by Robert Crais
He used Google Maps to find the site of his shooting, then the satellite-view feature to zoom into the street-level view. He had viewed the intersection this way hundreds of times, as well as the location where the getaway car was found. But this time he directed the map along the side street from which the Kenworth emerged. Three storefronts up from the T-intersection, he found Nelson Shin’s shop. He recognized the location by the blocky Korean characters painted on the metal shutter covering the windows, with ASIA EXOTICA painted in English below the Korean. The paint was faded, and virtually covered by gang tags and graffiti.
Scott zoomed out enough to see Shin had the bottom of a four-story building, with two storefronts on either side. Scott continued past to the next cross street, then realized it was an alley. The street-level feature wouldn’t enter the alley, so Scott zoomed out until he was in satellite view, and looked down from overhead. A small service area branched off the alley behind the row of storefronts. Dumpsters were lined against the building, and Scott saw what appeared to be old fire escapes, though he wasn’t sure because of the poor angle. The roofs appeared to be at differing levels. Some were cut with skylights, but others weren’t. He zoomed back farther, and saw that if someone had been on the roof that night, they would have had a hawk’s view of everything that happened below.
Scott printed the image, and pushpinned it to the wall by his drawing of the crime scene. Orso had given him a good tip, and now he wanted to see the alley himself, and find out if Orso knew anything more about Nelson Shin.
He was still thinking about this at dusk when he took Maggie out. They walked until she pooped. He picked it up with a plastic bag, and brought her home. This time, he beat her to the crate, and arranged the pad. As soon as he backed out of the crate, she went in, turned twice, then eased herself down onto her side, and sighed. The way she had settled, he could see the gray lines of her surgery scars. The gray was her skin, where the fur had not grown back. It looked like a large Y laid on its side.
Scott said, “I have scars, too.”
He wondered if the sniper had shot her with an AK-47. He wondered if she understood she had been shot, or if the impact and pain had been a sourceless surprise beyond her understanding. Did she know a man had sent the bullet into her? Did she know he was trying to kill her? Did she know she might have died? Did she know she could die?
Scott said, “We die.”
He laid his hand gently on the Y, ready to pull back if she growled, but she remained still and silent. He knew she was not sleeping, but she did not stir. The feel of her was comforting. He had not shared his home with another living creature in a very long time.
“Mi casa, su casa.”
Later, he studied the picture of Nelson Shin’s roof again, and sat on the couch with one of his spiral notebooks. He wrote everything he remembered from his session with Goodman. As he did every time, he described what he remembered of that night from beginning to end, slowly filling this notebook as he had filled the others, but this time he added the white sideburns. He wrote because sometimes the writing helped focus his thoughts. He was still writing when his eyes grew heavy, the notebook fell, and he slept.
7.
Maggie
The man’s breathing grew shallow and steady, his heartbeat slowed, and when the surge of his pulse grew no slower, Maggie knew he was sleeping. She lifted her head enough to see him, but seeing him was unnecessary. She could smell his sleep by the change in his scent as his body relaxed and cooled.
She sat up, and turned to peer from her crate. His breathing and heartbeat did not change, so she stepped out into the room. She stood for a moment, watching him. Men came, and men left. She was with some men longer than others, but then they were gone, and she never saw them again. None were her pack.
Pete had stayed with her the longest. They were pack. Then Pete was gone, and the people changed and changed and changed, until Maggie was with a man and a woman. The man and the woman and Maggie had become pack, but one day they closed her crate, and now she was here. Maggie remembered the strong sweet smells of the woman and the sour smell of the disease growing in the man, and would always remember their smells, as she remembered Pete’s smell. Her scent memory lasted forever.
She quietly approached the sleeping man. She sniffed the hair on his head, and his ears, and mouth, and the breath he exhaled. Each had its own distinct flavor and taste. She sniffed along the length of his body, noting the smells of his T-shirt and watch and belt and pants and socks, and the different living smells of his man-body parts beneath the clothes. And as she smelled, she heard his heart beat and the blood move through his veins and his breathing, and the sounds of his living body.
When she finished learning the man, she quietly walked along the edge of the room, sniffing the base of the walls, and the windows and along the doors where the cool night air leaked through small openings and the smells from outside were strongest. She smelled rats eating oranges in the trees outside, the pungent scent of withered roses, the bright fresh smells of leaves and grass, and the acidic smell of ants marching along the outer wall.
Maggie’s long German shepherd nose had more than two hundred twenty-five million scent receptors. This was as many as a beagle, forty-five times more than the man, and was bettered only by a few of her hound cousins. A full eighth of her brain was devoted to her nose, giving her a sense of smell ten thousand times better than the sleeping man’s, and more sensitive than any scientific device. If taught the smell of a particular man’s urine, she could recognize and identify that same smell if only a single drop were diluted in a full-sized swimming pool.
