3 Panthers Play for Keeps

by Clea Simon

  At least Haigen had perked up when I started talking about Spot. Partly, I figured, that was because he needed a project. Partly, I hoped, it was because he liked animals. That could have been wishful thinking; I wanted the best for Spot, if not this rich guy. Still, getting him used to working with a service dog would be good training for both of them, not that it would soften the blow as his world went dark.

  “Caught in a box…” It was a wisp of a thought, accompanied by a faint scent of trees and leaf mold. Too faint. I cranked down the window a crack. I’d been driving aimlessly, enjoying the ride. For Spot, however, the enclosed car must have been dull as—well, a dog could find something of interest even in the plainest dirt. The air that came streaming in was cold, frosty even. But the thaw had held, and the air had to be rich with information and intrigue for an animal like Spot. Sight was the least of it.

  “You must think we’re so limited.” I knew Wallis did. “But because of that, your new person will need you.”

  That’s when it hit me. All the answers I couldn’t get from Creighton, maybe I could get from Spot, now that he was making the effort, communicating with me telepathically in phrases I could understand. It was a rare opportunity, and even as I warned myself that this kind of communication tended to be limited—even as I reminded myself that I had to be careful against misinterpreting, against overinterpreting the canine’s half-phrased thoughts—I made my decision. I had to try. I hung a hard left and headed toward the highway.

  Spot’s ears pricked up as we cruised along the edge of the preservation land. And when I pulled into the service road we’d driven up the day before, I could feel his other senses on alert. Yes, he was all dog, made to work. But revisiting a trail like this one had to be a challenge.

  Unless…I paused. What with the tension between me and Dr. Laurel, I’d never followed up on what she’d said about Spot. Dream chases and nighttime whimpering could be a sign of distress. They could also signal involvement, unfinished business—much as human dreams may. As we pulled into the parking area, I reached out to place one hand on Spot’s broad back.

  “Is this okay?” I wasn’t sure how to translate my concern, and hoped that the physical contact would help. “Is it too much?”

  “Out!” He didn’t pull away exactly, but even without any special connection I would have been able to tell what he wanted. I walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger side, taking the lead in my hand.

  “Heel.” I was being paid for this, I might as well do it. Besides, I needed to exert some control over what happened.

  Spot’s training was good, and he waited, body still. His mind was racing, though, shooting off a rapid-fire series of images, chronicling the woods and its inhabitants. After about forty-five seconds, I gave him the go-ahead signal and he started toward the woods, pausing at the edge of the pavement for one backward glance.

  “Follow?”

  “Yes,” I said, not knowing if I had agreed to tag along or if he was asking permission to seek out that rich, strange scent once again. “Follow.”

  With that he was off, and even as I let out the lead, I had to trot to keep up. All around us, I could hear the sounds of the awakening woods—a litany of chirps and chatter that fell into muted silence as Spot and I approached. Spring was coming, after another hard winter, and everyone was ready to get down to business. To eat, to find a mate. To do what one could before some terrible jaws came clamping down.

  “Wait!” It was a command, so clear I stopped short without thinking. Spot, about twenty feet ahead of me, was frozen.

  “What is it?” I didn’t dare speak the words out loud, but my question must have been clear.

  “Careful…” I saw his black nose twitch, but I relaxed. It takes a discerning creature like Wallis—who knows me well—to separate out the signals I’m sending from the ones she—or he—wants me to hear. Spot had picked up that I was listening to the birds and squirrels, and these had been startled by our arrival. He was echoing back. Interpreting. Nothing more.

  Either he got that too, or he reached the conclusion by himself, because he started on again, going a little more slowly as we went deeper into the woods. The silence was almost complete here; the deep leaf cover, damp and soft, muting any sounds our feet would make. Even some of the larger animals—I got a sense of a possum and at least three nesting raccoons—seemed to be holding their breath. It was a little too much for one human and one good-sized dog to have provoked, and I felt the hairs along the back of my neck go up.

