The Last Second by Robin Burcell Page A

the one who’s actually calling the shots at Pocito PD. But no one can prove it. He told me he had his suspicions, but warned me about talking to anyone at the PD. He said they’d find out, and I’d end up in a body bag.”
    “When’s the last time you saw your brother?”
    “He was heading out to the old McMahon place. It’s an abandoned house on the edge of town, where he thought he might find some sort of evidence. That’s the last time I heard from him.”
    “How long ago was that?”
    “Three days ago.”
    She looked down at her coffee cup for a second or two, tracing her finger along the rim. When she looked back up again, her eyes shimmered with tears. “You have to help me. They killed him. I’m sure of it. He would never have jumped bail. Never.”
    Unfortunately, Griffin thought, they were only here to gather information. But he couldn’t leave her like this. “What sort of help are you looking for?”
    “I want to clear his name. If I can prove he was killed, I think the towns­people will take a stand and do the right thing. Someone in that police department’s dirty, but it’s not my brother. Right now no one in town will talk to me. They’re all afraid.”
    “And how do you plan to prove he was murdered?”
    “By finding his body. He was killed at the McMahon place. I’m sure of it. That’s where he was going, and it also happens to be where the police department found that large cache of explosives they say belonged to him. It’s not his. I know it.”
    “What makes you think it happened there?”
    “Because I’ve finally found the one witness who isn’t afraid to step forward. The only problem is that I seem to be the only person who believes him.”
    Now this was possibly something he could use. “And who is this mystery witness?”
    “His name is Max.”
    “Where can I find him?”
    She took a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable with what she was about to tell him. “The thing is . . . he doesn’t speak English.”
    “I speak fluent Spanish.”
    “Actually,” Trish said, “he doesn’t speak Spanish, either.”
    “What language does he speak?”
    She gave a hesitant smile. “This is the part you might have trouble with.”
    “Try.”
    “My witness is a dog.”
    “A dog?” He wasn’t even sure how to react to that. Even Sydney looked stunned. “A dog ?” he said again.
    Trish handed him two photos. The first was of a once-­white Victorian mansion on a low hilltop, which, judging from the peeling paint and missing sideboards, had seen better days. The second photo focused on a low wall made of large rocks that surrounded the bottom of the hill around the old Victorian’s perimeter, then extended out about thirty feet.
    And there, lying in front of the broken section of the wall, was a brown and black German shepherd, its head on the ground between its front paws.
    He showed the photos to Sydney, and she asked, “Whose dog is it?”
    “My brother’s dog. Max. He’s been there every day since Calvin went missing. Come tomorrow morning, the police department plans on detonating that cache of explosives they found in the basement of the McMahon house, and they don’t seem too concerned if the dog’s there or not.”
    “Why not remove the dog?”
    “There’s a high fence around the entire property,” Trish said. “The gates are locked. And now that that dynamite’s been discovered, the police won’t let anyone near it. I’ve tried calling Max out, but he won’t come. That’s what makes me think my brother is buried there beneath those stones. Right where the wall’s broken.”
    Griffin focused on the broken section, particularly the rocks in front of it. “Some of those weeds growing around the rocks look more than a week old. The bush growing next to it looks pretty intact.”
    Sydney leaned over to get a closer look at the photo. “I read a news article once about this dog that found its way to the cemetery and stayed by its master’s grave for