Guest Post & #Giveaway: Muzzle the Black Dog by Mike Cobb

Archaeolibrarian
13 hours ago
18 min read

Book Details:

Published by: Waterside Productions

Publication Date: April 15, 2025

Number of Pages: 184

@MGCobbWriter @partnersincrimevbt

@cobbmg @partnersincrimevbt

#Historical, #Psychological, #Thriller,

After a mysterious stranger appears at his isolated cabin door, Jack's life is forever changed. The stranger's cryptic message sets off a chain of events that lead Jack on a harrowing journey to uncover the true meaning of his own existence.

As a series of unexplained fires threaten to consume everything he holds dear, Jack is forced to confront his deepest fears and question everything he thought he knew about himself.

Set in the aftermath of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, Jack's search for the truth takes him to the edge of sanity and puts him on a collision course with a dark and powerful force that has been lurking in the shadows.

Join Jack on a gripping and thought-provoking quest for answers in this thrilling and suspenseful tale of self-discovery and redemption.

Add to Goodreads | StoryGraph | Smashbomb | BookBub

He didn’t show up at my door that night out of thin air. Well I guess, technically, he did. But somebody, or something, had to have sent him. Otherwise, how would he have ended up eleven miles–– eleven point three to be exact–– from anything resembling civilization?

I was awakened from a light doze by dogs barking in the distance. Free rangers. At first, I thought nothing of it. Probably cornered a bobcat. Maybe a fox. Or baying at a barn owl snaring its quarry. It wasn’t until I heard heavy footsteps that I knew I had a drop-in. But I hardly ever have drop-ins. It was almost midnight. What the hell?

I peered from around the muslin curtain, my passing facsimile of Desert Storm camouflage. A stranger stood at the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He saw me. We locked eyes. The low-lying fog that had settled in a couple hours earlier gave him a wraithlike mien. I could make out enough to tell he had dark scraggly hair. Not too long but cutting a mophead silhouette against the light from the waxing moon. Disheveled beard, greying around the temples and chin. I could have sworn I was witnessing an older Eric Rudolph in the flesh. But they caught him, right? Damn, that was seven months ago. Time flies. His brother, maybe? No, it couldn’t be. The man at my door had two hands–I know, because he held a canvas sack in one and a gnarly walking stick in the other– and I had read in the Cherokee Scout that Rudolph’s brother had cut off his left hand with a radial arm saw. But wait…didn’t the article say the doctors reattached it? Could it be?

“What do you want?” I yelled through the locked door.

“I’m here to help you.”

“Help me? I don’t need help. Okay?”

“Well, perhaps you can help me, then.”

“With what?”

“Let me in, please.”

“I don’t know you.”

“You don’t think you know me. But you do.”

“How? From where?”

“You’re Jack, right? Jack Pate.”

“Who are you?”

“Let’s just say I’m a friend you didn’t know you had. Let me in, man. It’s cold as the dickens out here.”

“Why should I let a perfect stranger into my house?”

“Because I’m not a stranger. I just told you, I’m a friend you didn’t know you had.”

I pondered whether to let the outlander in. My inclination was to turn him away. To tell him to move the hell on. But my interest was piqued. He knew my name. But how? He had sought me out. But to what end? I decided, against my better judgment and maybe to my detriment, to let him in. Albeit with an abundance of caution.

I grabbed my Stoeger side-by-side. I freed the deadbolt ever so gently so he wouldn’t hear. I walked across the room and stood halfway between the hearth and the door, feet shoulder width and planted firmly on the floor. I leveled the gun where I reckoned his heart would be. Dead center. Bullseye. “Come in. It’s unlocked.”

The door eased a crack. Now a bluster of winter chill jostled its way into the room, blowing the door open so hard it doubled back and slammed against the cabin wall. As soon as he saw me, he dropped the sack and stick. His arms shot into the air. “Don’t shoot, man. I’m not here to hurt you.”

His eyes were hollow dark caverns. His gaze was cut glass. He looked even more spectral with the fog behind him and the cabin’s dim light washing over him.

I nodded toward the center of the room. “Bring your shit in with you.”

He picked up the sack and stick and limped across the threshold. A waft of funk followed him. He set his sack beside the door. He leaned his stick against the door casing.

“Shut the door,” I said. “I let you in. Okay? Now tell me how you know my name.”

“Can I have a seat first? I’ve been on the road a long time and my feet are killing me.”

