Capitol K-9 Unit Christmas: Protecting Virginia

FOUR

The police thought the intruder had entered through the kitchen. The lock hadn’t been tampered with, but there were a couple of muddy footprints on the back deck and a pair of old size ten boots sitting under the swing.

They weren’t Kevin’s. He’d always worn Italian leather. Dress shoes shined to a high sheen paired with suits he spent a small fortune on. Even if he’d worn boots, Virginia didn’t think they’d have been sitting out on the back deck years after his death.

They belonged to someone. So did the clothes she’d found in the closet in the bedroom she hadn’t wanted to enter. The bedroom she and Kevin had shared. She’d gone in anyway, found faded jeans and threadbare T-shirts hanging in a closet that had once been filled with Kevin’s clothes. Kevin had never worn jeans, had rarely worn T-shirts. No, the clothes had belonged to someone else. Officer Morris had taken them as evidence. Virginia wasn’t sure what kind of evidence he could get from them. Hair? DNA? She hadn’t asked. She’d been too busy trying not to panic.

Now she was alone, the officers gone, the house silent. She paced the living room, cold to the bone. She’d turned the heat on high, turned every light in the house on. She’d made tea and drunk two cups, but she couldn’t get warm.

Someone had been in the house.

Someone who’d looked like Kevin, who’d called her Ginny, who’d mocked her with words that had made her blood run like ice through her veins.

A friend of Kevin’s?

If so, he wasn’t someone she’d ever met.

Whoever he was, he’d been in the house for a while. The clothes, the boots. The police had agreed that the guy had spent some time there.

That meant he’d had plenty of time to take whatever he might have wanted, but the house seemed untouched, hundreds of valuable things left behind.

She rubbed her arms, trying to chase away the chill. It didn’t work. It was the house, the memories. She’d thought about going to a hotel, but she had to do this, and she had to do it alone. Cassie had offered to stay the night, babysit her like she babysat the children at All Our Kids. Virginia had refused her offer.

At the time, the sun had still been up.

Now it had set, the last rays tingeing the sky with gold and pink. If she just looked at that, stared out the window and watched the sky go black, she might be okay.

She would be okay.

Because there was nothing to be afraid of. Gavin had changed the lock on the back and front doors; he’d checked the locks on all the windows. The house was secure. That should have made her feel better. It didn’t.

She grabbed her overnight bag and walked up the stairs, the wood creaking beneath her feet. She knew the sounds the treads made. She knew the groan of the landing, the soft hiss of the furnace. She knew the house with all its quirks, but she still felt exposed and afraid, nervous in a way she hadn’t been in years.

She thought about calling Cassie, just to hear someone else’s voice, but if she did that, Cassie would come running to the rescue.

That wasn’t what Virginia wanted.

What she wanted was peace. The hard-won kind that came from conquering the beasts that had been controlling her for too long.

Outside, the neighborhood quieted as people settled in for an evening at home. That was the kind of place this was—weekend parties and weeknight quiet. Older, well-established families doing what they’d done for generations—living well and nicely.

Only things weren’t always nice there.

She’d learned that the hard way.

She grabbed a blanket from the linen closet. There was no way she was sleeping in any of the bedrooms. She’d sleep on the couch with her cell phone clutched in her hand. Just in case.

She would sleep, though.

She’d promised herself that.

She wouldn’t spend the night pacing and jumping at shadows.

Only it had been years since she’d lived alone, years since she’d not had noise to fill the silences. The sounds of children whispering and giggling, the soft pad of feet on the floor, those were part of her life. Without them all she could hear were her own thoughts.

She settled onto the couch, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. It smelled of dust and loneliness. She tried not to think about Laurel, spending the last years of her life alone. No kids to visit her. No husband. No grandchildren. Just Laurel living in this mausoleum of a house, shuffling from room to room, dusting and cleaning compulsively the way she had when Virginia lived there.

She couldn’t sleep with that thought or with the musty blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She shoved it off, lay on her side, staring out the front window, wishing the night away.

