Dog Bless You (5 page)

As I pulled up next to Tony’s unmarked sedan, I got a
good look at him. He hadn’t changed much in the months since we’d last met; he
was still tall and dark-haired, in his late forties. He had light-green eyes,
which were arresting in combination with his brush-cut dark hair. They gave him
a look of intensity that I was sure suspects found unsettling.

Lili and I hopped out of the car, once again leaving
Rochester behind. He barked out his resentment as I introduced Lili.

“Pleased to meet you,” Tony said, shaking her hand. Then
he looked to me. “Where’s the body?”

“Around by the lake,” I said. Lili and I led him through
the muck, around the corner of the house. I’d have to wipe down my bare feet
again, but at least the grass was soft and spongy. I pointed. “It’s pretty
mucky out there. Be careful.”

Tony looked down at his black dress shoes, and I think
that’s the first time he realized that I was barefoot.

“Crap,” he said. “I usually keep a pair of boots in my
trunk but the sole started separating so I had Tanya take them to the
shoemaker’s to be restitched.”

I’d heard about Tony’s wife when he investigated a
murder at Eastern during the winter, but I had never met her. I knew she was a
nurse, and that he had a young son. But we’d never become friends, the way I
had with Rick.

Tony frowned as he bent down and took off his shoes and
socks, then rolled the legs of his black dress pants up to the knee. He looked
so comical I had to struggle not to laugh. His top half didn’t match the bottom
at all—a perfectly pressed dress shirt, with a red and blue striped tie held in
place by a diamond clip, contrasted with the little-boy look of rolled cuffs
and bare feet. He walked through the muck, and I could hear it squishing under
his feet.

He pulled a small digital camera from his pocket and
took a number of photos, as Lili and I stood in the background and watched him
work. When he’d covered all the angles, he put the camera back in his pocket
and withdrew a pair of bright blue rubber gloves. He slipped them on and crouched
down next to the upturned hand, which reminded me more and more of something
from a low-budget horror movie.

Tony gingerly scraped away dirt covering the
skeletonized arm, digging deeper the farther back he went. When he reached the
shoulder, he gave up and stood. He peeled the gloves off as he walked back to
us.

“I get a bad a feeling about this,” he said. “Looks
like a body dump to me. How long did you say the property was abandoned?”

“The Benedictines moved out about three months ago,” I
said.

“Finding an unidentified grave on a property where
there’s a regular cemetery is suspicious enough for me to order an exhumation,”
he said. “I’m going to have to isolate this area and then make the arrangements
with the ME’s office. This is going to be a big headache, you know that?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Can’t you just call the Benedictines
and see if anyone in the order knows who it is?”

“I’ll do that, but I’m willing to bet they know nothing
about it. Give me a hand with the crime scene tape?” he asked. “As long as
you’re here and your feet are already mucky.”

“Sure.”

While he walked back to his car to get the tape, I
turned to Lili. “So much for our pleasant little excursion out into the
countryside.”

“Better to find this body now, than later, when you’ve
got some kind of conference going on the property,” Lili said. “And better for
whoever that is in the ground, too.”

A chill ran up my spine. “You’re right.” I took her
hand and squeezed. “I’m glad you were here with me.”

“For a mild-mannered college administrator you lead a
very interesting life,” Lili said. “When I gave up photojournalism to come
teach at Eastern I worried I might get bored out here in the boondocks. Then I
met you.” She smiled. “You definitely keep things interesting.”

Tony returned with a roll of yellow tape and a couple
of wooden stakes. I helped him secure a perimeter around the location of the
grave. “You guys can go now,” he said. “I’ll be here for a while longer.”

“Let me know if I can help you with anything else,” I
said.

Lili and I returned to the car, where I cleaned my feet
off once more. As we backed down the driveway I saw Tony leaning against his
sedan, talking on his cell phone.

Rochester lay down on the back seat and pouted, annoyed
to have been left out of the fun, as I drove barefoot back to Stewart’s
Crossing. “There’s most likely a body there, don’t you think?” I asked. “I
mean, more than just the hand and the arm.”

“Most likely,” Lili said.

“I wonder if Tony will be able to match the remains to
any missing persons report. Those have got to be computerized, right?”

“Steve. You’re not going to start hacking into police
databases checking for missing people, are you? You’re not a cop and if you do
anything like that you’re going to get into big trouble.”

“I know. I’m just curious, is all. I mean, we don’t
even know if the person is male or female yet, how old, or any of that stuff.”

I turned to look at her. “What if that’s not the only
body there? Suppose a serial killer has been burying his victims back there?”

“Stop. You’re getting downright gruesome.”

I concentrated on driving back to River Bend, though I
felt like I was pouting just as much as Rochester was.

The first thing I did when we got there was wash my
feet and put on clean shoes and socks. Then Lili fixed us dinner while I took
Rochester for a long walk. He peed a lot but nothing else came out, and I was
grateful for that. When we got back I found that Lili had boiled up some
chicken for Rochester, and added white rice. “This’ll help settle his stomach,”
she said. “And I made enough so you’ll have it for a few days.”

