Red Dog Saloon Page 3

  “Are you the only one here?” Sam asked as he poked his head in the door seeing Carly, his tall brown-haired records clerk, dressed in a well-fitting knee-length skirt.

  The shapely clerk was raised up on her tiptoes filing papers in the top drawer of a cabinet. He had come at a perfect time. She was dressed for success.

  “Yep, sheriff, it’s just me this morning,” Carly responded, shooting her boss a broad smile. “I’m all alone.”

  “Oh really, you don’t say?” Sam said. "This must be my lucky day."

  He looked down the hall, making sure no one was nearby before shutting the door behind him. Shooting the clerk a sly grin, he boldly approached and removed the papers from her hands, placing them on top of the cabinet.

  “How’s the husband doing nowadays?” Sam asked.

  “He’s all work and no play,” Carly responded, biting her lip as Sam took her in his arms. “What about you? How’s the wife?”

  He drew Carly to him, kissing her on her cheek, his hands wrapped around her waist, whispering his answer as he worked his way down her neck.

  “That old hag, she ain’t no fun either,” Sam retorted. “We ought to run away together.”

  The sound of the door opening surprised the couple as Sam was still working his clerk’s neck. Carly tried to quickly push him away as she saw her assistant clerk, Wanda Robertson, come in. The clerk, letting out a disgusted sigh, wasted no time speaking up.

  “Why don’t you two get a room?” Wanda said as she stood at the door watching the intertwined couple. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe you two are married to each other the way you carry on. Men usually reserve that for their mistresses, sheriff.”

  Sam smiled at Wanda, not bothering to take his hands off his wife’s hips.

  “My fuddy-duddy wife won’t let me get a girlfriend on the side so I guess I’ll have to settle,” Sam quipped as Carly gave him a flirtatious slap across his cheek.

  “That kind of crap will get you a sexual harassment suit,” Carly warned her husband of over twenty years as she went back to filing papers.

  Carly, still a head-turner even after she celebrated her fortieth birthday a short time before, was a key part of the operation at the sheriff’s department. His wife knew where to lay her hands on any document, record or warrant in the whole building. Sam hired his wife for the job shortly after being elected the first time. He beat the county’s new nepotism policy which would have prevented him from bringing his wife on board. She was the best hire he ever made.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure of the high sheriff coming down here to the dungeon?” Carly asked as she finished putting away the files. “Why aren’t you out finding the hardened criminal that killed poor Andy Crouch?”

  “Hey lady, you stick to filing the papers and I’ll stick to enforcing the law in Castle County,” Sam retorted. “Speaking of which, do you have anything on our victim?”

  Walking over to another filing cabinet, Carly reached in and pulled out a file handing it to her husband.

  “That’s his jacket,” Carly said. “It’s pretty light.”

  Sam thumbed through the small file and discovered some petty arrests over the years, most alcohol-related. A couple of public drunks, a drunk driving conviction and a marijuana arrest were all that showed up in his file.

  “How about Eddie Young? Do we have anything on him?” Sam asked.

  His wife again demonstrated her uncanny ability to immediately fish out any file from the stacked-up records room. Sam wasn't even sure where he left his car keys.

  Eddie's record was much like that of Andy’s. All of his arrests had to do with alcohol. One of his public intoxications came on the same evening as one of those in Andy’s record suggesting the pair were partying together that night.

  “How far back do we go in here?” Sam asked.

  “In theory a person’s record should go from when they reached legal age but in reality we don’t have a whole lot prior to you taking office,” Carly admitted. “Your predecessor didn’t have a top notch records clerk like me.”

  “True, you’re a shoo-in for employee of the year,” Sam winked as he handed her back the file, waving good-bye as he headed back to his office.

  “I’d sure hope so,” Carly chirped as he walked away. “I’m sleeping with the boss.”

