by Lisa Gardner
Bobby surveyed the scene to his left. Looking for signs of life.
A dark shape, suddenly exploding from beneath the underbrush—
Just as Lieutenant Trenton sounded once more in his ear: “More movement. North. Activity. East. No, south. No, wait. Jesus Christ. All four sides breached. Perimeter fully breached. Bobby, do you read?”
Bobby heard. Bobby saw. Bobby moved.
Rifle, swinging around. Sighting, aiming, pulling the trigger. An aborted growl, then a dark shape tumbling down. While three more enraged forms burst from the woods.
D.D. started to scream, then everything was happening at once.
Bobby turned, tried to sight, realized the attack dogs were moving so fast, they were now too close for the set range of his scope. He swore, jerked his head up, and did things the old-fashioned way. Quick squeeze. An eerie, rumbling scream, then the second dog tumbled down.
Gunshots from below. Bobby spotted D.D. sixty yards away. Racing for his tree, firing wildly over her shoulder. She was moving at a good clip.
But she wasn’t going to make it.
He was breathing too hard, too fast. Get centered. Inside the moment, but outside the moment. Find the target. Focus on the target. Large black dog with tan markings, converging with another hundred-pound black dog, joining forces to chase down their prey.
Tree branch blocking. Then another. Now, as they passed through a narrow slice between the branches.
He squeezed the trigger. Third dog dropped. As the fourth leapt into the air and landed on D.D.’s back.
She went down as the dog closed its massive jaws around her shoulder and shredded her yellow vinyl jacket.
“Officer down, officer down!” Bobby screamed. “Assistance needed, now, now, now.”
Then he was fighting his way through the tree branches, trying to drop thirty feet to the ground, his rifle tangling him up, while the dog went after the back of D.D.’s neck, making a terrible wet, growling sound.
Bobby cleared the branches, jumping the remaining fifteen feet, rolling through the pain that rocketed up his ankles. Rifle was useless; force of the slug would pass through the dog into D.D. Instead, he reached behind his back for his Glock as he tore through the woods.
D.D. was still moving. He could see her arms and legs flailing as she fought to get the massive weight off her, punched feebly behind her at the dog’s head.
The dog was fighting with her Kevlar vest. Trying to chew and claw through it. Trying to sink its teeth into soft, white flesh.
Bobby ran. The Rottweiler never looked up. As Bobby placed the muzzle of his gun against the animal’s ear. As Bobby pulled the trigger. As the massive animal dropped, and finally there was silence in the woods.
It took them ten minutes to pry the animal’s jaws from D.D.’s left shoulder. They rolled her onto her side while they worked, Bobby talking to her constantly. She had a death grip on his hand, wouldn’t let go, which was okay, because he wouldn’t let her.
Blood. A little bit on her cheek, her neck. Not as bad as they feared. Her vest had protected her from the dog’s claws upon her back. When she’d pitched forward, the Kevlar had ridden up, protecting her neck from its fangs. She’d lost a chunk of skin along her jaw, a few clumps of hair on the back of her head. Given the possibilities, she wasn’t complaining.
The officers finally wrestled the Rottweiler’s body free and it fell limply to the ground beside her.
D.D. braced herself against Bobby and he pulled her upright. “Where did the dogs come from?” she wanted to know. An EMT had arrived, was trying to take her blood pressure. The raincoat was too thick. She shrugged it off, wincing at the movement.
“Woods,” Sinkus reported breathlessly, having just caught up with them. “No sign of a human intruder yet, but we found four wire cages about two hundred yards back, covered in bushes and set up with timers. Hour hit 3:33, electronic current shut off, and the doors swung open, releasing the dogs.”
Bobby glanced up. “And all four dogs ran to the exact same target?”
“Each cage contains, um, unmentionables,” Sinkus said.
“Unmentionables?” D.D. demanded. She touched her jaw gingerly, felt out the bloody tear.
“Yeah. Underwear. One pair in each cage. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m betting the thongs are yours.”
“What?” D.D. turned sharply. The EMT ordered her to stay still. She nailed him with such a glance, he fell back.
