by Tracy Weber
“Oh, George, I’m so sorry.”
I moved to hug him, but he turned away and shook off my touch. I didn’t know what else to do, so I stood silently with him for several awkward moments. Finally, he wiped his eyes and vigorously shook his head, as if forcing himself back to reality. When he turned back to face me, his heartsick expression had been replaced by one of stubborn determination.
“Don’t you worry about us, ma’am. I have a plan. Bella needs me and I will not let her down. No way.”
“What are you going to do? Do you think your family will help?”
He hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully. “My family isn’t an option. But I’ve been thinking, and someone owes me. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to help.”
That didn’t sound good. “George, what are you up to?”
He set his jaw stubbornly. “Don’t worry about it. All I can say is, I have a plan.”
Worry nibbled at the lining of my stomach. “How in the world can you get an extra $400 a month, George? You can barely buy dog food for Bella, much less expensive medicine. You’d have to rob liquor stores or sell drugs to get that kind of money.”
George crossed his arms, frowning. “I told you before,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t steal, and I don’t do or sell drugs. So get off that. Besides, what I do with my life is none of your business.”
He was up to something, and it couldn’t be good. Nibbling worry escalated to biting agitation. I knew George wouldn’t like what I was about to say, but I said it anyway. “Maybe you could find Bella a new home.”
He didn’t have to reply. His stiffening shoulders told me exactly what he thought of that idea. For a brief moment of sanity, I hesitated, wondering if I should go on. But fear for George drowned out all reasonable thought. I knew I might regret it, but I kept talking.
“I hate to say it, but maybe the vet was right. Maybe you should even consider—”
George’s expression turned from cold anger to retching disgust, like he’d discovered a smear of dog waste covering his shoe. “What is wrong with you?” he hissed. “Would you give up on a family member because she got sick? Would you get rid of a child because she was expensive?”
“No, of course not,” I snapped back, insulted. “But Bella’s not a child, George. She’s just a dog.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back. George’s look was clear. I was no longer a pile of dog dung. Now I was his best friend—and he’d just learned that I’d slept with his wife, strangled his puppy, or committed some other sin of unforgivable betrayal. He shook his head in disbelief. “I honestly thought you were different. I thought you’d understand.”
I’d already gone too far, but I kept on going. After all, George was clearly blinded by emotion. I had to make him see reason. “Look, George, I get it. You don’t want to put Bella down, and I can understand that. But you can’t keep her. I’ll help you find another home for her. I’ll even help you find another do—”
He hurled his papers to the ground. “Now she’s replaceable? I don’t know why I thought you were so special. You’re as bad as everyone else—worse even. You pretend to care.” He glowered at me with disgust. “I’m done talking with you. If you don’t want a paper, then get out of here so I can sell it to someone who does.”
I wanted to continue our conversation. I wanted to help. A part of me even wanted to apologize. But I was stubborn, and we were both angry. I turned on my heels and stomped away, dollar bill still in hand. I slammed the studio’s door, then jiggled and pulled and kicked and swore until it finally clicked into place.
“Stupid door. Just as cantankerous as that old man.” I pulled off my shoes and threw them in the corner. “Don’t know why I’d want to help him anyway. Ungrateful jerk disappears without a word for over a week, then shows up here expecting me to—”
I paused. Hey, wait a minute …
George’s timeline was incomplete. Bella’s test results took three days to come back. Why then, had George been gone for ten? I couldn’t imagine that he’d blithely sacrifice a week’s income, given his financial problems. What had he been up to?
_____
The rest of the day went by in a blur of private clients, teachers’ meetings, and group classes. Before I knew it, the students from my Core Strength class had departed, and I was ready to head home. I’d steadfastly avoided George the rest of the day, and now he and Bella were gone to wherever they went each evening.
Time had cooled my fiery temper, and I felt bad about our argument. I should have known better than to suggest George get rid of Bella. She was the closest thing to family he had. I vowed to apologize as soon as I saw him the next day.
My only goals in that moment, however, were to close up shop and go home. At almost ten o’clock, the dueling temptations of a hot bubble bath and a cool glass of Chardonnay beckoned me. But first I had to prepare for the next day’s classes. I blew out the candles, swept the yoga room’s floor, and emptied the garbage cans. I quickly wiped down the sink in the studio’s single unisex bathroom, grateful for once that the space didn’t have showers. From there, I headed to the small alcove of yoga props just off the back entrance. I untied the chaotic tangle of cotton straps, folded the pile of carelessly tossed blankets, and created three organized stacks from the Jenga-like structure of black foam yoga blocks. I finished by neatly stacking the mats.
Practice space done, I moved to the lobby, where I vacuumed the floor and watered my thirsty jungle of plants. I was about to re-stock the flyers outside the studio’s front entrance, when I heard the sounds of a heated argument.
To be honest, nighttime arguments weren’t all that unusual in this section of Greenwood. After nine at night The Loaded Muzzle and its sister bars were the only businesses open, and the neighborhood drunks weren’t exactly known for their quiet discussions on local politics and art.
