The Wrong Dog

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  “The dog. Maybe Marty Shapiro could take her temporarily.”

  He still looked puzzled.

  “He’s with the Bomb Squad. At the Sixth.”

  He made a note of that, too.

  An army had responded to my call. There was blue everywhere, paramedics, too. They’d put pressure pants on Mel, started an IV, but it was too little and too late. Much too late. Now they were waiting for the Crime Scene Unit, the detectives in dark-colored suits and cheap ties standing around and talking to each other, three of them out in the garden, two more in the short hallway, Bianca lying at Mel’s side, not moving even when the paramedics tried to shoo her away. One look at that little black teardrop and they let her stay, working around her.

  One of the officers had carried Blanche out into the garden and a paramedic seemed to be taking her vital signs. I couldn’t see if she was still breathing. I could hardly breathe myself at that point.

  “Ms. Alexander?”

  I must have closed my eyes. When I looked up, the uniform was gone. A familiar-looking man in a suit was there in his place.

  “Detective Agoudian,” he said.

  I started to get up but he put his hands on my shoulders, stopping me, crouching down so that I could see him without having to move. At least that’s what I thought, and that he was a really nice man, sensitive, bending down like that so that I wouldn’t have to crane my neck, but then he moved his hands and took my hands in his, standing and pulling me up, putting a hand on my back and leading me into Sophie’s bedroom, backing me up to the bed, gently, insistently, the way a lover might, me thinking, Great, now I’ll get blood on the bedspread, the way I’d gotten it on the couch, and while he pulled over the desk chair, so that he could sit in front of me, I began to wonder if we were here so that he could ask me how the screen had gotten torn. But he didn’t. At first, he didn’t say much at all and I wished he would, that he’d say something, anything that would take my mind off Mel lying dead on the rug in the next room.

  “How well did you know the gentleman in the next room?” Agoudian asked, looking right at me, not taking notes.

  “Not so well,” I told him, trembling so hard I thought I’d bite my tongue.

  “But he was here at four in the morning. Did you meet him at a party or a bar earlier in the evening?” He stood and reached behind me for a jacket, putting it over my shoulders.

  “It was nothing like that,” I said. “He was the dog walker. He walked Bianca, the smaller one.”

  He sat again. “And did he usually come to walk her at that hour?”

  “No. Of course not. I don’t know why he was here. What he said was that he’d tried to call me and got worried when I didn’t answer. He said he tried me at home, then here, that he’d been calling since last night.”

  When I turned to look at the torn screen, the room spun. I put my arms into the sleeves of Mel’s jacket, my hands into the pockets, finding his key ring and one other key, a smallish one that wasn’t on the ring.

  “It didn’t make sense. Not until we discovered that the phone wires had been cut. But right then, all I wanted was out of here, because someone had been able to watch her, Sophie, and listen to her, especially when she was out in the garden, and that whoever it was had killed her, and that now they were watching me, and Mel said he’d help me get the animals out, so I didn’t care about his story sounding fishy. Not then. Do you understand? Of course, before we got the chance to leave, he came, the man who called himself Joe, who said he was the super, but who wasn’t. The super’s name is Sergei.”

  I didn’t think I was making any sense, but Agoudian was nodding, encouraging me to continue, to tell him more.

  “You met Sergei. Well, I don’t know if it was you personally. He said the police had come and taken the Vacor he kept on hand to kill the rats. One was there,” I said, pointing toward the garden, toward the broken screen.

  “How’d that happen? Is that how Joe got in here?”

  “No. He has the keys. Dashiell did that. Joe was threatening me and the dogs were out in the garden because if the rat showed up, I didn’t want them to chase it in.”

  “You mean last night?”

  “No. He was here before. Twice before. He threatened me, told me to mind my own business. I didn’t listen to him and now—”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You didn’t shoot Mr. Sugarman.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Listen to me, Rachel. You didn’t do this.”

  I tried to speak, but my mouth seemed so dry, I couldn’t form words.

  “He has no ID on him. You said his name was Mel Sugarman, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Agoudian was waiting.

  “I mean, that’s what he told me. And you, well, someone from the Sixth spoke to him before. When Sophie, Ms. Gordon, died.”

  He nodded.

  “But maybe he didn’t have any ID then either. No one asked me for mine at that time. They just made a lot of cloning jokes.”

  He nodded again, his expression patient and kind, as if to say he would never have done anything so adolescent at a crime scene. Or anywhere else.

  “I don’t know where he lives, but there’s a dog there, at his apartment. Someone has to get the dog. She can’t be left there with no food and water, without someone to walk her.”

  Agoudian got up and left the room. I wondered if I should mention anything else about the dog, like the fact that Mel had referred to her by the wrong name shortly before he’d been shot. But when Agoudian returned, he had one of the paramedics with him, so I let that part go while the kid pulled down my lower eyelid, then put his moist, warm fingers on my wrist. When he’d finished, he gave Agoudian a look pregnant with meaning, only I didn’t know what the meaning was.

