by Kevin Hearne
The sounds of training ended and a couple of barks announced the approach of hounds, at least, if not the man himself. But he did arrive, though I couldn’t see him over the fence. I just heard him ask Atticus, “Can I help you?” in a sort of tight, muted English accent, like he had lived with severe constipation all his life and hadn’t heard about fiber. Atticus told him he was investigating a series of Grand Champion abductions and wanted to ask a few questions about his missing Airedale terrier.
“Yes. All right. Wait on the front porch, please. I’ll be around in a moment.”
As we walked back to the front I said,
Imagine a sausage, Atticus said after a pause.
But with all the flavor and joy sucked out of it. Just a tube of inert matter.
You’ll see for yourself in a few moments.
I’m not the finest judge of human fashion, but you didn’t have to be a genius to see that Gordon Petrie was trying to be normal and failing. As soon as he came through the front door I knew he was all kinds of wrong. First, he was wearing a type of pants that Atticus said were called slacks, and that’s not something you should be wearing if you’re training dogs. And if you’re wearing them ironically then you should have some dog hair on them to demonstrate that you allow your hounds to touch you or that your hounds want to play, but Gordon’s slacks were crisp and hairless. His shoes were the dressy black sort and highly polished. His long-sleeved white shirt was buttoned all the way to the top and at the wrists too. And a curious thin line of dark hair traced his jaw and formed a house shape around his mouth, the mustache part as strangely thin as the rest of it. Where had I seen that before? When I remembered, I had to warn my Druid.
Oh my gods, Oberon, don’t make me laugh right now.
“May I ask how you heard of me, sir?” Gordon said.
“Absolutely,” Atticus replied, pulling out one of his fake business cards and offering it to him. “I’m an animal rights advocate looking into this matter on behalf of Earnest Goggins-Smythe down in Eugene. His poodle was kidnapped like your Airedale and some others. There’s been a rash of them in Oregon and Washington, and now someone’s dead.”
Gordon didn’t even look at Atticus’s card or move to take it. He quite purposely folded his arms across his chest. I was pretty sure that meant, in human terms, that he was being a dick. One that smelled like lemons and rubbing alcohol.
“Yes, I’ve heard about the passing of Verity Boone-Sutcliffe,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Indeed. I got a call from a detective in Portland. She asked if you’d been to see me yet.”
“Ah, that will save me some explanation then. Could you tell me if your other dogs were drugged with food or a tranquilizer dart?”
“With food during the night. They were unconscious when I found them in the morning.” Atticus still held out his business card and Gordon’s eyes flicked down to it and then back to Atticus. His nostrils flared.
I know, but keeping it in his face is making him uncomfortable.
“Look, let me save us both some time,” Gordon said. “I’ll tell you what I told the detective. Julia Garcia did it. She kidnapped all these dogs, reported hers stolen too, and then left town when she killed Verity. She’s absolutely heinous and I hope she suffers in prison.”
“All right…how do you know that for sure?”
“She lacks a moral compass and tries to undermine other trainers in competitions instead of training her client animals to a superlative standard.”
“Okay, so you obviously bear a professional grudge against her, but do you have any proof she took your dog—what’s his name, anyway?”
“His name is Queen Victoria Who Put Her Prince Albert in a Can.”
I think so because he’s waiting for a reaction, but I’m not giving him one.
“And no, I haven’t any proof,” Gordon huffed once it was clear Atticus wasn’t going to crack a smile. “Finding that is what detectives are for. I’m just sharing what I know, and what I know is that Julia Garcia is pure evil.”
I chuffed in disbelief, and Gordon looked down at me and frowned as I shook my head at him. Who’s he to call someone else pure evil when he grooms himself to look like a Disney villain? He opened his mouth to say something about me but Atticus didn’t let him.
“Do you know if Julia has any other dogs besides the Grand Champion Italian greyhound?” he asked, and Gordon returned his gaze to Atticus, but noticed that the card was still hanging in the air between them.
“She used to have two others. I don’t know if she still does.”
“How do you know she’s left town? She’s in Tacoma.”
“Detective Ibarra informed me and asked if I knew where she might be. The answer’s no, I have no idea.”
“Thanks for your time. Please call me if you think of anything else.” Atticus thrust his business card right in front of Gordon’s eyes and then dropped it, turning away. “Come on, hounds.”
We trotted after him and Gordon said nothing, but I saw that he let the business card fall to the porch and he stepped on it like it was a spider.
Me neither. And that goes for Starbuck too.
