I got my paws under me. I charged. I sprang. I grabbed Wes by the pant leg. More like right through the pant leg—same leg I’d worked on before, at the start of our boat ride, but that was more or less an accident. The other leg would have been just as good, or almost. I worked on the leg I had, did the best job I knew how. Wes fell, screaming in what I think they call agony. The sound made me even more excited! Who knows why?
TWENTY-FIVE
When you’re busy like I was, you’re hardly aware of, say, lots of human shouting going on, or hands grabbing for your collar—when there isn’t one!—or wide-eyed looks on the face of a vet who’d probably thought she’d seen everything. Chet the Jet in action: add that to your list, baby!
But after a while, things settled down out there on the road in front of Dr. Ory’s trailer, and I found myself sitting peacefully at Bernie’s side. We watched Dr. Ory cleaning up Wes Derrick’s ankle and some of the calf, perhaps, and possibly a touch of above-the-knee involvement—not much more than a scratch when you came right down to it—and bandage up the boo-boo nice and tidy. One thing for sure: Wes was not a tough hombre. Tough hombres don’t moan and wince and ask whiny little questions about tetanus and rabies and other stuff that whizzed right by me. Around that time, I realized that Mr. Patel, the government dude, had—would retreated be how to put it?—stationed himself behind the mostly closed door of the trailer, only his head poking out.
“What in hell got into him?” Mr. Patel said.
Dr. Ory rose. “Good question—never would have dreamed he was the type to go off like that.”
What was this about? Wes and his wimpiness? That was my guess. I watched Bernie and waited patiently for whatever was coming next.
“Uh,” Bernie said.
I happened to notice that he had his hand resting on the back of my neck, fingers sort of curled into my fur—a brand-new thing, first time he’d done that in all our time together, and, of course, it felt good. What a great idea! But that was Bernie.
“Um,” he added. “Don’t really know.” He gave Wes a look like some question was coming, although he remained silent.
“Must be because of my cats,” Was said, so weakly he was hard to hear. “I’ve got cats.”
“Ah,” said Bernie. “Sorry, ah, Wes. I hope, you know . . . any associated expense, that kind of . . .”
With a groan or two, Wes got to his feet. “Let’s just forget it,” he said. “The company has an excellent health plan.”
Bernie’s eyebrows rose. Have I mentioned Bernie’s eyebrows? You really can’t miss them, and they have a language all their own. Right now they were surprised, plus a little something extra I didn’t get.
“Well,” he said, “if you’re sure you . . .”
Wes started backing toward the bright green jeep. Hey! He seemed to like walking backward: hadn’t seen much of that in humans—or any creature, now that I thought about it.
“Wes?” said Dr. Ory. “Where are you going?”
“Think I’ll lie down for a while,” Wes said, “take some painkillers, put my leg up.”
“What about our meeting?” Dr. Ory said.
Wes’s eyes shifted to Mr. Patel in the doorway. “Afraid I’m not up to it at the moment.”
“But the birds!” Dr. Ory said.
“Happy to discuss whatever may or may not be happening with any alleged birds,” Wes said. He opened the jeep’s door and slid in behind the wheel, all of it backward. I was impressed, but it didn’t make me like him any better. I still didn’t like Wes at all, although I no longer hated him: I had the taste of his blood on my tongue. “How’s tomorrow, same time, same place?”
Dr. Ory turned to Mr. Patel. “Jack?”
“Guess that’ll have to do,” Mr. Patel said.
Wes was already driving off, and not slowly. They all watched him go. I watched Bernie. Something was going on in his mind: I could feel it.
“Meantime,” Mr. Patel said, “I’ll want coordinates for all the bird finds.”
“I’ve got ’em,” Dr. Ory told him. They went inside, Dr. Ory pausing in the doorway and turning to Bernie. “I know a very good trainer,” she said.
“Trainer?” said Bernie as the door closed behind her. I was with him on that. Trainer? A total mystery. We hopped into the Porsche—me actually hopping, although not my very smoothest—and hit the road. My only sure takeaway was that Wes had no cats. You can’t have cats without me being in the know. He did smell like someone who spent time with a member of the nation within. Had I noticed that already? I got a bit mixed up, started thinking about the Isle des Deux Amis, no idea why.
