Yesterday's Echo (12 page)

Before she got there, the doors swung open and a man who looked barely out of his teens came into the room. “Dr. Ramsey” was stitched above the left pocket of his white coat. He stopped the gurney and pushed the rubber end of the stethoscope against Midnight's chest for too long. The world grew silent and the night crept into the clinic.

Finally, he pulled the instrument from Midnight's chest. “I'll be in shortly.”

The woman nodded her head and wheeled Midnight through the swinging doors.

“Is your dog on any medication?”

“No.”

“Has he eaten anything unusual recently?”

I remembered the warm contents in my pocket. “I don't know, but there was vomit on the grass where I found him.”

I pulled out the bag and handed it to Dr. Ramsey. He examined it for a second then put the bag in the front pocket of his lab coat.

“I'm going to pump Midnight's stomach and expel anything that hasn't been fully digested. I'll also give him an enema to flush out any lingering toxins.” He put his hand on my shoulder in a strained attempt at bedside manner. “He'll get the best care possible.”

I wanted to believe him, but he looked like a kid wearing a coat with his father's name on it. “Thanks.”

He turned and hurried through the swinging doors into the emergency room.

I slumped down into a chair along the wall. Dread tightened my throat and my eyes threatened tears. I scanned the clinic's waiting room.

I was all alone.

I checked my watch again: 2:20 a.m. I'd been at the clinic an hour and the vet and his assistant were still with Midnight behind closed doors. My body felt like a clenched fist. I did another circuit of the clinic's waiting room and watched the plaques, certificates, and pictures on the pale-green wall pass, again. I'm sure they all had some significance, but they never made it past my eyes into my brain. There wasn't any room left in there behind the fear, the regret, the anger, and the memories.

I'd had a dog as a kid. A basset hound named Baxter. We were both pups and, in my father's eyes, had a lot to learn. He was strict with both of us, but back then only Baxter had the courage to rebel. One night when I was ten, our family went out for our awkward annual restaurant dinner. My father had always worn his SDPD dress blues to the dinner while he was still on the job. This was our first night out since Dad had been kicked off the force.
He'd spent a lot of time earlier that night staring at his only two suits laid out on his bed. Once he decided, the rest of us put on our Sunday best and we all went out and tried to enjoy dinner.

I'd forgotten to put Baxter in the backyard before we'd left. He'd rewarded me by chewing up the suit that my father had deemed second best and left lying on the bed. Dad took his belt to both of us that night. Things were never the same after that night, between Baxter and my father and my father and me.

I never had wanted another dog until Kim, my last girlfriend, blindfolded me and drove me out to the back country in Alpine on my thirtieth birthday. When the blindfold came off, I was in a small pen with seven black Lab puppies. They were shy at first until one came over and licked my hand and sat down next to me.

Midnight had been at my side ever since. Now he might never be again. Someone had tried to kill him. If I ever found out who, I'd give the cops a legitimate reason to arrest me.

My temples throbbed and my breathing grew audible and then the vet's assistant came through the door in the back.

“The doctor will be in to talk to you in a minute.” Her brown eyes matched the stoic expression on her pale, oval face.

“Is Midnight going to be all right?”

“The doctor is the appropriate person to talk to. He'll be in shortly.” She walked behind the counter in the middle of the room.

“Don't give me that bullshit! Is my dog alive?”

Her face turned pink and she looked down at the computer on her desk. “Yes, he's alive. I'm not . . . the doctor likes to be the one to talk about the condition of our patients. I'm sorry.”

I noticed for the first time that the name Donna was stitched on her smock. “Thanks, Donna.”

The doors swung open and Dr. Ramsey walked in.

“Is Midnight going to be all right?”

“I'm afraid it's too early to tell.” Ramsey didn't look like a kid anymore. “We'll need to monitor him overnight.”

“Can I see him?”

“He's resting comfortably. Why don't you come back in twelve
hours?” He went to the counter, and Donna handed him a clipboard. “Please fill this out.”

