Karma's a Killer (17 page)

Liar.

Dad had lived at this address my entire childhood, until he died and I inherited the house from him. The returned letter was his version of a no-contact order. One that Dharma had obviously obeyed.

I set the sealed envelope aside to read last and tackled the rest of Dad's letters in chronological order. With each abbreviated story, I cycled through multiple emotions: surprise, grief, remorse, loss, nostalgia. Ninety minutes and a thousand unanswered questions later, I curled up on the couch and fell into a troubled sleep.

I rode the elevator upstairs to the King County Jail's visiting room, weighted down by a deep sense of dread. The disconsolate people around me all faced outward, slumping toward the elevator's walls like the gray-brown petals of a dying daisy.

One by one, they turned to face me.

And laughed.

The cruelly guffawing faces of Dharma and my father, Eduardo and Goth Girl, Maggie and Sally, Dale and Judith all swirled around me, as if I were trapped in the center of a derisive, carnival-like merry-go-round. The elevator door opened and I looked down at my suddenly bare feet. Officer Chuckles pointed at my blood-burgundy toenails and ordered in a deep, booming voice, “Shoes must be worn at all times.”

I opened my mouth to explain that being barefoot wasn't my fault—that my shoes had mysteriously disappeared—but my world dissolved into darkness. I wasn't blind, but I couldn't see, either. My eyelids refused to open. The stench of disinfected hopelessness burned my sinuses. I tried to pry my eyelids open with my fingers, but they were too heavy. I stumbled out of the elevator and thrust my hands forward, searching for walls, a doorway, anything.

I bumped into stranger after mocking stranger until I found a cold cement wall. I leaned my back against it, covered my face with my arms, and sank to the floor.

My own disembodied voice echoed across the emptiness.
Kate, you're dreaming.

I knew that already, but the insight was useless. I still couldn't stop it: my first lucid nightmare in well over a decade.

You're dreaming. You have to wake up.

“I can't,” I sobbed.

Yes, you can.

I crawled sideways until I found a corner in which I could cower. A place where nothing could attack me from behind.

Wake yourself up.

It had never worked before, but I had to try.

“Wake up!” I yelled. “Wake up!”

I shouted the words over and over and over again, but they didn't penetrate my consciousness. I tried pinching myself, but I couldn't feel it. I jumped up and down. I counted backwards from one hundred to one. Nothing worked.

The walls behind me dissolved and I heard footsteps. It was hap
pening again, exactly like it had when I was child. Someone was coming. Coming for me.

“Wake up!” I sobbed.

My disembodied voice spoke again.

You don't have to do this alone anymore. You have Bella. Ask her to help you.

It was worth a try. Bella had saved me before.

Dream-me stood up, tensed every muscle, and bellowed in a voice louder than I'd ever used in real life. “Bella!”

My still-asleep form moaned. It was working!

“Bella!” I yelled again.

A cold, wet nose nudged my face and jolted me awake. I sat bolt upright, wrapped my arms around my dog, and sobbed into her warm fur. “It's okay, girl. It's okay. It was only a dream.” I said the words to soothe myself much more than her.

I took several deep, long breaths and tried to slow down my pounding heart. “Good job, Bella. Gooooood girl.”

Bella whined and licked my face. I hugged her back and covered her muzzle in kisses.

No doubt about it. Reading Dharma's letter right before falling asleep hadn't been such a great idea.

At least this time my dream's symbolism was obvious.

What was it that I couldn't open my eyes to see?

I didn't understand everything I'd read before falling asleep. Frankly, I wasn't sure I wanted to. But now that I'd opened Dharma's Box, so to speak, that which had escaped could not be put back. My subconscious was obviously telling me something that I didn't want to hear. Only one question remained: was it about Dharma or about me?

I placed my feet flat on the floor. Whatever it was, I wouldn't be sleeping the rest of the night. I stood up, gave Bella a well-deserved chew toy, and moved to the office. It was time to learn more about this stranger who called herself my mother.

I might not have Michael's genius computer skills, but even I could type a few words into a search engine.

I started by trying to answer Dale's question: What was Dharma hiding about her involvement with HEAT?

