Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (28 page)

CHAPTER 38

FIGHTING CRIME BY BITING CRIME

I opened my eyes and saw Lisbet sitting in a chair next to my hospital bed. Her eyes were closed, and she was praying.

“Where’s my pho?” I whispered.

She opened her eyes and started laughing and crying, and then she said, “Michael, what am I going to do with you?”

“Unmentionable things, I hope.” I tried unsuccessfully to speak with more than a whisper.

“No brain damage,” she said, but then added, “Or at least no more than was already there. Thank God!”

Sirius awakened at the sound of our voices and struggled to rise.

“It’s all right, buddy,” I said, but he insisted upon getting up and planting his head right next to me.

It was then I noticed the IV tubes snaking into my arm, but that didn’t stop me from scratching behind his ear.

“So ist brav,”
I whispered to him. German is not usually the first language I think of when it comes to endearments, but he knew I was telling him what a good boy he was.

That was when Lisbet lost it, sobbing hard into her hands. I’m not sure which of us was more uncomfortable with her tears; both Sirius and I tried comforting her.

“They had to call me, Michael,” she said. “Sirius wouldn’t let the EMTs get to you. He kept everyone at bay, including the police and animal control. He was standing over you, and was ready to protect you with his life.”

That’s when I had to fight back my own tears, and poor Sirius didn’t know what to do. He went back and forth between me and Lisbet, trying to comfort both of us, and it was his earnest efforts that enabled us to start laughing. At least that made my poor, confused partner happy.

“James Rhodes?” I asked.

“As far as I know, he’s still in the ER being operated on,” said Lisbet. “One of the doctors told me there are thirty-eight bones in the hand, and Sirius broke all thirty-eight.”

“Rhodes was going to burn me alive,” I said. “He was trying to mask the crime scene, just as he did with his wife and with Langston. I’m guessing he stole the truck, just like he stole Donald Warren’s car. He was putting down a trail of accelerant between the truck and my car. I’m sure he studied up on car crashes to try and fool forensics. His only mistake was putting his hand into the car.”

“That hand will never be the same,” said Lisbet. “I was told Sirius broke fifteen of his sixteen wrist bones, and eight of his ten shoulder and arm bones.”

“Only eight of ten?” I said to Sirius, adding a tsk-tsk.

He heard the love in my voice; that was all that mattered.

“When I walked up to your car, Michael, I was scared. There was blood all over Sirius. His ears were back and he was growling, and it was this throaty, scary sound I’d never heard before. I had to talk with him for a minute before he calmed down, and then it took me another minute to persuade him to let the paramedics see to you. I was afraid his loyalty might kill you.”

I fought off tearing up again.
It’s the drugs they gave me,
I tried to tell myself.

“Luckily, the doctors say you look worse than you really are. Having been thrown around like you were, they say you could have suffered traumatic brain injury, internal injuries, and paralysis, but it looks like you escaped with only contusions and cracked ribs.”

“Does that mean I can go home?”

“It means in the morning the doctors can look you over from head to toe to get a better read of your condition. They told me that when it comes to car crashes, it’s likely you’ll feel worse the second day.”

“I’m feeling okay.”

“That’s the drugs talking. The doctors shot you full of pain medication.”

I fought back a yawn, but Lisbet noticed. “Don’t fight off sleep. That’s what your body needs.”

“What time is it?”

She checked her cell phone. “It’s ten thirty.”

“It’s past your bedtime,” I said.

“You think I could sleep after what happened to you?”

“You’re asking me to sleep after what happened to me.”

“This isn’t some negotiation.”

“You know why you should leave? Because I’ll have trouble sleeping knowing that you’re sitting there.”

“You need someone watching over you.”

“Let Sirius take the first shift.”

“Sirius needs someone watching over him as well. He was in your car with you.”

I didn’t tell her that I had shielded him, at least somewhat, from the impact. And as it turned out, trying to save him had saved me. My partner’s head was still on my bed. His ears were up; he knew we were talking about him.

“If I know you’re sitting in this room, I’m going to want to wake up just to talk to you,” I said, “and maybe do a little canoodling.”

“I hear the pain meds talking,” she said.

“You hear the pitter-patter of my heart, and I’m not talking about the EKG machine.”

I angled my head toward her, and Lisbet rewarded me with a kiss.

