CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
I found the second horse, drawn and quartered by pickup trucks, a tiny puppy curled up inside the bloody carcass for warmth. Later I found the rest of the litter nursing on the poisoned corpse of their mother. The puppies were sweet and playful, but it was obvious they weren’t healthy.
I got some shampoo from the truck and took the pups to the shallow water along the shore to give them a proper bath. The water was warm, so it wouldn’t be too much of a shock to their delicate little systems. They needed to be cleaned up and disinfected. Afterward, I sat in the back of the truck with the hatch open, cuddling them in a towel to warm them up while I made some phone calls. I left messages with Melanie, Nancy, and Martha. For once their fixation on puppies could be a help here. I tried to nurse the little guys from baby bottles filled with artificial mother’s milk, but they weren’t interested. At least they enjoyed the canned puppy food I put down for them. I made a little nest for them in an empty room in the boathouse, separate from the main puppy room so the other puppies wouldn’t get sick.
The following afternoon, Martha called me.
“Sandra found the new puppies this morning,” she told me. “How could you isolate them like that? It’s cruel, Steve.”
“Martha, they had to be quarantined. They could have parvo or distemper. We need to get them checked out and treated before putting the other puppies at risk.”
It was too late. Sandra had already put the sick puppies in with the others.
Over the next few days, I noticed that some of the other puppies were starting to show signs of illness. And then one morning, I discovered all the puppies were gone. I called Sandra.
“Angel and I took them to San Juan so they can go to shelters in the States.” This was the first time they hadn’t checked with me first in a while.
I was furious, but not because they had taken the dogs without my okay. In any other circumstance, I’d have been thrilled that the dogs were on their way to potential homes. But if the puppies were sick and sent to a shelter in the States, the entire project could be compromised.
That Saturday I took two cases of bleach to disinfect the puppy room. Eight gallons of toxic cleaner and six hours later, Sandra and I had nearly suffocated cleaning the place up.
For days I waited for word about the puppies they had taken, but nothing. I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. A week later, I heard through the grapevine that some of the puppies they had sent to a shelter in the Northeast had arrived very sick. They were severely dehydrated from vomiting and diarrhea. They died shortly thereafter. Apparently the same thing happened to another rescuer who had taken some of the puppies in until they got flights off the island. The sick puppies nearly wiped out all the healthy rescue pups she had in her home.
I had buried more than a thousand dogs. I had named each of them, fed and nurtured and cared for every single one. I had given them time, food, medicine, and love. With a lot of hard work, I’d managed to turn them back into healthy dogs. I’d socialized them and taught them tricks so that if they ever had the opportunity to move to a real home, they’d be ready. Instead, they were forever consigned to the burial ground at the beach.
Melanie Shapiro and Nancy Guilford heard from a contact of theirs high up the chain of command in the San Juan Police Department that I was being targeted by just about everyone with a vested interest in cleaning up the beach. They were killing my dogs to intimidate me—hanging, poisoning, decapitating, dismembering, torching—nothing was beyond them. They knew my routines and where I walked on the beach.
Everybody I spoke to suggested I stop going to the beach—neighbors, acquaintances, Pam’s coworkers.
And I was finally near the breaking point. For the past few months I had started limiting my wandering around the beach to an area close enough to my truck to make a quick getaway. I had become paranoid about every vehicle that passed or was parked in the near distance. I knew I was being watched. If I approached a vehicle, it quickly sped away. Where once I had left my weapons in my truck, now I carried them with me at all times. I’d practiced reaching for them so many times, I knew exactly how quickly I could access the machete or Taser.
One morning a couple of fishermen and their wives came to talk to me. They’d just seen me carrying a couple of dead dogs across the parking lot to the burial ground.
“We’ve seen what you do here for a long time now. People here talk about you. They say you are a hated man.”
I had pissed off too many people by going to the media and exposing the problems at the beach. How sad was it that people wanted to kill me because I fed dogs? But I realized it went deeper than that. What I was doing was interfering with their pocketbooks, and making their culture look bad.
But I wasn’t ready to stop. Another morning, another day at the beach. I spotted several of my dogs lying on their sides on the gravel in the middle of the parking lot. Occasionally the dogs would sun themselves, but this was different. They didn’t move when I drove closer. The rest of the pack filtered out of the jungle slowly, walking in front of the truck so that I had to be careful not to bump them.
When I parked and got out, I surveyed the area but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. A couple of the dogs had tried to get in the truck when I opened the door, as though they were trying to get away from something. I scoured the perimeter of the parking lot, then over toward the boathouse and up to the conveyer belt that ran along the top several stories up. My senses were tingling. I wanted to make sure the path was clear before I went to the dead dogs.
I unhooked my machete and walked to where they lay. The pack was acting twitchy and nervous. A few scattered and headed back to the jungle. The pack wasn’t the same as it had been. We’d lost so many of the leaders. There were a lot of newcomers now, young and unfamiliar with the threats at the beach. Only a few of them stood with confidence at my side.