HEAT didn't have much of a website, but they had a reasonable blog. The first entry had been posted two years ago and highlighted
the squalid conditions of factory chicken farms. Raven and four other women—all wearing the orange-flamed black T-shirts I'd seen on Saturday—were pictured.

Subsequent blog posts were inconsistent: sometimes once a month, other times more frequent. They covered a variety of animal rights issues, ranging from primate research at a state-run university to the slaughter of wolves in the Rocky Mountains. All pretty horrifying, but unfortunately not all that surprising.

As time went on, the number of black-clad people in the photographs grew. From four or five individuals to the two dozen people we'd seen at Green Lake on Saturday. Eduardo and Goth Girl started showing up in pictures starting nine months ago; Dharma, a few weeks later. I didn't see any references to DogMa or the supposed slavery of pet ownership.

I continued scanning the web. HEAT was mentioned in several articles, primarily ones written by Raven or other members of her organization. Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary. HEAT appeared to be making more of a ripple than a splash in the animal rights world.

The cursor blinked at me accusingly.

Come on, Kate. Stop procrastinating. You know what you're really looking for. What have you refused to see?

Dharma.

I knew nothing about Dharma. At least nothing I hadn't created and embellished in my childhood imagination. As a child, I'd convinced myself that she was out in the Congo or someplace equally exotic, trying to do good for the world. For all I knew, she was really a Sacramento-based ax murderer.

It was time to find out.

I typed in every permutation of Dharma's first and last names: Dharma, Daisy, Davidson, and Carmichael. I tried adding Sacramento and the phrase “animal activist.” I got plenty of hits, none of them useful. Not even a relevant Facebook page or Twitter profile. I leaned back and drummed my fingers on the desktop.

Think, Kate.

Everyone left an online trail, no matter how hard they tried not to. I simply had to figure out how to unearth it. I didn't know much about Dharma, but surely I had some relevant piece of information.

I closed my eyes and replayed our visit at the King County Jail. Dharma had talked about her cellmate. She complained about the food. She compared her current cell to the one she'd been incarcerated in while visiting Juarez.

My eyes flew open.

Dharma had been arrested in Mexico.

It was a start.

I typed in the words “animal activist,” “arrest,” and “Juarez.” The search engine returned several pages of hits, including an article published almost a year ago in an El Paso, Texas, newspaper. The article profiled a group of animal rights activists that had been jailed for six weeks in Juarez after protesting the city's mass euthanasia of street dogs. It included a photo of the protesters.

I squinted my eyes and leaned closer to the screen. Dharma was pictured in the second row.

Eduardo stood next to her.

Dharma and Eduardo were together in Texas? Before HEAT? I kept searching.

I added the name “Eduardo” to my search terms, but I didn't find anything relevant, so I went back to the El Paso news site and scanned for articles written around the same time period. A headline two weeks after the Juarez article made my mouth go dry.

Homeless Woman Dies in Fourth Suspected Arson

Police in El Paso are investigating the death of a homeless woman who died last night of apparent smoke inhalation. Investigators believe the woman had been sleeping in an abandoned building on Sugartree Avenue when the structure caught fire. The blaze initially started in a dumpster, but quickly spread to the adjacent structure. The fatal fire is the fourth suspected dumpster arson this summer. Thus far, no suspects have been identified.

A string of dumpster fires? Like the fire at Green Lake?

I continued scanning the paper's archives. The suspicious fires stopped after the homeless woman's death. After a few weeks, articles about the investigation became intermittent. After a few months, they disappeared. No arrests were mentioned. I assumed that meant the police never caught the arsonist.

Dream or no dream, I suddenly wished that I'd kept my eyes closed.

I turned away from the screen and stared at the wall, as if the newly installed sheetrock would provide a clean slate on which I could create a different, more palatable, answer.

Dumpster fires weren't all that rare, but they weren't common, either, and I doubted that serial arsonists kicked the habit any more often than serial killers did. If the fires stopped, it was for one of four reasons: the arsonist died, he got caught, he became better at hiding his crimes, or he moved to another jurisdiction.

Like California. With the occasional road trip to Seattle.

My stomach churned. Eduardo was marching with HEAT when the Green Lake fire broke out, but Dharma wasn't. She could easily have started it.

