by Jen Blood
Ignoring the voice, I pulled my phone from my pocket and selected Bear’s name on my contact list.
To my relief, he picked up on the second ring, sounding distant and nonplussed.
“What’s up?” he asked, nothing light or welcoming in the tone. I frowned.
“Where are you? We got a call to head over to the mainland.”
“Couldn’t sleep. I was over at the galley, talking to Ren.”
“At three in the morning?”
“It’s three hours earlier in California,” he reminded me.
“Okay. So, at midnight? Doesn’t she have work?”
“She was up, okay? Geez. You said we got a call?”
“Yeah. Put Casper in and meet me at the pier. Something happened at Nancy’s.”
I expected a barrage of questions, Bear’s usual response to a call. Instead, he said only, “I’ll be right there.”
He disconnected without another word. I put my phone away, unable to shake the feeling of dread that lingered in the silence that followed. I waited for Brock to return, every muscle knotted.
This time, he didn’t come.
#
By four a.m., the island had mobilized and my crew was headed for the mainland to help with the search for Albie and the escaped animals. Unfortunately, right now that crew was seriously shorthanded. Ren and her dog Minion were both gone, though I hoped they would return eventually. We still weren’t sure what she would be doing in the fall, and I knew the uncertainty was taking a toll on Bear. Her father, Carl, had also been an important part of our team. With the two of them gone and no new hires brought on board yet, every call was a challenge in logistics.
Regardless, we made do.
Our ragged team piled into the Flint K-9 cargo van while it was still dark outside. Monty Caldwell, an ex-con who was now my second in command at Flint K-9, was behind the wheel with me beside him in the passenger seat, Bear and another of my most reliable hires— Sarah Prescott—beside him. Sarah was short and slender, with innumerable piercings, tattoos, and—today, at least—pink hair shaved almost to her scalp. The shade changed regularly, though this had been her preferred style for some time now. Therese climbed into the back with her cell phone glued to her ear.
I’d gotten my phone out twice with the intention of calling Jack before ultimately returning it to my pocket. Maybe I would call him once I had a better idea of what we were facing. For now, it seemed silly to get him out of bed just because I felt better having him around.
I’d been getting periodic updates via text about the status of the search since first hearing from Tracy. So far, all of the farm animals had been located, along with twenty-two dogs and a dozen cats. I thought of the two immense barns with animals coming out the seams, and shook my head. It still boggled my mind that someone would have seen fit to set every one of them loose.
“What’s the count on the animals again?” Monty asked me as he pulled out of the Littlehope town landing parking lot.
Bear recited the numbers Julie had given us the day before, then added, “The numbers are always changing, since a lot of animals die on Nancy’s watch. It’s all just best guess, basically.”
I thought of Bear’s apparent familiarity with Nancy’s place the day before. “You said you and Ren went there before? Without me, I mean?”
There was a pause, and I realized he was trying to decide how much to tell me. I missed Ren immediately. Where Bear can be secretive, forever trying to solve his problems on his own, I could always count on Ren to come to me when it mattered most.
“We thought we could convince her to give some of the animals up,” he finally confessed. “Or at least, maybe we could help her with them. We went there a few times this winter.”
“When was the last time the two of you went?” I asked.
He thought for a second. “End of April, maybe?”
“Why did you stop going?”
He didn’t say anything. I thought back to that time frame, and recalled one Saturday afternoon in particular. Bear had come home with bruises, and a dog bite on his ankle that he’d been far too vague about explaining.
“The bite you had to get stitches for?” I asked. “Did that happen at Nancy’s place? You told me it was a dog training client.”
“If I told you it was one of Nancy’s dogs, you would have freaked out. Reaver didn’t mean anything by it, just got nervous because I made a sudden move. It was my own fault.”
“That was a deep wound,” I said. “You needed half a dozen stitches. Did you even find out if he’d had his shots? What the hell were you thinking?”
“Ren followed up with Nancy,” Bear said, his voice tight in defense. “And she was obsessed with making sure it didn’t get infected—you know how Ren is. I watched the bite, was up to date on my tetanus… Ren would have made me say something if anything went wrong.”
“That wasn’t her call, though,” I said. The rest of the van was quiet, and I knew this wasn’t the time or the place to be having this discussion. Regardless, I wanted to make sure Bear had some idea of how serious the consequences could have been for this kind of omission. “I know you two are used to dealing with a lot of responsibility—a hell of a lot more than most kids your age. That doesn’t mean you can just go around me when the truth is inconvenient. It’s still up to me to keep you safe.”
“I’m eighteen now,” Bear reminded me unnecessarily. Like I wasn’t there eighteen years ago, when he was tearing up my insides on his way out. “It’s not up to you to do anything at all for me. It hardly matters anymore, though, does it? Ren’s gone. You don’t have to worry about us going around you anymore.”
His tone was sullen, like he was just spoiling for a fight. He’d been going back and forth between two moods ever since Ren left, like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to beat the crap out of somebody or just curl up and cry. Personally, I wasn’t crazy about either choice.
