High in Trial (8 page)

“Roller derby,” he repeated. He squeezed my shoulder and added, “Do me a favor and
stay out of that guy’s way, okay? I don’t like the way his eyes were spinning around
in his head.”

I shrugged uneasily. “Some people get a little carried away when it comes to their
dogs.”

He pretended surprise. “You don’t say.” Then he winked and tugged my ponytail. “Okay,
I’m outta here. Text me your score.”

“Time,” I corrected him. “In agility, it’s time.”

“Right.”

I couldn’t help smiling as I tiptoed to brush a kiss across his lips. “Thanks for
coming, Miles,” I said, because, as my mother always said, you should never fail to
reward the effort. “That was nice of you. It showed real character.”

“Hey, I’m all about character.” His eyes danced with amusement and he cupped my neck
lightly as he turned to go. “Run fast.” His phone rang and he took it out, glancing
at the screen. “Love you, babe,” he said, and blew me a kiss just before he punched
a button and said into the phone, “Yeah, I’m on my way.”

I just stood there in silent astonishment, watching him walk away.

~*~

SEVEN

Nineteen hours before the shooting

F
or the longest time after Miles left, I
continued to stare after him
, thinking,
Oh no, he didn’t
. He did not just use the L word for the first time twenty minutes before I had to
psych myself up for a run and he did not just walk away without giving me a chance
to say anything in return. Was he kidding me? Seriously?

On the other hand, what would I have said? Our relationship was casual. I liked it
that way. What was he thinking?

That was just it. He wasn’t thinking. Men rarely are.

By the time I finished walking Cisco and took him over the warm-up jump a couple of
times, I’d decided I was making much ado about nothing. Miles hadn’t meant anything.
He probably even didn’t remember saying it. Men were such idiots. As I walked the
jumpers-with-weaves course with the rest of my group, trying to memorize a complicated
S-turn and wondering if I could do a blind cross coming into the second set of weave
poles, I started to wonder what kind of man could just toss off “I love yous” so easily.
How did you even get into that habit? On the other hand, wasn’t it better to be too
free with the words than afraid to say them at all? Or was it?

Standing in line waiting our turn, I came to the conclusion that I was the one who
was the idiot and really, I needed to just let it go. Like my mother always said,
the only thing more futile than trying to figure out why men did the things they did
was trying to figure out what they were thinking when they did them. So I decided
to just forget about it.

Unfortunately, in the process, I also forgot the S-turn and the blind cross, sent
Cisco into the weave poles backwards, and called him off a jump so abruptly that he
knocked the bar. Worse, I’m pretty sure the judge heard me say a bad word in the heat
of the moment. No one likes to lose, and the only thing that made it bearable was
the way Cisco bounced across the finish line with his tail waving and a big grin on
his face, as happy to have blown the course as he’d been to win only a few hours ago.
I couldn’t help but laugh. There’s a saying in this game: no matter what happens,
you still get to go home with the best dog in the world. And so I did.

Home, for the duration, was the Pembroke Host Inn five miles down the highway from
the trial site. I packed up our gear before the event was over—no point waiting for
a ribbon you have absolutely no chance of getting, right?—and was back at the hotel
by four thirty. Dog people, like elite athletes and senior citizens, like to dine
early and be in bed by ten, and I wanted to get to the dining room before the salad
bar was reduced to scraps of lettuce and pickled beets.

The hotel was a dog lover’s paradise. It was set far back from the highway and surrounded
by a beautifully manicured green lawn in front, which, of course, meant nothing to
seasoned dog travelers. We look for long winding paths and big open fields and well-marked
dog walk areas with strategically placed trash cans. This one had all of those things,
plus the added bonus of a central courtyard onto which all the sliding doors of the
dog-friendly rooms opened, so the last doggie pit stop of the night could be made
in your slippers and robe, if necessary. All designers of hotels should be so thoughtful.
I wanted to nominate them for an award.

I stopped by the room just long enough to feed Cisco one of his specially prepared
homemade energy meals from the mini refrigerator—oatmeal, chicken livers, eggs, milk
solids, and mixed vegetables—and check my phone messages. Miles had texted twice:
How did you do?
and
Running late. Call you after dinner
. Melanie had tweeted two pictures of the Smithsonian that made me smile reminiscently
and texted,
Go, Cisco! My blue ribbon guy!
A later text added,
Touring the White House tomorrow. Boooring. Rather see you guys win another ribbon.

I texted back,
Tell the Prez I said hi
. Then,
P.S. Maybe you’ll get to see the First Dog
!

By this time Cisco had licked his bowl clean and lapped up half a bowl of water, so
I snapped on his expandable leash, tucked the room key and a couple of pick-up bags
in my pocket, and took him out for his evening walk. Just as in the Old West a cowboy
always took care of his horse first, in the dog world we make sure our dogs are well
fed and comfortable before we take care of ourselves. It’s only right.

We went through the hallway door, which led to the parking lot and the big open field
beyond, and I noticed a couple of other dog walkers had the same idea. I saw Aggie
with Gunny at the edge of the field and waved. She waved back, and we started toward
them at a leisurely pace, Cisco in an ecstasy of sniffing the tracks of other dogs.
When we reached the edge of the parking lot, I gave him a few extra feet on his expandable
leash, and he hurried ahead of me.

I heard a car door slam behind me and glanced around to make certain no other dogs
were heading toward us. Marcie was leaning against her blue minivan with one arm wrapped
around her chest and the other hand covering her mouth, head bowed, clearly upset.
I actually turned to start toward her, and then the driver’s side door opened and
a man came around the van. I thought it was Neil until I saw the tender way he took
Marcie in his arms to comfort her, and then I realized he was a much bigger man than
Neil and quite a bit blonder. He said something in a low tone, and in a moment she
nodded and smiled up at him. He kissed her.

