A New Leash on Death (Dog Lover's Mysteries Book 1)

by Susan Conant

  At four in the afternoon, when it was still light out, I walked Rowdy to Huron Drug, which is a combination drugstore and post office, to mail the halter and harness orders and the two articles. The temperature had warmed to a comparatively balmy twenty-five, and the slate-blue clouds that foretell snow were moving in. I had Rowdy heel all the way home, and he did well, at least for him. At the corner of Huron and Appleton, he spotted a Great Dane across the street. His ears and hackles went up, and I could see that he wanted to bolt, but he stayed where he belonged instead of lunging and jumping. When we got home, I should have worked on getting him to hold the dumbbell without tossing it, but I didn't feel motivated. He wouldn't need the exercise until Open, and without his papers, I wouldn't even be able to enter him in Novice.

  I had dinner with Rita. We enjoy each other's company and have a lot in common, even though her ten-year-old dachshund has yet to attend his first obedience class. When Rita first moved in, I told her about the Cambridge Dog Training Club, but she said that Groucho was an obedience virgin and she liked him that way. He doesn't destroy the apartment and he's remarkably quiet for a dachshund, so I haven't pressed her. I asked her why anyone would want an untrained dog, and she said that as a therapist, she spends all day trying to get people to change, and when she comes home, she wants to find a creature she doesn't have to persuade to be any different from the way he already is. Rita and Mr. Rogers.

  I considered asking Rita whether I could spend the night in her spare room, but avoiding my own apartment felt cowardly, and the dogs would have been a problem. Except for an occasional exchange of growls, Rowdy and Groucho were tolerating life in the same house, but asking old Groucho to welcome Rowdy would have been overstepping the limits, and I didn't want to leave Rowdy alone in my place all night.

  By nine, Rowdy and I were back home alone. Steve was at a conference in Philadelphia. I called Buck, but he still wasn't home, and Regina snapped at me. I wondered what she was still doing there. I hoped she hadn't moved in. A stepmother might be tolerable, but not Regina Barnes.

  I wandered around and tried to read, but Hal was on my mind. If I'd paid attention to Kevin, who is not always wrong, I'd have phoned John or Gerry to ask whether Hal had checked in at the shelter, but I felt restless. In truth, Kevin's order to stay in and lock my doors had given me wanderlust. Besides, the wandering I lusted for was nothing more than a quick walk to the armory to check on Hal. Nothing keeps me from dog training, and I'm not the kind of person who takes a car to go a few blocks. If it had been Thursday instead of Friday, I told myself, I wouldn't have hesitated and I wouldn't have taken the Bronco. What's more, I thought, Roger, once bitten, might be shy. Margaret didn't worry me at all. There was a golden retriever specialty show on Long Island the next day, and I assumed she'd already checked herself into a Holiday Inn and tucked herself into a king-size bed. And Hal? I saw him only as the threatened, not the threat. In any case, I'd stay near home, and I'd be careful.

  According to Rita, rationalization is a better defense than denial. I'm not sure I can tell the difference. It seems to me that I took two slices of rationalization, slathered them with rebelliousness, sandwiched in a layer of denial, and bit in. Rita would say that my defenses were primitive. She'd be right. If you have the privilege of choosing your defenses, forget that Freudian gobbledygook. Get a Smith & Wesson and a dog. That's acting out, I can hear Rita say. At least it's acting.

  The afternoon's slate-blue clouds hadn't lied. Heavy clumps of snow were sheeting straight down in the windless night. Less than an inch had accumulated, but the thin cover was enough to awaken Rowdy's ancestral memory. At the bottom of the back stairs, he froze in recognition, then raised his hindquarters and thrust his nose to the ground, a doggy Proust nuzzling arctic madeleines. By the time he'd pranced and dashed his way to the corner of Appleton and Concord, God's own coat enhancer had given him a Best-in-Show sheen that no cosmetic spray would ever duplicate, and his joy had blunted my vigilance. The tags on his collar jingled like sleigh bells.

