The Dog Who Knew Too Much Page 16

  The price of my poor judgment had been a divorce. Lisa’s may have cost her her life.

  I put the box of bullets on the bottom step and began to open those other boxes, cartons containing carefully wrapped champagne flutes, a soup tureen, a fish poacher, grape shears, lobster forks. At three in the morning, having set aside only a hand-thrown planter I could use for herbs in the winter and a small, flowered bud vase, I resealed the cartons and stacked them neatly under the windows. Then I shut off the light, dropped the box of ammo in the kitchen, and went back out into the moonlit garden.

  Alongside the house were the logs I had gathered last fall in the woods surrounding my sister’s house. The smaller pile, the split logs, was nearly gone. I tossed the jacket over that pile, lifted the heavy tarp from the larger woodpile, and unwrapped the sledgehammer and wedge that lay on top of the wood.

  Dashiell lay peacefully on the rich, loamy earth near the oak tree that stretched skyward from the center of the garden. It was taller than the cottage. The moonlight, filtered through its branches, made his white fur look pearly, almost iridescent.

  A mugging. Yeah, right.

  Mid to late afternoon, I thought, lifting a log from the woodpile. Where had Howie been? It didn’t take an hour and a half to pick up a bottle of cheap Scotch for your mother, did it?

  I stood the log on the tree stump near the wood pile and tapped in the wedge. Where had Stewie Fleck been between four and five? In the field, meaning anywhere he damn well wanted to be, the little creep?

  What about Janet? Had she been at the gym, where Stewie said she practically lived, torturing innocents?

  Come to think of it, where had Avi been? The news was full of reminders lately that no one is immune to human frailty, not judges, Nobel laureates, or even holy men.

  If Paul had been killed across from the school, didn’t that mean he’d been on the way to the studio, to find me?

  If so, why hadn’t he called to see if I were there?

  But what would be the point? Surely he knew that no one ever picked up the phone. If someone doesn’t have the patience to wait for us to call them back, Avi had said once when I was going to answer the phone in the middle of working, they’re not going to have the patience to learn t’ai chi. Not answering the phone was a weeding-out process for him, the first in a long string of character tests.

  Why Paul? I thought. But the answer to that question hit really close to home. Too close, if you ask me.

  I looked back at Dashiell, still lying under the tree. Between his paws, right under his nose, he had serendipitously discovered a scent worthy of his complete attention. I could see his nostrils moving.

  I turned my attention to the wood pile and began to split logs in earnest now, tapping the wedge into the next log, swinging the sledgehammer back and then high over one shoulder, bringing it down hard, hearing the satisfying clang of metal on metal and seeing the log cleave in two, opening like a flower that had suddenly decided to bloom, the outside darkened by the weather, the inside raw and vulnerable looking as a wound. I worked until I developed a rhythm, until I was drenched with sweat, until I no longer knew where the sledgehammer ended and I began, nor did I care, until there were no more logs to split. Then I sat quietly on the steps, my dog on one side of me leaning in, those perfect roses on the other, until the stars began to disappear, the color of the sky lightened, the first bird began to sing. And when it did, I sat some more.

  26

  Be Not Afraid

  When the garden was filled with the sweet, clean light of morning, I spread the yellow roses under the bushes across from the cottage to mulch. Then, sticking my sore hands into my pockets, I felt the fortune cookie I’d never opened. I broke it in half and held the pieces for Dashiell to eat while I read the message. It was a proverb. Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

  I went inside and gave Dashiell food and water, ran a bath, and while the tub was filling, put my gun and bullets on the top shelf of the closet. Later, dressed in Lisa’s comfortable black workout clothes, I called Goodwill to arrange for them to pick up the physical evidence of my brief marriage in exchange for a generous tax deduction. When I hung up, I saw that Dashiell was fast asleep on the couch. He was so tired, he hadn’t finished his food. I gave him a kiss and headed for Bank Street T’ai Chi alone.

  I took the stairs, walking slowly. I had, after all, been up all night. The door was locked, but when I unlocked it, I found Avi there with Ch’an. He was at his desk paying bills.

