Gun Shy (21 page)

We talked for a few minutes about Hero and about dogs in general. I told him that Leo White’s body had been found, and he replied that he had already learned as much from Mickey’s father.

“So there’s no relative who’s able to take the dog?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But that’s not a problem. If Nero is not able to be reassigned, we have a long list of families who would love to adopt a young, highly trained dog like him.”

I smiled weakly. “I’m sure.” I stood. “I guess you’d like to see him.”

I must say I was impressed with the way Wes, despite his youth, was transformed once he took Hero’s lead. He became a dog handler: confident, assured, firm but fair, leaving no doubt in Hero’s mind or anyone else’s what he expected from the dog at any given moment. As he worked with Hero, he explained to me a little about the training program, and the reasoning behind each of the sixty-eight basic commands all of their dogs were taught before they were considered suitable for placement as service dogs.

Hero performed magnificently, of course. He brought Wes’s car keys, which he had dropped in the trash can, to the chair in which Wes was sitting. He put his front paws on my desk and retrieved a memo pad. He went quietly to a corner and lay down when Wes commanded him to do so. I knew all of this was just child’s play for him, and that Wes was letting him practice the easy commands only so that he would feel comfortable.

Then Wes put him in a down-stay, walked behind him and dropped a stack of heavy books onto the concrete floor. They made a sound like rapid gunfire. Hero whirled around, barking, then charged toward the door with his ears back and his tail down. I caught his collar. “Easy boy,” I said softly. “Calm down.”

Hero pressed himself against my leg, tail still tucked.

Wes came over to me, his face impassive, and took Hero’s collar. He calmly returned the dog to the exact same spot where he had broken his down-stay, which I knew perfectly well was the correct procedure, and he repeated the experiment. He repeated it several times, with steadily worsening results. When it became clear that the dog’s distress was nearing critical level, he snapped on the lead, asked Hero to sit, and then praised him gently. He released the dog to follow his instincts, and Hero’s instincts were to hide behind my desk.

Wes Richards looked at me with deep regret in his eyes. “He was such a great dog,” he said.

“So that’s it? He’s out of the program?”

He said, “It can take up to two years to train a service dog, and our waiting list is three years old. As valuable as Nero is to us, his chances of rehabilitation are so slim, and the time factor is so crucial, that I just can’t take trainers away from dogs who have a real chance of success.” He drew a breath and shook his head. “I hate this,” he said.

Then he picked up Nero’s lead and extended his hand. “I can’t thank you enough for taking care of him. I can tell you went above and beyond the call of duty with him.”

“You’re not driving back this afternoon, are you?”

“Actually, I’d planned to stay over and get an early start in the morning.”

“I’ll keep Hero overnight for you if you like,” I volunteered quickly.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling. “I hated to ask you to do more than you’ve already done, but I’m frankly not sure what the pet policy of the hotel is where I’m staying, and it would be a big help if I could pick him up in the morning.”

I walked him to the door. “It’s no trouble at all. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve grown pretty fond of him.” Then I said thoughtfully, “I know you’ve got a waiting list, but do you ever . . . that is, would you consider adopting Hero to someone who’s
not
on the list?”

He looked surprised, but also hopeful. “Do you mean you?”

I shook my head. “No. I’d love to have him, but I can’t. I was thinking about someone else.”

“Well, there would be a lot of factors to consider. We’d have to do an interview and a home visit. Could you tell me something about the person you have in mind?”

“In the morning,” I promised him. “I have to make a phone call, check some things out . . .”

As soon as he drove away, I hurried back to the desk. “Hero,” I excitedly told the huddled mass of insecurity under my desk, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before! It’s the perfect solution for everybody. And the best part is, you don’t have to leave. I can visit you anytime I want.”

I scooted behind the desk and picked up the phone. But I had dialed only three digits when the door opened on a gust of cold air. I looked up and dropped the phone back into its cradle as Sandy Lanier walked in.

