Fangs Out

“… Bu

“He’s a PI. Works for Charles Dowd, the attorney who represented Dorian Munz. Bu

“Who’s Dorian Munz again?”

“The guy who went out with Janet Bollinger after Ruth Walker dumped him.”

“Dorian Munz, who got executed for murdering Ruth.”

“One and the same.”

I told Rosario about my run-in outside the federal courthouse with the Human Doberman, he of the squished scrotum, and his threat that I get out of Dodge or else.

“The dude’s a stone-cold thug,” I said. “Except for his ears. He looks like a jack rabbit.”

“Which explains the ‘Bu

“What keen powers of deduction. You must be a detective.”

“I’ll check him out.”

I asked her if her department had tracked down the tattooed gangbanger I’d exchanged pleasantries with outside Janet Bollinger’s apartment. Not yet, Rosario said. She promised to let me know when they did.

“The woman had lost a lot of blood by the time I got in there,” I said.

“Nobody’s blaming you, Mr. Logan. There wasn’t much you or anyone else could’ve done.”

Her sentiments were appreciated. But they didn’t make me feel better.

Hub Walker seemed genuinely surprised when I told him about the paternity test Greg Castle had voluntarily taken to disprove he was the father of Walker’s granddaughter, Ryder.

“Greg never told me he took any test,” Walker said. “Neither did Ruth.”

“Paternity tests aren’t exactly something you post on Facebook, Hub.”

We were sitting in Walker’s home office, looking out onto the backyard. His wife and my ex were lounging poolside in bikinis, sipping umbrella drinks and giggling about something, their legs swishing playfully in the turquoise water while Ryder swam at the shallow end. Granted, I may be biased, but Crissy Walker, former Playmate of the Year, had nothing in the looks department when it came to the former Mrs. Cordell Logan.

“That test could go a long way knocking down Dorian Munz’s lies, that’s for sure,” Walker said.

“Castle hasn’t decided whether he wants to release the results.”

“He will when he understands how important it is.”

I glanced around. Had I racked up a combat record like his, my walls and shelves might’ve been crammed with shadow boxes touting all of my many citations and medals, but there were none on display in Walker’s office. The decor included two framed photos of his granddaughter and a framed cartoon rendition of a bulldog wearing a red sweater — the mascot of the University of Georgia. Only the wooden model sitting on his desk of an O-2 Skymaster like the kind he flew in Vietnam conveyed any hint of his wartime deeds.

“Any news on Janet Bollinger?” Walker asked.

“She died last night.”

He leaned back in his desk chair and gazed sadly out the window, shaking his head.

“Why in the world would somebody have wanted to do something like that to her?”

“I don’t know, Hub.”

He watched his granddaughter swim. “Sweet Jesus,” is all he said.

Whether truly grief-stricken or guilt-ridden, his reaction again was tough to read considering I’d only known him all of three days. I wanted to believe that he had nothing to do with Janet Bollinger’s death. Nothing pointed overtly to his involvement except some vague, ill-defined gnawing in my gut. When you’re a skeptic, I suppose, all the world’s a suspect. Sometimes even war heroes.

“The detectives’ll probably want to ask you and Crissy a few questions. You might want to call them.”

“Whoever hurt Jan needs to pay,” Walker said, his gaze still directed outside, “just like Dorian Munz.”

I dug Detective Rosario’s card out of my wallet and slid it across the desk.

“That private investigator you told me about? His name’s Herbie Myers,” Detective Rosario said when she called me back that afternoon.

“Herbie ‘Bu

“I ran his records. He spent twelve years as a special agent for the Navy’s Criminal Investigative Service before getting his PI license.”

“He worked for NCIS? That fits.”

Despite what TV producers would have you believe, Navy criminal investigators are about as high speed as the Mayberry Police Department. At least that’s the impression they left when I was with Alpha and we’d occasionally cross paths with them. Their primary mission back then was ferreting out closeted homosexual sailors who would then be deemed unfit for military service and automatically discharged. Bu

Only problem was, Bu

“Dowd says he has no idea where he’s at, and the only thing Bu

“His name’s Li’l Sinister and he wears boxers with little lightning bolts on them?”

“What can I say? It’s a weird world.”

“Indeed.”

Rosario said she and her partner were concerned that Bu

“The Mexican drug cartels have a lot of reach out there,” she said. “It’s hard to know who to trust on either side of the border anymore.”

“Hard to trust anybody anywhere.”

Rosario didn’t disagree.

Yuma is about 175 miles east of San Diego across the Anza-Borrego Desert. On a good day, the drive takes less than three hours, but this, the detective said, was not one of those days. An 18-wheeler hauling fresh eggs had collided with a tanker truck filled with extra virgin olive oil. Both big rigs had exploded. Aside from making the world’s biggest frittata, the accident had shut down Interstate 8 in both directions. No one could say how long the freeway would remain closed.

None of that should’ve been any of my concern. Sava