I lowered the Stoeger but kept a grip on it. I pointed toward the straight back chair near the corner. The one with the fraying cane seat. “Sit there. But take off your coat first. Hang it on the rack by the door. On the free peg. Okay?”

He slipped his arms out of his coat. He hung it where I had told him to.

I walked over to the coat. It was a Beretta Gunner Field Jacket, dry-waxed with a rich hunter brown patina. The kind you can’t buy at just any store. There was a one-inch rip near the shoulder. The cut looked fresh, with clean edges. I ran my left hand through each pocket, careful to train the Stoeger on my interloper.

In the jacket’s right pocket I found a half-full, crushed-in nonfilter soft pack of Camels. And a strike-anywhere matchbook with CITY LOCK SERVICE, MURPHY, N.C. on the front.

“Stand back up,” I said. “Hands in the air.”

I approached him. I held the Stoeger tightly in my right hand. With my free one, I patted down his right side, the inseam of his left leg. I switched hands. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“Sit back down.”

I sat in the chair facing him with my back to the hearth. The light and shadow from the flickering fire danced on his whiskered face. If I had to guess, I’d say he hadn’t seen a shower in three weeks or more.

“Do you know who you look like?” I said. “You look just like Eric Rudolph. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that’s who you are. Okay?”

He frowned. “Who is that?”

“Eric Rudolph? Where the hell have you been, man? You don’t know who Eric Rudolph is? !e Olympic Park bomber?”

“Of course. I recognize the name now. I’m not a newshound. And besides, I try not to remember things that don’t matter. Selective recall.” His eyes darted to the ceiling. “And that Eric Rudolph fellow means nothing to me.”

“Now that you’re sitting down, will you tell me how you know me?”

“Did I say I knew you? I said you know me.”

“But you knew my name. Right?”

“You have me there, Jack Pate. I know your name.”

“Okay then, so how do I know you?”

“Are you seeking affirmation? Are you trying to control me? Or are you just concerned?”

“What?”

“What’s with the verbal tic?”

I frowned. “Verbal tic?”

“Okay? Right? Dependent personality disorder if you ask me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m no shrink, but if one were sitting right here beside me, he’d tell you that when a gent says things like okay and right over and over, as a question, it usually means he needs validation, reassurance. To be taken care of. Not to be abandoned—”

“Do you think that’s me?”

“I wasn’t through…especially by somebody they love. But other people do it to control their interlocutor, a backhanded way of saying of course I’m right. Tricky, don’t you think? Or maybe yours is involuntary. Tourette’s lite, if you will.” He leveled his cut-glass gaze on me. “Which is it for you, Jack Pate?”

Before I could respond, he continued. “If you ask me, in your case, I think you’re trying to control me. Fixed gaze, stiff face. ‘Where the hell have you been, man?’ Dead giveaways. Then again, maybe you just want to be my friend and you don’t know how to show it.” He paused. “Okay?” An ear-to-ear grin formed, exposing a bright gold crown on number 5. “That was for you, Jack Pate.”

“Do you think, just maybe, that my fixed gaze and stiff face are because I’m sitting here, at a quarter to one, across the room from a drifter who happened to waltz in uninvited and crash my one-man band?”

“Perhaps, Jack Pate. But please don’t call me a drifter. I prefer errant knight. May I impose upon you for a jet black cup of joe? A morsel? A donut? Anything.”

“You don’t need to keep saying my name. I get it. You know who I am.”

“I just like the sound of it. That’s all. It has a bisyllabic crispness to it, if you know what I mean. Okay?” There was that grin again. “See, there I go. You’re rubbing off on me.”

I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I blinked and stared in its direction. A wisp scampered along the baseboard opposite where we sat. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. Was it a field mouse? A shrew? Or just a shadow from the fire?

I turned my attention back to the man sitting across from me. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Never mind. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Been a while. Two and a half days. A veritable feast. Lettuce, wilted, Bibb. Yogurt, vanilla, low-fat Dannon, as I recall. Peanuts, honey roasted. And some Boars Head deli ham, a week past the stale date. Not what you’d call epicurean, but it got me by. Retrieved straight from a dumpster, behind the Murphy Save A Lot.”

“Are you shitting me? That’s where they caught Rudolph.”

“Why would I, as you say, shit you?”

“Murphy’s twenty-three miles away. How did you get here?”

“With this thing right here.” He wagged his right thumb. “Man in a Ranger picked me up just outside of Murphy. I told him I was headed to a cabin in the woods due north of Marble. He brought me as far as he could, ‘til the gravel road turned to washboard. Then he dropped me off. Said, ‘Sorry, friend. Cain’t go no further. You just go ahead on.’ That’s what he said, ‘Cain’t go no further. Just go ahead on.’ I walked the rest of the way.”