My impression of Sandy had been that she was a pretty woman—even beautiful, with her long blond hair and her flowing gold-and-white top. But she didn’t look pretty now. Her hair was pulled back severely from her face and caught at the nape of her neck, and it looked dull and dry. She wore oversized dark glasses and no makeup, and her lips were chapped and cracked. The sage green hiking parka that she wore was stained and torn at the elbow, and her jeans were baggy and thread-bare.

She was accompanied by a man in a black leather jacket with zippered pockets, pencil-legged jeans and boots. He had scraggly dark hair that was a little too long and wore aviator sunglasses. He hung back at the door as Sandy came forward.

I said, in a stunned tone, “Sandy?”

“Hi,” she replied. Her smile seemed tight, as though it hurt her mouth. “I heard on the radio that you have my dog—that my dog Ringo was found, and that you have him here. Is that right? Is he okay?”

There was genuine concern in her voice with the last and I hastened to assure her, “Yes, I have him, he’s fine. But we’ve all been worried about you. I thought something had happened—”

The man stepped forward impatiently. “Can we just get the dog and go?”

Sandy said, “Raine, this is my boyfriend, Alan. We were camping and Ringo got away from us the other morning. He’s such a silly dog.” Her voice sounded high and artificial. “He never learned to come when I call. He probably shouldn’t even be allowed off leash. It was all my fault. I hope he didn’t cause you too much trouble.”

I stared at her, remembering the perfectly heeling dog who had never left her side, had never needed a leash even in the midst of throngs of people and children with hot dogs and ice cream cones. Why was she lying? What was wrong with her?

And in a sudden surge of cold anger I said, “I thought you were hurt. Cisco and I were searching for you, and somebody shot him.”

I thought I saw her flinch, but it was difficult to tell underneath the big glasses. She wet her pale, cracked lips. “How—awful.”

The man—Alan, she had called him—said, “We’re in kind of a hurry, so if you could just get the dog—”

I had been dimly aware of a low rumbling at my feet, but with everything else that was racing through my mind I didn’t recognize the sound for what it was. When the stranger moved toward the desk, however, the throaty growl suddenly erupted into a furious, snarling, barking frenzy as Hero leapt over my desk, toenails scrabbling, teeth bared, and charged.

Sandy gave a cry of alarm and shrank back, the man swore and raised his arm to guard his face and I instinctively grabbed Hero’s collar, dragging him back. Without a word, I swept the snarling, barking, lunging dog into the storeroom, maneuvered him into a crate, and shot the bolt. Cisco tried to struggle to his feet, excited by all the noise, and I told him sharply, “Down! Stay!”

Looking disappointed, he obeyed, and I quickly closed the storeroom door behind me.

“I am so sorry!” I said. My heart was pounding with adrenaline, and my voice was a little breathless. “I don’t know what got into him!”

“What kind of place are you running here, anyway, lady?” demanded the man angrily. “Goddamn dog almost bit me. I hope your insurance is paid up. You call this a dog school?”

“I’m sorry. He’s usually so friendly. . . .” Flustered, I bent down to pick up the papers Hero had dislodged from my desk, and that was when I noticed the man’s boots.

The boots were snakeskin. From my point of view near the floor, from a dog’s point of view, the diamondback pattern was unmistakable.

A flash of unwanted certainty hit me and froze me, for a fraction of a second, in place. It was Sandy, after all. Sandy and this snakeskin-wearing man she called her boyfriend who had killed Mickey White and possibly her husband, who had trashed her cabin looking for the coins, who had shot Cisco when we got too close. I felt it in my gut like a punch in the stomach, and then logic reestablished itself.

It was absurd, ridiculous. There was absolutely no reason to think Sandy was involved at all. Just because she happened to have been the dead woman’s physical therapist meant nothing, less than nothing. There was no evidence that she had even been in town when Mickey White was murdered. Just because she had disappeared right before the cabin was ransacked, just because Cisco had been shot while searching for her . . .

Watch out for snakes.
. . .

It was impossible. Sandy Lanier was a dog lover. And dog lovers didn’t kill people.

Well, maybe they did. But they never risked the safety of their dogs in the process.