I took the clipboard without looking at it. “Could you tell what he ate that made him sick?”

“I'd have to run a toxicology screen to be absolutely certain, but it appears that someone put sleeping pills in some raw ground meat and fed them to your dog. You can have the police call me when you file a report.”

I'd had enough of the police for one day.

It was after three a.m. when I walked through my front door for the second time that morning. I had to be back at Muldoon's in less than four and a half hours. The adrenaline that had surged through my body when I found Midnight and carried me through my hours of dread at the clinic now left me empty and spent.

I zombied into my bedroom and pulled off my clothes, left them where they fell, and went to the nightstand to reset the alarm to give myself an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. But something was wrong with the nightstand. Its feet were slightly forward from the ruts in the carpet they'd made after years of resting in the same place. It looked like someone had pulled the nightstand out and hadn't pushed it back in exactly the same place. The hair on my neck went up and the adrenaline awoke from its slumber and my stomach ground on empty.

Someone had been inside my house. Someone had poisoned Midnight so they could search my home.

Stone's tough guys?

I didn't think anyone was still in the house, but I searched it anyway. Even under the bed. No bogeyman, but he'd left something behind. My nose told me there was something familiar, yet out of place on the carpet next to my bed. The stink of human sweat mixed with something else that I couldn't identify, but knew I'd smelled somewhere before. Wherever it had come from, it was now the stench of my life being violated.

I checked all the locks on the doors and the windows. None showed any tampering. Whoever broke in must have had a set of
lock picks and knew how to use them. He'd gone through the back door so he could have time to work the lock without worrying about being seen. And he'd come prepared to deal with a dog. What else had he been prepared to deal with?

I'd gotten rid of all things police after I'd been bumped off the force. Including my gun. Tomorrow I'd go to a gun shop and fill that void. I just hoped Midnight and I could survive the ten-day waiting period. I fell asleep with the stink of something foreign in my nose and without my trusted companion at the foot of my bed.

The alarm rang at seven fifteen a.m., and I reached over to turn it off. I didn't know what day it was, but the surroundings looked familiar. Home. I staggered out of bed to let Midnight outside. Then it hit me like a left hook to the kidneys. Midnight! I dashed into the living room, grabbed the phone, and called the clinic where I'd left him.

“Mission Center Animal General.” A woman's voice.

“I'm checking on my dog, Midnight. I brought him in last night.” I held my breath. My heart pounded inside my head.

“Could you give me your name, please?”

“Rick Cahill. My dog's name is Midnight. I brought him in last night. He was poisoned.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. That's horrible.” I heard the clatter of fingers on a keyboard and then silence. “This computer is so slow.”

I tried to breathe.

“There. Oh, there's no status listed here. Let me go check with a doctor. I'm going to put you on hold, okay?”

“Okay.”

I stood naked, clutching the phone to my ear, and listened to the clinic's on-hold message warn about the dangers of heart-worms. The seconds passed as lifetimes. I paced the living room and noticed a picture on top on my entertainment center. It was of Midnight as a pup. He was about ten weeks old and sat staring directly into the camera. His ears were perked up and his head was tilted as if he'd asked a question. I didn't have an answer.

“Mr. Cahill?” A different woman's voice spoke into the phone.

“Yes?” I stopped pacing.

“This is Dr. Helmer. Midnight is awake, but still groggy. He answers to his name, which is a positive development. I want to keep him here for a few more hours to make certain that he's retained all his motor functions.”

I exhaled for what seemed like the first time that morning. Life was looking up. “When can I pick him up?”

“Why don't you wait until around noon? If there's any change, I'll call you.”

I thanked her and hung up, but still held the phone in my hand. Someone had poisoned my dog and broken into my house. It would have been a good time to call the police. I thought of Dan and Moretti and the interrogation room.

I put the phone back onto the receiver.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket on my drive to work. I switched the call to my Bluetooth.

