Dead Dogs and Englishmen (8 page)

“What the heck's goin' on?” He untied his apron and grabbed up his shotgun from beside the door.

Dolly Wakowski was reaching for the door handle just as we burst out, bumping into her.

“Whatcha want, Deputy?” Harry pulled back, blocking her way in. All I could see of Dolly, behind Harry, was her hat. “No deer killed out of season around here, ya know. Got nothin' that would interest you …”

“Yeah?” She pulled the door from his hand and walked in, eyeing me, backing toward the table filled with jars of our illicit fish. “Want to talk to Emily, there. Got a message …”

Dolly lifted her nose and took a sniff, then checked out the table behind me. “You and Emily been out fishing, Harry? Got yourself a license? Want to show it to me?”

Harry reared back uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “You see me or Emily standing in a river? You see us takin' any fish? Got some from a friend, is all. Invited Emily, here, over to learn how to can it, should she ever have a friend that drops some off to her house.”

Dolly made a skeptical noise and glared at me.

“You picked the wrong way to learn how to live off the land, Emily. Harry hasn't had a hunting or fishing license his whole life long.”

I shrugged and pulled off my dirty apron. “We better get out to talk to this George Sandini. I've got his address.”

“Yeah. West of Petoskey?”

I nodded. “He said to come any time we wanted to this afternoon.”

She nodded. “I got news too. Nothin' good. You know that Miguel we went to see? Over to Josh Sutter's farm? Mr. Sutter called me. Hasn't seen Miguel all day. Not usual since the man's a hard worker. Sutter said he's not the kinda' farmer you have to go out and round up. Went to his house and it's empty. Gone. The whole family. Said he's hearing it's happening to other farmers.”

“I'm through here. Right, Harry?” I handed the apron to Harry and thanked him for the fishing and the canning.

“I'll bring over your jars when they cool, Emily,” Harry said, frowned hard at me, and asked, “This about that dead dog you found over to Old Farm Road?”

“Hey! This is police …” Dolly started but I jumped in over her.

“It is. You hear anything? I know how you love your dogs …”

“Two found a month ago out at Tar Lake in Mancelona,” he said. “What usually happens is that the dogs get old, owners get tired of taking care of 'em, and kill 'em off. Most of the time they bury them in their own yard, not dump the bodies like they done.” He stopped to think a minute. “Or, could be one of those puppy mill things. Kill off old breeding stock. But I never heard of them killing people too.” He shook his head. “Some awful folks in this world, but nobody I ever heard of killing people and dogs at the same time. Something going on. That's for sure.”

“Did you hear about the gold cross the dead woman wore?” I asked, on the chance gossip had gotten around to Harry.

“Heard. Don't mean nothin' to me.”

“You want to get moving?” Dolly was impatient. “We got an hour trip ahead of us.”

On the way out to her car, I filled her in on what George Sandini had said.

“So, he thinks something's going on too. Good thing his worker's a citizen. Won't be runnin' back to Mexico. That's a break,” she said, then leaved a deep sigh.

I looked sideways at her. She had the gray look of someone who was suddenly very tired. “You doing all right?”

She said nothing. Okay, I was back out of her twisted loop. Fine with me. I didn't need Dolly's kind of trouble. I'd help find a murderer. Break the story to cement my place at the
Northern Statesman
.
That's what I had to think about.

But more than anything, Dolly or no Dolly, I wanted to find the guy who could so savagely kill a dog.

Dolly kept her beloved
siren off. The car was quiet. I sniffed and stared out my side window as she kept her eyes straight ahead. We got to Leetsville and she sped on up 131.

I took my reporter's notebook from my shoulder bag and began making notes. I wondered if immigration would have to be called in. What it sounded like to me was a dispute between the migrant workers coming in from Mexico. Maybe some kind of turf war. I didn't know enough about the process to make any guesses, but since that's all we had so far I was thinking the whole thing should be turned over to the government.

“ID the victim yet?” I turned to ask, keeping my face blank.

She shook her head. “Ran her through every site we know. Nothing. Lansing's got the body. They're asking the FBI to take a look at the prints. Who knows? This looks bigger than just what's happenin' here. Could be some kind of shakedown ring, getting money from Mexican workers, or from illegals. Maybe they're bringing illegals into the country and demanding money not to turn them in afterward.” Her voice was the same stiff voice she used to talk to strangers. “You ever heard of ‘coyotes'?”

“You mean the guys who bring illegals across the border for a price?”

“Yeah. Like that. I been looking it up. Those guys don't play around. If that's the problem …” She hesitated. “Got a preliminary on the necropsy Lansing's doing.”

I waited, figuring I shouldn't have to beg for information.

“Old injuries on the dogs,” she said finally.

“What's that mean?”

Dolly shrugged. “I don't know. Just said old injuries.”

“From what?”

