Isle of Dogs

  “I may as well take matters into my own hands,” Hammer decided. “I can’t wait for the governor to see me while a dentist is held hostage on an island that has declared war on Virginia. Nothing good can come from this, Andy. We must intervene immediately.”

  “With all due respect,” Andy started to say, but caught himself. “Superintendent Hammer,” he started again, “Governor Crimm is a proud man who is addicted to power. If you go over his head, he won’t forgive or forget it. He may not recognize it, but he’ll deeply resent your getting all the credit.”

  “Then what the hell do we do?”

  “Give me forty-eight hours,” Andy boldly promised. “I’ll somehow get an audience with him and inform him of all the facts.” He paused as he thought of Popeye and how empty Hammer’s house seemed without the little dog. “I posted a photo of Popeye on the home page of my website . . .”

  “I saw it,” Hammer replied. “And you should have asked me first, now that we’re on the subject.”

  “I’m not going to give up on her,” Andy said.

  Hammer’s eyes filled with tears that she quickly blinked back.

  “I know how much you miss her,” Andy went on, touched by her sadness and determined to make her talk to him about her feelings. “And I know how much you hate it when I do things without permission, but I’m not a rookie anymore, Superintendent Hammer. I have a mind of my own and a pretty good sense of what I’m doing. It seems you’re always irritated with me and have no appreciation of anything I do.”

  Hammer wouldn’t look at him or respond.

  “To be honest,” Andy went on, “you seem miserable and mad at the world most of the time these days.”

  Hammer was silent. Andy started to get up from his chair.

  “Well, I don’t want to invade your privacy,” he said, sensing that the last thing she wanted was for him to leave. “But I guess I’ll head out and not disturb you any further.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Hammer said, abruptly getting up. “It’s late.”

  She walked him to the door as if she couldn’t wait for him to leave.

  Andy glanced at his watch. “You’re right. I need to go,” he said. “I have to finish my next essay, you know.”

  “Do I dare bring up the subject?” Hammer asked as she walked him out to the front porch, where a tart fall breeze rustled trees that were beginning to turn the first hues of yellow and red. “Will there be more salient comments from your wise confidante?”

  “I don’t have a wise confidante,” Andy said with surprising sharpness as he went down the steps and passed through the gentle glow of gaslight lamps. “I wish I did,” he tossed back at her as he unlocked his car. “But I’ve yet to meet anybody who fits that description.”

  HE drove back home feeling out of sorts, and he was startled and suspicious when he climbed his front steps and saw a trash bag on the mat and an envelope taped to his door. There was nothing written on the plain white envelope, which looked like the generic kind available in any drugstore, and the black plastic trash bag clearly had something in it. Andy’s law-enforcement instincts instantly went on alert, and he touched nothing and got on his cell phone.

  “Detective Slipper,” a voice answered after the phone rang for a long time inside the Richmond police department’s A Squad, the division that worked violent crimes.

  “Joe,” Andy said, “it’s me, Andy Brazil.”

  “Yo! What’cha know? We still miss your ugly face around here. How are things with the state police?”

  “Listen,” Andy abruptly said, “can you buzz over to my house? Someone’s left something strange on my porch, and I don’t want to touch it.”

  “Shit! You want me to bring the bomb squad?”

  “Not yet,” Andy replied. “Why don’t you come here first and take a look?”

  He sat on his front steps in the dark, because his porch light wasn’t on a timer and the lights were off inside to save on his electric bill. Richmond police headquarters was downtown but not far from the Fan District where Andy’s tiny rented row house was located. Detective Joe Slipper rolled up fifteen minutes later, and Andy realized how much he missed some of his old friends from his former job as a city cop.

  “Damn good to see you,” he said to Slipper, a short, pudgy man who always reeked of cologne and had a taste for slick designer suits that he got dirt cheap at a local men’s discount shop.

  “Shit,” Slipper said as he probed the trash bag and blank envelope with a Kel light. “This is really weird.”

