Hellhound

by Mark Wheaton

  The old man’s smile disappeared.

  The radio of one of the patrolman squawked. “Domestic violence call, Triborough Projects,” said the dispatcher.

  The patrolman hit the black button on the side of the shoulder mic. “Shouts or shots?” he asked.

  “Sounds like a guy choking his wife,” replied the dispatcher. “Neighbor’s listening through the wall.”

  The location of the incident gave Leonhardt pause, but hearing the method sparked the detective into action.

  “Let’s go,” he told Garza.

  “Since when do we respond to domestic violence calls?”

  “Humor me. Would love to say otherwise, but I’ve got an extraordinarily bad feeling about this.”

  • • •

  The sensation of murdering his wife was downright orgasmic for Vernon long after Helen had slipped into unconsciousness. How different were her initial choking cries of alarm from those of ecstasy? Even the look on her face had been curiously similar. She closed her eyes, her mouth open with her lips arched at an odd angle like a fish gasping for breath or someone about to cough. Her body quaked, unable to control its movements anymore. She slapped at him, but in the same ineffective fashion as when he used to go down on her and would keep going even when she’d clearly had enough.

  All that said, part of him felt ridiculous over the fact that all this had given him an erection. He’d never been into any kind of extreme sex. For this to be the way his body informed him that it just might like tripping down such a particular garden path was bizarre.

  Whatever the case, he shoveled another handful of amphetamines into his mouth and swished them down his throat with a beer. He placed his hand back on his wife’s throat and continued squeezing. He’d heard once that strangling someone didn’t always lead to death. The person being strangled usually passed out from lack of oxygen to the brain and the person doing the strangling walked away, only to have the victim revive. Vernon was determined to stave off oxygen long enough for the brain to die.

  His neighbor, Mr. Jeffcoat, had been beating on the wall for a good ten minutes, shouting about calling the police. It only stopped when he apparently went to make good on that threat.

  It wasn’t until the pounding on the front door began that Vernon realized time was short.

  “Police! Open this door!”

  Vernon raised his wife’s unconscious body over the faux marble kitchen counter and brought it down with such fury that it not only snapped her neck, it also tore her flesh, nearly decapitating her. He stared down at her engorged tongue as it lolled out of mouth and then headed into the living room.

  The mastiff was just sitting there by the television, having watched the proceedings without apparent interest.

  “Worth the wait?” Vernon grunted at it.

  The dog didn’t so much as turn its head, much less bark. Its eyes stayed fixed on Vernon as he made his way to the window, unlatched its locks, and shoved it upward.

  “This is your last warning!” bellowed a voice from the other side of the door. “Open this door or we’ll be forced to break it down.”

  “Fuck yourselves!” Vernon called out as he stepped onto the fire escape landing.

  He’d tied the rope to the railing a little while before. In fact, that’s what Helen had been sticking her nose into when he’d decided to go ahead and finish his business. He slipped it over his head and tightened it around his neck.

  See you soon, bitch, he thought.

  As his doorframe shattered under the weight of a handheld battering ram, Vernon climbed to the top of the railing and leaped off.

  • • •

  The murder-suicide of Vernon and Helen Lester changed things at Neville Houses. Becca felt it the second she had reached the block as she walked home from school. No one was out in the courtyard. People in the businesses across the street stared and pointed, letting each customer know what had brought all the police and emergency services vehicles to the buildings across the street.

  Becca had heard about the deaths at school. One of the students had been in the office when the news came in and heard teachers talking about it. Word traveled fast, particularly since it related to someone that some of the students knew or had known.

  For Becca, the Lesters were just two more recognizable faces in the building. Since she didn’t go to P.S. 108 or P.S. 30, she’d never ridden one of Mr. Vernon’s buses. Still, she was aware of him. The fact that he’d killed his wife before killing himself couldn’t help but trouble her.

  It was the dog, she thought.

