Dogs (7 page)

“Fine,” Tessa said. “Want some coffee?”

“No, thanks, ma'am. I'm sort of in a hurry. Running behind schedule.”

Tessa left him with his time contradictions in the living room, tethered the yipping Minette to the kitchen table, and made herself coffee. Then she checked her email for the third time today. One of Salah's unknown correspondents had answered her: [email protected].

Dear Tessa,

I write in English for your convenience. I have heard not of Salah's death and it is very great shock to me. We have shared rooms at the Sorbonne, perhaps you know this. Also I have known him since a long time, when we were boys in Tunis. I am very sad to hear of his death. How has this occurred? Please tell me, if it is not too painful for you.

I have written Salah last year because our classmate has written to me to ask for Salah's email address. I have written to Salah first to see if this is okay for him. Salah said yes, so I have given the address to our classmate, Richard Ebenfield, American. Richard writes not any Arabic. Neither Salah nor I have seen Richard since many, many years.

I live now in London. Salah and I have promised to write to each other again but somehow we have not done this. Again, I am very sad to hear of this death. Please tell me what has occurred.

Sincerely,

Ruzbihan al-Ashan

Tessa closed her eyes. Salah had spoken occasionally of Ruzbihan. They had been great pals as children and at the Sorbonne but then, like many college friends, had drifted apart. No overt break, just living in different countries with different activities. And they were both still young, in their early forties only, there was lots of time. Until time had run out.

She wrote back to Ruzbihan, giving him the bare details of her husband's senseless death and adding a bit about their former life together. Then she turned to Salah's laptop, still set up beside her own Toshiba, and scanned his files for “Richard Ebenfield.” Nothing. Salah had evidently not referred to his old roommate specifically by name when he wrote back to Ruzbihan, or he had transliterated the name into Arabic. And Ebenfield, who would write in English, had apparently not contacted Salah even though he'd asked for Salah's address.

That left the other Arabic email correspondent to wonder about. He (she?) hadn't yet answered. And, of course, it was entirely possible that neither email had anything to do with Salah's and her names turning up on intelligence chatter in the Middle East. Tessa had been trained to follow all leads, but 95% of all leads turned out to be crap. Always. If Salah—

“All done, ma'am,” the cable guy said, holding out a fistful of brochures. “You have all network stations, local station KJV-TV, plus—”

“That's okay, I'll read it later,” Tessa said.

“If you don't mind my asking, what's that statue on that little table under the open window? I ask because it's, like, the only thing unpacked in there.”

“It's a god, Natraja,” Tessa said. “Shiva Dancing.”

“What are you, Islam?”

Tessa stared at the nasty expression on the face of this bigoted, ignorant, probably racist kid. “No. Shiva is a Hindu god, one of many. Hindu, as in ‘India.' Islam has only one God.”

“Oh,” he said, losing interest. “That'll be fifty-four dollars for installation plus the—”

“Just give me the bill. I can read,” she snapped, and he blinked. They finished the transaction in silence and mutual dislike.

No chance of meditating after that. Not that Tessa hadn't gotten used to the attitude, ever since 9/11. The glances at Salah as he walked down the street in his beautiful business suits and Arab headdress. The murmur in restaurants. A certain kind of silence when Salah came home from work, his usually cheerful face clouded. She'd learned not to ask; he didn't like to discuss it. It was hardest when the silent attitude came from people that they'd considered friends, people who should have been sophisticated enough to know not only that not every Arab was a fundamentalist terrorist, but also that Tunisia had a long alliance with the United States. But, then, the fucking
FBI
hadn't seemed to know any better.

Now there
really
wasn't any chance of a quiet meditation. Not until she cleared her mind. She threw on her coat and untethered Minette. “Let's go for a walk, baby. Too bad you didn't bite that cable bastard.”

Minette, hearing no word but “walk,” went into paroxysms of joy.

The afternoon was clear, windless, still in the forties. Minette trotted forward on her short legs, thrilled to be outside. A dog's life was so simple: If you like it, lick it. If you don't like it, growl at it. If it smells interesting, pee on it.

A few early crocuses poked green shoots above the earth. Winter sunlight touched the treetops with pale gold. Tessa breathed deeply of the crisp air. Maybe this move would be okay, would help her “adjust.” Whatever that meant. Tyler was a pretty place, and so peaceful after D.C. No traffic on her side street, no people crowding her, nothing moving anywhere at all, which now that she thought about it seemed a bit odd—

A police car rounded the corner and the patrolman rolled down his window, his face exhausted and incredulous. “Ma'am—what are you doing?”

“I'm walking my dog,” Tessa said. At the Bureau she'd joined in all the usual jokes about inept locals, the run-of-the-mill assumption that federal agents were superior to small-town cops. She hadn't really believed it. Some locals were good, some weren't—just like agents. Still, for this guy to ask such an obvious question—

He said, “Return home immediately with that animal, ma'am, and keep it inside. The mayor has issued an off-the-streets order for all dogs, effective immediately. I guess you didn't hear about it.”

“An off-the-streets order? Why?”

He stared at her, and Tessa realized what he saw: a person so out-of-it, so friendless, that no one had called her to tell her whatever this was about. She said in her most professional voice, “I just moved here from D.C., officer. Please tell me what's happened.”

“Some kind of disease turning dogs vicious. The CDC is here. Get inside
now."

Tessa saw that was all she was going to get from him. She walked the half-block home; he didn't move until she'd closed her front door. Tessa turned on CNN, sat on her meditation mat, and watched for ten minutes, Minette on her lap.

Nothing. But hadn't the cable guy mentioned a local station.... She fiddled with the remote until she found it.