It was good to know that D.D. was feeling better, even if it did mean her fingers were now crushing Bobby’s hand.
“Have you noticed anything disturbed at home?” Sinkus asked. “Like someone rifling through your drawers or, more probably, going through your dirty laundry? The system works best if the item bears your scent.”
“I haven’t been home enough in the past four days to check my drawers! Or,” she snarled, then sighed, “do any of my laundry.”
“Well, there you go. Guy helped himself to a few scent markers. Any well-trained attack dog would take it from there.”
D.D. definitely didn’t like that thought. She turned, regarding the body of the dog on the ground. Big, black, powerfully muscled. She touched its flank. The look on her face was not so much rage as regret.
“My uncle used to have a Rotty. Her name was Meadow. Biggest, sweetest dog you can imagine. She used to let me ride on her back.” D.D.’s hand moved, found the twisted wire around the dog’s neck, the kind of collar favored by drug dealers and dog fighters. “Asshole,” she suddenly growled. “Dog was probably trained from birth. Never had a chance.”
Bobby couldn’t look at her anymore. After all, he was the one who had taken out the four dogs that attacked her. And while he couldn’t feel bad about it, given the circumstances, he couldn’t feel good about it either.
“I don’t get it,” D.D. muttered. “Making me wear the locket made a crazy kind of sense. Gave the guy a cheap thrill. But why go through all that for this kind of setup? It’s like attacking via remote. Except I don’t think our subject is a remote kind of guy. I think he’s up close and personal.”
“It’s sophisticated,” Sinkus commented. “Allows him to show off his intelligence. Something Eola would do.”
D.D. didn’t comment. Neither did Bobby. He was thinking of what she’d said. The note had been personal, left on the windshield of D.D.’s car. The choice of trophies for each body they’d found had been personal, too, same with the MO of stalking Annabelle by leaving gifts. The setup here had involved stealing D.D.’s under-wear—no doubt, the subject had enjoyed that—so why not stick around for the show? D.D. was right. The subject had invested heavily in foreplay, then denied himself the main event.
That didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the way this sicko worked.
“Keep searching the grounds,” D.D. was saying now. “In addition to a trespasser, have the techies look for signs of video equipment, listening devices. Maybe our subject decided to stage the show, something he could record and watch from the safety of his home. Wanted a little action or a clip he could share on the Internet.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Sinkus assured her.
“We need choppers,” D.D. continued crossly, impatiently waving away the hovering EMT. “And dogs. Hell, let’s call in the National Guard. Fucking nearly two hundred acres. Fucking loony bin. He could hide out for days without us seeing a thing.”
Sinkus was nodding, making notes, preparing to blow the department’s annual budget for a one-night search.
Bobby was still not liking it.
Why so elaborate? They were looking for a pedophile, a man accustomed to preying on small children. Now, suddenly, he had his sights set on a grown woman? A female police sergeant who was bound to be smart, armed, and prepared?
Did pedophiles change their preferences so easily? Transition from small children to authority figures?
Unless …
It came to him all at once. Unless the man had never changed focus. Unless the man stil
l had his eyes set on the same target. A target who since recently resurfacing had spent the past two days surrounded by police protection. Until tonight, when by virtue of this operation …
Bobby whirled back toward his fellow detectives. “Annabelle!”
I woke up hard, hands fisting my sheet, muscles tense. For a second, I felt wild-eyed with alarm. Run, fight, scream. But my thoughts were sluggish, dream-soaked. I couldn’t fill in the blanks.
I forced myself to sit up, dragging in ragged gulps of air. Bedside clock glowed 2:32 a.m. Bad dream, I thought. Rough night.
I climbed out of bed, wearing a pair of men’s cotton boxer shorts and a faded black tank top. Bella lifted her head, considering the matter. She was used to my restless ways by now. She put her head back down; one of us might as well get some sleep. I padded alone into the kitchen, where I banged on the faucet and poured myself a glass of city water. If that didn’t wake me up, nothing would.