  I'd been concentrating so hard on admiring Rowdy, keeping my grip on his lead, and avoiding his rocketing leaps and plunges that I hadn't checked under the back steps or peered into the spite building. Not until we reached the corner of Walden Street did I remember to run my eyes up and down the whitened roads and sidewalks and scan the black shadows for human forms. Cars passed by on Concord Avenue, their tires writing black lines on its snow-covered surface. From a house on the opposite side of Concord Avenue, not far beyond the Cambridge Alternative Power Company (solar panels and wood stoves), old rock blared, a movie sound track. (Whoops. Sorry about that. In Cambridge, one says "film.") I sang under my breath.

  As the song said, the night had come, and the land was dark. Still, I could see ahead of us the back of a bulky, hatless figure moving, like Rowdy and me, toward the armory. Rowdy was not pleased at my silent tugs on his lead, but if I'd allowed him his usual hydrant, tree, fence, and hedge stops, the figure would have outdistanced us. As it was, within a block I recognized the figure, alone, dogless, lumbering along. Moments earlier I'd been singing brave words about not being afraid, but I was afraid. I had no one to stand by me except an overgrown puppy with snow on his mind. If Hal had had anyone to stand by him, I'd have turned and run home.

  Once I'd recognized the hulk ahead of us, I slowed down again, even though the black form gave no sign of suspecting that anyone was following. No stops. No turns. No surreptitious glances over the shoulder. No one, I thought, was looking or listening for me, but with one hard shake of Rowdy's head, the unmistakable ring of dog tags could set that hulking form after us like an oversize Newfoundland intent on a belled kitten. I wished I'd had the foresight, before leaving home, to replace Rowdy's tag-hung leather collar with a soundless nylon choke, but it was too late. I didn't even have a training collar with me. I could probably have muffled the tags while I unbuckled the leather collar, but I had no replacement for it, and I wouldn't have turned him loose to dash into the traffic of Concord Avenue even if it were the only threat the night held. I ran my gloved left hand over his big head, partly to comfort myself, partly to tell him to stay calm and, I prayed, soundless.

  Ahead of us was the darkest stretch of Concord Avenue, the block that runs by the long, wide fenced-in baseball field we'd have to pass before reaching the playground and, beyond the playground, the armory. Beyond the field, I knew, was the Tobin School, but its lights weren't on, and it appeared only as a form slightly darker than the field itself. Ahead, on the edge of the sidewalk, just before the playground, stood the little bus shelter. Shelter. A misnomer. Ambuscade. Suddenly, the sidewalk ahead was empty. Concord Avenue yawned emptily on my right. The deserted office building down the street offered not even the comfort of a single bright window. On my left, the chain-link fence separated us from the field and offered no hiding, no escape. Had that lumbering figure slipped into the bus shelter? The field? The playground? Had my wool cap, with its brave row of sled dogs, deafened me, but not the listener, to a soft clink of tags?

  I stopped, pressed Rowdy against the fence, and listened. My heart was jumping and pounding like a tethered sled dog. Rowdy's soft panting was the only other sound I heard. The light over the front door of the armory and a row of small floods along the side of the building shone hazily through the snow. What quirk of Cambridge politics, I wondered, had determined the absence of streetlights along this dark stretch of Concord Avenue? And the baseball field. Didn't the Little League have any clout? Hadn't anyone ever heard of night games?

  Night games. That's what this was, a night game in the dark, and dark it was, darker, somehow, because of those dull little lights on the armory, darker than any snowless night thanks to the eerie pink glow the sky takes on when it snows here. Night vision, I thought. I've got to stop looking at the lights on the armory, the headlights of the cars, the sky. I have to stare into the blackness and let my eyes adapt, just the way I did when I was a child when we'd walk home from the store
at night. After the brightness of the store, the road home was at first indiscernible. Creamsicles in hand, we'd pretend we were blind, groping our way along the edge of the blacktop, staring into the night, then gradually the sandy shoulders at the side of the road would appear, then trees, rocks, our own white sneakers. I sank my eyes into the blackness of the field and ran them over it toward the bus shelter and the playground, then back again.

