Distemper (31 page)

“Right. Too late to leak it to the local news. Hopefully none of your guys will go blabbing to Gordon.”

“I’ll make sure they don’t.”

“Thanks.”

“It was your idea to tell us, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to catch this bastard.”

“I thought you might be going soft on us brave men in blue.”

“Doubtful.”

“Or maybe,” he said, “you’re just crazy about me.”

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK TO THE PAPER
, M
AD WAS JOGGING LAPS
around the newsroom in his new khakis. Nobody seemed to notice.

“Christ, Bernier, what took you so long?”

“I was talking to Cody.”

He leaned against the wall and stretched his hamstrings.

“You were gone for an hour.”

“Forty minutes.”

“What’d you do, squeeze in a quickie?”

“Give me a break. We just had a sandwich.”

“A sandwich?” he said, grabbing his feet to stretch his quads. “I’ve been waiting for you all night and you’re having a fucking
sandwich?”

“Jeeze, are
you
all wound up. What gives?”

“Emma called half an hour ago. She’s waiting for us.”

“Where?”

“Your house.”

“What for?”

“She thought she found something up at the clinic, but
she didn’t want to tell me over the phone. Said there’s not a lot of privacy up there.”

“Did she even give you a hint?”

“Nah, but I got the feeling it was something big.”

“Because… ?”

“Because she wanted to know how fast you could track down your boyfriend the cop.”

That was enough to get me to sprint down the back stairs to the parking lot and hightail it over to my house.

But from the minute we got there, it was obvious something was wrong. The front door was wide open, and the living room looked
like a war zone. Pillows and couch cushions were scattered all over the place. The TV stand was sitting cockeyed in the middle
of the room, its plug pulled out of the wall and the cable wire stretched to the limit. An end table had been knocked over
and two of Emma’s orchids lay broken on the ground, with dirt and ceramic pot shards everywhere you looked.

Mad and I stared at each other, and I had a bad feeling the expression on my face was just as crazed as his. He started shouting
first, calling Emma’s name and running from room to room. Since it seemed a fine idea, I followed his example. It took less
than two minutes to figure out there was no one in the house.

“He took her,” Mad said. “The bastard fucking got to her. Alex, what are we going to do?”

He was more upset than I’d ever seen him. Then something else hit me, and I joined him in the wonderful world of hysteria.

“Mad, where are the dogs? Oh, my God, Shakespeare…”

I started calling her name, running around the house
and out into the rapidly darkening yard. It’s probably not nice to admit that I was about a hundred times more upset about
my missing dog than my missing roommate. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.

I was in the midst of full-scale screaming and sobbing when Mad came barreling out of the house. “Call your boyfriend. Tell
him to get his ass over here
now
.”

“I can’t find Shakespeare,” I said, well on my way to hyperventilation. “Oh, Mad, where’s my baby…”

He shook me, hard. “Calm the fuck down and listen to me. We don’t have time to screw around. I’m going to start canvassing
the neighborhood. You have to call the cops.”

“But I can’t find Shakespeare…”

Mad kept shouting orders at me, but I just stood there sobbing like a maniac. In retrospect, I realize he was sorely tempted
to smack me. But instead, he left me there and went back in the house to call Cody himself. I followed him in a minute later
and sank down on the couch, my brain awash with images of my dog—and, yes, Emma—in the clutches of whoever had mutilated C.A.

“Cody’s on his way over here,” Mad said, stalking around the room like a tiger. “He wants us to stay put.”

“Did you tell him about Shakespeare?” I know I was acting like an imbecile, but there are plenty of people on the planet who
don’t love their mothers as much as I love that dog.

Mad took a deep breath. “No, Alex, I did not tell him about Shakespeare. You can tell him when he gets over here.”

“Okay…” I said, and settled into the fetal position on the couch for some more sobbing.

Cody found us like that a few minutes later, taking in me and Mad and the trashed room in one long glance.

“What time did you speak to her last?”