  “You got any gloves handy?” Andy asked.

  “Sure.” Slipper pulled a pair of surgical gloves out of a pocket.

  Andy put them on and tugged the envelope off the door. It was sealed, and he slit it open with a pocket knife. Inside was a Polaroid photograph, and Andy and Slipper were stunned as the flashlight revealed a shocking image of Trish Thrash’s nude, bloody body at Belle Island. Slipper nudged the trash bag with his foot.

  “Shit,” he said. “Feels like clothes in there.”

  He opened the bag and carefully pulled out a black leather biker’s jacket, jeans, panties, a bra, and a T-shirt with the logo of what appeared to be a Richmond women’s softball team. The clothing appeared to have been cut with a razor blade and was stiff with dried blood.

  “Christ,” Andy said as he broke out in a cold sweat and thought of what had been carved on the murdered woman’s body. “I got no idea what’s going on here, Joe.”

  Slipper quietly and somberly returned to his car and got out evidence bags and tape. He sealed everything inside paper bags and suggested he and Andy talk, neither of them having any idea that Unique was hiding in the shadows across the street, watching the entire drama.

  “How about we sit in your car?” Andy suggested because he didn’t want Slipper inside his cluttered dining-room office with its research materials on Jamestown, Isle of Dogs, pirates, mummies, photographs of Popeye, and all the rest.

  “Sure.” Slipper shrugged, slightly puzzled. “What? You hiding a woman in there?”

  “I wish,” Andy replied. “Nope. It’s just the place is a friggin’ mess and I’d rather not be distracted at the moment. If you feel better coming inside, that’s fine, of course. You can even search the place if you want.”

  “Hell no, Andy,” Slipper said. “Shit. I got no probable cause to search your house, even if you give me permission. Come on. Let’s go sit in that piece of shit the city gives me to drive.”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, Joe,” Andy kept saying.

  “Well, I do,” Slipper answered as they climbed inside his old unmarked Ford LTD and shut the doors. “It certainly looks like our killer left this shit and is jerking us around. You know, I worked that fucking scene, and it’s obvious to me the photo was taken before we got there. Not to mention, when we responded, there was no sign of her clothes, and we searched the entire island.”

  Andy was in turmoil. Did the killer somehow know that he was Trooper Truth? Is that why Trooper Truth was carved on the body and now evidence was left at Andy’s house? But how could anyone except Hammer possibly know the real identity of Trooper Truth? It made no sense, and Andy feared that if he openly discussed the situation with Slipper, the detective would tell other cops and Andy’s literary career would be over and Hammer would be fired by the governor. Worst of all, Andy might become the prime suspect.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said with a frustrated sigh. “Joe, let me tell you right off, I had nothing to do with this case. I never heard of the victim until you called Hammer earlier today. I’d never seen the victim, and I sure as hell didn’t murder her or anyone, if that’s what you’re even remotely entertaining, and I think we should be really honest with each other, Joe.”

  “Damn right we’ll be honest,” Slipper replied, staring out the windshield at the dark, empty street, and Andy could tell by Slipper’s refusal to look him in the eye that the detective didn’t know what to think and was, in fact, suspicious.


  “Do you know anything about Trooper Truth?” Slipper asked.

  “I know the name was carved on her body, because you told Hammer and she told me,” Andy said. “Certainly, I know about Trooper Truth’s website, just like everybody else does.”

  “You’ve read his shit?”

  “Yes,” Andy said. “And I can’t see that there’s anything in the content of those essays that might be somehow linked to Trish Thrash, do you?”

  “Gotta agree with you there,” Slipper confessed. “I mean, I don’t see any connection between Jamestown, mummies, and all the rest, to what appears to be a blatant hate crime targeted at gay women. And I gotta admit, Andy,” Slipper said, finally looking at him, “half the city cops always assumed you was gay, and you never have seemed to care or have a thing about gays.”

  “I don’t,” Andy replied sincerely. “I don’t have a thing about anybody except bad people.”

