Allie climbed into the front of the truck, sitting awkwardly in the space between the two seats. She opened the top of the sack so the puppies could breathe, and balanced it as gently as she could on her lap. L.J. and Dub got in on either side of her. Then, as if he’d been driving all his life, L.J. threw the gearshift into reverse, and they were backing away from the loading dock.
They had done it! They had the dogs and were on the way to the police station!
L.J. stopped, put the truck in forward gear, turned the wheel, and began heading for the parking lot’s exit onto the road. He leaned forward, feeling for the headlights, and switched them on.
Suddenly, as if he had materialized out of the night itself, Mr. Cutler stood directly in the path of the truck, hands on his hips, head back, eyes narrowed against the glare. Behind him, the pink bicycle lay on its side in the gravel. Allie gasped, Dub shouted “Hey!”, and L.J. slammed on the brakes.
Nobody moved or spoke for what felt like a long while. Then Mr. Cutler’s voice came through L.J.’s open window.
“Just what you think you’re doin’, boy?” He spoke slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. His words were slightly slurred, it seemed to Allie, but he stood steadily on his own two feet. He was shaking his head mockingly, as if he already knew the answer to his question and found it pitiful.
“You know what I’m doing and you better not try to stop me.” L.J. sounded as if he was choking, and Allie was horrified to see tears running down his face.
Mr. Cutler let out an ugly laugh. “You gonna run me down?”
“If I have to.”
“Look at you. You’re cryin’. Ya got snot all over your face.”
“Get out of the way,” L.J. warned, his voice shrill.
“Your mother tried to pull something like this one time. She didn’t get away with it, and you won’t, either.”
“But she got away from you, finally, didn’t she, old man? And I aim to, too.”
“This is about that dog, isn’t it? Your precious Belle?” Mr. Cutler said the name as if it tasted nasty in his mouth. “I am so tired of this crap. How many times I told you? If we’re gonna eat, I gotta work. My business is dogs. Sometimes dogs die. It’s the way it is.”
“She didn’t just die!” L.J. screamed, sobbing now with fury. “You killed her!”
“You little pain in my butt. That’s it.” And then, so quickly Allie didn’t know how he did it, Mr. Cutler had moved from the front to the driver’s side of the truck. His arm snaked through the window and around L.J.’s neck. With his other hand, he seemed to be struggling to open the door.
L.J. stomped on the gas pedal with all his might, and the truck lurched forward. There was a crunch of metal as they ran over the bicycle. Mr. Cutler’s arm still encircled L.J.’s neck, and he was forced to run along next to the truck, his neck bent to the side, while L.J., his own head halfway out the window, steered crazily with one hand and pushed at his father’s face with the other.
They careened toward a pair of stout metal poles that had once held a sign marking the entrance to the plant. Allie screamed and grabbed the wheel, pulling it sharply to the right. L.J.’s foot seemed to be frozen all the way down on the gas pedal, and the truck veered in a tight circle. The engine roared and the tires spewed gravel.
Allie pounded on Mr. Cutler’s arm with her fists, but it didn’t have any effect, and she was afraid she was hurting L.J. more than his father. The truck continued to race in wild circles. Mr. Cutler was shouting and swearing, trying to keep his footing while his body was hanging from L.J.’s neck, and Dub was leaning across Allie to hold on to the steering wheel.
Allie looked at the bare skin of Mr. Cutler’s arm around L.J.’s neck and did the only thing she could think of. She leaned over and bit down hard.
There was a screech of pain and outrage, and Mr. Cutler’s arm slid from around L.J.’s neck. L.J. straightened up, held tightly to the wheel, and turned out of the parking lot and onto the road, still going very fast.
Dub opened his window, stuck his head out, and looked back. “He’s just standing there, rubbing his arm,” he said. “He can’t catch us now.”
It took a moment before L.J. was able to communicate that news to his foot. He slowed down at last, and they continued none too steadily down the long, straight, deserted stretch of road that led into town. They were all far too shaken to talk. The muzzles must have come off a couple of the dogs because frantic barking sounded from the back, and the puppies were whimpering and squirming in Allie’s lap. Allie felt like whimpering, too.
