"Well, if I yank Sally off our list, we can't put Graeme at the barn. Besides, Gale will just call her himself, which will make us look like we're trying to hide something. That means in half an hour she goes on the stand. So you tell me, could this girl have done it? Should I be concerned?"
Maggie shook her head. "No way. I've talked to the girl. She may be a jealous bitch when it conies to Kevin, but I don't see her taking girls off the street and killing them. And she wasn't making it up about Graeme and the bam. I talked to her. The girl was telling the truth."
"Then why the hell does Gale seem to think this is his Get Out of Jail Free card?" Dan asked. "Do we know where Sally was when Kerry disappeared?"
"No," Stride said. "Her name never came up."
"We know she wasn't with Kevin," Maggie pointed out slyly. "You made sure of that on redirect. He was in Florida."
Stride intervened before Dan could explode. "She didn't do it, Dan. But you can bet Gale has already checked, and Sally doesn't have an alibi for that night Or she doesn't remember where she was. Hell, it was almost two years ago. It's still smoke and mirrors. A coincidence. Give the girl a chance. She convinced Maggie. She'll convince the jury, too."
Dan slammed his briefcase shut and gave Maggie a malevolent stare. "All right. We don't change our strategy. We ignore the Kerry McGrath issue. By my estimate, we're still ahead on points. If the jury went out now, they might think about it for a while, but they'd convict. But if Gale can muddle their brains with another false suspect, he might talk them into reasonable doubt. And let me make one thing very clear. If we lose this case, the two of you are going to be scraping bird shit off statues in public parks for the next ten years. So you better damn well hope you've given me enough to put this pervert behind bars."
Stride and Maggie exchanged glances. They were both thinking the same thing.
What was Gale up to?
Or worse, what had they missed?
27
Jerry Gull couldn't take it anymore. He had to go. Badly. And there was still a long stretch of empty road between him and Duluth.
He had guzzled coffee throughout the four-hour seminar in Hibbing, then rushed out of the hotel without using the bathroom. Jerry had a phobia about public bathrooms and generally didn't go anywhere except at home or at the office. Normally, he would have made it home from Hibbing in plenty of time, but he was delayed by another hour on his return trip because he had to pick up Brunswick.
Brunswick was his girlfriend Arlene's dog, a Newfoundland who weighed more than Jerry. Stretched out, he was probably taller than Jerry, too.
Arlene had been married for a short time. In the divorce, her ex-husband, who had a small hobby farm outside Hibbing, was awarded custody of the dog. Jerry had never met Brunswick, but he made the ultimate miscalculation of talking to Arlene about his seminar, and she, in turn, had cajoled him into a promise to stop at her ex-husband's farm and bring Brunswick to her for a long weekend at her sister's place just south of the city.
That was why, squeezed into the backseat of his Toyota Corolla, was a black moose the size of Canada.
Almost immediately the coffee began to work its magic. Jerry tried not to think about it and instead just drove faster. It wouldn't have been hard to stop at a fast food restaurant along the way, but he wasn't ready to confront his phobia, and he wasn't sure he could get out of the car without Brunswick escaping.
By the time he began to dance in his seat, squirming to push his legs together, he was in the woods, a long way from any town. There was something about the dog, too, that made the urge to go even worse. He could smell him and feel him puffing, hot and foul, against his neck. The dog dispensed at least a gallon of drool, most of it down the shoulder of Jerry's blue suit. His slobbering face rubbed against Jerry's cheek affectionately and refused to leave him alone.
There was simply not enough room in the car for him, his bladder, and Brunswick.
Jerry eyed the shoulder of the highway, and like a miracle, a quarter mile ahead, he saw exactly what he wanted, a dirt country road winding back into the forest in the middle of nowhere. It looked like a road that got no traffic at all, except for an occasional farmer or hunter cutting over to a parallel highway.
He turned onto the dirt road, and the Corolla bounced and rocked. Brunswick 's jowls swung in a peculiarly compelling rhythm, spraying the car with drool. Some of it slopped onto Jerry's glasses, and he rubbed them clean with his hand, groaning in disgust. Jerry drove more than a mile down the dirt road, finding a place where the forest was thick with birches and there wasn't a sign of humanity anywhere.
His body was bursting with streams, rivers, waterfalls, and every kind of torrential, rushing body of water. He wasn't sure he was going to make it.
Jerry swung open the driver's door and literally ran from the car. He hurried around to the right-side shoulder, ran down into the trees, and began clutching for his zipper. His clumsy fingers reached for his penis and missed, and his eyes rolled as he tried to free it from within his briefs. Finally, blissfully, he got it out, where it began flooding immediately onto the spongy ground. He didn't have to hold it or point it; it just doused the brush on its own like a fire hose.
The relief was so great his eyes teared up.
Then, when he was almost done, something huge and heavy hit him from behind, sending Jerry sprawling. He twisted and landed on his back on the wet ground-ground he had made wet-and meanwhile, his penis was still busily doing its work, spurting like a broken sprinkler over his pants, shirt, tie, and face. Jerry screamed, so caught up in the horror of the moment that he barely realized the culprit who had attacked him was Brunswick, shooting like a cannon deep into the forest.
" Brunswick!" Jerry bellowed, unleashing some of his anger.
He pushed himself off the ground, looking down at his sodden clothes. He couldn't believe it. It was a nightmare. The worst part was, he had probably lost the dog forever, and Arlene would never forgive him. He really thought about getting into the car, driving away, and never going home.
Woof!
He heard a deep bark somewhere in the distance. Brunswick wasn't gone for good, but he wasn't very close by. By the sound of it, he was at least a hundred yards deep in the forest. Jerry called the dog again, then waited, hoping to hear the thunder of paws (which were more like hooves) trampling the ground as the dog rushed back.
No such luck.
Woof!
Jerry signed and started hiking. He kept calling for Brunswick, and the dog would periodically answer, helping Jerry to home in on him. Jerry was wet and dirty, and he smelled. The earth was soggy, and the tree branches scraped at his clothes and skin. His shoes were covered in mud. To add insult to injury, it was starting to rain.
" Brunswick!" Jerry called. He was losing patience.
Woof!
Jerry turned in the direction of the latest bark, squinting to see between the birch trees. This time, he caught a glimpse of a black beast, nose to the ground, paws digging frantically in the soft earth.
"Finally," he muttered.
He came up on the dog softly, not wanting to spook him and send him running away again, but Brunswick was intent on his work and didn't seem to notice Jerry at all. The dog had found something of great interest in a tiny clearing, and he was scooping out the ground with gusto. Every now and then, he would shove his whole huge head into the hole he had created.
Jerry reached down tentatively, taking the dog's collar in his hand.
"You are a bad dog," he said, stroking the matted black fur.
Brunswick, finally feeling Jerry beside him, looked up happily, drool spilling from his jowls. The Newfoundland 's broad mouth clutched something long and white.
"So what was worth all this trouble, Brunswick?" Jerry asked him.