Continuing around the room, she smelled the bits of leaves and grass the man carried inside after their walk, and followed the trails left by mice across the floor. She recognized the paths left by living roaches, and knew where the bodies of dead roaches and silverfish and beetles lay hidden.
Her nose led her back to the green ball, where she thought of Pete. The chemical smell of this ball was familiar, but Pete’s smell was missing. Pete had not touched this ball, or held it, or thrown it, or carried it hidden from her in his pocket. This ball was not Pete’s ball, though it reminded her of him, as did other familiar smells.
Maggie followed those smells into the bedroom again, and found the man’s gun. She smelled bullets and oil and gunpowder, but Pete’s scent was still absent. Pete was not here, and had never been here.
Maggie smelled water in the bathroom, and returned for a drink, but now the big white water bowl was covered, so she padded back to the kitchen. She drank, then returned to the sleeping man.
Maggie knew this was the man’s crate because his smell was part of this place. His smell was not a single smell, but many smells. Hair, ears, breath, underarms, hands, crotch, rectum, feet—each part of him had a different smell, and the scents of his many parts were as different and distinct to Maggie as the colors of a rainbow would be to the man. Together they made up this man’s smell, and were distinct from the scent of any other human. His smells were part of the walls, the floor, the paint, the rugs, the bed, the towels in his bathroom, the things in his closet, the gun, the furniture, his clothes and belt and watch and shoes. This was his place, but not her place, yet here she was.
Maggie’s crate was her home.
The people and places changed, but the crate remained the same. This place where the man brought her was strange and meaningless, but her crate was here, and she was here, so here was home.
Maggie was bred to guard and protect, so this was what she did. She stood in the still room near the sleeping man, and looked and listened and smelled. She drew in the world through her ears and her nose, and found no threat. All was good. All was safe.
She returned to her crate, but did not enter. She slipped beneath the table, instead. She turned three times until the space felt right, then lowered herself.
The
world was quiet, peaceful, and safe. She closed her eyes, and slept.
Then Maggie began to dream.
8.
—the rifle swung toward him, a tiny thing so far away, but different now. Its barrel was gleaming chrome, as long and thin and sharp as a needle. Its glowing tip found him, looking at him as he looked at it, and then the needle exploded toward him, horribly sharp, dangerously sharp, this terrible sharp point reaching for his eyes—
Scott jerked awake as Stephanie’s fading voice echoed.
Scotty, come back back back back.
His heart pounded. His neck and chest were tacky with sweat. His body trembled.
Two-sixteen A.M. He was on the couch. The lights were still on in the kitchen and his bedroom, and the lamp above his head at the end of the couch still burned.
He took deep breaths, calming himself, and noticed the dog was not in her crate. Sometime while he slept, she had left the crate and crawled under the table. She was on her side, sleeping, but her paws twitched and moved as if she was running, and as she ran, she whimpered and whined.
Scott thought, that dog is having a nightmare.
Scott stood, cringing at the sharp pain in his side and the stiffness in his leg, and limped to her. He didn’t know if he should wake her.
He eased himself to the floor.
Still sleeping, she growled, and made a woofing sound like a bark, and then her entire body convulsed. She jolted awake, upright, snarling and snapping, but not at Scott. He lurched back anyway, but in that moment she realized where she was, and whatever she had been dreaming was gone. She looked at Scott. Her ears folded back, and she breathed as he had breathed. She lowered her head to the floor.
Scott slowly touched her. He ran his hand over her head. Her eyes closed.
Scott said, “You’re okay. We’re okay.”
She sighed so hard her body shivered.
Scott pulled on his shoes, and gathered together his wallet, and gun, and leash. When he picked up the leash, Maggie stood and shook herself. Maybe she could sleep again that night, but he couldn’t. He could never go back to sleep.
Scott clipped the lead to her collar, led her out to the Trans Am, and held the door so she could hop into the back seat. That time of night, almost two-thirty, the driving was easy. He hit the Ventura, slid down the Hollywood, and made it downtown in less than twenty minutes. He had made the same drive many times, at hours like this. When he woke hearing Stephanie call for him, he had no other choice.
He parked in the same place they had parked that night, at the little T-intersection where they had stopped to listen to the silence.
Scott said, “Turn off the engine.”
He said those same words every time he came, then turned off the engine.
Maggie stood, and leaned forward between the seats. She was so large she filled the car, her head now higher than his.
Scott stared at the empty street before them, but the street wasn’t empty. He saw the Kenworth. He saw the Bentley. He saw the men covered in black.
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
The same words he spoke that night, this time a whisper.
He glanced at Maggie, then back at the street, only now the street was empty. He listened to Maggie pant. He felt her warmth, and smelled her strong dog smell.