Yes, I do.
I bet that if you look into their past you will find that they either dated at one time or he asked Julia out and she rejected him. Something like that, anyway. He’s behaving like he has a personal grudge against her, not a professional one.
No, I didn’t.
Hmm. It’s a long shot, but it would be best to check, wouldn’t it?
All right, I’ll cast camouflage, shape-shift to an owl, and fly back there to take a look. Let’s find a place for you and Starbuck to chill out while I do that.
Atticus tied us up, loosely, to an outdoor table in front of a coffee shop. Everyone would assume he was inside and would return soon. When no one was looking he winked out of sight, stripped, and put his clothes on the table. He dropped the camouflage off them when he was finished and asked me to guard them, then he shifted and hooted once before flying off.
Starbuck and I got petted a lot by people going in and out of the shop, and that made the time go by fast. It didn’t seem that long, anyway, until I heard Atticus in my head in his slightly muffled animal voice.
Chapter 6:
The Brazen
English Setter
Maneuver
When we got to the dog park in Eugene, Atticus restored the batteries to his phones and called Earnest. Until Earnest got there, Atticus said, we could just enjoy ourselves. Starbuck and I did just that, playing around with a hyper yellow Labrador as a yappy little Pomeranian criticized us for having too much fun. Toy breeds were always like that since they didn’t have legs long enough to do anything except jump into a human’s lap and stay there.
Algernon showed up soon thereafter, in a much better mood than I saw him the first time, and he barreled right into us, and we had ourselves an old-fashioned dog pile, Starbuck mixing it up with the big dogs despite being less than half our size. Algy was a ton of fun to wrestle with now that he wasn’t trying to rip my throat out. The Pomeranian was outraged that we dared to frolic and roughhouse so freely.
I did break it off pretty quickly, though, because I didn’t want Earnest to worry and I also wanted to hear what Atticus was going to ask him. The other hounds weren’t ready to quit, though. They thought I wanted to be chased and they were going to grant my wish. So when I disengaged and trotted over to Atticus and Earnest, they were nipping at my hind legs, and I had to speed up. That got us all running in circles around the humans as they talked, and holy angry badger balls, I had no idea how irritating Pomeranians could be when they got worked up like that one did.
Atticus was mostly just talking about finding Verity and Starbuck so I didn’t miss anything. The yellow Lab and the Pomeranian got called away by their owners after a few thousand laps so it was just me, Algy, and Starbuck, and we all took a break an equal distance away from each other, points in a triangle around our humans, to pant a bit and recover our strength, watching to see who would start the shenanigans again.
But it turned out not to be any of us. Well, maybe it was Starbuck. But really he was just reacting. Two English setters rocketed by us to go see the yellow Labrador, and Earnest said, “Hey, that’s Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth.” He looked over his shoulder and waved at a woman jogging toward us from the parking lot. It was the one who had stripes on her legs before, which she didn’t have this time but I’m pretty sure she was still a Huguenot, whatever that was, and her hair still didn’t match her eyebrows. “Hey there, Tracie.”
“Hey guys!” she called from a distance.
While she caught up Earnest said in a lower tone to Atticus, “I hope you don’t mind. I invited her along to hear what happened.”
Atticus shrugged. “Not at all.” And once Tracie got close enough to smell, Starbuck started barking his head off like that Pomeranian, except he was as unhinged as Imhotep’s jaw in The Mummy. His lips peeled back and showed maximum teeth, and when a dog is genuinely angry you can hear it in their bark, too. It’s the difference between a territorial “Hey, this is mine!” kind of thing versus “I will gnaw on your arm fat and chew on your cheek meat and bury you in my backyard if you get any closer!” Starbuck looked and sounded like he was going to latch onto her face any second and Tracie pulled up as Atticus hurried to calm him down.
“Whoa, whoa there, Starbuck,” he said, kneeling down and looping a finger underneath his collar.
“Starbuck?” Tracie said.
“Yeah, you recognize him?”
“No, uh—” Starbuck was still barking ferociously so it was no wonder she hesitated. “Just a cool name, that’s all.”
“Sure you don’t recognize him? He belonged to Verity in Portland.”
“That’s Verity’s Boston terrier?”
“Yep.” Atticus spoke to me via our mental link. Oberon, Starbuck is positive that Tracie is the person who shot Verity and killed her, intentionally or not. He recognizes her scent. That’s why he’s going nucking futs.
No! I trust Starbuck’s nose but no human court will. We have to get proof so the human police can arrest her.
