twenty

“What do you mean dead?” I heard a sudden ringing in my ears and felt as if my head might explode. It can’t be happening again, can it? I closed my eyes and tried to shake some clarity into my brain. My first half-century was completely murder free, at least among people I knew, but in the previous six months I had been close to several violent deaths. It can stop now.

“Janet, are you okay?” Tom put his hand on my shoulder. “I think you need to sit down.”

“No, no, I’m fine.” I opened my eyes and looked at him, and my recent first-aid training kicked in. I stepped around Tom and crawled into the tunnel to see for myself.

Rasmussen was in there, all right. One arm stretched toward me, as if he had collapsed mid-crawl. Dark brown paw prints trailed along the vinyl floor from his head toward me, and a voice in my head whispered blood. The dogs who had made it through the tunnel had stepped in the man’s blood. My stomach heaved. I had learned a bit about crime scenes over the previous few months, and I tried not to touch the paw prints as I crept closer to Rasmussen. Maybe he had an accident, murmured a hopeful voice in my head, but as I closed in on the body, I knew that this was no accident. Besides, how the heck did he end up dead in the middle of a twenty-foot agility tunnel?

My instinct was to back out of that tunnel as quickly as possible, but another voice said you have to make sure he’s dead. As soon as I thought it, the macabre double meaning of the words hit me. I hadn’t wished violence on him, but I still didn’t like the man, and Janet demon urged, yeah, Janet, make sure he’s dead. I couldn’t keep myself from laughing even as I fought down nausea at the horror of it all. Reflex, I thought, trying to assure myself that I retained a morsel of compassion even for Rasmussen. Just a self-protective reflex.

My hand shook and my gag reflex continued to operate as I reached out to check for a pulse. Rasmussen’s head was covered in blood that appeared to have sprung from several gashes in the back of his head and his temple. Something about the shape of his skull looked odd, like the side of his face wasn’t right. It was hard to tell in the light of the tunnel, filtered as it was through red vinyl. I withdrew my hand and slid my sleeves as far up my forearm as I could, then reached again and pressed my fingers up under his jaw. His skin was cool, and no life beat beneath the surface.

I backed out, stood up, and said, “Dead.” I took four steps backward and sank to the ground.

Tom knelt and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Janet?”

“How can this be?”

“Do you want some water?”

“No, I’m fine.” I’m not fine at all. “Tom, how … Again?”

Marietta Santini stepped in close to us. “Are you sure he’s dead?” she asked, and I nodded. “Oh my God.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, and as she punched in a number, she windmilled her other arm at the judge.

He slapped his thigh with his clipboard and glanced at his watch. “We’re already twenty minutes behind schedule,” he shouted. “Come on, let’s get rolling.” Marietta just kept gesturing for him to come on over as she spoke into her phone. He looked again at his watch, shoved his pencil behind his ear, and stalked across the course to join us beside the tunnel. Once he was informed, he wanted to tell the exhibitors, who were now clustered here and there around the ring trying to figure out what was going on.

“I don’t think we should say anything except that there will be a delay,” I said. “Not until the police get here.”

The judge glared at me. He had gone from annoyed to supremely annoyed, as if we had planned a death on course to insult him personally. “Why is that?”

“Because they won’t want people to leave until they say so.” At least I didn’t think they would, based on my limited but still too vast experience with murder investigations. If it was murder.

“I’m going to close the gate to be sure,” said Marietta, already headed toward the entrance. She signaled Jorge to help her.

The judge was still staring at me. He seemed to have one standard question. “Why is that?”

“Because, if this is a homicide, they will want to interview people.”

He rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, so you’re a cop now.”

Tom started to say something, but I cut him off. “They’ll want to talk to everyone. Including you.” I turned to Tom and said, “I need to see the boys.” A laying on of paws would, I knew, make me feel enormously better. Tom took my hand as we walked away from the tunnel.

Exhibitors and spectators were gathered around the ring, and there were questions from all sides as we left the fenced area.

“Is someone hurt?”

“What’s in there?”

“What’s the holdup? I have a three-hour drive …”

Tom finally said, “Please, just relax and play with your dogs. There’s going to be a bit of a delay. I’m sure someone will make an announcement soon.”

We cleared the ring-side crowd and were half way to my van when Alberta spotted us and scurried over. She had a plastic bag filled with packages of cat treats in her hand. “What’s happening?” she asked between wheezes. “I can’t stay, have to replenish the cat-treat bowl, we’ve handed out a hundred and fifty of these already, can you believe it?” She swung the bag toward us with one hand and adjusted her glasses with the other. “So what’s wrong with the tunnel?”

“Rasmussen. He’s dead.”

Alberta’s face went blank and her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. Finally she said, “Charles Rasmussen?”

Tom and I nodded.

“Couldn’t happen to anyone more deserving.” Alberta sounded as if she were approving the High in Trial winner. I couldn’t think of an appropriate response. I didn’t like the guy, and I wouldn’t miss interacting with him, but I couldn’t rejoice in a violent death, either. Trite as they were, the words it’s complicated were the only ones I could home in on.

A truck appeared from behind the training building and rattled over the sparse grass. His trajectory took him right by us, and I called to the driver’s open window, “You’re not taking them away already, are you?” In the bed, four plastic outhouses stood as if in casual conversation. Each of them, plus the door of the truck, sported the image of a dapper little man doffing his bowler under an arc of letters that spelled out “Johnny-Come-Early.” The tea and water I’d been drinking were starting to pressure me, and I was hoping the rest of the slogan wasn’t “Johnny-Leave-Early.”

The driver stopped the truck and said, “No, ma’am. Just switched these out for nice fresh ones. Do that every Sunday for Ms. Santini.” He grinned at us and drove on.

“Too bad Charles didn’t fall down in one of those instead of in the tunnel.”

“Alberta!” Okay, I admit that although most of me was horrified at her comment—a man was dead, after all—part of me loved the idea.

Alberta just shrugged and said, “Well, back to my display.”

Tom nudged me and pointed my attention back to the driveway. A police cruiser and a black sedan had pulled in. A third cruiser stopped beside the departing truck, then parked across the end of the driveway. The officer, lanky and well over six feet tall, walked to the truck’s driver, then waved him away. I turned to watch the other cars disgorge four more figures, three of them in uniform. The fourth, dressed in tan chinos, a plaid shirt, and a navy jacket, was Hutchinson.

“Oh, thank God,” I said.

“I thought you thought he was kind of a bumbler?” said Tom.

“But he’s our bumbler,” I said, then thought better of it. “Besides, I don’t think that anymore. He just works his own …”

A voice that needed no bullhorn said, “Excuse me!” We both jumped and turned. The officer who had spoken to the truck driver was coming up behind us. She gave each of us the once over and, without breaking stride, said, “Don’t leave the premises,” and followed her colleagues to the competition ring.