Dead Canaries Don't Sing (2 page)

I shrieked.

Max and Lou instantly stopped barking, no doubt impressed that the leader of their pack was capable of making a sound even more piercing than what they were capable of. Whether I’d simply stunned them or won a new level of respect, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.

At the moment, I was too busy struggling to remember what a rational person was supposed to do at a moment like this.

Cell phone.
Somehow, the thought cut through my panic.

“Stay!” I told Max and Lou, wanting to mark the precise location of the wing-tipped shoes and the human body that was attached to them.

For once, they actually obeyed. I dashed back to the van, praying I’d taken better care of my Nokia than I had my English muffins. I grabbed it off the driver’s seat, yelped with relief when I saw it was still half-charged and dialed 911.

“Officer Johnston, Eighth Precinct. Where’s the emergency?”

“Atherton Farm. Brewster’s Neck, off Green Fields Road.” The shakiness in my voice surprised me. “This is Dr. Jessica Popper. I’m a veterinarian. I came out here on a call and found a dead man in the woods.”

“How do you know the person is dead?”

“Not moving, lying half buried in the woods, skin—what I can see of it—ghostly white . . .”
Not exactly a pretty sight,
I was tempted to add, but didn’t.

“I’ll send an ambulance,” Officer Johnston replied, unperturbed. “Tell me exactly where you are.”

I gave directions, then ended the call. With the police on the way, I knew I’d done my job. I made a quick call to Skip, the manager of Atherton Farm, explaining that I’d been delayed but would get to the barn as soon as I could. The obvious next step would have been to put the phone away, call my dogs back into the van and wait for help to arrive.

Instead, I stared at the ditch my tire was stuck in and then back at the phone in my hand, thinking. Debating, really. Should I or shouldn’t I? Dialing those seven digits, punching in that familiar number that I’d called hundreds of times before, would have been so easy. And not at all questionable, under the circumstances.

Except that even I didn’t know my real motivation for calling Nick Burby. Did I really need his help? Or was I merely using the ghastly thing that had just happened as an excuse?

I was about to put my cell phone away when I heard Lou’s deep, chesty bark. I snapped my head around and saw him stationed a few feet away from the corpse, glancing down at something in the leaves and yelling his head off. Meanwhile, Max, the digger in the family, was doing his terrier thing. He was working his strong white paws like there was no tomorrow, the dirt flying wildly as he doggedly went after something buried near the body.

“No!” I shouted, moving toward them, worried about what he’d find.

Max shoved his nose into the earth. When he came up, the flash of bright color that contrasted sharply with his white beard sent a shiver through me that was even colder than the early November morning. Even from a few hundred yards away, I knew exactly what it was.

With trembling fingers, I dialed Nick.

The Norfolk County police arrived with their usual fanfare, sending up splatters of mud as two patrol cars came barreling over the dirt road far more recklessly than they should have. Their red lights flashed and their sirens made those obnoxious beeps that sound like the vehicle in question had too much spicy food the night before.

I stood a safe distance away from the corpse, wanting to seem respectful of death while at the same time serving as a sort of beacon, pointing the way. Max and Lou frolicked at my feet like two little kids. I was glad I’d gotten them away from the fascinating smells of the forest. The last thing I wanted was to disturb a crime scene. Especially this one, since I was already thinking of it as
my
crime scene.

Two uniformed officers climbed out of their cars, hoisting their belts and scowling as if they were already prepared for the worst. Well, they weren’t about to be disappointed.

“You the person who called in?” the short, dark-haired one demanded, his New York accent so thick he sounded like a character in a Scorsese film. He wasn’t much older than I was, but he already had the tired look and sagging belly of a man firmly planted in middle age.

I nodded.

He peered at me through dull, heavy-lidded eyes that were the same dark brown as his nightstick. “Name?”

“Jessica Popper. Dr. Jessica Popper.”

The wheels turned in his head, so slowly I could practically hear them creak.

“Dr. Popper?”

“That’s right.”

He smirked. “Like the drink?”