Well, she’s probably going to leave so that Starbuck can calm down. You kind of trail after her and just listen in case she’s upset and says something useful, and I’ll try to think of what else we can do. If she kidnapped the other hounds, we need to find out where she’s keeping them.
Atticus got a firmer grasp on Starbuck and apologized to Tracie for his behavior. “I’m sorry,” he half-shouted over the barking. “He’s touchy like Algy was yesterday. Verity’s dead, you know.”
“She’s dead?” Her hand flew to her mouth, which is what humans often do when they want to say “Oh, shit!” but don’t think it’s the right time. And maybe her surprise was real. She could have shot Verity in a panic that night, and left the house thinking she was only asleep and would wake up soon, no harm done.
“Yep,” Atticus said. “Found in her home with a dart in her, just like the one Earnest found in Algy.”
“Oh my God. But if it was a tranquilizer, how did that kill her?”
My Druid shrugged. “The autopsy’s not back yet. But the police are certainly looking into these hound abductions a lot closer now that there’s murder involved.”
“Oh, God. This is terrible. I just…I have to go. I’m sorry. Poor Verity.” Her eyes welled up and leaked and she turned away, walking back to the parking lot. She called for her hounds, who hardly had any time to play, and Earnest hollered that he would call her later.
Okay, buddy, you’re up, Atticus said, staying put with Starbuck firmly in his grasp.
I started wagging my tail and pranced after her, and she didn’t even notice because her English setters came running over, and she thought the footfalls were all theirs. She never even looked back to check—she just pulled out her phone and tapped at the screen a few times before putting it up to her ear. Her hounds were cool, and they sniffed at me as we walked, but I wasn’t interested in them at the moment. Somebody picked up her call and I listened in to her side.
“Mary. Listen. You need to get rid of the poodle now—all of them, actually. Right away. They could connect me to something awful.” There was a short pause and then she continued. “I don’t want to say on the phone, but trust me, it’s big trouble. So can you do it?” Her face scrunched up as she listened to the answer and I shot an update to Atticus.
We need to track Mary down, then.
Tracie spoke again, wiping tears from her cheek. “Clive has him? Well when’s he getting back?” She waited for a response and replied, “How late?”
Atticus whispered an idea in my head: Oberon, if you can grab her phone without biting or scratching her at all and get it to me, we can find out who she’s talking to and save the hounds.
Yes. Make it look like an accident. You’re going to take that phone like you’re playing fetch or something.
“Well, have him do it as soon as he gets back. Don’t wait until tomorrow,” Tracie was saying.
I was glad to have the English setters on my ass right then because I—or rather Atticus—could blame what I was about to do on them. I spun and gave one of them a quick nip on the ear and barked once to get them riled up, then it was just two quick bounds to plow into the back of Tracie’s legs and the fun began.
Humans are pretty easy to figure out if you want to take them down. Plant your paws in the middle of their back and they’l
l fall face first and put their arms out to break their fall. I didn’t want that because then she’d most likely be on top of her phone. But if you can make a human fall backward, and one or both of their arms are kind of raised from their sides, as Tracie’s was with her phone to her ear, then the arms windmill in panic, going up in the air in a futile attempt to catch their balance before rotating down to find the ground before the back of their head does. When I swept her legs out and she toppled backward toward the ground with a “Whoop!” her conversation ended and reflexes took over. Her arms flew up and the phone sailed out of her hand in an arc—no, what’s that math word?—parabola! Gotta remember to ask Atticus for a snack for that one. Her fingers splayed out behind her to take the impact, and she actually hit the ground on her backside before her phone did. It was in one of those plastic protector case thingies, a sensible precaution against drops, and I spun and leapt for it as her English setters came after me. I bowled right between them, scooped up the phone between my lips as a faint tinny voice said, “Tracie? What’s happening?” and sprinted full speed away from there toward Atticus.
The English setters were all in now, woofing as they pelted after me, and that was perfect, because that’s the first thing Tracie saw when she got to her feet. She couldn’t say I was a bad dog when it looked like her own two hounds were responsible for the “accident.”
“Damn it! Mr. Darcy! Elizabeth! Get back here!” she shouted.
Atticus was squatting down on the ground, still holding on to a supremely agitated Starbuck with his right hand. I angled my run so as to pass by on his left and let the phone fall from my mouth as I passed. He snatched it out of the air, and the English setters just churned on past, and since it looked like fun, Algernon barked and came along to see if he could catch up. Atticus gave me a play-by-play as I led a merry chase.