Gone to the Dogs (21 page)

“And?”

“And according to our records, on Monday night, somebody showed up with the body of a Saint Bernard mix and paid cash for routine final care.”

“Could that have happened?” I wanted him to promise me that, sure, that’s exactly what happened, that and nothing more.

“Yeah,” he said, “but most people aren’t going to pay cash. It’s not all that cheap.”

“So whose name was it? Was it someone we could call?”

“Sure. The name’s John Kelly, and the entire address is South Boston. What’s there is
Kelly
with a
y
, no
e
, but you’d want to check
e y
, too. You want to start?”

There are more Irish people in Boston than
there are in Dublin. In Southie alone, there must be hundreds of John Kellys, maybe more.

“It would be a lot of fun trying to prove he didn’t exist,” I said. “Or for that matter, that Jackie doesn’t. Anymore. But why?”

“Patterson. Jackie added things up. Why else?”

“Diehard,” I said. “It’s a nickname, right? For Scotties. Diehard.”

“She probably didn’t, you know,” Steve said gently. “Any veterinarian …”

Doctors are supposed to make the best murderers, but let me warn you: If your own M.D.’s office is stocked with the means of rapid euthanasia you’ll find in any D.V.M.’s and if your own doctor has anything approaching the average veterinarian’s hands-on experience in granting swift demise, mute those complaints about aches and pains, and don’t confess that your life isn’t worth living, unless, of course, you really mean it.

“If you decided to get rid of me,” I said, “that’s probably what you’d do, isn’t it? In fact, if I ever—”

“Holly, look. It’s not funny, and you know it’s not. But, yeah. If the whole thing was calculated, yeah, that’s what he did. It wouldn’t look like a natural death, but he had that all worked out. With a half-empty freezer waiting, it didn’t matter. He’d’ve sedated her first. There’s no shortage of sedatives back there.”

“Otherwise, she’d’ve been a little curious about the needle, I guess.”

“If you can’t put a lid on it, I’m leaving.” He sighed loudly, got up, and poured himself some more coffee.

I apologized. “Steve, I liked her. She was irritating, in a way, and I didn’t exactly want her for a good friend, but there was nothing wishy-washy about her. She was very definite. Like a Scottie. And I would never want … Steve, I need to ask you something. Maybe it’ll help if I don’t just have to imagine … Steve, the, uh, the bags the bodies go in. What are they …?”

“What are they like?”

“Yeah. What do they look like?”

“They’re ordinary plastic bags, like trash bags. But a lot heavier.” He drank some coffee.

“I keep wondering if … This is going to sound stupid.”

His voice was low and gentle. “Say it anyway, huh?”

“I wonder if he—” I got up, found a tissue, and blew my nose. “This is stupid.”

“What is it?”

I sat down and rested my elbows on the table. I found myself staring at my big kitchen wastebasket, which was lined with a heavy green trash bag. The cover of the wastebasket was ajar, propped open by an empty Lipton tea bag box and an out-of-date L.L. Bean catalog. “I keep hoping he, uh, closed her eyes. You know? Instead of just shoving her into a trash bag.” The tune of the disgusting schoolyard dirge was still running through my head. The worms crawl in, the worms … I tried to remember that Jackie hadn’t even been buried, for God’s sake. Her body had been cremated.

“She honest to God did look like a Scottie.”
Steve made it sound like the beginning of a eulogy. “And she acted like one, too. You never want to admit it, but it does happen.”

“Yeah, well, she was an exception. Steve, what about Patterson? Do you …?”

“Occam’s razor,” Steve said ponderously.

Under normal circumstances, I’d’ve asked him whether it was some kind of specialized veterinary scalpel, but I managed to keep quiet.

Steve must have misunderstood my silence. He started to explain: “The basic principle that—”

“The simplest explanation is the best.”

“More or less,” he said. “Don’t multiply your elements.”

Steve isn’t callous, you know, but how much raw sensitivity can he afford? If your dog ever needs a leg amputated, do you want to have to do the surgery yourself because your vet is too busy sobbing and wailing?

“So?” I asked.

“To explain what happened to Oscar Patterson,” he said laboriously. “Minimize the elements. Miner arrives. Cliff Bourque and his dog arrive. Bourque leaves. Patterson shows up, Bourque returns, or maybe someone else does, Brenner, whoever. Miner goes home. So?”

“So? Okay, so there’s no mysterious stranger. Or no Brenner?”

“Keep going.”