“He must not have put you out because of the washboard. Right? A Ranger could have gotten here with no problem at all.”

“No, it wasn’t that. He just didn’t want to go no further out of his way.” My visitor smirked.

“How did you know where to find me? And why did you want to find me in the first place?”

“It wasn’t easy. Would you be so kind as to hand me my jacket?”

I crossed the room and took the Beretta Gunner off the peg.

He reached into the right pocket and retrieved the Camels and matches. He held the pack out. “Care for a smoke?”

I told him I don’t smoke. And if he even thought of firing one up in my cabin, he could gather his things and be on his way.

He put on his jacket. “I’m not leaving. I promise.” He headed outside.

Five minutes later, he returned. He placed his jacket back on the peg. He picked a fleck of tobacco off his lip and reached for his sack by the door.

“Give it here,” I said. “Don’t even think of reaching inside. If you do, I’ll––”

“Fill me with buckshot?”

“Maybe.”

He extended the sack to me.

I grabbed it and placed it in my lap. As he stood before me, I groped through the contents with my left hand, looking for a handgun, a knife, a box cutter, an icepick. Anything he could do me in with. Out here in the middle of nowhere, who would ever know?

I handed the sack back to him.

He sat down, reached into it, and pulled out a map. It was one of those old Texaco accordion folds you used to get free at the filling station. With the five-point star on the front. And the smiling man in the grey-green attendant cap–beaming and baring his pearly whites. Not like the Texaco man I remember. Nicotinian would be more fitting.

He unfolded the map and held it up with his right hand. Pointed to a big red Magic Marker X where my cabin is. Close enough, anyway. Jabbed it with his left finger. “Here, right here. See. I knew where you were. When I got close, I saw smoke rising to the firmament. I knew it had to be you.”

I stared at his left arm, trying to get a bead on his wrist. But it was covered by his sleeve.

When he saw me staring, he jerked his hand away.

“And why?” I said.

“Why what?”

“Why did you want to nd me?”

The solitary light bulb hanging from the center rafter swayed ever so slightly. Like a Foucault pendulum. He looked up at it. Then back at me. His thoughts halted at his lips. “In time, my friend. In time.”

My frustration must have been center stage, because he looked up at me and, for the briefest moment, I saw in his eyes a blue-devil sadness, a despair, an odd affinity. “I really am your friend,” he said.

I threw another log onto the fire with one hand, never letting go of the Stoeger with the other. I scooped a generous helping of Eight O’Clock into the percolator basket. Threw a pot of leftover Dinty Moore on the burner. Grabbed what remained of a loaf of week-old New York rye from the Marble Big D.

I pondered my visiting sphinx as he tore half-inch bits of bread from the loaf, dipped them into the stew with his fingertips, and placed them between his lips, savoring them as if they were the finest delicacies. There was something about the way he ate, the way he sat there elfin-like in self-absorbed delight, relishing passable coffee, week-old bread, and canned stew. I found it downright queerish. Slowly, the hollowed caverns became black holes yearning to be plumbed, cut glass became Brazilian blue tourmaline pools. A smile crept up his face. His brow furrows dissipated. The funk settled in.

Back when I was a kid, a down-at-the-heels man showed up at our door one Saturday afternoon claiming to sell World Book Encyclopedias. My father turned him away without so much as a No Thanks, saying We don’t need no damned encyclopedia. That’s what libraries are for. Now get on. Later that same day, when my father was on our roof blowing leaves, he fell off and suffered a compression fracture. He had to wear a back brace for three months and went on short-term disability. Somebody once said karma’s a bitch. My father never understood that.

It’s true that I had just pulled a gun on my visitor. But I had let him in after all, even though he showed up past midnight, not the middle of the day. And now I was heating up food for a man I didn’t know from Adam. If bad karma was going to come my way, it had plenty of other opportunities to get in.

I leaned the Stoeger against the hearth, but within easy reach. “You know, another man dropped by here unannounced once,” I said. “Looking for Rudolph. I almost plugged him with buckshot, too. Come to find out, he wasn’t official. Just a local looking to get fat on a bounty. Once he realized I wasn’t harboring a fugitive, he split.”

“Thank you for not plugging me.”

“You’re welcome. More joe?”