“I got my partner killed. It happened right here.”
His eyes filled, and the sob racked him so hard he doubled over. He could not stop. He did not try to stop. The pain came in a torrent of jolting sobs that filled his nose and blurred his eyes. He heaved and gasped, and clenched his eyes, and covered his face. Tears and snot and spit dripped in streamers from his chin, as he heard his own voice.
Turn off the engine.
Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.
Then Stephanie’s voice echoed after his own, haunting him.
Scotty, don’t leave me.
Don’t leave me.
Don’t leave.
He finally pulled himself together. He rubbed the blur from his eyes, and found Maggie watching him.
He said, “I wasn’t running away. I swear to God I wasn’t, but she doesn’t—”
Maggie’s ears were back and her rich brown eyes were kind. She whimpered as if she felt his anxiety, then licked his face. Scott felt his tears return, and closed his eyes as Maggie licked the tears from his face.
Don’t leave me.
Don’t leave.
Scott pulled the dog close, and buried his face in her fur.
“You did better than me, dog. You didn’t leave your partner. You didn’t fail.”
Maggie whimpered and tried to pull away, but Scott held on, and didn’t let go.
PART II
MAGGIE AND SCOTT
9.
Scott and Maggie were due at the training field at seven that morning, but Scott left early and returned to the scene of his shooting. He wanted to see Shin’s building during the light.
He drove the same route he took three hours earlier, only this time when he approached the intersection, Maggie stood with her ears tipped forward.
Scott said, “Good memory.”
She whined.
“You’ll get used to it. I come here a lot.”
Maggie stayed between the two front seats, filling the car as she checked their surroundings.
It was five forty-two that morning, light, but still early. A few pedestrians were making their way along the sidewalks, and the streets were busy with trucks making early deliveries. Scott pushed Maggie out of the way so he could see, turned onto the street where the Kenworth had waited, and parked in front of Shin’s store.
Scott clipped on Maggie’s leash, let her out onto the sidewalk, and examined Asia Exotica. It looked as it had in the Google picture, only with more graffiti. A security shutter was rolled down over the window like a metal garage door. Padlocks secured the shutter to steel rings set into the sidewalk. The door was barred by a heavy steel throw-bolt locked into the wall. Shin’s little store looked like Fort Knox, but wasn’t unusual. The other shops along the street were similarly protected. The difference was that Shin’s locks, shutter, and door were powdered with undisturbed grime, and appeared not to have been opened in a long time.
Scott walked Maggie toward the alley. She went to his left side as she’d been taught, but walked too close, and let her tail and ears droop. When they passed two Latin women walking in the opposite direction, Maggie edged behind Scott, and would have moved to his right if he let her. She glanced at passing cars and buses as if afraid one might jump the curb.
Scott stopped when they reached the alley, and stooped to stroke her back and sides, hearing Leland’s lecturing voice:
These dogs are not machines, goddamnit. They are alive! They are living, feeling, warm-blooded creatures of God, and they will love you with all their hearts! They will love you when your wives and husbands sneak behind your backs. They will love you when your ungrateful misbegotten children piss on your graves! They will see and witness your greatest shame, and will not judge you! These dogs will be the truest and best partners you can ever hope to have, and they will give their lives for you. And all they ask, all they want or need, all it costs YOU to get ALL of that, is a simple word of kindness. Goddamnit to hell, the ten best men I know aren’t worth the worst dog here, and neither are any of you, and I am Dominick Goddamned Leland, and I am never wrong!
Three hours earlier, this living, feeling, warm-blooded creature of God had licked the tears from his face, and now she shivered as a garbage truck rumbled past. Scott scratched her head, stroked her back, and whispered in her ear.
“It’s okay, dog. It’s okay if you’re scared. I’m scared, too.”
Words he had never spoken to another living being.
Scott’s eyes fille
d as the words came to him, but he said them again as he stroked her back.
“I’ll protect you.”
Scott pushed to his feet, wiped his eyes clear, and took a plastic Ziploc bag from his pocket. He had sliced the baloney into squares, and brought them along as treats. Food as a reward was frowned upon, but Scott figured he had to go with what worked.
Maggie looked up even before he opened the bag. Her ears stood strong and straight, and her nostrils flickered and danced.
“You’re a good girl, baby. You’re a brave dog.”
She took a square as if she was starving, and whined for more, but this was a good whine. He fed her a second square, put away the bag, and turned down the alley. Maggie stepped livelier now, and snuck glances at his pocket.
The delivery area behind Shin’s building was a place for shopkeepers to load and unload their goods, and toss their trash. A pale blue van with its side panel open was currently parked outside a door. A heavyset young Asian man guided a hand dolly stacked with boxes from the store, and loaded the boxes into the van. The boxes were labeled MarleyWorld Island.
