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  HIGH IN TRIAL

  Raine Stockton Dog Mystery #7

  BY DONNA BALL

  Copyright 2013 by Donna Ball Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author

  http://www.donnaball.net

  Published by Blue Merle Publishing

  Drawer H

  Mountain City GA 30562

  www.bluemerlepublishing.com

  Experts in the North Carolina criminal justice system and in the rules and regulations of AKC agility will please forgive certain liberties taken by the author for the sake of this story. No claims made herein should in any way be construed to be an accurate representation of either organization.

  Many thanks to Brinkley, Gunny, and Bryte for the use of their names and breeds, although all other details relating to them are entirely the product of the author’s imagination. The owners/handlers depicted in this novel are wholly fictitious and bear no known resemblance whatsoever to their real-life counterparts.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and places in this book are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and no effort should be made to construe them as real. Any resemblance to any actual people, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  ONE

  December 1992

  The rust-colored pickup truck came out of nowhere, careening into the intersection like a skier taking off on a slalom course. There was no way she could have avoided it, even if the road had not been icy, even if the night had not been pitch black, even if she had not had a glass of wine—or maybe two—at dinner. She didn’t have time to cry out, and before her foot could even hit the brake, her Taurus had gone into a spin. Headlights flashed in her eyes, the steering wheel wrenched itself from her hand, and her companion shouted, “Steer into the skid! Steer into it!”

  She grabbed the wheel, twisted it hard to the right, fought the foot that wanted to slam into the brake pedal. She remembered—she would never forget—the instant her headlights caught the face of the driver of the other vehicle and seemed to freeze it in time: small, terrified eyes, white skin, scruffy beard, and stringy brown hair. His mouth formed an obscenity, revealing one tooth missing in front, before the night snatched him away and she heard the piercing shriek of metal on metal, smelled the burn of rubber, and the car shuddered to a stop. The pickup truck careened off her front bumper, spun around, and screeched to a stop facing north in the southbound lane ten feet away.

  For the longest time, she could hear nothing but the sound of her own thundering heartbeat, the hic and gasp of her breath, and, oddly, the hiss of the car’s heater, still blowing hot air across the interior. Then she became aware of the man in the seat beside her, dragging off her seat belt, touching her arms and her face, saying, “Sweetheart, are you all right? Talk to me. Are you hurt?”

  “Fine, I’m fine. The other fellow… Do you have your phone? Call 9-1-1.”

  She fumbled for the door handle, but he stopped her with a hand firmly on her wrist. “Wait,” he said. He had an authority about him that could command armies: quiet, calm, calculated, and always in control. It was this she had first loved about him. He didn’t panic. He didn’t rush to judgment. And he didn’t make mistakes. “You’ve been drinking. I’ll go check on him. Change seats with me.”

  She stared at him. Her voice, normally so gentle, her tone so dulcet, deteriorated into a near hiss of horror. “Me? You’ve had more to drink than I have! What if he recognizes you? You’re supposed to be in Seattle! Think this through, for God’s sake—”

  “I have.” His hand was already on the passenger doorknob, and with the other hand he thrust his phone at her. “Call it in. He could be hurt.”

  He had one foot out the door when the blare of a horn tore through the night. The engine of the pickup truck revved and its driver rolled down his window. “Bitch!” he screamed out the window. “Crazy-ass bitch! Keep it on the damn road, will you? Crazy bitch!”

  And then, incredibly, the transmission shrieked into reverse, he turned the truck around, and the tires squealed as he sped away.

  That turned out to be the biggest mistake of that young man’s life. And, for the two people watching incredulously as he peeled off, perhaps the luckiest break of theirs. For a time, anyway.

  Two hours later, a bored and sleepy patrolman outside a small North Georgia town pulled over a rust-colored pickup truck for speeding and failure to maintain a lane, ran the plates and discovered two DUIs and an outstanding bench warrant. This, and the suspect’s erratic behavior, gave him cause to search the vehicle, where he discovered a small cellophane bag containing a trace amount of a white powdery substance that might have been cocaine, a thirty-eight special concealed in the glove box, along with a wad of cash that amounted to two thousand fourteen dollars and a crumpled receipt for gas from a mini-mart outside Hansonville, North Carolina. The officer also noted minor damage to the front right fender of the vehicle that appeared to be recent. The suspect, one Jeremiah Allen Berman, was cuffed and booked on DUI, possession of a concealed weapon, and suspicion of trafficking controlled substances.

  At eight o’clock that morning those charges were dropped in favor of far more interesting ones. Apparently a man matching Berman’s description, driving a brown or red pickup truck, had stopped for gas at the Cash-N-Carry outside Hansonville, North Carolina, robbed the cash register of over two thousand dollars, and shot the clerk with a thirty-eight caliber weapon before departing, scraping his right front fender on the concrete pylon beside the pump as he fled. Jeremiah Allen Berman was extradited to North Carolina on armed robbery charges, protesting his innocence and demanding his rights every mile along the way.