L.J. turned when they reached the main crossroad in town. There were no other cars about, and the town center had an eerie, lonely feel.
“The police station’s right around here someplace, ain’t it?” L.J. asked.
Dub directed him to turn right and turn again onto Exchange Street, and they pulled up in front of a big brick building with white pillars.
L.J. switched off the engine. Staring straight ahead, he said in a flat, dull voice, “All right. Here’s where you two take over and I disappear.”
Nineteen
“What do you mean, disappear?” Allie asked.
L.J. gave a slight shrug. “Go away.”
“Where?” Allie asked, feeling totally confused.
“Someplace far from him.”
Allie looked at Dub to see if this made any more sense to him than it did to her, but he looked just as bewildered. She turned back to L.J., who was still staring straight ahead, as if into his uncertain future.
“But where?” Allie persisted. “You can’t just walk away.” She had an idea. “Where’s your mother?”
“Texas,” he answered. “I think. I don’t know for sure. But that’s where she’s from, and she always wanted to go back there.”
“Can you call her?”
“First thing I gotta do is get away from him.”
“You could—” Allie began.
L.J. kept on talking, slowly and deliberately. “I keep thinking, This time he’ll go to jail and I’ll be free of him. But it’s always the same. Like in Georgia, he was about to get caught, but we ran off. Then he started up again here. Now he’ll drag me off someplace new…”
This was by far the most talking L.J. had ever done, and Allie didn’t want to interrupt him, even though there were a lot of questions she wanted to ask.
“It’ll be the same old thing. He’ll read the want ads and get every dog that people are giving away. ‘Free to a good home.’” He gave a bitter laugh. “He’ll steal some fancy-breed dog like that one belongs to the teacher, if he thinks he can get away with it. He’ll call it his moneymaker and say he’s about to make big bucks. And then something will happen, just like always—”
L.J. stopped and shook his head angrily. “He just changes the name of his crummy business and starts all over. He thinks he’s smart, but if he was so smart we wouldn’t have to run away from every place we ever went.”
There was a long silence in the cab of the truck, and then L.J. spoke again. Standing up to his father seemed to have released feelings he’d been keeping inside for a long time. “After what happened to Belle at Cutler Creek—”
“Wait a second,” Allie interrupted. “Where’s Cutler Creek?”
“It’s not a place,” L.J. answered, sounding tired. “That’s just the nice-sounding name the old man gave his business back then: Cutler Creek Kennels.”
Allie glanced quickly at Dub. Now they knew what the crossed-out word had been on Mr. Cutler’s business card.
“It was a bunch of dogs shut up in plywood cages out in the yard in the blazing sun,” L.J. went on. “No creek. No water for miles around unless I carried it out in a bucket.”
“What happened there?” Allie asked quietly.
An expression of pain and fury passed over L.J.’s features. He didn’t answer the question directly, but kept talking in the same low, tight voice. “After Belle died, Mom couldn’t take it anymore. She ran off and
took me with her, but we didn’t get far. He came and got me. Stole me is more like it. She came for me again, but he got me back.” He gave that short, bitter laugh and added, “He always wins. Not that he wants me around, except to do stuff for him.”
L.J. had been speaking in a monotone, but his words grew suddenly louder and stronger. “Well, you know what, old man? I can’t take it anymore, either. And I’m big enough now to cut out and never have to look at your face again.”
He reached for the door handle. When it appeared that he really was about to leave, Allie said, “L.J., wait!”
L.J. turned and his eyes focused on her for the first time since he’d begun talking. His dark eyes looked like two wounds.
Now that she had his attention, Allie didn’t know what to say. She wanted to do something to change the awful things she’d just heard, but that was impossible. Nothing in her own life so far had prepared her for this moment. But she had to try something. It seemed like a good time for the truth.
“L.J.,” she whispered, “I think Belle knows what a good, brave thing you did tonight.”
