K-9 Blues

by Ralph Vaughan

  “We may have our differences with Antony and Arnold from time to time,” Levi interrupted, “but our goal is basically the same as theirs, order and protection. The real difference is that they always put the law above natural justice and doing what is right.”

  “They are not always the same,” Yoda mused.

  “It’s better to be right than lawful,” Sunny said.

  “Well, I suppose so,” Yoda agreed. “Consequences though…”

  “If we are in the right, then, generally, consequences don’t…”

  “We can argue philosophies later,” Levi cut in. “Sunny is right about Slim Shady – Antony and Arnold would not be running him to ground if nothing was amiss. The Whippet owes us some honest answers, and he better make it quick because the skunk-scent in the alley is fading fast.”

  “If Arnold would return on his own, it would be better,” Sunny pointed out. “He would listen to reason.”

  “Yeah, but he won’t come alone,” Yoda growled. “Arnold’s okay. I guess it’s mostly Antony who gets under my skin.”

  “Skin?” Sunny quipped, taking a page from Yoda’s own play-book. “You mean there’s a dog somewhere under all that wild fur?

  “If you’ll recall, I had a haircut three months ago,” Yoda said. “It grew back!”

  “Oh, yes, I remember now,” Sunny drawled. “If we had put collars on all that hair, we could have had two more Pomeranians.”

  “We can also quip later,” Levi interjected. “The skunk-scent is on the wane and there is an east wind rising.”

  Of all the animals assembled at the top of the driveway, only Sunny recognized the source of Levi’s quote. The others merely thought Levi was eccentric, and in that they were not wrong either.

  “All right then, let’s find out what Slim Shady’s real story is,” Levi said.

  Sunny pushed her shoulder against the door that connected the driveway to the backyard while Groucho leaped through the missing window; Smokey sprang from the Aspire to the roof of the garage from which he commanded a view of both the vacant lot where the Haunted House used to stand and the north-south alley beyond. Levi and Yoda followed Sunny. The door to the garage hung open.

  “You’ll want to get to high ground,” Levi said to Groucho.

  “Slim Shady is a Whippet, you know,” Sunny reminded the lithe Calico. “Prone to chasing.”

  “A dog must be true to his nature,” Yoda quipped.

  “He does not have to be a slave to it,” Sunny sniffed.

  Levi sighed. “Philosophy and quips? Together? Now? Really?”

  Sunny and Yoda sat down and pretended to watch Groucho as he leaped to a rusting barbecue grill beside the garage to the top of the open door to the roof. He trotted across the connecting portion to the house and westward down the length of the low roof.

  “I should check up on the canine cops,” Groucho said. “Have to make sure they don’t make like Dalmatians, and spot us.”

  Levi shook his head and smothered a sigh. Even the cats were starting to riff on Yoda’s propensity toward quips and puns. Perhaps it would be, Levi thought hopefully, a passing phase.

  “Slim Shady,” Levi called softly. “We need to speak.”

  “Is it clear?” a quiet and tremulous voice asked from just within the garage. “Have those two dogs gone?”

  “Come out here,” Levi said.

  A slender muzzle edged cautiously out the door followed by a long and lean head adorned with small silky ears and very large and luminous eyes. This was followed by a long arching neck and laid-back shoulders with flat, powerful muscles.

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” the Whippet asked, glancing about with his china-colored eyes.

  “Get out here,” Yoda snapped impatiently.

  Slim Shady was short-haired, off-white with large patches of gray across most of his narrow back and across his eyes like a mask. His lean form and markings had earned him his nickname almost from the moment of birth, three years earlier. A pet for his first two years, he suddenly found himself alone in a locked house, abandoned when his companions moved. He escaped, with help, and over the last year had knocked about this and surrounding neighborhoods. It seemed to the operatives of the Three Dog Detective Agency as if they had spent the past year getting Slim Shady out of one scrape after another.

  He finally emerged from the gloom of the garage. Small for his breed, he weighed only about twelve pounds, the result of a harsh life on the street. He had gone from being a confident and slightly plump pampered pet to what other dogs referred to as a “trembler,” a dog fearful of his surroundings, unequipped for a feral life yet unable to trust any companion who might rescue him from it.