“Well, well,” I murmured to myself. But that wasn’t the most surprising thing I saw.
When they went around to the back of the van and opened it, two dogs got out—Bryte
and Flame. And I distinctly remembered Neil saying he was taking Bryte home.

The man slung the strap of a day bag over his shoulder and they started toward the
dog walk area on the other side of the building. It was at that moment that Cisco
reached the end of his leash and looked back at me inquiringly. I called him to my
side because I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding about who was walking
whom, then gave him the full twenty feet of expandable leash in which to explore,
and we made our way across the field.

I spent a few minutes chatting with Aggie, and just as we were heading back to the
hotel, Cisco saw Brinkley and his mom—whose name I finally discovered was Sarah—coming
across the field. Of course there was no way I could take Cisco inside then, so we
spent another ten or fifteen minutes letting the three goldens sniff and play-bow
and romp with each other as much as their leashes would allow. We made arrangements
to meet for dinner in half an hour and started back toward our rooms. The other two
women went west and I went east, so I was probably the only one who noticed Marcie
and her boyfriend walking the dogs across the field a few hundred feet away. I waved
to her, and I know she saw me, but her boyfriend caught her arm quickly and they deliberately
turned and went the other way. Odd, but I supposed they wanted privacy. Besides, just
then I got another text from Miles and was reminded that I had enough to deal with
in my own personal life without borrowing other peoples’ problems.

~*~

EIGHT

Eighteen hours, forty minutes before the shooting

T
wice a week, Buck and Wyn met for dinner at a steak house on the highway midway between
their two homes. The food was good, and it was usually so late by the time they got
there that the family hour was over and the place was relatively quiet. The restaurant
was open until midnight, so they could relax in a booth over dessert and coffee for
an hour or two and unwind from the day.

Tonight, however, Buck was having a difficult time leaving the day behind. And Wyn,
who’d always had one of the keenest detective minds he’d ever known, was just as intrigued
as he was over the Berman case. She studied the file over a cup of soft serve vanilla
ice cream, her hair falling forward to shadow her face as she absently licked the
ice cream off the spoon.

“Bad dude,” she observed, turning a page. “Three assaults, walked on every one. Forgery,
fraud, possession… I can’t believe he never did time before this.”

“That’s because he never came up before Judge Stockton before,” Buck said. The red
vinyl seat creaked as he leaned back against it, stretching out his legs, sipping
his coffee. “Nothing pissed off the judge more than a criminal who got off on a technicality.
The thing is, he didn’t blame the criminal—he blamed the law. And if you were the
arresting officer who screwed up and didn’t get the right warrant or forgot to read
a Spanish-speaking person his rights in Spanish, he not only made you wish you’d never
walked into his courtroom, he’d make you wish you’d never been born before you walked
out. He used to say we were the torchbearers, and he would always hold us to a higher
standard, because if you couldn’t count on the guys who fought on the side of right,
then what were any of us here for?”

Wyn glanced up, smiling. “He sounds like a real old-fashioned hanging judge. Were
you ever in his courtroom?”

Buck shook his head. “He retired before I joined the force. But he’s the reason I
went into law enforcement, and that’s no lie. As a kid I spent just about as much
time over at the Stockton place as I did at my own, and I guess he taught me pretty
much everything I know about the justice system… and more than that, about morality
and standing up for what was right. He was one of those legends, the kind you read
about in books, like Daniel Webster or Justice Holmes… At least he seemed that way
to me.” He shrugged a little self-consciously. “A hanging judge? Not really. But he
was a stickler for what was right.”

Wyn nodded thoughtfully, scraping up the last spoonful of ice cream from her cup.
“So why do you suppose he let this guy plead to second?”

“You got me.”

Wyn finished her ice cream and turned the last page in the file. “Well, I don’t see
anything that would trigger an alarm bell here. Did you talk to his parole officer?”

Buck nodded grimly. “He was on a weekly schedule and hasn’t checked in in two weeks.”

“Uh-oh.” Wynn put down her spoon. “That’s not good.”

“No. It’s not.” Buck took a sip of coffee. “According to his parole officer, he was
living with his brother and helping him out with his construction business. The brother
hasn’t heard from him in a week.”

“That he’ll admit to.”

“Right. He also hasn’t seen one of the company pickup trucks in about that long.”

“So we’ve got a recently released murderer—”

“Second degree,” Buck reminded her.

“Right, second degree murderer that the trial judge was worried about…”

“Nobody said ‘worried,’” Buck corrected. “All Roe said was that the judge wanted to
keep an eye on him.”

She leveled a look on him. “Yeah, so maybe the guy was the judge’s long lost illegitimate
son or the innocent victim of a frame and he wanted to make sure prison wasn’t too
hard on him. The judge was worried about Berman getting out. He served all but five
years of his sentence, which means he was no angel in prison. He hasn’t checked in
with his parole officer in two weeks and he seems to have gone on the road. So what
we have to figure out is what Judge Stockton was worried about. Who did he think this
guy would go after when he got out?”

“Yeah.” Buck blew out a breath. “That’s all we’ve got to figure out.”

Wyn said casually, “Did you talk to Raine?”

The two of them had come to
an
understanding early in their relationship that there was no way to keep Raine’s name
from coming up now and again. Buck had known her all his life and had been married
to her most of it. Wyn had been friends with Raine before… well, before. All of their
lives were entwined, and they always would be. Still, it was awkward. And Buck couldn’t
prevent an automatic shifting of his gaze when he heard her name. He didn’t like it
when his worlds collided, or even brushed up against one another. He never knew how
to react.