  “Yeah, that’s always been my impression.” Slipper shook his head, mystified. “But why the hell would the killer leave this shit at your house, for Christ’s sake? I’m wondering if it could be some person you’ve arrested before or somehow had contact with, maybe when you was working for the city? Is your address listed in the phone book?”

  “No, Joe, it’s not. Mind if I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you considered that maybe the Trooper Truth link isn’t that the killer reads Trooper Truth but that maybe the victim did and somehow the killer found that out?”

  “You know, I’m kind of embarrassed to tell you that I didn’t think of that,” Slipper said with interest and a spark of hope. “Damn good thought. I’ll follow up on that right away, go back and talk some more with the people she worked with.”

  “Maybe with some of the people who played on the softball team that’s on her T-shirt,” Andy suggested. “What you might want to consider is not asking about Trooper Truth directly, because you don’t want people knowing the detail about what was cut on her body, right?”

  “Hell no. Only the killer and us and the M.E. know that. So we need to keep that to ourselves in case we ever get a suspect and he confesses to it, right?”

  “Exactly, Joe.”

  “So how do you think I could find out about Trooper Truth without mentioning him directly?”

  “How about this for an idea,” Andy said. “Trooper Truth gets e-mail.”

  “He does?”

  “Yes. It’s right there on the website that you can contact whoever he or she is and so on. Why not send an e-mail to Trooper Truth and ask for his or her help? He—let’s just go ahead and call him or her a he—can post something on his site and see if people who might have known Trish Thrash will respond.”

  “Like what?” Slipper scratched his chin. “What do we want him to put on his site?”

  “Okay,” Andy said, thinking. “Try this: The police are looking for anyone who knew Trish Thrash and might know her hobbies, passions, what she read, and if there was anything or anyone of late that she talked about a lot.”

  Slipper was taking notes and asked Andy to repeat the statement again.

  “And I would add,” Andy suggested, “that the informers don’t have to identify themselves, otherwise some people won’t feel comfortable stepping forward. And I’d offer a reward for any tip that leads to an arrest.”

  Slipper started the car engine and turned on his headlights while Unique crouched behind a tree in the dark, her molecules rearranged into invisibility and her Purpose throbbing as she imagined appearing at the blond cop’s door one night.

  “My car’s broke down,” the Nazi scripted. “Can I use the phone?”

  The cop would let her inside, and when he turned his back for even a second, Unique would, as instructed, become invisible and slip up behind him, slashing his throat all the way through his windpipe so he couldn’t scream and would drown in his own blood. Then, the Nazi said from her dark space, Unique would slash his pretty face, cut out his eyes and tongue, castrate him, carve a swastika on his belly, and photograph the fruits of her Purpose, as usual. Finally, she would take his clothes, which Unique would deliver to whomever the Nazi directed.

  “I know you’ve already thought of this,” Andy was diplomatically suggesting, “but I’d get the DNA lab to analyze the envelope, assuming the killer licked the flap, then have the profile run through the DNA database to see if we’re lucky enough to get a cold hit. Also have the blood on the clothes checked for DNA. Sometimes the killer cuts himself. I’d also get Vander to do his thing with the Luma-Lite and Super Glue in hopes there are latent prints on the trash bag and the envelope and Polaroid, which he can then run through AFIS. Of course, get trace evidence to check for fibers, hairs, and whatever on the clothes in the bag, and before any of this is done, don’t forget to let Doctor Scarpetta see everything.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Slipper said rather disdainfully, because he was trained in the old days and understood modern forensic science about as well as he did his VCR, which he still didn’t know how to work. “I already was gonna do all that.”

  Thirteen

  Trooper Macovich had flown the First Family to the helipad downtown and then returned to the state police hangar where he was now up on a stepladder, cleaning bugs off the 430’s bird-proof windshield in the glare of lamps along the tarmac.

