Loose the Dogs

by P. D. Workman

  He reached across Bill’s desk to grab a few tissues from the box, wadded them up and dabbed at his eyes and blew his nose.

  “That’s it. That’s proof. Now I have to get someone to listen to me.”

  “You say there are others?” Bill prompted.

  “Yeah. And I don’t know where they are. They could be here; they could be anywhere else.”

  “That’s the only one we got from the shelter,” Bill reassured him.

  “I’d be happier if they were all here. They probably spread them out, just to cover their butts.”

  “Did they know it was dangerous when they sent it here?” Bill asked.

  “They said no,” Frank said. “They said an expert declared them to be safe. But I knew they weren’t.”

  “Well, I guess you were right,” Bill said. “Now what are we going to do?”

  Frank smiled at the ‘we.’ It was nice to finally have someone on his side.

  “Well, I know I have to find where the rest of them are. I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

  “I want to help. And I have to tell the local police it was a dangerous dog before Miss Brooks ever got him. She couldn’t have known. He was going to hurt someone sooner or later. It wasn’t her fault.”

  “I guess you’d better,” Frank agreed.

  “Do you want me to call the shelter? Maybe they’ll tell me where the other dogs went to.”

  “You could try, but I don’t think they’ll tell you. They’re already pretty twitchy. They won’t tell anyone anything.”

  “I can try,” Bill maintained.

  “Why don’t we go our separate ways and meet for lunch to swap notes?” Frank suggested.

  He needed to get out of there, get out on his own, away from the sounds and smells of dogs and clear his head.

  He needed some privacy. Then they could get back together once they knew something else. And then they could get this whole thing straightened out. They could find those other dogs and have them destroyed. Make sure no one else could be hurt or killed by those devils.

  Captain Errol was not pleased to hear from Frank.

  “I thought you were taking a vacation. Some personal time. And here you are investigating on your own? You’re not authorized to be making any inquiries!”

  “I know. But I had to know, Captain. I couldn’t just ignore the stories in the news and pretend I didn’t care if this dog came from the Johnsons. And he did. We have proof now.”

  “Illegal search,” the captain said.

  “No. I didn’t do a search. I talked to the shelter, and they gave me the information voluntarily.”

  “You didn’t have authorization to make those inquiries. You don’t have any authority to investigate in Louisiana.”

  “I know. But you can still use the evidence. It isn’t tainted. The dog that killed the Brooks baby came from our animal shelter. It belonged to a retired couple who died. It is the right breed. If you can just get a warrant for the shelter’s records, you can confirm one hundred percent that this was one of the Johnson dogs. And if one is dangerous, they may all be dangerous.”

  “I’m going to have an awfully hard time convincing anyone to give me a warrant based on an illegal investigation you conducted in Louisiana!”

  “Then just say I made independent inquiries, you don’t have to say I came out here to do it. But we have to find out where those other dogs went.”

  “You still don’t know this was the dog. There could have been two Labrador retrievers from two different homes at around the same time.”

  “I know,” Frank maintained.

  “You know one hundred percent?” the Captain demanded. “This is still just a guess. Just a coincidence.”

  “No, it isn’t. I know. One hundred percent. All you have to do is compare the ID number the shelter gave the dog.”

  “If you know, that means you’ve corroborated it was the same number on both ends,” Errol said.

  Frank didn’t answer.

  “Have you corroborated it?”

  “Not in an official capacity,” Frank hedged.

  “How—no, don’t tell me how. I don’t want to be complicit in this. You know. You’ve seen this dog has the same ID number as the Johnson’s dog.”

  Frank breathed out slowly. “I know,” he agreed.

  The captain swore angrily. For a few minutes, he said nothing, other than swearing under his breath now and then. Frank wondered if he was fired. Just how mad was Errol?

  “So this is real,” the man finally said, getting back his power of speech. “This is no longer just crazy old Frank seeing ghost dogs everywhere.”

