Animal Appetite

by Susan Conant

  And, unbelievably, Kevin Dennehy still wasn’t home. “Damn!” I told the dogs, whose restlessness was increasing by the minute. “Damn! I really am sorry. One more quick phone call, and he’ll be here, and then I’ll feed you.”

  As the words left my mouth, I heard a soft metallic jingling and a muffled bang. My heart pounded. The dogs silently moved to the kitchen door. Even more eagerly than usual, they stood there wagging their tails. Rita’s high heels clicked reassuringly on the floor of the back hallway. The jingling: her keys. The bang: the opening of the outer door. Rita’s heels tapped up the stairs. Overhead, Willie, her Scottie, barked a welcome.

  “Truly, guys, I’m sorry,” I said. “Any minute now.”

  Rita informs me that a moderate level of anxiety has a beneficial effect on intellectual performance but that terror makes you stupid. In retrospect, it’s clear that I should have called Rita and Cecily to warn them to stay inside and, above all else, to let no one into the building. Instead, I phoned Estelle Grant and got stuck listening to her blather about some New York literary agent’s supposed interest in Multitudes in the Valley of Decision. I tried to be patient. Estelle’s dreadful novel was, after all, what had precipitated my call. What was it she’d said? Something about how vital it was to start with what you know. One of her characters had obviously been based on Jack Andrews, another on Shaun McGrath. The house of prostitution was a transformation of the publishing house. In the novel, the house was raided by the police. The real rats appeared, as did the poison. If Jack, Shaun, the press, the police, the rats, and the poison, why not Randall Carey?

  Multitudes in the Valley of Decision. The material Estelle had gathered. The preponderant material in the book? Leather.

  Breaking in recklessly, I demanded, “Estelle, have you ever happened to run into a guy named Randall Carey?”

  “Oh, him! Hey, let me give you some advice. Stay away from him. He’s really . . . Well, chacun à son goût”—she paused to translate—“to each his own and all that, and if that’s what appeals to you, I don’t have a problem with it, but if you ask me, he’s . . . Well, of course, the literary act is one thing, and it’s certainly necessary to connect the passion to the prose and so forth, and if that’s what you—”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “Well, then, stay away from him.”

  “You met him at Damned Yankee Press.” It wasn’t a question.

  “He had an appointment with Jack.”

  “On Friday. The Friday before Jack was murdered.”

  “Yes. And as usual, everything there was in total chaos, and Carey ended up having to wait around in the front office. Elsie was there—I mentioned her to you—and one or two of the part-time people, and they were all supposed to be working on mail orders that, per usual, were all backed up, and Shaun breezed through and yelled at everyone, especially me, of course, because everything’s always the temp’s fault. Anyway, I gave Randall Carey some coffee, and he sat around, and then Jack finally got around to seeing him. And then, by the time he finished seeing Jack, it was five o’clock, and when he was on his way out, I was leaving, and he asked me out for a drink.”

  “You went with him.”

  “Stupid me. First of all, he took me to this place with leather seats, not that that’s telling in itself, really, but the fact is that he was very supercilious and condescending and snide. I should’ve gone home.”

  “Did you talk about the rats? And the poison?”

  “Not then. Not that I remember. We probably did while he was waiting to see Jack. We must’ve, because I’m sure it was Friday when Jack finally threw that poison out. And Friday wasn’t even trash day! So that’s where Shaun got the poison, of course, out of one of the trash barrels in back of the building. He heard us talking, and then he came sneaking back over the weekend and went through the barrels until he found the poison. I know we were all talking. In case you wondered, not a lot of work got done around there.”

  He overheard. He snuck back sometime during the weekend. He found the poison. Yes, he did. But he was not Shaun McGrath.

  “After Shaun, uh, breezed through, did you talk about him?”

  “Probably. I know he yelled at everyone, so we would’ve. Yeah, we must’ve.”

  “And after you had a drink with Randall Carey?”

  “I’d really rather forget it. Art is one thing, but . . . I found it very humiliating.” In complimentary tones, she almost whispered, “And I’m quite sure that you would, too.”

  “I’m sure I would. Estelle, have you seen Randall Carey since then? Around the Square? Have you ever . . . ?”

  “Once or twice, but I’ve hightailed it in the opposite direction.”

  “Estelle, besides, uh, other things, that evening, did Randall Carey ask you about Jack Andrews? His habits, his schedule, anything like that?”

  “The fact is that I had too much to drink. And then later, we did some dope, and . . . You won’t mention this, will you? Because once Multitudes comes out . . .”

  “It’s strictly confidential.”

  “The fact is,” Estelle confided, “that what I can’t remember I’d greatly prefer to forget.”

  I wished Estelle success with her novel and hung up. The Dennehys’ outside lights were still illuminating Kevin’s empty parking place. Rita’s heels and Willie’s nails clicked quickly down the back stairs. Shooing Rowdy and Kimi out of the way, I moved toward my kitchen door to warn her to let no one in. As I opened the door to stick my head out and speak to her, she opened the outside door.