  “Ach,” he said, “I hate this. Lisa used to do this for me. Now the bills pile up, and I have to sit glued to a chair for hours to take care of them.”

  “I’ll do that for you,” I told him, one hand on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have to do this. Go. Go for a walk. I’ll leave everything ready for your signature when I finish.”

  I picked up Ch’an’s leash and held it out to Avi. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but changed his mind. He merely waved it away with one big hand.

  “You keep her,” he said, his eyebrows pinched together, his brow tense.

  “Okay,” I told him. “No problem.”

  “And give her a little walk before you leave, Rachel,” he said without looking at me. “I won’t be back for her until this evening.”

  I waited to hear the door close and the tumbler turn over. Then I pushed the stack of unpaid bills aside. While the computer was booting up, I rolled back the tape on the answering machine and began to listen. Avi rarely picked up the phone, even when he was at his desk.

  There were five messages on the machine, all inquiries about beginning classes, requests for brochures. I rolled the tape back and played it again, addressing the five brochures, then began surfing Avi’s files, looking at the dates and times the computer automatically adds to each directory. Avi had been working on-screen yesterday, starting at one thirty. Unfortunately, I could see only when he logged on, not when he’d finished working.

  There were no classes on Friday afternoon or evening, no way of knowing if Avi had been here or not. I slit open the envelopes in the pile of bills, checked each against last month’s billing, and wrote the checks I’d promised I’d write, leaving the stack for his signature when I’d finished, even stamping the envelopes for him. Then, before closing down the computer and shutting off the light, I checked one more thing, Avi’s personnel files. I copied down the addresses I didn’t already have, making sure to check my own as well. I was listed as living at Lisa’s apartment, with Lisa’s phone number. I wasn’t in the phone book. Still, somebody knew where I really lived.

  I patted my lap for Ch’an, and she came and laid her big head across my thighs, sighing as she did. I put one finger inside one of her ears, and she began to moan, the way Dashiell always does. That’s when I noticed the tag on her collar. I picked it up and looked at it. It wasn’t her license. It was her ID tag, complete with Lisa’s name, address, and phone number.

  Like Lisa, I would never risk losing my dog. Dashiell too had an ID tag on his collar, a brass plate attached to the leather collar with two rivets, for complete security. His had only my name and number on it, no address, because my life’s mission was to raise paranoia to a high art. So my secret admirer had had to be extra clever to have both my phone number and address.

  No problem. Whoever stood across from Lisa’s apartment, looking up at her windows, could have followed me home. But it hadn’t been Paul, had it? It had been someone else, someone who had nothing more important to do than to wait, hoping for a glimpse of the person he so longed to see. Not Lisa. Lisa was gone. Now it was me he had waited to see, me looking out over the dark street or up at the white face of the moon. It was me, one night when the weather was mild and his patience long, who appeared not in the window, but on the front steps, leaving with my dog.

  Was I just giving him a walk? That would be easy enough to find out. At that hour, even in New York, there aren’t many people around. You could follow someone from Huds
on and LeRoy to Tenth Street, staying far enough away to remain undetected yet still not risking the chance of losing them. Even when your unsuspecting prey turned the corner onto Tenth, there’d be no problem. Dashiell, like any intact male, was infinitely more conscientious about leaving his scent near home than far away. The closer he got to where we lived, the more urgent and time-consuming was his need to mark, and, lucky mutt, he had an owner who had an understanding of and a soft spot for hormone-driven canine necessities.

  I left the office, slipped off my shoes, and walked onto the studio floor in Lisa’s white cotton socks. Facing north, I did the form, keeping my concentration in the raging furnace beneath my navel. Something was chewing away at the edge of my consciousness, but I didn’t know what it was. When I finished, I walked over to the windows, opening the one someone had pushed Lisa out of, and once again looked straight down at the street, so far away.

  The first time I’d imagined Lisa doing this, I’d supposed she’d stood here alone and miserable. I’d pictured her climbing up on the sill, then pitching herself forward, into eternity.

