MERCY SAW THE SLEEK SHEPHERD SAIL after the moving target that was the Minuteman on the Vermont Republic float. He landed lightly on all four paws, barking like the hound of Hades.
The girl singer stopped singing. The fiddlers stopped fiddling. The music stopped and the girl screamed and the tall man turned. He dropped his haversack and hunting cartridge to the floor of the float, and raised his musket against the dog.
“No!” Mercy pumped her legs and her arms and lunged for the float. The flatbed hit her at the hip. She pulled herself up onto the platform, and still on all fours, threw herself forward towards the Minuteman’s legs, aiming to trip him. She stared up at the tall man as she clamped her fingers around his ankles. He tried to escape her grip, and his hat fell off, exposing his shaved head. She recognized him at once as the man Dr. Winters had called Max.
He pounded the musket butt on the floor of the float, just missing her hands with the first blow. Mercy let go and rolled away before the musket struck again.
“Get him,” she ordered.
Elvis tackled the guy, chomping down on his wrist as he’d been trained to do. Max cursed, dropping the rifle and wobbling toward the edge of the float, trying to shake off the dog and get away. But the ferocious shepherd hung on, forcing his perp to the floor.
Mercy kicked the musket away from Max, sending it flying right off of the float. The girl singer kept on screaming. The two fiddle players moved in to help Max, but thought better of it as Susie Bear bounded onto the float. She was barking, too, a low guttural bellowing Mercy had not heard before and that impressed her with its fierceness. It worked on the fiddle players, too, who backed off from the fight, edging to the far end of the float and leaving their friend to the dogs.
Troy heaved himself onto the float after his Newfie mutt, nodding at Mercy as he cornered the fiddlers.
“Don’t move, boys,” he said. “You can’t outrun her. She’s faster and meaner than she looks. Stay right where you are or you’ll end up like your friend here.”
Mercy saw Max struggling to sneak a cell phone from his pocket with his left hand. He got it out about halfway when she twisted his wrist, hard, and snatched the device from him. She didn’t know if he was using it as a detonator or not but she certainly wasn’t taking any chances.
“I’ve notified Thrasher,” Troy told her. “Backup is on the way.”
The float rumbled on past the grandstand. No one seemed to notice that the Green Mountain Boys weren’t playing anymore, maybe because everyone was much more interested in the pretty girls riding in the vintage Cadillacs in front of them. Behind them, the cadets marched on and the tractors chugged along and the Old Vermont Fife and Drum Corps struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Mercy kept her eye on Max and Elvis as two pairs of police officers flanked the float at the front and rear, walking alongside and instructing the driver to make a right at the next intersection. They removed the barriers that flanked Main Street, diverted the onlookers, and then guided the float onto a side street, replacing the barriers as soon as it was clear of the crowd. All with an admirable minimum of fuss.
She called off Elvis and he sat by her, ears up, as the police officers arrested the tall man, who identified himself as Max Skinner from Provo, Utah.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he was telling the cops. “I’m an artist.”
She heard him ask for a lawyer as they took him off to the station.
Troy and Susie Bear joined Mercy and Elvis, and together they left the float, giving the bomb squad the room they needed to clear the vehicle.
They sat on a fence fronting a Victorian charmer housing a real estate office and watched as the rest of the band were escorted away for questioning. The dogs sat at their feet.
“The fiddlers are Paul and Louis Herbert,” Troy told her. “Wayne Herbert’s little brothers.”
“They’re wearing the same belt buckles as the one we found with the bones.”
“Yeah. You’d think they would have mentioned that when I talked to them. I wonder what their mother, Flo, will have to say about that.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“Sarah Lavery, a sous chef from Bennington. Not sure what she’s got to do with this yet.”
Together they watched as the bomb squad checked out the float, and found no evidence of explosives. Or of anything else criminal. The hunting cartridge that Skinner had carried was empty. The knapsack held a tambourine. And the canteen was filled with water.
“I don’t understand it,” said Mercy. “Elvis is a bomb-sniffing dog. He’s trained to alert to explosives. That’s what he does.”
“They didn’t find anything.”
“He alerted to PETN in the woods. Your own people confirmed that.”
“Yes, but not this time,” said Troy. “Maybe it was Skinner himself. If he was your intruder, Elvis may have alerted to him.”
“I know he alerted to something.”
“They would have found it.” Troy leaned in toward her. “You know Elvis has been all over the place lately. I knew a dog handler who used to say that his sniffer dog loved granola bars and would alert to them everywhere they went.”
“Elvis does not alert to granola.” She tossed her head, not caring that it still hurt like hell whenever she did that. “Look, can we go now?”
“You’ll have to make a statement.”
Mercy knew they were missing something. She was missing something. Time to go home with Elvis and have a good think, as her grandmother liked to say. And maybe some of her carrot cake.
“I really don’t feel up to hanging around the station for hours.” She touched her crown gently to underscore her meaning. “And it looks like rain.”
“Of course.” Troy stood up. “Stupid of me. You should be home in bed. Or whatever Patience thinks you should do. I’ll explain to the captain.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble with Thrasher.” Mercy stood, too, and stared up at the storm clouds that had suddenly darkened the sky. “Or Harrington.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He offered her his arm and she took it. The dogs followed them as he led her along the side streets, avoiding the crowds, to his truck. He was so solicitous of her that she almost felt guilty.
“I am sorry,” she said. “This is not what I thought would happen.”
“I know.” Troy ushered them all into his vehicle just as the downpour began.
“I was so sure.” Mercy couldn’t understand how she could be so wrong. About the parade. About Elvis. About herself.
“You may have been wrong about the parade, but you aren’t wrong about the case.”
“You don’t have to say that.” She appreciated his good intentions, but the more understanding he was, the worse she felt.
“Something is going on here.” He switched the windshield wipers on high and pulled out onto the road, proceeding carefully as people rushed to their cars to get out of the rain. “We’ve got the dead bodies to prove it.”
“And a missing mother and child.”
“Yeah,” he said, maneuvering the big truck through the traffic that crowded the slick streets. Visibility was poor, even with the lampposts. “Still no word on them.” He looked over at her with concern. “But the evidence team did clean up that pendant. I’ll text you the images.”
“Okay.” She knew he was just trying to make her feel better. Not that it was working. “If I don’t figure it out soon, Amy and Helena may be the next…” She stopped. She couldn’t say it out loud.
“It’s not all on you. We’ll figure it out.”
“What about Harrington?”
“You let me worry about Harrington.”
They fell silent. Mercy stared at the rain slashing at the windows. “It just doesn’t add up,” she said finally. “Yet.”
Troy smiled. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. Now that they were out of town, it was slow going as the deluge continued. “All the best cops are.”
She wasn’t a cop anymore and he knew it. But she appreciated the sentiment. She smiled back at him, then leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s been a long day.
“And night,” said Troy.
“I just want to go home.”
“Not to your grandmother’s?”
“Home.”
“She won’t like that.”
“Home.”
Elvis barked.
Troy laughed. “Home it is.”
If there was one thing Mercy hated, it was going home in defeat. But retreat was not always defeat.
So she’d retreat … for now.