Mercy Dogs

by Tyler Dilts

  “Oh my god,” you say, choking up.

  Grace locks eyes with you and you know she sees your gratitude.

  “We should do a real one, one of these days,” she says.

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.” She puts the pad on the table and spins it around for your father to see. “What do you think, Pete?”

  “Am I that skinny?”

  The nearly empty page of the yellow writing pad stared back up at him. He’d needed something bigger than his notebook so he could try to lay out the information he had so far. But there were only two things written on it. Two names.

  Lisa Briard.

  Amy.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected to find in the studio. Had he really expected a clear answer, something simple that would point him directly to wherever Grace was now? He didn’t think so, but the disappointment he felt, looking at what he had in front of him, led him to believe that, on some level at least, he’d been wishing for exactly that.

  “Don’t expect too much,” he whispered as he opened the laptop. It was one of the new MacBook Pros that had only come out a few months ago, the base model without the fancy Touch Bar that could read your fingerprint. He’d looked at one the last time he’d gone to the Cerritos mall. His computer was getting old, but he didn’t use it for much besides email and bills and the internet, so he’d decided against spending so much money. He made a note on the yellow pad.

  Check release date of new Macs—before or after Grace moved in??

  The screen lit up and he saw a browser window with a dozen or more still-open tabs. He scanned them, hoping to find Facebook or some other social-media site, but from what he could see of the tabs scrunched together and overlapping, it didn’t look like there was anything like that there.

  The open window was an Amazon page for a pair of Merrell women’s Moab Mid hiking boots. They had four and a half stars with 692 reviews. It looked to Ben like they were beige and pink, but the color was listed as Boulder/Blush.

  Grace had never mentioned an interest in hiking. Did this mean she was thinking about a new hobby, or that she was concerned about her safety and preparing to flee and disappear into the forest somewhere? He hit the “Back” button a few times and just saw five pages for similar boots. At least she hadn’t been looking for survival gear. Ben wasn’t sure why, but he found that a small relief.

  He started clicking on the other tabs. There was one for REI, open on the same boots in a different color combination. They looked gray and green to Ben, but he didn’t investigate any further. The next was the main page of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, then Vulture, Slate, and a few other news sites. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to them besides the boots, and nothing that connected to her personally. It wasn’t until he tried to check the browser history and found nothing there that he realized it was set to the private mode that didn’t record the sites she’d visited.

  Ben minimized the window and opened a new one. He typed gmail into the search window, hoping she might have saved the password to the email account she’d put on her rental application. But no luck—just the generic sign-in page.

  He looked for files saved on the desktop or in folders, and there was nothing. Even the Downloads folder was empty. He clicked on the trash icon. Nothing. It looked like everything she did on the computer was online in private mode. Maybe if he still had help from the LBPD computer techs he could find something, but as far as Ben could tell, the laptop looked like it had barely been used at all.

  Grace was being cautious not only with her physical space but with her digital space as well. Had she been covering her tracks all along, or had she cleaned everything up in order to disappear?

  He couldn’t find anything there. Would anyone else be able to? If Becerra came back and searched, he might be able to get something from the computer. But what about the red Camaro? If the driver really was a dirty cop, he might be able to get something from it, too.

  He decided he’d keep the laptop in the house for now. If Becerra got a warrant, Ben figured he’d likely get a heads-up and have time to put it back in the studio. He scribbled a reminder on the yellow pad.

  How much useful information he’d discovered, he really didn’t know. Lisa Briard—was that Grace’s real name? It made sense. Why else would she have the prescription? But she’d been so careful with everything else. Could that be another alias? Was it someone else’s medicine? Maybe she needed the Zoloft but couldn’t get it legally, and found another source. If it really was hers, why not just peel the label off or scratch out the name?