“How did you know that?” I asked. “You’ve never had a
dog.”

“I’ve been around the world, Steve,” she said, as she
drained a big pot of pasta for us. “I picked up a few tricks along the way.”

“I’ve noticed.” I stepped up behind her and kissed the
nape of her neck.

She pushed back at me playfully, and we both laughed.

That evening, Lili and I relaxed on my king-sized bed
together, both of us preparing for working with the College Connection by reading
The Hunger Games
. By the time Rochester was bumping his head against me
for his pre-bedtime walk, my mind was buzzing with ideas for a seminar with the
CC kids.

“This book is cool,” I said. I closed it and pushed
Rochester away so I could find my shoes. “I love the whole dystopian theme. I
could get them talking about how this kind of thing could happen.”

“Says the man who didn’t even want to read the book to
start with.”

“Just because someone was making me read it,” I said. I
wondered about that. Was it that I was so far removed from being a student? Or
did I just not like people telling me what I could and couldn’t do? Was that a
remnant of life behind bars, or had I always been that way?

“Remember, these kids are coming from the inner city,”
Lili said, sitting up. “They’ve probably got a good idea of what life is like
already for these characters. You don’t want to talk down to them. Try and let
them lead the conversation.”

“This won’t be my first time at the rodeo,” I said. “I
do know how to teach.”

“I’m not saying you don’t. Just that these kids are
different from the ones you teach at Eastern. They’re younger, they’re probably
more jaded, and they see difficult things all the time.”

“Oh, you mean like finding dead bodies?” I said.
“Creepy hands rising up from unmarked graves?”

I turned my hand over in a mimicry of the one we’d
found at Friar Lake.

“That’s just tragic,” she said. “Get the dog’s leash so
we can get moving.”

We walked Rochester together, and I was glad to have
Lili there for company. Despite my joking, I had been unsettled by that
disembodied hand in the muck at Friar Lake, and didn’t want to worry about
every stray noise in the dark.

After Rochester had left all his doggy messages, Lili
and I went back up to the bedroom, where we put the books aside and enjoyed
each other's company before we went to sleep.

 The next morning, Rochester gobbled more of Lili’s
chicken and rice, and I continued to give him the medication the vet had
prescribed. I wasn’t taking any chances on a repeat performance. We played out
the same routine – I hid the pill in a chunk of peanut butter, which he ate, then
he licked my finger clean. Then he spit the pill out, and I had to drop it down
his throat. You’d think one of us would learn.

I liked the fact that Lili had begun leaving a few
clothing and toiletry items at my house. It made our relationship seem that
much more solid, and when she stayed over she was able to get ready for work
with me and we could ride up to Eastern together.

As I pulled into a parking space behind Fields Hall,
Lili said, “Remember, I’m going into Philly this afternoon to see my friend’s
gallery show, and then dinner with some people. I’ll call you when I get home.”

“Have fun.” We kissed and then got out of the car.

“Remember what I said about thinking this job offer
through,” Lili said. “Don’t just jump at it because John Babson says so. You
have skills and you have options.”

“I wish I had your confidence in my abilities,” I said.
“But don’t worry, I’ll think.”

As I walked Rochester to my office, I thought about
what Lili had said. Did she really have faith in me – or did she just have her
own vision of the person I could be? That was the case with Mary, for sure. It
took me a long time to understand that when we met, she saw me as a ball of
clay she could mold into her idea of the perfect husband. When I resisted her
efforts – to get an MBA like my friend Tor or to seek a promotion at work—she
got angry. Part of the reason why our marriage failed was because I couldn’t
conform to the man Mary wanted me to be.

I didn’t want to recreate that pattern with Lili. I
needed her to see me as who I was, warts and all. While Rochester sniffed
around the base of a pine tree, I wondered if what I saw was the real Liliana
Weinstock. Because we shared a Jewish background, she was familiar to me in
many ways; but because she had been born in Cuba, and grown up in a
Latin-influenced household in the US, she was also exotic. That blend was fascinating
to me.

She’d been married twice and divorced both times, and
had pursued a career in photojournalism around the world before choosing to
become an academic. Sometimes her intellect awed me; she had a PhD, took
amazing photos and then manipulated them into awe-inspiring art through her
computer skills. I had relied on my intelligence and skill with words and
computers to slide through life and had overcome the brief interruption
provided by the California penal system to resume my lifelong pattern by
falling into my jobs at Eastern.

It seemed Lili had deliberately made herself into the
person she was, while I had simply taken what came to me. In her view, at
least, I was continuing in that same pattern by accepting the job at Friar
Lake. Could she accept that I was that kind of guy—or would she give up on me
the way Mary had?

Those were troubling questions so early in the morning.
I was glad that I had a meeting scheduled with Joe Capodilupo, the director of
physical plant for Eastern, so I could avoid considering them. I left Rochester
snoozing in my office when I walked over to meet with Joe.