She must have drifted off.

She woke to the sound of rain tapping against the roof and the subtle scent of cigarette smoke drifting in the air.

Cigarette smoke?

Her pulse jumped, and she inhaled deeply, catching the scent again. Just a tinge of something acrid and a little sharp lingering.

Was it coming from outside?

In the house?

She crept to the doorway that led into the hall and peered into the foyer. The front door was closed. Just the way she’d left it, but the scent of smoke was thicker there, and she glanced up the stairs, terrified that she’d see him again.

She saw nothing. Not him. Not the light that should have been shining from the landing.

The upstairs hallway was dark as pitch, and she was sure she saw something moving in the blackness. The shadow of a man? The swirl of smoke?

She didn’t care. She wanted out.

She lunged for the door, scrambling with the lock and racing onto the porch. Her car was in the driveway, but she hadn’t brought her keys, and the phone that she’d been clutching to her chest when she fell asleep? Gone.

She must have dropped it.

She should have thought to look for it before she went searching the house for a cigarette-smoking intruder.

She ran down the porch stairs, her bare feet slapping against wet wood. She made it halfway across the yard before she saw the man standing on the sidewalk. She skidded to a stop, her heart beating frantically, as she watched the butt of his cigarette arch through the darkness.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his face illuminated by the streetlights, his little dog sniffing around at his feet.

“I...” What could she say? That she’d smelled his cigarette and thought someone was in the house? She doubted he’d want to know all the details of that. “Fine...”

“Probably you should put some shoes on. This isn’t just rain. It’s ice—and your feet are going to freeze.”

Her feet were already freezing, but she didn’t mention that. She was too relieved to have found the smoker outside her house to be worried about her feet. She thanked him and walked back to the house. The door was open as she approached, just the way she’d left it.

She’d nearly reached it when it swung closed.

She grabbed the door handle, trying to push it open again.

It was locked.

She hadn’t paid much attention when Gavin had been installing it. Was it the kind of knob that locked automatically?

One way or another, she was locked outside.

Which, she thought, might be for the best.

The door might have closed on its own. There was a slight breeze. It was also possible she’d imagined the shadow in the upstairs hallway. She’d imagined plenty of other things before—faces staring out of the dark corners of rooms she knew were empty, shadowy figures standing at the foot of her bed when she was just waking from nightmares. None of those things had ever turned out to be real, but right at that moment, she was certain someone was in the house, and she was just as certain that if she entered it, she might not come out alive.

She didn’t have her phone, didn’t know any of the neighbors. She’d given Gavin and Cassie the spare keys to the house, but she had no way of contacting either of them. She did know John Forrester, though, and he’d told her to call if she had any trouble. She didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t care. She jogged around the side of the house and headed toward his garage apartment.

* * *

Samson growled, the sound a soft warning that pulled John from sleep. He sat up, scanning the dark room for signs of trouble. The living room was empty, the TV still on whatever station John had been watching when he’d fallen asleep on the couch.

“What is it, boy?” he asked, keeping the light off as he walked to the window where the dog was standing.

The dog growled again, nudging at the glass, his gaze fixed on some point beyond the yard.

Virginia’s house?

John leaned closer, peering out into the blackness. Ice fell from the inky sky, glittering on the trees and grass, tapping against the garage roof. Not a good night to be out, but he thought he saw a shadow moving near the shrubs. As he watched, it darted through the thick foliage, sprinted into the open.

Medium height. Slim.

Virginia?

Samson stopped growling, gave a soft whine that meant he recognized the person running toward the garage.

Virginia, for sure, and it looked as if she was in trouble.

He ran to the door, yanked it open. He was halfway down the stairs when Virginia appeared. She barreled toward him, wet hair hanging in her face, head down as she focused on keeping her footing on the slippery stairs.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

It was obvious everything wasn’t.

She had bare feet, no coat, skin so pale it nearly glowed in the darkness.

