Warning Signs

CHAPTER 14

Although I'd seen Royal and Susan Peterson's home plenty of times on the local television news in the days since Roy's murder, I hadn't been there again in person until Friday morning as I was parked across the street sitting in the front passenger seat of Sam Purdy's red Jeep Cherokee. The floor mats of Sam's old car were so caked with dried-on dirt and gravel that I couldn't tell whether they were made of carpet or rubber.

Sam had been quiet since he'd picked me up at my office. Now he'd started humming, never a good sign with Sam.

Out of nervousness as much as anything, I said, "It's just like seeing Plymouth Rock."

Two or three seconds passed before he said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Years ago, I drove to Plymouth Rock from Boston-it's a long way. The day I was there it was raining pretty good. You make the long drive, you find a place to park the car, you get out, you walk to the shore, you stand behind a little iron fence, you look down, and what do you see? You see a rock. That's it. A rock. Not a big rock, not an interesting rock. We're not talking Gibraltar. It's just a rock."

"Yeah, your point?"

"That's kind of how I feel right now, seeing Royal and Susan's house. I expected-seeing it in person after the murder, all that's happened there-that it would feel different, somehow, than it used to. More important, more moving. I don't know. But… it's just a house."

Sam harrumphed.

I continued, eager for him to understand. "It's like finding out Santa Claus is just a guy in a red suit."

Sam yawned. "I don't know. Lawn needs to be mowed. That never would have happened if Royal were alive. I think he was a keep-the-lawn-mowed-and-the-walkway-edged type of guy. I bet he was a regular Friday-after-work or Saturday-morning-first-thing-type yard guy. So that's different, the lawn not being mowed. In the winter, after a storm, I bet he was the first guy on the block out with his Toro, blowing snow halfway to Nederland."

I looked sideways at him. "Not in a particularly philosophical mood, are you, Sam?"

He laughed. "With what you told me to get me to do this, you're lucky I'm here at all. Don't hold your breath for Sartre."

I cracked open the car door. "I'm going to get the key. You want to come with or you want to stay here?"

"If it's all the same to you, I'll stay here and ponder the Plymouth Rock thing a little bit more. Maybe I'll get it."

As I walked across the street, I retrieved the yellow sticky note that I'd stuffed in my pocket and checked the address. The number matched the house right next door to the Petersons'. I walked up a flagstone path and rang the bell.

The woman who answered the door was young and harried. She had a toddler perched on one hip and another child, a girl around four, corralled between her legs. "Yes?" she asked. Her tone said, This better had be good.

"Ms. Wallace? I'm Alan Gregory; I'm a friend of Susan Peterson's. She said she would call you to authorize you to give me a key to her house. She said she left one with you for emergencies."

"Yeah, right. Hannah! You stay put, you hear me? How is Susan doing?" The little girl tried to squirm away. The woman trapped her with a knee and tried to smile at me. The expression ended up looking more like a grimace. "Such a tragedy what happened to Royal. Have to admit, it's scared the whole neighborhood. Hold on, I'll go get the key." She grabbed Hannah's hand, and mother and children disappeared down the hall.

I heard some insipid children's music playing in the background and reminded myself that my day listening to insipid children's music would soon come. I wondered whether the offensive sound was coming from a CD or a video and whether it involved a purple dinosaur or animated Japanese monsters.

I said a silent prayer that Grace would have good taste.

The woman returned with both children and with the key. She handed the fob out the door, and said, "Here you go. Just slip it back through the mail slot when you're done with it. Nice meeting you."

The door was closed before I said, "Thank you."

Sam met me on the road in front of the house. He said, "You never told me, what did you tell Susan Peterson to get her permission to do this?"

"You may not know this, but your friends at the police department only turned the house back over to her yesterday. Since she got out of the hospital, she's been staying with one of her daughters in Durango. I called down there and made up a story about something Royal and I were working on together, said I knew where the papers were in his study."

"She went for that?"