  Now I was sure she’d had help.

  But not from her ex-lover.

  Before I closed the window I looked at the courtyard across the street, where Paul’s body had been found. Formerly the research facility of Bell Labs, Westbeth was now housing for artists. There was a security guard inside with closed-circuit TV watching the elevators, the hallways, the entrances and exits, the courtyard.

  Was the killer someone Paul knew, someone who could have rested an arm over his shoulders in friendship? Two men walking or standing that way wouldn’t alert a security guard, not in this neck of the woods.

  Or were they shielded from the camera’s eye by one of the trees planted in rows across from the entrance? Perhaps the guard was checking another monitor at the time of the murder. No one can watch everything at once. How long would it take to snap someone’s neck, slip the money out of his pocket, then disappear? Not long. A life, a complex being, a family, and a future, destroyed in an instant

  I went back into Avi’s office and picked up the phone.

  “Can you meet me at the studio in half an hour? It’s important. Good. Lunch is on me.”

  I put on my shoes, grabbed my jacket, picked up Ch’an’s leash again, and headed for the door. Ch’an got up slowly, stretched, and followed me, looking elsewhere, as if it were merely a pleasant coincidence that we were both going out at the same time.

  On the way to pick up lunch, I thought about my companion, walking along untroubled at my side. If trouble came, would her demeanor change? Had it changed during the last moments of lisa’s life, or had the dog remained asleep in the other room, oblivious to what was going on in the studio?

  Wouldn’t there have been loud voices, accusations, recriminations, something to rouse the sleeping dog and make her curious enough to pad out into the studio to see what all the fuss was about, something to make her understand her owner was in jeopardy?

  After all, Akitas are reputed not only to be loyal and courageous but to have astonishing powers of reasoning as well. In fact, those very characteristics, one owner had told the Times, had enabled his Akita to save his life. The dog had wisely neglected to alert him to a crime in progress the night thieves stole his Lincoln from his driveway. “He didn’t want to see me come running out of the house in my underwear and into a dangerous situation,” the proud owner said. “And, besides, I didn’t really like that car anyway.”

  Sometimes what seems like a clever ploy on the part of a dog is merely a case of an owner who loves his dog, as many of us do, beyond all reason, and the ability of the human half of the partnership to tell a good story, saving face not for oneself but for one’s dog.

  Talk about stories, how about the O. J. Simpson case? Here again an Akita was present during the commission of a crime, the double murder that captured the attention of the entire nation. In Simpson’s first trial, the dog was part of the case. Since she had been found afterward, wandering the streets wailing, the prosecution attempted to use her cries to establish the time of the killings.

  Akita lovers could not understand why Satchmo, formerly Kato, hadn’t protected Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. But if they secretly doubted her courage, no one could doubt the dog’s loyalty. There had been blood on her legs and paws when she’d been found, and on her undercoat as well, as if she had in her grief lain down beside her beloved mistress’s body.

  Days after the crime, the dog’s behavior became an issue again. When Simpson returned to Rockingham after the much-televised slow-speed chase, the bitch had cowered as Simpson stepped out of the Bronco. Some thought that was an accusation, the dog’s way of telling what she knew. Some people even suggested the big dog take the stand.

  But why had the dog failed to protect the victims?

  She had the motive—she clearly loved her mistress. She had the means, didn’t she? She was a powerful animal with big teeth. And as far as anyone knew, she had the opportunity. She was out, not locked up in the house.

  But the man accused of the double murder had been powerful, too. And he had a knife. In next to no time he slaughtered not one young, healthy person but two, nearly decapitating one of them, the woman with whom he was obsessed, the woman who thought, for one heady moment, that she had finally broken free of him.

  Any dog worth its feed would know its owner’s feelings toward another person, would feel the fear. Moreover, if accusations and suppositions were correct, in line with the second trial rather than the first, the killer had not been a stranger to the dog, someone to back down, an enemy to be dispatched without hesitation. Just a short while before, he had been the dog’s master. So long before the night of the murder, she had seen him enraged, perhaps starting when she’d been a pup and no one had remembered to take her out on time. She’d been there when Nicole was beaten. Perhaps she’d been beaten, too. If Akitas were half as smart as their owners claim, perhaps she kept away to protect herself.