I was standing there, staring at the faint line of hallway light glowing beneath my chained and bolted door, when the front ringer buzzed noisily. I jolted, water spilling down my shirt, while Bella came bounding out of the bedroom, scrabbling across the kitchen and barking madly at the door.
I didn’t think anymore, I moved. Tossed the plastic cup in the sink. Ran back into the bedroom. Flipped over my pillow, grabbed the Taser I kept tucked beneath it. Go, go, go.
Back in the kitchen now. Bella barking. My heart thudding. Did I hear the creak of the downstairs door? Footsteps on the stairs?
I finally grabbed Bella by the collar and forced her onto the floor. “Shhhh, shhh, shhh,” I murmured, but my own tense state kept her agitated. She growled low in her throat as I stared at the sliver of light beneath my apartment door, waiting for the dark shadows of footsteps to appear, the enemy to come into sight.
And …
Nothing.
Minute slid into minute. My breathing slowed. My composure transitioned from fight-or-flight to just plain bewildered. Belatedly I thought to move over to the bay windows, peer down at the street. No strange cars were parked below. No person loitered in the shadows.
I collapsed in the window seat, Taser still clutched to my chest. I was overreacting but couldn’t give up my vigil. Bella was more practical about things. With a huff, she left her post in favor of the living room dog bed. In a matter of seconds, she was curled up and back asleep, doggy nose tucked on doggy paws. I remained an over-hyped sentinel, trying to talk myself down.
Buzzers go off in the middle of the night, I tried reminding myself. It had happened before. Would happen again. Drunks wander by or even invited guests of another tenant who get the unit numbers confused. My fellow renters were security-conscious. None of us randomly opened doors for unknown buzzers. Which probably only increased the odds that the outside person was going to keep punching buttons until he got results.
In other words, there were a million and a half logical explanations for a doorbell to sound in the middle of the night. And none of them were working for me.
I got off the window seat. Returned to my front door. Pressed my ear against its painted surface and listened for sounds coming from the stairs.
The problem is, there’s no soundtrack for real life. In the movies, you know when something bad is going to happen, because the heavy bass tells you so. There isn’t a person alive whose heart doesn’t race upon hearing the theme song from Jaws, and frankly, that’s a comforting thing. We like our markers. It gives the world a sense of order. Bad things may happen, but only after the background picks up with da-dah, da-dah, da-dah-da-dah-da-dah.
The real world isn’t like that. A young girl comes home on a sunny afternoon, climbs the same old stairs, listens to the same old hum of ancient air conditioners, only to enter the apartment and find her mother dead on the sofa.
A man goes out for a walk in the city. Listens to the rush of cars, the honk of horns, the bustle of his fellow pedestrians chatting away on their cell phones. Steps off the curb an instant too soon, and next thing you know, his face is a pulpy mess, shattered against a lamppost.
One little girl goes out to play in her grandparents’ yard. Birds chirping. Fall leaves crunching. Breeze rustling. And winds up screaming in the back of an unmarked van.
Life changes in an instant, with no soundtrack to be your guide.
Which leaves someone like me, jumping at all noises because I don’t know how to tell the difference.
I wanted to be like the rest of my urban neighbors, who, when awakened in the middle of the night by their front buzzer, could heartily declare “Fuck off!” before rolling over and going back to sleep. Now, there was a way to live.
I trudged back to my bedroom, lit by three separate night-lights. I stretched out on my twin-size bed, dancing my fingers across the narrow width.
And I let myself imagine, for a moment, what it might be like if Bobby Dodge wasn’t a detective and I wasn’t a victim? suspect? witness? Maybe we were two ordinary people, meeting at a church social. I’d brought the three-bean salad. He’d brought that perennial bachelor favorite—a bag of tortilla chips. We could talk kickboxing, dogs, white picket fences. Afterwards, I’d let him walk me home. He would slide his arms around my waist. And instead of going rigid with distrust, I would let myself sink into him. The feel of a hard male body, the plane of his chest flattening out my breasts. The ticklish rasp of his whiskers in the instant before he kissed me.
