Drool Baby (A Dog Park Mystery) (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries) (7 page)

"Bailey's come out of her catatonic state. She thinks someone tampered with her medication to send her into some sort of schizophrenic episode, and that's
why she attacked you."

"Seriously?" Lia scoffed. She sat back and folded her arms mutinously.

"I'm not crazy about this, but I feel like I have to check it out."

"Why?" The one-word question came out harshly, an accusation.

"I know she assaulted you, and nothing changes that. But if someone tampered with her medication, then maybe it's not over. Maybe someone is still out
there, picking off people you know, one by one. And if that's true, you could be next."

"Oh." The sound was breathy and small.

"Yeah, 'oh.' I hate what Bailey did to you, but I'm not going to ignore this. You're too important to me, okay?"

"I don't know what to say," Lia said, stunned. "I thought once you arrested Bailey, that was it."

"That's what I was hoping. Promise me you'll start locking your screen door?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. No problem. Peter, I think I'm getting scared."

"Me, too. That's why I want to check this out as soon as possible."

"What does Roller think about it?"

"He doesn't know, and he's not going to."

"Why not?"

"All we've got is a woman in a psych ward claiming someone else made her do it. It's not enough. And if I tell Roller she's talking, she'll be back in jail
in a heartbeat. I want to take a minute to find out what's going on first."

Lia dreamed of the gun that night. Bailey was wearing a straight jacket. The dogs sat in a row and howled. Peter was running towards her, but he kept
getting smaller and smaller, as if he was running backwards and getting further and further away. Someone she couldn't see held the gun against her head.
The gun was still pressing into her temple when it went off.

Lia woke up with her heart pounding, the fear strangling her. She remembered what Asia said, to breathe out so she could breathe in. She sat up and looked
out the window at the moon, reminding herself where and when she was. She focussed on the sensation of sitting on the bed, grounding herself in the here
and now. The pounding slowed as she continued to breathe smoothly and rhythmically. Inhale, two, three, four. Pause. Exhale, two three, four. When she was
calm, she turned and saw Peter's back rising out of the top sheet. His breathing was deep and even. She thought about waking him up, then decided against
it. It was enough that he was there. She laid back down, spooning her body behind his.

Peter and Jim got out of their cars in front of Bailey's house. The neat little red brick bungalow was out of keeping with the tall, weedy grass and
neglected flowerbeds. The mailbox was stuffed to overflowing and ad circulars littered the walkway and porch.

"Hoo Boy," Jim said, shaking his head. "She's lucky if no one has broken in to steal the copper yet. She must not have anyone looking after the place." He
took the pile of mail out of the box. "I'll take the mail if you'll grab those papers."

They found a trash can around the side and Peter dumped his load of weekly circulars. "I suspect she has other things on her mind right now besides home
maintenance," he said.

They proceeded to the back yard. Pots of dead geraniums and other, unidentifiable flowers lined the porch. The yard had been well maintained until Bailey's
arrest. It was obvious nobody had attended to it since.

"Where's the key?" Peter asked.

Jim pointed to a stone planter beside a pergola. He handed the mail to Peter. "Second row from the bottom, fourth stone from the right is loose. It should
be behind there." He counted, then leaned over and tugged on the rock. It stuck for a moment, then came free. He reached inside and felt around until he
found a baggie wedged in the back of the cavity. He stood with his prize and held it up so Peter could see. A brass key with a pentagonal head was inside.

"As a hiding place, it's a lot better than the ledge over the door," Peter said.

Jim unlocked the back door and they entered the kitchen. Peter dumped the mail on the dusty counter and looked around. The place should have been cosy. The
air of abandonment lay like a miasma over the lovingly refurbished vintage furniture. There were a few plates in the sink, and a dirty glass on the
counter. A faceted crystal hung in the living room window. It cast rainbows over the opposite wall, a counterpoint to the sad air of the place. The dining
room was lined with book cases topped with clusters of natural crystals and several large stone orbs on decorative stands.