  “Why are Officers Antony and Arnold looking for you?” Levi asked, keeping his tone soft but firm.

  “I…I don’t know…they just started chasing…hassling…”

  “Cut it out!” Yoda snapped.

  Slim Shady looked up as if he had been smacked with a rolled-up newspaper.

  Sunny immediately stepped forward. “We want to help you, Slim Shady, but you can’t lie to us.”

  “No one wants to hurt or scare you,” Levi assured the other dog. “But we must know the truth.”

  “Remember, dogs do not lie,” Sunny said.

  The Whippet sat down and hung his head low.

  “Time is not on our side,” Levi said. “The only reason Antony and Arnold could not force their way in was because your scent was lost in the ambient chaos resulting from last night’s skunking. Now, you may not be a Bloodhound, but you can surely smell what’s fading from the air. We want to help you, Slim Shady, but not if you cannot be honest with us. Before we do anything, we have to be sure we are doing the right thing.”

  “Come on, Slim Shady,” Sunny urged. “We know you’ve had your problems, but I feel in your heart you are a good dog.”

  “So, give, buddy!” Yoda enjoined.

  Slim Shady dipped his long graceful neck even lower, till his nose seemed ready to touch the walkway. After a long moment, he sighed, lifted his head and looked directly at the three dogs.

  “I guess it’s because I found some food this morning, before dawn,” Slim Shady said. “I was hungry and was scrounging through dumpsters near the condos at the edge of Memorial Park.”

  “That’s behind the police building,” Yoda remarked.

  Slim Shady nodded. “I was ready to give up when I came upon some packages. Like you said, I’m no Bloodhound, so I had to rip one open to see what was inside. Meat. It was meat.”

  “What do you mean?” Sunny asked.

  “The package was full of meat,” Slim Shady explained. “And so were the others…fresh meat.”

  “That does not make any sense,” Levi asserted. “Companions often throw away perfectly good food, but no one is going to throw away fresh meat, and not all wrapped up.”

  “I did not try to make sense of it or figure out how it got there,” the Whippet said. “I was too hungry to ask questions.”

  “Poor baby,” Sunny murmured.

  “So, you found something to eat,” Yoda said. “You lucked out. No one – even someone like Antony – is going to begrudge a meal to a hungry dog.”

  “Yoda is correct,” Levi agreed. “How did the K-9 Unit get in on the act? That time of the morning, a few officers may be riding with the regular police, making security rounds, but most are going to be in their kennels.”

  “I was so happy about finding the meat, I didn’t really notice anything else around me,” Slim Shady continued. “Suddenly, two really big Dobermans leaped out of the darkness. One pinned me while the other grabbed my neck and shook it. When I was down on the ground, all I could do was look up, and that is when I saw the strange dog in the mask.”

  “Say what?” Yoda gasped.

  Sunny cocked her head dubiously.

  “What kind of mask?” Levi asked.

  “Maybe ‘cowl’ would be a better term,” Slim Shady admitted. “It was black and wrapped abou
t, covering his whole head except for a bit around the mouth and the two holes where his green eyes shone through. He was sitting on top of the brick wall around the dumpster looking down. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t – it was like I was held by those glowing eyes.”

  “A masked dog with fiery green eyes?” Yoda said doubtfully. “Okay, what breed was this…this ghost dog?”

  “It wasn’t a ghost,” Slim Shady protested. “I’ve seen ghosts. We’ve all seen ghosts…and this was no ghost!”

  “Bad meat,” Yoda said, shaking his head. “You got hold of some bad meat and…”

  “I did not imagine all this!” the Whippet snapped. “And I am not lying! I may be just a street-dog now, but I am not a liar!”

  “Settle down,” Sunny advised. “Obviously you had a scare, and no one is calling you a liar.”

  “Well, I…” Yoda started to say.

  “Yoda,” Levi warned. He looked to Slim Shady. “Let’s assume you saw a real dog on the wall…”

  “What kind of a dog is going to be sitting on a wall like that?” Yoda demanded, but fell silent at a disapproving glance from Levi.

