The Wrong Dog

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  It was an old building, like the back cottage I lived in. The main floor had been gutted and made into a laboratory. Since the little back window had been dark, I guessed whoever I could hear now crossing the wooden floor lived there, and had been asleep. Had I awakened him? I thought I’d been silent. That seemed a joke now. I heard the floor creak again. Then someone sneezed. I held my breath.

  Would he come down or go back to bed? I decided not to find out. Backing up to the window, I nearly tripped over a pile of magazines and newspapers tied with a cord and waiting to be set curbside for recycling. I couldn’t help looking, to see if whoever lived here read the Wall Street Journal or Playboy. But neither was on top of the pile. It was Clone Magazine. Clever me, I’d found Side by Side.

  I tore off the cover and stuffed it into my back pocket, looking up at the ceiling and willing whoever was up there to go back to bed. But instead of hearing a door close, or the springs creak, I heard someone coming down the stairs.

  I slid the window all the way open, not bothering to close it behind me this time, getting out of the cottage as fast as I could. I never stopped moving, using the bench to give a boost up the brick wall, tossing myself over the top and landing with a thud in the ivy on the other side.

  Catching my breath, I saw him again. He’d been eating something in the center of the garden. The noise had made him stop and turn. For a moment, we stayed the way we were, two animals sizing each other up. Then he dropped to all fours and disappeared into the pachysandra.

  I ran across the garden, into Sophie’s apartment and straight out her front door, stopping only when I saw another rat. This one was looking down at what he was doing, unlocking the glass door from the street.

  CHAPTER 31

  It Was Probably His Eye Glasses Case

  I had only two choices—back to Sophie’s apartment, or up the stairs. I chose the stairs, taking them two at a time, moving as quietly as I could on the chance he hadn’t seen me. But as I headed up to three, I heard him behind me, not moving quietly, his big feet slapping hard against the stairs, making them moan and creak despite the carpeting.

  I thought about banging on someone’s door, but if I waited and no one was home, he’d have me. So I kept going, straight up to the roof. I pushed the door open and stepped out into the dark, feeling wind coming from the west, seeing the top of the house on West Fourth Street, the windows dark, everyone downstairs, everyone waiting for Joe to come back, say he’d gotten the job done properly this time.

  I had no soda can. I decided not to leave my shoe in the door either. I went to the edge and looked over, checking for a fire escape or a terrace I could jump down to. I thought I could hear him breathing behind me, but the door hadn’t opened yet. I wondered if he had the gun this time, hoping he had only the wrench. I was full of hope, and so scared I sounded as if I was having an asthma attack.

  The door opened and for a moment he stood there, the dim stair light behind him making him look even bigger and bulkier than he was. I looked at his hands, then for a bulge in his belt. Then I checked out his size again, comparing it to my own. I would have swallowed but my mouth was too dry.

  He took a step forward. I stood where I was, the uncomfortably low parapet right behind me.

  “Bitch,” he said, still not moving out of the doorway. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

  “Whatja bring this time, Joey? Let’s see, we’ve done the Vacor, the wrench, the gun. How about a rope and a chandelier?”

  He laughed, a man who once again was in no rush. “Rope and a chandelier? Not exactly, but close enough. Want to write a little note before you jump? Or shall we leave it a mystery, private eye, distraught over the death of her client, leaps to death from roof of West Village apartment building. It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  This time I had enough saliva to swallow.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I am depressed. I should have protected her. It’s all my fault.”

  I bowed my head, clasped my hands, and mumbled to myself. Out of respect, Joe stayed put. He wasn’t a complete boor, you had to give him that. Head still low, I turned, looked all the way down into Sophie’s garden, my knees turning to water, anything I’d eaten since I was nine fighting to come back up and out. Then I glanced to the right and took off running, going over the low parapet, to the next building, and then the one after it, which was about as far as I could go on this block since the next building was two stories taller.

  I didn’t have to look, I could hear him behind me, his shoes on the tarry surface of the roof, his heavy breathing. I was sure he was getting angrier with every step. I went to the north parapet again and turned to face him. He was almost on top of me. I opened my mouth as if to speak, then closed it. He came at me fast now, his meaty hands straight out in front of him, aiming at my chest.

  I waited as long as I could, and then a second longer. As he came at me, giving it all he had, I leaned to the side. Instead of hitting me dead center with both hands, his right hand hit my right shoulder, spinning me around and knocking me off balance. His left hand hit air. Joe, too, lost his balance, listing a little to his left, lurching forward, flipping headfirst over the low wall. Facing the way he went, I continued moving, too, over the parapet, still spinning from the impact, so that as I went over, I was facing the building. Reaching for what I had seen from the roof of Sophie’s building, I grabbed with both hands, hoping that one of them would make sufficient contact with the ladder of the fire escape to stop my fall. But it didn’t. Feeling one hand scrape along the rusty metal, I fell for what seemed like forever, landing with a loud clang and a double shot of pain on my hands and knees on the top level of the fire escape, the one below a window of the sixth-floor apartment. Eyes closed, mentally checking to make sure I was in one piece, I took a breath, staying exactly where I was, crouched like a dog.