Peter bent down to read the titles. "Crystal Healing, Making Friends with your Medicine Animal, Astral Projection for Dummies, Dream Interpretation and
Prophesy, Your Spirit Guides, How to Read Auras. Looks like a New Age bookstore. But I don't see Reincarnation and Soul Contracts. That's the book that Lia
told us about, the one that Bailey was reading earlier this summer. Too bad it's not here, I'd like a look at it."

Jim, a devout Catholic, merely grunted. "I think the bathroom is this way." He pointed to a small hall off the living room.

The bathroom floor was a checkerboard of pink and sea-foam green tiles in a classic pattern from the thirties. The wainscoting consisted of a bands of
green and pink tile, punctuated in several places by hand-painted tiles of day lilies. The shower curtain was covered with peonies. There was an old, wood
medicine cabinet over the sink with a glass knob on the door.

Peter moved into the small space while donning a pair of latex gloves he pulled from his pocket. He opened the cabinet and scanned the shelves. "Depakote.
This must be it." He picked up the bottle and showed it to Jim.

Jim eyed the bottle in Peter's hand as if it would leap up and bite. "What now?"

"I take this to a friend who will examine the bottle and capsules for finger prints, then it goes to a private lab. But first I want to check something
out." He carefully opened the bottle and poured some of the capsules into his hand. He eyed them for a minute. "Shit." He ground the word out on a massive,
resigned sigh.

"What?" Jim asked, looking and seeing nothing.

"Look at the lettering." Peter pointed his chin at the turquoise and white capsules.

"What about it?"

"When they come out of the factory, the print on the two halves of a capsule will line up exactly. Someone tried to line these up, but it's a little off.
There are slight variations. See?"

Jim looked more closely. The differences were minute, just a hair, but they were there. "You think someone's been into these."

"I know someone's been into these. What I don't know is if it was Frank, creating a defense for Bailey, or if some nut job did this to her, and sent her
off the rails. I wish we'd found this when we first arrested her." He looked at Jim. "You don't know how badly I was hoping to find nothing."

Jim gave him a wry expression. "I guess that means we give Bailey the benefit of the doubt for now. Suppose I'll come over and mow her lawn. If someone put
her in a psych unit, I'd hate to see her house get vandalized while she's stuck there."

Peter poured the caps back in the bottle. He pulled a zip-lock baggie from his hip pocket and sealed the bottle inside. "I'm trying to look at all sides of
this. No matter what we find, this could open a whole can of worms. If we find something, it's fuel for Bailey's defense, even if we can't prove who
doctored the meds or when it happened. I guess there's some chance Catherine did it before she drowned in her pond, but I think we agree she wasn't
meticulous enough to pull off any kind of crime without leaving evidence. And she wasn't on Bailey's list. If it wasn't Frank, it's likely there's somebody
out there laughing at all of us."

Before they left, Peter examined the doors and windows for signs of forced entry. He found nothing.

I've been considering my options, how best to recreate the sensations I experienced with Catherine. It occurs to me that these sensations were not a result
of killing her with my hands. I believe my disappointing experiment at Red River Gorge proved that.

I am thinking the thrill resulted from the way I engaged directly with her before I killed her. I let her see me, know me and my intent. I unleashed a part
of myself, a brutish side that I had not experienced before. I expressed hatred I did not know myself capable of in that moment. And, for a brief instant,
I saw her terror.

Now the question is, how can I engage my 'inner brute' directly with a target without risk to myself? How can I find this hatred within myself again? I so
rarely have deep emotions for anyone. It could be years before someone enters my life who affects me as Catherine did. Then it was months before I allowed
myself to remove Catherine.

So far, everything suggests that this experience was target specific. Must it be that way? I am sure much of the excitement resulted from the build-up to
that event. Is it possible to compress the build-up in some fashion? Reduce the time involved while intensifying it somehow? Perhaps I could prolong the
actual experience in order to allow more time for emotions to emerge within the event under extreme circumstances.

