Gone to the Dogs (16 page)

“There’s a Vietnam vet I heard about once,” I said, “or maybe I saw him on TV. Anyway, what he does is study bears, in Yellowstone or some place like that. He spends his whole life out with a video camera. He photographs the bears, observes them. So that’s his life. Is it anything like that?”

“Yeah. Actually, it’s a lot like that. Except, partly it’s the dogs, always having somebody other than himself to take care of, somebody he can totally trust. And these dogs, Chinooks, have got to be the sweetest dogs in the world, and they’re so friendly. Nobody can stay isolated with a Chinook around. A Chinook really, really needs people. Don’t get one if you’re gone all day, because that’ll practically kill a Chinook. But the other thing is that once Cliff got started with the Chinooks, he started talking to breeders. And then he’d go and visit them, to see their dogs. That’s when he really got involved with the breed. And these weren’t the kinds of people he’d been hanging out with before. You can’t imagine how nice these people are. They’re wonderful, most of them. Before that, most of the time, he was either by himself, or else he was with these people who were basically worse than nobody, if you ask me.”

“So when did you …?”

“Uh, Karluk was two. So it was five years ago.” Thus spoke a real, if recently converted, dog person. My father never forgets the date of my birth because he knows precisely when the preceding litters were whelped.

“So he was already …?”

“Yeah. Sort of. He was at least speaking to people, and he wasn’t drinking all that much because he’d mostly quit hanging around with those other people. And he was working some—he had to, because of the dogs—but it was more like, you know, odd jobs. But he was still living … Well, I won’t tell you how he was living, except it was not like this. So, basically, what he needed at that point was somebody to get him organized.”

“That doesn’t always work, does it?” I asked tentatively.

“No,” she said, “but, basically, he was ready, because … You know, it’s like, not that it really happened, but in a way, it’s like he got his buddies back. With Cliff, these are not just dogs. Not that they are with me, either, but, with Cliff, it’s different.”

“So the night Patterson—?”

“No. Yeah, I know maybe it sounds like that, but actually that’s how I know Cliff didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“But if …?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically and looked directly into my eyes. “Because he would never, ever have just left her body there. He’d have brought her back home, to bury her, here. Cliff loved Mattie. We both did. So one thing I’ll swear on any Bible is that when that man got back here that night,
he did not know she was dead. In fact, he still wasn’t all that worried about her.”

“Anneliese, what was wrong with Mattie?”

For the first time, she sounded bitter. “Good question. If you ask Cliff, he doesn’t know. That’s half of what’s eating him now, you know. Like she’s missing in action. He’s had about as much of that as a person can take. That’s what’s killing him, you know. Like, did she die in pain? Was she all alone? And what
was
it?”

“Can you tell me what you do know? About what happened that night?”

“Sure, but it’s not all that much.” She paused and took a deep breath. “This was maybe, I don’t know, one in the morning? And Cliff woke up. Yeah, I know everybody wakes up, but not like Cliff. First he’ll start to moan and roll around, then … it’s like when the nightmares start, he can wake himself up instead. And what he’ll do then is get up and go and check on the dogs. So that’s what he did. Bear and this guy here were in the bedroom with us, but Cliff went out to check on the others, not that there’s ever anything wrong with them, but, basically, it gives him something to do, when he doesn’t want to go back to sleep. So this time, though, Mattie was sort of gagging and trying to vomit. So he carried her into the house, and that’s what woke me up. And I really panicked, because I’d just read this article about bloat, like that day, and one of the things you’re supposed to watch for is when the dog does that and doesn’t bring anything up. But Cliff was, like, sure that it wasn’t bloat.”

“Had she been—?”

“I know what you’re going to ask, but, no, that’s what Cliff said. She hadn’t been drinking a lot of water,
and there’s no way she could’ve raided the food bags or anything like that. And the other thing was, I was afraid her stomach was swollen, and he said it looked exactly the same, but it really was hard to tell, because she was pregnant.”

“That does make it hard to tell, I think. But retching without vomiting? When it’s a big dog?”

“Yeah. That’s what the vet said. I made Cliff call the vet. Dr. Miner. He said if a dog keeps doing that, you have to assume it’s bloat, and he told Cliff to get her there right away, to the animal hospital, and he’d meet them there. And when Cliff left, he was like, ‘Oh, this is mostly to calm you down. There’s nothing that wrong with her, because if there was, she’d look a lot worse.’ And that was true. She didn’t look all that sick.”

