“Bruno, komm!” Cole shouted. Bruno turned and stared for a second, but then came to him. Cole opened the passenger side door, moved the seat forward, and gestured toward the back seat. “Belle, Bruno, load up.”
The dogs jumped into the back. A feeling of urgency made Cole hurry around the vehicle, climb into the driver’s seat, and take off for the school. He hoped Sophie had missed the bus, and he would find her there waiting for him.
With his jutting lower jaw, Hank Wolford reminded Mattie of a pug with a beard. He wore navy sweat pants and a gray sweat shirt dotted with stains, and he had a bushy head of graying brown hair and a full beard streaked with strands of silver. He’d opened his door when Brody knocked and stepped out onto the porch to speak with him.
Mattie and Robo waited in the yard, which was covered with closely cropped weeds that had barely started their spring growth. She stood below the porch and off to Brody’s right where she could observe.
“And why are you here?” Wolford asked after Brody introduced himself.
Brody consulted a notebook he’d withdrawn from his pocket. “I’d like to talk to you about Tuesday afternoon, day before yesterday.”
Wolford’s dark eyes, deep in the sockets of his jowly face, moved slightly as he appeared to be thinking. Evidently he locked into the date and time, because he nodded as he crossed his arms over his chest. “All right.”
“Burt Banks says that he was here at your house on Tuesday afternoon. Can you confirm that?”
Wolford raised his hand to his chin and stroked his beard. “I can. Burt Banks was here.”
“And were there others who could also confirm this?”
“Yes, I had a few friends over for a game of cards.”
“A game of cards?”
“Yes. A poker game. Just a game among friends. Small buy-in, and we play with chips. Top three split the pot.”
His description sounded like a perfectly legal game. Now, Mattie wondered, is he telling the truth?
“Could we come inside and speak with you for a moment?” Brody asked.
“We’re fine out here.”
“I need the names of the people at the poker game.” Brody removed a pen from his pocket.
Wolford gave him a list of four names, none of which Mattie recognized. She wondered how Burt Banks could’ve spent large sums of money on a small buy-in for a game. It didn’t feel right. She moved closer to the porch, and Robo went with her at heel. Wolford eyed her dog and edged back a step.
Brody was still digging. “Can we get phone numbers from you?”
“They’re in my cell phone . . . inside. I’ll get it.” Wolford opened the door wide enough to slip inside and then closed it right behind him.
Robo had sniffed the air when Wolford opened the door, his nose bobbing. As soon as the door closed, he ignored the steps and jumped onto the porch, sniffed the door jam, and then sat. He stared at Mattie, giving her a signal that she knew well.
“There’s dope inside,” Mattie muttered.
Brody glanced at Robo before looking at Mattie. “Probably weed.”
“Might be, but we don’t know that.”
The door opened, and Robo stood. Wolford was looking at his cell phone as he started across the threshold but stopped dead when he noticed Robo looming on the porch. Wolford glanced at Brody in confusion.
Mattie peered beyond him, into the living room. There, a guy lay on the floor, his arms flung outward, and he looked unconscious. Or dead.
“Hey!” Stepping up beside Wolford, Mattie shouted to the guy inside. “Are you okay?”
Wolford tried to push her back. Robo growled, baring his teeth, and Wolford stepped away, his hands raised. The guy inside didn’t move.
“Robo, guard! Keep your hands raised and stay away from me or this dog will attack,” she said to Wolford. To Brody: “There’s a guy inside there. Not moving. Medical emergency.”
“He’s just passed out on the floor,” Wolford said. “Drunk.”
After Robo had told her he smelled drugs, Mattie really wanted to get inside that house, and this guy was her ticket, drunk or not. “We don’t know that. He looks unconscious.”
“Mr. Wolford, step outside,” Brody ordered. He tipped his head toward the doorway, throwing a glance at Mattie. “Go ahead and check on him.”
Wolford moved out to the porch. Mattie brushed past him to enter the house, leaving him under Brody’s watchful eye and taking Robo with her.
The guy on the floor looked to be twenty-something, thin to the point of emaciation, his long brown hair stringy and unclean. Sores festered on his face, more dense around his mouth. Even as she assessed him visually, she was pulling on latex gloves extracted from her utility belt. Robo started toward the guy, but Mattie stopped him and put him in a down-stay a few yards away.
The man’s chest rose and fell, the sound of his breath loud enough to hear now that she was in the room. “Hey!” she shouted, stooping cautiously to give his shoulder a shake. “Are you awake?”
No response. She bent over and placed a finger on his neck. His pulse was rapid but strong. This guy was unconscious and under the influence of something stronger than alcohol. She rolled him to his side, leaving him there to protect his airway in case he should vomit. “We’d better get an ambulance,” she called to Brody.
Taking a moment to scan the room, Mattie spotted the poker setup immediately. A poker table and chairs dominated the center of the living room, chips stacked neatly in a rack on the tabletop. She identified the thick, pungent odor of stale marijuana smoke mingled with cigarettes in the air. Even the walls were dingy and yellow from exposure. Rust-colored draperies sagged at the grungy windows.
Robo was getting a nose full, his head bobbing as he sampled the air. As soon as Mattie released him from his stay, he made a beeline for a scarred and battered old credenza that stood against the back wall, its top cluttered with bottles labeled with any type of hard liquor you could imagine. As he sniffed the doors in front, he jostled one of them, and it popped free from its magnetic catch and slowly drifted open. Robo sat and gave Mattie the look that said he’d found something.
Keeping one eye on the unconscious man, she moved to the credenza and peered inside without touching anything. There in plain sight she found a large bag of cannabis, its bits of green leaves and stems easily recognizable. She didn’t need a scale to know that the stuff weighed well over the two-ounce limit allowed for an adult to possess at any one time. Beside the weed sat a baggie half full of white crystal shards—obviously meth. Mattie wouldn’t be able to prove it yet, but she suspected Wolford not only provided a high-stakes poker game here at his house but also sold drugs and alcohol. One-stop shopping. Mattie felt a slow burn of anger start to flicker as she thought of Burt Banks and his involvement in this operation, spending his paycheck while his wife struggled to support their family. And was Banks really here Tuesday, or was this crook Wolford lying, just because he could?
Asking Robo to heel, she left the evidence he had found in the credenza and moved back to the porch, where Brody and Wolford were waiting. As soon as she stepped outside, she gave Robo another command. “Watch him!”
Robo went into guard-dog stance, an alert position with unblinking eyes fixed on Wolford. The man scowled.
“That guy’s out on something more than alcohol,” Mattie told Brody. “And Robo hit on a cabinet inside. We’re going to need a warrant.”
Cole drove to the elementary school and parked out front. No Sophie waiting on the steps. He found her teacher still in her classroom. Mrs. Stanford was a small woman with droopy eyes and cheeks, although he didn’t think it nice to point that out, so he’d never mentioned it to Sophie.