How can I prolong engagement before I complete the act, while minimizing the risk? Minimizing risk is imperative. Time is my enemy. The more time I take,
the more chances there are: of being seen, of leaving a trace of myself, of failing to complete the act successfully, of being caught.

Peter called in a favor and topped it with a case of beer. The tech working that holiday weekend agreed to check for prints and run them while he was
there. There were no fingerprints on the capsules. The only fingerprints on the bottle were Bailey's. Peter was disappointed but not surprised.

"Geezelpete, I thought people would be sleeping late today. It's supposed to be a freaking holiday." Lia looked out at the eddying morass of dogs in front
of the corral, most of whom were unknown to her. A strange trio lunged at the gate, barking something that sounded like "Come in here and we'll tear your
lungs out." Chewy protested with his piercing bark. Honey snarled. CarGo, being many times the size of the challengers, ignored the confrontation.

"Excuse me," Anna called out. "Whose dogs are these? Can you come pull them away from the gate?" She turned to Lia. "We'll be fine as long as we get by the
mob."

A string bean of a woman came up, rolling her eyes. "I don't see what the big deal is. There's no reason to be afraid of my dogs."

Anna took a deep breath. "They're guarding, as if this is their territory. You should not let them do that. Most fights at dog parks happen at the gate,"
She explained patiently.

The woman shook her head. "Whatever." She led the dogs away.

"Idiot," Lia muttered under her breath.

Once the gate was clear, Anna and Lia cut around the furry horde, waving at Roger and Jose as they passed. They headed for the back of the park, which was
empty. They joined Jim at their usual table while Lia's dogs ran off to play. CarGo stayed by Anna. Jim was reading on his Kindle.

"Geezel, Jim," Lia said, "I thought you were the mayor of the dog park. What were you thinking, letting all these strange people in?"

"Don't look at me," Jim said. "They just showed up."

"Do you suppose," Anna said, "They just woke up and said, 'My goodness, it's a holiday, I guess I should play with my dog'?"

"And they've got to get it out of the way early so it won't interfere with their beer drinking. I would have gone over to the other side, but it's so
small, Honey won't run over there," Lia said.

"Well, we're safe back here," Anna watched the unruly bunch up front. "But I think I'll wait to do my crossword at home so I can keep my eyes on them. Jim,
what are you reading?"

"I'm looking up pizza recipes. The kids are coming over later and we're baking pizza in that wood fired oven we built out behind the house."

"That sounds so nice. What about you, Lia? Anything planned with your detective?"

Lia squirmed a little. "Peter invited me to this cookout District Three and District Five are having. They're playing baseball against each other. Peter and Brent
are on the team."

"Is Brent that nice boy from Atlanta Peter partners with?"

"That's the one."

"That'll be fun," Anna said.

"I decided not to go."

"Why ever not?"

Lia shrugged. "I figured it was going to be one of those things where the wives and girlfriends all hang out together while the guys play ball. I didn't
want a bunch of women I've never met grilling me about my relationship with Peter and asking if we're serious. Does that make me a bad person?"

"Not bad. Chicken, maybe. I imagine you'd feel more comfortable if you knew some of the women," Anna said.

"That, too. It felt like I was going to meet his family or something. I'm just not ready."

"You can join us if you like," Jim said. "You, too, Anna, if you aren't doing anything."

"I'd love that," Anna said. "I hope you'll let me bring something."

"Thanks," Lia said. "I've got my head into a painting right now, so I'd rather stay home and work."

"If you change your mind, just come on over. We're eating around five."

Vicious snarling interrupted their conversation. Honey, Viola, Kita and Fleece started running towards the disturbance. Lia and Jim yelled for their dogs.
The errant canines sulked back to the picnic table. CarGo hadn't budged an inch from his spot by Anna.

At the other end of the park, Jose waded through the roiling dogs and fell on top of the main aggressor. Roger pulled a bleeding beagle out of the fray.
The string bean woman screeched at Jose to leave her dog alone. Jose shouted back for her to control her dogs.