"U" is for Undertow (19 page)

Walker kept his expression neutral, not wanting to give Herschel the satisfaction of seeing his dismay. “I’ll have to move money over from savings. I don’t keep cash like that in my checking account. Can it wait until I get out?”

“Have Carolyn take care of it. Nice seeing you.”

 

 

Peephole, California, is essentially two blocks long and ten blocks wide, a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean. A Southern Pacific Railroad track runs parallel to the 101, separating the town from the beach. A tunnel runs under both the train tracks and the highway, making it possible to reach the water if you’re willing to walk hunched over through a damp and moldy-smelling fifty yards of culvert. At the northernmost end of town there’s a banana farm. The only other businesses are a service station selling no-name gas and a fresh-produce stand that’s closed for most of the year.

I activated my left-turn signal and slowed, eyes pinned on the rearview mirror to make sure no one was plowing into me. At the first break in oncoming traffic, I turned off the highway and crossed the tracks, which put me at the midpoint, half the town to the right of me and half to the left. The ebb and flow of the surf and the surging and receding waves of cars on the highway created a hush of white noise. There was something lazy in the air. My driving tour was brief because there wasn’t much to see. The streets were narrow and there were no sidewalks. There were roughly 125 homes in a hodgepodge of architectural styles. Many of the original summer cottages still stood, probably tricked out by now with proper insulation, forced-air furnaces, air-conditioning units, and triple-glazed windows. These were people with storage problems. The yards I passed were littered with everything from boat hulls to broken birdbaths to old suitcases. Discarded furniture had been tossed off the porch steps, perhaps awaiting a sweep by the alley fairies.

I turned onto Zarina Avenue, checked the house number, and found myself peering at a one-story shingle-and-adobe house with a crudely constructed chimney piercing the roof on one end. A flaking white-painted picket fence staggered around the property, enclosing a length of gravel driveway bordered by patches of overgrown grass. A chicken-wire fence surrounded the vestiges of a garden planted in winter vegetables. A shaggy-coated yellow mongrel roused himself from a nap and sauntered in my direction, wagging his tail. The mop of hair hanging over his face made it look like he was watching me from behind a bush. This was the third dog I’d encountered in the past week, and I could feel my resistance fading. The dogs I’d met were a good-natured crew, and as long as none of them barked, snarled, snapped, bit, jumped on me, humped my leg, or slobbered o’ermuch, I was happy to make their acquaintance. This one followed me to the front door and watched expectantly as I knocked on the frame of the screen. He studied the door as I did, glancing at me now and then to show he was attentive to the plan and supportive of my aims.

The man who opened the door had to have been descended from one of the blue-eyed Irish-Hispanic clan who’d prospered in Peephole since the mid-1800s. His hair was the color of new bricks, clipped short and threaded with gray. He was tall and thin, broad-shouldered, with ropy muscles and a weathered nut-brown complexion that suggested hours in the sun. His jeans were well worn and rode low on his hips, and his blue denim shirt had a rip in one sleeve. I placed him at the north end of sixty.

“Yes?”

I said, “Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for P. F. Sanchez.”

“That’s me. Who are you?”

“Kinsey Millhone,” I said. My impulse was to shake his hand, but that would have necessitated his opening the screen and I could tell he was already wondering if I was selling soap products door-to-door, while I was wondering if he was married. The Polk and the Haines hadn’t mentioned a spouse, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. The cornflower blue of his eyes was the same shade as Henry’s.

“Mind if I ask what the P. F. stands for?”

“Placido Flannagan. People call me Flannagan, or sometimes Flan,” he said. “I have an uncle and two cousins named Placido, so I use my middle name.”

“So you’re Harry Flannagan’s, what, great-grandson?”

“Let me guess. You’re an amateur genealogist. That’s usually the story I get when a stranger asks about Harry.”

“Actually, I’m a private detective.”

He scratched his chin. “That’s a new one. What brings you to my door?”

“I found your telephone number on an ID tag, buried with a dog. I was curious about the circumstances. In case you’re wondering, you’re listed in Peephole in two crisscross directories, which is how I came up with your address.”