  The old trick worked. Was it rods or cones? Something in the retina. Rods. Shapes appeared. In the playground, somewhere near the dark mass of the climbing structure, something moved. I tugged softly on Rowdy's leash and stepped forward heel-first, then toe, then heel, then toe until we'd almost reached the cover of the bus shelter. With luck, we'd blend into it.

  "Hey, buddy. Got something for you."

  The voice was closer than I'd expected and loud with fake heartiness. Two shapes. Moving. Moving low down. Then a glint that almost pulled my eyes back toward the armory. The light from the floods on the side of the building had caught something out there near the climbing structure, something that reflected their light.

  "Cold out here, huh, buddy? Thought you could use a little warming up." The voice was softer now, almost gentle. "Guys said you hadn't checked in tonight, and I said to myself, old Hal knows better ways to keep warm than that stew they dish out there. Old Hal doesn't want their stew. Do you, pal?"

  Night vision. Mine was good now. Night games. Roger's game with Hal. I could see them now, and I could see Roger hand something to Hal, something that caught the light, a bottle. It had to be. I moved quickly to the far side of the bus shelter so I was flattened against it and almost in the playground. I'd always known that Hal was a gentleman. He raised the bottle jauntily toward Roger to offer his benefactor the first swig.

  "It's all yours, pal," Roger said ungraciously, and he laughed, then started across the playground in my direction.

  Hal lifted the bottle toward his mouth. I ran toward him and shouted, "No! Hal, it's me, Holly. Drop it! Don't drink it!"

  I should have realized that I wasn't the first person who'd told Hal to quit drinking and that he'd know how to handle the injunction. He handled it in his usual way. He ran off into the blackness leaving Rowdy and me alone in the playground with Roger.

  "You bitch," he said.

  I took it as a compliment. That's how I was brought up.

  "Thanks," I said. "But before you come any closer, there's something I have to tell you. I've got this code, and it says I've got to give fair warning. Try anything with me, and you'll put me in the hospital."

  I'd overestimated him. Even in Cambridge, not everyone reads Spenser. He didn't say anything. He grabbed Rowdy's leash out of my hand, wrapped one arm around my head, and dragged me. His arm was across my face. I wasn't sure where we were going, but I was willing to bet it wasn't toward the armory. I couldn't breathe right, and I couldn't open my mouth to scream. Rowdy didn't make a sound. My neck was at an odd angle, and it hurt so much that I was almost relieved when he dumped me on the ground. I thought for a second that I had a chance to run for it, but I was wrong. The next moment, before I could yell, he was on top of me, pinning me to the snow with his weight. The moment after that, his solid gloved hand slammed down on my neck. I expected more blows, but looking up, I saw that he was busy with something in his hands, something shiny that jingled very quietly. I'd know that sound anywhere. A metal training collar. A choke collar. A choke chain. Lion's oversize training collar, too big for her. I could hear Rowdy moving, his tags clinking together. The next second, the chain slipped over my head, and Roger was standing above me, a leash in his hand, the leash fastened to the collar around my neck.

  If I expected anything, I expected him to do to me what he'd done to his uncle, get it over fast, and take off. The ground was incredibly cold, and the snow had worked its way into my hair and around the icy chain. He kept the chain tight, but I could see that he was doing something—in fact, doing something with Rowdy, fastening the lead in his hand to Rowdy. The chain bit hard into my neck, cutting at my windpipe. I couldn't make a sound. With my good night vision, I watched him fumble with Rowdy's collar, and I watched him run ahead of Rowdy and pull hard.

  "Mush!" he yelled.

  The dope. Nobody says "mush" anymore. It's strictly Sergeant Preston stuff. You tell the dog to pull or go, not mush, but Rowdy wouldn't have understood that, either. He'd never been trained to pull, and, thank God, he didn't need any training to understand that the bastard was trying to murder me. As Roger yanked and stomped and bellowed at him to mush, Rowdy first held steady, legs straight and strong, then he backed up until he was standing over me. He was so close that I could watch him part his black lips and offer a ritual display of gleaming white teeth. He lowered his head a little, pulled back his ears, and through those big teeth, let loose a snarl more deep and loud than I'd ever heard before from any dog or any wolf. His hackles rose, and all over his great muscled body, his coat stood out, thick and silvery. Twice his normal size, he was a growling, shining menace.

