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“Yes, the suspect confessed this morning. He said he was pressured into filing the complaint and submitting to having pictures of the bite marks on his arm taken.”
“Pressured by whom?” Doc Cleary asked, though it was clear he already knew the answer.
“Sheriff Tulley and Jimmy Cornell.”
“That’s a lie!” Sheriff Tulley shouted again.
“Sheriff, if you interrupt one more time, I’ll direct Deputy Miller to arrest you and have you forcibly removed from the room,” Jeb warned.
Maddox motioned to Sawyer to step forward. “Can you tell everyone who you are, please?”
“My name is Sawyer Brower. I’m a vet specializing in the care of large animals and wildlife. I treated Gentry, the bear who lives on Dallas’s property, after he was shot repeatedly with a BB gun and burned with cattle prods.”
Another round of hushed gasps went through the crowd.
“You’ve been working around Loki, right?”
“I have. For a couple of weeks now.”
By this time, Loki was lying on the floor and Newt was playing with his ears.
“Is Loki pure wolf?” my brother asked.
“No, he’s a wolf hybrid. That means he’s a mix between a wolf and a domesticated dog. You can tell by the shape of his muzzle and his larger build.”
Maddox looked at Doc Cleary. “Do you agree, Doc?”
The vet nodded. “I do.”
“Sawyer, you’ve worked around wolves before, right?” Maddox continued.
“I have. I’ve participated in studies on them in Canada and in several national parks in the Rockies.”
“The behavior Loki exhibits, would you say he leans more toward wolf or dog?”
“Dog.”
“Is there any way to prove he isn’t dangerous?”
Sawyer chuckled. “A Chihuahua can technically be considered dangerous if they aren’t raised right. Their bite might not hurt as bad, but they can still cause damage, especially to a small child. In Loki’s case, he’s attacked someone only under circumstances that any family dog would – that they’d be expected to, actually. He was protecting the members of his pack like many domesticated dogs do. Human, dog, bear – doesn’t matter. Loki went after people who were harming his family.”
“Wolves have a high prey drive, don’t they?” Maddox asked. “They’ll pursue things that are smaller or weaker than them and kill them, correct?”
“Correct.”
To me, Maddox asked, “Dallas, do you trust Loki? Do you trust him with this boy’s life?”
I nodded without hesitation, even as I began to guess what Maddox had planned.
To Isaac he said, “Do you trust me not to let anything happen to your brother?”
The tension in the room grew to astronomical proportions at the question. I could see Isaac hesitating and I knew it was a lot to ask. He’d known us less than twenty-four hours and for whatever reason, he and my brother had gotten off to a rocky start. Isaac finally nodded.
Maddox knelt down and let his fingers settle in Loki’s fur as he spoke to Newt. “Newt, can you do me a favor and run as fast as you can to your brother? Loki’s going to go with you, okay, so don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” the little boy declared. “Loki likes me.”
With that, he got up to run to Isaac. Loki jumped to his feet and darted after Newt, easily overtaking him. There was a collective gasp and someone let out a cry of distress, but everyone fell silent when Newt made it to his brother untouched.
“Come on back, Newt,” Maddox called
Loki again ran next to Newt. It wasn’t until the pair reached my brother that he pressed his big body up against Newt’s expectantly. The little boy patted Loki several times.
Maddox looked over his shoulder at Jeb. “I’d like to ask that my brother be allowed to take his pet home tonight while Deputy Miller works to have the false complaint removed.”
“Agreed,” Jeb said as he glanced at the other committee members who were all nodding. “Deputy Miller, I trust you’ll go through the appropriate channels to discuss your concerns about Sheriff Tulley’s conduct?”
“Yes, sir, I will,” he said.
“Good luck with that,” the sheriff barked. “I’ve been protecting this community for years.”
“You’ve also been lying to them for years,” the deputy retorted. “Like after a certain accident where you forced me to tell everyone I’d forgotten to ask the hospital staff to run blood alcohol tests on Dallas Kent.”
The sheriff paled, but the deputy ignored him, then turned his attention to me. “I’m sorry, Dallas. The sheriff told me your father said you were driving that car and that you’d been drinking. But I knew he was lying because I saw the results of the blood alcohol tests myself. I’d just started in the job and didn’t want to lose it, so I never said anything.”
“What is he talking about?” Doc Cleary asked as he rose to his feet.
Maddox was the one to answer. “Our father asked the sheriff to cover up the fact that our mother was the one who’d been driving that night and that both she and our father were drunk. When he realized our father had lied to him, instead of telling the truth about what really happened that night, Sheriff Tulley covered up his role in the lie by getting rid of the evidence that proved Dallas hadn’t been drinking. What really happened the night of the accident was that Dallas tried to stop our parents, but couldn’t. He also hadn’t had a single drop of alcohol that night. After the car rolled down the ravine, he managed to pull our mother from the car before he lost consciousness. When he woke up, he found out what my father had done, but he never said anything.”
