go south, I still have Ash’s portable radio.”
Tina tossed me the keys to the Aztek. “Okay, but be careful.”
“I will, and can I ask a big favor? I got all preachy with Kurt over how he was treating Longstreet; meanwhile, my own dog has to stay in his crate all day. Would you mind if I took Kitch with me?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“It’s just for this morning when I go to Wade Tice’s place. I promise I’ll vacuum all the dog hair from the backseat.”
“And clean up his dog slobber from the windows.”
“Think of it as biodegradable window tinting.” When Tina didn’t reply and raised an eyebrow, I quickly continued, “The windows will be spotless.”
“Okay, I guess. But only this once.”
“Thanks, Tina. Oh, and one other thing . . . could you assign Kitch a really cool radio call sign like Hellhound-One or Lethal-Woofin’? It’d make his day.”
“Good-bye, Brad. I’ll see you when I get back from Roanoke,” said Tina as she headed for the door.
We went back out to the parking lot. Tina got into her cruiser and headed for the medical examiner’s office, while I fired up the Aztek. The vehicle’s digital thermometer said the temperature was up to forty-eight degrees, so I rolled all the windows down. That helped clear the air inside the car a little, but it still reeked of Shenandoah Valley sinsemilla.
As I pulled out from the parking lot, I briefly paused to admire the maple tree-lined main street of Remmelkemp Mill. The glorious fall foliage was past its prime, but the street still looked lovely. Instead of making the right turn to go home, I turned left and drove the half-block to Pinckney’s Brick Pit. I hadn’t seen Sergei in the better part of a week and was hoping to briefly stop at the restaurant to say hi. However, Sergei’s big pickup truck wasn’t in the lot, so I headed home to get Kitchener.
Fifteen minutes later, Kitch was in the backseat of the Aztek, hanging his head out the open window, savoring the universe of new scents. Before I went to the Tice farm, I made a short detour to the Food Lion supermarket in Elkton, where I went inside to try to confirm one of the bits of information that Kurt Rawlins had given us.
The store manager was puzzled that I was asking questions about a two-week-old event that had never been reported to the sheriff’s department. He told me he hadn’t seen the encounter, but that one of his cash register operators had. It was obvious that folks still didn’t know about Rawlins’s death, and I wasn’t going to break the news. Witnesses usually feel less compelled to embellish their statements if they think they’re describing a minor crime.
The register operator was a middle-aged woman who continued to scan groceries as she talked to me. She told me she knew both Everett Rawlins and Wade Tice and said there was no doubt in her mind that Tice had provoked the fight. Furthermore, she remembered that Tice had shouted words to the effect of that he would get even. I thanked her and the store manager for their help and returned to the Aztek, where Kitch had been busy tinting the passenger windows.
I drove south toward Kobler Hollow Road and, playing a sudden nasty hunch, made a quick stop at the Rawlins farm. I’d half expected to find that the bullheaded Kurt had returned, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps I’d misjudged him . . . or simply come by too soon. I continued on to Wade Tice’s farm.
Unlike the Rawlins farm, the Tice homestead looked down-at-the-heels and forlorn. The driveway was deeply rutted and could have used about two tons of fresh gravel, the cedar planking on the cabin-style house was in dire need of a fresh coat of stain, and one of the tall grain silos adjoining the ramshackle barn was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. An old International Harvester tractor was parked in the yard. Half of the tractor’s engine was missing, and from the metallic clanking coming from the barn, I guessed that Wade was undertaking
Tina tossed me the keys to the Aztek. “Okay, but be careful.”
“I will, and can I ask a big favor? I got all preachy with Kurt over how he was treating Longstreet; meanwhile, my own dog has to stay in his crate all day. Would you mind if I took Kitch with me?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“It’s just for this morning when I go to Wade Tice’s place. I promise I’ll vacuum all the dog hair from the backseat.”
“And clean up his dog slobber from the windows.”
“Think of it as biodegradable window tinting.” When Tina didn’t reply and raised an eyebrow, I quickly continued, “The windows will be spotless.”
“Okay, I guess. But only this once.”
“Thanks, Tina. Oh, and one other thing . . . could you assign Kitch a really cool radio call sign like Hellhound-One or Lethal-Woofin’? It’d make his day.”
“Good-bye, Brad. I’ll see you when I get back from Roanoke,” said Tina as she headed for the door.
We went back out to the parking lot. Tina got into her cruiser and headed for the medical examiner’s office, while I fired up the Aztek. The vehicle’s digital thermometer said the temperature was up to forty-eight degrees, so I rolled all the windows down. That helped clear the air inside the car a little, but it still reeked of Shenandoah Valley sinsemilla.
As I pulled out from the parking lot, I briefly paused to admire the maple tree-lined main street of Remmelkemp Mill. The glorious fall foliage was past its prime, but the street still looked lovely. Instead of making the right turn to go home, I turned left and drove the half-block to Pinckney’s Brick Pit. I hadn’t seen Sergei in the better part of a week and was hoping to briefly stop at the restaurant to say hi. However, Sergei’s big pickup truck wasn’t in the lot, so I headed home to get Kitchener.
Fifteen minutes later, Kitch was in the backseat of the Aztek, hanging his head out the open window, savoring the universe of new scents. Before I went to the Tice farm, I made a short detour to the Food Lion supermarket in Elkton, where I went inside to try to confirm one of the bits of information that Kurt Rawlins had given us.
The store manager was puzzled that I was asking questions about a two-week-old event that had never been reported to the sheriff’s department. He told me he hadn’t seen the encounter, but that one of his cash register operators had. It was obvious that folks still didn’t know about Rawlins’s death, and I wasn’t going to break the news. Witnesses usually feel less compelled to embellish their statements if they think they’re describing a minor crime.
The register operator was a middle-aged woman who continued to scan groceries as she talked to me. She told me she knew both Everett Rawlins and Wade Tice and said there was no doubt in her mind that Tice had provoked the fight. Furthermore, she remembered that Tice had shouted words to the effect of that he would get even. I thanked her and the store manager for their help and returned to the Aztek, where Kitch had been busy tinting the passenger windows.
I drove south toward Kobler Hollow Road and, playing a sudden nasty hunch, made a quick stop at the Rawlins farm. I’d half expected to find that the bullheaded Kurt had returned, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps I’d misjudged him . . . or simply come by too soon. I continued on to Wade Tice’s farm.
Unlike the Rawlins farm, the Tice homestead looked down-at-the-heels and forlorn. The driveway was deeply rutted and could have used about two tons of fresh gravel, the cedar planking on the cabin-style house was in dire need of a fresh coat of stain, and one of the tall grain silos adjoining the ramshackle barn was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. An old International Harvester tractor was parked in the yard. Half of the tractor’s engine was missing, and from the metallic clanking coming from the barn, I guessed that Wade was undertaking
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