Chapter 46
An annoying sound roused Jojo from a restless sleep.
Bzzzzzz.
Groggy and slow, she tried to figure out what was making?—
Bzzzzz. Her cell phone was vibrating on the bedside table. She always kept the ringer turned off so as not to jar her uncles when she got a call. Squinting at the clock, she couldn’t make out the numbers. But it was dark outside.
She touched the little green answer icon and mumbled, “Hello.”
“Were you asleep?” Conor asked.
“Me? Asleep? Naaaa. I was working out. Fifty push-ups followed by fifty sit-ups followed by?—”
“You were asleep.”
“Of course, I was asleep. What do you think I’d be doing at,” she squinted at the clock again and could see the time, “four-thirty in the morning?”
“You made me swear I’d call you the minute there was an important break in the case.”
Actually, she hadn’t made him pinky swear, which would have made it a sacred vow, but she had made him promise.
“What’s the break?”
“Just heard from the FBI that our friend Adam Cruz … isn’t.”
“Isn’t our friend?”
“Isn’t Adam Cruz. His real name is Spencer Mason—maybe.
He may have even more aliases, the FBI’s still tracking it.
But as Spencer Mason, he is a ‘person of interest’ in a murder in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2018.
Apparently, he vanished in a puff of smoke into the mountains before they could question him. ”
Jojo sat up in bed. “What do we know about the murder?”
“Not much. The FBI is on it, and we’ll have more by the end of the day. But we have enough right now to get a warrant to round this dude up and bring him in for questioning.”
Jojo lay back down and pulled the warm blankets up around her. “So why now?” she asked.
“It took time to cross-check his driver’s license picture with facial recognition?—”
“Not now as in today. Now as in four-thirty in the morning. Have you … You didn’t go home last night, did you?”
“Busted.”
“Have you gone home at all since the shootings?”
“Well, sure I’ve gone home?—”
“Shower, shave and change. Let me amend that. Have you slept at home, in your own bed in the past ten days?” Jojo knew the couch in his office folded out into a bed, but those were usually more uncomfortable than just sleeping on the floor.
“That’d be a no.” Before she could make more of it, he quickly changed the subject. “So how about you meet me at the barracks in, what, an hour and we will go serve an arrest warrant on our friend Adam Cruz?”
“Sure … maybe it’ll be daylight by then,” she said.
“And bring Trident with you.”
What an odd remark.
“I always bring Trident with me. Why would you say a thing like that?”
“Just be sure you have the dog.” Then he hung up before she could ask any more questions.
Jojo showed up in Conor’s office forty-five minutes after she hung up the telephone. He looked up startled and almost choked on his cup of coffee.
“You look like you’re surprised to see me.”
“Well, you said an hour.”
“It takes a while for most women to do all the things to themselves that I don’t do.
I just shower and dress—not complicated.
” What was complicated, however, particularly in the wintertime, was wet hair.
There was no electricity in the house to power a blow dryer or a curling iron.
Gratefully, Jojo’s hair was naturally curly, so she didn’t have to do her hair, just let it dry naturally.
Not a problem most of the year but she couldn’t go out with wet hair in the wintertime, or it’d freeze.
“Now that we have a warrant, we can go into his house and get him,” Conor pointed out. The best time to catch a suspect unaware was early morning. Most of them weren’t early-bird-gets-the-worm kinda people.
Jojo nodded, then asked the question that had been buzzing around inside her head like a mosquito on meth. “Why did you tell me to bring Trident?”
“You’re not going to like this part.”
She said nothing, just waited.
“You know the guy who was running the ski lifts at the resort that night, the one you threatened that Trident would rip his leg off if he didn’t do what you told him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“His name’s Hank Peterson and he’s filed a complaint against your dog.”
“Filed a complaint against Trident for what?”
“For biting him.”
“Trident didn’t bite him,” she said, her voice level but tight, a deep alto. “He didn’t bite anybody. He just sat there. You can ask all the people who were standing around. And?—”
Conor held up his hand to stave off the rest of the rant he could surely see coming, a tornado that’d maul everything in its path.
“I’m sure you’re absolutely right. All I need from you is proof that he is up to date on his rabies vaccinations?—”
“Of course, he is. He was a narc dog, for crying out loud. You think they’d?—?”
“Just get me his vaccination certificate and?—”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because … I don’t know where it is … exactly.
I think it’s in a box in a storage unit in Chicago.
” Jojo didn’t bring everything she owned when she came home in February.
The plan was that she’d help with her mother as long as it was needed.
She hadn’t intended to stay in Somerset County.
“I just haven’t found time to drive up there?—”
“So you don’t have his rabies vaccination certificate.”
“Nobody in the past five years has wondered if my dog might be rabid, you know, while he was jumping out of helicopters and sniffing out coke.”
“If you can’t find?—”
Jojo ground her teeth.
“Fine. You want the certificate—I don’t intend to go searching through boxes. I’ll call the veterinarian where I took him for a checkup on the knee he injured and get him to send me all of Trident’s records. Does that suit?”
“That will do fine.”
Jojo smiled and started to get up.
“How long will that take?”
“His office is closed on Mondays, but I’ll call first thing tomorrow and I’ll have it before noon. Is that good enough?”
Conor nodded and again Jojo started to get up.
“But between now and then, Trident has to be quarantined.”
Jojo lost it.
“What!” Her voice was almost a growl, got deeper when she was pissed. “Are you telling me that my dog … has to …” She was so angry she was stammering. “He’s been decorated three times for valor. Did you know that? And he?—”
“Judge’s decree says that either we take him to the Somerset County animal shelter and have him confined there?—”
“No! I’m not leaving Trident?—”
“Or …”
“There’s an or?”
“Or we quarantine him.”
“And that means …?”
“That I’ll inform the court that the Pennsylvania State Police will be responsible for quarantining the dog. And then he can just wander around the barracks and keep the night dispatcher company. Linda loves dogs.”
“At night? You mean he can’t come home …?” She saw the answer on Conor’s face.
She sighed, “This is absurd.”
“Yeah, it is. I’m sorry.”
“So that means Trident can’t go with us now?”
“That’s right. He’s quarantined.”