Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) Page 20

  “Just make sure you remember that the wine is for you and the kibble is for the dogs.”

  Laughing, she said, “I’ll try not to forget that.”

  While I went to my car to get another bag of kibble, Doreen got Angie ready for our walk. My rescue dog was happy to see me and wagged her tail nonstop while sniffing me. As Angie took stock of my scent, I was sure she was privy to all my movements since dropping her off.

  Sirius was in the car, and Angie was even happier seeing him. My partner matched her, tail wag for tail wag. After getting Angie settled, we took off on our drive.

  The Silver Lake Recreation Center is dog-friendly. They even have two dog parks, one for little dogs and one for big dogs. On this occasion I decided to bypass the parks, opting for the two-mile walk around the reservoir.

  In Germany they have strict rules concerning breed suitability. Sirius came to LAPD as a Schutzhund 1, their highest ranking. In German, Schutzhund means “protection dog.” To earn his designation, Sirius had to pass a number of tests involving tracking, obedience, and protection. The character of the dog is carefully judged. They have to show enthusiasm for the tasks given to them, and need to demonstrate courage in the face of perceived danger. Dogs also have to display appropriate levels of aggression. You don’t want a timid dog, and you don’t want Cujo. You want the right Goldilocks porridge.

  I decided to use the walk to work on Sirius’s skills, not to mention my own. At least once a month, we try and train with Metropolitan K-9 and go through drills that include suspect apprehension, bite work, attack simulations, and tactical deployment. Though we couldn’t do any of those things on the walk, we could still do some obedience, agility, article search, and tracking. The problem was doing all those things while also walking Angie.

  Over the years I’ve tried to make our workouts fun for Sirius. Because of his intelligence, I try and mix up the training so he doesn’t get bored. In my daypack I keep tennis balls, discs, stuffed animals, treats, and water. All of those items, and more, come into play during our training.

  At the onset of our walk, we started with the command “Sit.” While Sirius waited, Angie and I continued forward until we were out of sight. My command was for Sirius to stay put until he heard from me. Some dogs struggle when they can’t see their handler. Five minutes passed before I finally whistled. It was the sound Sirius was waiting for. When he came bounding up to us, I praised him, and then brought out a tennis ball. While Angie and I kept walking, Sirius and I managed to play fetch. I had thought Angie would want to join Sirius in his games, but she actually paid him very little mind. Once again she seemed to be captive to her nose. It was hard to tell if she was following a scent or looking for one. Either way she pulled me along. “Heel” did not seem to be part of her vocabulary.

  Along our route I hid a Frisbee, and then had Sirius find it. His reward was my throwing some discs to him. Then it was back to more obedience and some agility training; I had him running in and out of bushes, much like coaches have their athletes making cuts around cones. Now and again Angie wagged her tail at his displays, but for the most part she remained preoccupied with her nose work. I’d had few dealings with bloodhounds, and didn’t know if the breed was obsessive-compulsive, or whether just Angie was. Sirius wanted to please; Angie couldn’t care less about Brownie points. She had her own agenda, or seemed to.

  The sun was about half an hour from setting when we finished our walk. I wasn’t sure if I’d succeeded in wearing out Angie. As we drove her back to Los Feliz Hills with the windows a few inches down, Angie’s nose was still on the job, tilting one way and then the other. From the rearview mirror I watched her. On a few occasions it looked as if she was on to something, but then whatever scent she had honed in on disappeared, and once more she returned to her olfactory hunt.

  Her sniffing brought to mind one of my all-time favorite movies: The Scent of a Woman. It also brought to mind Heather Moreland.

  “I bet you’re looking for the scent of one particular woman,” I said.

  Angie answered by continually testing the air.

  “I’m looking for that same scent,” I confessed. “And if you don’t give up, I won’t either.”