  “Spot?” I voiced the question this time, even though my mouth had gone dry. “What is it, Spot?”

  How could I have been so careless? We weren’t the largest predator in these woods. Creighton might have his doubts, but something had savaged that woman.

  Spot had stopped, and I came up to him. Better that we should stay close together: one big creature instead of two smaller ones. Me standing and tall with Spot by my side made a less appealing target for a hungry predator.

  “Gone.” The one word had me breathing again. Of course, he had never forgotten what we were dealing with here. “This way.”

  I let him lead me a few hundred feet farther, and then waited as he sniffed some leaves. They could have been the ones cradling the body we’d found. To be honest, with the changing light and the sameness of the brown leaf bed, I wouldn’t vouch for it.

  “She was here?” I reached tentatively for Spot’s head. I wanted the contact, but I also didn’t want to kneel down, to make myself look lower or smaller, just in case he was wrong.

  “Here, I found her.” Of course, the scent remained. The body, however, had been removed only after we’d gone.

  With that confirmation, it was easier to see the signs of Creighton and his crew. Some of the leaves seemed to have been raked; they were probably taken for further analysis. One of the trees seemed to have had some bark scraped away, although whether that was done intentionally by the cops or by some photographer backing into a damp oak was anyone’s guess. But while Creighton’s people would have taken anything that a human would consider a clue, I had another tool at my disposal. Now that we weren’t facing a dead body—or an angry detective—I could give Spot his head.

  He didn’t need a prompt, and as soon as I let the lead out again, he began investigating, nose to the ground, ears pitched forward as if to capture more of the scents and the scene.

  “What is it, Spot? What do you get?”

  More sniffing. Leaf mold. Something warm, with charcoal fur. A mole? A squirrel? Then—bingo!—he was on it. Blood, fresh enough, and suddenly the images started pouring forth. Fear, acrid as smoke. Pain just as sharp. More pain. Blinding pain and sounds—not human. Or, well, not that of a rational human anymore. Then the rip and tear of teeth. Huge teeth. The warmth of blood and then…cold silence.

  When the images faded, I realized I was leaning back on that oak, panting as if I’d just been chased. So this is how Spot saw the world? I looked down, a little dazed, to see the shepherd mix looking up at me.

  “I smelled that here.” Yes, I’d gotten that. But there was something more. “In the blood, here.”

  And I remembered. Yes, those emotions—the fear, the pain—they might well remain in the blood when it was spilled. It didn’t mean the attack, for there was no other word for it, had happened here. Had it?

  Spot looked at me and tilted his head. It was a complex question, one I wasn’t sure how to phrase. I thought of a woman, here in the woods, her hands outstretched in a useless last-ditch attempt. I pictured her falling in the shadows of these trees. It was horrible.

  What I got was sunlight. Warmth. An echo of the calm that had preceded the attack. Did that mean the woman had been killed on a brighter day—or closer to high noon? The morning shadows were leaving us now, but in an hour or two, this leafless bit of forest might be fairly bright. Or was I just picking up an em
otional state as interpreted by a dog: the last bit of peace before the kill?

  “The blood is silent.” Yes, I knew it was, now. Spot seemed to be trying to tell me something, but I was stuck on my own memories now. Those images had been so vibrant, so harsh.

  “Run away, quick, quick…” I sensed a bit of a struggle. Spot was a well-trained dog, a domestic animal. Still, he called it as he saw it. “Trapped.”

  She might have been happy, out here for a walk. Not that she was dressed for it. And again, I wondered, how did she get out here? Who was she? I pressed as hard as I dared, concentrating on the depths of those dark eyes.

  “Who isn’t important.” I got it, finally. Not that I understood. “Who didn’t do it. She was in the way. In her way. That’s how she got killed.”