Could Dharma have set the fires in El Paso, too? She certainly had means and opportunity. As for motive, I hadn't rubbed match sticks with many firebugs—at least not that I knew of—but wasn't fire-starting a compulsion for pyromaniacs?

I stood up and started pacing. This was all supposition, of course, and Dharma as a pyromaniac seemed like a stretch. Still, if
I
had figured out that she was living in El Paso at the time of the fires, Raven might have, too. And even if Dharma hadn't set the fatal fire, she or Eduardo might know who did. That would make them accessories after the fact. Either way, I realized, the homeless woman's death might be a secret worth killing for.

I sat back down at the computer and resumed typing, determined that the next time I confronted Dharma, I would be armed with irrefutable information. Dharma would never fool me again.

Or so I thought.

Sixteen

Michael called at eight
the next morning. His father had survived surgery but was still in critical condition. His doctors said that if he made it through the next forty-eight hours, he would likely survive.

If.

I didn't tell Michael about my late-night Internet discoveries. I certainly didn't tell him what I'd read in Dad's letters. In my defense, I wasn't hiding information for my own benefit this time. In fact, I wanted—even needed—to talk it all through, and the person I most wanted to talk with was Michael. But he was already under enough stress. Adding mine might tip him past the breaking point. I'd have to wait and share my burden with Rene after Prenatal Yoga.

In the meantime I fed Bella, loaded her into the car, and drove to Serenity Yoga.

I parked Bella's mobile home in the covered garage and filled her water dish. Today's projected high wouldn't hit sixty, and the garage would be several degrees colder. Still, I cracked the windows an inch and partially opened the sunroof. I finished our normal routine by giving her a few chest scratches.

“I'll come get you for a walk after I meet with Alicia.”

Bella ignored me. She was officially on duty, guarding the garage against evil intruders. I took off her leash, tossed it on the passenger seat, and headed for the studio. By the time I entered, Alicia was already in the yoga room, seated on her mat in Lotus Pose.

I slipped off my shoes and set them on the shelf outside the practice space. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm running a little late this morning.”

“No problem at all. I was getting in a little pre-class meditation. The morning instructor let me in before she left.”

Alicia and I made small talk as I turned on a Deva Premal CD and lit the candles at the front of the room—my personal pre-class rituals. I consciously avoided talking about Dharma, my connection to yet another murder, and my late-night research project. Although Alicia was my friend, I wasn't ready to share what I'd learned with anyone other than family. And family, in my world, meant Michael, Bella, and Rene. I didn't even plan to loop in Dale until I understood how all of the disparate pieces fit together.

“Hey, is the rumor true?” Alicia asked. “Did you really save that stupid pigeon?”

I smiled. “I did, indeed.”

“Unbelievable. Our one chance to actually get rid of that flying waste generator and you decide to play Florence Nightingale.”

“Count your blessings,” I replied. “At least I'm not gathering the neighborhood snails for a lettuce party.”

Alicia looked confused.

“It's an inside joke. But that reminds me: I need to call Judith and see how Mr. Feathers is doing.”

“Now you named him?”

I shrugged. “I'm a sucker for animals. Don't worry. If he survives, I'm not bringing him back to the garage. I'll let him loose over at the park.”

I sat on my meditation rug and rang the Tibetan chimes.

After almost two years of private work, Alicia and I had established a pattern. Rather than ask her what she wanted at the beginning of each session, I created a plan for each week based on where we had left off the week before.

Today's theme was balance: balance poses, balanced energy, balanced breathing. I started with some simple kneeling poses to warm Alicia's muscles and deepen her breath. Then I led her through a flow that included Downward Dog, Upward Dog, Plank, and Side Plank. By the time she held the final Side Plank, Alicia's face was dotted with sweat. Her arm muscles quivered.

I continued with a standing Warrior I, II, and III flow that I rarely taught but knew Alicia adored, then brought the energy back down with a few seated postures. We ended with a breath practice designed to help rebuild her breath capacity, which was still compromised from the cancer treatments.

What felt like five—but was actually over sixty—minutes later, I rang the chimes again to bring our session to a close.

We ended with our normal “Namaste.”

“See you on Saturday?” Alicia asked.

