InHarm’s Way - Ch. 5-6

Excerpt from rough draft of In Harm’s Way by Pat Otterness

CHAPTER FIVE

???????????It wasn’t long before Hiram appeared, driving Chance’s rattletrap of a truck. He pulled to a stop when he saw his dog tethered to the tree.

????????????“What is Wolf doing?here?” he asked.

????????????“You don’t want to know,” I said. “You really?do not?want to know.” I laughed.

????????????“What?” said Hiram. “Tell me!” He sat down on the grass beside Wolf and rubbed the big dog’s ears.

????????????“Woof!” said the dog, all wagging tail and drooling tongue. Wolf’s cup was always half full.

????????????I gave Hiram a brief recap of how Chance and I had rescued Wolf and the drainpipe from the woods, and told him about Wolf digging at Raja’s grave.

????????????“I wonder if there’s something in there,” said Hiram.

????????????“Of course there is. A dead,?rotting?dog.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

????????????“No, I mean something?else.” Hiram gave Wolf an admiring look, and stroked the big dog’s head fondly. “Wolf is really smart. Maybe he’s trying to tell us there’s something there.”

????????????“What? You want to go dig up Raja again? If Chance catches you doing that, he may bury you and Wolf in that hole.”

????????????“Woof!” said Wolf enthusiastically.

????????????“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, pooch?” I said, laughing. I stroked Wolf’s furry back and got a little wet tongue for my trouble.

????????????“I’d better take him on home,” said Hiram.

????????????That should be interesting, I thought, eyeing the truck. “How?” I asked. “Will he stay in the bed of the truck, do you think?”

????????????“Umm …” said Hiram.

????????????“No! Don’t even think about it! I’m not putting him in?my car?again. This is?your?problem, Harm.?Your?dog.” I glared at the two of them.

????????????“Umm …” said Hiram again. “Maybe you could ride in the bed of the truck with him? It isn’t far.” He gave me a look that was all beseeching eyes.

????????????Drat!?Without a word, I climbed over the tailgate and sat down in the truck bed. There was a clink of chain, and Wolf bounded happily into the truck beside me and flopped his slobbery face heavily onto my lap.?Dandy!

????????????I had just settled into the first deep sleep of the night when the howling began. I jerked awake, startled and still unsure of what I was hearing.?Coyotes??Wolves??I snapped fully awake.??Dammit-all! I thought.?Wolf. The howling continued unabated. Why weren’t Harm and Chance shutting the dog up? If I could hear it all this way from their house, surely they were being deafened by it. Sure enough, finally, the howling stopped. Jeez!

????????????I had calmed myself and was just about to resume my rudely interrupted sleep when a fresh racket began out on my porch. Pounding feet, crashing metal, and spitting cats announced a visitor whose identity was no surprise. Wolf!

????????????I didn’t get up to investigate. Instead, I picked up the phone and dialed a local number, with murder in my heart.?Ring! Ring! Ring!?Then a click, and a mechanical voice said,?“The number you have dialed is not a working number, a number no longer in use. Please hang up and consult your directory, or ask assistance from an operator.”

????????????Say what? I clanged the receiver back into its cradle. What new hell was this? I sat there in the dark, listening, but all was quiet. Maybe Wolf had left. I envisioned the big dog setting out on a long journey, to a place far, far away, and gradually drifted at last into an uneasy sleep.

????????????I was up early, after a restless night. My first surprise of the day was that Demon was missing. Demon was always, without fail, waiting at the door for his breakfast. For a deaf cat, it was uncanny how he could sense my approach and be waiting inches from the door for my arrival with his morning kibble.

????????????Today, though, no Demon. The porch was littered with empty cat food cans that had been neatly stacked in a corner the day before. As I stepped onto the porch, other cats came running. Precious, my bulimic cat, was first at the trough. She needed a head start, since she would have to eat, vomit, and eat again. Hobo, a new feral addition to the feline family, inched up beside her. He was happy to recycle anything she regurgitated, and treated her like a special friend.

