“What the hell?” he said, and whipped one of those backhand blows in my direction. Real quick for a human, but I caught that backhanding hand in my mouth and bit down. He cried out, his voice suddenly high and scared and no longer nasty. Could it have hurt that bad? I didn’t think so and gave my head a quick shake, back and forth, in the hope of sending the message about what was what. But maybe it didn’t get through, because all that happened was more screaming, followed by flailing, and what was this? Brass knuckles appearing from under the seat? Then we were rolling around a bit, and he was fumbling with his free hand for the knucks—a weapon we hate, me and Bernie—and kneeing me in the face, and I was growling, and Anya was shouting, “Chet! Chet!” and then suddenly her door opened and we tumbled out, except for Guy, who somehow stayed inside.
I rolled over a few times, found my feet. By that time, the car had started up. It swung around in a wild circle, tires shrieking on the pavement, and sped off down the mountain road, headlights out, passenger door wide open. The smell of burned rubber rose in the night air. I turned toward Anya.
SEVENTEEN
The moon had risen over the treetops and I saw that Anya’s nose was bleeding from both nostrils, the blood like two black streaks on her moon-whitened skin. She sat on the road, hugging her knees and crying softly. Poor Anya. I went over to her and licked off her tears and blood at the same time, a rich and heady mixture, I don’t mind telling you.
She hugged me. “Oh, Chet,” she said. “What’s going on? Where’s Bernie?”
I started panting, not sure why, and sat down beside her. She wiped her face on the back of her arm and pulled out her cell phone. Was that like panting? What a crazy thought: I forgot it immediately. Anya flipped open the phone, squinted at the screen, said, “No goddamn service.” She stuck the phone back in her pocket. “What are we going to do?” Her eyes teared up. I gave her a little nudge with my head. Whatever we were going to do—and I had no ideas on that subject—we’d have to start by getting up.
Anya gave me a look. Her eyes cleared. “I told Bernie the truth,” she said to me. “Maybe I just put the emphasis in the wrong places.”
What did that mean? You tell me. All I knew was this: time to get up. I nudged Anya again, somewhat harder. She put her hand on my back and rose. At that moment, a flashlight shone on the path that led from the cabins down to the parking lot. The beam poked this way and that, then steadied, shining in our direction although not reaching us. We moved toward it. A man called, “Who’s down there? What’s going on?” I recognized the voice. It was Ranger Rob.
We came together at the entrance to the parking lot. Ranger Rob shone the light on Anya, then at me, then at the ground. His leathery face, illuminated from the bottom up, seemed older than before: people’s faces aged quickly sometimes—I’d seen it more than once—and they never went the other way, even when things were going good.
“Ms., uh, Vereen?” he said, his voice not as strong as I remembered it, more like the voice of old Mr. Parsons next door back home in the Valley. “I thought I heard some commotion on the road, maybe an accident.”
“Any word?” Anya said.
“Word?”
“About Devin, for God’s sake.” From the way Anya said that I could tell she was starting not to like Ranger Rob.
Ranger Rob shook his head, began talking again about a commotion.
“There was no commotion,” Anya said. “We’re looking for Bernie.”
“Ah,” said Ranger Rob.
“Ah?” said Anya. “What does that mean?”
“Just that there’s been some, uh … shocking news on that score.”
I felt Anya’s hand on my shoulder, clutching my fur. “What are you talking about?”
Ranger Rob had a pickup. He drove us down the mountain road, Anya in the passenger seat, me in the cargo bed behind. It didn’t take me long to discover that someone had been eating potato chips in the cargo bed, and pretty recently, judging from the crispness of the few I found. As often happens when a too-small snack puts in an appearance, I realized how hungry I was, but could I find one more measly chip, or anything else edible—and I’m not fussy—for that matter? I ended up licking the cold metal where the chips had lain, and then moved forward, gazing over the roof of the cab.