  She didn’t know how the dog got to the Lesters or, really, anything about its m.o., but it had lived with Mrs. Fowler, and now she was dead. Without a master, the animal must’ve wandered away. Not even twenty-four hours later, more death.

  As Becca approached Building 7, a handful of officers tried to block her path.

  “I live up there,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “We’d like to call up and have one of your parents escort you to your apartment, if that’s all right,” the officer said.

  “My brother’s up there asleep,” Becca explained tersely. “He works nights. I’d rather you didn’t wake him up, as you sure did a lot of that last night.”

  The officer was taken aback. He wasn’t sure how to respond to this. That’s when Trey walked up from across the courtyard and grabbed Becca by the shoulders.

  “I got this. She’s my sister.”

  “You got what, Trey? You think I can’t handle this?”

  Trey rolled his eyes. “Give it a rest for a second, Becca. Ken’s up, just went for a walk. He called in. Doesn’t want us home alone tonight.”

  “It’s the dog!” Becca exclaimed. “They have to get that dog!”

  “Okay, Becca, they get it. You’re crazy. Let’s go.”

  Trey had just begun pushing Becca towards the building’s entrance when a voice boomed after them.

  “What dog?”

  The half-siblings turned as Detective Leonhardt hurried up to them. He glanced from Trey down to Becca, as if attempting to divine Becca’s credibility.

  “What dog?” he asked again.

  “The big dog that’s been making people crazy,” Becca replied urgently. “Mrs. Fowler had it last.”

  “A dog?” Leonhardt asked.

  “Yes, a dog,” Becca replied, exasperated at being made to repeat herself. “You calling me a liar?”

  “Ma’am, I certainly am not.”

  Becca straightened a little, clearly delighted to be called “ma’am.”

  “Can you describe the animal?” Leonhardt asked, popping out a pen and pad of paper.

  “It’s a big black dog,” Becca began. “Biggest dog I’ve ever seen.”

  “Tall? Like a Great Dane?”

  “No, muscular. Short-haired. Like a bull. We’ve got a picture…”

  Trey squeezed Becca’s arm and she cut herself off. Leonhardt noticed but pretended like he didn’t.

  “You have a picture?”

  “We saw one online that looked like it,” Trey said.

  “But you saved it? She said ‘we’ve got.’ That could be really helpful.”

  Trey stared back at Leonhardt, knowing the detective was sending him every kind of warning in the book with his word choice and body language.

  Don’t make me go Bad Cop on you and your sister.

  Trey was about to reply when Becca chimed in. “We’ll check the computer if you want. I don’t want to wake up my brother, but I could email it to you.”

  Leonhardt looked from Trey to Becca and back again. She’d bested him, as if knowing nary a judge in New York would give him a warrant to seize or search that computer. He sighed and pulled out a card, scribbling his email address on the back.

  “We’re just trying to figure out who did this.”

  “And I told you,” Becca said, matter-of-factly. “It was the dog.”

  • • •

  Ken hadn’t intended to walk Bones ver
y far, but it had been awhile since he’d walked anywhere. It just felt like a good way to clear his troubled mind. He’d headed towards the water, crossing Harlem River Drive, where he turned north. The RFK bridge was only a few blocks away, so he led the shepherd to the pedestrian walkway.

  “There are a bunch of parks on the Randall’s Island side,” he told the dog.

  As they crossed the bridge, Bones seemed thrilled to be away from the cramped buildings and out in the sunshine. He cantered along, nose in the air, taking in the smells of the East River.

  “There’s a lot of bad shit down there,” Ken joked. “Be careful what you’re inhaling.”

  When they got to the other side, they followed something Ken saw labeled as the Harlem River Pathway. Now they were directly opposite the neighborhood, though Ken couldn’t see his own building.

  “Good-looking dog,” someone said.

  Ken glanced over and saw a woman in a tight jogging outfit nodding at Bones.

  “Yeah, but he works out like crazy, only eats organic. You know the type.”

