Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) (8 page)

“She’ll be the well dressed one,”
Peter said.

Lia had never heard anything like
it. The sound emanating from the living room was definitely canine
in origin. It was a rhythmic groaning that rose and fell like a car
engine trying, and failing, to turn over. She walked into the room
and spotted Max with her tailbone pressed against the lower edge of
the futon couch frame, rubbing her sacrum back and forth across the
wood edge. The noise, apparently, was ecstasy.

Lia sighed. Max looked up and
grinned sheepishly, caught in the act. Then she resumed her
gyrations and her indecent orations.

“Whatever floats your boat, girl,”
Lia told her. “At least you aren’t into humping legs.” The phone
rang.

“What, on God’s green Earth, is
that noise?” Peter asked when she picked up.

“That,” Lia said, “is Max,
committing a bizarre form of self-gratification against my
furniture.”

“You’re letting the children see
this?”

“Their innocence is lost forever.
Do you think Brent wants a dog?”

“Wreck his carefree bachelorhood?
Doubt it.”

“Do you suppose if we snuck her
into his car when he wasn’t looking that he’d keep her?”

“Lia, if you don’t want the dog,
just take her back.”

“I can’t do that. I don’t know
where she’ll end up.”

“So, how’s my girl?”

“She’s fine. I don’t know how she
can sleep through this racket.”

“I meant my best girl.”

“I thought Viola was your best
girl.”

“How about my best two-legged
girl?”

“She’s good, too. I managed to
hook up with Renee today.”

“What mad scheme does your
favorite patron have up her sleeve now?”

“She wants a larger-than-life
portrait of Dakini. She says that’s to make up for her curator
friend backing out on the sculpture commission the museum was going
to give me. Last time she spoke to them, the curator dithered
something about one of their biggest donors and her latest boy-toy
artist. Apparently her nepotism outranks Renee’s
nepotism.”

“What’s Renee need a painting of
her dog for? She’s got Dakini right there, all she has to do is
look at her.”

“Philistine.”

“You can’t be talking about me,
I’ve never been near the Middle East.”

“Hick.”

“Keep abusing me, and I won’t come
over.”

“Promises, promises. You bringing
dinner?”

Peter dug his chopsticks into a
bowl of pad Thai while Lia delicately nibbled the end off her
spring roll.

"Thai is perfect. How did you know
I was in the mood for pad grapao?"

Peter leaned over and wiped a bit
of plum sauce off the corner of her mouth with his index finger.
"I'm a detective. They pay me to know these things."

"Uh-huh, knowing my secret cravings
for Asian cuisine really goes a long way toward keeping our streets
safe."

“There are times when that's all
that stands between order and chaos."

Lia snorted at Peter’s earnest
expression. "I refuse to dignify that remark. What's going on with
the bones we found? Do you know who it is yet?"

"We think so. We're waiting on a
dental comparison, but the timeline fits and he liked to hike in
Mount Airy. I wonder if you knew him."

"That's a gruesome thought. Bad
enough to find the bones of a stranger. I hate to think the coyotes
were chewing on someone I knew."

"I have a picture. Brent and I are
going to show it around tomorrow, after we get confirmation. See if
anyone remembers him. Would you mind looking at it?"

“ID-ing dead people over dinner.
You sure know how to show a girl a good time."

“You brought it up."

"Yeah, throw that in my face. It’s
okay. Hand it over."

Peter pulled up a photo on his
phone and handed it to Lia. She blinked as she took in the piercing
blue eyes that belied middle-age bloat, the receding white hair,
the full lips quirked to one side in an ironic
half-grin.

“That’s Daisy’s dad. I can’t think
of his name.”

“George Munce?”

“Yeah, that’s it. That’s who was
in the woods?”

“That’s what we
believe.”

“Geezelpete. That’s who she was
waiting for. No wonder he didn’t show up. Poor woman.”

“Who are you talking
about?”

“There was this woman at the park
today, waiting for someone in the picnic shelter. She didn’t have a
dog. Didn’t want to talk. Dressed too nicely for the park. Jim
remembered seeing her before, heading into the woods with someone.
He couldn’t remember who.”

“Did you get a good look at
her?”

“I was about six feet away.
Why?”

“We’ve got to find out who she is.
I need to set you up with a police artist so we can get a picture.”
He reached for his phone.

“Relax, Wonder Boy. I can draw my
own damn picture.” Lia went into her home studio and brought out a
drawing pad. She flipped to a clean page and swiftly blocked out a
sketch of a heavyset woman sitting at a picnic table.

Peter watched, fascinated, as a
face evolved from Lia’s brisk lines, features emerging from
nothing. At first the lines were vague, an approximation. Lia went
back in with her pencil and overlaid her sketch with authoritative
marks. She shaded under the nose and chin. She used her eraser to
pull highlights out. He noted the hint of anxiety in the eyes of
the fleshy woman, the nervous tapping of her fingers on the picnic
table, the short, neat nails.

“This is great. You’re so
talented.”

Lia sniffed and drew herself up.
“I’m a professional,” she announced in a lofty tone.

Peter chucked her chin. “We still
need to talk to the police artist. He’ll take you through a process
that will refine this to a photographic likeness.”

Lia narrowed her eyes.

“Don’t get huffy. He’s going to
love having your drawing to work with. We still need to have an
E-FIT composite that meets departmental standards.”

“Departmental standards, my ass,”
Lia grumbled.

“This is really good,” Officer
Foreman said.

Lia smirked at Peter. He rolled his
eyes. Andy Forman laid Lia’s drawing down next to his
computer.

