

  “Where does Arthur work?” Jackson asked.

  “He’s a bus driver for the Fort Worth school district.”

  That explained the commercial driver’s license.

  I chimed in again. “When did you go to sleep?”

  She raised a shoulder. “’Bout seven this morning.’”

  “Have you been asleep since then?”

  “I was asleep until you knocked on the door,” she said, impatience creeping into her voice now.

  Jackson picked up my line of questioning. “So you can’t verify for certain whether your husband was actually here during the morning hours and whether he just left for work.”

  The woman crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. Rather than respond to Jackson’s statement directly, she asked, “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” the detective replied.

  Scheck’s wife sighed. “He’s out on his route by now, and he’s not allowed to use his cell phone while he’s driving the kids. Best I can tell you is to call the school bus depot. They can get in touch with him by radio.”

  I jotted down the number for the depot as she rattled it off.

  “One last question,” Jackson said, gesturing for me to pull out my phone. “Do you know what this is?”

  I pulled up the pic of the plastic funnel-shape piece and held it at eye level for Mrs. Scheck.

  She stared at the screen for a moment, but there was no flicker of recognition. She raised a shoulder. “Is it a mouthpiece for some type of musical instrument? Maybe a trumpet?”

  Given the flimsy plastic material, I doubted it was substantial enough for a real instrument. But I supposed it could belong on a toy. Could the robbers have young children?

  We thanked the woman for her time and returned to my cruiser. While Jackson called the school district’s bus depot, I let Brigit out of
the car to relieve herself and gave her a fresh drink of water. “There you go, partner.”

  Once we were back in our places, Jackson turned to me. “He’s already out on his route, but his supervisor gave me a list of the stops. We should be able to catch him.”

  She directed me to drive to the Ryan Place neighborhood, where we parked and waited at a corner. Brigit stood in her enclosure in the back, watching out the window as two frisky squirrels chased each other round a yard and up a tree. She gave a soft whine.

  “Sorry, Brig,” I told her. “No squirrels for you today.” Or any day for that matter. I knew the dog had predatory instincts, but that didn’t mean I had to let her terrorize innocent squirrels.

  A few minutes later, a big yellow school bus lumbered around a corner a couple blocks down and headed our way.

  Jackson put her hand on the inside door handle. “Let’s roll.”

  I climbed out of the car and followed her. The two of us stood waiting to the side as the bus pulled to a stop, the air brakes giving off a loud hiss. The tall door swung open with a squeak and five high school kids climbed off. Before Scheck could close the door, Detective Jackson put a foot on the bottom step and looked up at the driver. “Come on out here a moment, Mr. Scheck.” She waved him down with her hand.

  A moment later a man in his early thirties climbed down the steps and onto the curb. He wore rubber-soled loafers, khaki pants worn thin from numerous washings, and a faded green button-down shirt. The button on the left side of the collar was chipped. His brown hair was cut short and his face was clean shaven. Despite the bright sunshine, he wore no sunglasses. Hmm …

  Dozens of pimpled faces pressed to the bus windows as Scheck looked from the detective to me and back again. “What’s this about?”

  “We have a few questions for you,” Jackson asked. “Can you tell me where you’ve been today?”