Canine Christmas (27 page)

Jackie turned to her dog. “We haven't got much to go on, but I know you can do it. You've got to find her, Jake. Let's go to work.”

Jake barked. Father Morelli handed Jackie his flashlight. “We can find our way back to the alley door without this,” he told her. He took the children's hands.

“It's all right—we know the way,” said the little girl.

“Father Morelli, can you handle both the children?” asked Father Schumann. “I'm going to go with Jackie.”

“Father, you don't have to …”

“I cannot leave you here alone,” said the old priest. He held up a hand to ward off any further argument. “Now let us hurry and find the mother.”

Jackie followed Father Morelli and the children out of the room and turned in the opposite direction to the one they were taking to leave the old hotel. “Which way should we go, Jake?” she asked the dog. She shone the beam of Father Morelli's flashlight into the gloom. A streak of white near the floor entered the hallway from one room and sped away into the darkness. It was the little white dog. Jake whuffed and followed.

“He's not just going after that dog, is he?” asked Father Schumann. “Does he know he is supposed to be looking for someone else now?”

“Father, I only wish I knew,” Jackie told him. “We have to trust Jake now. The only thing we can do is follow and hope.”

“No, we can follow and pray,” said the priest.

“You're in charge of praying,” said Jackie, “and Jake's in charge of tracking.” I wish I knew what I was doing here, she thought to herself, but decided against saying it.

Jackie kept the light in front of them as best she could, but not only was Father Morelli's flashlight growing dimmer by the minute, but Jake's breakneck pace had them heading into total darkness every few seconds, unsure what might lay ahead. Or Jackie was unsure—Jake seemed utterly confident. At least there wasn't a lot of debris lying about in their path.

As her dog led her along, Jackie thought, but once or twice was certain, she saw a rat scurry out of the approaching beam of light.

“Jackie, slow down!” Father Schumann called from behind her.

“Tell it to Jake, Father,” she called back over her shoulder. She had wished Father Schumann weren't so insistent on coming along back there in the room. She had to admit she felt less alone and less afraid of what she might find at the end of their search with another human being present.

Still, she would rather the human being in question be Father Morelli or Sister Mary Pat than the dour, disapproving Father Schumann.

At the end of the hallway Jake stopped and turned both ways for a moment, then caught a scent and took her down a flight of stairs covered with threadbare carpeting. Jackie shone the beam on the steps and hoped they were all intact, which turned out to be the case. As Jake took a turn at the bottom of the steps, Jackie heard the faint sound of human voices coming from nearby.

“I heard your kid talking about the money, so I know you've got it,” said a rough male voice, echoing through the empty spaces. “You'd better find it and hand it over before I find those kids.”

“My kids aren't anywhere around here,” said a woman's voice. Jackie felt even more relief than fear. They were almost on top of the man with the knife, and the children's mother was still alive. The uncertainty lay in what was coming next.

They moved forward as quietly as they could manage, turned a corner, and emerged into a large area with shafts of moonlight penetrating the gloom. Some of the window boards had fallen or been pried off, and Jackie could see the moon—just past full—with a few wispy clouds skipping across its surface. The storm had blown over at last.

The room appeared empty, but the tension in Jake's body told Jackie they weren't alone, and the awful silence where only moments before she had heard a voice told her that whoever was in here was watching them. Slowly, she reached down Jake's heavy leather lead until her hand rested on the clip that separated the lead from Jake's collar. Then she raised the flashlight's weakening beam from the floor and scanned the room.

They were on a mezzanine just above the lobby of the hotel. A few old pottery planters, broken and fallen over, were all that was left of the furnishings that once filled it. A waist-high railing ran along one side, overlooking the lobby floor, and at the far end of that railing, half-hidden by shadows, was a man holding a woman with a knife to her throat. Jake growled when he saw the knife and the situation, two things he had learned to recognize in his former career as a police dog. Jackie jerked firmly once on his collar to signal him that it wasn't yet time for action.

“Get the hell out of here,” the man told them. “I just came for the money. Once I have it, I'm out of here.”