"She trusts me."

"Fool."

"Your guy is coming, right?"

"My guy is a girl and, yes, she's coming." He glanced at his watch. "We're early. She'll be here."

"She's off duty?"

"Way off duty. She's on disability after getting hurt on the job. Like I told you, she trains K-9s now, earns a little extra money."

Just then, a fifteen- or twenty-year-old Mercedes wagon rounded the corner and slowed as it pulled up to the curb. The paint on the car had oxidized to the point where I couldn't even guess at its original color. One front fender was liberally treated with rubbing compound. A young woman hopped out of the driver's side. She waved hello to Sam and walked to the rear hatch of the car. When she opened it, a medium-sized dog with floppy ears and indeterminate heritage jumped out and heeled beside her. She fixed a lead to the dog's collar and together they joined Sam and me on the sidewalk.

The woman limped noticeably.

Sam said, "Dorsey, this is Alan Gregory. Alan, Dorsey Hamm. Ex-Westminster Police Department, and this is her K-9 friend, uh…"

Dorsey was a stocky woman. Her skin showed evidence of a lost battle with adolescent acne. Her hair was cut carelessly. My impression was that she had long ago stopped trying to be attractive and that she was absolutely content with her decision.

She said, "I'm pleased to meet you," and held out her hand. "This here is Shadow." As I drew close enough to her to shake her hand, I thought I caught a whiff of cannabis. Involuntarily, I glanced at Dorsey's eyes. Red trails arced across the whites like lightning bolts.

The dog's tail was in nonstop motion. The rest of him was perfectly still.

"What kind is he?" I asked.

"Lab-shepherd mix. Both breeds tend to be good with explosives." She told him to sit, and he lowered himself without delay. On their best days, my dogs weren't as well-behaved as Shadow.

And they didn't have their best days very often.

Sam said, "I'm not going inside, Dorsey. Wouldn't be appropriate, given Lucy's situation." He handed me a pair of latex gloves and told me to put them on. He said, "Let's not complicate things with your prints, eh?"

Sometimes, especially during the height of hockey season, Sam developed an unconscious tendency to affect a Canadian accent. I think it came from watching too many Canadian athletes and listening to too many Canadian sportscasters on television. The affectation tended to fade a week or so after the league awarded the Stanley Cup.

He offered a pair of gloves to Dorsey. She took them and while she snapped them onto her hands, he said, "I appreciate your willingness to screen this place for me; I owe you one."

Dorsey glanced at the house. "Oh, don't mention it, Sam. Shadow needs the work, and unfamiliar environments are great training tools. We'll be in and out of a place this size in ten minutes, max. Probably not even that long. Don't go out for coffee or anything." She shortened the lead, touched the dog, and leaned down close to his ear. "Come on, boy. Come on. Let's go treasure hunting."

I proceeded up the walk, unlocked the front door of the Peterson home, and held the door for Dorsey and Shadow.

Dorsey reached down and whispered an instruction to Shadow that I couldn't quite hear. Her next message to the dog was a simple hand signal.

The dog charged forward, lowered his head, and started searching the Peterson home for explosives. Dorsey held the lead and stayed within a few feet of him.

My dogs could do that. Either of them.

Right.

Seconds after we were inside, Dorsey led Shadow up the stairs to the second floor. I didn't follow them right away; I was distracted. As soon as we were in the house I'd started looking around, trying to identify the precise place where Royal had been bashed to death. I thought the news reports had mentioned the living room and I was curious whether there would actually be a chalk outline to indicate where the body had been found. By the time I had examined the living room pretty carefully-no chalk-and was ready to start up the stairs, Shadow was already preceding Dorsey back down to the first floor.

Dorsey said, "Upstairs is negative."

I said, "Good."

Shadow moved away from the staircase, lowered his snout to the hardwood, took a few steps, circled a spot just beyond the doorway that led to the dining room, and sat. The dog's head swiveled toward his master and back to the floor. Dorsey looked at the dog, then over to me. "That's an alert-a positive," Dorsey said, her voice suddenly swollen with tension. "Is there a basement below that, or a crawl space? Do you know?"