“Well, Miner
was
there,” I said.

Steve nodded.

“And Cliff Bourque did leave Mattie. And Patterson did disappear.”

“So?”

“Okay, I get it. So if what you want is a simple
explanation, that’s it. Bourque never went back that night, which is what his wife says. So the only people there were Miner and Patterson. And the dog, of course. Mattie. Steve, I know one reason, which is—”

“The dog,” he said. “Sorry. What were you going to say?”

“There’s this story I heard, from Geri Driscoll. Patterson’s practice was large animals, too, and what he did was deliberately send Miner out to some farm where there was a bull that kicked. So Miner went out there, and it kicked him, just as planned, I gather, and Miner ended up in a manure pile, which was exactly what Patterson knew would happen. Or maybe he didn’t exactly know it, but he knew it was likely, and he sent Miner, with no warning or anything.”

Steve sounded less sympathetic than I’d expected. He pointed out that bulls are going to kick some of the time, and where there’s a bull, a manure pile shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

“He could’ve been killed!” I said. “Besides, it must’ve been so embarrassing. He must’ve felt so humiliated and also furious, because Patterson set him up.”

“Guys’ll do that,” Steve said. “Sounds like Patterson staged some kind of initiation.”

“Yes, but Miner failed it.”

“Not necessarily. It depends more on how he took it.”

“Well, he took it badly, I think. I would, too.”

Steve said nothing.

“Okay,” I said. “You don’t want to say it. It was one of those stupid male rites. It was a silly macho test, and he flunked. He took it like a girl.”

“Half of the veterinary students in this country
are women,” he said. “Most of them would’ve passed.”

“So he took it like an anorchid. Is that better? A mental anorchid.”

Steve laughed. Do I need to translate? Well, you can’t show a male dog in breed, in conformation, unless he’s got both testicles where they belong. In a cryptorchid, one or both haven’t dropped, a monorchid has only one, so an anorchid has …? It happens in dogs, too.

“I still don’t think Patterson should’ve done it,” I said.

“Look, Holly. If Miner was afraid of animals and didn’t want to get dirty and couldn’t laugh at it, the last thing he should’ve done was become a veterinarian.”

“I guess. Maybe that’s why he’s so … Do you know, when you were away, and Rowdy got that ear infection? Did I tell you this? He muzzled Rowdy. It was the first thing he did.” Rowdy and Kimi had been stretched out on the floor, but when Rowdy heard his name, he stirred, clambered to his feet, shook himself, and ambled over to me. “And,” I continued, “Rowdy didn’t mind very much, but I did.”

“That’s what he does with Willie,” Steve said. “Since, uh … Without Jackie around, he keeps him muzzled.”

Without Jackie around. Rather, with Jackie in a plastic body bag in the freezer, where there were no—I repeat—no worms. And later, with her body reduced to ashes in a mass cremation.

“Willie does bite,” I said. According to Rita, talking about dogs is a defense, but what was I supposed to do? Sing that horrible song out loud? “Or at least he nips,” I added. “But Rowdy loves vets, and
he wouldn’t bite anyone, anyway. Of course, he is big.” I stopped. “Jesus. You don’t think … Steve, Cliff Bourque brings in his bitch, Mattie, right? Suspected bloat. She’s retching. Maybe she’s going to vomit. What’s the first thing you
don’t
do?”

“Yeah. And there’s a second thing. I didn’t tell you about that. One part of Miner’s story is real fishy. Patterson takes over. It looks like G.D.V. syndrome. This is a large dog. He’s got a second veterinarian there. And the first thing Patterson does is send away the second veterinarian? And if there’s a chance of vomiting, yeah, you never use a muzzle, because the dog could aspirate.”

“I’m getting confused. Mostly now we know what didn’t happen. So what did? Mattie got sick. Bourque called Miner, and they met there, at the hospital. Bourque went home.”

“And Miner slapped a muzzle on her,” Steve said. “He knew better, you know. He knows better. And he wouldn’t have left it on.”

“But he was afraid she’d bite,” I said. “A large dog? And maybe she was terrified. That’s so stupid. It’s one of the things Chinooks are famous for, not biting. They’re totally gentle, totally unaggressive. You’d think Miner … Steve, wouldn’t her record’ve said what she was? That she was a Chinook?”

“Sure. Of course it would.”

“And a veterinarian wouldn’t forget that. No veterinarian would. I mean, if someone brings you in a Karelian bear dog? A Lundehund? Whatever? That’s unusual, right? It’s interesting. You’re not going to forget that.”