“Maybe with bloat, they don’t always. I don’t know. Anyway, and then? You stayed here.”

“Right, because we thought, so if it isn’t bloat, maybe they’re all going to get it. Like something contagious? Or maybe they did eat something. So I stayed here.”

“And did any of the others …?”

“Not a thing. And I’m positive, because I brought them all in. I had all of them in the bedroom with me. I went back to bed, but I was still listening. And then when Cliff got back, we took a good look at all of them, and they were fine. They would be. I mean, bloat isn’t contagious.”

“And what did he say? About taking Mattie in.”

“Just that Dr. Miner was there, and he said not to worry. They’d call, and Cliff could probably go pick her up the next day.”

“One thing I’ve been wondering is, is there some
reason why Cliff didn’t stay there at the clinic? I mean, why he left and came home?”

“Mostly in case the other dogs had started with the same thing. If it’d been Dr. Patterson, maybe he would’ve. Dr. Patterson practically lets you move in. He doesn’t exactly want you breathing down his neck when he’s doing surgery or anything, but he’ll let you take your dog home the same day, most of the time. And one of the things we like about him is that he doesn’t just treat your dog. He’ll explain what he’s doing, and he’ll teach you about it. The woman who’s there now—she’s the only one of them that’s left—she’ll do that, too. But with Dr. Miner, it was like, ‘I’m the doctor, and you don’t know anything, so get out of my way.’ ”

In presenting Lee Miner with my own misdiagnosis of Rowdy’s ear infection, I’d invited the conclusion that I didn’t know anything. But with Groucho? Although I’d been relieved to have Lee Miner, D.V.M., take charge, I’d felt brushed aside.

“But you called Dr. Miner?” I asked. “Not Dr. Patterson?”

“We would have, except Dr. Miner was the one the answering service got. It was his night. I guess we could’ve called Dr. Patterson or just gone and showed up at his door, but it didn’t seem right, to go and wake him up. And we didn’t like Dr. Miner a whole lot—he didn’t exactly fit in around here—but there wasn’t anything wrong with him. People laughed at him, ‘cause he was kind of a sissy, but he was a good enough vet. And some people did like him. Like, one of my clients has this cat that got into a really bad fight with something, maybe a raccoon, and got all torn up. And Dr. Miner sewed it completely back together. She thought she was going to
have to have it put to sleep, and now I guess you can hardly tell. So she thought he was great, and some other people did, too.”

I nodded. It was easy to imagine Lee Miner spending hours on the cat, meticulously cleaning and suturing every wound and tear.

“Anyway,” Anneliese continued, “Cliff wasn’t exactly happy when he got back, and we were both kind of worried about the other dogs, just in case. But he did not know Mattie was dead. And he didn’t expect her to die, either.”

Her eyes filled with tears. We talked about losing dogs you love.

Eventually, I asked, “So when did you hear about Mattie?”

They’d learned the next day, when they’d also heard Miner’s story about overhearing a fight between Cliff and Patterson.

“What do you make of that?” I asked.

The hollows beneath her cheekbones seemed to deepen. She looked directly into my eyes. “That it wasn’t Cliff. It was some other guy. That’s all. Because Dr. Miner never
saw
Cliff, you know. He just
heard
them—the man who was arguing with Dr. Patterson—when he was leaving. After Cliff left and came home, I guess, Dr. Patterson showed up, which is like him. You know their house is right there? The animal hospital is right on the road, and their house, his and Geri’s, is back down a dirt road, so there’s just a field between his house and the animal hospital. And he does have a tendency to sort of butt in.”

“With Dr. Miner’s patients?”

She smiled affectionately. “With everybody’s, the woman, too, and the vet who was there before Dr. Miner. But he doesn’t mean it like that. They’re a
lot younger than him. You can’t blame him if he wants to make sure they’re doing everything right.”

“Oh.” I envisioned Oscar Patterson charging in to play God, D.V.M., while Steve Delaney was working on an animal or explaining something to an owner. The picture that came to mind was of Steve stooping down to Patterson’s level, scooping him up, and tossing him out the door.

“Which is one of the things I don’t understand,” Anneliese said. In spite of the masses of hair, her face seemed almost bony now, thin and tired. “When Dr. Patterson came and took over and told Dr. Miner to go home, he must’ve thought Mattie was okay or at least starting to get better. Otherwise, wouldn’t he’ve told Dr. Miner to stay?”