The wind blew in my face, a feeling I normally love, but my mind was somewhere else, namely on Bernie. I kept thinking he was back home on Mesquite Road, and I had to get there, too. Was that where we were going now? I peered into the night— hey, the same way our headlights were boring into the mountain darkness?—and caught a quick glimpse of a pair of orange eyes glittering by the roadside. Some big shadowy form faded away into the woods. I sniffed the air and picked up a whiff of that locker-room-laundry-hamper scent I’d first smelled on the trail. A puzzler, but I didn’t puzzle over it for long: my mind swung back to Bernie.
We came to a fork in the road, our lights sweeping over a sign with writing on it. What did Bernie always say at a time like that? “In the words of Yogi Berra, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Bernie always got a kick out of that, and so I did, too, although the meaning wasn’t clear. Was Yogi Berra a perp? If so, his days on the outside were numbered, whatever that meant exactly.
Left and right were two directions. They came up over and over, but which was which? I never knew. Ranger Rob picked one of them and we kept going, first through a series switchbacks and then on a long winding stretch with some traffic and the glow of a town in the distance. Soon houses were going by, most of them dark, and we slowed down. The road broadened into the main drag of a small western town, the kind with a diner, a couple bars, a few stores, an office building or two. We’d had lots of adventures in small western towns like this, me and Bernie, so right away I felt pretty good about our chances. Chances for what was a question just starting to form in my mind when we parked in front of one of those office buildings. A blue light shone over the door.
Ranger Rob and Anya got out of the pickup. They both looked at me, standing in the back.
“What about Chet?” said Anya.
“The dog?” said Ranger Rob. “He’d better stay in the truck.”
“Chet?” said Anya. “Stay!”
I hopped out. Did I stay for every Tom, Dick, and Harry? I knew plenty of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, and stayed for none of them. I stayed for Bernie.
We went into the office building, not a very tall building, made of brick; I only mention that because bricks have a smell I like. There was a bit of confusion at the doorway and I ended up in the lead. The first person I saw was the deputy named Mack. He sat at a desk strewn with papers, eating from a big box of greasy fries; I knew they were greasy from the smears on his face. He looked up at us, selected a long limp fry, dipped it in a little paper cup of ketchup, and stuck it in his mouth.
We stopped in front of the desk. “Deputy?” said Ranger Rob.
“Yup,” Mack said, and went on chewing, mouth open. I knew one thing right away: I wanted those fries.
“Is the sheriff around?” Ranger Rob said.
“Who wants to know?” said Mack.
Ranger Rob blinked. “I do,” he said.
“Let’s see some ID.”
“ID? But you know me. Rob Townshend? Director of Big Bear Wilderness Camp?”
“Sheriff’s orders,” Mack said. “We got a dangerous prisoner locked up on the premises.” He held out his hand, the ends of his fingers red with ketchup.
Ranger Rob gave Mack his ID. Mack gave it right back, didn’t even glance at it. He made a little two-finger twitching motion at Anya. She handed over her ID. This time he looked carefully, and then looked just as carefully at her. “Picture don’t do you … what’s the word?”
There was a silence. Ranger Rob said, “Justice?”
“Yeah,” said Mack. “That’s it.” Anya turned a stony-faced expression on him, gave Ranger Rob a dose of it, too. Mack reached for another fry, popped it in his mouth as he rose. “This-away,�
� he said.
We followed him toward a door at the back of the room. Now I was in no hurry to be first, happy, in fact to lag far behind. Not to worry: I caught up real quick. Snagging a mouthful of Mack’s fries took no time at all.
Mack knocked on the door. Voices speaking fast and low came from the other side. Mack knocked again. The talking stopped, and I heard Sheriff Laidlaw call, “Yeah?”
“Visitors,” said Mack. “Civilians.”
“The voting kind?” the sheriff said.
Mack eyed us. “Don’ know. Want me to ask?”
The sheriff laughed. “Naw,” he said. “Send ’em in.”
Mack opened the door. We were in a small office that smelled of cigars. Sheriff Laidlaw sat at a desk, a shotgun rack on the wall behind him. On a couch along the side wall lay the cigar smoker, an old dude—string tie, cowboy boots, longish white hair—with his legs stretched out, feet resting on a pillow. Mack went out, closing the door behind him.