  And who was Amy? Was she the woman he’d seen visiting Grace? He didn’t know. He figured at some point he’d head to the Attic, the restaurant down in Belmont Heights where Grace worked. She’d said the woman was a friend from work, hadn’t she? Ben thought he remembered that. Maybe he’d have to go a few times, see if he could spot her.

  Ben realized he had stopped writing and was tapping the end of the pen against his bottom lip, and was seized by a memory of sitting at his desk, years ago in the Violent Crimes Detail, a yellow pad in front of him, doing the same thing with his pen.

  It didn’t startle him like the flashes usually did. It didn’t make him uncomfortable or anxious.

  No.

  Quite the opposite, in fact.

  It felt familiar. It felt right.

  A jet rumbled in the distance. Ben got up and went into the dining room just in time to watch through the patio door as Peter, his hand raised and waving, followed the long arc of the plane across the sky.

  Ben was in the kitchen making some fresh dishwater so Peter could help clean up when he heard the text-message sound from his phone in the office. He grabbed for a paper towel from the holder on the counter, but it didn’t tear off like he expected it to and when he gave it a second yank, the whole thing tipped over and toppled to the floor.

  “Shit!”

  The towel in his hand was still connected to the wobbling roll on the floor by a rope of eight or ten more. He grabbed the strand, pulling off the two on the end and letting the long tail float down to the tile.

  He dried his hands and went into the office, hoping to see something from Rob or Becerra or even Jennifer. But when he depressed the button on his phone, he saw that it was just CVS notifying him that one of Peter’s refills was ready for pickup.

  While he was there, he checked his email again. There was nothing from anyone who mattered. He knew Rob was trying, and he believed Jennifer when she told him Becerra was, too. But he couldn’t help feeling like he was all alone.

  In the kitchen, Peter had put the spindle holder back on the counter and was holding the roll in both hands, slowly and carefully winding the long strand of excess towels back into place.

  Sometimes Peter liked to go with Ben on errands to get out of the house, so he rode with him to CVS. He didn’t want to go inside, though, so he waited in the Volvo with the windows rolled a quarter of the way down and the satellite radio playing Willie’s Roadhouse.

  Ben came out with a small bag in his hand, got in the driver’s seat, and said, “Would you mind if we made one more stop?”

  “No. Where do we need to go?”

  “I heard about a place that has some good biscuits and gravy. Want to try them?”

  “Sure.”

  While he’d been waiting in line at the pharmacy window, Ben had looked up the Attic on his phone. When he saw that they served breakfast until four, he thought it might be a good excuse to stop by for a visit and phoned in a takeout order. The timing, he hoped, would be helpful. They were right between the lunch and dinner crowds, so he could get a decent look around without having to wait too long for the food. At that time of day, he might even be able to score a spot in the tiny lot behind the restaurant instead of having to park in the surrounding neighborhood a block or two away.

  Ben couldn’t figure out why his father liked country music so much now. Neither of his parents had ever listened to it while h
e was growing up. It was all Beatles and Van Morrison and early British rock and folk stuff. After his mom died and the avalanche started, though, things began to change. With each of Peter’s surgeries, he became less interested in the music he’d listened to before, and more and more he’d be drawn to the classic country stuff. Ben had never met his paternal grandfather, he’d died before Ben was even born, but he’d often been told the story of how Peter was born in Oklahoma and moved with his family to California when he was still a toddler.

  Sitting in the left-turn lane at the light on the corner of Seventh and Redondo, Ben remembered something he hadn’t thought of in years. In the ninth or tenth grade, he had to do a project for class about a career he was interested in, so he asked his father why he’d become a history teacher. “When I was about your age,” his father had said, “I read The Grapes of Wrath and I knew I’d be either a novelist or a historian.” Ben could remember his father’s grin as if it were yesterday. “Turned out I was a lousy writer.”

  Ben started to look at his father, hoping to see a trace of that smile, but the driver in the car behind him leaned on the horn. The light had turned green.

