comfortable position then resumed snoring languidly with his curled back to the deputies.
"Whew! What'd you do, douse him in kerosene?" James commented as he closed the cell door.
"That won't be necessary," Roth observed after explaining where he'd found Jorge, then thought better of leaving the door open. Even without his truck, Jacobs didn't want his only link to the slaughter of the bull to wander off. In spite of the Mexican's knowledge about similar crimes, he made a poor suspect in this case. He was truly traumatized by what happened, as much for the similarity to attacks back home in his own village as to think the same had begun here.
What would become of Ramirez in the off season from harvesting when the ranches that hired him opposite the farms had no cattle left to tend? Sure, the odds of the problem spreading to that extent were slim, but a man living hand to mouth to feed his family would look at any disruption as a threat to life if not limb.
Bill left to get sandwiches at the local Dairy Queen toward noon as Jacobs settled in to try and make some sense of the strange events leading up to the death of the bull. Try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to profile the culprit as an otherworldly bloodsucker capable of bringing down an animal twenty times its size and weight. As much as he'd detested the ringing telephone that morning while he was trying to catch up on his sleep, he was relieved that it rang again. The report could wait. There was routine police business piling up and needing his attention, if only in paperwork.
Please, let it be just another run of the mill complaint.
Roth immediately recognized the voice on the other end as that of the Third Round owner, Blayton Collier. He sounded angry and distraught, immediately going into a tirade about his Rottweiller, Champ. This time, there was blood out behind the bar, but no dog.
"Blake? No, it doesn't sound crazy. I just thought you were calling to gripe about me leaving that old Dodge pickup out in front of your place. I told Delores I wanted to park it for the time being, but I'll get it moved as soon as I can. Now, what's this about Champ?" Come to think of it, Jacobs was used to seeing the tan and black 125 pound canine lying by the front door, as effective as any bouncer. He was there as often as not, penned up in a cage off the back of the bar when he got rowdy or restless. It was Collier's way of making sure he didn't just run off after anything in heat.
At the suggestion from Roth that the dog was after some female, Blake did get upset. The cage Champ was kept in had been opened, the door thrown back against the fence, probably by the force of the Rottweiller rushing through it. The deputy sheriff put down the Sykes report, but this was certainly no reprieve. If anything, it would only get longer and more involved if the two incidents were related.
"I'll be right there," Jacobs sighed.
He met James at the door carrying lunch, paid him five dollars and took the meal with him.
"What about him?" Bill asked, indicating the dozing Ramirez.
"Book him for drunk and disorderly conduct. Set bail at $3000.00. That ought to hold him until I get back." In a small town like Jefferson, Texas, the sheriff or his duly appointed deputies had the authority to act in the absence of a travelling magistrate to impose minor sentences and set fines.
For the third time that day, Roth Jacobs pulled alongside the rusted out Dodge pickup and stepped out onto the cracked asphalt of the black top parking lot. The bottle red head was waiting at the door, chewing her bottom lip as she held it open for the deputy to step into the bar.
Passing through to where Smootz sat alone in a booth at the back of the Third Round, Jacobs opened another screen door off the kitchen and joined Blayton outside. Thirty feet removed from the back porch, the bartender stood at the gate of the enclosure, testing the grated door by swinging it on its hinges just inches above the worn ground beneath it.
"I just don't get it, deputy. I make sure this cage door is well-oiled, but there's no way it could've opened by itself, let alone Champ nudge it open. Somebody had to let him out, but I trained that dog myself to attack anybody who came back here without me."
"Are you sure that's a wise decision, Collier? I mean, that's a lot of liability to assume if somebody trespasses. You could be sued." Roth waited patiently for a response.
"I could be robbed or worse, more like it. You've stepped over that worthless dog on your way into the bar before. Hell, even Calvin can navigate around him, and he's drunk most of the time when he does it. If Champ knows you, all he's looking for is a scratch behind the ear or a pat on the head. If he don't take to you, well you're in for what you deserve, anyway."
Trespasser.