  Yeah, being a helicopter pilot was glamorous, all right, Macovich sourly thought. Nothing more exciting than hauling around the governor, who was blind as a bat, and that family of his, who acted as if they were royalty. Hell, the Crimms never thanked or praised him, and he hadn’t gotten a decent raise in a while, either. It wasn’t fair that Andy Brazil could be suspended for an entire year and then dance back to work as if nothing happened.

  Macovich hoped Andy got what was coming to him and that everybody else did, too. Macovich wished something magic would happen in his life to help him out of debt and ease his relentless, exhausting sexual cravings. Women and most men didn’t have any idea what it was like to have a stallion between your legs that was always kicking, bucking, and snorting to get out of the stall, even when the horsie, as Macovich called it, was asleep. His lustful nature had trotted into his life at a very early age, and his father used to chuckle with pride and call his boy Thorlo Thoroughbred, not realizing that little Thorlo was developing a big problem that would eventually dominate his body and his life. He had to have women, and it was expensive. He had to have women who were sexually insatiable and skilled enough to stay in the saddle no matter how hard the ride, and female company like that was hard to find.

  Macovich stopped scrubbing away bugs for a moment when he noticed a Land Cruiser boldly pull up and park right in front of the state police hangar. A tough-looking white kid with dreadlocks climbed out and walked toward the helicopter as if he had every right in the world to do as he pleased.

  “Hey!” Macovich said sternly. “This is a restricted area.”

  “And I’m lost as hell,” the kid replied. “Can you tell me how to get to the regular airport? I got a flight to Petersburg in fifteen minutes and I’m gonna miss it for sure if I don’t get there fast.”

  “There ain’t no flights to Petersburg,” Macovich said as he scrubbed a stubborn splat with the rag. “Petersburg’s only thirty-something miles from here, so why you need to fly there? Just drive and you can get there just as quick.”

  The other road dogs had their windows down, listening and tensely wondering what Smoke was going to do. Man, worried Cat, if Smoke skyjacked that chopper, there wasn’t a way in the world the dogs were ready to fly such a thing. Cat could see from the backseat of the Land Cruiser that the cockpit looked like a spaceship, with hundreds of overhead switches and circuit breakers and other components unfamiliar to him. He nudged Cuda.

  “What we gonna do he shoot that trooper and take the chopper?” Cat asked.

  “Maybe we steal a Peterbilt and haul it in the reefer?”

  “Won’t fit in any reefer I ev
er seen.”

  “Yeah. Have to take the top off the reefer with a blowtorch so the propeller would have some room. That the biggest propeller I ever seen.”

  “They’re called blades,” Possum corrected them. “Boats and prop planes got propellers. Not helicopters.”

  “Well, they still ain’t gonna fit!” Cat said, annoyed.

  “Just go south on the interstate and you can’t miss it,” Macovich summed up directions to Petersburg.

  “How ’bout I pay you to drop us off in this thing?” Smoke nodded at the huge, beautiful helicopter. “How fast could it get us there?”

  “Ten minutes, unless we got a head wind. But I can’t give you a ride. The helicopter is used only by the governor and his family.”

  “Yeah? So how’s he gonna know?” Smoke was getting increasingly aggressive, standing close to the stepladder and wondering if he should kick it out from under the trooper.

  “There’s a little Hobb’s Meter in the cockpit and every time you pull up the collective, that meter knows it,” Macovich explained. “Tomorrow, when I take the First Family on their next trip, the meter will say I flew the helicopter ten minutes, then sat it down, then took off again, then sat it back here at the hangar again, before I picked them up and after I dropped them off from the steak house. How I ’sposed to explain why I flew the state chopper to Petersburg unless the gov’ner think I took him there after dinner?”

  “Maybe he won’t remember.”

  This was a distinct possibility, especially after the amount of vodka the governor had consumed earlier this evening, and Macovich was getting tempted. It had been a bad week and a stressful night, and he was certain he couldn’t make this month’s Visa payment.

  “Maybe you give us a quick joyride in that thing?” the kid with dreadlocks suggested. “We don’t really need to go to Petersburg. It’s getting late.”