  CHAPTER 29

  SLEEPING BEAUTY, WEEPING BEAUTY

  When he’d last appeared in front of her, Heather had been forced to listen to his lies and insinuations, his horrible toxic comments, for the better part of an hour before he showed himself. But even then her captor had hidden behind a mask, wearing something that resembled the face of a mandrill, with a long red nose, bluish lines, fierce teeth, and feral eyes. The mask was like one a witch doctor might wear.

  And his blowgun was a weapon a witch doctor might use.

  She’d wondered if the weapon was for show or if he really intended to use it on her. She hadn’t had to wait long to find out.

  “Do you have any last prayers?” he’d asked, his voice muffled behind the mask.

  Then he took in a breath, found a space for the blowgun through the serrated teeth of the mask, and blew. Though the dart missed, she could see its sharp point as it skidded along the concrete floor.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she screamed.

  He answered by sending another dart her way.

  Heather looked for something she could use as protection. She had to settle for the mostly empty pitcher of water, trying to use it as a shield. The darts came faster and faster, and his aim improved. Heather tried picking up some of the darts to throw back at him, but she couldn’t throw them as far as he could shoot them, and her efforts only exposed her all the more. She didn’t know if the tips of the darts were poisoned. She only knew it was terrifying being a target.

  “Bastard!” she screamed at him. “Bastard!”

  One of his darts finally struck, burying itself deep in her thigh. She pulled the dart out as fast as she could, but she was afraid the damage had already been done.

  “You fucking toad!” she cried.

  “Do you want those to be your last words? If I was taking my leave of this earth, I’d try and do a little better than that.”

  “I pray that you burn in hell.”

  “That’s a little better. But perhaps you should be praying that I didn’t coat that dart’s tip with deadly poison. Did I, or didn’t I? I really can’t be sure. And neither can I tell you what makes for a lethal dose.”

  It hurt where the dart had struck her; pain and heat radiated throughout her thigh. Heather was feeling wobbly, but the rational part of her mind, which she was trying to cling to, wondered if his power of suggestion was making her feel that way.

  Am I dying? she thought. She didn’t know. She began to silently pray, but he must have noticed the movement of her lips.

  “Let us prey,” he said, laughing.

  His words were the last thing she remembered before swooning.

  When Heather finally awakened, being alive didn’t feel like a victory. It was just a reprieve before more torture.

  There had always been a part of her that resented her mother, that wondered why she hadn’t simply called the authorities and had her father locked up. Heather had grieved when her mother had been murdered, but she’d also blamed her mother for not acting and saving herself, not to mention saving Heather and her brother. She was more sympathetic to her mother’s plight now. She’d learned what it was like to constantly be afraid, and how when hope is the only thing you can cling to, it becomes all the harder to hold on to.

  She didn’t know how long she had been out. In her prison, days and nights were difficult to distinguish. She found herself naked and sprawled out on the concrete floor. The burka was gone; in its place he’d left skimpy lingerie.

  It was the sound of heavy breathing, Heather realized, that had awakened her. The sounds were magnified, almost as if he was breathing through a respirator. It was like listening to Darth Vader. Maybe that was the effect he was going for. It wouldn’t have surprised her to see him wearing a Vader mask.<
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  The breathing dominated the space around her. It was a sound designed to make her anxious. Heather tried to control her own breathing and not succumb to panic. Her captor enjoyed terrifying her and demeaning her and hurting her. He wanted to break her. She couldn’t let him, for she suspected resisting him was the only thing keeping her alive.

  With nothing else to wear, she put on the sheer Chantilly lace teddy. It didn’t do much to lessen the bite of the cold, but then the lingerie clearly hadn’t been designed for warmth. It came with a plunging neckline and an exposed backside that made her feel like she was wearing dental floss. She doubted whether a woman could have designed such an outfit.

  The breathing grew louder and more intense. It echoed around the room.

  As she finished dressing, she examined the puncture on her thigh. It was red and ulcerated. She was afraid it was in danger of festering. There was nothing to treat the lesion; there was barely any water left.