“Please.” He held out his cup. “I’m not looking to get rich. I’ve had my share of fortune. In my day, as they say. But somewhere along the way, I realized it wasn’t working for me.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Same as you.”

“Same as me?”

“Yes, same as you, Jack Pate.”

“And where might that be?”

He leveled his eyes, not at mine, but at my balding crest, as if he were looking beyond me, to some place far away. “Why, Villa Rica, of course.”

“You said you didn’t know me, right? But you know my name. You know where I’m from.”

“So I’m correct,” he said. “You are from Villa Rica.”

“I never saw you there. But then I’ve been gone four, almost five years.”

“Well, I’m originally from Waco. The Georgia Waco. Due west of there. Fifteen miles, give or take.”

“I know where it is,” I said.

“I move around a lot now. Up and down 78, mainly. Eschew the interstate, for obvious reasons. They don’t take kindly to waggish thumbs on the Is.”

“You mean wagging?”

“No, I mean waggish. Puckish. That’s me, they say. Recklessly playful. Ironic, in a way.”

“Ironic?”

“Yes. Have you ever seen a recklessly playful loner? A man of the road who spends…I don’t know…maybe two thirds of his time by himself? Most loners aren’t waggish.”

I thought about how I could get him to open up. Given that he somehow knew me, maybe he knew my family. Having just met the man, I normally wouldn’t have confided personal details. He had shared little with me. But I needed to find out how much he knew. “The wife and kids still live in Villa Rica.” I studied his face.

The man’s gaze moved from my forehead to my eyes. “We haven’t even officially met.” He rose to a half-stoop. Leaned in. Extended his hand. “Yardley Bennett.”

I returned the favor. “You know my name already.”

“Nice to meet you formally, Jack Pate.”

“Are you going to tell me how I know you?”

“Let’s just say you’ve walked in my Weejuns a time or two. We’ll leave it at that for now.”

I looked down at his feet. At his leather Woodlands, scratched and scuffed. “But if, as you say, you don’t know me, how do you know I’ve walked in your Weejuns?”

“You’ll figure it out. In time. I can tell already you’re a reasonably intelligent fellow.”

“So how did you become a drifter? Sorry, an errant knight?”

“Had a wife. Owned a Chrysler dealership. Well, co-owned. In Carrollton. Bankhead Highway. Miracle Mile for rednecks. Sold out to my partner right before the divorce. I tried to make it work.”

“The business?”

“No. The marriage. Damned hard I tried. Finally, after twelve years, I left. She took me to the cleaners. But that’s okay. I have enough to live on.”

“So where’d you go?”

“I hit the road. On a Schwinn American. Metallic blue with handlebar streamers.” He looked wistfully to the ceiling. “Pedaled off into the sunset. Just like The Drifter.” He lowered his eyes and stared through me. “You did call me a drifter, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“I left behind a lot,” he continued, “but I never looked back. As soon as the ink was dry on the papers, the ex moved with the little ones to Greer, just outside Greenville.”

“Little ones?”

“Boy and a girl.” He placed his index finger to his lips as if in pensive thought. “Let’s see…boy’s fteen now. Girl’s twelve…wait, what’s today?”

“The third of January.”

“Thirteen.”

“Why Greer?”

“Her sister has a beauty shop there. She…the ex, that is… married a man I call the Five Forks Forty-niner, although I’ve never met him.”

“The what?”

“Forty-niner. Gold-digger. Get it?”

“Not to pry, but––”

“Pry away. I’m an open book. But mind you, I’m a stickler for the rubric. I won’t let you skim through the pages to get to the good part. You were saying?”

“How do you get by on the road? I understand the Save A Lot part. But you don’t seem the dumpster-diving type.”

“As I said, I lost a lot in the split-up, but I still have enough. I’m sure you can tell I’m not a big spender. But I don’t always dive. Sometimes I dine.”

“Dry-waxed Beretta Gunners ain’t cheap.”

“You got me there, Jack Pate.”

“So, you were telling me what it’s like being on the road.”

“Is that what I was doing?”

“I thought so.”

“On the one hand, I can’t say I rue having left. I’ve met a lot of nice people. Good, solid-as-they-come stock. Hell, I met you, didn’t I? But wherever I land, I’m always the stranger. Somehow, I guess, being the outsider was my lot. Always outside looking in.”

Or standing at another man’s door. “And on the other hand?”

His left hand shot to his side. “What do you mean, the other hand?”

“You said on the one hand. What about the other hand?”