We could have dinner, go out to the movies, spend entire weekends having sex. On the sofa, in the bedroom, on top of the kitchen counter. He was fit, athletic. I bet he’d be very good at sex.
We could even become boyfriend and girlfriend, the way other people did. And I would be normal and not search for his name or likeness in the sex offenders’ database.
Except I wasn’t normal. I lived with too many years of fear stamped into my psyche. And he lived with the weight of a man’s death hanging around his neck. His job already had him lying and manipulating me. My past had me lying and manipulating him. Both of us thought we were right.
I wondered for the first time how well Bobby slept at night. And if we ever did get together, which one of us would be the first to wake up screaming. The thought should’ve sobered me. Instead, it made me smile. We were both twisted, he and I. Maybe, if given enough time, we could find out if our twistedness made us fit.
I sighed. Rolled over. Listened to the pitter-patter of Bella returning to the bedroom, taking up position next to my bed. I stroked her ears, told her I loved her. It made us both feel better.
Much to my surprise, I relaxed. My eyes drifted shut. I might have started to dream.
Then the buzzer came again. Loud, shrill, jolting. Again and again and again. A violent onslaught of sound, ricocheting through my tiny apartment.
I leapt from my bed, ran to the window. Streetlights bombarded the slick black space but gave up nothing. Into the kitchen now, skipping forward on the balls of my feet, muscles bunched, Taser ready, eyes glued to the strip beneath the door.
Spotting a telltale shadow.
I froze. Caught my breath. Stared.
Slowly I got down on my hands and knees. I peered beneath the door, desperately searching the framed view of a tiny slice of hall. Not feet. Not a man.
Something else. Something small, rectangular, and perfectly wrapped in bright colored paper, the Sunday comic strips …
I rocked back on my heels. Then I attacked my door, frantically working the half-dozen locks as my heart pounded with fear and my hands shook with rage. Bella was barking as the chain lock fell free. Together, we barreled out into the fifth-floor landing, where I stood, half-naked, wielding my Taser and roaring at the top of my lungs: “Where are you, motherfucker? Come out and fight like a man. You want a piece of me?”
I leapt over the wrapped package. Bella thundered downstairs. We careened into the downstairs lobby, fueled by pure adrenaline and ready to take on an entire army.
But the building was empty, th
e stairs deserted, the lobby vacant. I followed the sound of thumping to the front foyer, where I found the building’s outer door open and banging in the wind.
I pushed the door wide. Felt the cold onslaught of rain slashing across my face. The night was storming. It was nothing compared to how I felt inside.
No sign of life out on the street. I secured the outer door, called Bella back up the stairs.
Outside my apartment it was still waiting for me. A flat, rectangular box. Snoopy, perched on his red doghouse, smiled on top.
And suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. Twenty-five years had not been enough. My father’s training had not been enough. The threat was back, but I still didn’t know who to fight, how to attack, where to direct my rage.
Which left me with only the fear. Of every shadow in my darkened apartment. Of every sound in this old creaky building. Of every person who might randomly wander down the street.
I left the package on the landing. I grabbed Bella by the collar and dragged her into the bathroom, where I locked the door, climbed into the tub, and prayed for the night to end.
“You’re sure you didn’t see anything?” Bobby was asking. “A car, a person, the back of a coat disappearing down the street?”
I didn’t answer. Just watched him pace back and forth in the three-foot expanse of my kitchen.
“What about a voice? Did he speak, make any kind of sound coming or going up and down the stairs?”
I still didn’t say anything. Bobby had been asking the same questions for hours now. What little I’d had to offer was already on record. Now it was about him burning off steam and trying to come to terms with events I still refused to accept.
For example, twenty-five years later, the unidentified white male subject had found me again.
My phone had rung shortly after four a.m., another sharp and shrill noise that made my blood run cold. But the voice that came through my answering machine was not a taunting lunatic’s. Just Bobby, demanding for me to pick up.
His voice grounded me, restored my sense of purpose. For him, I had to leave the tub, open the bathroom door, brave my darkened apartment. For him, I could lift the receiver, cradling the cordless phone against my ear as I grimly snapped on lights and reported the night’s events.