“That's our house money,” said the woman. “I'm not going to tell you where it is.” Her eyes were wide with fear, but her voice was firm and determined.

“We are not armed,” said Father Schumann. “Let the woman go.”

“I know you're not armed,” the man replied. “If you had a gun you'd be waving it around. Besides, you're a preacher or something.”

“I'm Father Detlef Schumann, pastor of St. Wenceslas church, right next door. Please let us have the woman. Then you are free to look for the money as long as you like.”

Jackie thanked whoever might be listening that Father Schumann hadn't decided to threaten the man with the police, who would certainly be here soon. Soon enough? She knew she couldn't count on it.

“No!” the woman cried. “He can't have our money. We're going to rent a house!”

“Your life is more important than a house,” Father Schumann told her. “Tell him where the money is, and he'll let you go.”

The woman only shook her head, tears running down her cheeks.

“She'll tell me where the money is, all right,” said the man. “But if push came to shove I could find it without her, so if you don't back out of here right now I'm going to cut her throat. You might be thinking I won't, but you just don't know me.” He pressed the knife closer to the woman's neck. She whimpered in fear. “She wouldn't be the first.”

Jackie believed him. Now she had to make him believe her. She began to back away.

“Jackie, what are you doing?” Father Schumann whispered to her.

“I guess we're leaving,” said Jackie.

“But … !”

“We've got to leave, Father,” said Jackie, and hoped the priest could see she meant business. “If we don't, he'll kill her.” Jackie was pretty certain the man planned to kill the children's mother one way or the other, once he found the money he was looking for. She and Jake had seen his type before.

“We're leaving now,” she said to the man. “This is none of our business.”

“You're damned right it's not!” the man shouted, his voice cracking at the end. “Now get the hell out!”

Jackie took Jake's collar firmly in one hand and led him through the doorway. He was quivering with frustration, but there was nothing she could do about it right now. She had to make the man relax, and she prayed he would when he saw them leave. Praying might be Father Schumann's department, but what the hell— maybe he could use some help.

As Father Schumann came through the doorway behind her, Jackie switched off the flashlight, then turned Jake back in the direction of the mezzanine and unclipped the lead. Without a sound, Jake took off at a gallop and leaped into the air near the railing. Jackie switched the light back on, but it was hard to see anything from here. The man's scream told her Jake had found the knife hand, even in the dim light. The crunch of bone that followed told her that the ex-police dog was taking no chances with this perpetrator. She fought down a surge of sudden nausea.

The man screamed again and fell back against the railing. The woman fell down onto the floor and began to crawl toward the doorway as Jake and the man struggled. Jackie ran into the room. “Jake, off!” she shouted, just as the man lost his balance and fell backward into the blackness with Jake still clamped on to his ruined arm. There was a short, terrified scream, a hard thump, then silence.

“Jake!” Jackie ran to the railing and looked over, but couldn't make any meaning out of the jumble of dark shapes on the lobby floor, even with the help of the flashlight, which was growing dimmer by the second. She turned and pushed past Father Schumann, who was coming to the aid of the children's mother, then ran down the stairs and out onto the floor under the mezzanine railing. Something was rising up from the floor. She played the light in that direction.

Jake rose up from the body of the man on the floor and stepped away. He seemed to know there was no more danger in the still, twisted form. He walked around the man—now only an obstacle between him and his mistress.

Jackie knelt down and hugged her dog. “Jake, you're wonderful!” she told him. “You're the best dog anyone ever had!”

Jake whuffed. It wasn't the first time he'd heard that sort of praise, and the way Jackie figured it, he probably knew he deserved it.

“Jackie, is Jake all right?” Father Schumann called down from above.

“He's fine, Father,” Jackie called back.

“And the man?”

“Dead.” Jackie swallowed hard. “Is everything okay up there?”

“Everything is fine. And we have a little surprise, as well.”

From above came two short, high-pitched barks.

“Well, you didn't find the dog in the manger,” Jackie told Jake, “but it looks like he found us.”

“So I missed all the fun again,” said Frances Costello, shaking her head. “Why didn't you come get me when all this started?”

“Things sort of got away from us, Mom,” Jackie explained. “More hot chocolate?”