  “The early report is back,” came the voice of Sam’s Chief Investigator Bo Davis, the stocky red-faced country boy filing in beside the sheriff as he walked back down the hall toward his office. “The crime lab guys are heading in to your office right now.”

  “Did they find anything for us?” Sam asked.

  “Don’t know,” Bo responded with his southern drawl. “I did a walk around out there and didn’t find nothing. Talked to the neighbors and they didn’t hear nothing either. It’s pretty quiet out in those parts and noise carries down in that hollow where our boy lived. Whoever did it did it real quiet-like but then busting open a man’s skull with an ax don’t make much noise.”

  Sam and his investigator arrived at his office just as members of the state crime team walked in. Their faces told the sheriff their search was uneventful.

  “Well, do we have anything?” Sam asked in a hopeful voice.

  “Nothing,” responded lead detective Bryce Gonder. “The place is as clean as I’ve ever seen a crime scene.”

  “Are you saying there’s absolutely nothing?” Sam asked.

  “I’m saying we went over the house with a fine-toothed comb,” Gonder responded in an irritated tone. “There’s not a fingerprint, footprint, tire track, or even a hair follicle there. It’s almost like someone floated in there, killed the guy, and floated back out.”

  Disappointed the evidence techs would not be able to provide even a shred of evidence, Sam centered on the murder weapon.

  “Okay, what about the ax?” Sam asked. “What do we know about that?”

  “From what we can tell, the ax belonged to the victim,” Gonder revealed. “He had a wood burning stove inside his house and there was a fresh wood pile around back. We’re assuming the ax used to kill him was also used to chop the wood he was using for his stove. And, before you ask, the ax was clean of prints. The killer either wore gloves or wiped it clean.”

  “What’s your guess for our perpetrator?” Sam asked. “Man, woman, big, small, what are we looking for?”

  “That ax was filed razor sharp so pretty well any adult of average strength could have swung it with enough power to cause the fatal injury,” Gonder answered. “The ax caught him right on top of the skull and penetrated several inches into his brain. He was dead before he hit the floor.”

  “Okay then, what about the blood on the mirror?” Sam asked.

  “That was the victim's blood,” Gonder replied. “The killer probably used his or her finger to spell out the words on the mirror. Once again, there were no viable fingerprints since it was smeared on the mirror.”

  Sam leaned back in his chair realizing they would have to solve the case the old-fashioned way, that being good detective work since modern science wasn’t going to bail them out.

  “So, in other words …” Sam began, only to be cut off by Gonder.

  “There’s nothing,” Gonder interjected. “Whoever did this was very efficient.”

  Thanking the crime scene team, Sam walked them to the parking lot before returning to his office where Bo still sat.

  “What do you make of the killer writing Red Dog on the mirror?” Bo asked before Sam could even sit down at his desk. “Seems a mighty odd thing for a man to do while he’s standing around a house with the corpse of the man he just killed.”

  “Around here the words Red Dog can mean only one thing, that being the old bar that used to sit over on East Ridge Highway,” Sam said with certainty. “Now why anybody would reference a bar that has been gone for over twenty years at the scene of a murder is beyond me unless they had some long lasting issues.”

  “I never got to go there,” Bo said matter of f
actly. “I always thought of trying to sneak in when I was a teenager but then the place burned down when I was still too young.”

  “You didn’t miss anything, Bo,” Sam declared. “It was a redneck saloon where nothing good ever happened. As a matter of fact a lot of bad things happened there. A decent person wouldn’t be caught dead in that dive.”

  “What about you? Did you ever go?” Bo shot back.

  “Oh yeah, I went a time or two,” Sam admitted, a bit embarrassed he had darkened the Red Dog door. “But it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Just a bunch of brawlers and drunks hung out there looking for trouble. Going out there was more of a rite of passage, showing your buddies you had guts enough to walk into the Red Dog.”

  “That takes us right back to the question of the Red Dog,” Bo noted. “Why take the time to write that message after splitting a guy’s head in two?”