She double shrugged. “Could be abuse, they said. Could be the dog was used in dog fights.”

“Dog fights.” I didn't buy that one. Not in my peaceful Northern Michigan—well—except for a murder or two.

“Had a dog-fighting group up here maybe twenty years ago. Townspeople turned those guys in. Can't see it happening again without folks putting a stop to it. Still, you never know.”

That wasn't something I wanted to hear. Not up here. That kind of mindless evil didn't belong in my new world.

_____

In Mancelona Dolly pulled up next to a state police car parked at the side of the road and exchanged how-ya-doings with the cop sitting inside, then we were off again.

I settled down for the ride. Fifteen miles or more, depending on where this farm was. The notes I continued making, head down, concentrating, were now notes on groceries I needed, body lotion, a box of dog bones, and anything else I could think of needing within the next month or so. Then I started listing home improvements I might one day make—if my book sold and I made any money. Things like adding a greenhouse off the porch. Like building a garage for the Jeep. Maybe I'd look into a sauna for me so I could run out through four feet of snow, sit in heat for a while, then run back in the house, steaming all the way. I crossed that one off. So, maybe someday I'd get a boat and fish in deeper water. Or maybe I'd get a kayak I could strap on top of the Jeep and kayak in any river I came across. Or go to the Upper Peninsula and get out on some of those perfectly clear lakes. Since I was making “someday” notes, I added a new car and a TV that wasn't twelve inches wide. Maybe … since I was at it … a trip to …

“So, I can't talk about being pregnant to you. Since you seem kind of mad at me,” Dolly said to the windshield.

“I'm not mad at you, Dolly. It's just that you're so …” I sputtered, looking for a word that described her and how she made me feel. “You don't drop something like being pregnant on a friend and then pull away, not let them help. I mean, you acted like you were sorry you even mentioned …”

She shrugged. “I'm not … well … good at needing people.”

“Nobody is. But there are a lot of people who care about you, whether you want to see it or not.”

“Not Cate. She wants out of here. Says she's not up to takin' care of a baby at her age. As if I'd even ask her. All my life I took care of me. Now I'll take care of me and a baby. Don't need nobody …” She was getting herself worked up again.

“See, that's what I mean.” I sighed and settled back for a long ride.

Out of nowhere, stopping me in full throttle, Dolly asked, “You think I'll love it? I mean, you think I'll know how to be a mother? You know I didn't get much in the way of … well … of being loved from all those foster mothers.”

I pulled in a deep breath. “I'm no expert, but I think it's built into us. Loving babies.”

We were quiet. There was so much I didn't know about being a mother. Maybe even about being a woman. So much about the basics of everything.
Would she love it?
How did I know? After a while I asked, “What about the father? A child deserves a father.”

“Lots of kids don't have fathers,” she snapped back. “There's divorce. There's death. What's different about this?”

“With something like death and divorce, you deal with it. The mom, the kid, they're in it together. What if you have a boy, where's the role model?”

“That'll be me,” she said. “More than I ever had.”

“Your job's dangerous. I don't care that you're in a small town. There've been small-town cops killed in the line of duty before. What then? What about the baby? You think about a guardian?”

“What are you talkin' about? Anybody in town'd take my kid. Lots of good people in Leetsville. And what about you? Huh? You'd take my kid, wouldn't you? You'd be a good mother. You wouldn't let my baby go off to an orphanage or a lousy foster home.”

I couldn't say a word, struck dumb at the thought of having a child. Anybody's child.

“Anyway, what I need now is for you to tell me if you think I got a problem or not.”

“Yes, you've got a problem,” I snapped back too quickly.

“I mean a medical problem. Kind of scared me.”

I took a deep breath. One jump to the other.

“What kind of medical problem?”

“Blood in my drawers this morning.”

“Blood? You mean in your pants?” I took a deep breath.

“Yeah.”

“A lot?”

“No. Just some.”

“That's spotting. Could be serious. Could be nothing. You call your doctor yet?”

“Don't have one.”

“What! How do you know you're even pregnant?”

“No periods. Throwing up. I'd say I was pregnant.”

“When are you due?”

She shrugged. “Don't know.”

“Are you nuts? When in hell did you plan on seeing a doctor?”

“I was gonna go but I don't want to see nobody around here. Everybody in town would hear about it right away.”

“Then go to a doctor in Traverse City.”

“Who?”

“Why would I know an Ob-Gyn?”

“Don't you have one of them gynecologists? You're the type.”

“What do you mean ‘the type'?”

“Regular checkups. Pap smears. Mammographs. Stuff like that.”

“Mammograms.”

“Whatever.”

“I'm that type, all right. I just don't have health insurance. But I'm going to when I get the money,” I said.

“Yeah, well, me too.”

“I think we should head for the hospital in Petoskey. Let them check you out.”

“I'll go after we see these guys we're goin' out to see.”