The old dude nodded to Ranger Rob. “Rob,” he said.
“Judge,” said Ranger Rob.
The old dude was a judge? There was only one judge I knew well—Judge Jaramillo, down in the Valley. I’d been Exhibit A, Exhibit B being a .44 Magnum I’d dug up out of some perp’s flower bed. Judge Jaramillo had invited me up to sit beside him. Also he’d given me one of those nice pats that let me know he liked me and my kind. Plus, down under his big judging desk where no one could see, there’d been a quick handing over of a biscuit. So: nothing wrong with judges, in my opinion, and I was all set to like the old dude on the couch.
“Judge Stringer meet Ms. Vereen,” Ranger Rob said. “Ms. Vereen’s the mother of the missing boy.”
The judge looked her up and down, real quick, but I caught it. Suzie had a thing about that, and I’d picked it up from her. Why she had a thing about it, and what the whole up-and-down thing meant was a mystery, but I loved Suzie, so it had to be important.
“My very best wishes to you, ma’am,” the judge said. “You can be sure that the public servants of our beautiful county will not rest until little David is brought back safe and sound.”
“Devin,” said Anya.
“Devin?” said the judge. “Interesting name.” He took a drag from his cigar, blew out a narrow stream of wonderful-smelling smoke.
Anya gazed at the judge, eyes narrowing. “Right now I’m not at all sure about your public servants,” she said.
“Oh?” said the judge, tapping cigar ash into a coffee mug.
Anya turned to the sheriff. “Is it true you arrested Bernie Little?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Suspicion of murder,” the sheriff said. “Specifically of the wilderness guide, Turk Rendell.”
“That makes no sense,” Anya said. “Why would Bernie do that? He didn’t know Turk Rendell, hadn’t ever been here in his life before Friday.”
“If so,” the sheriff said, “his attorney will have the opportunity to enter it into the record at the bail hearing.”
“Speaking of which,” said the judge, getting off the couch with a grunt, “since I’m presiding, I’d best not be participating further in this conversation.” He nodded to Anya and Ranger Rob, stuck the cigar in his mouth, and went out through a side door, closing it behind him.
“When is this bail hearing?” Anya said.
“Tuesday, nine a.m.,” said the sheriff. “In our small but historic courtroom upstairs.”
“Who’s Bernie’s lawyer?”
“I believe he’ll be represented by one of our fine public defenders.”
“Are you telling us that Bernie hasn’t called his own lawyer?” Anya said.
“Us?” said the sheriff. “That would be you and Rob, here?”
“Um,” said Ranger Rob, looking down at the floor. I looked down, too, and spotted a popcorn kernel. Popcorn’s not my favorite on account of the way it gets caught between my teeth, but I scarfed up this popcorn kernel anyway, realizing again how hungry I was. Square meal was one of my favorite human expressions. It had been way too long.
“… information on that score,” the sheriff was saying.
Anya’s voice rose. “What’s going on around here? My son is missing and instead of finding him you’ve arrested the only person who seems interested in bringing him home.”
Sheriff Laidlaw sat back in his chair. “Gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to think bad of anyone for how they acted in a moment of distress. Bail hearing’s public, and you’re welcome to attend. Meanwhile, Rob, I’m suggestin’ you escort your friend back to wherever she’s stayin’.”
“I’m not leaving until I see Bernie,” Anya said, folding her arms across her chest. I always watched for that in humans. Dust-ups often came next.
“’Fraid that’s not possible under county regulations,” Sheriff Laidlaw said.
“Fuck county regulations,” said Anya.
Pink spots appeared on the sheriff’s face, or at least on the nonhairy parts. Ranger Rob turned to Anya. She looked ready to say more, more and louder. Ranger Rob touched her elbow, very lightly. “Ms. Vereen?” he said.
She glared at him. He shuffled around and looked sheepish. That certainly described Ranger Rob’s face at the moment, although I actually ran into an angry and unsheepish sheep once, resulting in a bit of trouble, perhaps a story for another time. Anya paused and took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. She gave Sheriff Laidlaw the dagger look—another great expression of Bernie’s—and turned to me. “Come on, Chet. Let’s go.”
