The Husband. Dean Koontz
Okadan? I do his gardening.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The guy who was killed—that wasn’t Mr. Okadan.”
“No.”
“Who was he? A family member, a friend?”
Avoiding the question, Taggart said, “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize the dog.”
“One golden looks like another.”
“Not really. They’re distinct individuals.”
“Mishiki,” Mitch remembered.
“That’s the dog’s name,” Taggart confirmed.
“We do that property on Tuesdays, and the housekeeper makes sure Mishiki stays inside while we’re there, out of our way. Mostly I’ve seen the dog through a patio door.”
“Evidently, Mishiki was stolen from the Okadans’ backyard this morning, probably around eleven-thirty. The leash and collar on her don’t belong to the Okadans.”
“You mean… the dog was stolen by the guy who was shot?”
“So it appears.”
This revelation reversed Mitch’s problem with eye contact. Now he couldn’t look away from the detective.
Taggart hadn’t come here just to share a puzzling bit of case news. Apparently this development triggered, in the detective’s mind, a question about something Mitch had said earlier—or had failed to say.
From inside the house came the muffled ringing of the telephone.
The kidnappers weren’t supposed to call until six o’clock. But if they called earlier and couldn’t reach him, they might be angry.
As Mitch started to rise from his chair, Taggart said, “I’d rather you didn’t answer that. It’s probably Mr. Barnes.”
“Iggy?”
“He and I spoke half an hour ago. I asked him not to call here until I had a chance to speak with you. He’s probably been wrestling with his conscience ever since, and finally his conscience won. Or lost, depending on your point of view.”
Remaining in his chair, Mitch said, “What’s this about?”
Ignoring the question, returning to his subject, Taggart said, “How often do you think dogs are stolen, Mr. Rafferty?”
“I never thought about them being stolen at all.”
“It happens. They aren’t taken as frequently as cars.” His smile was not infectious. “You can’t break a dog down for parts like you can a Porsche. But they do get snatched now and then.”
“If you say so.”
“Purebred dogs can be worth thousands. As often as not, the thief doesn’t intend to sell the animal. He just wants a fancy dog for himself, without paying for it.”
Though Taggart paused, Mitch didn’t say anything. He wanted to speed up the conversation. He was anxious to know the point. All this dog talk had a bite in it somewhere.
“Certain breeds are stolen more than others because they’re known to be friendly, unlikely to resist the thief. Golden retrievers are one of the most sociable, least aggressive of all the popular breeds.”
The detective lowered his head, lowered his eyes, sat pensively for a moment, as if considering what he wished to say next.
Mitch didn’t believe that Taggart needed to gather his thoughts. This man’s thoughts were as precisely ordered as the clothes in an obsessive-compulsive’s closet.
“Dogs are mostly stolen out of parked cars,” Taggart continued. “People leave the dog alone, the doors unlocked. When they come back, Fido’s gone, and someone’s renamed him Duke.”
Realizing that he was gripping the arms of the wicker chair as if strapped in the hot seat and waiting for the executioner to throw the big switch, Mitch made an effort to appear relaxed.
“Or the owner ties the dog to a parking meter outside a shop. The thief slips the knot and walks off with a new best friend.”
Another pause. Mitch endured it.
With his head still bowed, Lieutenant Taggart said, “It’s rare, Mr. Rafferty, for a dog to be stolen out of its owner’s backyard on a bright spring morning. Anything rare, anything unusual makes me curious. Any outright weirdness really gets under my skin.”
Mitch raised one hand to the back of his neck and massaged the muscles because that seemed like something a relaxed man, a relaxed and unconcerned man, might do.
“It’s strange for a thief to enter a neighborhood like that on foot and walk away with a stolen pet. It’s strange that he carries no ID. It’s more than strange, it’s remarkable, that he gets shot to death three blocks later. And it’s weird, Mr. Rafferty, that you, the primary witness, knew him.”
“But I didn’t know him.”
“At one time,” Taggart insisted, “you knew him quite well.”
White ceiling, white railings, white floorboards, white wicker chairs, punctuated by the gray-and-black moth: Everything about the porch was familiar, open and airy, yet it seemed dark now to Mitch, and strange.
His gaze still downcast, Taggart said, “One of the jakes on the scene eventually got a closer look at the victim and recognized him.”
“Jakes?”
“One of the uniformed officers. Said he arrested the guy on a drug-possession charge after stopping him for a traffic violation about two years ago. The guy never served any time, but his prints were in our system, so we were able to make a quick match. Mr. Barnes says you and he went to high school with the vic.”
Mitch wished that the cop would meet his eyes. As intuitive and perceptive as he was, Taggart would recognize genuine surprise when he saw it.
“His name was Jason Osteen.”
“I didn’t just go to school with him,” Mitch said. “Jason and I were roommates for a year.”
At last reestablishing eye contact, Taggart said, “I know.”
“Iggy would have told you.”
“Yes.”
Eager to be forthcoming, Mitch said, “After high school, I lived with my folks for a year, while I took some classes—”
“Horticulture.”
“That’s right. Then I got a job with a landscaping company, and I moved out. Wanted an apartment of my own. Couldn’t fully afford one, so Jason and I split rent for a year.”
The detective bowed his head again, in that contemplative pose, as if part of his strategy was to force eye contact when it made Mitch uncomfortable and to deny eye contact when Mitch wanted it.
“That wasn’t Jason dead on the sidewalk,” Mitch said.
Opening the white envelope that had been on his lap, Taggart said, “In addition to the identification by an officer and the print match, I have Mr. Barnes’s positive ID based on this.”
He withdrew an eight-by-ten color photo from the envelope and handed it to Mitch.
A police photographer had repositioned the cadaver to get better than a three-quarter image of the face. The head was turned to the left only far enough to conceal the worst of the wound.
The features had been subtly deformed by the temple entrance, transit, and post-temple exit of the high-velocity shot. The left eye was shut, the right open wide in a startled cyclopean