Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [53]
“So what did he recall about the dog?” asked Rocky.
“The kid was waiting for the dog to dig in his heels. You almost always have some kind of hitch with dogs. But this dog never looked down. He just walked across. He thought at first he might be a guide dog. That’s when he noticed the woman, expecting her to be blind. Fits the description of her. Young, dark hair, short with lots of blond streaks. Nose stud. He said she looked like a tourist, not the kind who really wants to live here. And he said the dog was a big black Lab.”
The Portland police, who came once a day to the island, told Isaiah more of the details that the newspapers didn’t have. The woman had been found dead on the mainland after a mail carrier contacted the police, after the unmistakable odor found a crack in the house and reached the nose of the only person who came close enough to notice. The cops said that it had all the earmarks of a suicide, even without the note. The doors were both dead-bolted from the inside. This had been a very determined, don’t-try-to-save-me suicide. Empty prescription bottles were found near the body. Autopsy results were pending, but the police unofficially called the death an overdose.
The police had taken a look in the old Hamilton place and found only a sleeping bag, plastic bowls on the floor with dog food remains, and some canned soda. They speculated that she had only been there a day or two at the most.
“The place was going to need a lot of work before someone could move in. She might have just come over for a day or so to look it over, see what needed fixing. Nothing has been done to that place for years, and you know what a place can look like after fifteen years of renters,” said Isaiah, still smarting from his previous renters.
Both of their cups were empty. “Rocky, it could be that your dog, I mean Lloyd, might be her dog.”
Rocky felt an ill wind blow past her. She had images of the people in the Midwest who, in good faith, adopt a baby and suddenly the birth mother, or father, come on the scene two years later and want the baby back.
“There’s one more thing. Charlotte looked up the obituary on the Web from a Providence newspaper. They said Elizabeth was an accomplished archer. A competitive archer.”
“She shot her own dog? Is that what you’re thinking? Most people with mental illness hurt themselves, not others. And surely she wouldn’t kill a creature that provided her with the relentless adoration that only a dog can generate.” But Rocky knew it could happen, if delusions were severe enough, demanding enough.
“It won’t be hard to figure out if the dog belonged to her. Contact the vet clinics in Orono for starters. You could contact the mother.”
Rocky recoiled. She didn’t want to call a mother who was wrestling with the death of a daughter after they had been estranged for over a year. And she particularly didn’t want to call about a dog, as if the death of her daughter wasn’t the most horrible thing that had ever happened to this woman.
“You’d be better at it than I would. You must have been called on hundreds of times to talk with people after a death. We count on you guys for this. We want you at hospitals and funerals. This is what you used to do, right?”
“If the dog did belong to Elizabeth, then the mother needs to know. By rights the dog was property and should be handed over to the family of the deceased.”
Was Lloyd property? He seemed more like a co-pilot, at least while she was driving. Or a companion.
“Let me check into the Orono clinics. I’ll ask Sam if he can do this. He must have some swift way to e-mail particular areas. There’s no reason to bother this woman’s mother yet, not until we find out.”
Rocky rushed home, driving the yellow truck as fast as she dared. If Isaiah was right, his owner, Elizabeth Townsend, had shot him. Labs