  “You just answered your own question,” Sam said. “It was a message, perhaps a threat. Whoever did it felt it was important enough to delay their departure from the scene of the crime. As for their choice of words, I’m hoping an old friend can help me out on that one.”

  “An old friend? Who's that?” Bo asked.

  “Well, I think I’m going to get me a little lunch and then I’m going to drive out and see my predecessor, Bill Foster,” Sam declared. “He was sheriff in Castle County back during the Red Dog’s heyday. Maybe he recalls an old feud or bad blood from back then that could have led to the murder.”

  Bill Foster was not only Sam’s predecessor as sheriff but he had served as the county’s chief law enforcement officer for nearly a quarter-century before retiring twelve years ago. His decision not to seek a seventh term of office left every political hopeful in Castle County scrambling to toss their hat in the ring. No less than ten candidates sought election to Foster’s seat.

  Prior to the announcement of his retirement, no one had dared run against the veteran sheriff in three elections. Whether it was due to intimidation or just reluctance to throw their money away on a hopeless campaign, no one lifted a finger to try to unseat the incumbent during his final terms of office.

  The popular old-school lawman dispensed a brand of justice that while, fine for its time, had run its course with the changing of times. His retirement was well-timed. His strong-handed tactics, in the modern climate of litigation, would have surely seen Castle County sued several times over if he were still in office.

  The campaign that followed Sheriff Foster’s announced retirement was a free-for-all with election signs in almost every front yard in Castle County. Being well known in the community since his childhood, perhaps best known as the all-state quarterback for the Castle County Knights in high school, Sam used his name recognition to his benefit along with his recent service in the U.S. Army. That combination, along with having some of the most attractive campaign signs in the field of candidates, led to Sam winning by a scant fifty votes.

  Sam’s popularity, as well as his margin of victory, increased over the years to the point no one even bothered to run against him in the last election. He still used the campaign signs from his first run, figuring they were still the sharpest campaign signs around. He even put a few of them up the last election despite being unopposed.

  Sam had consulted with his predecessor on a few occasions since taking over his office. Most of the time it was about minor things having to do with the jail or about where fugitives may be hiding out. Bill still had his ear to the ground for a lawman that had been out of the game for over a decade. Sam figured if anyone would recall the history of the Red Dog it would be Bill Foster. He had personally answered many a call at the bar back in his day.

  “Sheriff Delaney, how have you been?” the sixty-nine-year-old retired lawman said, obviously surprised to see Sam standing at his door. “Come on in here, you’ll catch your death of cold.”

  Bill, a recent widower, had always been hospitable to folks publicly despite tales Sam had heard concerning the head-busting tactics the former sheriff sometimes used to keep the peace in Castle County.

  “I’d offer you some coffee but my doctor told me to cut down on caffeine - high blood pressure and whatnot,” the still fit-looking senior revealed as he pulled a couple of beers from his refrigerator handing one to his guest. “That’s the good thing about being the boss. Who’s going to get onto you for having a beer on duty?”

  Settling down at Bill’s kitchen table, the men engaged in law enforcement chat for a good twenty minutes, sipping beer and swapping stories. Sam caught his predecessor up on the changes at the department. The casual chat, however, eventually led around to Bill’s curiosity for the real reason of Sam’s visit.

  “I know you didn’t drive all the way out here on the coldest day of the year to sip beer and swap war stories with an old man,” Bill reckoned.

  “True, I was actually hoping to pick your brain,” Sam revealed as he leaned forward in his chair, giving the former sheriff a serious look.

  “Pick away,” Bill countered as he went for another beer. “So what do you want to pick about?”

  “The old Red Dog Saloon,” Sam responded, his words freezing Bill momentarily as he leaned into his refrigerator to retrieve a beer.

  His voice somewhat hesitant, Bill wondered about the significance of the old bar.