“I'll go with you. I mean to the hospital.”

“You don't have to.”

“Yes I do. You brought me into this and you're not going to shut me out now.”

“Who says I'm tryin' to shut you out? That's just dumb.”

“Yeah, well … at least I know how to take care of myself.”

“Really? No doctor in … what … five years? When'd you get your last checkup?”

I sputtered, then sat glowering out my side window. She had me there. A long time ago now—since that dose of the chlamydia Jackson gave me for Christmas—like, seven years ago.

“Can't answer, can you?”

“I'm stopping this conversation,” I said with the best huff I could muster. “I don't have the kind of patience it takes to be your friend.”

“Who cares?” she said. “And you're not going to be the godmother either.”

“Fine,” I said.

The rest of the drive was quiet, though I couldn't get Dolly's problem out of my head. Maybe I was mad, but I didn't want anything to happen to her. Being irresponsible shouldn't be a death sentence—for her or her baby. Then I wondered at the feeling I'd gotten when she said I could take the baby if anything happened to her. What was that lift inside of me? What was that extra heartbeat about? What biological trick was my body playing? The old ticking clock? More like a time bomb. I had no desire to raise a kid. None whatsoever. Not Dolly's and not one of my own.

_____

This farm was a huge, going concern. Barns, silos, and a white, gabled farmhouse with extensions out the side and back. It was one of those lived-in farms that had settled in the midst of fields running back and off to the west, a farm set among rolling green hills with fields of corn in one direction, orchards in the other, and in between a fenced-in pasture where twenty or thirty cows ruminated and lowed in the hot afternoon sun. The ground in front of the biggest barn was bare, earth beaten down by the tractors and plows and trucks standing at all angles under two rows of huge oak trees.

I went off to find George Sandini while Dolly waited in the car. He was on the back porch of the sprawling, white farmhouse, sitting on an old kitchen chair reading the newspaper. We shook hands when he unfolded his long body. He nodded a few times, gave a kind of greeting, one long sentence about the weather, then we went back out to meet Dolly. The man was in his sixties. He wore faded overalls with a white undershirt beneath. His face was lined—too many years staring out at growing fields. His hair was mostly gray, with a few gray hairs sticking up from his undershirt, and even a few sticking out of his ears.

I introduced Dolly. They shook hands.

“My worker's name is Carlos Munoz. Right now he's doing a final spraying in the orchard,” he explained to both of us, dragging his words. “Be back soon. Better you wait 'til he gets here. Don't either of you want to be out there with the spraying goin' on.”

“Want to tell the deputy what you told me?” I said.

He nodded to Dolly, then nodded again. “Heard you're doin' a bang-up job there in Leetsville, Deputy. Be happy to help out anyway I can. What Carlos was sayin' was that he got wind of things—workers getting scared off and such. He says it's about something big that's either going on already or might go on. Couple of illegals got involved, then got scared and hightailed it outta here. Nobody knows what's happenin', but I'm thinking drugs. Something like that.”

“What's with the dead dogs?” I asked. “Your guy have any idea?”

George Sandini shrugged, bringing his wide shoulders up to his ears and down again. “Heard about that, too. One man had a dead dog thrown up near his house. Kids found it in the morning. Maybe it's a Mexican thing. Like a warning they'd recognize right away.”

“Any idea who the murdered woman is?”

He shook his head slowly. “Nobody went missing far as I heard. Maybe Carlos can tell you something. Doubt it though. I'll tell you one thing. This guy's usually real steady. He's with me permanently—long as I've got a farm. Carlos is a citizen. Been here over nineteen years. Good man. What he does is help the migrant workers when he can. I mean, helps them find places to shop, doctors when they need one. Things like that. But I never seen him as shook up as he is now. Already he sent his wife and kids to his brother in California. Says far as he can see, it's gettin' dangerous around here.” He made a face, took off his cap and scratched his head. “You ever hear of anything like that, Dolly? Dangerous up here? But I'll tell you both, what I got to worry about is having help with the crops. Can't handle the harvest by myself. No way. So we're all hoping this thing gets resolved …” He put a hand over his eyes and looked off behind where we were standing.

An old green army truck drove in and stopped. A small, dark man with a thick head of straight black hair, wearing a blue-striped shirt and old jeans, jumped out and hailed George.

“You finish the apples?” Sandini asked.

The man nodded, smiled, and walked to where we stood waiting under the trees. George Sandini made the introductions and the man's face closed down on itself. His eyes narrowed. All trust and friendliness got lost back in his head.

“Can you tell me what's going on, Carlos?” Dolly asked, toeing the bare dirt with her booted foot, then looking off across the road, to another farm.

“Only what I told George here.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Workers are leaving when they shouldn't leave. Harvest time is ahead. This is what they come for but now, one after another, they're going away. Back to Mexico, I think. One whole family, the Diaz family, gone.”