  Heather turned her back to where the camera was, and where she suspected her captor was watching her from. She didn’t want to give the voyeur any more images of her than necessary. She peed in a small trash basket, then ripped off a piece of the lingerie, dipped it into her urine, and tried to clean the wound as best she could. It stung, but she forced herself to saturate the wound with urine. She’d heard that was how you treated the puncture wound from a stingray if no other antiseptic was available. Her sterile urine might stave off any potential infection. That didn’t make what she was doing any less repulsive, but she refused to succumb to an infection, or to him.

  His overly loud breathing almost sounded like the beating of drums. She did her best to ignore the auditory invasion. Because she knew his eyes were on her, Heather didn’t address her sticky inner thighs. While she’d been drugged, he had once again raped her.

  It was hard to think over his amplified breathing. Her captor preyed on comatose women. When stories of Bill Cosby’s sexual predation had emerged, Heather had been repulsed. The whole idea of date rape, of trolls abusing unconscious women, was beyond repugnant. Along with the Cosby revelations had been articles detailing his suspected somnophilia. Some had tried to categorize Cosby’s sickness as a fetish, as Sleeping Beauty syndrome, but that was ridiculous. No one called pedophilia a fetish. Somnophilia was a dangerous sickness, a psychiatric disorder. Emilio had wanted to try things sexually that she had spurned. She’d refused to entertain his desire for a three-way. On one occasion she remembered passing out and not waking until morning. She blamed it on a reaction to an over-the-counter medicine. But what if Emilio had drugged her? What if he was a somnophiliac?

  “Did you sleep well?”

  The amplified voice made her jump. There was a nasty tone to it, but more than that, it didn’t sound quite human. He was using a voice changer again, and his laughter sounded like that of a troll or ogre.

  “Emilio?” she asked.

  He didn’t respond other than to say, “Are you ready for more games?”

  CHAPTER 30

  LISTENING TO GOD, LISTENING TO DOG

  During my years with Metropolitan K-9, the cops went through as much training as the dogs did. We were coached on becoming more effective handlers, with the instruction designed to improve our vocal techniques and physical cues so as to maximize the understanding between handler and dog and the effectiveness of the team.

  There came a time in K-9 when I thought I knew it all. That’s when one of my instructors decided to give me a comeuppance. “What the hell is wrong with you, Gideon?” he asked. “Are you going to wake up sometime today and notice the gimp in your dog’s giddy-up? What do you need, a waving red flag? Until you learn how to listen to the dog, you’re always going to be a second-rate handler.”

  My first reaction was defensive. I wasn’t going to buy into any Zen crap. Listen to the dog—sure. Ohm. Ohmmmm. But as it turned out, during the day’s training, the dog had gotten a foxtail in his paw, and I had missed what he was telling me. From that day forward, I’ve tried to take the time to better read whatever dog I’m working with. You can’t rely on a dog’s bark to tell you everything. Because of that I began to more closely study the position of a dog’s head, ears, eyes, and tail. I gauged attitudes and posture, and interpreted sounds and body language and what the dog’s eyes said. I became a better listener.

  I thank my lucky stars that I landed a partner like Sirius. He “speaks” in a way that makes it easy for me to understand. I usually know what he’s up to and what he wants. I don’t need to interpret much, and we always seem to be on the same wavelength. But it wasn’t Sirius I was thinking about as I settled into bed; it was Angie. Had I been listening to her?

  I had categorized her as OCD. I had thought she was a nose with a dog attached. It was easy to write her off as instinct bound. But had I paid the proper attention to what she was trying to tell me?

  Her behavior offered clues, I was sure, but I was slow in picking up on them. There was something there, or I sensed there was, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, and the more I tried, the more frustrated I became.

  It says something about your day when the highlight is attending a memorial service. Tomorrow, I thought, I would call Savannah Walker. Asking to meet with her so soon after her husband’s service felt wrong and discourteous, but Emily Post never ran a potential homicide investigation. Besides, Mrs. Walker had been married to a cop for more than thirty years. If anyone would understand my intrusion, she would.