“That’s Pepper. I’m Popper.”
And even though you
clearly think you’re incredibly clever, this is about the
eight millionth time in my life I’ve had this exchange.

“Wanna tell me what happened here?”

I glanced at his name tag and learned I was talking to Officer Pascucci. “I came out here early this morning on a call. I’m a veterinarian, and—”

“You’re a
what
?”

I peered at Officer Pascucci more closely, trying to decide if he hadn’t heard me, hadn’t mastered any six-syllable words or was merely toying with me.

“I’m a veterinarian,” I repeated patiently. “An animal doctor? I was on my way to make a house call. One of the Athertons’ stallions is sick.”

He just stared at me. I was really having trouble reading him. Was he not capable of understanding what I was saying—possibly the result of too many hours spent in front of the tube watching arena football and
The Man Show
? Or was he waiting for me to say, “Oh, and on the way, I stopped to drop off a dead body I happened to have with me”?

“My dogs found him,” I persisted, trying to hang tough. Pascucci stared me down. “I stopped my van to check the tire, and they raced out before I could grab them. The next thing I knew, they were barking like crazy. That was when I went over there and saw . . .” My voice trailed off lamely.

“These are your dogs?”

I just stared at him. It was
so
tempting to point out that given the fact that we were standing in a deserted field with only two dogs in sight, the odds were astronomical that the gangly one-eyed Dalmatian and the hyperactive, tailless Westie were, indeed, mine.

Instead, I simply replied, “Yes.” Then congratulated myself on my outstanding amount of self-control.

“It was actually Max who found the body,” I went on. “The furry guy. He’s a West Highland White . . .”

Pascucci didn’t appear to be listening. He crouched down to examine the witness more carefully.

“What kind of dog did you say this was?” He stuck his hand out, as if he were about to grab Max by the throat to get a better look.

“Hey!” he yelped, pulling it back abruptly and jumping up. “The little bastard tried to bite me!”

“I’m so sorry!” I grabbed the perpetrator and tucked him under my arm like a football, thinking, “Well, what did you expect, approaching an animal like that?” Still, I knew that Max’s tendency to snap, at least under pressure, wasn’t one of his more endearing qualities. “He only does that when he’s excited or scared. I know it’s a terrible habit, but I’ve never been able to break him of it. His original owners weren’t exactly the nicest people in the world.”

Pascucci’s face twisted into an ugly scowl. “You got a license for that mongrel?”

It was probably just as well that the other cop chose that moment to step in. “Why don’t you go check out the body, Vince?” he interjected. He was as lanky and fair as his sidekick was stubby and dark. “Officer Nolan,” his name tag read. “You know Homicide’s gonna want to ask their own questions.”

Officer Pascucci shot Nolan a look that told me his surliness wasn’t reserved purely for members of the general public. Then he strutted away, positively oozing self-importance as he headed toward the woods.

As soon as he was out of earshot, the second police officer smiled apologetically.

“Sorry about that. I’m afraid Vince has seen too many cop shows. He thinks ‘tough’ and ‘obnoxiously rude’ are the same thing.”

I put Max back on
terra firma,
then smiled back. If these two are playing good cop, bad cop, I decided, they’re doing a pretty good job.

“Besides, you gotta realize what a big deal this is, Dr. Popper. It isn’t every day we have a murder up here. Compared to the rest of the Eighth, this area’s Disneyland. The worst crimes we ever get up here on the North Shore are little old ladies who lock themselves out of their houses. Maybe the occasional cell phone gets stolen out of somebody’s BMW. So for somebody like Pascucci, this is the thrill of a lifetime.”

He smiled again. He had a rather nice smile, I noticed, one that lit up his entire face and gave him a boyish look that bordered on charming.

“By the way, I’m Officer Nolan.”

“Jessie Popper.”

“A veterinarian, huh?”

“That’s right. I specialize in mobile veterinary services. In other words, I make house calls.”

“Yeah? How’d you get into that?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer. A shrieking ambulance careened toward us, trailed by two cars. The isolated dirt road was beginning to look like a parking lot.