  His courage must have inspired me. I got one gloved hand to my neck, loosened the chain, and tried to scream for help, but nothing in my throat was working. All I could do was gasp for air. I thought I was going to pass out, but then, through the growling, I heard shouts that I at first mistook for my own. Loud, rough cries surrounded me, wet dog hair, hands, and, at last, light, the brightness of the armory entrance hall, a scratchy blanket making my cheeks itch, and faces, Gerry Pitts, John, and Hal. And Rowdy, licking my face and my raw neck.

  19

  Most of the blood came from fairly superficial cuts and scratches attributable to Roger Singer's predictable choice of a shoddy training collar. The rough metal loop had done the worst damage. Rowdy gave me the same first aid he'd have applied to himself. Even so, my neck may never look the same again.

  Gerry's first aid consisted of forcing me to remain supine on an army cot under layers of green blankets. Some men have an unreasonable fear of blood. I tried to tell him that I wasn't suffering from hypothermia, but the words wouldn't come out. He misread Rowdy's scouring operation as vampirism, but I clung to Rowdy's collar and waved Gerry off when he tried to pull Rowdy away. Gerry might have succeeded if the lead had been fastened right, but it was still the way Roger had left it. He'd unbuckled the collar, slipped the collar through the loop on the lead that belongs in your hand, and rebuckled the collar.

  I'm not sure how long I lay on the army cot wishing I could talk. Although it was probably only half an hour, it seemed longer, and the longer I lay there, the more helpless I felt, and the more helpless I felt, the more I wished that Rowdy had gone for Roger's throat. I was so angry that it was days before I realized that Rowdy couldn't have gone for Roger's throat without tightening the collar on mine. Rita later attributed my fury and my distorted sense of time to the peculiar nature of my early relationship with my parents, especially my mother. She maintained that my loss of voice was a hysterical reaction. According to Rita, words were what distinguished me from the other pups. Injured and mute, she claims, I lost my principal basis of competition with my psychological siblings, and I regressed to a state of diffuse infantile rage. When I told Rita that maybe she was right, since I'd never been so angry before, she threw me one of those psychotherapist smiles and said, "Ah, but you have. That's the point."

  Just as I was starting to feel a little better, Kevin Dennehy and an ambulance crew arrived. Kevin's face showed touching and unwarranted alarm on my behalf. I had no intention of getting into the ambulance—no dogs allowed—but I couldn't think of any wordless way to say that I was fine except for my neck. Shaking my head yes or no sent great stabs of pain up to my head and down through my shoulders. I wrapped one hand around Rowdy's collar, pointed my other hand at the medics, looked straight at Kevin, and mouthed "No!"

  "No dogs in the ambulance," he said. "Okay, but you're going to Mt. Auburn. Someone'll drive you. You and the dog can wait in the cruiser until they're ready fo
r you."

  Mrs. Dennehy thinks she's the real Christian in that family, but she's wrong. Even though I'd been right, I shouldn't have been so impatient with Kevin that day. He's intelligent as well as kind. He produced a pen and notebook.

  "Pain in the neck," I wrote.

  It was an apology. He likes bad puns. His eyes sparkled and he put a hand on my shoulder. I also wrote out Roger Singer's name and address and the message, "His dog."

  "I hate to tell you," Kevin said, "but he's been there and gone."

  On the way to Mt. Auburn, I tried sitting up in the back of the cruiser, but my neck hurt. I tried lying down. My neck still hurt but not quite so much. The uniformed cop at the wheel, one of Kevin's minions, looked about eighteen. I think I made him nervous. He was just a kid. Maybe he wasn't used to women with bleeding necks. Or maybe, it occurred to me, he was just afraid of dogs. At Mt. Auburn, we left Rowdy in the cruiser, and I checked in at the desk. The minion did the talking for me, and I filled in a form the nurse gave me. I wasn't dying, so there'd be a forty-minute wait, she said. An ambulance and another cruiser wailed in, and the minion spent the forty minutes with his colleagues in the second cruiser. Maybe they compared victims.