Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (29 page)

“Keep trying,” I told Reyes. “And while you work on locking down his address, we’ll be doing the same thing. We’re going to be heading to Sherman Oaks.”

“Why Sherman Oaks?”

“That’s where I found Angie. She traveled a roundabout route from Burbank. I’m thinking she was following Heather Moreland’s scent. I’m hoping by the time she collapsed in Sherman Oaks, she was getting close to her mistress.”

“That sounds like a long shot.”

“Until you get me Barron’s home address, you got any better ideas?”

“Not a one,” said Reyes.
“Vaya con Dios,”
he added, and then clicked off.

Go with God,
I thought. That’s what I hoped we were doing.

“Let’s hit the road,” I said to Steven.

“We can’t proceed without a specific location,” he said.

“We’re going to my house in Sherman Oaks,” I said.

Once more I had to lock and load the coordinates before we set out. For the first few minutes, we drove in silence. From the backseat I watched Angie’s every movement. Her passenger window was halfway open, and she was sampling the breezes, but nothing seemed to have captured her interest.

Steven cleared his throat and then said, “I didn’t mean to snoop, but I couldn’t help but overhear some of your conversation.”

“And?”

“So we’re driving to Sherman Oaks with the hope of this dog picking up a particular scent?”

“That’s right,” I said. “A woman—Angie’s owner—is missing under suspicious circumstances. We’re looking for her. And we’re looking for the man who might have taken her. So I guess we’re potentially looking for two scents.”

“Do you want me to put in my own two cents?”

He laughed at his own pun. It was a reminder to me of how I annoyed certain people.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“When we get to Sherman Oaks, we should take into account the direction of the wind, and try to position ourselves accordingly to maximize our chances of the scent coming our way.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

Angie apparently could. She violently shook her head, and froth and drool went everywhere, but Steven was the main target. He looked down to the splatter zone that was his shirt and pants and said, “Gross.”

“Sorry about that.”

He found a napkin and began dabbing at the mess. While working on the slobber, he took notice of Angie’s bandages. “What happened to her ear?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure the bastard we’re looking for cut half her ear off.”

“That’s sick.”

I liked the anger I heard in his voice. “Tell me again,” I said, “your thoughts on matching up the wind to Angie’s olfactory senses.”

We had driven to one location in Sherman Oaks, and then a second. If I understood what Steven was telling me, he was establishing vectors on a wind map in the hopes of formulating a directional grid. That he was trying was enough for me. I kept paying for every ride with my credit card.

“If we’re going with God,” I muttered, “we’re taking a circuitous route.”

“Excuse me?” said Steven.

“Nothing,” I said, but then added, “We need Angie to be Balaam’s donkey.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“I guess they don’t teach religion in your graduate engineering courses.”

“Of course not,” he said, almost sounding offended.

“In the Bible there’s the story of Balaam’s donkey,” I said. “I don’t remember where Balaam was going or what he was doing, but whatever it was, somehow he displeased God. To intercede with Balaam, God sent down an angel. This angel stood in the middle of the road with a drawn sword, but Balaam couldn’t see that. The donkey sure did, though, and being a smart creature, every time it saw the angel, it turned away from the road.

“Because of the animal’s swerving, Balaam hurt his foot. Being a jerk, he took it out on the donkey and only stopped his beating when the donkey opened its mouth and spoke with the voice of the Lord, chastising Balaam. And then God opened Balaam’s eyes so that he could see the angel that had been there all along.”

I stopped talking. I hadn’t beaten Angie, but I wondered if there were more similarities than not between me and Balaam. An animal had known what was going on. It had taken me too long to divine what was there.

“So Angie needs to see what we cannot?” said Steven.

“Or smell what we can’t,” I said. “The human species is so proud of the fact that we’re at the top of the food chain that we forget the abilities that other species have.”

Angie’s head suddenly jerked and her body stiffened. She looked as if a jolt of electricity was coursing through her. Then she began breathing hard, almost like a wheezing asthmatic, desperate to take in some rare air.

“What do I do?” said Steven.

“Follow the wind.”

CHAPTER 41

THE TRUMPETING OF A HAIRY ANGEL

As Kurios made his approach to her cage, he tried to hide the sounds of his footsteps. He was sure she was dead, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. As he had fast-forwarded the footage, he was able to see that for hours she had remained curled up and inert in a pool of blood. That couldn’t be faked.

Neither could the smell. He raised his hand up to his nose and tried to ward off the odor. The foul creature had soiled herself when she died.

It appeared rigor mortis had set in, but because she remained in the shadows, it was difficult to get a good look at her. She had been remarkably uncooperative in death. She’d kept her back to the camera. When she’d cut her wrists, he had observed the flow of blood, but hadn’t seen her rend her own flesh. Kurios had felt cheated by that. Next time he’d set up multiple cameras so as to be able to see everything.

He felt the electricity running through him. He had hoped it would be like this. It was what he expected, and more. For so long he’d listened to their lurid stories, to men talking about how they put their women in their place. His clients had never known how much Kurios enjoyed hearing how they beat and bloodied the oppressive women in their lives. Growing up, he had watched his father beat his mother. She had always deserved it. And then his mother had abandoned both of them when he was only eight. His father was right: women should have a bounty on them.