  “What breed was it?” Levi asked. “Could you tell what breed it was under the mask?”

  Slim Shady cast his gaze downward as his mind went back to that moment in time. Though he had been terrified for his life, he had not panicked to the point of oblivion. The eyes of a Whippet are to that breed what the nose is to a scent-hound, and he now tried to recall all that had come into his field of vision.

  “He was not a Elkhound, but he was about the same size, with something of a Bulldog’s compact build,” Slim Shady said, eyes half-closed as he concentrated. “The cowl was loose, but I could tell the head was large and dome-shaped. No ears rising or bulging at the sides, just a bit of a bump where ears would have been. Short haired. Dark. Weird markings, like stripes. But what I recall most are those eerie eyes.” Slim Shady shuddered at the remembrance. “Glowing…green glowing eyes!”

  “Darnedest thing I ever heard of.” Yoda remarked.

  “What was the connection between the masked dog and the two Dobermans?” Sunny asked.

  “At first I didn’t think there was any connection at all,” Slim Shady admitted. “But then the masked dog made a sound and they let me go.”

  “What kind of sound?” Levi asked.

  The Whippet gave the canine equivalent of a shrug. “It wasn’t a growl or a bark, nor any kind of word I could make out. But they both reacted to it instantly, getting off me and letting go my neck. I think one of them even said ‘yes, master,’ or something like that.”

  “A dog called another dog master?” Yoda exclaimed.

  “That’s what it sounded like,” Slim Shady confirmed.

  “I don’t know any dog who would call another dog master,” Sunny averred. “Not even the most tyrannical alpha.”

  Both Sunny and Yoda looked to their own alpha for a glimmer of sense in Slim Shady’s story, but Levi held silent, his gaze slightly uplifted, his eyes half-lidded as he remained deep in thought.

  “They let me go, and then they were gone,” Slim Shady said as the silence became uncomfortable. “The Dobermans and the dog in the mask.”

  “Where did they go?” Sunny asked.

  “I don’t know,” Slim Shady admitted. “One moment they had me, could have done me in, then they were gone.”

  “You must have heard something,” Yoda insisted. “Which way did they go? Down the street? Into the condos? The park? Where?”

  Slim Shady sighed in frustration. “Nose and ears not too good, but with my keen eyes and my speed I should have seen where they went, but I didn’t. I scrambled up fast as I could, but none of them were around anymore. They were just gone.”

  “Then what happened?” Sunny urged.

  “I grabbed one of the meat packages and ran down into Memorial Park.”

  “You hid under the stone bridge,” Levi suggested.

  “Yes, I…” Slim Shady started and looked at Levi eyes wide with surprise. “How did you know?”

  “The little stream that runs through the center of the park under that bridge causes a light covering of moss to grow where the stones are always in shadow,” Levi explained. “You carry the scent.”

  The explanation, simple as it seemed stated so bluntly by Levi, still baffled Slim Shady. Like all creatures dwelling beneath sun and moon, he defined the world around him by his own capabilities and limitations. Though he understood some dogs had other senses greater than his own, he could never experience the world as they did. In that respect, the operatives of the Three Dog Detective Agency held an advantage over all others. They were so close emotionally, bound by affection and sense of purpose, that when they worked together on a case, Levi’s sniffer, Yoda’s radar-like ears, and Sunny’s preternatural vision gave them powers that seemed to other dogs almost magical, an understanding that transcended canine limitations.

  “I hid in the blackness under the bridge, tore open the package, and devoured the meat,” Slim Shady continued. “I slept there till sometime after dawn.”

  Smokey leapt from the garage roof, touched upon the arbor, then alighted upon the ground. He started toward the chain-link fence that separated the backyard from the apartment complex and the vacant lot to the north. The flash of motion caught the attention of Slim Shady, and he instinctively started for it.

  “Sit!” Levi said softly.

  Slim Shady instantly planted his posterior against the concrete, his attention deserting the swift-moving cat for the quiet-spoken Dachshund.

  “Antony and Arnold came to you in the park?” Levi asked.