????????????Sneak hesitated at the edge of the porch, waiting for her daughter, Bounce, to waddle up the steps. Hobo had given Bounce a little something to remember him by, and kittens were imminent. But still, no Demon. I finished setting out the food and went looking for him. Calling to a deaf cat does no good at all. Demon could not be found.

????????????I fixed myself some scrambled eggs and a glass of V-8 juice, wishing for bacon but too lazy to fry it. Too bad my sister Hope wasn’t here. She made a nice job of fixing a country breakfast. I stuck the egg-encrusted frying pan in the sink to soak and ran some water in it. I kept hoping someone would invent a disposable frying pan, or at least a liner, but so far no luck. My pan supposedly had a no-stick coating, but I had seen no sign of it. What happens in my frying pan stays in my frying pan.

????????????I brushed the cat hair off the kitchen table with my hand, and set my paper plate and glass in the cleared space. Yum! I made short work of my eggs and juice. I fetched a pair of glazed doughnuts from the cabinet, followed up with an iced tea chaser, and I was good-to-go. Meal completed, I was free to give my whole attention to finding the missing Demon.

????????????Demon rarely left the porch. Even his ablutions were generally performed right at the foot of the porch steps, where the unwary were forever stepping in what he had left behind. Why on earth would Demon wander off. Everything he needed was on the porch. He was neutered, so?cherchez la femme?was not the answer. He had been amply fed the night before, so he had no need to resort to hunting game for himself. There was only one plausible answer.?Wolf.?Remembering Demon’s last encounter with Wolf, I was afraid Paul Revere’s midnight ride might be nothing compared to Demon’s.

????????????Were the pair still together? I wondered. Had Wolf dumped Demon somewhere far from home and abandoned him? A deaf, mute, neutered tomcat was pretty defenseless in the wild. He couldn’t hear trouble coming. He couldn’t cry out for help. He didn’t even have that testosterone boost that can make all the difference in a fight. I sighed. I was going to have to look for him. For?them, really. I was going to have to think like Wolf – to figure out where the dratted dog was most likely to go. A cold feeling sank like rock in the pit of my stomach. I knew?exactly?where Wolf would want to go … again … and I didn’t want to go there.

????????????Armed only with a towel, I scraped my way through barbed wire, and began my upward climb towards the woods. It felt creepy on the hillside where early morning fog still lay heavily around me, hours away from burning off in the heat of day. What was I doing here? Why had I thought this would be a good idea? I didn’t even have the sound of Wolf’s howling to lead me on. Could I even?find?Raja’s grave by myself? I was filled with doubts. Only the thought of my defenseless tomcat drove me on. Demon had suffered a difficult life before I’d adopted him from Almost Home, the same place that had offered up his archenemy, the hated Wolf. At first, Demon feared everyone, human and feline alike. Any advance made towards him earned a slam of his nail-gun paw. We all walked a wide circle around him.

????????????Once I’d figured out that he was deaf, though, all was forgiven. Demon had had to be on his guard for his own protection. He’d always had to watch his back. In the end it was we, I and the cats, who adapted to him instead of forcing him to play by our rules. He became, over time, a very loving cat that rubbed around ankles and loved to have his head stroked. But the paw was always there, waiting to flash out when whatever we did failed to suit his majesty. That’s why I brought the towel. If I found him, I was going to have to carry him home, claws and all.

????????????I paused at the edge of the woods and listened. The day wasn’t cold, but I shivered in spite of myself. Spider-webs hung in huge arcs between trees, covered with droplets of dew. Everywhere there were rustling sounds, yet I saw nothing moving. I wondered if the woodland creatures were listening back. I screwed up my courage, found a spider-web-free gap, and entered the dark forest.