“Around six-thirty,” Mad said. “We were supposed to meet her here at seven, but Alex didn’t get back, so we were half an hour
late. When we walked in, the door was wide open and the place was… well, you see.”

Cody surveyed the wreckage. “What was happening at seven?”

“She was going to tell us something she’d found out at the clinic. Son of a bitch, we should never have dragged her into…”

Cody cut him off. “Emma didn’t say what it was?”

“She didn’t want to talk at the hospital. But I got the feeling it was something more than just what we asked her about the
Marx girl’s dog.”

“Cody,” I said in a voice weak from all the crying. “It’s not just Emma. Both the dogs are gone too. It’s just like what happened
to the others…”

“Shh…” he murmured, stopping on his tour around the room to pat me on the head. “Don’t worry, we’ll find them. Let me make
some calls.”

Just as he got up to get the phone, we heard someone struggling at the front door.

I froze. Mad stood up. Cody pulled out his gun.

A second later Emma walked in, dragging Shakespeare and Tipsy behind her. She looked up at her reception—which included two
hysterical people and a firearm—and promptly burst out laughing.

“What the bloody hell is going on? Don’t shoot. We surrender.”

I jumped up and ran for Shakespeare. Mad grabbed
Emma, swung her around, and kissed her on the lips. Cody put his gun away.

“Good God,” she said when Mad finally unhanded her. “To what do I owe this greeting?”

By that time, Mad had calmed down enough to get embarrassed about his unmanly display. I was still on the floor showering
kisses on Shakespeare’s snout. That left it up to Cody to answer.

“Ahem, they… Well, they had the impression you’d been abducted.”

Emma was utterly confused for a second, then suddenly not. “Oh, Lord, you poor things. You saw the house and you thought I’d
been… Oh, for heaven’s sake, what an absurd notion…”

“You don’t have to
laugh
,” Mad said.

Now it was Cody’s turn to look confused. “What happened in here, anyway? It doesn’t look like a break-in…”

“Break-in? No, it was my sodding
dog
.” She indicated the canine in question, now sound asleep on the bare couch frame.

“Tipsy did this?” I said.

“Well, your little angel helped a bit. Quite a lot, actually.”

“But what the hell happened?”

She gave a surprisingly ladylike grunt. “Good God, but I could use a drink.”

“Coming right up,” Mad said, and started mixing martinis at the corner bar—which, mercifully enough, was still standing.

Emma put a cushion back on the couch and collapsed on it. “Our little adventure began when I let Tipsy out back. He ran around
the yard like a bloody mental patient,
and then when he finally came in he had some sort of rodent in his mouth. I got him to drop it, but the nasty thing got away
from me and the next thing I knew both dogs were falling all over themselves chasing it, knocking furniture about. Oh, my
orchids
,” she said, noticing that particular mess for the first time. She made as if to get up and try to salvage them, then changed
her mind and flopped back onto the couch, stretching her legs on the edge of the up-ended coffee table. “Jake, my pet, is
that drink forthcoming?”

“Dinner is served,” he said, and handed her a glass filled to the brim with liquor and three olives. Mad looked inquiringly
at me and Cody, but we both shook our heads, so he went to fix his own drink.

“Mmm…” Emma said after a long sip. “That’ll cure what ails you. Now where was I? Oh, yes… Well, when Tipsy’d come in bearing
gifts, I hadn’t closed the door all the way, so naturally the little beastie went running for it, and both dogs followed,
so I fetched their leashes and gave chase. I trod a good six blocks before I finally found them. They’d treed the poor thing
in that park by the library. It was a miracle they didn’t get their sorry selves run down in the road.” She gave another delicate
grunt. “
Look
at this place. Tipsy, my darling, I could wring your pretty neck.”

“Should’ve gotten a cat, huh?” Mad said as he perched on the couch arm beside her.

“Are you joking? Steve’s cat
helped
them. It was a bloody Walt Disney movie in here. I am
so
knackered…”

Cody, who’d been making a halfhearted effort to straighten things up, flipped the coffee table back into position
and sat on it. “I know you’re beat, but I really need to know what you found out.”