  “I’m fine,” I told Agoudian. “Really. Just tired.” Then I turned to the paramedic, a young kid, short and wide, his dark hair slicked down with something that made it look wet. Or maybe he was sweating. Maybe this was his first dead body, his first injured dog, his first babbling private eye. “The dog, Blanche, is she okay?” I asked him. “Can I see her?”

  They looked at each other again.

  “How old is she?” the kid asked.

  “Nearly twelve,” I told him.

  He didn’t look much more than twelve himself.

  “That’s old for a dog, isn’t it?” He was looking at his shoes, brown Mephistos, not back at where Blanche was and not at me. My stomach tilted portside.

  “Is she dead?” I asked him.

  “Not yet.”

  I didn’t remember when I’d eaten last, nor what I’d had, but whatever it was, it was suddenly in my throat.

  “Can I take her to her vet?” I asked Agoudian. “If she has a chance…”

  Agoudian didn’t answer me. He turned to the kid instead. “Can you start a line on her?”

  The kid nodded.

  Agoudian nodded. “Do it.”

  The kid disappeared, but Agoudian didn’t.

  It was hours before he let me call Chip and allowed us to take the animals out of Sophie’s apartment. But before that he did let me go outside and see Blanche as soon as she was getting fluids. When I walked out into the garden, the three detectives went in, huddling near the kitchen with Agoudian, deep in conversation. Or maybe they were telling cloning jokes. It’s hard to say.

  The kid crouched near Blanche and so did I. For a moment, we didn’t speak. I heard some woman yelling at her kid, telling him he was late, he’d miss the bus. A dog was barking in another yard. And some kid was practicing the piano, making a lot of mistakes, starting and stopping, going back over what had just been played. The young paramedic asked if I’d stay with Blanche while he went to get an ice pack, and while he did, while I was alone in the garden with her, I turned my back to the apartment and pulled out my cell phone. When I started dialing, a phone rang somewhere near the garden, the sound echoing off the building so that I couldn’t tell where it was com
ing from and the music stopped. Maybe they were coming from the same place.

  I waited for my machine to pick up; I said I was off the case, that Bianca had alerted a seizure so I no longer had any need to locate Side by Side, and besides, I said, it had gotten too damn dangerous. I waited. Then I said, no, I wasn’t disappointed. I was happy to turn the case over to the cops. That’s their job, I told the tape. Why should I bust my ass doing their work for them when I’m not even on the payroll anymore, hoping as I spoke that Agoudian wasn’t listening.

  Me, too, I said, flipping the phone closed and putting it back in my pocket just as the kid showed up with the ice pack, handing it to me.

  Blanche opened one eye when I put the ice pack against the side of her head where Joe had slammed her with his gun. She sighed and in a moment she was out again.

  “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” I asked the kid.

  But he didn’t answer me. He probably didn’t know. Then all I could hear was that piano again, and Blanche breathing, the hollow noise you get when you press a seashell tight to your ear. Sitting back on his heels, one hand on Blanche’s side, the kid just watched her stomach inflate and deflate, her rib cage move up and down, maybe hoping she’d make it, that he wouldn’t be seeing his second dead body so soon after the first.

  Agoudian was standing in the doorway. I took the kid’s hand, moved it to the ice pack, and went back inside.

  CHAPTER 26

  I Took a Big Breath and Let It Out

  “Will she be all right?” I asked.

  Sandra Cohen was still holding the stethoscope against Blanche’s side and didn’t answer my question.

  After what seemed to be a very long time, she took the instrument away from Blanche and out of her own ears, carefully laying it down on the counter behind her.

  “There’s just so much heartache an animal can handle,” she said.

  “You mean she’s going to die?”

  “I can’t say for sure. But there’s not much we can do for her. If you like, I’ll keep her here. I can continue giving her fluids and keep an eye on her. We just have to wait and see if she has it in her to rally.”

  “The injury?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that. The ice pack took the swelling down. But she’s an old dog and she’s had a lot of hard knocks, some more painful than a blow with a gun. I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but will you be responsible for the bill?”

  “Yes, but I’m not leaving her.”

  “I understand. I’m here in case you need me.”

  Chip was waiting for me in the car. When he saw me carrying Blanche, he got out and opened the door for me. I slid into the backseat, Blanche on my lap, not saying a word.

  When we got home, he helped me get Blanche and the other dogs inside, then went to park the car. I lay Blanche on a folded quilt on the living room floor and gave Dash and Bianca fresh water outside. Then I began to prepare the raw food for all the pets, putting Blanche’s portion in the blender until it had the consistency of baby food. When it was ready, I took a small portion of it and sat next to Blanche, talking to her and stroking her until she opened one whale eye and looked up at me, then I fed her what I could from my finger, offering small enough amounts so that she could swallow without lifting her head.

  When she had eaten as much as she wanted, I lay down on the quilt along the line of her back, putting an arm across her side, my hand curled under her front leg and against her chest, feeling her breathe, whispering in her ear as she did. I heard Chip come in and take the food outside for Dash and Bianca and walk back in to where I lay on the floor with Blanche.

  “Do you know what she said as I was leaving?”

  He knelt, resting one hand on the top of Blanche’s head.

  “She said, ‘At least you have the clone. It’s not like losing her altogether.’”