“I’m running through an ice storm in bare feet,” she responded. “Things are not okay.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, grabbing her hand, urging her up the last few stairs and into the apartment.

“I locked myself out of the house.” Her teeth chattered, and he grabbed the throw from the back of the couch and dropped it around her shoulders.

“Should I ask why you were outside in the middle of the night?”

“I smelled cigarette smoke and thought it was coming from inside the house.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

The police hadn’t found cigarette butts on the property, but that didn’t mean the guy who’d been there wasn’t a smoker. “I’ll go check things out,” he said, grabbing Samson’s work lead and calling the dog.

“Don’t go rushing over there yet, John. I’m not done with my story.”

“The ending isn’t as exciting as the beginning?” he asked, grabbing a towel from the linen closet and handing it to her.

“I’m not sure.” She wiped moisture from her face and hair, then tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear. “The cigarette smoke was coming from outside. Some guy walking his dog. When I went to go back in, the door closed.”

“The wind?” he suggested, and she shrugged.

“That would be a logical explanation.”

“But?” he prodded, because he thought there was more to the story, and he wasn’t sure why she was holding back.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said with a sigh. “I was diagnosed with PTSD a few years ago. I went to counseling, worked through a lot of issues, but I still have nightmares. I still wake up in the middle of the night and think someone is standing in my room or hiding in the shadows. Sometimes I think there’s danger when there isn’t.”

This was part of what she hadn’t told him earlier. She’d hinted at it, said she’d nearly died, but she hadn’t given details. He’d done a little digging and asked a few questions. Morris hadn’t been eager to give details, but there’d been a few newspaper articles written about it. Local Attorney Shoots Wife and Self in Apparent Murder-Suicide Attempt.

Lots of speculation as to why it had happened, but there’d been no interviews with Virginia or her grandmother-in-law, so no one knew for sure how a seemingly rational high-level attorney could snap.

Personally, John didn’t think he’d snapped. He thought the guy had been out of control from the get-go, that he’d just been hiding it from the world.

“The worst mistake you can make—” he began, taking the towel from her hand and using it to wipe moisture from the back of her hair. The strands were long and thick and curling from the rain, and he could see hints of gold and red mixed with light brown “—is hesitating to ask for help because you doubt your ability to distinguish real danger from imagined danger.”

“I think I’ve proven—”

“You’ve proven that you’re strong and smart,” he said, cutting her off, because thinking about what she’d been through, the way she’d probably spent her entire marriage—in fear and self-doubt and even guilt—made him want to go back in time, meet her jerk of a husband and teach him a lesson about how women should be treated. “You might jump at shadows, but you’re not calling for the cavalry every time it happens.”

“I guess that’s true,” she conceded with a half smile. She had a little color in her cheeks, a little less hollowness in her eyes.

“So, tell me what happened with the door. You don’t think it was the wind.” Not a question, but she shook her head.

“I turned all the lights on in the house.”

He’d noticed that, but he didn’t say as much, just let her continue speaking.

“Then I went downstairs, lay down on the couch and fell asleep. When I woke, the lights upstairs were off.”

“Power outage, maybe?”

“The other lights were still on.”

“Did you check the circuit breaker? Maybe you blew a fuse. It happens in old houses.”

“I might have checked, if I’d been able to get back in the house. The door locked when it closed. I couldn’t remember if Gavin installed a lock that does that, but...” She shuddered and pulled the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders.

“I don’t think he did.” And that worried John. There’d been evidence that the guy who’d been in Virginia’s house had stayed there for a while—clothes in the closet, an unmade bed. It could be that he’d returned, found a way in, gone back to whatever he was doing before Virginia had arrived. “Tell you what. Stay here. Samson and I will go check things out.”

“I gave the spare key to Gavin and Cassie, and the doors are all locked.”

“I’ll call Gavin and ask him to meet me at your place. I’ll call Officer Morris, too. He should know what’s going on.” He attached Samson’s lead, and every muscle in the dog’s body tensed with excitement.