  Chapter Nine

  If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that Spot had just given me motive. She got in her way. That sounded like jealousy to me. The disposal of a rival, in a particularly permanent way. That didn’t fit, however, with anything else that I knew. Even in my blackest mood, for example, I doubted I could tear Laurel Kroft’s sleek coif half off and let her smooth throat bleed out on the leaves. And if I couldn’t, well, no matter what the handsome Creighton might believe, it did look to be the work of an animal.

  There was something wrong here, though. Something I wasn’t getting. And as Spot went back to sniffing, I worked at phrasing my question correctly.

  “What did this, Spot?” I didn’t want to picture a cougar. The tawny fur, the broad muzzle. The fangs. That would be the animal equivalent of leading the witness. I didn’t want to think any more about Laurel Kroft, either. No matter what was going on between us—or between the pretty doctor and Creighton—she was Spot’s caregiver, at least for now. No, I tried to blank my mind out, and when that failed, I recalled what I could of the victim’s wounds.

  I’m not squeamish. Never was, and living with Wallis has weaned me even further from it. But I hadn’t taken a really good look at the body we’d found. Now I closed my eyes and took a breath. That blouse, that was a good starting point. A gold pattern—interlocking chains? Maybe—I could picture them running down her arms, bright against the deep green background. Quite lovely, really, if it hadn’t been for the dark staining on the front. No wonder I hadn’t noted that she wore no coat. Maybe that’s what had been bothering me. I couldn’t tell, yet I had to make myself try.

  It wasn’t fun, but with my eyes closed, I made my memory move up her arms to her chest. To her throat. At first, I saw black—the darkness of terror. The dark hair and the raw flesh beside it, dark with clotting. That one eye. Dried blood staining what remained of her shirt. A touch of gold, where a shred of her shirt had not been soaked through. Where a claw—

  “No!” I couldn’t help it. I’d felt it. That moment—the panic, the realization. The giant paw. The jaws. I yelled out loud, jumping back in terror at the image that had leaped into my head.

  “Master?” Spot was looking up, worried.

  “No.” I forced my voice down, into its normal register. “Everything is fine. We are good.”

  A tilt of the head. “Good boy.” I wanted to give him what reassurance I could. In response, he gave his flag of a tail a half a wag. More acknowledgment of what I was trying to communicate than true happiness.

  “Good boy!” I put some heart into it. After all, as far as I could tell, Spot really had done everything I’d asked of him. By sharing his impressions—the scent of blood left on leaves and his acute canine interpretation of it—he had fleshed out my memory. I didn’t know if he had smelled a killer, or if some chemicals in that spilled blood—adrenaline, maybe, or something stronger—had triggered my own reaction. But he’d allowed me to see what might have happened. How this killing might have gone down.

  I should go for more. I still had no sense of what exactly had torn that poor woman’s throat out. And I had no idea how jealousy or ambition—how “getting in her way”—might figure into it. But I didn’t know how much else he could give me. We had come back here. Spot had done his best with the scene. Truth was, I didn’t have the heart for more.

  I liked to think it did Spot some good. Revisiting a scene might not give a dog “closure,” as Creighton had called it. Not in the human sense. But I’d pulled him away yesterday before he’d had a chance to really explore. That unsatisfied curiosity might be what had caused his dreams the night before. I really didn’t know. But Spot came willingly when I told him we were going, and I believe both our moods picked up as we approached the clearing where I had parked.

  “Heel.” Once I could see the brightness of the sun ahead, I realized I should really use the time as I was paid to. “Good boy,” I said as he responded instantly.

  “Walk me.” I shortened the lead and watched him step up so it was just taut. “Let’s go,” I said, and he began leading me. Not too fast and very careful, coming back to my side to halt me with his body when we came up to a large branch in our path.

  “Good boy.”

  I turned and began walking again. This time, I had my eyes half-shut, just as an experiment, but I could clearly see the brush ahead of me. Out from under the trees, at the lot’s edge, it had grown thick and brambly. And I walked toward it as if those thorns would mean nothing to me.

  “No!” Spot was in front of me, leaning his considerable weight against my legs. “Stop!”