At the mention of Belle, L.J.’s gaze grew even more intense. “I saw Belle in a dream,” Allie continued quickly. “She was in one of those plywood boxes, and she was sad and dirty and sick.”
Different emotions passed over L.J.’s face. Allie knew he must have witnessed the scene she had described, and that he had to be wondering how she could have seen it, too.
“I know this sounds crazy, L.J.,” Allie said. “But I see ghosts. And I saw Belle.”
L.J.’s expression became wary, as if he feared he was being made fun of.
“It’s true, L.J.,” Dub said quietly.
Allie nodded and hurried on. “They—the ghosts—come to me for help. This is the third time it’s happened. And this time, the ghost was a dog. I wasn’t sure until now, but it was Belle.”
L.J. was listening hard. Allie could see how much he wanted to hear news of Belle, in spite of any doubts he might have about the existence of ghosts.
“When you had Belle, you made a sign for her crate, didn’t you?” she asked. “You wrote each letter of her name with a different color crayon. It must have been a few years ago, because the letters looked like a younger kid had written them.”
L.J. had the haunted look of someone in the midst of a painful memory. “I was seven,” he whispered. “Belle was a great dog. She was my dog. She wasn’t part of the lousy business. She was so pretty and so smart, you wouldn’t believe how smart.”
He paused, making a choking sound. Then his eyes narrowed and he continued. “He couldn’t stand it. He had to breed her. You shoulda seen her pups. They were so cute. Everybody wanted ’em. He began to make money, more than he’d ever made before. So he kept on breeding her. She needed to rest and get her strength back, but he kept on doing it, until—” He broke off then and looked away.
“L.J.,” said Allie, “Belle’s ghost came back to stop your father from doing the same thing to other dogs. She tried in lots of ways to make me see what was going on. But it was hard—I mean, she couldn’t talk, and I’d see these terrible pictures, but I couldn’t tell what they meant. Then Dub and I thought we’d finally figured out what was going on, but when we came out with the police, your father tricked us. But, tonight—well, don’t you see? You did it. You stopped him. Now Belle can rest in peace. I feel it. She’s gone.”
It was true. Now that they had saved the dogs, Belle’s ghost was no longer lingering in the world of the living. Her job was finished.
“For real?” L.J. asked in a whisper.
Allie nodded.
L.J. smiled then, a real smile, filled with happiness.
And for a moment he, too, seemed to be at peace. But then a shadow of fear passed over his face. “I gotta go,” he said, and reached once again for the door handle.
“L.J., no,” Allie and Dub both cried at the same time.
“Let’s just go inside,” Dub urged. “Your father can’t hurt you at the police station.”
“Dub’s right, L.J.,” pleaded Allie. “Come in with us. We can get this all straightened out. You’ll be safe.”
“You don’t understand,” L.J. said in a resigned voice. “The only safe place for me is far away from him.”
“But he’s going to be in big trouble,” Allie said. “He’ll have to go to jail or something, won’t he?”
“He’s gotten in trouble plenty of times before,” L.J. said hopelessly. “And, somehow, he always talks his way out of it. Or there’s not quite enough proof of anything to arrest him, or he runs. And then it’s just him and me again, and somehow everything was my fault. No way. Not again.”
He opened the truck door, jumped down, closed the door, and looked back into the cab. He spoke quickly, saying, “All the towns we been to, I never got to know nobody much. But this place could have been different, maybe.” He hesitated, as if there might be more he wanted to say, then shook his head. Looking down, he mumbled, “Sorry about the teacher’s dog and all.”
He walked a few paces and turned around. “Don’t go inside yet, okay? Give me a chance to make tracks outta here.”
“Wait, L.J.!” Allie said. “Why don’t you take the truck?”
He had broken into a run. Over his shoulder, he called, “Too easy to find me.”
A few seconds later, he disappeared.
Twenty
“Are we going to just let him run away?” Allie asked when L.J. was out of sight.
She and Dub looked at each other, frozen with indecision. With each moment that passed, L.J. was farther away, and it was evident that they were, indeed, giving him the chance he had asked for.
