Mr. Joyce was a retired dispatcher for a cement company, his tiny house a monument to rural poverty out in the middle of farmland. I suspected the house’s original owner had been a tenant farmer, for on either side of the property were vast expanses of fallow fields that Mr. Joyce said were thick with corn in the summer.
And it had been summer, a hot, sultry July night, when Bonnie Smyth and Jim Freeman had been forced to drive along the sparsely populated dirt road out front. Then November had come, and I passed over the same road, passed right by Mr. Joyce’s house, the back of my station wagon packed with folded sheets, stretchers, and body pouches. Less than two miles east of where Mr. Joyce lived was the dense wooded area where the couple’s bodies had been found some two years before. An eerie coincidence? What if it wasn’t? “So tell me what happened to Dammit,” Marino was saying as he lit a cigarette.
“It was a weekend,” Mr. Joyce began. “Middle of August, it seems. Had all the windows open and was sitting in the living room watching TV. ‘Dallas.’ Funny I can remember that. Guess it means it was a Friday. Nine o’clock when it came on.”
“Then it was between nine and ten when your dog was shot,” Marino said.
“That’s my guess. Couldn’t have been shot much before that or he’d never made it home. I’m watching TV, and next thing I hear him scratching at the door, whimpering. I knew he was hurt, just figured he’d gotten tangled up with a cat or something until I opened the door and got a good look at him.”
He got out a pouch of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette in expert, steady hands.
Marino prodded him. “What did you do after that?”
“Put him in my truck and drove him to Doc Whiteside’s house. About five miles northwest.”
“A veterinarian?” I asked.
He slowly shook his head. “No, ma’am. Didn’t have a vet or even know one. Doc Whiteside took care of my wife before she passed on. A mighty nice fellow. Didn’t know where else to go, to tell you the truth. Course, it was too late. Wasn’t a thing the doc could do by the time I carried the dog in. He said I ought to call the police. Only thing in season in the middle of August is crow, and no good reason in the world anybody should be out late at night shooting at crow or anything else. I did what he said. Called the police.”
“Do you have any idea who might have shot your dog?” I asked.
“Like I said, Dammit was bad about chasing folks, going after cars like he was going to chew the tires off. You want my personal opinion, I’ve always halfway suspected it might have been a cop who done it.”
“Why?” Marino asked.
“After the dog was examined, I was told the bullets came from a revolver. So maybe Dammit chased after a police car and that’s how it happened.”
“Did you see any police cars on your road that night?” Marino asked.
“Nope. Don’t mean there wasn’t one, though. And I can’t be sure where the shooting happened. I know it wasn’t nearby. I would’ve heard it.”
“Maybe not if you had your TV turned up loud,” Marino said.
“I would’ve heard it, all right. Not much sound around here, ‘specially late at night. You live here awhile, you get to where you hear the smallest thing out of the ordinary. Even if your TV’s on, the windows shut tight.”
“Did you hear any cars on your road that night?”
Marino asked.
He thought for a moment. “I know one went by not long before Dammit started scratching on the door. The police asked me that. I got the feeling whoever was in it is the one who shot the dog. The officer who took the report sort of thought that, too. Least, that’s what he suggested.”
He paused, staring out -the window. “Probably just some kid.”
A clock gonged off-key from the living room, then silence, the passing empty seconds measured by water clinking in the sink. Mr. Joyce had no phone. He had very few neighbors, none of whom were close by. I wondered if he had children. It didn’t appear he had gotten another dog or found himself a cat. I saw no sign that anybody or anything lived here except him.