Samson loved his job, and John loved working with him. He was one of the smartest, most eager animals John had ever trained.

“Heel,” he commanded as he stepped outside. “Lock the door, Virginia. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

FIVE

John called Gavin on the way down the stairs and asked him to call Officer Morris. He didn’t want to make the call himself. He knew what the DC officer would say—stay clear of the scene. Let the local police handle things.

Wasn’t going to happen.

If someone was in the house, John planned to find him. Virginia had been through enough. He wasn’t going to stand by and watch her be tormented. So far, that was what seemed to be happening. No overt threats of danger, no physical attacks, the guy seemed more interested in terrifying her than in hurting her.

That could change, though, and John wasn’t willing to wait for it to happen.

The upstairs lights were on when John arrived at the house. He could see them gleaming through the windows. That didn’t mean they hadn’t been off when Virginia woke. He kept that in mind as he eased around the building, Samson sniffing the air, his ears alert, his tail high. Focused, but not cautious. So far, the dog didn’t sense any danger.

They moved around to the front of the house, and Samson headed straight across the yard, sniffing at a soggy cigarette butt that lay on the sidewalk. It seemed odd that Virginia had been able to smell the smoke.

He left the butt where it was and walked to the porch, Samson on-heel. The dog nosed the floorboards, sniffed the air, growled.

“Find,” John commanded, and the dog raced off the porch and around the side of the house, sniffing the ground, then the air. He nosed a bush that butted up against the edge of the house, alerting there before he ran to a window that was cracked open. No way had Virginia left it that way. Someone who’d been through what she had didn’t leave windows open and doors unlocked.

Samson scratched at the window, barking twice. He smelled his quarry, and he wanted to get into the house and follow the scent to the prize.

“Hold,” John said, and the dog subsided, sitting on his haunches, his eyes still trained on the window.

John eased it open. The screen had been cut, and that made his blood run cold. Virginia’s instincts had been spot-on. Someone had been in the house with her.

A loud bang broke the silence, and Samson jumped up, barking frantically, pulling at the lead. John let him have his lead following him to the back of the house. A dark shadow sprinted across the yard. Tall. Thin. Fair skin.

“Freeze!” he called, but the guy kept going.

“Stop or I’ll release my dog,” he shouted the warning, and the guy hesitated, turning a little in their direction, something flashing in his hand.

A gun!

John dove for cover, landing on his stomach as the first bullet slammed into the upper story of the house. He pulled his weapon, but the perp had already darted behind the neighbor’s house. No way was John taking a blind shot. It was too dangerous for the neighbors, for anyone who happened to wander outside to see what all the commotion was about.

He unhooked Samson’s lead, releasing the dog, allowing him to do what he did best.

Samson moved across the yard, his muscular body eating up the ground. No hesitation. No slowing down. He had unerring accuracy when it came to finding suspects, and the guy they were seeking was close. No amount of running would get him out of range, because Samson would never give up the hunt.

John sprinted across the yard, knowing Samson would alert when he had the perp cornered. Ice crackled under his feet as he rounded the neighbor’s house, racing into the front yard. Samson was just ahead, bounding across the street and into a small park lined with trees. The perp had plenty of cover there, plenty of places to hide and take aim.

“Release,” he called, and Samson slowed, stopped, sending John a look that said why are you ending the game?

“Let’s be careful, pal,” John said, hooking the lead back on. “The guy has a gun.” And he’d already discharged it.

They moved through the trees and farther into the park, Samson’s muscles taut as he searched for the scent. When he found it, he barked once and took off running. The darkness pressed in on all sides. No light from the street here. Just the ice falling from the sky and the muted sound of cars driving through the neighborhood.

Behind them, branches snapped and feet pounded on the ground. A dog barked, and John knew that backup had arrived. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Dylan Ralsey and his dog Tico heading toward him.

“Gavin called. I was closer than he was, and he thought you could use some backup,” Dylan said as he scanned the darkness. “His ETA is ten minutes.”