????????????Unlike my previous experience with this stretch of forest, everything was wet.?Fog??Dew??An overnight rain I didn’t know about? Whatever the source of it, my feet were quickly drenched. Fat droplets of moisture fell on my head and trickled down my face as I made my way between trees and around brambles and low brush. I fashioned a turban out of the towel, partly to keep my head dry, and partly to free my hands.?Where was it??I veered more to the right, seeming to remember a tree here, a fallen log there. I plowed on through unfamiliar territory, hoping to locate Raja’s grave, and Wolf, and especially my fierce little Demon.

????????????Without warning, I stumbled upon the gravesite - almost stumbled into it. I barely caught my balance on the edge of the four foot hole that gaped open in the weak, filtered light. I closed my eyes for a moment. I?really?didn’t want to see the rotting canine carcass that must surely have been the object of the digging. There was no doubt in my mind that Wolf had done this. Judging by the claw marks, it was either Wolf or a bear, and I was betting on Wolf. I pulled myself together and leaned over to see what was in the hole.

????????????“A-a-e-eigh!!!” This time I?did?fall in the hole, screaming all the way down. Throwing out a desperate hand, I was only just able to avoid landing on top of the rotting corpse at the bottom of the hole. Even a dolt could see it wasn’t Raja. I could see strands of long black hair, and an arm and fist whose yellow-green flesh reeked of death. Struggling to maintain my?not-on-top-of-it?position, I jostled the corpse a little and saw a chunk of something metallic drop from its closed fist.

????????????Going against my better judgment, which had fled in terror when I fell in the hole, I pulled out my handkerchief and gingerly picked up the dropped object. I stuffed it in a pocket for later examination. I wanted out of this hole, out of the woods, and I wanted it?now!?Wolf and Demon could fend for themselves.

????????????Getting out of the hole was tricky. The soil was loose and wouldn’t support my weight, and I really, really didn’t want to fall back in on top of the woman, whoever she was. I wanted to get the hell out of there before I upchucked all over her.

????????????With a final, desperate lunge I escaped from the hole and wrapped an arm around a small tree while I barfed up my breakfast. Before my agonized retching had ended, a stunning blow to the head sent me reeling, so that I almost fell back in the hole.?Gosh, that hurt!?I looked around for my assailant, but no one was visible. Stunned, I raised a tentative hand to the lump on my head. My fingers came away sticky with two small splotches of blood.

????????????“Demon?”?I said aloud, unbelieving. I raised my eyes to the branches of the tree, and there he sat, teeth bared, extended claws at the ready, watching me.

CHAPTER SIX

?????????I viewed my feral tomcat with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was truly glad to find him alive and unscathed. On the other hand, I wanted out of these woods in a hurry, and Demon would not be easy to catch. If I left him, he could still fall victim to any number of woodland creatures. We glared at one another. I looked away first. Where was the towel? It had fallen from my head during my tumble into the hole. I peered over the edge, and there it was, nearly at the bottom of the hole. I looked at the cat again, weighing my options. Sometimes being a responsible pet owner was a curse. I got down on my belly and stretched my arm into the hole.

????????????Drat it all!?The towel was still out of reach, and I was not, repeat,?not?going back in that hole. The dead hand seemed to beckon to me. My stomach lurched. I pulled back from the hole and did a little dry retching before taking up a long stick and trying again to fish the towel from the hole.

????????????Demon watched warily with his yellow eyes, following my every motion as I gradually teased the damp, muddy towel out of the makeshift grave. As casually as I could, I sauntered over to Demon’s tree and held up a friendly hand to stroke him. Maybe I could ease him down from the tree.

????????????Whap!

????????????“Ow!” I snatched my bleeding hand out of his reach. “That wasn’t very nice,” I said.?Like he cared.?He began a leisurely bath, stretching a black-and-white hind leg out in front of him and running his pink tongue between each outstretched toe.?Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.?The code of the deaf cat.

