Retribution (31 page)

When the iced tea maker started to dribble hot tea over a mountain of ice, she went to the studio and browsed through the built-in bookcase, running her hands over the spines of old photo albums used for scrapbooks. She had labeled them herself and Charlie paused for a moment at the firm, expressive, and yet obviously young hand printing on labels which were now curled, edges yellowing, the scotch tape holding them to the spines discolored and peeling back. Ten years ago she was a child, and John Rubidoux had been a young man.

She chose a scrapbook and brought it down, wiping the dust off with one of her paint rags, and opening it. It smelled musty and old, faintly disagreeable. Quentin had smoked then, and it seemed the smell of burning still lingered in the pages. She turned them. A leaf which must have once been brightly red and yellow with autumn, now pressed to brown inside its waxed paper. She had written something on it.

Charlie turned the album to read the pencil markings which had skidded and plowed stubbornly over the waxed paper. Fall, Big Bear Lake. Quentin's cabin. The memory curved her mouth. She had called it a cabin, but it had been one of a hundred or so condos, at the foot of one of the premier skiing mountains in Big Bear. He had owned it for an investment, and the two-story unit paid for itself during the snow and ski season. They visited it on off-seasons, she, and Quentin's mother, and her mother, and Quentin. It had a balcony upstairs, living room, eating nook, small kitchenette, and downstairs were the bathrooms and bedrooms, two of them, and a small corner which could be used as a den or another sleeping area.

Blue jays, squirrels, and an occasional raccoon reigned on the balcony. They bought peanut hearts and mini-marshmallows and threw them out to be eaten. The squirrels were gluttons for the marshmallows although the white, puffy objects would make them drool and fill their cheeks almost to bursting. Charlie ran her fingertips over the waxed paper. That was before the collapse. They had not gone back after the operation. She had never asked why, and it seemed that some wordless knowledge had come to her that the condo had been sold to pay for the bills her mother's meager insurance had not.

She turned a few more pages. A lock of hair. A diploma from middle school. A plane ticket.

She smoothed it out. Her first plane trip, to San Francisco, her two paintings in a new art portfolio bag nearly bigger than she was, Valdor on the other arm, carrying her overnight bag and his suit bag.

Charlie swiftly turned a few more pages, the plastic covering bristling, the faint smell of smoke still reaching her. Then she lifted her head, uneasiness stirring in her.

That was not tobacco she smelled burning. There was a faint touch of wood, and hemp, and perhaps even a sharp, acrid scent of paint remover.

She dropped the scrapbook. Even as she turned, she could feel it in her eyes and nose.

Smoke. And fire.

* * *

By the time he reached the kennels, the vet's car was in front. He found Dr. Longmont walking out with Hans in his arms, back leg bound in a temporary splint. The shepherd looked at him dully, chin lolling over the crook of the vet's arm.

The vet motioned with his chin for John to open the rear door and the two of them laid Hans down as gently as possible on the backseat.

"How bad is it?"

"The splint's precautionary. I'm not too worried about internals either. Doped him up a bit so I could manipulate him. Lucky dog. The car stopped, according to your neighbor, or tried to. He more-or-less bounced off the bumper." Longmont pulled on his beard, wiry and graying like the hair on his head, which he wore long but kept tied back, looking much as he did in the photos of him during his hippie college days, which hung on the wall in his office, though he had not been gray then, or balding.

"Looks like someone wanted to create problems, but had more trouble than they expected once they let the dogs loose."

"I can only hope."

Longmont's mouth was nearly hidden by his mountaineer style beard as he grinned. "Me, too."

John shook his hand. "Thanks for coming."

"No problem. The bitch seems all right. Someone tried to get in your office as well, but she evidently scared them off." He ducked his head as he got into the driver's seat. "I'll call you about Hans in the morning. If I get busy, you call me."

"Will do." John started to back away, then added in afterthought. "Say, do you know the guy who took over Baez's practice?"

Longmont nodded. "Young kid. Older wife." He smiled. "They specialize in reptiles and birds. Why?"

"He was the vet for a client of mine before he retired. She needs her dog's records, needs to prove rabies vaccination."