  My unsettled mind wasn’t making it easy to sleep. I wanted oblivion. I wanted an escape from that weight, that pressure I was feeling that came from Heather Moreland’s disappearance. My Saturday-afternoon coffee with her ex-husband hadn’t yielded anything. I was still puzzled as to why he’d met with me. What was his motive other than wasting my time?

  For the second night in a row, I all but welcomed a burning dream. I had too many questions and not enough answers, and because of that I was willing to spend time in hell to get them. That spoke to my desperation. In the not-too-distant past, there had been nights when I’d purposely gone without sleep in order to avoid another fire walk. What I experience doesn’t just feel like I’m burning. I am burning.

  I almost called Lisbet, but didn’t. I told myself that I wasn’t bothering her because of how heavy her workload was. The truth was that I didn’t want to look weak.

  Sleep finally came. I don’t know if the night would have brought with it a burning dream, because as it turned out, my sleep was interrupted. At a little after two, my cell phone began ringing. Without reading glasses, I couldn’t make out the readout of who was calling.

  “Detective Gideon?”

  The woman’s voice sounded apologetic and unsure. It also sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it at first. I growled some acknowledgment of my identity.

  “This is Doreen Phelps,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Doggy Doreen,” she said.

  “That Doreen,” I said, trying to sound friendlier.

  “I wouldn’t have bothered you at this hour except for something that happened to Angie.”

  Now I was awake: “What?”

  “The vet is looking at her now. I was afraid she wouldn’t make it. But it’s looking better now.”

  I tried to rein in Doreen, and her story. “Take a deep breath, and then tell me what happened from the beginning.”

  Her breath sounded shaky, but at least she took my advice. “About an hour ago I heard this loud ruckus,” she said.

  “So that would have been around one in the morning?”

  “That’s right.” Her voice steadied. “At first I thought a raccoon or possum must have gotten into the backyard and was driving the dogs wild. But then I realized all the noise was coming from Angie. She was barking and baying and growling. Naturally that riled up the rest of the dogs, most of which were asleep in the master bedroom.

  “It sounded like Angie was having a run-in with something, so the other dogs and I went to investi
gate. By the time we got to the backyard, though, the sounds had stopped. That seemed strange to me, what with the way Angie had been going crazy. I started calling to her, but she didn’t respond. There are motion detectors out back, but it’s a good thing I had the dogs with me. Without them I don’t think I would have even seen Angie. We found her in a heap hidden under shrubbery near the fence. She was barely breathing. My first thought was that she’d stumbled on a baby rattlesnake. They show up around this time. But then I noticed she was bloody, and that whatever she’d tangled with had taken half of one ear.”

  I’d heard enough. “Where is she being treated?”

  “It can wait until the morning,” she said. “I just thought you might want to know—”

  “You did the right thing by calling me. And I do need to see her. What’s the address?”

  Doreen went to find a business card in the reception area, and then read me the address. I entered it into my phone’s GPS and said, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  The vet’s clinic looked closed except for the three cars that were parked in the lot. I lowered the car windows until they were half-down, and then I gave Sirius the command to “Stay.”

  “I would tell the doc that you and Angie are family,” I told him with a scratch, “but I don’t think the vet would buy the resemblance.”

  The doors to the animal hospital were locked, but there was a buzzer, which I pressed. Doreen appeared with a young Hispanic male in blue scrubs who unlocked the door for me.

  “Thank you, Hector,” she said.

  “No problem.”

  “Hector is a lifesaver,” she said to me. “He carried Angie in and got her ready for Dr. Green.”

  The vet tech smiled and shrugged, and then took his leave of us. Doreen had me follow her into a treatment room, where Angie was being tended. Dr. Green looked up from her work and acknowledged us with a curt nod. She had short, gray hair, with scrunched eyebrows that angled downward to a V and looked almost owl-like. Her glasses were perched precariously on the very end of her nose.