????????????I went to the other side of the tree and started climbing. I was at his back, counting on his being unable to see or hear me. He sensed motion and streaked higher into the tree, further out of my reach. Fuming, I pursued the annoying creature through the branches, wondering how I’d ever get both of us safely down should I actually catch him. That question was quickly answered.

????????????“Woof!” said a happy voice somewhere below the limb on which Demon was crouching.

????????????Back instantly arched, fur standing on end, Demon leapt from the tree and landed with a thud on the shoulders of the shaggy dog.

????????????And they’re off!?I said to myself, mimicking a sportscaster as I watched the feline jockey flog his mount and disappear from sight into the underbrush. I jumped down, tied the towel around my waist, and set off in pursuit.

????????????It was my good fortune that Wolf was hungry. He made a beeline for my porch, where cat food remained untouched in Demon’s dish. Nobody …?ever?… messed with Demon’s food dish. Demon leaped over Wolf’s head onto the rabbit cage where his food dish sat, but he was too late. No one had told Wolf about the food dish rule. He snarfed the kibble down in a single bite and looked around for more. The outraged Demon landed a smashing blow to Wolf’s tender nose, and the big dog yelped with pain.??Even puzzled and hurt, Wolf was quick to forgive. He lashed a wet tongue over Demon’s startled face, then beat a hasty retreat towards home and his own, bigger, breakfast.

????????????I don’t have time for their nonsense, I thought as I entered the house and started for the phone. On second thought, I retraced my steps and securely locked my doors first, including the chains. There was a killer out there. That body didn’t bury itself. I shuddered and picked up the phone.

????????????“Nelson County Sheriff’s Office,” said the female dispatcher who always set my teeth on edge.

????????????“Hello. This is Charity Chance,” I began.

????????????“Can you spell that for me, please?” said the whiney voice.

????????????“No,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Investigator Hunt, please.”

????????????“Can you spell your name for me, ma’am?” repeated the voice.

????????????“M-U-R-D-E-R,” I said. “Get me Investigator Hunt.”

????????????“Investigator Hunt is not available at this time. Can I take a message?”

????????????“May I speak to someone?else?” I asked.?Anyone else.?I heard a little huff of displeasure from the other end of the line. “Just a moment, please,” she said, and hung up on me. On purpose, I was sure. I waited a moment, and the phone rang.

????????????“Hello?” I said.

????????????“Ms. Chance,” said a more friendly voice. “This is Captain Morris at the Sheriff’s Office. I believe you were looking for some kind of help?”

????????????“Thank goodness it’s you,” I said. “I was hoping to catch Jordan Hunt. We have a big problem here.”

????????????“Don’t tell me it’s another dead body?” said Morris, laughing.

????????????I said nothing.

????????????“You aren’t serious,” he said, scrambling to regain his dignity.

????????????“Dead serious,” I said. “Is Jordan around?”

????????????“I’m afraid he’s out of the area,” said Captain Morris.

????????????“Will he be back soon? I was out looking for my cat and I found a body – a woman, I think. She was buried up in the woods, but the dog dug her up.”

????????????“What?dog? You don’t?have?a dog, do you? I never saw a dog up there.”

????????????“It’s a new dog. It’s Hiram’s. He adopted it yesterday as a gift for Chance -- but I don’t think Chance wants any part of it.”

????????????“Another?Rottweiler?” said Morris. Did I detect a hint of alarm in his voice?

????????????“No, not even close. This one has to be seen to be believed.”

????????????“I guess I could send Investigator Vaughn,” said Morris hesitantly.

????????????“Isn’t there anyone else?”?Maybe someone competent? Someone polite? Someone with a trace of professionalism?

????????????There was a brief silence. “I’ll come, myself,” said Morris. “Get the ball rolling. But Vaughn has to work the case, you know. He’s the only other investigator we have.”

????????????“Where is Jordan Hunt?” I asked. “Why can’t he be here for this?”?Why can’t he be here for me?