“Pardon?”

“Up at the vet hospital. Alex and Mad said you were going to tell them something.”

“Oh, of course. I’d utterly forgot.” She drained her drink, put the glass down, and sat up straight. “Alex called and asked
me to see if a particular dog had been brought in for ear cropping. Beastly thing. We’ve done away with it back home, you
know. In any event, I looked into it. What was the name again? Ah yes—Cocoa Marx.”

“Cocoa marks?” Cody looked to her empty glass as the most likely source of her babbling. “What’s a…”

“Cocoa was the dog’s name. It’s how we keep track of patients. The pet’s name, then the family name, just like a person. You
can’t just put ‘Fido,’ or you might get mixed up. Do you have any idea how many dogs named ‘Aristotle’ there are in this town?”

“But there’s only one Shakespeare,” I offered.

Emma looked at me pityingly. “I neutered two last week.”

“Oh.”

She raised her glass and wiggled it at Mad, who got the message and went to get her a refill. “As I was saying, Alex asked
me to look into the matter of Cocoa Marx, and I discovered that the dog had indeed been brought in for an ear bob.”

“The surgery was done?” Cody asked.

“It was. And according to our records, the owner paid cash and picked the dog up the next day as scheduled.”

“Do you know what time of day?”

“I wrote it down. It’s in my handbag. Would you be so
kind… ?” Cody handed it to her. “Everything’s done by computer, so we can tell the exact time the dog was checked out. It
says here that it left at 8:47
P.M.
on May 18th.”

“You’re open that late?”

“We have evening hours until nine on Thursday. Most of the local vets do.”

“Patricia Marx worked at the mall in Syracuse until seven-thirty that night. She must have driven straight here to pick up
the dog. As far as we know, it’s the last time anyone saw her alive.”

“How very disturbing,” Emma said, and promptly downed half of her second martini.

“No offense,” Cody said, “but do you think you could lay off the sauce until you’re done telling me everything? I kind of
need you sharp right now.”

“She’s fine,” Mad said, looking awfully proud. “Emma can handle her liquor better than I can.”

“You see, Detective,” Emma said, raising her glass, “I am English.”

“I’m very happy for you. Now, would you mind telling me what else you know? It might be important.”

“Certainly. As I was saying, Alex asked me to look into whether Patricia Marx’s dog had been treated at the hospital. And
while I was doing so, I had a thought. I entered Lynn Smith’s name, and sure enough, there it was.”

“Are you sure it’s the right Lynn Smith?” Cody asked. “It’s a fairly common name.”

“This Lynn Smith had a dog named Harley. Am I right?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well then, this Harley Smith was in a bad way. He was
a nine-year-old boxer mix, and blind as the proverbial bat.”

“Was?”

“I assume they’d have put him down by now.”

“He was sick?”

“Not as such. But he had bad cataracts, and it had gotten to the point where he was completely blind. We could have operated
on him and restored his sight, at least partially, but the owners couldn’t afford it. Quite a shame, really.”

“How much would it have cost?”

“Oh, in the area of eight hundred to a thousand dollars, I should expect. And that’s a bargain. It would be more at a private
clinic.”

Cody rubbed his reddish stubble, deep in thought. “So both Patricia Marx and Lynn Smith had dogs that were patients at the
Benson vet clinic. I’ll be damned.”

Emma looked at him as though he were dense even for an American. “Don’t forget Cathy Ann. She brought Nanki-Poo to the clinic
as well.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Just as you say.”

“Tell me something. Did all three of these dogs have the same veterinarian?”

Emma shook her head. “The clinic doesn’t work that way. Patients don’t have a particular vet per se. You might see the same
person on two different occasions, but it would just be a coincidence. Different doctors and students rotate through, so who
you get is the luck of the draw. That’s how a radiologist like me gets the pleasure of snipping testes all the bloody day
long.”