Sarah Benadine is Dead

Chapter III, Part II

Clifford Dent was certain he was getting on Horace Strickland's last nerve. Good. The son of a bitch deserved it.

Strickland had never liked Dent much, but that was easily enough explained. Dent was a threat. Strickland had been Clearwater's sheriff since before the birth of Christ and looked to continue to be so until at least the second coming. Cliff Dent didn't have much interest in the sheriff's position, truth be told, but he was the best of any of them, and Strickland knew it. It galled him, but he knew it.

The whole affair with the Kline's dog had passed from busybody to busybody in record time. Not much of a surprise there; every nosy neighbor worth his or her salt was sure to mention that the dog was found just two doors down from Lance Benadine's house—yes, of course, that Lance Benadine, how many Benadines do you know?—in Mrs. Johnson's begonias. And what a shame, they were such pretty flowers.

Of course, the news had made it to the police station. They'd heard it from Mrs. Johnson herself, who'd called the police that same night when she'd heard a scream outside her door and gone to the window to see Gavin, Benny, and Janet Kline and Liam Malone standing over a dead dog in her garden. There wasn't much the police could do though, besides help get the thing out of there. That'd been a task; a gory mess had been most of what was left of the poor animal, and it'd been enough of a problem just to keep the two kids away from it. Wild animal. Wild animal was what Gavin Kline kept saying got it, and Strickland concurred.

In Cliff Dent's opinion, a wild animal hadn't killed that dog any more than his Great Aunt Lorna had.

"You saw the damn thing, Dent," Strickland said, his voice stringy with irritation. "A coyote or something, I'm telling you."

"When was the last coyote sighting within the town limits?" Cliff asked, knowing Strickland wouldn't have an answer for him.

"Well, then some other animal. Another dog, for Chrissakes."

"Another dog? This wasn't a pipsqueak Chihuahua, this was a German shepherd. There aren't many dogs in town bigger than that. Do you think Mrs. Levi's Pomeranian got him? Or the Debenhams' Shih Tzu?"

"Maybe your Rottweiler did." The corners of Strickland's mouth were just dying to break into a self-satisfied smile.

"She must be able to do magic then because she was inside playing with my girl all night."

"Oh, damn it all, Dent, are you bound and determined to make this into a bigger problem than it is?"

"We don't know how big a problem it is."

"Yes, we do. It's not a problem at all."

"What about what the girl said?"

Strickland sighed and rubbed his fingers against his forehead roughly. "The kid was scared out of her damn mind, seeing the dog like that. She didn't know what she was seeing."

"So you think she just invented a person running away from the scene?" Cliff looked at Strickland with honest curiosity. Strickland scoffed.

"Don't call it 'the scene' like it's some damn homicide investigation," he groaned. "Maybe someone was there, but got scared off by the state of the dog and the kid's screeching. Just didn't want to be involved. Can't fault a person for that."

Strickland always had a lot of sympathy for people who didn't want to be involved. Strickland never wanted to be involved—hard to manage when you're the sheriff. But Cliff was relatively confident in his assessment that Strickland's devotion to the sheriff's position had very little to do with justice.

"Lord," Strickland muttered, shaking his head. "You're thinkin' of Angela Carson, aren't you? You are; I can practically see the wheels spinning in your head. Well you can just forget about that."

"She saw something the night Sarah was killed, too," Cliff pointed out. Strickland moaned like he was in physical agony.

"Something she said was a monster!" he cried. "Honest to God, the girl's six. Them kids invent all kinds of stories. Your problem is you believe everything that comes out of their mouths! Angela Carson saw a monster, so there must have been a monster. Janet Kline saw a person running away, so there must have been a person running away. What's next? Little Suzie Snitch will tell you she saw the Headless Horseman and you'll go axing Jack-O-Lanterns?"

"It's a bit early for Jack-O-Lanterns," Cliff said drily.

"Dent," Strickland warned.

"I don't see the problem in just being thorough. A girl's been murdered, Horace, any little thing could matter."

Strickland deflated, looking at Cliff with an uneasy glare. He thought for long moment before saying anything. "All right, I'll tell you what probably happened. You know Gavin and his temper, the stupid mutt was probably yapping at something, or maybe pissed on the rug, how the hell should I know? But anyway, there was probably stuff leading up to it and Ole Gav just had his last straw."

"You think Gavin Kline did it," Clifford stated more than asked.

"Might have done. You know him."

"But why do that to it. A shotgun works just as well."

"Ah, hell, Dent, do I have to reason every little thing out for you? I ain't pretending to know why anybody does anything, I'm just supposed to stop 'em from doing things they shouldn't be doin'. It's just a damn dog. No way of provin' anything anyway. I'm tellin' ya, leave it lie. More than likely, it was some animal, or a good, respectable family man who doesn't need this kinda trouble over a dog."

The conversation was over whether Cliff liked it or not, because Strickland headed for his office, slamming the door childishly behind him. Cliff stared at the wood and shook his head. At her little desk in the corner of the room, Sally Burton was the only other person there.

"Hope you're writing all this down, Sal," Cliff said.

"As soon as somebody starts saying something interesting, I will," she said with the smile of the cat that got the cream. Cliff smiled himself, then turned back to a pile of paperwork on his desk and tried not to think about the dog or, more importantly, what it could mean.