I got to the first dog and knelt at her side. I looked her over to see any sign that she’d been hit by a car, but there was nothing to indicate that. Her body was intact and warm to the touch. But she was lying in a pool of blood. Where was it coming from? I lifted her head and found a small hole in her neck. It looked like a bullet hole. I slid my hand under her neck and found a much larger wound: an exit wound.
I quickly went to the other dogs to see if the same was true for them. They had all been shot.
I felt a wave of panic. What if the killers were still around? I scanned the area again but saw no movement, heard no sound.
My instincts were telling me to leave, but I couldn’t leave without burying them. They would be flattened by someone driving across the lot if I didn’t take care of it now.
I slid my hands under the first dog and lifted her. She was still floppy. She hadn’t been dead long.
I looked around as I carried her across the lot to the truck, her face up against my left ear. I had one hand under her shoulder and the other under her bottom. I was still holding her when I heard the whiz and whoosh of another bullet hitting her body. Her body twitched from the impact; blood sprayed across my shoulder.
The dogs scattered. I dropped the body and ran for cover behind the metal storage containers. I couldn’t tell where the shooting was coming from. I was afraid to look. My knees wobbled beneath me as I leaned against the container. I could feel my heart beating in my head. The driver’s-side door of my truck was still open. I fumbled with the keys in my pocket, almost dropping them. My chest hurt. I looked to see if I’d been hit, but it was only the dog’s blood. I took a deep breath and made a break for it, but I slipped in the gravel as I rounded the containers and fell on my side. I jumped right back up and was behind the wheel in a few short steps. I jammed the key in the ignition and fired up the engine, pulling a fast U-turn.
The next thing I knew, I was at an intersection a couple of miles up the road. If I turn right, I go home. If I go straight, I go to the police station. I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went home.
A few weeks later, Nancy Guilford moved back to Florida.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
My application to RISD was accepted. I was elated. Until then, Pam and I had been seriously considering renewing her contract to stay in Puerto Rico for two more years. We both still harbored a dream of living a normal life there, in the paradise we’d imagined when we first arrived. I also couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing my dogs again. And we really had nowhere else to go. But once the letter arrived, we changed plans. We quickly purchased another old farmhouse in Rhode Island with an eye toward fixing it up while I was in school.
I needed to make an appearance at the school to finalize a few things with my undergraduate credits, so Pam and I decided to make the trip back to Rhode Island with a few dogs that we wanted to get into stateside shelters. We made arrangements for a night flight into Newark Airport. This would mean traveling during the coolest part of the day in the shortest amount of time, which meant less stress on the animals. From New Jersey, we’d rent a vehicle large enough to transport them the rest of the way.
Hurricane season is not to be taken lightly when you live in the tropics, so we made extra preparations to batten down the house while we were away, just in case a storm blew through during the week we were gone. I closed and locked the hurricane shutters on every window and door. I closed and locked the garage just before we drove to the airport.
Funnily enough, it felt good to be back in Rhode Island. Everything looked brighter and felt a lot more peaceful after all the hair-raising experiences we’d been through in Puerto Rico. It was beautiful there. We dropped in to see a few of our friends. It was really lovely, and the week flew by.
Pam needed to get back to Puerto Rico for work, but I wanted to hang around a few more days getting the animals situated. I dropped her at the airport on Sunday and went back to the big empty house that would be our home in a few months. I was outside cutting the grass when Pam called to let me know she had arrived safely in San Juan.
“Call me when you get back to the house, okay?” I said before we hung up.
The drone of the lawn mower must have drowned out my ringtone when she checked in later, and I missed her call. When I listened to her message, my heart skipped a beat. Then it skipped a few more.
I couldn’t make out everything she said, but through the screaming and crying I heard “robbed” and “broken in” and “smashed.”
I tried to call her back but it went straight to her voice mail.
I called again. Same thing.
On the third try, she answered. “I’m standing in the living room. They stole everything!”
There was a heavy lock on the steel cage over our front door (a regular feature of homes down there), which was intact. But inside, there was chaos. Pam—a veteran of years of California’s finest seismic activity, thought there’d been an earthquake. The TV cabinet was tipped over, everything was out of drawers and on the floor. But things got weird in the kitchen. There were ice cream containers on the counter, the fridge was open, all the food inside spoiling. And then she saw the back door swinging in the wind, one of the panes of glass broken inward and the lock drilled out.
What she said next was a little muffled, as though she’d moved her mouth away from the phone: “You better get the hell out of here!”
“Pam, who are you shouting at?”
“I don’t know if they’re still here!”
“Pam, get out of the house right now! Get in the truck and drive to a public place.”
I could hear her breathing hard as she ran. I was relieved when I heard the beep of the alarm on the truck indicating that she was getting in. I heard the door shut and the engine turn over.
“Lock the door!” I screamed.
“I’m driving away from the house now.” She sounded calmer, but only marginally.
“Just keep driving around the compound until we can get in touch with one of the other expats. Hang tight. I’ll call you right back.”
I hung up and dialed her supervisor, Bryan, but it went to his voice mail. I was reluctant to leave a message, but I left one anyway. Luckily, he called back immediately.