Kurios looked into the cage. It was too dark to see the purpling of livor mortis, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there was purge fluid along with her feces and urine. She had been disgusting in life, and was even more disgusting in death.

Now all that remained was for the trash to be put out.

He unlocked her cage, holding his breath. The stench was revolting. He had bought a huge roll of polyethylene, what the worker in the hardware store had called painters’ plastic sheeting. After coating the body in lime, he’d wrap her up in the sheeting. Then he’d find a spot in the desert to bury her so that she would cook in her own foul juices.

He stepped closer and bent down to see her face. Her mouth was set in a gargoyle’s rictus.

This time there was no mask obscuring Kurios’s vision. He could see the filth for what it was; the bad thing was that he had to smell it.

The box cutter came at him before he could react. Kurios heard it better than he saw it. The blade sliced upward but missed his throat. The sharp edge didn’t go thirsty, though; it cut through to the bone of his jaw. Blood began streaming down his shirt.

Kurios backed up, instinctively raising his hands. She sliced open his palm and kept coming at him. He found himself screaming. It wasn’t only the surprise and the pain; she looked inhuman. Her face was white, her flesh pallid, and there were wounds all over her body. She had acted dead, and looked dead. She was growling and making subhuman sounds.

She lunged at him again with the box cutter, and Kurios almost fell over. For a moment he thought about running away. He could escape and lock her in the tomb forever. But there was no need to run. She was panting, and weak. Losing all that blood had taken its toll.

No, he wouldn’t run. He was the lord, and she was the lowest of the low. She had thought she could escape her cesspool, but he’d put her where she belonged. He would disarm her and then break her. She was a pile of shit, and he would wipe her from the bottom of his shoes forever.

She went for his face, but he threw his head back and she was only able to nick his ear. It was a movement that exposed her, and he grabbed her arm. She tried swinging the box cutter, but his grip gave her no leverage. Squirming, biting, and kicking, she did everything possible to free herself. But he wouldn’t let loose. He bent her arm to the point of breaking, forcing her to drop the box cutter.

Without a weapon, she tried to use her nails, tried to rake his flesh, but he was taller than she was and had longer arms. His hands wrapped around her neck, choking the life out of her.

Stars came to Heather’s eyes. She had done everything she could, but her last desperate gamble hadn’t worked. She had completely humbled herself, had lain in her own waste, but even that ruse had failed. Lack of food and water, and her own spent blood, had done her in.

She heard something over the rushing sound in her ears. It was some kind of trumpeting. Were the angels coming for her? She hoped that was so. But no, it wasn’t trumpeting. It was a different kind of triumphant sound. It was baying.

That sounds like Angie,
thought Heather, and passed out.

CHAPTER 42

UNLEASH THE HOUNDS

The driver and I were both holding our breath. Angie seemed to be on the scent again. From the backseat, I was keeping her from jumping out of the opened passenger-side window by holding on to her leash. She was pulling hard, ready to run after the scent. But then her body suddenly went slack, and she settled back into the front seat.

“Shit,” I said. Steven joined my chorus.

It had been stop, and start, and stop again. Angie had caught the scent, and then lost it, and then locked in once more before losing it.

Steven wet his index finger and then raised it in search of the wind. It had come to that.

“Not much wind,” he said. “And what’s there isn’t consistently coming from one direction or another. Maybe that’s why she lost the scent.”

“Head that way,” I said, signaling with my hand. “I think that was the direction she was pulling.”

He began driving, but I think he was watching Angie more than he was the road. I was more obvious in my staring. And I was gauging her leash like an anxious fisherman might his fishing line. Angie hadn’t given up on her sniffing, but she couldn’t find that elusive scent.

“It’s not like the movies, is it?” said Steven.

I shrugged dispiritedly. Maybe it was like the movies. After all, the bloodhounds had come up empty in
The Shawshank Redemption
and
Cool Hand Luke
. Of course I’d been glad the hounds had come up short in those films. I wasn’t so glad now.

“She’ll pick it up again,” he said.

It might have been lucky that Angie had picked it up at all,
I thought. Neither Heather Moreland nor her abductor had walked this route. Their spoor wasn’t on the grass or brush.

“I hope so.” Heather’s elusive scent was out there in the ether.

“Maybe we need to get Angie out of the car,” he said. “It’s possible her being in an enclosed space makes it difficult to pick up the scent.”

“That didn’t stop her earlier.”

Angie’s nose had taken us throughout much of Sherman Oaks before she’d lost the scent.

“But you might be right,” I added. “Let’s wait a minute or two, though. Walking would slow us up.”

I didn’t add that I wasn’t even sure if I was up to the task of acting as her handler. My accident had caught up with me. Just breathing was causing me pain.

We came to a stop sign. “Where to now?” he asked.

My fish wasn’t pulling. I pointed in the direction of North Hollywood and said, “That way.”

We started down a quiet road in a residential section of Sherman Oaks. The leash was still slack. My bobber still wasn’t bobbing. I watched Angie’s nose twitch, saw her breathe in, but the air offered no secrets.