  They did get lucky with a parking spot in the lot. Ben had been worried about leaving Peter in the car on the street far away from the Attic, so he was glad he didn’t have to try to convince him to come inside. Ben left things just the way he had at the drugstore, and walked around to the front of the building.

  The restaurant was in what had been, decades ago, a fairly good-sized Craftsman house. For years it had been another place, called Lasher’s, but Ben had never eaten there, and he’d only been here once since it changed owners. With the change, they’d added a large outside patio area that ran the full width of the building along Broadway and back around one side. It was much more popular now that they’d made the changes and updated the menu, and that was one of the main reasons he’d never come back after that first visit. He’d really liked the food, but not the crowd. He’d had to wait forty minutes, and then, once he got inside, all the people in the small dining area had made it loud and hot and his anxiety kicked into high gear.

  But now, at three thirty, with only two people inside and a few small parties scattered around the patio, he could imagine himself enjoying a meal here.

  The hostess came up and greeted him. She was wearing jeans and a black shirt that looked identical to the ones in Grace’s laundry basket. “Hi,” she said. “How many?”

  “Oh, it’s just me.”

  “Would you like to sit inside or outside?”

  Ben wondered how old she was. Eighteen or nineteen? Quite a bit younger than Grace. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m sorry. I called in a takeout order?”

  “Oh, okay. Can I have your name?”

  “Ben.”

  “Give me just a sec, I’ll go check on it.”

  While she was gone, Ben sat on a bench on what had once been the front porch and looked across the street and down the block at the Reno Room. For decades it had been an authentic dive bar, and then in the nineties, as gentrification began to take hold in the surrounding neighborhoods, it became a hipster hangout. When he’d been in uniform patrolling the East Division, he’d responded to more calls there than he could count. He’d only been there once off duty, and the fourth time someone pointed out the pool table Charles Bukowski had vomited on, he decided he probably never needed to come back.

  She returned with a white plastic bag in her hands. “Biscuits and gravy and an OG Mac?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”

  He paid cash for the order.

  “Anything else for you?”

  He decided to take a chance. “Is Amy working today?”

  “Oh,” the hostess said, “you just missed her. She did breakfast and lunch.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, his stomach tingling. “Thanks.”

  Peter waved at him as he approached the car. Ben opened the back door on the passenger’s side and put the bag on the seat. The he covered it with his fleece jacket, hoping it would stay warm long enough to get it home.

  “What did you get, something good?” Peter asked, twisting around and trying to get a look under the jacket.

  Ben slid in behind the wheel. “Yeah,” he said, “I think it is something good.”

  1/12 3:40

  Amy works at the attic!!!

  Morning shift—check back—tomorrow???

  He tried not to get too excited about this new information. But since he’d searched the studio, things had felt different. They’d felt right. He knew Jennifer would tell him to stop what he was doing. And he thought about it. All those years as a cop, how many people had he told to stay out of things, to let the police do their job? More than he could count.

  This was different. He wasn’t just some amateur going off half-cocked and interfering with an investigation. Hell, as far as he knew, he was the only one actively investigating anything. There was no doubt Becerra was doing his best. But how many cases did he have on his plate? How much time did he have for a case he couldn’t even be sure was really a case? Even with Ben’s history, and Jennifer putting in a word with him, there was no way it was a high priority for him. And Rob—was he more interested in helping Grace or in putting his dirty cop away? Suspects and witnesses were very different priorities. Tightening the screws on somebody dangerous always put witnesses at risk. If Rob had to choose between Grace’s safety and his case, which would it be?

  No. Ben had to keep going. There was nobody else he could trust.

  They bumped into Bernie and Sriracha on their evening walk again.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. The little dog had been pulling at her leash for the last fifty feet so she could get closer to Peter. When she jumped on his legs, he bent over and scratched her behind the ears.

  “How’s it going?” Ben asked. Like always, he stopped to chat mostly just to give his father time with the dog.