“Deal.” I didn't need to write it down. Wednesdays and Saturdays with Alicia were an indelible part of my weekly routine.

I walked her to the front door and grabbed my keys.

“Hey, are you going to walk Bella?” she asked. “I'd like to say hi to her.”

We reversed course and headed out the back exit to the parking garage. Alicia walked up the three steps to garage level and froze.

“Oh, geez, Kate. I'm so sorry.”

I followed her gaze to my car.

The doors of my Honda stood open. What was left of the passenger-
side window lay scattered all over the ground. The trunk was cracked open as well.

I didn't care about any of it.

I tore across the lot toward my car, so focused on reaching my destination that I was only vaguely aware of Alicia running behind me. A single question taunted me.

Where is Bella?

My mind whirled with scenarios, motives, fears, and outcomes in that ten-second race to my trashed automobile. What would a car prowler expect to find in my beater Honda that was worth confronting a hundred-pound German shepherd over?

Could he have been after Bella herself? It seemed unlikely. Dogs were stolen every day, but they usually disappeared while tied up outside coffee shops and grocery stores, not while on guard duty inside locked cars. And most of the animals pictured on lost dog posters weren't nearly as intimidating as Bella. Still, the shattered window and open doors could only mean one thing: Bella was gone.

Bright red splotches stained the broken glass littering the cement floor. My stomach lurched.

Blood.

I ran faster.

Please, God. Please don't let her be hurt. Please don't let her be—

“Kate, be careful.” Alicia's words barely reached my consciousness. They certainly didn't slow down my actions. I threw the passenger door open wider and peered inside.

My throat convulsed.

Oh thank God.

Bella huddled on the floorboard behind the driver's seat, ears flattened against her head. The driver's seat was folded forward, as if someone had tried to crawl back there with her. Broken glass covered every square inch of her normal resting spot.

“You okay, sweetie?”

She uncertainly placed her front feet onto the seat cushion, preparing to climb through the littered glass toward me. I held up my hand, palm forward.

“Bella, freeze.”

She froze.

But for how long?

One wrong move and she could end up with sliced-open pads, glass embedded in her skin, or worse.

Alicia's shoes crunched through the glass behind me. I motioned for her to edge closer.

“Alicia, hold your hand up like this.” I showed her the hand gesture for Bella's “freeze” command. “I'm going over to the driver's side. Don't let her move.”

“How am I supposed to stop her?”

“Keep telling her to stay. Sound like you mean it.”

Alicia spit out the command “stay” like a drill sergeant, over and over again. Bella looked confused, but she didn't move.

I ran over to the driver's-side door, wrapped my jacket around my left hand for protection, and grabbed Bella's collar with my right. I brushed away as much of the glass from the area as I could see.

“The leash is on the passenger seat, Alicia. Can you hand it to me?”

Alicia handed me the leash, still brusquely repeating the “stay” mantra every two seconds.

I clipped on Bella's leash.

“Thanks, Alicia, that's enough.”

I pushed the driver's seat as far forward as it would go and looked at Bella. “Okay, girl. Slow.”

As trained, Bella moved toward me slowly, one tentative foot at a time. After I coaxed her to safety several feet away from the car, I carefully examined her feet, legs, belly, and back, inch by painstaking inch. Miraculously, I couldn't find any cuts.

“Is she okay?” Alicia's voice startled me.

“She seems fine,” I said. “The blood must have come from the prowler. I hope he bleeds to death.”

“Kate!”

I didn't mean it, of course, but in spite of Alicia's stern admonishment, I didn't take the words back. Yoga principles of nonvio
lence be damned. Anyone who messed with Bella had better be ready to feel the full wrath of Kate.

I hugged Bella to hide the angry tears forming in my eyes. “What kind of person would break into my car with Bella inside it? She could have been hurt. Frankly, she could have hurt the car prowlers, too. Were they crazy?”

“I don't know, but whoever they are, they messed with the wrong landlord.” Alicia pointed at the garage's security cameras. “Follow me. We're going to kick some car-prowler ass.”

Alicia asked the maintenance manager to sweep up the glass and cover my car window with plastic. She and I huddled in front of the computer monitor in the apartment complex office, examining the past hour's security footage. Bella explored the rest of the office, checking out her new territory. She finally lay down between us.

