TEST PARKED HER Peugeot in front of Jed King’s house, stepped out and looked around the place. It seemed eerily quiet. From where it hung on the porch, a Don’t Tread On Me flag flapped lazily in the wind.
King’s truck was nowhere to be seen.
Test stared at the old sugar shack.
She walked up the slate walkway to the porch of the house and knocked. No one came to the door and she heard no sound from within the house.
She shielded her eyes with her hands and peered through the window.
The inside of the place, what she could make out of the living room and kitchen, was immaculate. A stack of magazines sat on a coffee table, each magazine perfectly squared with the others. Three TV remote controls sat aligned beside the magazines. The end tables had not so much as a coaster on them. All four kitchen chairs were tucked up precisely to the kitchen table. Nothing sat on the table. The countertops were bare, except for a toaster. The refrigerator door did not have a single magnet stuck to it. The place was as neat as a drill sergeant’s quarters. Though she’d expected the slummy disorder of a two-time, late-middle-aged divorcee, a militant tidiness did not fully surprise her now.
Test stepped off the porch and walked toward the sugar shack.
The door to the shack was ajar. Test knocked, then opened it.
Inside, propped in the corner, were dozens of Take Back Vermont signs.
“Find what yer looking for?”
Test spun at the voice behind her, hand going to the butt of her sidearm.
“Going to draw on me again, are we?” King said, smirking, his eyes gleeful, almost childish, with contempt.
“Push me. Find out,” Test said.
“I’ll file a harassment complaint if you don’t have a warrant to be on my property, is what I’ll do.”
“You’d know about harassment. According to Gregory Sergeant.”
“Go running to the cops, did he.”
For a moment Test thought he was about to confess to poisoning the dog.
“All because I accidentally bumped into him on the street,” King continued. “Figures. Drama queen. Jacked with paranoia and seeing enemies all around.”
“You kill his dog?”
“Now why would I do that?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m not going to do your job for you, Officer.”
Test wondered if he used the word Officer as a knowing slight, or didn’t appreciate the difference between an officer and a detective.
“Where were you last night?” Test said.
“Right here.”
“Doing?”
“Making more signs. They’re in high demand.”
“Making them alone? You have an alibi?”
“Don’t need one.”
“But do you have one?”
“I have more than you. You have squat. Just like last time. Just because you don’t like that I speak the truth, you hound me without a lick of evidence. If you did have anything on me, we wouldn’t be here gabbing about it like silly gossiping school twats, now would we?”
“I’ll find something,” Test said.
“You know where I am.”
In her Peugeot, Test slammed her palm on the steering wheel. The fucker. He’d killed both dogs and was going to get away with it unless she found physical evidence. All she had was her gut, and King’s smug response. A man who would do that. It shifted her idea about Brad. King had no alibi for the night Jessica was killed. He’d been on his own, distributing signs. And he had no alibi for last night. Whereas Brad Jenkins had the ultimate alibi for last night.
Test needed to bring North up to speed on the dogs; it might alter his theory on Brad as it had started to alter her own.
King had some balls, too, knocking Sergeant just about on his ass in broad daylight. Threatening him. Then the dogs. Her dog. Charlie. It had to be him. It had to be. He’d killed the dogs and Jessica. She hated the man, she realized. Truly hated him.
She wondered if she was letting her personal emotions cloud her objectivity.
No, part of her hatred of King came knowing what he was capable of doing.
But being capable of something and doing it are not the same, she thought.
“Shut up, shut up,” she said and pulled her car onto the road, its bad exhaust backfiring like a rifle shot.