The foreboding that awakened me at the hospital had grown worse. I had this feeling something bad was either happening or imminent. The anguished tune in my head kept playing.

“The war is coming, and there’s no shelter from it,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

I didn’t have to explain. Angie did that for me by suddenly going ballistic. Her earlier baying was just a warm-up for the big show. I had to hold tightly to her leash. There was a whale on the line. Angie had radar lock-on. The target was fixed, and she wanted the missile to fly. I could barely hold her inside the car.

“Stop,” I said.

Steven braked hard. I was losing the tug-of-war, and Angie was trying to jump out her half-open window. “Hold the leash!”

Steven grabbed it, and that gave me the chance to throw open my door and step up to Angie’s door. With Sirius at my side, I inched open the passenger door, getting a grip on her leash and collar.

Then I made the mistake of opening the door all the way.

Angie leaped out and almost pulled my arm out of its socket.

I ran as fast as I could, but it wasn’t anywhere near fast enough for Angie. She began dragging me, and I had to let go of the leash. Sirius came to a stop next to me, but I had enough breath to go German on him:
“Voraus!”
He heard my command to “go” and didn’t need to be told twice.

There had been a reason Dr. Padgett had advised me to not leave the hospital. My cracked ribs were now on fire.

“Are you all right?”

Steven had caught up to me. It hurt too much for me to reply, so I let the dogs do the talking. Sirius and Angie were running around an eight-foot-high privacy fence that ringed a home’s large backyard. Angie was desperately looking for an entrance into the yard.

“Help the dogs over that fence!”

Steven assumed I knew what I was talking about. He sprinted to the dogs. I watched him lift Angie high enough for her to scrabble over the fence, and then he began hoisting Sirius. I arrived on the scene just as my partner disappeared from view.

“Now me,” I said.

He interlaced his fingers, offering me a stirrup. I stepped up and he gave me a boost. His lifting up my body was bad enough; the torque of my swinging over the fence made me scream, but my cries of pain were covered up by the urgency of Angie’s baying.

I didn’t need to take any time figuring out where to go. Angie was scratching at the door of a backyard shed. Unfortunately, it was locked. Whether I kicked it in or hit it with my shoulder, it was still going to hurt. I took a step back.

And then I heard a sound coming from behind me and watched as Steven rammed into the door. Maybe he really did like playing cops and robbers. The door flew open, and the dogs jumped over his downed form. I moved around him and joined Angie. She was scratching at a throw rug, and I pulled it aside. The shelter dog had found the underground shelter.

I gripped a metal ring and lifted the hatch up. The rungs in the concrete walls had lost their battle to time, but had been replaced by a portable fire-escape ladder that extended to the floor below. The drawbridge was down. It was time to storm the castle.

I started down the ladder. Maybe I should have first consulted with Angie. Going down second apparently wasn’t to her liking. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t room for the two of us. I was only halfway down the stairs when she jumped through the opening. I tried to catch her with one arm and hold on to the ladder with the other, but succeeded only in falling. Luckily, I cushioned her landing, but at the expense of my own body. I would have screamed, but the wind was knocked out of me. From above I could see Sirius’s anxious face, and knew he was ready to do his own high-wire act.

“No!” I gasped, and then found breath enough to say,
“Sitz! Bleib!”

I began to rise gingerly, but that was before a man began screaming. His terror not only got me to my feet, but got me running. I ran toward the sounds and saw Dr. Alec Barron trying to fend Angie off. Most dogs have to be taught to bite. It’s not in canines’ nature to clamp down on humans. But Barron was on the wrong end of Angie’s teeth, and she showed no signs of letting up. His hands and arms were bleeding from multiple wounds, sacrificial victims to the shielding of his neck and trying to keep his jugular from being torn apart.

“Angie!” I yelled. “No!”

She ignored me and continued lunging at Barron.

“Angie!” I yelled again, trying to get her attention.

I didn’t want to have to hurt her, but wondered what else I could do to stop her from ripping Barron apart.

And that’s when a form raised itself from the shadows and began violently coughing. That got Angie’s attention a lot more than my shouting.

And then Heather Moreland whispered, “Angie, come!”

Angie forgot her prey and bounded over to the still-coughing Heather. Then the woman threw her arms around Angie and held on as if she was the world’s largest life preserver. Heather began sobbing uncontrollably, and all the while Angie desperately tried licking away what she perceived as Heather’s sorrow.

The mother-and-daughter reunion was almost too personal to watch. The two survivors consoled each other and let their love speak. It would be a memory, I knew, that would sustain me for the rest of my life; it would be my own perpetual night-light that I could call upon to stave off the darkness that sometimes comes upon me.

Out of the corner of my peripheral vision, I saw Alec Barron trying to crawl away. I didn’t let him get very far. I read him his Miranda rights and then secured him with flex cuffs.

He said only two things to me: “I need a doctor. And I need a lawyer.”

I was glad he chose not to say much. Glad that he seemed to be in even more pain than I was. And I had the ready relief that he didn’t. All I had to do was look at Heather and Angie. That was better than pain meds. That was better than anything.