“I still can't believe someone was stupid enough to break into your car with Bella inside. What did they think she would do? Say hello?”

Bella responded to the familiar command by standing up and offering Alicia her paw.

Alicia ignored her and continued fast-forwarding through the footage.

“I'm surprised no one saw or heard anything,” I said.

“The garage is empty this time of day. Most of the residents work weekdays.” She pointed at the screen. “I think these are our prowlers.”

We watched the grainy video as two ski-masked individuals—a female in jeans and a male dressed in black—moved into camera range. The male carried a knapsack. The female tried both car door handles in a futile attempt to open them. Bella watched with interest, but she didn't bark.

Alicia frowned. “Is Bella always that laid-back?”

“No,” I replied. “Not at all. Bella is very territorial.” I drummed my fingers on the desktop. “This doesn't make any sense. For some reason, she doesn't see them as a threat.”

The female turned toward the male, said something, and shrugged.

“Do you have sound?” I asked.

Alicia shook her head no.

We silently watched as the scene continued to unfold. I didn't need sound to know the two strangers were arguing, or at least the agitated-looking female was. The male seemed to be largely ignoring her. He reached into his bag and pulled out a metal tire iron. As he leaned forward, I noticed his shirt—or, more specifically, the logo embroidered on the front of it.

“Pause that for a second, would you?” I pointed to the screen. “What does that look like to you?”

Alicia squinted her eyes. “I don't know. Fire, maybe?”

“That's what I think, too.”

“What does it mean?”

“These people are from HEAT.” Not-so-nonviolent thoughts raced through my mind. “I think that jackass is trying to free my dog.”

Alicia started the video again.

The man raised the tire iron, but the woman stepped in front of him, blocking him from my car window. She must have said something that got his attention, because he nodded and lowered his arms. She jogged to the opposite side of the car.

Wait a minute …

I leaned closer to the screen, frowning. I recognized that wiggle. Come to think of it, I recognized the fit of those tight jeans, too.

Alicia must have sensed my tension. “Kate, what is it? Do you know them?”

The growl in my voice sounded more threatening than Bella's. “Keep playing the tape.”

Everything that followed seemed to happen simultaneously. The female slipped something that looked suspiciously like a heart-shaped dog cookie through the crack in the driver's-side window. Pointy German shepherd teeth reached up from the back seat and snatched it from her fingers. The man raised the tire iron over his shoulder and swung.

I knew what was about to happen, but I still couldn't watch. I turned away and involuntarily squeezed my eyes shut. When I glanced back at the video, broken glass littered the garage floor. Blood dripped from the man's fingers.

Alicia shook her head. “Some animal rights activists. Don't they know how dangerous that was for Bella?”

The man reached through the now-broken window and unlocked the doors. The female opened the door on her side, grabbed Bella, and pulled.

Bella didn't move.

I reached down and scratched Bella's neck. “Good girl.” The man moved to the driver's side of my car, reached underneath the steering wheel, and popped open the trunk. Then he shoved his friend to the side, grabbed Bella's collar, and yanked. Hard.

Bella finally reacted.

She roared out of the car, landed on the man's chest, and knocked him to the ground.

The man did the most stupid thing he could do, given the circumstances.

He ran.

Bella ran faster. She grabbed onto the prowler's pant leg, gripped the loose cloth, and jerked her head violently back and forth. I prayed her teeth only ripped denim. Seattle had the toughest dangerous dog laws in the nation; a damaging bite might not end well for Bella, justified or not.

The woman grabbed Bella's collar and dragged her off the man. He scooped his bag off the ground and scrambled out of camera range.
He must have kept running, because a few seconds later Bella went into a perfect sit and nudged the woman's hand, as if expecting a treat.

When Alicia turned toward me, she wore a confused expression. I'm pretty sure mine was homicidal.

“I don't get it,” she said.

My lips pressed into a tight line. “I think I do.” And if I was right, someone was going to die.

If she was lucky.

The female led Bella back to my car, pulled off her mask, and glanced up at the camera. She leaned in close to Bella's face and gave her the palms-up hand signal for the command “stay.” I would have sworn she was crying. Not that I gave a damn.