The puppies in Allie’s lap began to cry.
“Poor things,” she said. “I bet they’re hungry.”
A knock on the window next to Dub startled them. “Hey, kids. You all right in there?”
A uniformed policeman was peering through the glass. Dub rolled down the window, and the policeman shone his light on them.
“Yes, sir,” Dub answered, squinting in the beam from the flashlight.
“I kept hearing dogs barking out here. What’s going on? Who’s driving?”
Allie and Dub glanced at each other. Dub murmured, “Here we go.”
“It’s kind of a long story, Officer,” said Allie.
“How many dogs are back there?”
“Ten. Plus these puppies.”
“This got anything to do with that wild-goose chase Officer Burke went on earlier?” the policeman asked.
Allie saw Dub’s face flush. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
The policeman sighed. “All right. Let’s go inside.” He opened the door of the cab, and Dub and Allie got out. “Whew,” he said, wrinkling his nose.
“It’s the puppies,” Allie explained. “They’re not very clean.”
With a grimace, the policeman said, “I can see this is going to be one of those nights.”
You can say that again, thought Allie.
Inside the station, Allie and Dub related the bare bones of the story. Their parents were called, along with Ed McHugh from the Humane Society and Officer Burke. Both of Dub’s parents came. Mr. Nichols came alone, while Allie’s mother stayed with Michael.
As Allie and Dub related more and more details about what had happened, the station grew busier and noisier. Phone calls and radio dispatches were made at a frantic pace. A warrant was issued for Mr. Cutler’s arrest. Teletypes and faxes including L.J.’s description and that of his father were sent out to every state from New York south. Even though neither L.J. nor his father had more than a half hour’s lead, the police had concluded from Allie and Dub’s story that either or both of the Cutlers might head south to Texas.
The dogs were loaded into the Humane Society van and taken to the shelter, where, Allie and Dub were told, they’d be cared for and held until L.J.’s father was found and charged.
To Allie’s dismay, Hoover was taken, too.
“Ju
st for tonight,” Ed McHugh explained. “We’ll have a vet check her out thoroughly, and document her condition for the record. You can pick her up in the morning.”
It was almost 4 a.m. when Allie and her father got home. “I’m proud of you and Dub,” he told her as they headed up the stairs to bed. “And I’m glad you’re safe. But tomorrow we’re going to have to talk about this business of sneaking out of the house.” He kissed her good night and looked at her, his stern expression changing to one of wonder. “I can’t believe you bit his arm.”
Allie laughed. “Neither can I.”
She fell into bed and slept, undisturbed by ghosts.
The next morning, Allie lay in bed, trying to imagine what L.J. was doing at that very moment. Where was he? Had he slept somewhere? Had he caught a ride with someone? Had he eaten? She said a silent prayer that he was safe and on his way to find his mother.
She heard voices and a hammering sound outside in the yard. When she looked out the window, she saw her parents, their neighbor Tom Wright, and Dub’s father working together to fence in a portion of the Nicholses’ back yard. Michael had made a fort out of the cardboard crate the sections of fence had come in, and was busy playing with his X-Men action figures.
Allie ran down the stairs and into the yard. “What are you guys doing?” she asked.
“Well, honey,” said her mother, “we began thinking that we can’t have Hoover going back home, not with Mr. Cutler still on the loose. We can’t take a chance by leaving her there alone, and we don’t want you going over there to take care of her. So your dad was at the building supply store when they opened at seven this morning, and—” She shrugged and gestured to the fence. “She’ll have to stay out here because of Michael, but I think she’ll be fine until Mr. Henry gets back.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Allie said. “Thanks, everybody. Can I help?”
Mr. Whitwell handed her a spool of wire and some wire cutters and told her to cut pieces long enough to twist around the metal poles to hold the fencing in place. She had bent to the task when Michael came over, cupped his hands around her ear, and whispered, “I’m whispering ’cause this is secret.”
The Ghost of Cutler Creek Page 11