“I miss her too, you know,” I said. Though it was dark in the van, I could see Bear shift in his seat. “But you don’t see me being a jerk to everybody around me because of it. And as for your being eighteen meaning I’m not responsible for you anymore, that’s a load of horse crap and you know it. Just because legally I may not have to put a roof over your head now doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about every move you make. I don’t get to retire just because you had a birthday.”
“Mm hmm.”
So much for that conversation. I chose not to push anything further in the presence of the others, but I really wasn’t loving this brooding, humorless new side to my son. He’d always been serious, but this was ridiculous.
“Well, however many animals she had out here,” Monty interrupted, steering us along an almost-empty stretch of Route 97 as the sun came up on the horizon, “it hardly matters. Chances are, she didn’t even know how many there were. I still don’t understand what she could have been thinking, letting things get this bad.”
Monty had been working with me for seven years now, and there was no mistaking the disapproval in his voice. I’d hired him the day he was released from the Maine State Prison, on a recommendation from a friend who ran a canine training program with the inmates there. He could be irreverent and outspoken, but so far I hadn’t had a single moment’s regret since bringing him on board.
“She was crazy,” Bear said. “Trust me, there was no reasoning with her. We should have taken them all yesterday.”
“We weren’t getting them out of there without a fight yesterday,” I said. “This was the only way.”
“Yeah, this is so much better than getting a few cops involved and just getting it over with when we were already there,” Bear said dryly.
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. If I’d known something like this would happen, I would’ve pushed her harder. We couldn’t have known.”
“I still don’t get how anybody could do this,” Bear said. “She claimed she loved them, but you saw them yesterday. Animals half dead, starving, mangy, wi
th who knows what kinds of diseases. Killing each other, biting anything that moved… If she loved them, she had a funny way of showing it.” The anger hummed from his body.
“It’s not up to us to figure out what she was thinking,” I said. “We leave that up to the investigators.”
“Right,” Bear muttered. “We just go in afterward and clean up the mess.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence, though Bear’s words lingered in my head for the remainder of the drive.
Chapter 4
NANCY’S HOUSE WAS OVERRUN with police cars, ambulance, and fire trucks when we arrived shortly before six that morning. There were plenty of civilian cars as well, most of them equipped with at least one dog crate or a stack of cat carriers, while volunteers stalked the premises in search of one more rogue dog, cat, cow, or rabbit to save.
“Where are the animals you’ve already gotten?” I asked Tracy when I reached her, standing beside the Pope Humane Society van. Her dark hair was pulled back, and she wore jeans and a man’s flannel shirt—both of them filthy. The day hadn’t even started yet, and it had already been a long one.
“We’re triaging out back,” she said. “Thank God, the animals in the barns and the farm yard were right where Nancy left them—looks like it was just the guys in the house who got out.”
“There’s a fence, though,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t they have just been confined to the yard?”
“Front gate was open, too,” she said, grimacing. “Whoever did this, I don’t know what in hell they were thinking. But then, I almost never do where people are concerned. Animals are so much easier to figure.” She took a second to get herself back on track, then added, “I have three stock trailers people have donated. The problem is, a couple of fosters backed out at the last minute, and we found a bunch of animals at the back of the big barn nobody seemed to know about. Which means I have a few more placements to deal with.”
I glanced at Therese, standing beside me with arms crossed over her ample bosom and a knowing expression on her face.
“How many can we take?”
“Realistically?” She weighed the question. “Bear already committed to a donkey and ram he checked out yesterday, I guess. We have room for a couple more of the farm animals. Maybe the rest of the sheep. We need to redo the fencing out on that northern pasture on the island. Our pygmies have trashed it.”
I grimaced. We’d been having fencing wars with Randy, Rowdy, and Piper, three rescued pygmy goats, since Bear got them from a hoarding situation in New Hampshire last fall.
“We’re in good enough shape to take the whole sheep herd here and not be stretched too thin, though,” Therese continued. “I know there are a couple of cows—”
“Already got placements for the cows, the chickens, and the rabbits,” Tracy said. The beauty of living in a rescue-friendly rural community. “We need a place for the dogs—at least the ones the police say aren’t a danger.”
“We’ve got an entire building with empty kennels,” Bear said immediately, leaping into the conversation head first. “We can take whoever you need.”
“Not so fast,” I stopped him. “We have a new shipment of trainees coming next month. We tell the shelters we’re not taking them, and those dogs die.”
“That gives us a month to work with these guys. We can figure it out.”
At Flint K-9, we work with high-kill shelters around the country to find dogs with the right energy, build, and temperament for search and rescue, police work, or to serve as therapy or assistance dogs. We pull those dogs off the euthanasia list, bring them to our facility out on Windfall Island, and then work with the dogs on the basics—housetraining, basic commands, and socialization—before either training them ourselves for search and rescue or sending them to affiliate groups who will train them in another specialty. It’s a constant juggling act to ensure we have the space to take in new dogs when necessary while still making sure we’re turning out top-notch working dogs who will go on to live out happy, healthy lives in forever homes once they make the transition from Flint K-9.