“A dog.”

“A dead one.”

His mouth pulled down with skepticism. “Woofer’s the only pooch I own and you’re looking at him. He may be old, but as nearly as I can tell, he’s not dead yet. You sure about this?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. “The dog’s name was Ulf.”

He stood stock still for a moment and then squinted at me. “
What
did you say your name was?”

“Kinsey.”

He opened the door. “You better come in.”

I entered the house, stepping directly into the main room with Woofer at my heels. The dog padded the perimeter with his nose down, following the scent of an unseen creature, very possibly himself. The place was old. The thick walls were stucco and the ceiling was exposed timber, dark with age. The fireplace itself was a half-round of stucco tucked into one corner. The mantel was a curve of raw wood with a pair of antlers mounted above it. The furniture was Victorian, four chairs and two sofas lined up against the walls as though the center had been cleared for dancing. Three dingy rag rugs had been tossed on the floor and Woofer chose the biggest for the next phase of his nap. The room smelled like damp ash, the lingering scent of last winter’s fires.

Flannagan indicated that I should sit and I settled in a chair with an ancient black horsehair seat. Given my trivial mental processes, I was momentarily distracted by the notion of horsehair, wondering if the chair was literally upholstered in an equine hide. Couldn’t be done in this day and age, but our forebears weren’t troubled by the sorts of sentiments we harbor today, believing animals were intended for Man’s use. Even in death, nothing went to waste.

Flannagan sat down to my right on a rose-colored velvet settee with an ornate dark mahogany trim. The nap had worn thin in places, but the tufting was still crisp and all the buttons were in place. He rested his elbows on his knees, his gnarly fingers loosely laced together. “What’s your interest in Ulf? He’s been gone the better part of twenty years.”

“I know. If my information’s correct, he was buried in Horton Ravine in July of 1967.”

Flannagan was shaking his head. “That’s not possible. You’re mistaken.”

“According to the best guess, he was a German shepherd.” I reached into my jacket pocket and removed the blue leather collar with the tag attached. I handed it to him. He studied the disk, front and back, and then ran his thumb across the dog’s name.

“Shit.”

“I take it you know the dog.”

“He belonged to my son. Liam died in a motorcycle accident in 1964. Eighteen years old. He laid his Harley down in a patch of gravel on the 101 and skidded into the path of an oncoming car.”

I watched him without a word, letting him tell it his way.

He tilted his head this way and that to loosen tension, which created muffled pops. His blue eyes met mine. “Ulf wasn’t a shepherd. He was a wolfdog. You know anything about the breed?”

“Wolfdogs? No clue.”

“Ulf was what they call a high-content hybrid, meaning genetically he was more
Canis lupus
than
Canis lupus familiaris
. A hybrid is usually the result of a female wolf mated to a male domestic dog. I’m generalizing here, but as a rule, they don’t make good pets. They’re too high-spirited and demanding. Smart as all get-out, but they’re difficult to housebreak. Chain ’em up in the yard and they go berserk.”

“How long did your son have the dog?”

“Not much more than a year. Liam was in his biker phase and probably sold dope, though I never pressed him on the subject. He would have lied if I had so what’s the point? He bought the dog from a guy who had a litter of six in the back of his pickup truck. I guess if you deal drugs, owning a wolfdog lends you a certain dangerous air. They’re aggressive and predatory and they have those eerie gold eyes that look straight into your soul. Hold on. I’ll show you something.”

He got up and crossed the room to a carved oak breakfront he was using as a catchall—keys, junk mail, tools, paperbacks, a silver tea set with the creamer missing. He picked up a framed color photograph, looking at it for a moment before he crossed the room again and handed it to me. “That’s the two of them.”

I angled the photo to eliminate the glare. Liam must have inherited his mother’s coloring. Unlike his father, he was dark-haired and dark-eyed. He did have his father’s physique in a lighter body style. He wore a black leather jacket, jeans, and black boots. He was hunkered beside the young dog, which stood facing the camera with a wary air of intelligence. He looked like a German shepherd except that his torso was slimmer and his legs were longer. His coat was medium length and appeared rough, a grizzled black with layers of gray near his head. The mask of white across his face attested to the strong genetic presence of wolf.