“So we either kiss all night, or you go and get some sleep,” I said.

“Did I already mention that you’re impossible?”

“You already did.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am sure.”

“All right; I’ll be back here first thing in the morning.”

“Maybe you’ll bring me my bowl of pho,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll eat your bowl of pho,” said Lisbet, and we kissed again.

She stood up and tried to get the kinks out of her shoulder. Done right, praying is a strenuous workout.

“Should I take Sirius home with me?” she asked. “Your attending doctor filled out paperwork saying that he was your therapy dog.”

“I wish that wasn’t true, but it is. So you better leave my therapy dog. I have some issues we’ll need to work through.”

“Dr. Padgett even stitched up Sirius, but we’re not supposed to tell anyone because he says it could get him fired.”

She raised a finger to her lips, and for some reason I found that funny. My amusement made her smile, and Lisbet took her finger from her lips and gently pressed it on my lips.

“Pleasant dreams,” she said, and then tiptoed out of the room.

I fell asleep almost immediately, but I didn’t have pleasant dreams.

CHAPTER 39

THE LAST RECORDING

It was late when Kurios arrived at the bunker. He controlled his urge to hurry down to see her. Delayed gratification, he knew, only made it better. He wanted maximum intensity. Besides, he needed to tend to business before pleasure.

He needed to make sure he was safe.

Kurios checked on the GPS tracker he’d planted on the snooper’s car. The detective had gone here and there, but his vehicle hadn’t moved for hours and was miles away.

There was nothing to worry about.

Still, he refrained from going to her. The anticipation needed to build, and the best thing for that was to put his workday behind him. It had started early and gone late. There had been a number of times during the day when she’d entered into his thoughts, but he hadn’t dared to monitor her. Too many people were about. But now, finally, he was alone.

Kurios tuned into his live feed. She was against the wall, and her face was hidden from him. He zoomed the camera in, but couldn’t detect any rising or falling of her chest. She didn’t appear to be breathing.

He moved the camera’s lens, studying the concrete floor. There was blood pooled around her, lots of blood.

He took a sharp breath, growing hard. It was just as he’d hoped. She’d used the box cutter.

He went from the live feed to what had been recorded, rewinding the footage back to the point in time when he’d left her with the box cutter and exited the dungeon.

Then he began watching, savoring every second of what he saw.

She had moved the box cutter far away from her, a feeble attempt to keep temptation at bay, but as time passed she had gradually moved closer and closer to where she’d left it. Finally she’d picked up the blade and examined it.

He had seen some of the light go out of her eyes when he’d presented the dog’s ear, and then it had extinguished for good when he’d told her Bowser was dead. With her little baby gone, she’d lost the will to live.

Kurios watched as her last inner trial took place. He could see her thinking. She touched the blade, felt its sharpness. The promise of relief, only a few strokes away.

He paused the recording. He needed to tend to his own relief. And then he would return to the footage and watch her die.

CHAPTER 40

BLOWING IN THE WIND

I didn’t have a burning dream, but during the short time I slept, I did have a troubled dream.

And I woke up even more troubled.

The pounding in my head didn’t come only from a headache. In my dream I’d heard the music from earlier in the evening, with voices screaming for shelter.

It wasn’t only Merry Clayton and the Stones clamoring for shelter. I was sure I heard Heather Moreland in that chorus. It didn’t matter that I’d never heard her voice. I’d heard it in my dream, and even stranger, I was hearing it now. In my head she was calling for help.

I pressed a button for the floor nurse, and then began looking for my phone and my clothes. As far as I could determine, they weren’t in the room.

The urgency welling up in me demanded immediate action. It was a war that couldn’t be put off.

The floor nurse entered my room. Before she could speak, I said, “I need my phone right now.”

“Detective Gid—”

“Now!” I said, interrupting her.

She read my voice and my expression and left the room. A minute later she returned with my phone, with security, and with what I assumed by his scrubs was my doctor. Everyone was looking at me warily. I had taken out my IVs and hadn’t done a very good job of it.

The young man in scrubs stepped forward and said in an overly calm voice, “Detective Gideon, I’m Dr. Padgett.”

“I understand I am greatly in your debt, Dr. Padgett,” I said, “but right now I have to attend to a matter of life and death and need to discharge myself.”