I straightened up slowly, clutching a handful of papers, and tried not to stare at the man. My heart couldn’t seem to find its normal rhythm, and my breath came shallowly, too quickly.

Sandy was saying, “Please, could I just get Ringo? I want to see him.” There was no mistaking the note of desperation in her voice.

“Sure.” I turned quickly and went behind the desk. “He’s in back. I’ll get him. I would have kept him in the house, but I’ve had a crisis or two myself over the past couple of days. It seemed best to keep him in the kennel.” I was babbling. I hoped no one noticed. “I’m glad you’re okay. I was afraid something had happened.” Obviouslysomething had happened. The only question was
what.

“I want to pay you, of course.” Sandy was fumbling in her purse. She took out a checkbook.

“No, it’s not necessary.” Snakeskin boots. Lots of people had them. They meant nothing. I had nothing to go on but Sonny’s interpretation of what a dog had told her and even that did not prove anything.
Watch out for snakes.
. . . “I do this. I mean, rescue dogs, that’s what I do. There’s no charge for boarding rescues.”

“Please, I insist.” Her voice was tight, and she scribbled out a check.

“Really, it’s—”

She thrust the check into my hand. “Take it,” she said, and something about her tone, about the determined way she held the check out to me, made me take it from her and glance at it.

On the PAY TO line she had written in block letters:
HELP ME.
Underneath it, in the IN THE AMOUNT OF area, she had written another word, and underscored it. The word was
Gun
.

I realized I was staring at the check. When I looked at her, I was sure that everything I knew was written on my face, and that the man could see it. I cleared my throat, folded the check into my hand with what I hoped was a casual gesture, and plucked the cordless phone off the desk. I turned toward the door that led to the kennels. “I’ll just go get him.”

The man took a step forward. “What do you need the phone for?” he demanded.

I turned to him, trying to appear cool and in control.

Trying to look normal. I was certain he could see the pounding of my heart, the shaking of my hands. I said, “We don’t have an extension in the back. I always take the phone.”

He said, “We’ll answer it if it rings.”

I almost managed a smile. “Oh, I couldn’t let you do that.”

He took a step toward me. There was menace in his eyes, in his posture. “Leave the phone.”

I cut my eyes toward the kennel door, wondering what my chances were of making it to the other side of the door, locking it, and dialing 911 before he could stop me. I was only inches away. I stretched my fingers toward the door handle, and that was my big mistake. He lunged toward me and the kennel door and was on me before I could turn the handle. Sandy screamed and tore at him. He sent her sprawling against a display of leashes. The metal rack came down with a crashing sound as he wrestled the phone from me, tossing it across the room. I tried to claw at his eyes, but he punched me in the stomach hard enough to knock the breath out of me.

“Bitch!” he shouted. “You cheap, lying whore!”

It was only when he turned to push Sandy back against the wall that I realized he was shouting at her, not me. I was gasping for breath like a beached fish, my vision was blurring and terror started to fill my lungs where air should have been. Distantly, I heard barking. Cisco? Hero?

“What did you do? What the fuck did you do?” The check had fallen from my clenched fist in the struggle, and he snatched it up, read it, tossed it down. “You never knew where the money was! It was a trick to get me here! You lying—”

The air returned to my lungs in a whoop and I charged at him head down, just as he drew back to hit Sandy again. All I did was knock him off balance, and before I could dive for the phone—which is what I should have done in the first place—he grabbed me by the neck and tossed me against Sandy. We fell in a pile on the floor, and when I looked again, it was into the ugly maw of a .45 caliber pistol.

He grabbed one of the leashes and tossed it to me. His face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat and he was breathing hard. “Tie her hands together,” he commanded. “Do it right. I’m watching.”

Now that her glasses had been knocked away, I could see that both of Sandy’s eyes were blackened and that her right one was swollen almost shut. I felt a stab of remorse for what I had secretly accused her of, and a swell of relief that I had been wrong. Neither of those emotions were helpful now, though, as my brain raced helplessly, foolishly, to try to think of some way to overpower or outsmart the gunman.