Therese raised her eyebrows at me, but said nothing. I did the calculations. It was true: right now we had twenty empty kennels, and were in a rare position to be able to work twenty-four-seven on rehabbing and re-homing these dogs. Dogs who had, up until last night, known only one kind soul in their lifetimes—and that kind soul had nearly killed them.
“We need to approach this with as much organization as possible,” I said, my focus on Bear. “That means you’re in charge—completely—of house training, nutrition, socialization, and everything else that goes along with this. You don’t have Ren to help you, but you have access to our staff and resources to make things happen. All that said… This means you’re responsible for coordinating this whole thing. It’s a big job.”
“I can handle it,” he said, without a second’s thought.
I have faith in my kid, but I definitely had some reservations this time around. Regardless, I nodded. “Okay, then. We can take up to twenty dogs that you think we can either re-home given the right training, or send to long-term foster placements if that’s the better solution. I leave it up to you to decide how to run things from there.”
He grinned at me, dark eyes alight. After the way he’d been acting for the past month, that light was a relief. Bear has always loved a challenge.
“You got it,” he said. And then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Thanks, Mom.”
I nodded. Most parents dread the question, “Mom, can I keep him?” I have no sympathy until their kid starts asking, “Mom, can I keep the whole kennel?”
Monty had been back in triage checking out the other animals, but now he returned to me at a light jog, phone in hand. “They just got a call about a rabid dog over on River Road, about a mile from here. Said it’s a giant tan and white pit bull, frothing at the mouth.”
“The dog that was chained out back—Reaver,” I said to Tracy. “Is he still here?”
Tracy shook her head. “No. We’ve gotten complaints about him before, so that was one of the first things I checked. Somebody must have let him loose.”
“You think that could be him over on River Road?” Monty asked, then reconsidered. “Giant pit bull frothing at the mouth sounds about right, I guess.”
Tracy frowned. “There’s some cowboy who’s afraid of dogs who lives not far from here. He’s got guns, and he’s certainly not shy about using them. Hank, Nancy’s neighbor, is already over that way trying to catch another couple of dogs spotted over there. I’m sure he could use some help. I was just about to head over myself.”
“I’ll go,” Bear said.
“You stay here,” I said quickly. After the bullet Bear had taken when another cowboy with a gun took a shot at his dog, there was no way I was letting him go that route again. “Take care of the dogs we’ve already got here, and start working up assessments. Tracy and I will handle Reaver.”
To my surprise, he didn’t argue. In fact, he looked a little relieved. Maybe Bear didn’t come through everything in Vermont last year quite so painlessly after all.
“Let’s go, then,” Tracy said to me. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got before somebody decides to take matters into their own hands.”
#
The sun was just coming up over the ridge on River Road when we got there, a ball of pink and gold that hovered above the tree line. Cushing is a fishing village—and not the kind tourists flock to. It’s a rough town that keeps to itself, somehow managing to maintain an air of unapproachability when neighboring villages very much like it have been overrun by wealthy out-of-staters. Land is cheap and life is tough, but the area is beautiful.
Hank was waiting for us when we got there, smoking a cigarette as he leaned against a red pickup parked on the side of the road. He tossed the butt on the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of his Bean boot, then glanced at me when I glared at him. After a second-long standoff, he bent with some effort and picke
d it up.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’d think littering was a federal offense, the way some people carry on,” he said.
“It’s a hard world when a man can’t even dump his toxic crap on the ground without being called on it,” I said.
He grunted.
“No in-fighting now, you two,” Tracy said. “It’s bad enough I’ve got to deal with it with the animals. My people better pull themselves together and get along. You two met, right? Jamie Flint, Hank Williams. Hank, meet Jamie.”
“We met,” I confirmed. I raised an eyebrow at Hank. “Hank Williams?”
“No relation to the singers. My mom was just a fan. It’s good to meet you, officially. I’ve certainly heard enough about you and your crew out on the island.”
I wasn’t sure whether what he’d heard was good or bad, and he didn’t elaborate. Instead, to my relief, he got down to business.
“We already caught three of the dogs out here—I just sent Mandy back with those. The pit bull seems to be the last of ’em. He was out that way last I saw him.” He nodded toward the west. “Running deer, so you know nobody’ll stand for that too long.”
“No,” I agreed, grim. “What did he look like?”
“Big brown and white pit bull, mangy and half-starved. It’s Reaver all right.”
“I take it you heard about Nancy,” Tracy said.
Hank grunted again. He patted the front pocket of his flannel shirt, pulled out a pack of Marlboros, and lit up. “They know who did it yet?”
“They haven’t given us any details yet,” Tracy said. “I heard rumblings that it was a heart attack. You heard different?”
“Just rumors down to Bob’s Market. Nobody knows anything for sure. I heard tell from one of the deputies though, off the record, that there was some cleanup that needed to be done. Blood. Used the words ‘brain matter.’ That doesn’t sound much like a heart attack to me.”
My stomach turned. It was just rumor, I reminded myself, and rumors run rampant in small towns like this. Still… They usually have some basis in truth.