“First,” Bernie said, pulling up to a roadside food truck—one of the greatest human inventions, in my opinion, right up there with cars and handcuffs, “let’s get you fed.” Sounded like a plan to me. And what if after I was done, he said, Second, let’s get you fed again?
Bernie went up to the guy in the food truck window.
“Got any steak?”
“Just the round, but it’s all cut up for the brochettes,” said the food truck guy. He wore beaded chains around his neck and was missing a whole bunch of teeth. Getting through life without all your teeth? Hard to imagine anything worse.
“I’ll take two pounds.”
“How’d you like that done?”
“Raw.”
The next thing I knew I was making quick work of the best steak I’d ever tasted, and you can take that to the bank, except you couldn’t, the steak being gone. This took place outside the car, right off the paper wrapper, the food truck guy in the window smiling the whole time. After that, I lapped up a bowl of water and another, felt like me. I sat myself down in front of Bernie and waited.
“What?” he said. “What?”
He didn’t know I was waiting for him to say, Second, let’s get you fed again? That had been the plan, at least as I remembered it.
Then from the food truck guy came a big surprise. “I reckon he wants to do it all over again.”
“Can’t be,” Bernie said. “You saw what he just downed.”
“So how come he’s barking like that?”
Bernie gave me a look. “Could be anything. Cool it, Chet. Let’s go.”
We went. I tried to cool it but couldn’t for the longest time, on account of it couldn’t be anything! The food truck guy hit it on the nose, whatever that might mean, the human nose being mostly wrong in my experience, or not even in the picture. Finally, Bernie said, “Chet! I can’t hear myself think!”
Uh-oh. Bernie’s thinking was one of the best things we had going for us at the Little Detective Agency, Bernie having come up with so many thoughts in our career that I couldn’t remember any. I got a grip.
“Whew,” said Bernie. We turned onto the rutted road that led into the swamp and stopped by the dock where Little Jazz was tied up. Bernie switched off the engine.
How nice to sit by the bayou, just the two of us parked in the shade of a skinny tree that wasn’t providing much shade at all, but it was still nice. Bernie patted his shirt pocket, took out the cigarette pack he’d bought in the city—I hoped it was the same one—and shook out the last cigarette in there. He crumpled up the pack.
“Final smoke ever, I swear,” he said.
I always liked hearing that. Bernie lit up, let smoke curl from his nose and mouth. I felt his whole body relax.
“Time for a mental list,” he said.
So exciting! We hadn’t done mental lists in way too long. I waited to hear, mental lists being pretty much a mystery to me, and also Bernie’s department.
“Item one,” he said. “You need a new collar.” He gave me a close look. “Sure like to know how you lost the old one.” He took another drag. “What went down in the boat, big guy? How many of them were there? Get a good look?”
The boat? What boat would this be? I’d been on so many boats lately, after a whole boatless lifetime, that I couldn’t even begin to keep them all in my mind. I took a swing at it anyway: there w
as Little Jazz, of course, and the pirogue. Hey! Was I off to a good start or what? I left it there for the time being.
“Item three,” Bernie was saying. I got a vague sort of feeling that maybe I’d missed something. “I don’t like getting hit on the head and now it’s happened twice.” He glanced at himself in the mirror. “Tired of people looking at me funny,” he said, losing me a bit more: why would something that crazy ever happen? He opened the glove box, took out the Swiss Army knife, found the scissors and snip snip cut the stitches out of his forehead. Bernie kept talking the whole time, but taking in this new side of him—he was as good as any doctor, or better!—used up all my concentration. “Unrelated coincidence?” he might have been saying. “Don’t know about you, Chet, but I’m thinking about that Pyro dude who told us Cleotis had split for Houston. Wish to hell I’d seen—huh, literally—what he had up his sleeve, but let’s suppose it was a Q. Where does that take us?”