  Two cases in which an Akita failed to stop a crime. Yet in both instances, the Akita people could only sing praises for the breed that bores so deeply into the human heart that all the dogs have to do to win the boundless love of their people is be themselves. And this the Akita can do with remarkable self-assurance.

  Now there was a third case involving an Akita. Hadn’t Lisa’s dog been present when her owner had been murdered? Had the dog been complacent because she knew the killer? Someone who had the keys.

  Be not afraid.

  Had Lisa been writing when the killer arrived?

  I’m sorry. Lisa. Not a suicide note.

  Was it an apology to someone whose feelings she was about to hurt? Someone who was coming to hear the news of her departure? She’d told Avi she wanted to tell the others herself. One at a time. Had one of them been here?

  If so, which one?

  As of now, only the killer was privy to that information. And once again, the Akita knew. But sadly, she had no way of telling the rest of us the answer we so desperately sought.

  27

  His Eyes Were Pinched and Small

  When I got back to school, he was sitting on one of the couches, his eyebrows pitched with worry. Ch’an didn’t greet him. Instead, she quickly disappeared into the office. I heard her at her water bowl, heard her lie down with a sigh.

  “I’m s-sorry about yesterday,” he said. “Really s-sorry. I j-just forg-g-got about your—”

  “Bullshit,” I said, taking a seat across from him. “I’ve had enough lies, and I’m ready for the truth now. The appointment was in your book, your book was open, you didn’t forget. And you didn’t go shopping for Mother Teresa either. So where were you?”

  He had his mother’s eyes, washed out and saggy, and her fleshy cheeks, already losing their battle with gravity. They were trembling now, as if he were frightened. Good, I thought, exactly the effect I’d been looking for.

  “I f-forgot,” he said, petulant as a child. “Is
th-that a c-crime?” His eyes were pinched and small, like a pig’s.

  “It’s not a crime. It’s a lie.”

  “What m-makes you—”

  “You can tell me, Howie,” I said, my voice now soft and nurturing, the voice he’d never heard at home. I didn’t live that far away from the HB Acting Studio myself.

  I pushed the t’ai chi magazines aside and put the bag of food on the low table between us, opening the bag and taking out the juicy hamburgers and fries, then the sodas, and putting one portion in front of Howie.

  “You can tell me anything. You know you can. What happened yesterday?”

  “I w-went for a walk. And I l-lost track of time. Th-that’s all.”

  “Doesn’t sound right to me, Howie. I’m trying to believe you. Honestly, I am. Hell, I want to believe you. But it just doesn’t come together for me, Howie. It doesn’t jive, does it, that you lost track of time and missed two appointments. Doesn’t sound like you, Howie, a responsible man who cares for his mother in her old age.”

  Howie, who’d talked to me about a low-fat diet, always a dead giveaway, eyed his burger like a hungry wolf.

  “Howie, you know you’ll feel better if you’re honest, if you tell me.”

  “It was my m-mother,” he shouted. “Ha-happy now?”

  And then it happened, the tears, first one, rolling down his doughy cheek, then a double. Thin-skinned, she’d said. Mother knows best.

  “She was after me a-a-again.”

  “About money?”

  “About everything, how inadequate I am, how insufficient a human being I t-turned out to be, how I d-d-disappoint her, in every way. ‘You have a f-fine mind, Howie,’ she said yesterday. That’s how it started. She was st-standing in the doorway of my office with a ci-ci-cigarette even though I told her not to smoke there because it’s not fair to the pa-patients. ‘You have a fine m-mind, Howie,’ she said, ‘so how come you n-never use it?’ That’s what I li-live with, Rachel, and sometimes, every once in a while, I can’t st-st-st take it, and I just have to get away from her. But I am so sorry that I had you come for no-nothing. There’s no excuse for me not calling you. None wh-whatsoever.”