Distemper (15 page)

“He’s fantastic.”

“Zeke, sit.” The dog did. “Lie down.” He did that too, then rolled over, begged, gave both paws, and spoke. Cody looked absurdly
proud.

“Show-off. Does he play dead too?”

“Never. He has his dignity.”

“You can leave that jar of biscuits there? And he won’t eat them all?”

“Of course not.”

“And where’s all the dog hair, anyway? Doesn’t he shed?”

“I brush him. And he’s not allowed on the furniture. He sleeps on his bed in the corner.”

“Wow. My dog would consider this a fascist state.”

“You just have to establish who’s the alpha male. Want another drink?”

“God yes.” He went back into the kitchen, and I stretched out on the floor with Zeke. “Does he really sleep in the corner
all night? All by himself?” Cody didn’t answer. “Or is there an occasional breakdown in discipline?”

“My ex didn’t care for dogs in the bed,” he said from the other room. “Or anywhere near her, for that matter.”

“Jesus, Cody, how did you end up with this chick?”

“I was young and stupid.”

“You still didn’t answer my question. Does Zeke really get exiled to the living room?” He came back and handed me my drink,
filled up to the very brim. “Well?” He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Okay. Maybe, once in a while…”

“He sleeps with you every night, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Cody, you big
softy
. Words can’t express how much I approve.”

“My sheets smell like his feet.”

“What could be better?”

“You are one strange lady. You drunk enough yet?”

“Not quite.”

“Are you going to drink all my gin?”

“I might.”

“What if I take advantage of you?”

“I’ll take my chances, Boy Scout.”

F
OUR DAYS WENT BY, AND NOTHING
. N
O SIGN OF
C.A.,
AND
no sign of her dog either. We’d even run a picture of Nanki-Poo as a second-day story—“vet student and pooch still missing,”
that sort of thing—but so far none of the calls to the hotline had panned out, at least as far as I knew. I hadn’t asked Cody
if they had any leads, but I had a feeling if they did, he’d break protocol and tell me.

There was some good news, though. The animal-rights story died down for a while, which helped me hold on to my sanity for
the time being. With my roommate missing and creepy letters coming to my newsroom cubbyhole, I wasn’t sure I could handle
more pictures of fetal pigs. Mad and I were supposed to be covering the murders together (him officially, me not), but Bill
had an attack of humanity and sent me out on a few quick-hit stories. I did a piece on some Benson students who were building
bicycles out of spare parts and giving them to needy kids, and one on a guy who does a cable-access show on the JFK assassination
(one conspiracy theory per episode),
and another on a cop who was retiring after twenty years of directing rush-hour traffic at Gabriel’s most hated intersection,
a notorious eight-road snarl nicknamed The Octopus.

That Tuesday, I wasn’t working on anything much more exciting. My assignment for the day was a piece on a couple battling
the landmarks preservation commission for the right to fix half the roof on their house. The roof was white, and part of it
was leaking, but the commission told them if they replaced it they could only do it in the “historically faithful” color now
required of the whole preservation district, which was dark brown. (The white roof had, apparently, been put on during those
crazy fifties.) The couple wanted a variance so they could fix the roof. The commission told them to go to hell, so they were
appealing. My original story, by the way, included the phrase “Oreo cookie” to describe one possible architectural outcome.

I was looking up the number of the head of the city planning office when the scanner went off. “Emergency control to Gabriel
monitors. Report of a body in Blue Heron Wood, approximately a quarter mile southeast of the main entrance. Subject is a female
Caucasian, appears to be…”

The announcement just stopped, as though the dispatcher had been cut off. I’d been sitting on top of that scanner for nearly
four years, and I’d never heard it happen before. Sure, sometimes the dispatchers trip over their own tongues and start over,
but this sounded like the microphone had actually been snatched from her.

“Mad, did you hear what I just heard?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s C.A. It’s got to be.”

“Take it easy, Alex. Don’t jump to…”

“Did you ever hear anything like that? They found another body. There’s no way they’d want that over the regular dispatch
radio. The announcer must have screwed up, and somebody grabbed the mike.”

He didn’t try to argue with me. “I’ll tell Bill.”

We ran out to the parking lot and jumped in my car. My left wrist was getting better, but it was still weak and I didn’t dare
drive too fast. Blue Heron Wood is Benson’s ornithology preserve, thirty acres of land five miles from central campus. There’s
a study center overlooking a pond, and trails that intertwine throughout the property. It’s one of the few parklike areas
around Gabriel that doesn’t allow dogs, because they’d scare off the birds. I’d spent a fair amount of time there, though,
because the trails are perfect for cross-country skiing—and, well, I brought Shakespeare anyway.

“Where are you going?” Mad asked when I drove past the road leading to the main entrance. “You missed the turn.”

“No point in trying to go in the front door. Cops’ll be all over the place. We won’t get within five hundred yards.”

We took a left a mile farther and skirted the preserve’s outer edge. Blue Heron is much wider than it is deep, and by parking
along the road on the far side we’d be just as close to the location the dispatcher had described as we would have been by
going in the front.

We started hiking in, picking our way around the gopher holes and fallen trees. The undergrowth was dense, and nobody seemed
to have done any previous bushwhacking
that might have helped us out; most people crunchy enough to visit the preserve have the good manners to follow the signs
and stay on the trails. Worse, we really weren’t dressed for it. It was the warmest day of the season so far, and I was wearing
a short-sleeved mini-dress with brown leather sandals whose major fashion statement was clunky two-inch heels. Mad was wearing
his usual uniform of khakis and a blue oxford, but his footwear—his only vice, if you don’t count booze and women—consisted
of an expensive pair of black wing tips with leather soles, which were getting ruined.