????????????“He’s up in Richmond for the month, teaching a law enforcement course at the Police Academy. I can hardly call him away from?that. I’m sorry, Ms. Chance.” To be fair, he?did?sound sorry. “I’m on my way,” he promised. “Should be there in about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

????????????I hung up the phone and went to take a hot shower. I felt an aura of death clinging to my whole body.

????????????I was squeaky clean and munching on donuts when Captain Morris arrived. A second cruiser pulled in behind him, and then a third. Thankfully, their approach had been a silent one. Vaughn would have made a point of arriving with lights flashing and sirens blaring. Probably he still would when he found out about the murder. I opened the kitchen door and stepped outside.

????????????By now morning sun had burned away the fog. Much of my earlier fear had dissipated, too, with the advent of sunshine and deputies. I had few reservations about returning to the scene as I led the assembled lawmen up the hill and through the woods. By now there was a clear trail of broken vines and snapped twigs along the route to Raja’s gravesite. Even without this primitive trail, the buzzing of insects might have led us to the newly opened grave. We were not the only ones seeking out a decaying body.

????????????This time I was able to alert the deputies to the nearness of the open hole before anyone fell in.

????????????“Stay here,” said Captain Morris. He indicated a spot beside the very tree where I had lost my breakfast an hour earlier.

????????????“How about over there, instead?” I said, pointing to a distant spot on the other side of the hole. “I’ll go around in a wide circle.” I indicated the pool of vomit near our feet, now crawling with insects. “I don’t think I can manage being so close to?that.”

????????????“Stay well back, then,” said Morris, turning away to begin examining the site. “I don’t want you marking the crime scene.”

????????????Uh-oh!?“Captain Morris,” I said, reluctantly calling him back. “Before you get started, there’s … something … you need to know.”

????????????While deputies stretched crime scene tape in a wide circle around the perimeter of the hole, I confessed to Captain Morris the tale of my unfortunate tumble into the grave, my struggle to escape from proximity to the corpse, and other details of the role I played in thoroughly contaminating his crime scene. Blushing, I admitted to ownership of the vomit pool, as well.

????????????Morris was silent for a moment, and it wasn’t a friendly silence. “You told me,” he said softly, “that you were out looking for your cat and found a body.”

????????????“That was kind of the?short?version of what happened,” I said. “I was going to tell you all of it eventually.”

????????????“And have you told me all of it now, Ms. Chance?” Morris said wearily. “Is that everything?”

????????????I shook my head. “You might not believe the rest,” I said, thinking of Demon riding into and out of the woods on the back of Hiram’s dog.

????????????“Try me,” he said. “But first, I need to take a look at the body and send someone down to lead the forensic team up here when they arrive. I called Richmond before I left the station and asked them to send a wagon. They should be here any time now.”

????????????I walked the promised wide circle around the site until found a fallen log to sit on. The forest felt full of fairy magic as rays of sunlight broke through the leaf cover to drench the surrounding woodland in muted color. This is the very?essence?of green, I thought, glorying for a brief moment in the many shades of that color that made up this pocket of woods.

????????????Then an erratic shift of breeze brought me a sharp whiff of decay, which plunged my thoughts back into the nearby hole where yellow-green, rotting flesh added its own touch of color. Donuts danced in my belly, and I struggled to keep them down. Barfing up breakfast alone in the woods was one thing. Tossing my cookies (i.e. donuts) in front of a bevy of deputies was another thing altogether.

????????????“Captain Morris!” I had to call his name several times before he responded.

????????????“I think it would be better if I went back to my house,” I said. “I’m not feeling well.” Possibly my face was another interesting shade of green, for Captain Morris nodded his agreement and selected a deputy to escort me from the premises. Consequently, only one of the deputies witnessed the re-emergence of my donuts. In a burst of support, he quickly deposited his own breakfast alongside mine, and we parted there, blushing, bonded by barf.