“Get ready,” Officer Nolan warned me under his breath. “Here comes the big guy.”

A well-dressed man with the posture of a four-star general strode toward us, glancing down at the scrubby terrain as if it were peppered with land mines. He struck me as the kind of guy who got his boxer shorts dry cleaned—extra starch, please—and I got the feeling he was more worried about getting his shoes muddy than he was about the unexpected appearance of a corpse in the woods. Still, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. The ambulance driver and an EMT followed, lugging medical equipment and looking substantially more anxious about what might be going on here than the man in the suit.

The “big guy,” as Officer Nolan had identified him, nodded an acknowledgment at Nolan, then focused on me with pale blue eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m Lieutenant Harned, chief of homicide. You the one who made the call?”

“Yes. I’m Dr. Jessica Popper, and—”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

I elected not to point out that I’d been about to do precisely that when he’d interrupted me. “I operate a mobile veterinary services unit and I came out here on a call at about six-thirty. One of the Athertons’ horses is sick. My van stalled, and when I opened the door to check it, my two dogs ran out. They discovered the body over there.”

“Exactly what time did you get here?”

The guy was big on exactness, I noted. “I’d say 6:25. Actually, I’m pretty certain of that, because I’d just looked at my watch to see how late I was going to be.”

“Did you see anybody else in the area?”

I shook my head.

“Somebody driving away, maybe? Or maybe you passed somebody out on the main road?”

“Not a soul. This area’s always quiet, and this early in the morning, it’s completely dead.” My hand flew to my mouth. “What I mean is—”

Lieutenant Harned frowned. “What about seeing anything unusual? When you went after the dogs, did you notice anything out of the ordinary? A weapon, a footprint . . . anything at all?”

“Well, there was this one thing . . .” I pointed to the spot where the dogs had found the body. From that distance, it was hard to make out the human form half covered by dead leaves. But the flash of bright yellow was unmistakable.

“Max—this one’s Max, the Westie, uh, the West Highland terrier—dug up a canary nearby. I’m not sure how deep it was buried—”

“A canary?” Harned repeated the word with suspicion, as if he deeply distrusted my ability to identify such a rare species of bird.

I was debating whether or not to remind him that I was an animal expert when he commanded brusquely, “Give your name, address, and phone number to Officer Nolan here. And don’t leave yet. I’ve got a couple of guys from my unit on the way. They’ll want to question you.”

As he turned and headed toward the body, I called, “I’d be happy to show you exactly where—”

“We’ll handle this from here.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Lieutenant Harned paused long enough to glower back at me. “Put those two mutts on a leash and get ’em out of here. They’ve already messed up the crime scene enough.”

By that point, my blood was boiling so violently I figured there had to be steam coming out of my ears.

What
exactly
were you expecting from the cops? I asked myself. An engraved thank-you note? A proclamation commending your good citizenship?

I answered my own question: How about a little civil treatment?

When I heard another set of tires on the rutted road, my stomach tightened. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or even more agitated over Nick Burby’s arrival on the scene.

How long has it been? I wondered, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand as I watched the black Maxima jerk along the uneven road. Okay, I knew exactly how long it had been. Two months, one week, and four days. A grand total of seventy-one days.

At least you haven’t been calculating the hours, I thought.

I tried stepping out of myself, objectively viewing my reaction as I watched Nick climb out of his car. The reasonable part of me felt like shaking me by the shoulders and scolding me over the way my heart got that weird achy feeling. Not good achy; bad achy.

It was the feeling that makes you realize where the term “broken heart” comes from.

I took a few deep breaths. It has to be like this, I told myself firmly. You know perfectly well it’s the only way. You made your decision, and it was a good one. The only one. Now, you’ve got to move on.

I repeated these assurances in my head as I watched Nick stroll across the field, his hands jammed into the front pockets of khaki pants that would have greatly benefited from five minutes with an iron. As he walked toward me, he kept his head down. The lock of dark hair that was always falling into his eyes behaved exactly as predicted. He pretended he was being careful not to stumble. But I knew, deep inside, that he was trying not to look at me.