No idea, and all this was impossible to follow. Not only that, but memory of another boat I’d been on was coming to me . . . coming, coming, coming, and boom! There it was: Mami’s boat! I could actually see it in my head. Amazing what the mind could do. No comparison to the body’s ability, but still it was nice to have both. I’m one lucky dude.
“. . . bringing us to item six,” Bernie said, mashing the cigarette butt in the ashtray and turning to me. “How come you don’t like Wes?”
Bernie gave me a close look. I gave him a close look back. My tail came alive, doing what it could from its somewhat cramped position kind of trapped under me on the shotgun seat. I agreed with my tail, if that makes any sense, not always the case, if that, too, makes any sense: this was nice, me and Bernie just chillin’ by the bayou. That was what my tail was selling me and I bought the complete package.
Bernie smiled. “I get the feeling you’re way ahead of me, big guy.” Me? Ahead of Bernie? Never! We were side by side, to the max. His eyes got an inward look, the way they did when an idea popped up in his mind and demanded attention. “Suppose . . . suppose Wes actually has no cats,” he said. “See where I’m going with this?”
I did not, but anyplace without cats sounded good to me.
“And it’s testable,” Bernie said. “Cats or no cats—either way a solid fact. Which is what we need right now in the worst way.”
Bernie reached toward the key in the ignition like he was about to turn it and start us up, and then his gaze fell on Little Jazz and he paused.
“I’m an idiot,” he said.
Bernie’s a great one for jokes. Once we went to a comedy club downtown with some cop buddies and they had a few drinks and some betting went on and all of a sudden Bernie was onstage doing a trick I’d never seen with a tower of beer cans and a volunteer from the audience who turned out to be a safecracker on the lamb. The laughs he got that night! Although he hadn’t seemed to recall much about it next morning, and we never visited a comedy club again.
Instead of heading out for a spin, which was what I’d sensed coming next, we got out of the car and stepped onto the dock. Bernie walked along it the whole length of Little Jazz, his eyes on the boat all the time, and then back the other way.
“What do I know for sure?” he said.
Give me a hard one! Everything was the answer. Bernie knew everything for sure, the whole enchilada, although enchiladas themselves were a bit of a puzzler. I’d once scarfed down not one but two quick whole enchiladas—pressed for time in a restaurant kitchen that might not have strictly speaking been part of the case—and while I had no complaints, there was no comparing enchiladas to lamb kebabs, for example, or baby back ribs.
“I had a picture book when I was a kid,” Bernie said, “about these two miners who start digging into a mountain from opposite sides and meet in the middle. Now that I think about it, my interest in mines probably started with that book.”
What a great story, probably the greatest story I ever heard! Bernie: just when you think he’s done amazing you, he amazes you again.
“Never liked a story with a moral,” Bernie said. “Don’t like to be hit on the head.”
I gazed at his head, still wrapped in the bandage, although it was nice the stitches were gone. Poor Bernie. I hated him getting hit on the head, didn’t like getting hit on my own head either.
“But the moral of the miner story is that there are always at least two approaches.” He crossed the wooden gangplank to Little Jazz’s deck, me following and then somehow ahead. “Can’t tell you who we surprised in here, but I know what he was up to—searching the place. Did he find what he was looking for after I was out of the picture? I’m betting you didn’t let that happen, big guy. So that’s our angle into this particular mine—we’re going to rip the place apart.”
Little Jazz was a mine? News to me, but I didn’t worry about it for a moment. If ripping a place apart is on the agenda, you have my full attention.
TWENTY-SIX
Ripping places apart was a kind of search. We’ve done searches out the yingyang, me and Bernie, most of them lots of fun, some not. The worst was when we opened up that broom closet in the tidy little kitchen of a tidy little house in Vista City. Too late. Oh, no: too late. I never wanted to think about that, but it came into my mind anyway, sometimes at the oddest times, like when Charlie falls asleep on the couch on one of those days we have him, and I just sit close by, watching him sleep. We’ve solved every missing kid case we ever took, except the broom closet one. Which was how I thought of it, although the girl’s name was Gail. The look I saw in Bernie’s eyes: I’ll never forget it. Later that night, we’d taken care of justice on our own, which I also won’t forget, even though Bernie had said we should. “Lock it in a deep dark place, throw away the key, and never think about it again.” I’d tried so many times.