“—since this morning. This is Tyler Community Hospital,” said a carefully made-up blonde in an unbuttoned parka, a large building behind her, “where the worst of the dog bite victims are being treated. Ten people have already died, seven of them children. Four more are in critical condition. Law enforcement authorities admit to being stymied. Specialists from the CDC in Atlanta, KJV has just learned, have now arrived in Tyler. Stay with us as we follow this breaking story. Meanwhile, the Truman High School Scorpions last night edged out the—”

Tessa stared at the television. A plague among dogs?
Dogs?

She made a move toward the phone, then stopped. She was no longer an FBI agent. She no longer had access, or rights, to breaking knowledge about threats to the public welfare. She had made that choice.

Bag that.
This was her town, as of three weeks ago. And she didn't need the Bureau to find out what was going on in it. Her coat was still on; she closed and locked the window, grabbed her keys and gun.

Minette, quiet now, watched sadly as Tessa left.

Ed Dormund peered out the kitchen window. The Samoyeds weren't visible anywhere in the fenced yard. They'd gone either into their dog house or around to the west side of the house, which had only one small window set into the wall of what Cora called her “crafts room.” Ed didn't know what she actually did in there, and he didn't care. But he cared where the dogs had gotten to.

Cora sat slumped over coffee at the dirty kitchen table. “Stop pacing, you're making me sick.”

“That hangover is making you sick.”

“Like you should talk. You drink more than I do. And if you ever hit me again I'll—”

“You'll do what?” Ed was barely listening; this was old ground. Where the hell were the dogs?

The phone rang and Cora answered. “Yeah?… Oh, hi.” She listened, laughed shortly, and said, “Yeah, right, whatever.”

“Who was that?” Ed finally said when it was clear she wasn't going to tell him, just to make him ask.

“Old Man Lassiter next door.”

“What'd he want?”

Cora smirked, making him wait. Eventually she said, “He said he heard from somebody that there's some kind of plague going around, a disease that turns dogs vicious, so we should keep ours locked up. Ain't that a hoot? Some people will believe anything. Probably afraid that little Spic mutt of his will bite his finger.”

Despite himself, Ed laughed. Then he scowled at Cora and went to see if he could spot Jake and Petey and Rex from the craft-room window.

Del Lassiter hung up the phone. Brenda had gone back to bed after lunch. The chemo really tired her out. Del was glad she hadn't woken when Rod Gregory had called to tell Del about the dog plague.

A
dog plague
…How could such a thing happen? Was it even true? Dogs?

Del gazed at Folly, chewing on a miniature rawhide bone on the floor. All at once the Chihuahua looked up and sniffed the air. As she rose to her feet, her entire fawn-colored body started to quiver.

“Cold, girl?” But the kitchen wasn't cold. Ever since Brenda had been diagnosed, Del kept the house at 78°, day and night. Chihuahuas shivered when cold, but also when excited, nervous, or scared.

Folly sniffed the air again and began to howl.

Ellie opened her bedroom door. The Greyhounds rushed up to her, Butterfly jumping to lay paws on Ellie's shoulders and lick her face, the other four crowding close.

“Good morning, good morning!”

Morning indeed. Ellie had gone back to sleep and slept the morning away, which was disgraceful. She was on the four-to eleven shift today as work, but even so…

Song dashed away and returned with her favorite toy, a much-slobbered-over football. Chimes licked Ellie's hand. Music barked to go out. Ellie tried to attend to all of them at once, laughing at their antics. Scornfully she thought of her co-workers at the office, yammering on about TV shows and dates and clubbing in D.C. Who needed inane sitcoms or cheating men or noisy clubs? She had everything she wanted right here, with her precious friends whose lives she had saved.

Ellie opened the door to let the dogs out into the backyard. Somewhere a siren began to sound, but she barely noticed.

Steve Harper sat in his bedroom, listening to the phone ring. It was his mother, and he should answer it. She'd lost Davey, too, and he should be there for her. But he couldn't. He couldn't do anything but sit here, see
ing over and over again the same image,
the brown mastiff with a single long string of saliva and blood hanging from its mouth onto Davey's body
…

Steve put his hands over his face. The phone went on ringing and ringing.

Allen Levy sat watching TV in the family room, waiting for 3:00, the remains of his lunch on a plate beside him. At 2:57, his mother bustled in, "Allen, it's time for my show."

“Oh, Mom,
pleeeessssse!
I'm right in the middle of
Star Wars!
Look!”

“You've seen it before, and you know I only watch this
one
show, Allen.
Star Wars
can wait an hour.”

“No, it can't, I haven't seen it before, we never got the DVD, Jimmy gave it to me!
Pleeeessse!
I'm so bored!”

Mrs. Levy frowned. “This isn't like you, Allen. As I said, I only watch one show every day and—”

“Then can I go outside to play? It's so nice out, look!”

Allen pointed to the window, but his mother just kept gazing at him. He tried to look pathetic. Finally she sighed. “All right, I'll watch TV upstairs. But you stay right here, you hear me? And turn it down a bit.”

“Thanks, Mom!” Allen turned back to the screen and inched toward it happily. He didn't touch the sound. On screen, the Sith blew up something.

When his mother had gone upstairs, he waited a few minutes. She didn't come down. She'd been watching her afternoon show, which seemed to involve grown-ups crying and screaming at each other a lot, as long as Allen could remember. It was very important to her. Allen crept quietly from the family room to the basement door.

He couldn't hear Susie through the door. All night he'd heard her, whimpering and barking because she wasn't where she was supposed to be, at the foot of Allen's bed. Instead she was locked in the basement, where it was dark and cold. She might even have eaten all her food by now. Allen's mother said she'd given Susie a lot of food, but his mother didn't always tell him the truth. Just last week she said Allen couldn't go over to his friend Jimmy's to play because Jimmy's mother had the flu, but the truth was that Jimmy's mother was drunk again. Jimmy had told him later.