  “No,” Frank agreed. “Now we know for sure this killer dog was one of the Johnson dogs.”

  Errol swore again. “You know what kind of trouble this is going to cause?” he asked.

  “No… not really. I know it’s going to be pretty bad. But think about how much worse it would be if the public discovered we knew this and didn’t investigate it. If we just turned a blind eye and said: ‘Well, the other dogs must all have been okay.’ We can’t cover this up. We have to make it right before someone else gets hurt.”

  “You’re right,” the captain agreed. “I just don’t know how I’m going to do this… man, have you got me in deep doggie doo, Frank.”

  “Except it’s not crap this time,” Frank said. “It’s blood.”

  Chapter Twelve

  CARMICHAEL HEARD A SHOUT and looked around for the source. Bandit’s ears swiveled around as he located the sound. A woman stood on the sidewalk, blood on her hands and shirt, shrieking. He pulled over and got out to talk to her, and she pointed across the street.

  “There! There! It was him!”

  Carmichael turned his head to look where she was pointing. A young black man in a hoodie ran down the block and ducked into an alley. Carmichael had Bandit out of the car in an instant, and they were running after him. He made an emergency call on his radio, hoping it was clear enough even with him running. At least they could GPS his car and phone and get back up to him quickly. He put on a burst of speed to try to catch up to the fleeing suspect.

  He could just barely keep up. They took another turn down the alley, but Carmichael was losing him. Another minute or two and he was going to lose the suspect.

  “Bandit,” he ordered. “Take him down!”

  He pointed. Bandit leaped ahead of him eagerly, his feet pumping like pistons. Carmichael kept going, following as closely as he could behind. The suspect had jumped a fence and Carmichael climbed over it quickly. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. He landed awkwardly and stood there for a moment to catch his breath, knowing Bandit was ahead of him and would delay the suspect until he got there. He started running again, following the sounds of the pursuit. It was only a few seconds before he heard the suspect cry out. He grinned with satisfaction.

  “Attaboy, Bandit,” he murmured.

  The suspect kept shouting, but Carmichael wasn’t worried. The dog was well-trained. He would hold the perp and make sure he couldn’t get at a weapon until Carmichael could secure him and put him under arrest. Carmichael jogged the rest of the way up to the tangle of bodies and looked down.

  “Lay still and I’ll call the dog off,” he instructed.

  “Ahh! He’s hurting me!” the man howled. “Get him off, get him off!”

  “I’ll get him off when you lay still so I can handcuff you.”

  “Ahhh!”

  Carmichael noticed the blood. Bandit was growling, and rather than just holding the man’s arm still, was wrestling it back and forth, tearing at it.

  “Okay, Bandit. Break!”

  Bandit did not.

  “Break!” Carmichael commanded. “Good dog. Break, now. Let him go.”

  Bandit still did not let him go. The suspect was screaming, and there was a growing pool of blood beneath his arm. Carmichael caught Bandit by the collar and pulled him back.

  “Come on, boy. Break. Let him go.”

&n
bsp; Bandit whipped his head around and even though Carmichael let go quickly, Bandit still managed to graze him with his teeth, drawing blood. Carmichael stared at it, confused.

  “Bandit. No!”

  The dog had already gone back to his first victim. Carmichael tried to kick him out of the way.

  “Back, Bandit. Break! Let him go!”

  The screams of the man were starting to weaken. He was sobbing, incoherent. Carmichael grabbed Bandit again, hauling him back as hard as he could, ignoring the frenzied dog’s slashing jaws. If he got hurt, he got hurt. He had to stop the dog and protect the suspect. Bandit was growling and snapping and slashing at whatever he could reach. Carmichael tried to attach a leash to the collar, but couldn’t work his fingers around the catch while the dog fought back. Kicking Bandit, Carmichael grabbed at the suspect, trying to get a good grip and pull him up.