He nodded.

“Well, Miner said he did! That’s crazy. I mean, this is a fussy guy who spends half an hour picking
over the details of Rowdy’s entire medical history before he treats a plain old ear infection? Steve, this guy has such an eye for detail that he rearranged the ornaments on my tree. At the party, when you were away? Did I tell you about that? He rehung them in perfect little neat rows. It was weird.”

“He gets lost in details.”

“Yeah. Anyway, at the party, Jackie was talking about Oscar Patterson and telling everyone about what’d happened, and she mentioned that the dog that died was a sled dog. So, of course, I asked what kind, and she said she didn’t know, but Lee would. Anyhow, later, when they were leaving, one of us asked him. She did or I did, I don’t remember. And he said he didn’t know. Or he couldn’t remember. But what I do remember is that, first of all, he was kind of irritated at her for pressing him about it, and, second, he said something like, ‘What does it matter?’ And at the time, I didn’t know him, really, and so what? But she must’ve thought that was pretty strange.”

“Yeah. It’s possible he could’ve forgotten, but if he had? Jesus, he would’ve spent an hour going over all the possibilities.”

“And she must’ve known that better than anyone, that any detail
would
matter. So she’d’ve known something was wrong.”

“So why didn’t he tell you? He probably did remember.”

“I think he just plain didn’t want to talk about it. No, there’s another thing. Nobody was drinking all that much, but he must’ve had a fair amount of wine. I mean, he’d talked about it before, obviously, but I’ll bet it was when he was cold sober. He’d had a few drinks, it was late, he was tired. He didn’t trust himself.
But Jackie must’ve caught it. And once she sank her teeth into something, she wouldn’t let go, would she? And if she just worked it out and took him up on it?”

“I thought she seemed real devoted.”

“I think she was. But what she wasn’t was sneaky. And she talked all the time. Maybe she really was shocked, and she threatened to turn him in, but I don’t think so. Maybe he just realized that even if she wanted to keep it a secret, sooner or later, she’d open her mouth and say something. Maybe it wouldn’t even have been anything important, but he’d always have had to worry. He’d never have known for sure, not with her around.”

“Back up,” he said. “Bourque brings in the dog, Miner muzzles her, Bourque leaves.”

“And Patterson shows up. He finds Mattie dead, and he rips into Miner. What Patterson walked in and found was that Miner had killed Mattie, or that’s what it amounted to, anyway. She died because Miner was afraid of big dogs.”

“Christ, if I walked in on that—”

“Plus Patterson and Miner already have this history, the bull and the manure pile and all that. And Patterson used to barge in and take over from people anyway. Also, what he did to Brenner? Anyway, Patterson would’ve been livid, and he did something: He hit Miner, threatened him, whatever. So what Miner saw coming was basically another bull and another manure pile, only worse this time, because what he’d done was real malpractice. What Miner must’ve really wanted was to get rid of the whole situation, only he couldn’t, of course. He couldn’t bring Mattie back to life. The closest he could come was to get rid of Patterson. I wonder what he did to him.”

“In a veterinary hospital? You must be kidding. Take your pick.”

“Yeah. Anyway—God damn. You know what? Cliff Bourque’s been right all along. For a start, he knows that he wasn’t there and that he didn’t even see Patterson. The poor guy. No wonder he’s half crazy. Anyway, so there’s Miner with two bodies, Mattie’s and Patterson’s, and I guess that’s when he discovered this business of imaginary dead dogs. Patterson wasn’t all that big. Their records probably look like yours, only that time it was a Newfie or something. With Jackie, it was easy, I guess. He could say that his wife had left him. If a guy tells you his wife walked out on him, you focus on him and how he’s
been
left.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “You don’t usually ask where she’s gone.”

A voice with the tone, timbre, resonance, and range of Rowdy’s lifts itself above the ordinary canine woofs and arfs maybe once or twice a century. On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, he melodiously burst forth in the definitive performance of the Malamute Variations. His theme began with one long, frigidly clear, weirdly male soprano note, descended to rich midrange, then plunged to a prolonged, all-stops-open basso profundo. I pulled a pillow over my head and swore. My eyes felt as if I’d been crying in my sleep. An unshaven human male cheek scratched the back of my neck. Steve’s voice joined the howling in a verse of “Good King Wenceslas.” Then he straddled me and yanked the pillow from my fists.