“Not the dog,” the sheriff said.
“Not the dog?” said Anya. “What does that mean?”
“Interest of being humane, believe it or not,” said the sheriff. “No reason the dog can’t share a cell with his master. Be a comfort, like.”
Anya peered at Sheriff Laidlaw, head tilted to one side, like she was trying to see him from a new angle. We do the same thing in the nation within.
“That’s a nice gesture, Sheriff,” said Ranger Rob, who still had Anya’s elbow. He began leading her toward the door.
I followed. Anya stopped and knelt beside me. “Stay, Chet,” she said, laying her hand softly on my head. “There’s a good boy.” She and Ranger Rob headed again for the door. I followed.
Anya turned. “Chet? Stay. You’re going to see Bernie.”
I was? I didn’t smell Bernie, not the least bit. Neither did I hear him. All I heard was a toilet flushing on the other side of the door the judge had gone through. While all that was on my mind—Bernie, toilet, Bernie, Bernie—Anya and Ranger Rob went out the main door. Hey! I bolted after them. The door closed in my face. Behind me, the sheriff laughed.
I turned my head, looked back at him, my paws still pointed to the door.
“Want to see Bernie?” the sheriff said.
Oh, yes, and very badly. But for some reason my tail wasn’t wagging.
The side door opened and the judge came out, zipping up his pants. “Rid of them?” he said.
“Yup,” said the sheriff. “But this dog here’s got me a bit worried.”
The judge glanced at me. “Think he’s a biter?”
“It’s not that,” the sheriff said. “More like he’s up to something.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Like he’s plotting against us.”
“Laidlaw?” said the judge. “Don’t be such a goddamn moron. It’s a dog.”
“I know that, but—”
“Try to concentrate. Your job is to make sure everything goes smoothly Tuesday morning.”
“You can count on me.”
“Can I?” the judge said. “Is the prisoner going to look presentable, for example?”
The sheriff’s eyes shifted. “No problem there,” he said. “What kind of bail you got in mind?”
The judge smiled. He had just about the yellowest teeth I’d ever seen, almost brown. “High,” he said. “Sky fuc
king high.”
“What if—” the sheriff began.
The judge cut him off. “Don’t want to hear your what-ifs,” he said. “I’ll do the thinking.” He moved toward the door, saw I was in the way. “Here, boy,” he said. I stayed where he was. The judge turned to the sheriff. “Got some kind of treat?”
“Treat?”
“Dog treat, for Christ sake.”
“Why would I have a dog treat?” said the sheriff. “I’m a cat person—thought you knew that.”
Cat person? I got the feeling, unusual for me, that things were growing worse and worse.
“Some snack then,” the judge said. “A cookie, a doughnut.”
“How about a Slim Jim?”
“Worth a try.”
The sheriff opened his desk drawer and took out—yes!—a Slim Jim. He held it up. Who can resist a Slim Jim? I hurried over, barely aware of the judge moving behind me, leaving the office and closing the door. Oh, those wonderful Slim Jim smells. I sat beside the desk, looking up at Sheriff Laidlaw, and waiting for him to come across with the Slim Jim. There were two ways of doing it, holding the Slim Jim close to my mouth where I could grab it, or simply dropping it at my feet. Both were fine with me but Sheriff Laidlaw did neither. Instead, he put the Slim Jim back in the drawer.
Whoa. Normally I liked surprises, but this was a bad one. I moved away from the sheriff, returned to the main door, and stood there doing nothing much. Soon the door would open and I’d be free. That was my only thought.
The sheriff reached for a folder and started leafing through papers. After a while he belched a couple times. That made me want to belch, too, but I had no belches inside me. The sheriff rose and went through the side door. I heard a toilet seat bang down. A moment or two later, a door at the back opened and Mack poked his head in. “Sheriff?” he said. He looked around and went away. But he didn’t quite close the door behind him.
The Dog Who Knew Too Much Page 13