His department was headquartered in a converted
carriage house at the back of the Eastern campus, near the road that led down
to Friar Lake. The quaint stone and shingle exterior was a contrast to the
bland efficiency of the inside. To the left, beyond a receptionist’s desk, was
a series of cubicles and one big office. Tall metal storage cabinets lined the
other wall. From the ones with open doors, I could see they were used to store some
of the equipment that kept the campus humming.

There were nearly twenty buildings at Eastern, from the
original stone ones like Fields Hall and the carriage house to the 1960s-era dormitories
like Birthday House and the brand new, pill-bottle-shaped Granger Hall, donated
by a pharmaceutical magnate, which housed the visual and performing arts. Every
building had its own maintenance issues, and Joe supervised a team of
engineers, plumbers, handymen and groundskeepers. It was a function of the
college that students took for granted—until a toilet leaked, a cockroach was
spotted or a boiler failed on a cold winter day.

Joe was a gruff, heavyset guy with white hair and a
white beard, and he looked like he’d have been at home with the Benedictines if
you slapped one of those black robes on him. He had already been involved in
hiring the architect to do the drawings I’d seen, and had a contractor ready to
get started as soon as the permits were approved. He was going to handle the
actual renovation process.

We stood beside a broad plan table in his office and Joe
began to go over the large-sized version of the drawings I’d seen in Babson’s
report. “The whole property’s going to need to be rewired,” he said. “Right now
it’s a firetrap, with frayed wiring, places the squirrels have chewed through,
missing outlet covers. We have to bring the place up to code with sprinklers,
fire alarms, emergency exits, and handicap access. And the kitchen needs to
come out. The appliances there come from the year dot.”

I laughed. “My dad used to use that expression.”

He turned to a color-coded schedule hung on the wall
next to the plan desk.

“Once we have the permits, we start with demolition.
We’ll knock out anything that isn’t going to stay, move on to structural
reinforcement, then MEP-- mechanical, electrical and plumbing. After that we
slap on the drywall, spackle and sand, install the light fixtures and all the
other little crap. Then we paint and carpet and bring in the furniture. We’re
aiming to open right after graduation next May.”

“That’s almost a year. What am I supposed to do while
all that work is going on?”

“Oh, there’ll be plenty for you,” he said. “I’m only
handling the physical renovation to the building. You’re going to have to get a
designer to source all the furnishings and décor.”

My brain was reeling as I walked back to Fields Hall. It
was almost lunchtime, so when I got back to my office I took Rochester out for
a walk downhill to where the lunch trucks clustered along Main Street. I got a
double-patty bacon cheeseburger and fries, ignoring the potential for
cholesterol overload, and sat down on the side of a concrete planter to eat,
Rochester on his haunches next to me.

I pulled out the extra burger and fed it to him between
my own bites, trying to pull my head together. My dad had never been the type
to complain, but I knew there had been situations where he’d been transferred
from one department to another. My mom had a cancer scare when I was a little
kid—that surely must have freaked him out.

There must have been times when he worried that he
wasn’t doing the right thing, or doing a good enough job. He’d never betrayed
that insecurity to me, but that was what men of his generation did. They just
got on with the task at hand. Could I do the same thing myself?

I liked working at Eastern, and I really liked the
security of having a regular paycheck. Babson had shown faith in me, and I had
learned since my return from prison that not everyone would – and that I needed
to repay that faith. So I was going to take the job he offered at Friar Lake,
even if I worried that I couldn’t handle it.

I finished my lunch and walked Rochester back to my
office, then called Elaine in HR. “President Babson told me to let you know
he’s reassigning me.”

“Hold on, I think I saw an email about that.”

She typed, and then groaned, which wasn’t a good sign.
“You’re going to be the first employee of a new cost center,” she said. “We
don’t even have the job posted yet. I just got the forms from the president’s
office this morning. But that’s typical. You’ll have to wait until the job is
posted, and then fill out an application. As soon as I have it in the system,
I’ll email you. He’s indicated that the position is open until filled—so if you
apply right away, then we can railroad through the paperwork and close the
position. If you wait too long and we get a raft of applicants, we’ll have to
go through a formal interview and hiring procedure.”

“I thought this was just an internal transfer,” I said.

“Well, it is, and it isn’t. Because the position is new
we have to jump through some extra hoops, and ensure that we’re abiding by all
the relevant hiring laws.”

When I hung up from Elaine, I was more confused than
ever. Did I really have this job? Babson ran Eastern as his private fiefdom,
moving people around at will. But I knew Elaine had to make sure all the right
procedures were followed.

What if the pool was opened to all candidates, and
someone more qualified applied? That wouldn’t be hard, since I had none of the
skills the position was going to require. And if I had to fill out a whole new
set of forms, that would involve disclosing once again that I had a felony
conviction on my record. Suppose Elaine or someone else in HR raised a fuss,
and Babson decided I wasn’t worth the trouble? I’d be back on the street.