“Of course. But don't think it's going to make up for not bringing me along on your adventure.”

Jackie picked up the steaming pan of chocolate from the stove in the church kitchen and poured cups for her mother, Father Morelli, and Sister Mary Pat.

Father Schumann was busy putting little Wenceslas to bed in a pile of his old sweaters, after finding some dog food in the donated items for the holiday drive, and taking food and water bowls from the kitchen cupboards. The two of them were hitting it off just fine. Father Schumann seemed to have found something more gratifying to worry about than the welfare of wooden statues, and it was doing him a world of good.

The blood on the dog's fur had apparently belonged to someone else—presumably the children's father, who had been taken to the nearest hospital for a few stitches to close the wound the prowler had given him. Father Schumann had paid for a cab and a hotel room for the man's family, and told them he'd pick them up himself tomorrow for Christmas dinner at St. Wenceslas. The family had arrived a few weeks before in Palmer, down on their luck, and had been squatting in the old hotel. Then the father had gotten a job, and they had been trying to save enough to rent a place to live. Father Schumann was sure he could find someone among his parishioners who could help with that goal.

“It's hard to believe how bored and depressed I was only a little more than an hour ago,” Jackie told them. “I was certain that nothing I did could possibly make a difference.”

“We've seen a big difference made here tonight,” said Sister Mary Pat.

“And I think you and Jake have to take a lot of the credit for it,” said Father Morelli.

“Thanks, Father,” said Jackie, “but all I did was follow Jake. He's never led me astray yet.”

Jake lay at her feet, legs twitching in a canine dream of chasing rabbits or sheep or just possibly a small white dog.

“And we all followed Wenceslas,” Jackie added. “He's the one who seemed to know all along exactly where we were needed.”

Habits

Jeremiah Healy

JEREMIAH HEALY, a graduate of Rutgers College and Harvard Law School, was a professor at the New England School of Law for eighteen years. He is the creator of John Francis Cuddy, a Boston-based private investigator. Mr. Healy's first book, Blunt Darts, was selected by the New York Times as one of the seven best mysteries of 1984, and his second novel, The Staked Goat, received a Shamus Award. His later works include So Like Sleep, Rescue, Invasion of Privacy, The Only Good Lawyer, and The Stalking of Sheila Quinn.

“As my brother Earl would put it,” said Joe Bob Brewster from the rocker on his porch, “you're having a day of bad biorhythms.”

Chief Lon Pray looked up from the window of the town police cruiser at Joe Bob, a paperback book open in his lap and a sleepy hound dog named Old Feller twitching his tail under the chair in time to the rocking of his master. Pray couldn't recall ever meeting Joe Bob's brother, who'd moved away before Christmas a year before, but he had been introduced to a couple of the Brewster sisters, and they varied from Joe Bob's carroty hair and stocky frame about as much as one pumpkin from another. Unfortunately, though, issues of family tree—or Yule Tree—weren't what brought Pray back to Joe Bob's dusty front yard for the second time that December morning.

The chief said, “You still haven't seen anything, then?”

“Uh-uh,” from the man in the rocker. “You ain't turned up nothing from all those roadblocks?”

“Nothing like the three that hit the bank, anyway.”

“Well,” said Joe Bob, “I sure didn't hear them running down behind the house here,” flicking his head to the rear.

Three men, in masks, had hit the bank just as it opened that morning. Pray had seen his share of armed robberies while working as a detective on Boston's force up north. But instead of a getaway car with a wheelman out front, these guys had run across the street and down a path through the wooded hillside half a mile above Brewster's ramshackle home. They'd apparently stashed a pickup truck on a fire road about midway down the slope, because the one witness who'd had the courage to run after them saw it pulling away in the distance when he reached the fire road himself.

Only thing was, Pray had contacted his patrol units within two minutes after the bank manager had called it in, and the county sheriff within two after that. This part of the state—that Pray had found himself just by driving south from Massachusetts one brutal February until he started feeling warm—had paved routes laid out like a grid pattern at intervals of roughly three miles, so setting up roadblocks had been both practiced in the past and easy in the present.