Again, that phrase leapt to the deputy's mind. Just as it had with the locked barn door back on the Sykes T-Bar ranch. The whole crime scene, if indeed there even was one in the case of the missing dog, was backwards to the report he investigated with the dead bull the preceding morning. Jacobs didn't want to associate yet another animal death with a superstition. Better to eliminate all the other possibilities first. What had they called it in the Sherlock Holmes books he read as a kid and dreamed of being a detective?
Ockham's Razor. The fastest way to the truth or the best explanation of something is to get unnecessary information out of the way first.
"Are you sure Champ didn't just hurt himself getting out of the cage and ran off after whatever got him so riled up?" Jacobs figured it was straightforward, logical and didn't involve a monstrous consequence. Blake would have none of it, and seemed ready to punch out the smaller deputy for taking the quickest solution. Still, it was a reasonable scenario, so he let it stand and looked around the garage area to the single path leading up into the secluded wooded hills beyond.
Coming to the same conclusion simultaneously, Collier called for Delores Watson, the waitress, to cover for him while the two men made their way up along the winding path. They hadn't gone twenty feet over the rise when they found a disturbed patch of tall grass. It looked as if a scuffle had occurred, with the long blades bent outward, flattened or broken by something wishing to see over them without being seen itself. It looked for all the world like a nest.
One stalk was covered in dried blood. Whatever had begun back at the cage didn't end here. They pressed on in nervous silence, watching the trail to either side for a departure that might indicate which way the Rottweiller went in pursuit of its prey. The ground was too hard to leave an impression, but on the cusp of a disturbed fire anthill twenty yards up the path was a faint set of tracks. One was large and padded, definitely Champ's paw print.
The other, partially obscured by that of the much larger dog, was the track of what looked to be a large bird, three-clawed with a half-turn. It was as if whatever the dog chased looked back before racing on before it. In the first similarity to the case of the prize bull, Jacobs wondered why the owner didn't hear anything. The blood was dried, and since Blayton didn't live at the Third Round, it could have happened the previous night or as late as early that morning.
Jacobs thought to ask the bar owner why he didn't notice or report the dog missing any sooner than he did, but the deputy had been called in more than once when Champ was wandering loose around Jefferson. Although he was gentle enough to those that knew him, Collier was right. The Rottweiller would just as soon sink his teeth to the bone in a stranger unless his master was around. No, something led the big dog up into the hills intentionally to get it away from prying eyes or listening ears.
The thought froze the deputy's blood. The Syke's ranch was over thirty miles away. What kind of animal could cover that much territory overnight and still muster the energy to outrun and overpower a 125-pound Rottweiller? How much would it have to feed to be driven to seek out two victims in one night so far apart? A glutted creature of any sort would be looking to rest after having its fill. There was another possibility that Roth Jacobs didn't want to entertain. If one of these Chupacabra existed, there might be two.
They suddenly came upon the body of Champ, wrapped around the base of a Pecan tree. It was as if he had bee
n thrown there, to drape about the roots of the state tree.
Immediately, Jacobs worked with Collier to move the dog down the hill to the back of Ramirez's truck. As before, there was no blood other than where the Rottweiller had been scratched on the side and the bridge of its powerful muzzle. A gaping, perfectly round wound punched the side of the neck beneath the collar, where it was mercifully hidden from the owner. Smootz was gone, so there was no need for explanation. Not that the old drunk would have remembered anyway.
Delores chewed her gum nervously, but promised to say nothing to anyone else until given permission by the sheriff's department and Jacobs personally. She agreed with a wink, as if the request carried with it a certain obligation on his part. Roth shook it off and had Collier follow his squad car in the truck. The deputy sheriff called in the report to Bill James, who was unusually agreeable.
The second deputy contacted the county coroner's office, which happened to be located on the western outskirts of Jefferson. A human doctor would not have a patient and a veterinarian would ask too many questions. He needed something at that point that neither could provide.
Forensic pathology on what killed the unfortunate beast.
Ten minutes later, they pulled into the unassuming