  He was arraigned within forty-eight hours and a trial date was set. The prosecutor offered three years and his court-appointed attorney told him to take it. At first he was cocky. Why were they cutting him a deal if they were so sure he was guilty? Because they couldn’t prove it, that was why. Because they didn’t have a security camera tape or a bullet or anything but a couple of half-assed witnesses to put him at the scene. Plus, he was innocent. He was totally going to skate if it went to a jury. Meanwhile, the Hanover County jail was clean and the food wasn’t half bad. He’d take his chances.

  By the time he started to reconsider his decision a few days later, it was too late. The store clerk was dead, and Jeremiah Allen Berman was facing the death penalty for a murder he did not commit.

  ~*~

  FRIDAY

  The Present

  ~*~

  TWO

  Twenty-nine hours before the shooting

  I’ve always thought I’d like to write a book entitled Everything My Dog Needs to Know My Mother Taught Me. My mother wasn’t a dog trainer. But she was a great mother. Aside from how to tie my shoelaces and the importance of regular dental checkups, she imparted quite a few important life lessons, such as:

  —Honesty is the best policy. It’s easier than lying and usually has fewer consequences.

  —Always do your best. Less is cheating.

  —Winning is better than losing. Always.

  Okay, so the meaning of that last one is probably more like trying to win is its own reward, or perhaps even it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. I have to admit, I’ve always been a little on the competitive side. A teacher once described me, somewhat generously, as goal-oriented. My goal is winning.

  My name is Raine Stockton. My father was a judge and my mother was the arbiter of all things gentle and proper in the small Smoky Mountain town of Hansonville, North Carolina, where I still live. I’m afraid I’ve fallen a little short of her standards when it comes to gentility and
propriety, but I do try my best to impart to my dogs the same important life lessons she taught me. Honesty, for example, is as desirable a quality in a dog as it is in a human, and you hear a lot of talk about “honest” dogs on the competitive circuit. Frankly, I’ve never met a dishonest dog, but when trainers and handlers call a dog honest, what they usually mean is he’s consistent, dependable, and earnest. What you see is what you get.

  My golden retriever Cisco is extremely consistent: consistently distractible, consistently curious, consistently unpredictable. For example, with only one group ahead of us for our very first run of the agility season—the one that would set the tone for the rest of the year—he was completely and obsessively focused, not on me, his partner, his handler, and the only member of our two-member team who could actually read the course map the judge designed, but on Brinkley, a sassy golden retriever who’d recently become his new BFF.

  Brinkley, good dog that he was, was warming up by weaving through his handler’s legs and practicing focus by dropping to a sit on command and maintaining eye contact. Cisco watched him in eager fascination, ears forward and grinning, as I sank down onto the bleachers, tugging him into place beside me. The Excellent class was finishing up; Open—in which we were entered—was next. Cisco had completed walk time, play time, warm-up time at the practice jump, and a pep talk. I was wearing my lucky Golden Retriever Club of America sweatshirt, my lucky agility socks, and the Air Bud cap my young friend Melanie brought back from her spring break trip to Disney World in Orlando. My shoelaces were double knotted. My long brown ponytail was threaded through the back of my hat, securely out of my way. I was ready. Cisco was ready. There was nothing more we could do until the judge called our class.

  We’d traveled from Hansonville to Pembroke, South Carolina, for the three-day AKC sanctioned agility trial, which was the traditional opening of the competitive season in our part of the country. It was a gorgeous April weekend, and the venue was perfect: huge open agricultural fairgrounds and exhibition center with two covered pavilions, a concrete livestock building for crating, plenty of public restrooms, a separate concessions building surrounded by picnic tables, and acres of rolling grass for setting up shade canopies and walking dogs. There was even RV parking on site, and every time I walked past the camping area with the smell of charcoal-grilled burgers and the sight of happy dogs lounging in their ex-pens in front, I felt a stab of yearning. Although I had no complaints about my luxurious room at the Pembroke Host Inn on this trip, most doggie motels left a great deal to be desired. An RV was any dog show enthusiast’s secret dream.

  If I had had an RV, for example, I would have brought my two Aussies, Mischief and Magic, and I would have entered every class being offered this weekend. I might even have a chance of winning one. On the other hand, Cisco and I had trained all winter—well, part of it, anyway—and I was feeling good about our chances. I only hoped Cisco shared my confidence.

  Of course, there were a few advantages to staying in a motel rather than an RV, even if it did mean limiting myself to one dog. Like room service, for example, and a full stand-up shower. And the fact that my boyfriend, Miles, had surprised me by driving in from Atlanta last night and had immediately upgraded our room to a mini-suite. I have to admit, the evening wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable had we been staying in an RV with three dogs.