  The woman laughed and sidled up to Ken. “You live over there?”

  “Yeah, just off Jefferson Park,” Ken replied, giving a thought to lying, but not caring enough to do so.

  “Oh, Jeez,” she replied. “Were you around for the shooting last night?”

  “Nah, that was a couple of buildings over,” Ken lied, not looking for pity.

  “That’s crazy. All those cops.”

  “Yeah, I know. Everybody in the neighborhood is freaked out,” Ken replied while looking for a way to change the subject. “Where do you live?”

  “Sunnyside, but I work here on the island. I use my lunch to do some running.”

  “Cool, where do you work?”

  She shot a thumb over her shoulder. “Psych Hospital. I swear I’m not an escapee.”

  Ken laughed. “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and send you a couple of patients after all this sorts itself out from last night.”

  “Good thing you’ve got that dog.”

  “Good thing. I’m Ken. Dog’s name is Bones.”

  “Catherine. Well, Cathy. Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. If I see any lunatics on the trail, I’ll be sure to send them your way.”

  “Do that,” Cathy laughed. “You know how you can tell which are the crazies?”

  “How?”

  “They just say they work at the Psych Hospital and swear they’re not escapees.”

  Ken laughed and gave her a little wave as she continued on her jog. It felt good to flirt, a reminder that, some day, he just might put his hands on a woman again. His life hadn’t allowed for much socializing of late.

  “Good boy, Bones,” he said, scratching between the dog’s ears.

  That’s when he heard the distant sirens carrying across the river.

  “Hah, can’t have more mayhem back home, can we?”

  But the shepherd just looked up him confusedly, as if giving voice to skepticism.

  “Shit, you’re right,” Ken sighed. “Way things are going, probably means the whole building’s on fire.”

  VII

  Upon encountering the police still conducting interviews on the Lester case in front of the building, Ken led Bones around the block. He came up to Building 7 from the rear, taking the back stairs up to his apartment.

  “Where’d you go?” Trey asked, sprawled out on the sofa next to Becca, watching television.

  “Randall’s Island,” Ken replied. “Felt good to get out.”

  He went straight to his bedroom and, a moment later, Trey and Becca could hear him on the phone.

  “It’d just be for a couple of nights,” Ken was saying. “You have to understand how bad things are up here.”

  “Shit,” groaned Trey. “Bet he called Aunt Marta.”

  Becca held her breath. Their “Aunt Marta” was really “Great Aunt Marta” down in East Orange. Their mother’s aunt, they’d only met her a few times. That entire side of the family had functionally abandoned them years ago, down to the absence of Christmas cards, which took a couple of years to be noticed.

  Becca remembered being in Aunt Marta’s house only once. It was large and filled with grandkids when they were there, but what Becca remembered most was being made to feel like a stranger. She’d gone off to explore the upstairs, only to be corralled by an older cousin or uncle who chewed her out for going in whichever mothball-smelling guest room she’d made her way to. To make things worse, when he’d brought her downstairs, he made a big deal out of implying that he’d caught her about to steal something. That this wasn’t true in the slightest did little to assuage either Becca’s guilt or her mother’s humiliation.

  “I would not be calling if this wasn’t a life or death emergency,” Ken said. He was silent for a moment, but when he spoke again, his exasperation was on the rise. “Turn on your fucking television! It’s all over it! Whole team shot up. That was outside our front fucking door! Yeah, I’m mad! You…”

  Trey and Becca could hear the other line clicking off from across the room. Ken walked into the living room and threw the cordless phone at the front door.

  “You trying to ship Becca to Aunt Marta’s?” Trey asked.

  “Trying to ship both of you,” Ken replied. “You hear the press conference earlier? They had the goddamn mayor, all these cops and borough presidents, all talking about what a great tragedy it was and how our police are all heroes. But they were talking about it as if it was this one isolated thing, this crime that happened, but is over. Mr. Lester today? Nothing to do with it. Devaris the other night? Same thing. Totally unrelated.”