  His hands were slippery with blood. The suspect realized he was trying to help and clung to Carmichael, trying to pull himself to his feet. But that exposed the perp’s throat to Bandit, a huge mistake.

  A renewed attack, more blood, spurting everywhere, and the suspect was silent and limp in Carmichael’s arms.

  Carmichael kept kicking Bandit back. His backup found him, but it was too late.

  Carmichael stood there, holding onto the victim, kicking at Bandit whenever he approached. Bandit stood back, growling, looking for an opportunity to attack. Carmichael was barely aware of what was going on anymore.

  He was in shock.

  In shock at the dog attacking, in shock from the bleeding gashes in his arms. The whole thing made no sense at all.

  “Secure the dog,” ordered Evans, one of the cops who arrived to help.

  The officers tried to corner Bandit and keep him contained. No one had come with a loop to catch him with. A few of them tried to keep him there. The others tried to help Carmichael. They took the victim from him and laid him on the ground.

  “Are you hurt?” Evans asked, looking at Carmichael’s exposed arms and bloodstained clothes. “Oh hell, you sure are. Let’s get you sat down, first of all.”

  Carmichael didn’t do anything. Evans gently gripped his arm where it wasn’t hurt and pulled him to the side. He found a crate for Carmichael to sit down on. Carmichael sat there, dazed.

  “What happened?” Evans asked. “Did the dog just go nuts? Was he hurt or drugged? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand what happened. He just… I couldn’t get him to break. I couldn’t even pull him off. He just kept attacking. The perp is dead, isn’t he?”

  Evans nodded. “Looks that way. He’s quite a mess.”

  Evans had gauze in one of his belt pouches, and he carefully wrapped it around Carmichael’s arms.

  “There. That’s the best I can do until we can get you to the hospital. Are you okay?”

  “I’m a little… I don’t know. I’m a bit foggy.”

  “I don’t know how much blood you’ve lost. Put your head down.”

  Carmichael obeyed, but he didn’t think it did much good. Evans patted him hesitantly on the back. It was a while before a cop came into the alley who had a loop to catch Bandit. They managed to get it around his neck, and pulled him away, out of the alley. Yellow tape was going up. The forensics guys and homicide were arriving. Chaos reigned in the little corner of the alley.

  A few of them asked Carmichael questions, but he had a hard time answering anything.

  Back at his hotel, Frank tried to distract himself by watching TV. He had talked to Janice, and she was going to bed. He couldn’t bear to think of all those families that had gotten killer dogs. He just couldn’t bear it.

  The news came on. Frank listened to the blather about the weather and politics and other things that didn’t matter. It was only on to keep him distracted.

  “In the news today, a police dog has killed the suspect in a robbery assault case…” a news anchor announced, and they flashed to the scene. Lots of yellow tape, police everywhere refusing to say anything, and then the police spokesperson talking gravely.

  “We are looking into the incident. At this time, we don’t have any concrete evidence as to what happened. The dog went rogue… we don’t know why. He was a new K-9 but passed his training without any problems, no red flags. We will be investigating further to try and figure out how this could have happened. We cannot comment on the dog’s human partner and how he responded or might have been involved in the incident. We will release more information as it becomes available.”

  Frank stared at the screen. He knew what everyone would say. It wasn’t one of the Johnson dogs. Then why were there suddenly so many dog attacks in the news? Was it really just synchronicity? Coincidence? He was seeing it because he was looking for it? It didn’t seem like there could have been so many dog attacks in the news before the Johnsons were attacked. He couldn’t remember one. And now… every time he turned around, there was another one.

  One of the Johnson dogs had been a German shepherd. He remembered it. Remembered the dark blood on its muzzle. Remembered it approaching him with the others, eyes showing the whites, ears laid back against its skull. It was all there, impressed on his memory. It could never be erased. The picture of the dog they were showing on the screen was a German shepherd. But was it a picture of the dog who had attacked the suspect or was it just a stock photo of a police dog from the network’s file?