It was slow going, but after twenty minutes of slogging we got to the spot I’d been aiming for. There was nothing in sight—no
cops, no ambulance, and certainly no body. I looked around, trying to get my bearings.

“I thought you knew where you were going,” Mad said, sitting on a log to inspect his shoes. When he got up, there was a muddy
streak on the seat of his khakis. I decided not to tell him.

“I haven’t spent much time here when it wasn’t winter. It looks different with leaves on the trees. But the trail has got
to be around here somewhere.”

“Look, Alex, maybe this isn’t such a great idea. They must have sealed off the park by now. If the cops catch us, we’re going
to be in deep shit. I’m still not off the hook with those goons for punching out that cash machine…”

“Go back if you want. I just have to know if it’s her.”

“Aren’t you going to find out soon enough?”

“I thought you were dying to see a dead body. Now’s your chance.”

“Maybe I’m not so hot for it after all.”

“I’m going ahead. You can do whatever you…”

“Shh. I think I heard something.”

We listened for a minute. “I don’t hear…”

“Shut up,” he whispered, and pointed off to our left. “Over there.” I still didn’t hear anything, but I crouched down next
to him. We were at the edge of a small clearing, and the long grass tickled my naked legs. “Look.” Sure enough, off in the
distance were two people in dark blue windbreakers with yellow lettering on the back. I couldn’t read it from that far away,
but I knew what it said: GPD.

“They’re searching,” I whispered back. “They can’t have found anything yet.”

“You don’t know that. They might be sweeping for evidence.”

“So what do we do?”

“Try not to get caught.” I crept forward, glad I’d worn my brown dress instead of the fuchsia; at least I had some decent
camouflage. “Alex, where are you going? Get back here.” I pretended not to hear him. “Would you just stay put? Oh,
Christ
,” he growled, but I heard him follow.

“Listen,” I said when he caught up. “I think I know where we are. There’s a trail off to the right that winds around the edge
of the pond and goes back to the main parking lot. It’s like the main drag.”

“So let’s stay the hell away from it.”

“No, let’s take it. Think about it. The body’s got to be deep in the woods, just like the other ones. The main trail is the
last place the cops’ll be. And besides, if we run into them, we’re just two people taking a walk.”

“Just two reporters taking a walk through a crime scene. Right. They won’t suspect a thing.”

We made our way through the dense woods without speaking. Birdcalls filled the silence despite our intrusion, or maybe because
of it. I wondered if the preserve’s rightful owners were warning each other of interlopers, and what their calls might have
sounded like when a killer was dumping a dead human being in the birds’ backyard.

After a couple of wrong turns, we finally found the trail. We walked along for ten minutes without running into anyone, when
Mad stopped. “How far away from the main entrance did the dispatcher say the body was?” Mad asked.

“A quarter mile.”

“That’s what I thought. We should be around there by now, and there’s nobody.”

I glanced around, trying to make out landmarks through the trees. “Shit, Mad. I think I sent us in the wrong direction. We’re
probably back close to the car.”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Then let’s turn the fuck around.” We retraced our steps to where we’d found the trail and kept
going in the right direction.

“Hold on,” I said. “I have to stop for a sec.” I sat on a flat rock and dug out a pointy twig that had lodged itself between
my foot and the sandal.

“I’ll be right back. I just want to see what’s around the corner.” He took off down the path. The forest was quiet once his
footsteps faded; even the birds had taken a break. I sat there inspecting my foot for splinters, and wondering what the hell
I was doing in the woods looking for my roommate’s corpse. Why couldn’t I wait for the cops to report the identity of the
body? Did I feel guilty because of the disaster over the letters, which had
seemed so lame but obviously weren’t? Or was I just hoping that it would turn out to be another girl—somebody else’s roommate,
instead of mine?

“What are you doing here?” The voice, male and authoritarian, made me snap to attention and look around. But there was no
one there; the question had come from around the bend, though the voice was forceful enough to sound closer.

“Nothing, Officer,” I heard Mad say at the top of his lungs, presumably to warn me. “I was just going for a walk.”

“The preserve has been closed for the day. You’ll have to leave immediately.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“There’s been an accident. Please turn around and go back the way you came. If you take a right at the first fork it will
bring you back to the main entrance.”

“But what’s…”

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t… Wait a second. You’re that jerk from the newspaper.” Mad didn’t say anything. I cringed behind a
tree, but bravely. “Nice try, you little prick. Now get the hell out of here before I bust you for fucking with a crime scene.”
Ouch. So much for the civil servant routine.

They came around the corner, and I continued my very successful cringing. I peeked when they passed by and saw that the cop
who had called Mad a “little prick” was about half a foot shorter than him, but twice as wide. Apparently the guy was determined
to bring Mad right to the car; I hoped he’d have the presence of mind to come back and get me.

Mad and his escort disappeared down the path, and I
sat there trying to figure out what to do. I still couldn’t hear anything from the direction the cop had come from, so I figured
he must have been one of a legion of uniforms searching the woods for evidence or just evicting stragglers. I stood up and
nobody leaped out to slap the cuffs on me, so I kept going. The path straightened out for about a hundred yards, then curved
to the left. I was almost to the bend when I heard voices behind me, just around the previous corner, and guessed it was probably
cops. I broke into a trot, hoping to get around my corner before they got around theirs.
Screw this
, I thought.
I’m going back to the car, and whenever the cops figure out
…

I’d rounded the corner by then, and a second later I wished I hadn’t. Because when I looked up, I saw the body of Cathy Ann
Keillor. She was lying across the path, laid so straight and precisely it might have been a geometry lesson. Her eyes were
closed, and from the chin up she looked as though she’d died in her sleep. But the fiction ended there, because her neck had
the same diamond-shaped marks as the others.