“As I told you, I left a lot behind. Mainly, I miss my kids. But surely you know what that’s like. You said you had kids. How many?”

I couldn’t begin to express how much I missed my own children. How hard it had been to leave them. But I had no choice. It had to have been hell for them, and for Barbara, whenever the Holly Golightly mean reds came upon me. “One of each, just like you.”

By the time I got around to looking at the clock, it was two fifteen. “Listen,” I said, “do you want to stay the night?” I was as surprised by my words as he must have been. I never would have asked him to stay, but I had gotten only a few pages into the book. I suspected the good part, the important part, would take a while. How could I let him leave with the riddle hanging over me? Without knowing how he knew me, and why he was even here? If he left, I might never find out.

“You’d let me stay here? A perfect stranger, as you claim?”

“It’s not an offer I make lightly. But it’s late. It’s cold out. Where would you go if you left at this hour? And besides, there’s still a lot you haven’t told me.”

“You got me again, Jack Pate.”

“I can put a blanket on the floor. And add a log or two. I’ll even give you a little plonk before you turn in.”

“Plonk?”

“Cheap Carolina Muscat. Yadkin Valley.”

My Checkered, Passion-Driven Journey

Follow your passion, my sixth grade teacher told me. Wherever it takes you, follow it unwaveringly. At the time, while I sort of understood her advice, I didn’t really understand it. It wasn’t until years later that the essence of her words hit home. Too many of my classmates pursued careers they weren’t passionate about but that would make them a lot of money, only to realize, often too late, that their life choices had led to unhappiness and a lack of personal fulfilment.

I jokingly tell people that I have a checkered past. While that may be a bit of an overstatement, the journey that has led me to write historical crime novels is certainly unconventional. But sometimes, when we follow our passions, pursue our dreams, that’s just the way things work out.

When I look back over the past forty-plus years, I like to think of my professional career as having three phases, each embodying passionate pursuit.

In 1980, with a PhD in computational quantum chemistry in hand, I began my career as a scientist. Why? Because I have a passion for curiosity-driven science, deep research, and innovation. My passion for science began at an early age. I believe I was eight or nine when my parents bought me my first chemistry set. I relished the pure wonder and excitement—a mix of curiosity, discovery, and a little bit of magic—especially when I chose to break the rules, straying from the set experiments spelled out in the instruction manual. Every adventure felt like a secret unlocked—turning liquids blue, making crystals grow, or watching invisible ink appear under a light. Then, thanks to two exceptionally gifted high school science teachers, my early career path was set. I majored in chemistry in college and went on from there to graduate school without the foggiest notion of what I would do when I got out. I just knew I was following a dream, that it would all work out. And it did. I look back with great fondness on my years as a scientist.

At some point along the way, my career morphed into its second phase, business leadership and consulting. I hadn’t charted that career course, but it happened because I discovered I also had a passion for that place where science and business intersect, and for driving product innovation to meet identified needs in the marketplace. I went on the run several companies and to help others achieve their business objectives. My years as an executive and consultant brought great enjoyment and a sense of fulfilment, precisely because I loved what I was doing.

Then, after a four-decades-long career as a scientist, corporate leader, and consultant, I decided to take the plunge and pursue my passion for creative writing on a full-time basis. Do I miss the corporate world? You bet I do. But I’m living my dream and having a blast doing it.The logical question, as I satisfy my lifelong dream of being a creative writer, is how those passions and attributes that drove me as a scientist and business leader play into my third career phase. For me, the answer is simple, albeit not necessarily apparent at first. In addition to my abiding curiosity, love of science and research, creativity, and tenacity, I also have a passion for reading and history that I can trace back to around the same time I got that first chemistry set, or perhaps a few years prior. As a writer of historical fiction, usually with a crime element, I have learned how important these passions are to my work and to my sense of personal fulfilment. Being a writer brings me great joy and satisfaction. Of course, there are setbacks, periods of uncertainty and doubt, frustrations, just as there were in my first two career phases. But it’s all worth it in the end. And I like to think that I am serving the community of readers by entertaining, challenging, and educating them.

My hope is that everyone reading these words has found, or will find, that place where they can pursue their passions in service to others, and have a blast along the way.

Mike’s body of literary work includes both fiction and nonfiction, short-form and long-form, as well as articles and blogs.

He is the author of three published novels, Dead Beckoning, The Devil You Knew, its sequel You Will Know Me by My Deeds, and Muzzle the Black Dog, a novella. He is also working on Kathleen, a fictionalized account of a cold case murder from 1970.