  He couldn’t call Janice about it. He couldn’t even call Errol about it. He had just hung up after talking to him. And the Captain was not a happy man. Finding out Frank’s leave of absence had been for more investigating, not healing, had not made a good impression on him. He warned there would be a disciplinary review when Frank returned to the job. If he returned to the job. The threat was not exactly veiled.

  But Frank could call Bill. Bill couldn’t do anything about the police dog, but at least he could understand what Frank was feeling. Frank dialed the number Bill had given him earlier that afternoon.

  “Hullo, Bill…? It’s Frank.”

  “Frank? You got something already? That’s great!”

  “No. Nothing yet. I was just wondering if you were watching the news.”

  “No,” Bill said, not understanding at first. “I’m just getting ready to hit the sack.”

  “There is another attack on the news.”

  Bill went quiet. Frank wondered for a moment if the connection had been broken.

  “Another attack,” Bill repeated. “What happened? Were there children?”

  “It was a police dog,” Frank told him. “It killed a suspect in a robbery assault.”

  Bill swore. “It couldn’t be another one of your dogs, could it?” he demanded.

  “It could be. There was a German shepherd.”

  “But… the police screen their dogs. They are so careful. Their training is rigorous.”

  “Well, they missed something, no matter where that dog came from. I’m telling you, these dogs are vicious. But they’re cunning. They don’t show their true nature ahead of time. You never saw it in the Brooks’ dog, did you?”

  “It was a very submissive dog. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it nipped someone when it was scared, but to attack a baby… no, I never saw any aggressive signs. He seemed like a fine dog. And retrievers are great for families. Stable. Easygoing. Good with kids.”

  “Usually,” Frank amended.

  “Yeah, usually. We know he didn’t turn out to be.”

  Frank shook his head. “What are we going to do? We have to track all these dogs down, and we need to do it now. We can’t wait until we hear about each one of them in the news.”

  “What are the chances they are all vicious?” Bill asked. “I can’t imagine every one of them is aggressive. Dogs have different personalities, and even when raised in the same household…”

  “These dogs have tasted human blood. You know what they say about that.”

  “It’s an old wive’s tale. An urban legend. They aren�
�t any more likely to attack after having tasted human blood.”

  “Is it? What about the Brooks baby? What about that dog? It attacked without provocation. Just attacked a baby, as if it were prey. It had a taste for human blood.”

  “So far we only have proof one of the dogs was vicious. Let’s not jump ahead just yet. Let’s find out where the other dogs went before we assume they’re all vicious. This one… this might just be a coincidence.”

  “Maybe the retriever was the only dog who was vicious out of the bunch.” Frank said. “It was, what, the leader of the pack?”

  “If the dogs killed the Johnsons—and that’s still an if, because we don’t know what killed them—that doesn’t mean all of them killed them. It could be one of them killed, and the others just happened to be hungry and fed themselves. We don’t know they all attacked as a pack.”

  “Dogs hunt in packs, don’t they? Not individually?”

  “Dogs will hunt individually as well. You’ve heard of a lone wolf. We don’t know the whole pack is vicious. Maybe it was just this one. The one that killed the baby.”

  Frank breathed out heavily. “I hope you’re right, Bill. That would sure make me a lot happier. But right now… I’m just so scared. So scared for all of those families out there, taking home these lovely new dogs to be companions for their children… I just can’t imagine what a horror it must be for them. For people like Mrs. Brooks, finding her baby girl, killed, viciously and for no reason.”

  “The dog had a reason. We just don’t know what it was.”

  “Because the dog had a taste for human blood, and saw the baby as prey. What else could it be? This is not a dog attacking because somebody got too close to its food, or threatened it, or approached it while chained up. This dog went hunting when its owner was out of the way. He had already killed smaller animals.”

  “I just can’t believe it,” Bill said. “Maybe something startled it. Maybe the baby cried, and the dog perceived it as a threat. I don’t know. I can’t believe it just wanted… a snack.”