“You’re confused, Detective. You’re drugged, and not in your right mind. In this state, I can’t release you.”

“Phone,” I told the nurse, extending a bloody arm.

She looked to the doctor, and he gave a slight assent. I took the phone.

“And I’m going to need my wallet,” I said.

There was another exchange of glances between the nurse and the doctor, and then she left the room to get my wallet.

“You’re bleeding everywhere,” said Dr. Padgett. “Can I at least put some gauze on your wounds?”

“I would appreciate that.”

Dr. Padgett didn’t look much more than thirty. They keep making doctors younger and younger, or so it seems. With Sirius watching his work closely, the doctor did a quick patch job.

“You really are in no condition to leave this hospital,” he said.

“And I wouldn’t be leaving if it wasn’t a life-and-death situation.”

“Then why don’t you call emergency services? They would certainly be able to respond faster than you, wouldn’t they?”

“No,” I said, “they wouldn’t. Besides, it would be difficult for me to explain the situation to them.”

“You’re making my case for me that your cognitive abilities are compromised.”

“You’re making my case for me,” I said, “that what I need to do can’t easily be explained.”

The nurse reappeared with my wallet. I found the business card of Angie’s vet, along with Dr. Green’s emergency number. Four sets of eyes—the doctor, the nurse, the guard, and Sirius—watched me as I dialed the number.

Dr. Green didn’t use an answering service. When she picked up the phone at a quarter to midnight, she sounded tired, but not asleep.

“This is Detective Gideon, Dr. Green. I’m sorry that I didn’t pick Angie up earlier, but there was a good reason for that: I was in a car accident.”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine. And I wouldn’t be disturbing you at this hour if it wasn’t an emergency. A situation has arisen that requires me to get Angie out of your clinic right now.”

“And it can’t wait?”

“I would explain, but every second counts.”

“I’ll take you at your word, Detective. I’ll call our evening vet tech and tell him that you’re coming to get Angie.”

The animal doctor was willing to believe in me, but the human doctor still had his doubts.

“You’re really in no condition to leave,” Dr. Padgett said, “and it would be unlawful for you to operate machinery.”

I pointed to my phone and then hit the Uber app. After my account came up, I punched in the destination of Dr. Green’s vet clinic. Uber electronically confirmed I would be paying with the credit-card information they had on file, and then gave me an amount and ETA of the driver.

“My ride is going to be here in ten minutes,” I announced. “I’d like my clothes and my handgun.”

“You are not getting your gun,” said Dr. Padgett.

I took it as a good sign that he was no longer saying he wouldn’t release me. The gun had been the bargaining chip I knew I would have to concede, but I pretended to be upset by his ultimatum, offering a long sigh and shaking my head.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll call in another cop with a gun to assist me. What about my clothes?”

“Your bloody clothing is being laundered,” said the nurse.

“I’ll need scrubs and my shoes, then,” I said.

The nurse once again looked for direction. Dr. Padgett’s sigh and headshaking were far more convincing than mine, but finally he said, “Go ahead.”

The nurse and the guard both left the room, and Dr. Padgett made a last attempt to be the voice of reason: “I strongly suggest that you stay, Detective. You’re leaving against medical advice.”

“I understand that. And I’ll sign whatever forms are needed that exonerate you and the hospital.”

“We’ll get them ready for you. And don’t even think about walking out. We’ll have an attendant wheel you downstairs.”

I stripped and put on doctors’ scrubs. The simple motions of undressing and dressing hurt like hell. I was already missing the drip, drip, drip of my pain medication. And I wasn’t the only one moving gingerly: my guard dog was also limping.

“You can play the fife,” I told him, “and I’ll play the drums.”

A pile of forms was dropped into my lap, and I signed my life away. Then my chariot showed up, and I was wheeled downstairs to the lobby. I felt guilty about my riding and Sirius having to walk. My attendant was a young, heavy-lidded Asian man. It looked as if he’d just been awakened. I knew for a fact that Sergeant Reyes had just been awakened, because I was the one who’d woken him up. I spent most of my wheelchair ride on the phone with him.

“You need to find a home address for me,” I told him. “I might have something on our abductor.”

“What’s stopping you from getting the address?”