  “Good.” Spot was perhaps a tad premature, but his reaction was basically correct. Besides, I was ready to go home. “My turn now.” Letting out more of the leash, I signaled that I would take the lead. “Walk,” I said out loud.

  “No!” Ignoring my lead, he stepped in front of me. “Get back.” He flicked his ear away from me and turned slightly. Body still blocking me, he turned toward the hedge-like undergrowth.

  “I’ve got it, Spot.” I reached down to get his attention and to remind him I was in charge. As soon as I touched his head, however, I realized there was more involved than canine overexuberance. Something was going on here. Something that countermanded his training, and I needed to find out what it was. “Are we a little excited?”

  Wallis hates it when I use first-person plural. She finds it infantilizing, or, in her words, “treating me like some foul-bottomed kitten.” Spot was upset, though, and I wanted him to know I was with him. We were together.

  “Did we do too much today?”

  “Danger!” As I’ve said, this can mean many things to a dog. This time, however, Spot’s body language made his meaning clear. His back was stiff, his muzzle pointed at the dense undergrowth, and I felt a chill run down my spine.

  “What is it, Spot?” I was still talking out loud, I was pretty sure. But my voice had dropped, as if in fear of being overheard. “What’s in there?”

  Maybe it been my moment of panic in the woods, an emotional reaction so strong it had been communicated in human form to another creature. Maybe Spot was still processing that. Protecting me.

  Or maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe I just didn’t want to believe that whatever had attacked that young woman was still out there. Maybe between us and my car. It was high noon. A crisp and beautiful spring day, but I was shivering. All I could think of was the body we had found less than twenty-four hours before. The shock of raw fear—that secondhand terror—still chilled me. I didn’t know what had torn her like a papier-mâché doll, but something had. And I had a horrible feeling that whatever had done that was now waiting, watching us, from the shadows.

  Chapter Ten

  We stood there for what seemed like an eternity, although I could have calculated the time by the audible beating of my heart. Spot stayed on alert, and I stared for all I was worth, trying to decipher the mass of shadows in the brambles, to distinguish the shape of a potential predator from last year’s leaf fall, while we both stood as still as statues. It was the sensible response, one young animals know
by instinct. Movement gets noticed, and getting noticed—if you’re prey—gets you dead.

  Unfortunately, I’m not a bunny. I’m a human, and as the seconds—or maybe they really were minutes—ticked past, I became aware of two distinct urges. The first was for a bathroom. And while I’m not above squatting in the woods, I know enough to not make myself look smaller—more vulnerable—to a predator. If I’m going to be jumped, I sure as hell don’t want it to be with my jeans down. The second urge was to strike out—or at least to talk back to whatever it was that was out there. I’m not saying humans are superior creatures. I’ve learned that much in my time with this supposed gift. What I am saying is that I was getting angry. Here I was, acting on another’s trauma reflexively, when the one thing I had going for me was my brain. Not that I could out-argue an alpha predator. But if I couldn’t find a way to think my way free of this situation, well, I deserved to die wetting myself.

  It was time to act.

  “Spot.” I kept my voice level but low. The command firm. “Come here, Spot. Heel.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, more something I sensed than saw. He didn’t want to step beside me, where he couldn’t protect me. I got it. “Heel,” I reiterated, putting a touch more steel into my voice. He came and stood beside me but not willingly. Every fiber—every hair on his coat—was on alert. If I didn’t already feel alarmed, his resistance now would have clued me in.

  “Watch out.” It was a warning, the equivalent of a whisper. I got it, and reached down to lay my fingers in what I hoped was a comforting fashion on Spot’s head. But I was focused on the bush. Somewhere in there was something that had raised Spot’s hackles and should have raised mine. Something in there had attacked the woman we found. Something that was, most likely, an animal. And here I was, the animal psychic. Wasn’t it possible that I could reach out and make some kind of contact with it? That I could, if not communicate, at least eavesdrop on whatever it—he, she—wanted? Shouldn’t I be getting something?