  “Not bad. What’s up with you two?” Bernie asked.

  Before Ben could answer, Peter looked up and said, “She’s still gone.”

  Bernie looked puzzled, and when Peter turned his attention back to Sriracha, he whispered to Ben, “Your mom?”

  Ben shook his head. “No. Grace is missing.”

  “Really? She skip on the rent or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. She’s all paid up and things are good, but she hasn’t been home for several days.”

  “Wow. You going to do anything about it?”

  “I called a friend from the LBPD. They took a missing-persons report. Someone’s looking into it.”

  “I hope everything turns out okay.”

  “Me too.”

  Peter stood up straight and smiled at them.

  “You guys think any more about a dog? I’ve got a friend with some puppies. Little terrier mixes like that one.” He stuck a finger out at Sriracha, then looked Ben in the eye and added, “A lot mellower, though.”

  “Dad,” Ben said. “Should we get a dog?”

  Peter thought about it and said very seriously, “They poop a lot.”

  Ben and Bernie laughed, and, after a few moments, Peter joined in, too.

  Ben gave Peter his evening meds and noted it in his book. He also made a big check mark with a Sharpie on the note on the refrigerator door. He needed to find a balance with the obsessive-compulsive behaviors, but for now, he decided that if he would err, it would be on the overly cautious side.

  He waited while Peter brushed his teeth and changed into the long-sleeved T-shirt and gym shorts he liked to wear to bed.

  “Thank you for taking me out,” Peter said when Ben came in to say good night.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “The food was good.” He’d only eaten one of the biscuits and a bit of the gravy. Ben wasn’t sure, but he thought it was too peppery for Peter, who didn’t have much tolerance for spiciness anymore.

  “I know, I thought so, too.” He’d eaten the leftovers, in addition to his
mac and cheese. It had been too much and his stomach was just beginning to let him off the hook.

  Ben leaned in and kissed his father on the forehead. “Good night.”

  “Good night.” Peter looked like he wanted to say something.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  He just shook his head and squeezed his son’s hand.

  The yellow pad was staring up at him again. He made a to-do list.

  1. Check for Amy at Attic

  2. Call Rob

  3. Call Becerra

  It wasn’t much. Not yet, anyway. He was hoping Amy would be able to help, to give him something else to go on, or at least a nudge in a particular direction. It didn’t even have to be the right one at this point.

  He wasn’t good at being spontaneous anymore, and even the need to make an unplanned phone call could sometimes send him into an anxious spiral.

  But he looked at number two and checked the time again. It was five minutes after nine.

  Fuck it. He was just going to do it.

  Three taps of his thumb on the screen of his phone and he was waiting for Rob to answer. He decided not to say anything about Amy to him yet. If Rob hadn’t already talked to her himself, he wasn’t the cop Ben thought he was. No, he would just press Rob for information. He’d felt hints of his old confidence already, and the memory was enough to embolden him. If he pushed, Rob would give him more. Ben was confident of that. And he was ready to push. On the third ring his confidence crescendoed and began to fall as he became more certain that he’d be talking not to Rob but to his voicemail.

  Ben left a message telling Rob he needed to talk to him, and disconnected.

  Crossing that item off the list didn’t give him the sense of accomplishment he’d been hoping for. Staring at the phone in his hand, he saw the little red bubble over the green icon at the bottom of the screen reminding him of Emma’s voicemails. He knew he should see her. But what could he really tell her? How much would he have to hold back? The idea of withholding or even lying to her seemed overwhelming, but he knew he would have to if he saw her. She’d never approve of what he was doing. He called her back, knowing it was safe, that there was no chance of her answering the phone at this time of day. When her recorded greeting finished, he said, “Hi, Emma, it’s Ben. I’m doing okay. Had a few rough days with my father, but I’m doing better now. I won’t need the extra appointment after all.” Apparently, lying to her voicemail was an altogether different story.