Longmont thought a moment, then said, "I'll call 'em in the morning. Everything's boxed up. I know how Viktor kept his records. They'll never find it." Longmont started the car, smiling faintly. "Although there is a certain logic to it."

"What?"

"He kept the rabies certificates filed under Old Yeller." Longmont grinned widely and waved.

Laughing, John backed into his driveway and let out a piercing whistle, guaranteed to call cabs in New York. Running shapes came out of the darkness, bounding beside him, barking excitedly. Flint, Jake, Hooper. They went into their pens after a cautious approach, their security and faith in their shelter disturbed by events earlier. He checked each gate. None had been damaged maliciously, just swiftly unlatched and opened. He went to the last kennel in the row, Jagger's temporary quarters. Its gate swung eerily in the evening breeze, and there was no sign of the golden retriever anywhere.

"Jagger!" He whistled and chirped.

Flint paced up and down his run, and gave a low growl. John stood, wheeling about in all directions, but no dog came in answer.

Unhappily, he trotted to the office. The outer door also swung open, but there was damage to the frame. It looked as if someone had taken a tire iron to it, popped the doorknob and latch completely out of the frame. He ran his hand along the splintered wood, then stepped in and immediately, savage barks and ivoried fangs lashed at him.

John scrambled as Sultry snarled and crouched, protecting the inner doorway to the storeroom. Behind her, newly roused pups let out tiny mewlings of noise, only now becoming aware of the world of sound as their puppy ear workings had begun to open to it. He snapped his fingers and the canine dropped to her chest, blinking, lips curled.

He calmed her, talking to her, giving her the commands she knew so well. The bitch finally let out a low whine, in apology, and rolled to her side. He put a hand down and rubbed her gently.

"I know, girl, I know. Good girl. Guard those babies of yours. It's all right now." He thumped her rib cage. Then he reached up, got a lead hanging off the hook on the wall, and snapped it to her collar, to take her out to the exercise yard. He searched the grounds and looked up into the foothills behind, but there was no sight of anything four-footed wandering the night.

All the dogs had stayed close despite their loosing. All but Jagger. Had he run off… or had someone taken him? It was a twenty-minute crosstown run to Charlie's. He wondered if the dog had decided to go home on his own. Across streets and highway and even deserted stretches where coyotes claimed territory. It was not that far, but the dog had never been that way before.

He didn't know how he could return to Charlie's without him, but it looked as if he had no choice.

* * *

Charlie staggered away from the rear of the kitchen as blue-gray smoke curled toward her, choking, stinging her eyes. Orange-red tongues licked up the far corner and back of the house, eating into the textile studio, where the walls were thinner, not the adobelike thickness of the original bungalow. She ran back to the living room and dialed 911, blurted out the address at the operator and added, "This is old Laguna. The big trucks can't get down the streets!"

Swiftly, the operator replied, "I'll note that, Miss. Get in the clear and wait."

Charlie dropped the phone without responding. Her textile works would go up in a flash. She had no hope of saving anything there. But on a diagonal, the painting studio stood, and that was where she ran.

The lights flickered and went out. In darkness made thicker by smoke and growing heat, she got down the hall and into the studio, grabbing up canvases, staggering to the front door and throwing them as far as she could onto the lawn. She could hear the faint, faraway wail of a siren and prayed that it was for her home. She turned and bolted back inside, using her hands to propel herself down the hall.

Glass crackled and exploded at the rear of the house. It shattered like chimes and there was a whoosh, a tremendous intake that seemed to make her ears pop. The sliding glass doors must have gone, and the air being sucked in now fed the inferno to new heights. She could feel the reflected heat, already intense.

Her leg threatened to buckle under her. Charlie gasped, her throat burning, her eyes clouded with tears and smoke. She grabbed more canvases, not heavy but bulky… four, five, and stumbled back to the front door. Someone met her there, pushed her aside roughly, grabbing the paintings from her. She could not see his face, staggering on the threshold.