  “You told her?”

  “Everything.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I knew there was something wrong with that woman when she didn’t attend my talk.”

  “Is that what people really think, that a clone is the original? That would make twins interchangeable, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t account at all for the development of character, of soul. You can’t duplicate those things.”

  “There’s some more bad news, Rach.”

  I slid my hand out from under Blanche’s leg and sat up.

  “What?”

  “I don’t imagine you saw today’s paper yet.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “They did some tests on Dolly and found that her telomeres were shorter than they should be.”

  “In English please.”

  “The telomeres are attached to the chromosomes and they get shorter each time a cell divides until eventually the cell dies. Dolly’s shortened telomeres might reflect the age of the cell from which she was cloned.”

  “You really can’t fool Mother Nature.”

  “It looks that way. At least for now. But this technology is moving faster than we can absorb it. They may, one day, find a way around this problem, too.”

  “But meanwhile, Bianca was cloned from a nine-and-a-half-year-old dog.”

  “That’s right, Rachel. But so far, she’s fine. She seems healthy and acts appropriately for her chronological age, exactly the way an adolescent should act.”

  I looked back down at Blanche, sleeping again.

  “No matter how many ways we try to play God…”

  “Only God can make a tree?”

  “Correct.”

  He put his hand on the back of my head, leaned forward, and kissed my forehead.

  “You should get some rest, Rachel. You had some night.”

  “He saved my life,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “He did it deliberately, pulling me around behind him when he saw Joe, or whatever his name turns out to be, with the gun. And he said something so strange, Chip. He said, ‘I told him he’d already gone too far.’ Him who?”

  “Are you going to…?”

  “I was hired to contact Side by Side, to tell them the talent they were cloning for did not translate, that the cloned dog wasn’t alerting. But Bianca wasn’t alerting because the job was taken. She wasn’t needed. Blanche was doing the job for her. But when Blanche was incapacitated, and Mel…” I stopped and took a few breaths, thinking of Mel lying in my arms, bleeding to death, thinking how easily that could have been me. “When Mel was about to seizure from loss of blood, Bianca alerted him. She knew.”

  “So there’s no need for you to find Side by Side.”

  “I think what Sophie would want—God, I hate it when people say that, but, still. I think Sophie would want me to take care of Blanche. And for now, that’s what I intend to do.”

  “The police will find Joe.”

  I nodded.

  “When they do, I guess they’ll want you to ID him, and eventually testify against him.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You’ll be able to?”

  “No problem.”

  “And until then…”

  Blanche’s feet were moving. When she began to yelp in her sleep, we both reached out to stroke her.

  “Do you think she’ll make it?”

  “If she’s got a chance, Rachel, your taking care of her will give it to her. If you’d left her there…” He shook his head. “I don’t think she would have lasted a day.”

  “I don’t know if she’ll last a day here.”

  “We have to wait and see.”

  After Chip left for work, promising he’d be back as early in the evening as he could, I called in the dogs and we all stayed with Blanche. I thought I’d sleep, lying against her back, the way I do with Dashiell. But as tired as I was, sleep did not come. I kept thinking about cloning, what it meant, where it would lead, if it would turn out to be another disastrous act of human hubris, like the atom bomb.

  I sent Dash for the phone and dialed a familiar number, one I hadn’t calle
d in ages.

  “Ida?” I said when she picked up.

  “Rachel.”

  “I need a minute or two.”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you been following the news about cloning,” I asked, “about Dolly, the sheep?”

  “Cloning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, yes, of course I’ve read about it. But what…?”

  “I have a client whose dog was cloned. She, the client, was an epileptic and someone approached her about cloning her seizure-alert dog.”

  “You said she was an epileptic?”

  “She was murdered.”

  “How awful. And you’re trying to find out who killed her?”

  “I’m trying to find out how I feel about cloning right now. I feel really confused.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “A lot of people think that procreation should be left to God.”

  “The Joyce Kilmer school of thinking?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you think?”

  “Well, the thing is, yes, I’d agree with that. Or I would have. But this cloned dog, she’s wonderful. There’s nothing wrong with her.”

  “That you can see.”

  “That I can see.”

  “But perhaps…”

  “What I can’t see might be screwed up. Like this age thing, the shortened telomere. Or something else. Something worse.”

  “So what do you think about it, given that?”

  “If I knew what I thought, I wouldn’t have called.”

  “Ah. I was wondering about that. Why did you call?”

  “I told you.”

  “What’s really going on?” she asked, the way she always had. “I can hear that something’s bothering you and I can’t help wondering if it isn’t something more personal.”

  I took a big breath and let it out. Blanche, in her sleep, did the same. Dashiell sat up and cocked his head. Bianca was running in her sleep this time. Outside, some birds were squabbling over a branch. And I could hear some crazy person yelling, from way over on Tenth Street. How was I supposed to think in this crowd?

  But I did, suddenly seeing how stress and exhaustion had made me lose track of who I was and what I did. A moment later, the answer to her question came in the form of a picture, the image of Mel bleeding and dying in my arms. I looked down at myself, realizing I was still wearing the bloody shirt and jeans.