  I always feel a little silly saying that—“boyfriend”—partly because I don’t think any woman over sixteen should call any man a boyfriend and partly because, well, I don’t exactly know what else to call him. For one thing, Miles is hardly a boy. He’s in his mid-forties with short spiky salt-and-pepper hair, a rock-hard body, and nice gray eyes. He has questionable political opinions, a bullheaded way of getting what he wants, and more money than I even want to know about. He’s funny and charming and smart, and he makes me laugh even when I’m mad at him. When we’re together, he always cooks. He’s also the dad of one of my favorite people in the world, the aforementioned ten-year-old Melanie, who’d begged to forgo a school field trip to Washington, D.C., this weekend in order to attend this trial. Melanie had aspirations of seeing her own golden retriever puppy, Pepper—who was currently in the very capable care of their housekeeper in Atlanta—bring home a slew of blue ribbons one day. While I agreed with her father that a hands-on experience in American government should take priority for the weekend, I also secretly agreed with Melanie that it’s never too soon to start exposing a puppy to competition.

  The upside of having Melanie in Washington was that Miles and I had the weekend to ourselves—if you didn’t count the three hundred or so dogs between us—which was something we’d learned to value since our relationship had taken a more romantic turn. Is he my boyfriend? I still struggle with that. But what else do you call someone who drives four hours just to watch you compete in an event that lasts less than a minute?

  Here’s something else my mother taught me: Be careful who you date, because you can’t always choose who you fall in love with.

  “So,” said Miles, snapping open a bag of corn chips, “explain the rules to me again.”

  An agility trial is always more fun with a buddy—someone to cheer you on, help with strategy, and keep you from going bonkers between runs. Usually I trial with Maude, my business partner, oldest friend, and the best dog trainer I know, but since we were rather desperately trying to keep Dog Daze, our boarding and training center, above water we agreed the business could spare only one of us per weekend. This was my weekend, and while it’s true that trialing with Maude was both educational and supportive, Miles was a lot more fun. For one thing, I liked seeing the game through the eyes of someone who was new to it, and what girl doesn’t like that slightly superior feeling that comes along with explaining things to her guy? For another thing, I’d recently discovered he was almost as much of a junk food junkie as I was, and as everyone knows, dog shows are junk food nirvana.

  He offered me the bag of chips, but I shook my head—bad idea to load up on corn chips before a run—and explained, “Okay, right now we’re watching the Excellent B Class, which is pretty much as hard as it gets. What’s more, this is the twenty-inch jump height group—border collies and Aussies, mostly, who are some of the fastest dogs in the world. Unless you actually have a border collie or an Aussie, you really don’t want to be in that group. Those numbers on the cones beside each piece of equipment mark the course. The object is to get your dog to follow the numbers faster and with fewer mistakes than any other dog. The trick is that you have to memorize the course and you don’t get to practice it with your dog beforehand. But you see the way they’re arranged in loops and figure eights and weird triangles? The handler has to do some pretty fancy maneuvering to get his dog from one obstacle to the other without tripping over him. You’re not allowed to touch your dog. You get disqualified if you do. It’s all done with body language and voice commands. The team with the fastest time and the fewest faults wins first place, and at the end of the weekend, the dog with the highest overall score wins high in trial.”

  There was, of course, a great deal more to it than that, but most people who weren’t themselves agility competitors would have a hard enough time following the action even with that broad outline of the rules. Miles, however, was unfazed. In the short time I’d known him I discovered his interests were eclectic and his curiosity unbounded; he had very little trouble catching on to new things.

  “Hmm.” Miles watched a border collie sail off the teeter-totter and dash through the tunnel. The judge’s hand flew up. “So, do people bet on these things or what?’

  “What do you mean, bet?”

  “You know, like at the dog track. The greyhounds.” He dug into the bag again, focused on the Australian shepherd who was sailing over the first set of serpentine jumps. Cisco turned to him hopefully, the crinkling of the bag having successfully drawn his attention away from Brinkley.

  “Of course not.” I was mildly offended. “Don’t be silly.”

&
nbsp; “Then what’s the percentage?” He started to sneak a corn chip to Cisco, caught my look, and pretended innocence as he popped the chip into his own mouth instead. “Who pays for the training, the prizes, the shows? What do you get out of it?”

  “Entry fees pay for the shows,” I explained patiently, “and the sponsoring dog clubs do all the work. As for the prizes—a few hundred dollars cover the ribbons and dog toys. What did you think, there was a jackpot cash prize for high in trial?” I shrugged. “We do it for the fun of it, that’s all. It’s a game.”

  He gave a slow shake of his head. “Wasted opportunity,” he said. “If Vegas ever gets word of this, look out.”

  I helped myself to a chip—okay, a couple of chips—and gave him a suspicious look. “Okay, you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you hardly ever swear, and you don’t mind driving four hours to watch a dog show. So gambling’s your vice, right? You’ve got bookies lined up from here to Atlantic City and you drop a couple grand every weekend on football.”

  “I work too hard for my money to gamble with it,” he replied mildly. “Whoa, look at that little guy go. Are you watching that, Cisco? That’s the time to beat.”

  Cisco grinned at him happily, ears pricking with renewed expectation as he watched Miles’s hand dive into the bag again.

  “Whatever you do,” I told him sternly, “don’t feed my dog.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “And make sure that bag is out of sight before we go into the ring.”

  “You got it.”

  “There are AKC regulations about training on the grounds, you know. And food in the vicinity of the ring is absolutely forbidden.”

  “Easy, sweetheart. Like you said, it’s just a game.”