“Hold on a second. What does Dr. Miner say? Does he say it was bloat?”

“Yeah, now he does, because that’s what she died of, I guess, but he didn’t know then. I mean, he didn’t know yet, because Dr. Patterson came right over, right after Cliff left. He must’ve seen the lights on in the animal hospital, and then he came right over. And he told Dr. Miner to leave. And then when Dr. Miner was going out, that’s when he heard yelling, which is what he thought was Cliff having a fight with Dr. Patterson. But it wasn’t.”

“So Lee Miner thought that Cliff had turned around and come right back?”

“Yeah. And, you see, everybody believes that—that it
was
Cliff he heard. Look, you asked me, right? Why didn’t he stay with her? And the cops asked the same thing, when they came here the next day, and they’ve asked me again, and you can tell they don’t believe me. And I can sort of understand it, because if you know Cliff and how he feels about the dogs,
it’d make sense that after he left Mattie, he’d change his mind and go back.”

“How sure are you that he didn’t?”

“He didn’t have time! I was here! He did not have time. And I explained about the other dogs, that it was mostly Cliff who thought she didn’t have bloat, so it was mostly him who was worried that the other dogs might be sick. But you can tell they don’t believe me, which is partly because of how it ended up. I mean, if the other dogs had got sick, too, and we’d had to take them all to the vet or get Dr. Patterson to come here, then there’d be some proof that, you know, Cliff really did feel like he had to come home. And with Mattie dead, it looks like he had a good reason to go back there. Only he didn’t know, not then. Dr. Miner told him Mattie’d be okay and not to worry.”

“Anneliese, what about cars? If Cliff went back, his car would have to have been there. Did Dr. Miner say that he saw Cliff’s car?”

“No, but he wouldn’t have, even if it was there. You haven’t been there? Well, like I said, the animal hospital is right on the road, but the entrance and the parking lot we use are on the opposite side, next to the field. But where the people who work there park
is
on the road. There’s like a little staff parking lot between the road and the building, and there’s a back door there, for deliveries and stuff. So when Dr. Miner went out to his car, he used that door, and the only car he could’ve seen was his own.”

I drew a mental map of the scene and studied it: the road, the staff parking lot, the animal hospital, then the clients’ parking lot. I darkened the map; the events had taken place in the middle of the night. Even if Miner had glimpsed the clients’ parking lot as
he drove away, he’d probably have seen nothing more than the outline of an unidentifiable car, anyone’s car. Anneliese’s account made sense.

“So what do you think happened?” I asked.

“Somebody else showed up, and when Dr. Miner heard them yelling, he just assumed it was Cliff. And, you know Dr. Miner?”

“A little.”

“Well, can you see him going to help Dr. Patterson?” She gave a quirky little smile. “If there was a fight? What he’d do was run away.” She jerked her chin down once as if to say,
So there! That’s what happened
.

“Even with Mattie there? If Dr. Patterson was fighting with whoever it was, he couldn’t have been paying much attention to Mattie.”

“Which is what happened, you see. That’s mostly why she died. So, in a way, you could say that it was Dr. Miner’s fault, for leaving her. But Cliff …”

“Is that why he’s in Cambridge?”

“He thinks Dr. Miner
knows
. If you listen to Cliff, Dr. Miner wouldn’t run out and leave her like that. We both think he wouldn’t’ve run in and helped Dr. Patterson, but Cliff says he’s lying. Dr. Miner knows what happened. And Cliff does have sort of a point. Dr. Miner was the one who saw her body.”

“So you never—?”

“No, which is part of Cliff’s problem right now. When Dr. Miner got to the animal hospital the next morning, she was dead. And, of course, he thought Dr. Patterson was home asleep. Anyway, he didn’t really know us, so he had her body sent away to be cremated, which I guess is sort of the normal thing they do. Dr. Patterson would’ve known that Cliff would want to bury Mattie here. But how was Dr.
Miner supposed to know? And besides, it’s sort of against the law. Probably Dr. Miner would’ve thought he was committing a crime or something. He’s kind of like that. Anyway, meanwhile, the cops keep asking questions about Dr. Patterson, what happened, where he was, all that kind of thing. And, you know, I thought Cliff would go totally wild, about Mattie, but he didn’t. He just got
so
quiet. So when the cops finally figured out that Dr. Patterson actually was gone, which took a while, and when they started leaning on Cliff, he just took Bear and left.”