“Thanks,” John replied. He didn’t stop. They didn’t have time to discuss what had happened, go over the details, come up with a plan.

“Tico was bored anyway. It’s been a slow night.” Dylan moved in beside him, flanking his right, Tico on his lead a little ahead.

The park opened out into another quiet street. Both dogs stopped at the curb, nosed the ground, whined.

“He had a car,” John said, disgusted with himself for letting the guy escape.

“Wonder if any of the neighbors have security cameras? Seems like that kind of neighborhood, don’t you think?” Dylan asked.

It did.

The houses were large, well maintained and expensive. Lights shone from porches and highlighted security signs posted in several yards.

“That would almost be too easy, wouldn’t it? Look at some security footage, get a license plate number, find our guy?” he murmured more to himself than to Dylan.

“We can’t assume the guy was driving his own car, but if we could get a tag number on whatever he was driving?” Dylan smiled through the darkness. “We’ll have something to go on.”

“Did Gavin mention whether or not Morris sent the clothes we found this afternoon to the evidence lab?”

“Not to me, but if they were sent, it might be weeks before you hear anything. If they can find some DNA, there might be a match in the system.”

“Finding one will take even more time that Virginia might not have. The perp is bold. He entered the house while she was sleeping, and he had a gun.”

“Did he fire it?”

“Hit the side of the house. The bullet should be lodged in the siding.”

“We might get some ballistic evidence from it.”

“You mean Morris might,” John said. “He’s the local PD who’s handling the case.”

“I know who he is. Gavin told me to steer clear of the guy.”

“Guess Morris isn’t all that happy with my involvement.”

“From what Gavin said, he’s on his way, and he’s not happy. Said you needed to stop stepping on his toes or things could get ugly.”

“Should I sit back and watch a woman be terrorized?” John asked, allowing Samson to nose the ground, follow whatever scent he could to the east.

“As a fellow member of the Capitol K-9 Unit, I’m going to have to say yes. Because that’s the official protocol.”

“What would you say as my friend?”

“You know what I’d say, John. Do what you have to do to keep Virginia safe.”

“I guess you know which way I’m going to go,” John responded, because he couldn’t sit back and watch crimes be committed, he couldn’t back off and wait for help to arrive when he could be the one doing the helping. It was the way he’d been raised. His father, grandfather, brother, had all been police officers. They’d all given their lives for their jobs, sacrificing everything to see justice done.

“I guess I do.”

Samson stopped at a crossroad, circled twice, then sat on his haunches. He’d lost the trail. Not surprising. He was trained in apprehension and guard duty. Scent trail wasn’t his forte, though he’d done some training in that, as well.

“Good try, champ,” John said, scratching the dog behind the ears and offering the praise he deserved.

“The perp is heading toward downtown,” Dylan said, his gaze focused on the road that led out of the community. “If we had a description of the vehicle, I could call it in, get some officers looking for it.”

“Anyone who confronts the guy is going to have to be careful. He isn’t afraid to use his weapon.”

Dylan scowled. “That’s not news that fills me with warm fuzzy feelings.”

“I wasn’t too thrilled, either.”

“You’d be even less thrilled if you were lying in a hospital bed.”

“True, but I don’t think the guy was aiming for me. I think he was just trying to get me to back off.”

“So, he’s playing games?”

That was the feeling John had, so he nodded. “That’s the impression that I’m getting.”

He’d dealt with plenty of criminals. He’d had a few occasions when he’d been certain he was looking evil in the face. He was trained to understand the way felons would respond in a variety of situations, and he had a reputation for being good at staying a step ahead of the bad guys.

Sometimes, though, crimes weren’t about what could be gained. They weren’t about revenge or jealousy or passion. Sometimes they were a fantasy being played out, a game whose rules only the perpetrator knew.

He thought this was one of those times.

If he was right, the perp’s next move couldn’t be predicted. How he’d act or react couldn’t be ascertained.

The best thing they could do was find him quickly and get him off the street; because until he was locked away, Virginia wouldn’t be safe.