  Because of where I had positioned myself for the push that was supposed to unite me with my client and her dog walker, Joe had gone straight down. Well, maybe not straight down. With the fire escape that close, he may have banged his shoulder against it on the way, sending him a little farther to the left.

  Steeling myself for the return of nausea, I opened my eyes and looked between the rusty metal slats beneath me. Everything spun. I took a deep breath and let it out. Joe lay still, five stories below me. He’d apparently hit the birdbath in the center of the garden with his head, as if the fall wouldn’t have been enough to kill him. The birdbath was lying next to his body, the basin cracked in half, the spilled water making his dark hair even darker, pasting it down to his skull, making his round pale face shine, as if he were in the middle of a bad dream, sweating profusely from the fear. There was water all around him, too, dark and glistening. But maybe not. It was probably blood.

  I reached for my cell phone, but it wasn’t there. Looking down again, I saw it in the garden, close enough to Joe’s hand that, were he able, he could make the call we needed himself. But maybe not. It was probably his eyeglass case or his wallet. A fall like that, things are bound to get out of place.

  The curtain was pulled back. There, at the bottom of the window, was a small face, the large blue eyes fixed on mine. A moment later, a man opened the window.

  “What in the hell…,” he said, the little boy now hiding behind him.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, still on my hands and knees, “but could you call nine-one-one? There’s a dead man in the garden.”

  CHAPTER 32

  He Pulled Down the Shade

  Whoever lived in the apartment whose fire escape I’d landed on didn’t offer to let me in through the window. Instead, he checked to make sure it was locked, and that the lock was holding. Then he pulled down the shade. “No,” the little boy said. I could hear him whining as he was being dragged to the safety of another room.

  I didn’t stay there on the fire escape to wait for the cops. I had other things to do. I stood carefully, did a quick check of body parts�
��my own—and when I found I was more or less intact, climbed up the ladder I’d missed on the way down. My cell phone was next to the parapet between this building and the next. I picked it up, shoved it back into my pocket, and tried the door to the stairs, finding it locked.

  Ignoring my scraped hands and bleeding knees, I went quickly over the low wall to the next building, the one abutting Sophie’s. The fire door was locked there, too, but this building also had a fire escape. I climbed down the ladder, trying to think about anything but how much it was shaking and pulling away from the brick wall of the building, bits of mortar falling to the garden below as I descended as quickly as I could, trying my best not to make noise, which was, of course, a hopeless endeavor.

  The second-floor fire escape was the last one. From that one you could lower a ladder to the garden next to Sophie’s, if you had the tools to get it free. Apparently there hadn’t been a fire in this building for fifty or a hundred years. No way was I going to get this ladder to slide down. So I climbed over the edge and hung by my torn hands, dropping gracelessly onto the brick patio outside the living room of the vacant apartment, spun around, pulled open the window, and, in no time, was out on Third Street and heading home.

  I called Chip when I got to Bleecker Street, told him I was alive, skipped a few of the details, like the stuff that had happened on the roof and my escape through the empty apartment next door to Sophie’s. But I did tell him I’d found the lab where the cloning had been done and that I had the name of the geneticist who’d done the astonishing work sub rosa. He asked if I wanted him to come over. I told him no, I had to do some research, find out all I could about Ruprecht Philips before morning.

  “What then?”

  “Depends on what I find.”

  No one said anything for a minute. I thought about changing my mind, asking him to come over, bring his laptop, help me with the research. Then I thought about him seeing my hands and knees all bloody and raw and decided it wasn’t a good idea to risk clicking on the “Me Tarzan, You Jane” thing, making him feel he’d failed to protect me from the charging rhino.

  “Not to worry,” I said, wincing as my jeans pulled against one knee where the fabric had stuck to the wound, thinking if I wasn’t in jail by morning, I might do something the good doctor and all his colleagues no longer did. I might make a house call.

  There were no cops waiting for me on Tenth Street, only dogs, three of them, all acting as if I were Santa Claus with a bag full of liver treats. Dashiell spent a lot of time sniffing at my bloody knees. The bullies licked my hands. I fed them, let them out, and got to work.

  At a quarter to four, the excitement of the hunt keeping me wide awake, I found what I was after, an article about Ruprecht Philips, whose name I’d gotten from the mailing label on the cover of Clone Magazine. He’d been doing research on cloning for a small lab that was hoping to corner the market on human body parts, hoping that instead of waiting for a new kidney, patients would be able to buy one. The lab had lost funding when Clinton called the ban on human cloning and my guess was that Charles Madison had seen that same article and had snagged him for Side by Side.

  I wondered if it was Philips who had taken the DNA samples from Blanche, though it could just as easily have been Lorna, going into the back room and taking cheek swabs. Sophie said she never saw the vet. I’d read the instructions at VetGen’s web site and it didn’t seem to me you’d have to be a rocket scientist to follow them.