“Long story short, I had an accident and am just now being released from the hospital. Besides, I thought you wanted to be in on this.”

“What’s the name?”

“Dr. Alec Barron,” I said, “with two
r
’s in the last name. He’s a therapist, and has offices in Los Feliz.”

“You think he’s our guy?”

I had remarkably little in the way of evidence, but enough had added up. In my fire vision I had heard my instructor exhorting me, “You got to listen to your dog, Gideon.”

The fire dream hadn’t stipulated
which
dog. It was Angie I hadn’t been listening to. I never took into account how alert she’d become when we neared Alec Barron’s workplace. And when I came back from my meeting with Barron, Angie had all but patted me down with her nose. It wasn’t a friendly sniff either. She was all business; she knew the scent of her enemy.

Emilio Cruz had finally admitted that Barron had authored his note. The therapist had to have been the one who suggested they meet. Barron must have been watching for me from the parking lot, and while I was preoccupied, had planted a tracking device on my car. It was the only way I could figure how he’d known where Angie was being kept. Barron had recognized what I’d failed to—Angie was a witness to his crime, or her nose was. He’d understood that she was a potential threat to him, and because of that he’d attempted to murder her.

Still, the evidence was sketchy. I had little more than a lost dog, a dream, and a gut feeling to go on, but for me that was enough.

“I do. He’s certainly a person of interest.”

“You’re not exactly reassuring me, Gideon.”

“I got to run,” I said. “I’m making a stop along the way before calling on Barron. Call me when you get his home address.”

“If it’s going down, I want to be there,” he said.

“Then you’d better find out where
there
is.”

The Uber driver pulled up to the hospital’s entrance. He was driving a Ford Focus. In a short while it was going to be a tight fit.

I got out of my wheelchair and told the attendant, “Thanks for the ride.”

As Sirius and I approached the Focus, the driver rolled down the passenger window. He was a white kid who looked to be in his midtwenties. “I wasn’t told about the dog,” he said.

“It’s not a dog,” I said, “but a decorated police officer. And I’m his handler. We’re on police business.”

I flashed my wallet badge, groaned as I helped Sirius up into the back, and groaned some more as I took a seat in the front. The kid acted uneasy. That might have had something to do with my appearance in the wake of playing bumper cars. Or maybe it was my wearing doctors’ scrubs while claiming to be on police business.

Uber driver Steven said, “Where are you going, sir?”

Judging from his appearance, Steven looked and sounded like a nerd. “We’re going to a veterinary hospital,” I told him.

“Is your dog all right?”

I reached back to my partner, gasped from the pain the movement caused, and then ruffled Sirius’s fur.

“We were in a car accident tonight,” I said. “But we’re not going to the vet’s office for my partner. We’ll actually be picking up another dog.”

Steven thought about that. “I’m not sure about transporting a second dog.”

“A second police dog,” I said. I decided to elaborate on my fabrication before Steven learned firsthand what a drooling machine Angie was. “And as you probably know, police dogs are afforded the same status as police officers and cannot be discriminated against. As you’ll see, Angie is a trained bloodhound.”

My Uber driver was looking that much more uncertain.

“Say, Steven,” I said, “when you were a kid, did you like playing cops and robbers?”

Without asking Steven’s permission, after we picked up Angie, I seated her in the front next to him. My neck was hurting too much for me to easily turn around, and I wanted to be able to monitor Angie’s reactions.

My phone rang while I was getting into the backseat. The readout told me Reyes was calling.

“Good timing,” I said. “What’s his address?”

“I’m still working on it,” he said. “His DMV address isn’t where he lives. It looks like that’s where he rents out a room in a house and collects his mail. His landlord says he uses it as a sometime office, but it’s definitely not his residence.”

“What about property records?”

“Nothing has popped out yet. And you know how some properties are in trust names or business names. Unraveling those takes time.”

I cursed under my breath, and Steven’s eyes widened. He’d told me he enjoyed playing cops and robbers as a kid, but I wasn’t convinced. My menagerie was certainly out of his comfort zone; Steven was a grad student studying engineering at UCLA. His orderly world had been invaded by a cop in doctors’ scrubs, my toothy partner, and a slobbering dog who was already drooling on him, not to mention his car’s upholstery. Given his position, I might not be enjoying this particular game of cops and robbers either.