“He’s beautiful. The name, Ulf, as in ‘wolf’?”

Flannagan smiled. “Liam came up with that. He was just a little fluff ball when he got him. Six weeks old. Even as a pup, he was a handful. I never once heard him bark, but when he howled, even as a baby, it would raise the hair on the back of your neck. Dog like that is always testing—the more wolf, the more testing. Liam was alpha male, which meant when he died, no one else could really handle the dog.”

“So he reverted to you?”

“That’s about the size of it. Wolves are pack animals. They have a clear social structure. There’s only room for one leader, and it better be you. You want alpha status with a dog like that; you have to teach him he’s subordinate. You don’t play tug-of-war with him. He doesn’t sleep on your bed. You go through the door first and he eats when you say so and not a minute before. With Liam gone and me stepping in after the fact, there was no way the dog would accept me as dominant. I tried to treat him as Liam had, but he wasn’t impressed. He put up with me. Beyond that, he obeyed if he felt like it, and the rest was my problem.”

“Must have been a strange relationship.”

“I’m not sure he ever felt much for me, but I admired him and I was grateful for his tolerance. My biggest problem was finding a vet willing to treat him. A lot of vets won’t do it. There’s no approved rabies vaccine for the breed so if the dog bites someone, the county will insist on putting him down, no ifs, ands, or buts. In some states it’s illegal to own a wolfdog. I’m not sure what the California law was back then, but I remember Liam saying when you take a wolfdog to a new vet, to be on the safe side, you claim he’s a husky or half malamute.

“That turned out to be a nonissue with Ulf. He developed what I thought was hip dysplasia, meaning the joint was unstable and started causing him pain. By the time he was four years old, the suffering was so acute he could barely get around. I’m not that good a liar so I made a lot of calls before I finally found a vet who’d see him. He suggested I drop him at the office so he could sedate the dog and take X-rays. Sedation’s a risky business with wolfdogs, but he said he understood and he’d be cautious about the dosage. Anyway, I drove him up to Santa Teresa.

“While Ulf was still under, the doc called and told me it wasn’t hip dysplasia at all. We were looking at osteosarcoma, a malignant tumor in the bone. In a young dog like Ulf, the tumor is usually fast-spreading and survival time is short. Amputation was a possibility, but I couldn’t see it with a dog like him. The vet offered to show me X-rays if I needed to be convinced, but I believed him. He recommended euthanization and I agreed.”

He lowered his head and then pinched the bridge of his nose and let the air out of his lungs. “Shit. I know I did the right thing. Own an animal and you’re responsible for his comfort and safety. You do what you have to do, even if it breaks your heart. But I should have been with him. Losing that dog was like losing Liam all over again. I couldn’t handle it. I should have driven back up there, even if he was already sedated and wasn’t aware of what was going on. Instead, I told the vet to get on with it. I told him to just take care of it and when I hung up the phone, I stood here and wept. It was cowardly. He was a noble animal. I should have held him while he died. I owed him that and Liam, too.”

I was busy thinking about six other things, breathing through my mouth in hopes I could keep my shit together. Meanwhile, Woofer, the yellow mongrel, had roused himself and crossed to Flannagan’s side. He stood there with his chin on Flannagan’s thigh, looking up at him through the mop of hair that hung over his eyes. Flannagan smiled and rubbed behind his ears.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve never owned a dog.”

“Yeah, well, I swore I’d never own another one and here I am. This fellow’s fifteen years old and so far, so good. Maybe I’ll get lucky and go before he does. At any rate, that’s the story of Ulf. You caught me off guard. I never thought I’d hear another word about the dog.”

“I appreciate the information.”

“What about you? You haven’t explained how you ended up with his tag.”

I gave him an abbreviated version of my meeting with Michael Sutton, his encounter with the two guys digging the hole, and his suspicions about Mary Claire Fitzhugh. Flannagan remembered the child’s disappearance. None of the other names I mentioned meant anything to him. He hadn’t known the Kirkendalls, the Suttons, or anyone on Alita Lane.