“Mr Hooper had some threatening calls,” the sheriff said. “Somebody got hold of his unlisted number. He was just telling me about it now.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Allan?”
“I didn’t want to alarm you. You weren’t the one they were after, anyway. I bought a shotgun and kept it in my study.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“No. I make enemies in the course of business, especially the farming operations. Some crackpot shot your dog, gunning for me. I heard a shot and found him dead in the driveway.”
“But how could you bury him without telling me?”
Hooper spread his hands in front of him. “I wasn’t thinking too well. I felt guilty, I suppose, because whoever got him was after me. And I didn’t want you to see him dead. I guess I wanted to break it to you gently.”
“This is gently?”
“It’s not the way I planned it. I thought if I had a chance to get you another pup—”
“No one will ever take Otto’s place.”
Allan Hooper stood and looked at her wistfully across the open grave, as if he would have liked to take Otto’s place. After a while, the two of them went into the house.
Carlson and I finished digging Otto up and carried him out to the sheriff’s car. His inert blackness filled the trunk from side to side.
“What are you going to do with him, Sheriff?” I asked.
“Get a vet I know to recover the slug in him. Then if we nab the sniper, we can use ballistics to convict him.”
“You’re taking this just as seriously as a real murder, aren’t you?” I observed.
“They want me to,” he said with a respectful look toward the house.
Mrs Hooper came out carrying a white leather suitcase which she deposited in the back seat of her Mercedes.
“Are you going someplace?” I asked her.
“Yes. I am.” She didn’t say where.
Her husband, who was watching her from the doorway, didn’t speak. The Mercedes went away. He closed the door. Both of them had looked sick.
“She doesn’t seem to believe he didn’t do it. Do you, Sheriff?”
Carlson jabbed me with his forefinger. “Mr Hooper is no liar. If you want to get along with me, get that through your head. I’ve known Mr Hooper for over twenty years – served under him in the war – and I never heard him twist the truth.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it. What about those threatening phone calls? Did he report them to you before today?”
“No.”
“What was said on the phone?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Does Hooper have any idea who shot the dog?”
“Well, he did say he saw a man slinking around outside the fence. He didn’t get close enough to the guy to give me a good description, but he did make out that he had a black beard.”
“There’s a dog trainer in Pacific Palisades named Rambeau, who fits the description. Mrs Hooper has been taking Otto to his school.”
“Rambeau?” Carlson said with interest.
“Fernando Rambeau. He seemed pretty upset when I talked to him this morning.”
“What did he say?”
“A good deal less than he knows, I think. I’ll talk to him again.”
Rambeau was not at home. My repeated knocking was answered only by the barking of the dogs. I retreated up the highway to a drive-in where I ate a torpedo sandwich. When I was on my second cup of coffee, Marie Rambeau drove by in a pickup truck. I followed her home.
“Where’s Fernando?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been out looking for him.”
“Is he in a bad way?”
“I don’t know how you mean.”
“Emotionally upset.”
“He has been ever since that woman came into the class.”
“Mrs Hooper?”
Her head bobbed slightly.
“Are they having an affair?”
“They better not be.” Her small red mouth looked quite implacable. “He was out with her night before last. I heard him make the date. He was gone all night, and when he came home, he was on one of his black drunks and he wouldn’t go to bed. He sat in the kitchen and drank himself glassy-eyed.” She got out of the pickup facing me. “Is shooting a dog a very serious crime?”
“It is to me, but not to the law. It’s not like shooting a human being.”
“It would be to Fernando. He loves dogs the way other people love human beings. That included Otto.”
“But he shot him.”
Her head drooped. I could see the straight white part dividing her black hair. “I’m afraid he did. He’s got a crazy streak, and it comes out in him when he drinks. You should have heard him in the kitchen yesterday morning. He was moaning and groaning about his brother.”
“His brother?”
“Fernando had an older brother, George, who died back in Canada after the war. Fernando was just a kid when it happened and it was a big loss to him. His parents were dead, too, and they put him in a foster home in Chilliwack. He still has nightmares about it.”
“What did his brother die of?”
“He never told me exactly, but I think he was shot in some kind of hunting accident. George was a guide and packer in the Fraser River Valley below Mount Robson. That’s where Fernando comes from, the Mount Robson country. He won’t go back on account of what happened to his brother.”
“What did he say about his brother yesterday?” I asked.
“That he was going to get his revenge for George. I got so scared I couldn’t listen to him. I went out and fed the dogs. When I came back in, Fernando was loading his deer rifle. I asked him what he was planning to do, but he walked right out and drove away.”
“May I see the rifle?”
“It isn’t in the house. I looked for it after he left today. He must have taken it with him again. I’m so afraid that he’ll kill somebody.”
“What’s he driving?”
“Our car. It’s an old blue Meteor sedan.”
Keeping an eye out for it, I drove up the highway to the Hoopers’ canyon. Everything there was very peaceful. Too peaceful. Just inside the locked gate, Allan Hooper was lying face down on his shotgun. I could see small ants in single file trekking across the crown of his bald head.
I got a hammer out of the trunk of my car and used it to break the padlock. I lifted his head. His skin was hot in the sun, as if death had fallen on him like a fever. But he had been shot neatly between the eyes. There was no exit wound; the bullet was still in his head. Now the ants were crawling on my hands.
I found my way into the Hoopers’ study, turned off the stuttering teletype, and sat down under an elk head to telephone the courthouse. Carlson was in his office.
“I have bad news, Sheriff. Allan Hooper’s been shot.”
I heard him draw in his breath quickly. “Is he dead?”
“Extremely dead. You better put out a general alarm for Rambeau.”
Carlson said with gloomy satisfaction, “I already have him.”
“You have him?”
“That’s correct. I picked him up in the Hoopers’ canyon and brought him in just a few minutes ago.” Carlson’s voice sank to a mournful mumble. “I picked him up a little too late, I guess.”
“Did Rambeau do any talking?”
“He hasn’t had a chance to yet. When I stopped his car, he piled out and threatened me with a rifle. I clobbered him one good.”
I went outside to wait for Carlson and his men. A very pale afternoon moon hung like a ghost in the sky. For some reason, it made me think of Fay. She ought to be here. It occurred to me that possibly she had been.
I went and looked at Hooper’s body again. He had nothing to tell me. He lay as if he had fallen from a height, perhaps all the way from the moon.