“I’m calling Pam’s cell right now,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”
I waited impatiently for Bryan or Pam or anyone to call me back and tell me what was going on. I wanted to hear that Pam was safe.
While I was cooling my heels in Rhode Island, Pam had managed to reach her coworker Pablo. The three of them met at the Palmas del Mar front gate and went to the house together, where they waited for the security company to arrive. Bryan and Pablo had no idea how bad it was until they went inside and saw for themselves what had happened. The back door had been tampered with and the windows next to the door handle were busted out. It appeared the burglars had drilled and disassembled the lock to get in. The door didn’t shut properly and would need a new handle before anyone could safely stay in the house. Bryan insisted Pam stay with him until I returned.
“Bryan’s working on a flight back for you,” she told me later when we spoke. I felt better knowing that her friends were looking after her, but it bothered me that I wasn’t there for her. I spent the next forty-eight hours finding a place for the dogs. A woman named Osa, a real animal lover, volunteered to take them while I was back in Puerto Rico.
I got an early plane heading south, trying to come to terms with all our personal possessions having been stolen or destroyed. This was not how I wanted to leave the island. But the thing weighing heaviest on my mind was the dogs, of course. What was going to happen to them? Who would take care of them now? Sandra had little to no money to spend on food and visited the dogs only when she could afford to feed them.
Bryan picked me up at the airport.
“Pam’s hanging in there,” he said. “Don’t worry about a thing. We’re here to help.”
“I really appreciate it, man.”
The drive to the compound seemed awfully long. I’m usually very chatty, but I was quiet, thinking about the mess that awaited me.
I felt my heartbeat quicken as we drove up the hill right before our house.
Bryan looked over at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I’ve made arrangements for packers and a moving truck to get you guys out of here. They start tomorrow.”
I sat quietly. This was all happening so fast.
Pam burst into tears when I walked in the front door. I was speechless. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the middle of our living room. Pam’s friend Karina, a Puerto Rican native whom she knew from work, was helping Pam clean out the rotten food in the refrigerator. Karina had also been extremely helpful to Pam in dealing with the local police during the investigation.
It appeared that the burglars had made themselves at home. They’d not only stolen or destroyed everything of value, they’d left remnants of the food and booze they’d helped themselves to on the kitchen table.
“I want to come see the house right away,” our landlady, Blanca, called to say.
“Could you wait until tomorrow? It’s not a good time right now,” I said.
She started to scream at me.
“Settle down!” I was in no mood for this bullshit. “You need to talk to the real estate agent and make arrangements with her to enter the premises.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I want Pam.”
She hung up the phone and within seconds Pam’s cell phone rang. Pam looked at me and shrugged. She took the call. After a few minutes, she hung up.
“She’s coming by to see the damage tomorrow. She wanted to bring Berto, but I said absolutely not.”
Berto was the handyman I’d fired several months earlier for entering the house without our permission. I had just gotten out of the upstairs shower one day when I heard someone downstairs in the living room. I was halfway downstairs when I saw him with a beer in his hand.
“What are you doing here?”
/> He choked on a mouthful of beer. “I thought no one was home.”
“And that would make it okay for you to be in my house?”
He looked angry. “Blanca owns this house, not you! She employs me to take care of this place.”
I felt a little vulnerable dressed only in a towel, but I wasn’t backing down. “I have a contract stating that she needs to give me forty-eight hours notice—in writing—if she wants to enter the house. So get out before I call the police!”
He mouthed “Fuck you” as he turned and stormed out.
I called Blanca to complain, and she said, “There’s nothing I can do.”
Furious, I called the real estate agent and asked to have someone change the locks. I sent Blanca the bill. I’d been on her shit list ever since. I didn’t care—I wasn’t letting Berto in my house.
“He showed up with the security guard when Bryan and Pablo and I first got here,” Pam said. “I didn’t let him in.”
The next day, while the movers were busy shoveling the remains of our damaged possessions into boxes, Blanca called Pam from the end of the driveway. Pam went out to speak to her.
“This is going to come out of your security deposit,” I overheard Blanca say. I kept my distance, knowing that I would say something I’d regret. In a little while, Pam and Blanca went to the real estate agent’s office to take care of the paperwork. I knew it wasn’t going to go well, but there was nothing I could do, so I decided to focus on finishing up at the house.
I went to the backyard to clean the bits of leaves and grass clippings out of the pool. The movers were still inside, working toward having the truck packed by the end of the day. I needed to be by myself for a little while. I was upset about the way things had happened. We had come here with such open hearts and minds, ready and willing to embrace anything the new culture could throw our way. Instead, our dreams of living a fantasy life on a tropical Caribbean island had been dashed. Was I supposed to learn something from this? I was angry that the next day would be our last in Puerto Rico. We still needed to go to the police station to get the final report for the insurance company. I felt a pain in my heart when the next thought came to me: the dogs. I had to say good-bye to them. I felt sick at the thought. I flirted with the idea of skipping it. They’d never know the difference, right? I couldn’t do that. I owed them at least a good-bye.
The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach Page 19