I normally ignored them, but for some reason this felt serious. I cracked open the door and pressed my ear to the void, trying to eavesdrop. The yelling stopped as suddenly as it began.
Nothing but silence. Not the easeful silence that enveloped your mind after the most blissful of meditation practices. Not the friendly silence that followed a fight between buddies, after they had shaken hands and made up. Not even the sad, desperate silence of loneliness. This was a more ominous silence. The silence between the jarring final notes of a horror movie’s theme song. The silence before the knife shot through the shower curtain in Psycho. The silence that punctuated the seconds until the evil monster attacked the heroine from behind.
Great. And now I had to walk out into the parking lot. Alone.
Should I call the cops? If I called the police and it turned out to be nothing, I’d feel pretty stupid. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. By the age of thirty-two, I should be able to take care of myself. Besides, the police had better things to do than walk paranoid yoga teachers through empty parking lots.
Dad schooled me well in self-defense, but I owned little in the way of protection. The yoga teachings were clear: violence was not an option; therefore, I did not own a gun. I looked around the studio. A yoga strap would help only if I wanted to whip my would-be killer into submission. My newly organized yoga blocks? I could throw one at him, I supposed, but the lightweight foam brick wouldn’t do much damage. If only I’d purchased the heavy wooden ones instead. I supposed I could try to smother him with one of the blankets …
“I wonder if it’s too late to open a martial arts studio?” I said to the empty room.
The deadliest options I found were a stapler and a pair of round-nosed scissors. Vowing to buy pepper spray first thing the next morning, I grabbed my flashlight, turned on my cell phone, and prepared to press the autodial button for 911, just in case.
I opened the door and cautiously looked left and right. Nothing. No sounds except th
e traffic along 85th Street; no smells but the yeasty aroma of stale beer. Nothing unusual at all. I inserted the key into the lock, and started at the sound of someone throwing out the trash. Good lord, you’re jumpy. No more Friday night horror fests for you.
I played the flashlight along the pavement in front of me, wishing there were more people out on the street. I had nothing but my internal dialogue to keep me company.
See, nothing to be afraid of here, just the normal cats, cars, and an occasional empty beer can. I heard a metallic bang, yelped, and practically leaped out of my skin. Just the garbage can lid. You really need to drink less caffeine, jumpy girl.
As I tiptoed to the end of the parking lot, the flashlight illuminated a mound of old clothes. How odd. Someone threw out a jacket and pants. I moved closer. Actually, it looks like a whole pile of clothes.
I froze. Wait, are those shoes?
My stomach churned. Oh, no, I silently prayed. Please, God, please don’t let that be what I think it is.
Acid bile rose in my throat as I moved the flashlight’s beam across the shape. It wasn’t a pile of clothes at all. It was a person—a man—surrounded by a pool of thick, dark fluid.
I recognized the sickening, coppery smell. It was blood. A lot of blood.
I resisted the urge to scream and run. Instead I turned him over to see if he was still breathing. The minute I saw the deep indented gash in his forehead, I knew saving him was hopeless. I pressed the button to make the 911 call I now dreaded, took two steps away from the body, and vomited.
It was George. And Bella was nowhere to be found.
six
“Ma’am, I need you to wait in the patrol car. The detectives will be here soon to take your statement.”
“I can’t stay here,” I begged. “I have to find Bella! She’s a large black German shepherd. She never left George’s side, and she must be terrified.” I frantically looked left and right. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. Please let me go look for her. She hates being alone.”
I’m sure I sounded insane. All things considered, a stray dog should have been the least of my concerns. But focusing on Bella allowed me, if only for a moment, to avoid thinking about George’s death. And I couldn’t think about that. Not then. It was too awful.
“Ma’am, there’s obviously no dog here, and I need you to come with me before you destroy any more evidence.” The officer took me by the arm and led me away from George’s body. As we walked past the small crowd of pointing and whispering onlookers, I felt strangely guilty, as if I were the murderer, not merely a witness.
Everything seemed surreal, like the flashing, disparate images of a childhood nightmare. Circling police lights pulsated in an oddly patriotic collage of red, white, and blue. The zigzag aura of an impending migraine tugged at the edges of my vision, and I knew throbbing pain was sure to follow. The officer opened the car door and nudged me inside. I didn’t want to sit in the car. I wanted to go home. I wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. Barring that, I would have preferred rotting in a nice, dark prison cell, far away from all this insanity. I considered telling the officer exactly that.
I sat in the car.
“The detectives in charge will be able to answer your questions. Now wait here and let us do our jobs.” He firmly shut the door.
It seemed like a hundred years, but actually only twenty minutes passed before detectives Martinez and Henderson had time to question me. Petite and pretty, with dark hair, brown eyes, and a serious look, Detective Martinez obviously played the good cop to Henderson’s bad one. Bearded, slightly paunchy, and well on the far side of forty, Detective Henderson wasn’t the slightest bit interested in my worries about Bella.
“I already told you,” I said wearily. “I don’t know anything. Now please let me go! I have to find Bella. George wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone.”
“Ma’am, answer the question,” he replied. “What were you doing out here when you found the body?”