  “Yes, while I was just laying there, not up to getting about yet,” Slim Shady said. “I was tired and sore.”

  “What did they say to you?”

  “I’m not sure, Levi,” Slim Shady replied. “It all happened so fast, it’s hard to keep it straight.”

  “Try,” Levi urged.

  “Okay,” Slim Shady said. “I had been awake only a little while. I was cold and shivering, wasn’t really paying much attention to anything around me, thinking back to…well, better times, I guess, when I had a home. Just as I got up and started to stretch, those two police dogs were there, on either side of the bridge, blocking me in. The Cane Corso…”

  “Antony,” Yoda supplied.

  “Yeah, he was yelling about me stealing and biting…”

  “Biting?” Sunny tilted her head in confusion. “You never bit anyone in your life.”

  “And how can taking anything from the trash be stealing?” Yoda demanded. “If it is, then we’re all thieves from time to time.”

  “Let Slim Shady tell his story,” Levi said.

  “Antony was doing the shouting,” Slim Shady said, “with the other police dog just standing there.”

  “Figures,” Yoda muttered softly.

  “He got in my muzzle, yelling and snapping, telling me I had one paw in the Shelter, that he was going to push me the rest of the way in,” Slim Shady explained. He gasped as he relived a moment that had frightened him more than had the physical attack. “He said I entered a house, attacked another dog, bit a companion!” His breaths were fast and shallow; he appeared on the verge of collapse. “I would never…you got to believe…I’m not…no matter what!”

  Sunny stepped forward, resting her neck over his, pressing her chest against his side so he could hear and feel the beating of her heart. Very quickly, he calmed down and his breathing returned to normal. When he stopped trembling, Sunny stepped away.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that…”

  “That’s okay, buddy,” Yoda said. “We all know it’s been a rough year for you.”

  “Neither Antony nor Arnold said anything about the dumpster or what you found there?” Levi asked.

  “No…no, they didn’t,” Slim Shady replied. “I guess I was so rattled by everything that I connected the two events in my mind, but, now that I think about it, they did not say anything a
bout the meat or the other dogs.”

  “You did not go into a house?” Levi said.

  Slim Shady shook his slender head. “I have not been in any house, not since…well, you know. And I certainly did not attack a dog or bite anyone. You got to believe me!”

  “We do believe you,” Sunny told him.

  “How could Antony and Arnold be so wrong?” Yoda asked. “I know I sometimes make fun of them…”

  “Sometimes?” Sunny ventured.

  “Well, maybe a bit more than sometimes,” the Pomeranian admitted. “But the point is, they’re basically good police dogs, and not the type to go off the leash, if you know what I mean.”

  “Antony always follows the evidence, and Arnold is more of a good influence that he realizes,” Levi mused. “If anything, those two have always been a bit too cautious, slow to action until they have enough evidence to satisfy the law.”

  “Which makes the incident in the park all the more mysterious, don’t you think?” Sunny said.

  “How did you escape them?” Yoda asked.

  “I ran for my life,” Slim Shady replied. “When they came after me, I leaped across the stream and ran.”

  “Nothing mysterious about that,” Sunny admitted.

  “If a Whippet isn’t built for speed, then who is?” Slim Shady quipped. “Besides, over the past year I’ve rather gotten used to running away.” He sighed. “Very used to it.”

  “So, that’s when you came here?” Yoda asked.

  “Not right away,” Slim Shady admitted. “They chased me for awhile, but I eventually ditched them. I wandered around. I did not know what to do, where to go. I really did not want to come here.”

  “Why in the name of Anubis not?” Sunny demanded. “You knew we would help you, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve been so much trouble to you guys already,” the Whippet sighed. “I don’t want to end up in a Shelter; they say the one here in Chula Vista doesn’t put anyone to sleep, but…well, you just can’t trust companions, can you? Look what they did to me, leaving me in that locked house! If it had not been for you three…well, coming so close to being slammed up got me to thinking how many close calls I’ve had, how the three of you have helped me more than I deserve. Before I talked myself into coming here, I thought maybe it would be better for everyone if…” He uttered a piteous whimper. “I thought about walking into traffic.”