All I saw was the dog sitting peacefully. I expected something different, though I don't know what. "Basement," I said in reply to Dorsey's question. "My memory is that the stairs are in the kitchen." I added, "What do you mean, 'positive'?" Though I knew what she meant by "positive."

She didn't answer. She found the way to the kitchen and led Shadow down the stairs. I fumbled for a light switch, finally illuminating the dark staircase. The basement was nicely finished, but the ceilings were low and the space felt claustrophobic. The large room at the base of the staircase was set up as a home office for Royal. One long wall was lined with shelves filled with an impressive collection of abstract pottery. I counted fifteen large pieces and a few small ones. A prominent space on a shelf that was near the foot of the stairs was empty.

Royal's collection of ceramics had apparently once included sixteen large pieces.

After no more than ten seconds, Shadow moved from a quick sniff around Royal's office to focus on an adjacent utility room. There he immediately picked a spot near the center of the room, raised his snout in the air, circled once, and sat.

Dorsey said, "Wow. That's another alert. He's confirming."

"Confirming?"

"Watch this," said Dorsey with obvious pride.

She moved a six-foot stepladder from the far wall and set it up on the exact spot where Shadow had been sitting. She released him from his lead and, without a moment's hesitation, the dog climbed the length of the ladder, balancing his front paws on the top platform, his back paws on the second-to-last rung.

"Isn't that cool?" Dorsey said. "I didn't even have to teach him that. He does it all on his own."

"Amazing," I agreed. I could barely breathe. It was as though Shadow were stealing all my air.

"It's another positive," she said, as she lifted the dog off the ladder and placed him on the concrete floor. "I think it's the same spot he smelled from up above. I bet something's been tucked up there between the floor joists."

I leaned in and peered up into the dark recess.

She asked, "What do you think?"

"The floor plan is kind of hard to follow from down here, but, yeah, I think it may be the same spot where he sat upstairs."

She pulled a flashlight from an asspack around her waist and aimed the beam up toward the ceiling. "Holy moly, there it is. Wow, wow, wow. I've never found a real one before. I'm just a trainer, you know?"

I reminded myself to exhale. "Are you going to go up there and look at it?"

"Are you nuts? The device could be booby-trapped. Shadow locates the things; that's where my involvement stops. I sure as hell don't examine them or disarm them. I've already given enough of my body to law enforcement, thank you, and I've gotten as close as I plan to get to that device, whatever it is."

"Of course, I wasn't thinking," I said. I was so nervous, I was barely capable of thinking.

Dorsey said, "What do you say we get the hell out of here as quick as we can? It gives me the willies knowing that there are really explosives here."

"You're sure that we're talking… explosives?"

"Me? I don't smell a thing. But Shadow's pretty sure. He's been an A student. Most K-9s work at eighty-five to ninety percent accuracy. Shadow's almost done with his training and he's been near ninety-five percent for the last couple of weeks. The fact that he's sure is plenty good enough for me."

"If that's the case, getting out of here as fast as we can sounds like a perfect plan," I said. My throat was so dry I had trouble getting the words out of my mouth. I held my breath for a moment so I could listen hard for the sound of a clock ticking.

Or my heart pounding.

Nothing.

Dorsey wasted no time herding Shadow back up the basement stairs toward the front door. Seconds later, Dorsey, Shadow, and I were all back outside on the Petersons' front porch. When I looked up, I saw Sam pacing across the street.

Dorsey waved to him while she simultaneously slipped Shadow a treat.

"It's positive, Sam," she called out. "Sorry."

Sam buried his face in his hands. I was pretty certain that if I were any closer to him I would have heard him curse me in some imaginative way.

To Dorsey, I said, "I think I'd feel a whole lot more comfortable if we got off of this porch, maybe joined Sam across the street."