“Rick.” The man's voice was smooth and patronizing at the same time.

I'd heard the voice before in person. It wasn't any more appealing over the phone.

“How did you get my cell number?”

“Oh, Rick.” A dry chuckle. “In my world, a man like you can always be found.”

Peter Stone. The man probably responsible for poisoning Midnight. I squeezed down my anger. I had a feeling he fed off of other people's rage. Like a wildfire riding the Santa Ana winds.

“Didn't your goons find what they were looking for last night?”

“You must have me confused with someone else.” He managed to sound sincere. “However, if you give me what Melody took from Adam Windsor, your life will improve.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” And I didn't. Whatever game Melody was playing no longer included me.

“I actually admire you. At first I thought you were just a boorish waiter trying to impress a woman who was out of your league. But you took a beating for her. That took courage. And stupidity.
But those two always go together, don't they?” He paused, but I didn't answer. “Now it's time to be smart, and I think you're capable of that. Do me this favor and your life will improve.”

“You're not listening, Stone.”

“You poor boy, you're in love. She could always make them fall in love with her. That's her greatest asset and her biggest fault.” The superiority left his voice and he sounded human. “Listen to me, Rick. Melody's a puppet master and you're jiggling on command. Give me what the police didn't find and move on with your life.”

“Melody didn't give me anything.” The anger wrestled free from my grasp. “So call off your pit bulls and stay the fuck out of my life!”

“You're making a mistake, Rick. We could have been friends.”

The line went dead.

Turk walked into Muldoon's around nine as I was cleaning off silver skin from a tenderloin. It was his day off. He held a newspaper in one hand and a quart of orange juice in the other. Half-zipped sweatshirt, board shorts, tangled red hair. A thought popped into my head that he'd heard Midnight had been poisoned and was there to lead a posse to track down whoever did it. My protector, my partner, my best friend. Just like old times. Or even four days ago.

“You read the paper this morning?” He took a gulp of OJ and a drop of it rolled down his chin and nestled in stubble. He tossed the front page onto the table.

“No.” I looked at the paper. A lot had changed in four days.

A picture of me with my hand blocking my face sat below a headline entitled: Restaurant Manager Questioned In Windsor Murder. The article's author: Heather Ortiz. She'd twisted my “no comments” from our little talk yesterday into the empty denials of a guilty man.

Now it was murder. Now I was a suspect. Now it was Santa Barbara all over again.

“You get a lawyer, yet?” Concern lifted Turk's eyebrows.

“I don't need a lawyer.”

Maybe I did, but I couldn't afford one. The cops had me spooked, but I wouldn't go into hock just because they were looking at me. When they stopped looking and started touching, then I'd mortgage my future for my freedom.

“Read the article.” Turk tapped the newspaper. “They're making you out to be a serial killer.”

“I don't need to read the article. I know the story.”

Juan, the veggie prep, chose then to emerge from the walk-in refrigerator with a bag of carrots stacked on top of a box of broccoli and a flat of cauliflower.

“Juan, why don't you go pour yourself a Coke in the bar?” Turk nodded toward the kitchen door.

The kid looked at me and then set the produce down on his workstation and left the kitchen.

“Listen.” Turk's voice was low and calm. “You should at least talk to a lawyer. The article rehashes Colleen's—um, the whole Santa Barbara thing.”

“I know. Once a killer, always a killer.”

“Rick, this is serious.” Turk grabbed my shoulder with his huge hand and bore his eyes into me. The worry in them scared me a little. “You can't just make wisecracks and hope this goes away. I can't—you don't want to go through Santa Barbara all over again.”

Turk had visited me while I was in jail in Santa Barbara before SBPD dropped the charges. He was the only friend who ever did. He had tried to keep things light during the visit, but I could tell that seeing me locked up had been hard on him. It had been hard on me, too.

“I know. You're right. If the cops pull me in again, I'll lawyer up.” In that instant the past few days didn't matter anymore. We were friends again. “Thanks.”