I would have screamed in frustration, but the sound might have exploded my pounding head. “For the hundredth time, I heard fighting and I got worried. I decided to make sure everything was OK on my way home.”
“If you heard a fight, why didn’t you call the police?” Henderson asked, leaning forward. I assumed he was trying to intimidate, not sicken me. But the warmth of his garlic-infused breath sent another wave of nausea roiling through my stomach. And his scruffy mat of saliva-encrusted facial hair didn’t help. I swallowed hard to avoid vomiting a second time. Lord, didn’t anyone shave anymore?
“If what you say is true, you’re lucky you didn’t get your face bashed in.” He stepped his feet wide and glanced at Martinez. “This kind of thing happens all the time. Couple of drunks fighting over money or booze. One puts up a little too much resistance and gets beat up or worse. Could even have been a drug deal gone bad. A young woman like you should have more sense than to get in the middle of it.”
“I’m telling you, that’s not what happened,” I replied emphatically. “George had a drinking problem, but he didn’t do drugs, and he wasn’t violent.”
Henderson leaned back and crossed his arms. “All right, then, what’s your theory?”
My eyes burned with looming, frustrated tears. “I don’t know, maybe he got mugged.”
“Why on earth would anyone mug him? He obviously didn’t have much money.” Henderson leaned in close again, going for the jugular. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling us …”
Dad taught me to be tough—to stand up to bullies and never give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry. But my head pounded, my body ached with exhaustion, and I couldn’t hold back anymore. Tears streamed down my face. “I don’t know anything! Please, please, please let me go, so I can look for Bella.”
Martinez gave Henderson a “back off now” look. “Just a few more minutes, ma’am,” she said. “How did you know the deceased?”
“I told you that already. He sells—” I bit back a sob. “I mean, he sold the Dollars for Change newspaper outside my store. We became friends.”
“See, that’s what I don’t get,” Henderson sneered. “Why would a pretty young thing like you be friends with a deadbeat like him?”
At that moment, Detective Henderson joined Jake the Jerk on my short list of truly odious people. My tears stopped. The hair on the back of my neck rose. An image of my fist smashing into Henderson’s face entered my head and refused to leave. Cold-cocking him would land me in jail, so I looked at him steadily and enunciated clearly.
“George wasn’t a deadbeat. He had an addiction. There’s a difference.”
Martinez stepped between us. “Did the victim have any enemies?”
“No, George was a sweet man. People aren’t always courteous to the homeless, but I can’t imagine why anyone would hurt him.” I remembered the incident with Charlie. “He did have an argument with someone earlier today, but he said it was nothing—that they had it all worked out.” I described the dispute over the black duffel bag. “The guy seemed kind of odd, but George said they were friends.”
“We didn’t find a bag with the body, but we’ll look into it,” Martinez assured me. “But if this ‘Charlie’ isn’t a regular in the area, he might be hard to track down. And the bag is probably long gone by now.”
“Did anything else seem different than normal?” Henderson asked.
“Not really. George had some money worries, but I think he had a plan to fix that.”
The two detectives exchanged a knowing look. Henderson spoke. “Perhaps he decided to consort with the wrong people to get that money and got himself killed for his efforts?”
I felt my face flush with anger.
“George was the victim here. You keep forgetting that. George was an alcoholic, not a criminal. And if he planned to meet with someone dangerous, why didn’t he take h
is dog? Bella would never have let anyone hurt him.”
They were about to press me further when a uniformed officer interrupted. “Excuse me, detectives. You might want to take a look at this. We found a dog in the alley behind the pet store. It might be the one the witness has been talking about.”
I jumped out of the police car, pushed past the two detectives, and ran as fast as my legs would take me. Bella’s low bark filled the air as I rounded the corner.
She huddled, cowering in the back of her crate. “That’s her! That’s Bella!”
Martinez grabbed my arm before I could open the cage. “Don’t touch anything! That crate is evidence. Wait until we call Animal Control.” Bella snarled and lunged against the door. “Besides, that dog looks dangerous. The Animal Control officers will know how to handle it.”
Animal Control? Wasn’t that a fancy name for the dog catcher? Were they going to take Bella to the pound?
“There’s no need to call anyone,” I quickly replied. “Bella’s not dangerous, she’s just upset. I’m sure I can calm her down.”
“Maybe so,” Martinez replied. “But we still need to call Animal Control. They’ll take her to the shelter and contact her owners.”
I imagined Bella trapped in a cage, surrounded by strangers and barking dogs. “But there’s no one to contact. Her owner is dead.”
“They’ll call his next of kin, in that case. If no one claims her in seven days, they’ll assess her. If she’s deemed adoptable—” She paused and glanced at Bella, still ferociously barking in the crate. “If she’s safe to adopt, they’ll try to find a home for her.”
I knew the chances of that were somewhere between slim and none. In this horrible economy of home foreclosures and double-digit unemployment, more and more people were forced to give up their pets. Normally easy-to-place animals were euthanized every day. And Bella wouldn’t be easy. Not only did she have behavior problems, she had an expensive health condition.
