Urge to Kill

It wasn’t much of a farm. The surrounding fields lay fallow except for near the back of the barn, where tomato vines wound their way up head-high wooden stakes. A small field of cornstalks off to the left appeared to be the only other crop. The rest of the farm was so neglected that the woods had taken over a large area of the fields. There were more trees near the ramshackle house and barn: a shade tree—looked like a maple—by the barn, and a huge willow whose graceful branches scraped the old house’s second floor. In the shade of the willow a deteriorated wooden porch glider that didn’t look safe to sit on had become the property of termites.

The house was sided with faded gray clapboard. The trim was dark green, but hadn’t been painted in a long time. Here and there bare wood peeked through. There was a wide plank porch across the front. The wooden steps were painted gray and were rotted enough to be dangerous.

Pearl looked closely at the barn where the dogs had been found hanging and gutted. It was a leaning structure of weathered wood with horizontal streaks of old red paint still holding on. Its twin wooden doors were closed, and made to stay that way with a large padlock. The hinges on the doors were old and dusted with surface rust but looked strong. There was no sign of any animals.

As soon as Quinn and Pearl had climbed out of the parked Lincoln and slammed the car doors shut, a man in tattered jeans and a red shirt with its long sleeves rolled up to his biceps opened the front door and stepped out into the shade of the porch’s sagging roof. He looked to be in his early fifties, had receded dark hair, and a hard, seamed face. Slung beneath his right arm was a double-barreled shotgun.

He stood casually observing Quinn and Pearl and said nothing.

“Dwayne Avis?” Quinn asked.

“Was when I woke up this mornin’.”

He’s going to be difficult. Quinn kept an eye on the shotgun.

Avis spread his feet wide and assumed an unyielding stance. His dark eyes were staring and unblinking, with a glint of arrogance in them.

“We’re police,” Pearl said. She’d had about enough of this backwoods bravado.

“State or local?”

“New York City.”

“You got no jurisdiction here.”

“We can get it in a hurry if we have to.”

Avis stepped down off the porch, carefully holding the shotgun pointed at the ground. “Then why don’t you hurry on away an’ do that? Meanwhile,” he said, raising the shotgun but aiming it off to the side, “get off my land.”

Pearl thought she’d never heard that except in movies or TV.

Quinn thought this was a man who used his temper mainly as a weapon, not really losing it but pretending, showing it off as he did the shotgun, letting interlopers know what could happen if they took him lightly. Contrary to how they were portrayed in books and movies, this sort of person was dangerous. Pretending could turn real in a second.

“We only want to talk to you,” Quinn said. “It’ll be easiest all around if you don’t make us have to leave and come back.”

“I know what you wanna talk about,” Avis said. “Them damn dogs. Well, I already been dealt with and consider that whole thing a closed matter. Dealin’ with me next time won’t be a pleasure. I swore that to myself.”

“This isn’t next time,” Quinn said.

“We’re not interested in dogs or anything related to them,” Pearl said.

Quinn tried a smile on Avis. “Anyway, I don’t even see any dogs around here.” Playing dumb.

Avis knew better than to aim the shotgun anywhere close to them, but he pointed it farther off to the side, raised it, and fired one of the barrels. The noise was deafening, and Quinn could swear he heard pellets rattle through the branches of the willow at the side of the house.

“Shit!” said Pearl, instinctively dropping into a crouch.

Quinn remained upright and calm. “We’re here as part of a murder investigation,” he said. “And you’re digging yourself a hole with that gun.”

“Murder investigation? ’Cause of dogs?”

“Forget the goddamned dogs,” Pearl said, straightening up, but not all the way. She seemed hyperalert. Her black eyes were fixed, unafraid and calculating, on Avis.

He seemed to see in her somebody maybe not so unlike himself. Somebody who might shoot him.

“Forget the dogs?” he said, showing her he was heeding her words.

“I’m a cat person,” Pearl said, her bleak and menacing glare still trained on Avis.

“Well, I never killed any kinda person, nor animal I was never gonna eat.”

Quinn swallowed a bad taste in his mouth and then very slowly removed a slip of paper from his shirt pocket. He read off a list of dates and times.

“I need to know where you were on those nights,” he said.

“I was here.”

“You remember all of them?”

“I don’t need to remember any of ’em. I’m always here. And no, I don’t have an alibi. I was alone. Didn’t plan on havin’ to prove I wasn’t someplace else.”

“You mind if we look in the barn?” Pearl asked.

“I do, but you will anyway sooner or later.”