“So we’re looking for a
middle-aged woman with light, chin-length hair, squared face, heavy
build. That right?”

“It lacks poetry, but those are
the basics. Are you going to ask me about her nose now?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Andy
said. “We gave up the ‘Mr. Potato Head’ approach recently. This is
far superior. Now we work with evolutionary algorithms to morph
into the correct likeness holistically.”

“Excuse me?” Lia wrinkled her
brow, she turned her head, and caught Peter looking too innocent.
“You,” She growled as she poked him in the chest, “Are not supposed
to snicker at witnesses.” She turned back to the computer screen.
“Okay, how does this work?”

“Just watch. I love this program.”
Forman keyed in the basic data. Nine different images popped up on
the screen. “Look at the faces and tell me which one is most like
the woman you saw.”

Lia scanned the array, pointed to
the middle image on the top row. “That one.”

“Now look at them again and tell
me which two faces look least like her.”

She considered, then selected two
more faces. “Why do you want to know what she doesn’t look
like?”

“It feeds into the algorithm.” He
entered her choices. A new array of photos popped up, all
variations of the first photo she selected. “Same thing. Which
looks most like her?”

Lia selected three more faces. They
went through this process several more times. Each time the faces
offered looked more like the woman in the park. Finally Lia said,
“That’s it. That one. It doesn’t have the emotion, but that’s
her.”

“Shame we don’t have a program yet
that can overlay feelings onto the likeness.”

“This is amazing. It’s not at all
stiff like the sketch I saw on television last year of the
Blue-Eyed Rapist. What do you do with the drawing now?”

“Andy,” Peter nodded at Officer
Forman, “is going to generate some copies. Brent and I are going to
spend tomorrow running them around to all the motels within a five
mile radius of the park. If she’s an out-of-towner, we’ve got to
catch up with her before she takes off. Do you think Jim’s still
awake? It would help if we had a description of the vehicle. Once
we get that, we can hit the rental agencies.”

“What if it turns out the body
isn’t George?”

“We still want to find her. A
stranger at the dog park, waiting for someone who doesn’t show, no
dog, inappropriately dressed. Maybe her friend didn’t show because
he couldn’t. Even if she wasn’t waiting for our dead guy, she’s
been hanging around the woods. She might have seen
something.”

“Do you think she killed
him?”

“I don’t know. She’s an anomaly,
and cases are built on anomalies.”

“Brother of mine, we are not
taking your ten year old Blazer. Apart from being embarrassed to be
seen in it, there’s always the question of when its poor, worn out
engine is going to drop on the road.” Brent walked past Peter’s SUV
and clicked his remote key-fob. Brent’s Audi beeped and flashed its
lights.

Peter gritted his teeth. “My engine
is fine. I had it rebuilt last year. You just want an excuse to
show off your new car.”

“That I do.”

“You have to promise to obey all
traffic laws.”

“You just want to ruin all my fun,
don’t you?” He got into the driver’s side, waited for Peter. “ You
know, you could trade in your Blazer for an Escape. Every time you
transported a suspect, you’d be making an ironic
statement.”

“That truck is going to live at
least another ten years.”

“It’s a car, not a marriage. Where
to?”

“We’ve got a choice. There’s the
Comfort Inn up on Mitchell Avenue. A middle class lady would feel
comfortable there. Or there’s that string of older motels down on
Central Parkway. We could hit all of them in the time it would take
for us to go up to Mitchell and back.”

“Isn’t that like looking for your
car keys under a street lamp because the light’s better? Some of
those places are really run down.”

“What’s closest to us is also
closest to the park,” Peter pointed out. “They’re small, and
chances are that if she’s staying at one of them, the clerk on the
desk would know it. Comfort Inn, she could be staying there and
unless she stood out, which our girl doesn’t, they might not
remember her. More employees to interview, too.”

“She might be staying in one of
those bed and breakfasts in the Gaslight District.”

“I’m betting not. From what Lia
said, she was uncomfortable with being questioned. A place like
that, they like knowing everything about why you’re in town and
what you’re doing.”

“Central Parkway it is, then.
Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for take off. This is a short
flight, so we will not be serving any refreshments.”

The first place they stopped had a
mostly empty parking lot and a gum chewing desk clerk sporting a
nose ring. She looked as tired as the motel. Peter smelled burnt
coffee. There were a pair of unappetizing glazed donuts on a
chipped plate by the coffee maker. The girl glanced at the photo.
“Nah, ain’t seen her.” She snapped her gum for emphasis.

“Thanks for your time, Miss,”
Brent said.

She snorted.

Back in the lot, Brent unlocked his
car. “Did you see those donuts? If they’d showed me those at the
police academy, I would have had second thoughts about becoming a
cop.”

“You and your doughnut
fetish.”

“A man has to have a
hobby.”

They checked the $37 Interstate
Motel just for form. The motel’s iconic sign had overlooked the
highway for decades. It was hard to tell if the exterior paint was
supposed to be that ugly gray, or if time and neglect had drained
the color out of it. They were known to rent rooms by the hour,
catering to participants in sordid couplings, mercenary or
otherwise. Peter was certain the mystery woman with the carefully
coifed hair would never lay her head on these pillows.

“Comfort Inn looking better?”
Brent arched an eyebrow at Peter on their way out.

“I haven’t given up
yet.”

“I bet you tomorrow’s doughnuts
she’s not on this strip.”

“You’re on.”

The third place showed signs of
care with neatly trimmed privet hedges and a recent paint job. It
was modest in appearance, with the parking lot hidden behind the
building. It occurred to Peter that this feature prevented
passersby from noticing who was there.