She turned back to get the last of them. She could hear the retired Navy officer across the street begin to shout orders for hoses. Bent over, holding the hem of her shirt to her face, she hobbled to the studio a last time to salvage what she could.

She got the last of the paintings under one arm, and the scrapbook she had been reading. Smoke began to curl in, along the floor, rising quickly, sucking the air out, bringing immense heat with it. She reeled back, knowing she might not get out this time, suddenly afraid.

She thought she heard sirens or it might have been the scream of her own pulse in her ears. Bumping along the dark corridor in which smoke even obliterated the light of flames, Charlie hunched determinedly. Her leg gave out. She fell, coughing and gasping rawly for air.

She heard a dog barking, loud, frantic. She crawled toward the noise, clutching the scrapbook and last of the canvases she could carry. Her lungs felt as though they would burst, as if she were drowning.

Like a cloak, a blanket, smoke covered her. Dragged her down. Heat rolled through the house. She could hear windows all over begin to crack and shatter. It seemed to be all she could hear.

Somewhere that dog kept barking. Sharp. Insistent. Charlie pulled herself to the noise.

She called out as she drew near what must be the front door… though she could not see, no longer had any sense of where she was in her own home. Her voice failed her.

Charlie sank to the floor, gasping.

A form burst through the smoke and began to paw and nip at her, wet nose to her heat-shriveled face, grasping at her wrist and then the shoulder of her shirt, pulling, nudging. Teeth sharp enough to cut through her lassitude. Pain brisk enough to make her gasp for breath.

Charlie tried to rouse for Jagger. She could hear sirens shrill and near, then cut off sharply. The dog dug at her and, coughing heavily, she started to crawl after him.

Her lungs failed her. She sank down a last time. Jagger swiped her face and let out a mournful howl. It was the last she knew.

* * *

Ruby saw the dark clouds flowing into the evening sky, and then the abrupt stop of sirens nearby, and he felt his heart begin to thump uncomfortably. Fire… close… too close… to Charlie's. As he pulled the van into the terraced hillside, he could see the engines blocking the lower end of the street, and he did not take time to look any further. Jumping the curb, he pulled to the street above, rammed the van into a driveway and jumped out, leaping side yards and back fences, getting to Charlie's the quickest way he knew how, as smoke billowed gray as water hoses hit the conflagration.

There were no words to form his thoughts. He vaulted the last side gate into her driveway, the air and drive slick with water and steam, and ran to the front, where a wispy-haired woman was gathering up what looked like paintings, pulling them out from the path of firemen laying more hose down. He grabbed the nearest slickered fireman. "Did she get out? Did you get her out?"

The fireman shrugged him aside. "Let me do my job. Go around front." He braced himself as the hose line he held suddenly filled with incredible pressure, threatening to knock him off his feet.

John made his way to the front of the house, already his mouth and nose and throat full of the pollution, the smoke, the awful smell of the fire. The headlights of the fire trucks cut across the lawn. He could see a fireman/paramedic on his knees, giving CPR. He leaped forward and pulled the man back, and saw that the limp form in his arms was that of the dog.

Jagger lay stretched out, his golden-red form still, his paws red sores. Some lavender-haired woman he had never seen before, a chenille bathrobe clutched around her, sobbed.

"He was so brave. He kept running back in for her…"

The fireman gave him a puzzled look and John let go of his shoulder. He stood up and looked at the woman.

"Did she get out? Is Charlie out of there, for God's sake? Someone tell me they got Charlie out!"

The woman looked at him, and began to bob her head in nervous reaction. The fireman working on Jagger jerked his face aside suddenly as the dog let out a choking gasp and then began to breathe, his tail thumping the grass weakly.

"We wouldn't 'ave found her, but he took us to where she collapsed. She's over on the other lawn. Smoke inhalation. Pretty bad. Soon as we can get the ambulance up here, they're transporting her." The fireman stroked Jagger. "This is one damn fine dog."

He picked Jagger up in his arms and carried him over to the other lawn, where he could see two firemen/paramedics kneeling beside Charlie. He knelt down, laying the dog next to her, her face obscured by the oxygen mask and bubble which the tech pumped to a regular count.