  “The Red Dog? You came all the way out here to ask me about a bar that’s been gone for twenty-one maybe twenty-two years?” Bill asked as he returned, twisting the lid off his beer. “Shoot, there wasn’t anything to talk about even when it was open. All it amounted to out there was a bunch of trouble. The day it burnt down was probably the best day in county history.”

  He knew he would have to show some of his cards in order to get cooperation from his predecessor. The sheriff decided to trust Bill, hoping law enforcement fraternity would ensure his silence on the sensitive matters of the case.

  “Have you heard about the murder this morning?” Sam began. “They found Andy Crouch dead.”

  Bill nodded his head and gave Sam a solemn look.

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Bill responded. “News travels fast in a small town.”

  “We have reason to believe his murder may have something to do with the old Red Dog,” Sam revealed. “What I was wondering is if there was something back in the day that someone could have held a long grudge for. I know Andy was one of the regulars out there.”

  “It’s hard to say sheriff,” Bill began. “There was a lot of trouble out there - fights, cuttings, you name it and it went on out at the Red Dog.”

  “Can you recall anything having to do with Andy Crouch or his old buddy Eddie Young for that matter?” Sam questioned. “They used to hang out with your oldest son, Bart. I believe. I think I saw them out there a time or two.”

  Sam’s reference to Bill’s son brought an immediate change in demeanor from the old lawman.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bill snapped, his tone immediately letting Sam know he had crossed an invisible line in his course of questioning. “He was a grown man so it wasn’t like I could tell him where he could or couldn’t go. If it were up to me he wouldn’t have gotten within a hundred miles of that God-forsaken dive.”

  Sam apologized for the wording of his question. He was taken aback by the extreme reaction by the former sheriff.

  “No, I didn’t mean anything bad. I just knew there were a bunch of them that hung out together back in the old days and thought maybe Bart might have some information he passed along about things that went on out there,” Sam clarified. “I’m looking for any information, no matter how seemingly minor, which might help the investigation.”

  Bill paused for a second and looked blankly into space as if he was thinking back to long forgotten conversations.

  “Nope. Bart never told me anything about what went on out there,” Bill declared, still a bit standoffish from Sam’s mention of his son. “I’m just glad I never had to arrest my own son out there. That would have been embarrassin
g. Like I said, the best thing that ever happened was when the place burned to the ground.”

  The Red Dog burned under mysterious circumstances about twenty-two years ago. The pervasive rumor was the fire was intentionally set, however, as far as Sam could recall, no one was ever charged with arson.

  “It was intentionally set as I recall,” Sam began. “Did you ever have an idea who was behind it?”

  Sam’s question seemed to again fluster his host who remained silent for a moment as if deciding whether to answer the question.

  “It’s according to whom you talk to, Sam,” Bill started. “Some people say old Earl Cutts decided to torch the place to collect insurance and got caught up by the inferno inside before he could get out. Others say it was payback for trouble that happened there over the years. Beer wasn’t the only thing being sold out of the place so let your imagination run wild. I know from my dealings with him over the years that Earl Cutts was shady as they come. There were a lot of people who were happy when he went up along with the saloon. Some folks even say the fires of Hell itself reached up to claim the Red Dog and its owner.”

  “So I take it the proprietor wasn’t on the up and up then,” Sam said.

  He already knew the former bar owner’s reputation as a businessman who didn’t let the law stand in the way of making a dollar. Earl Cutts' less-than-honorable reputation remained two decades after he was gone.

  Eyeing Sam across the table, Bill wanted answers as to what caused the sheriff to link the killing of Andy Crouch to the old Red Dog Saloon.

  “You said you had reason to believe his murder had something to do with the Red Dog,” Bill recalled. “What makes you think that if you don’t mind me asking, one lawman to another?”

  The sheriff decided to take his predecessor into confidence when it came to the writing on the mirror.

  “We found the words Red Dog written on a mirror at the crime scene,” Sam explained. “I think whoever did it was trying to send a message or perhaps a warning.”