We boarded Little Jazz. The sun was high in the sky, a yellow sky, so hot and heavy, and the bayou looked kind of yellow, too. I stuck my head over the side rail, opened my nostrils and did a quick search of my own. Good news: no trace of Iko’s scent. Not that I was afraid of Iko. Don’t think that for a moment.
The long rubber tube I’d last seen snaking out of a hole in the deck was still there. Bernie knelt to examine it.
“Clues all over the damn place,” Bernie said. “Didn’t actually check out any of this when I came to—not priority one at that moment.”
No? What could be more important than clues? I didn’t get it.
Bernie’s gaze went to a dark, dried-up bloodstain on the deck. “Who belongs to that?”
Cale Rugh, if I remembered right, and of course I did. When I’ve tasted someone’s blood, he tends to linger in my memory.
Bernie came over to me, gave me a pat, the slow and thoughtful kind. “If there’d been a body on board when we first came here, you’d have known, right?”
What a question! There hadn’t been any body on board, wasn’t one now.
“So we can rule out the creepy possibility that Ralph’s been on this boat the whole time,” Bernie said. “But suppose whoever we caught searching it wasn’t searching. What if they were bringing him here, step one in a plan that ended in a fire? See where this leads? Even if some remains got found, it would look like the strange but accidental death of a loner no one understood in the first place. So let’s go sniff around.”
Sniff around? For what? There was no body on board: hadn’t we just been through that?
We sniffed around the boat—living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and through a hatch door on the upfront—bow! I kept forgetting and it kept coming back to me!—part of the deck. Bernie actually sniffed once or twice himself. Even when you were doing something completely useless you could still find lots of fun in life.
“It was a search then, for sure,” Bernie said. He went into the kitchen, knelt by the sink. “So we pick up where the searcher left off. A search,” he added, his voice sinking down to muttering level, “a sharper guy would have done the moment we first came aboard.” I realized that picking
up on mutters wasn’t one of my strengths: I must have heard wrong.
The door to the cabinet under the sink already hung open. Bernie gazed inside, then started rooting around, and out came sponges, brushes, detergents, steel wool—big mistake, chewing on steel wool, and there’d be no repetition of that, I wasn’t even tempted—paper towel rolls, an old coffee pot, a bunch of rags, a jar full of rusty nails.
“So much junk in life,” Bernie said, his head now inside the cabinet, making him a bit hard to understand. “How about we start over, say around ten thousand BC?” Ten thousand BC? That had come up before, a total mystery to me. I moved a little closer in case Bernie was about to explain what it was all about. Instead, he reached in deeper, stretching his body flat out, and said, “Wonder what this thing does? Part of the garbage disposal, or—”
Whoosh! A whole big—maybe not river, more like a fire hose thing—gush of water came blasting out from under the sink, followed by Bernie, his hair plastered flat against his head, the top half of him soaked right through, and then all of him, and me, too! And the gush kept gushing! Meanwhile, how exciting to see Bernie with his hair plastered flat like that! Like he was a different Bernie! But still Bernie! Hard to explain. Next thing I knew, we were crowded under the sink together, Bernie grunting and struggling and using some of the words Charlie wasn’t supposed to hear, and me just crowding. Then came a metallic clang and the gushing ramped way up, no question about it. Bernie and I went rolling and sliding across the watery floor. It was almost like surfing!
“The main!” he shouted. “Gotta find the main!”
Did that mean we were done with surfing, so soon? Yes. Things were moving fast, but that was just the way I like them. We ran out of the kitchen, out of the cabin—some confusion in the doorway, me ending up in the lead—onto the deck, back around to the hatch in the bow, and dove right down through it, me actually diving, Bernie sort of falling. Down below—the only light entering through a small round window up high on the wall—he picked himself up, me helping, and looked around wildly. I could hear water flowing across the deck above.
The Sound and the Furry Page 20