  Okay, I thought, making notes as I did, let’s say Madison set up a lab for Philips in the cottage, paid him a fat salary, had him there cloning dogs.

  But why? What the hell was he doing there that made it worth killing Sophie?

  And Mel?

  Then I thought about the loft on Gansevoort Street, about the name on the bell. Didn’t that mean that Mel was Madison’s son?

  Impossible. No one would…

  But he hadn’t sent Joe to kill Mel. He’d sent him to kill me. Twice. Maybe three times, the klutz. All his money, Madison couldn’t find a better goon?

  And what now? Send someone else? Do it himself? He was in too deep to stop. Whatever it was he was after, nothing was going to stand in his way—no loss, no law, no anything.

  I made a grilled cheese sandwich, putting a mug on top of it to make sure the cheese melted. Sitting at the table, I looked at my notes, trying to figure out what this was all about, how the different parts connected, and when I thought I had most of it, I locked the door, took a hot shower, and waited for morning.

  CHAPTER 33

  He Took a Step Toward the Gate

  I called the house on West Fourth Street, and when he answered, told him where I’d be in an hour. He agreed to meet me so that we could talk. Then I showered, dressed, ate, and fed the dogs, taking the bullies for a walk, then leaving them home and taking Dashiell to the dog run.

  He’d gotten there before me, taking the same seat he’d had the first time I’d met him, looking pretty much the same as he had then, overdressed for where he was. This time, perhaps to keep the sun out of his eyes, or maybe for some other reason, he was wearing dark glasses.

  I kept Dashiell on leash and sat down next to him. He dipped his chin, but didn’t speak.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “You couldn’t possibly understand.”

  “Try me.”

  He looked me over and exhaled through his nose, like a horse. Clearly, I wasn’t up to his high standards.

  “I’m your best shot,” I said.

  “It seemed an incredible opportunity for me, a dream come true. Except—”

  “Except that you’d never be able to publish it, never be able to announce it, never get to take credit for it.”

  He shook his head. “No. That was part of the deal. Though I thought that one day he might change his mind. I hoped that, at least.”

  “If you were successful.”

  He smiled. “Yes, that big if.”

  “And you were. There were how many Blanche clones?”

  “Just the three. Once we had those, we didn’t try for more.”

  “Still, it’s an astonishing accomplishment.”

  “Still,” he said, staring straight ahead, across the run, focusing on God knows what.

  “And fantastic as that was, something that would have assured your place in history, it was just the warm-up.”

  “Yes.” No surprise showing on his face. Still staring straight ahead, as if he was talking to himself, not to me. And maybe, in a way, he was.

  “The real work, how did that go?”

  He shrugged. “It hardly matters now. The project ended last night.”

  “So I heard.”

  Now he turned his head and looked at me, at least I assumed he was looking at me. All I could see in those dark, dark glasses was a miniature reflection of myself, something akin to what Charles Madison had so longed to see.

  “He wanted this enough to kill for it.”

  “I had no idea. I knew he wanted it enough to spend millions on it. The rest, when it happened…”

  “But you didn’t stop then. You didn’t leave. You—”

  “I was in so deep. I was so involved in the project. The thought of abandoning it, well, I just couldn’t, I couldn’t. I told myself—”

  “That it wasn’t your fault, what happened, it was his fault. He’d done it. You were just a scientist doing what you’d been trained to do, using your extraordinary talent, following along from question to question.”

  He turned back toward the other side of the run and nodded. “Yes. Something like that.”

  “Did you know, when Sophie died, what had been done?”

  “Not at first. But then I heard talk.”

  “He was on the phone?”

  “No. He was talking to his son. Arguing, actually. I was coming in from the lab, crossing the garden. I could hear them through the French doors.”

  “His son,” I said.

  “Adopted.”

  “Ah.
”

  “And the daughter also?”

  “Yes.”

  “So neither of them—”

  “No. That was the gist of what he told me, that he was not able to father children but that more than anything in the world, he wanted one who would inherit his ability.”

  “Who would play the piano.”

  “Compose and play, yes.”

  “But the son and daughter?”

  He shook his head. “I suppose it’s a form of megalomania, not so different from his. But when he approached me, all I could see, all I allowed myself to look at was the opportunity to work with unlimited funds, with fewer restraints than I’d have anywhere else.”

  “Something you were unable to turn down.”

  “I expect I could have turned it down, Ms. Alexander. I don’t want you to think I take no responsibility for my decision. I am not without backbone. But the temptation…”

  “Nearly impossible to resist, a chance like that.”

  He nodded.

  “And you had no idea how obsessive—”

  “Obsessive? Oh, believe me. That, yes, I did see. But not how violent he was. Perhaps I was naive.”

  I didn’t respond. I wondered, instead, how many of us could resist an offer like that, the dream of a lifetime on a silver platter.

  “Did you live there, too?”

  He nodded again.

  “At the cottage, over the lab?”

  “No. The main house, top floor.”

  “Then who lives at the cottage?”

  “No one.”