  “So, you believe me about this dog now, huh?” Becca said.

  “I didn’t say that, but it’s something. Mrs. Fowler, Mr. Lester, Devaris, Mr. Preston, and that dog. We know it’s connected. They just think it’s a crazy man on drugs, an old lady who got confused, a kid who got high, and a drunk who accidentally burned out his throat with acid. And that’s all that matters to them. The easy answer.”

  Becca looked over at Bones who was sunning himself by the window. As Ken went to get something from the fridge to abate his anger, she sat next to the shepherd and began stroking his fur.

  “Where’s the other dog, Bones?” Becca whispered. “That’s what we’ve got to know. Where’s the other dog?”

  The shepherd, now awake, eyed Becca curiously as she spoke, but then flopped back down to enjoy his tummy rub.

  • • •

  The afternoon passed into evening and eventually, the police and other first-responders left Neville Houses. Becca watched from her bedroom window, thinking she might spy Detective Leonhardt, but coming up empty. Bones had come in to sit with her. Despite having slept most of the afternoon, he promptly fell asleep in her room as well.

  Ken had come by to check on her a couple of times but didn’t say anything. She’d heard him leave around six and watched him walk across the street to grab food from the corner grocery. He’d said he was going to stay home that night from work, but the phone had rung just as he was coming back. Even through the closed door, Becca knew it was his shift foreman.

  “I just can’t,” Ken said. “You know those guys are just out drinking or whoring. I have a real reason.”

  When Ken hung up a few minutes later after not saying much, Becca expected the knock on her door.

  “Hey,” said Ken, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “I understand if you have to go in,” Becca said. “I’ll keep the doors locked and the police dog close.”

  “Nobody knows what’s happening here. I need to know that I can trust you to stay in here and not go out. Trey’s going to do what Trey’s going to do, but it’s you I’m worried about.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll stay right here.”

  Ken looked hard at her, unsure whether to believe her. “Did you really tell a teacher to ‘fuck off’ today?”

  “You heard, huh?”

  “You can’t really do that and g
et away with it,” Ken said. “Adults are already going to know you’re smarter than them, which is strike one. Strike two is when you let them know that you know. Doing what you did is strike three, rubbing their face in it.”

  Becca smiled, knowing a compliment when she heard it.

  “I’ll be better.”

  “Okay, good. I bought some different kinds of dog food when I picked up supper. See what he likes.”

  “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later, the front door closed as Ken headed out. Becca waited another ten before exiting her room to make sure Trey was gone. She found a bag of dry dog food and a couple of cans and opened all of it, pouring the mess into a large sauce pan for Bones.

  “Eat up, boy. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  • • •

  “What was your name again?”

  “Trey, sir. I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

  Janice’s dad stared at Trey with something resembling suspicion, though he was obviously too new to Harlem to recognize that Trey’s intentions were absolutely one-hundred-percent counter to what he might want for his daughter. Seventy-five-percent, maybe. Possibly as high as eighty-five-percent. But there seemed to be a part of him willing to give Trey the benefit of the doubt.

  Maybe it was the “sir.”

  As Janice’s dad stepped back to retrieve his daughter, Trey made a mental note to beat the head in of anyone who “sir”ed him when coming by to collect any little girl he might have in his future.

  “Hey, Trey,” Janice said, coming to the door.

  She wore the tightest orange T-shirt he’d ever seen, matched only by her jeans. He saw that her father was uncomfortable with this, but didn’t say a word. Then he got it. Janice was one of those daughters who could do no wrong in their daddy’s eyes. Girls always had daddy issues, but he knew that this brought on minefields all their own.

  “’Sup, Janice? You ready to go?”

  She nodded as Mr. Gaines stepped forward.

  “Don’t be out too late.”

  Oh, okay, Dad, said Janice’s eye roll.

  Trey smiled at her with understanding. He wondered how she planned to wrap him around her little finger as tightly as her dad.