Page 59 of Death on Gallows Path

“That’s why the escapee’s family was broke? From paying off the judge?”

That explained Donna’s disdain for the Swindell family tree.

“How can we know—?”

“—across the distance of time. Right. But even if Damon’s judge ancestor was corrupt — and it sure sounds like he was — you think Damon’s killing could have something to do with his ancestor being involved with a hanging in 1936?”

“I did not express an opinion on that. I merely acceded to your request for information and provided a connection between the background of Damon Swindell and the road called Gallows Path.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

As soon as Clara opened her door to me, Gracie, and Murphy, she asked, “What did you learn from Urban? Anything useful?”

I’m no saint. I told her all of it as she straightened her desk, closed down her computer, and gathered dog park necessities.

At the end, she said, “Huh.”

“Huh, what?”

She blinked — she’d been staring into space — and looked at me. “You’re always bringing back things from Urban I’ve never heard before. That’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? Anyway, we won’t know if it was useful until we know if it fits in, will we?”

I had a headache.

It would be cured by the dog park.

Watching the dogs have fun, getting out their fidgets, breathing in fresh air. Sure, a good portion of that air had spring pollen in it, but still, it would be interesting to scope out the pre-sunset crowd.

First person we saw as we entered the foyer between the main gate and gates to the individual areas was Berrie.

My headache worsened.

And then her Boston Terrier named Marcus spotted me and started carrying on in the adjacent small dog enclosure.

No one knows why he goes — let’s say bananas, though some use an expression for a primate’s excrement — when I appear. I have never done anything to this animal except looked at him, smiled, said hello a time or two.

At the moment, Berrie wasn’t helping by screeching something in our direction that we couldn’t possibly hear over Marcus.

Clara shouted to me, “You go in first.”

Our experience is that the way to stop Marcus is for me to reach a point inside the big-dog enclosure, which only he knows.

After that, all is well.

One of the tough lessons of dog training, though, is that if you once open the gate and let your pups steamroll in instead of obeying the command to wait until being released, they will internalize that immediately as the way they get to act. You’re not back to zero, you’re sunk into negative territory.

So, I handled Gracie’s and Murphy’s leashes as I steered them through the open gate, then shouted the commands to sit and wait.

Good thing these dogs are good at lip-reading.

As soon as I released them, they thundered away and I followed them deeper into the enclosure, quickly overtaken by LuLu, whom Clara had brought in, made her wait, then released.

It felt like I was halfway across the enclosure before Marcus abruptly cut off the banshee spigot and stalked away from the dividing fence.

It was one heck of an entrance and every one of the humans looked at me. A spattering of those who’d seen this performance before appeared to fill in the others.

That’s what I could see. What I could hear was Berrie.

That was the downside of Marcus falling silent.