  Randall Carey stepped in.

  CHAPTER 32

  Rita continues to blame herselfi. She shouldn’t. How could she have known? She tells me that it never occurred to her to be suspicious. It wasn’t as if Randall Carey had had a shaved head and worn black leather studded with metal and emblazoned with the emblem of some notorious gang. On the contrary, he wasn’t even wearing that stupid-looking tweed hat. His suede jacket and khaki pants were unexceptional, and the weather was cold enough to justify his leather gloves. Nothing about his appearance that night gave Rita any cause for alarm. What must have been the sudden pallor of my face might have concerned her, but by the time Randall Carey had a strong grip on my kitchen door, she and Willie had clattered down the outside steps.

  I have repeatedly asked myself what I should have done. Screamed? Bolted? Hollered to Rita to run and call the police? Even if I’d tried to shriek, I’m not sure I’d have succeeded. The muscles in my throat felt frozen, and my mouth and tongue were almost painfully dry. What impeded me from barging through the door or turning around and fleeing through the front of the house was, I am sure, my ingrained habit of never, ever giving the dogs a chance to get loose. I cursed myself for following the safe practice of storing my revolver in one closet, the ammunition in another. I could, I suppose, have dashed to the side yard and shouted for help. Leaving Rowdy and Kimi to follow? Leaving them alone with Randall Carey?

  He stepped into my kitchen and closed the door softly behind him. The leashes hanging there swayed back and forth. I must assume that Rowdy and Kimi sensed that something was wrong. Instead of jumping on Randall Carey or even greeting him in their ordinarily hospitable fashion, they stood calmly on either side of me.

  “Hannah,” Randall Carey said.

  Holly, I wanted to insist. Holly, not Hannah. I said nothing.

  “I have come to offer my most profuse apologies.” Carey’s customary self-mockery was missing. He looked soft, round, and harmless.

  I cleared my throat. “I have lost all interest in Hannah Duston,” I said hoarsely. “I’m not destined for the scholar’s life. I don’t have the training. Besides, the world of academe is much too gory for me.” In a gesture of helplessness, I raised my right hand to my breast. In my ears, my voice sounded hollow, distant, and scared. I hoped that Randall heard it as the falling petal of a frail flower.

  He didn’t reply immediately, but ran his eyes around my kitchen until his gaze locked on t
he stack of books and papers that rested on the counter. Leah’s list of references was there, of course, the list that included his own dissertation. So was the photocopy of Lewis Clark’s book. Without turning his back to me, he took a couple of roly-poly, plump-boy steps across the linoleum and caught sight of the photocopied book. I edged backward. The dogs backed up with me. In teaching them correct heel position, I’d trained them to ease themselves toward me or away from me, forward or backward, as needed. They seldom, however, backed up without a reminder. In any case, heel position—place, as I tell the dogs—means sitting at my left side, and both dogs were standing squarely, Rowdy on my left, Kimi on my right.

  Words came to me unbidden, and not pagan words, either: “And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” If Randall Carey hurt me or my dogs, I hoped that whoever judged him showed no compassion. Those whose “tender mercies are cruelties,” I thought. The phrase was one that Cotton Mather had used to describe Hannah Duston’s captors. Its source? The Book of Proverbs: “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

  I inched backward. Again, the dogs moved with me. At the edge of my vision, to Rowdy’s left, was the door to the kitchen closet. Not far beyond it lay the interior hallway. In the hallway was the coat closet where I’d stowed the ax. Beyond the hallway was the front door.

  Randall Carey reached into the right pocket of his suede jacket and took out a small glass bottle. From his left pocket he produced a plastic packet of what it took me a second to recognize as raw hamburger. Until then, Rowdy’s eyes had been fixed on my face, and Kimi had been looking back and forth between Randall Carey and me. Now the raw meat captured the dogs’ exclusive attention.

  “Eighteen years ago,” he said plaintively, “nobody gave a sweet goddamn about women and Indians.”

  Through the back window of the kitchen, I could still see Kevin’s empty parking spot. My mind’s eye was fixed on the image of the ax. “Jack Andrews did,” I said.

  Randall held up the small glass bottle and tilted it admiringly back and forth. He might have been a little boy administering chloroform to a butterfly.

  Stalling desperately for whatever time it would take Kevin to get here, I said, “Just to satisfy my curiosity, how did Jack get hold of your dissertation?”

  Randall Carey sneered. “Foley sent it to him. Without my permission. With a letter explaining that one of his graduate students had produced a dissertation worthy of publication that might be of interest to the general reader.”

  “Jack Andrews was a former student of Professor Foley’s. They were old friends.”

  “Of course.”

  “So why didn’t Jack Andrews just go to Professor Foley? No, wait! I know! Jack Andrews did the same thing that Professor Foley did eighteen years later. They both wanted to give you the chance to turn yourself in. They didn’t want to do it.”

  “The expression that eludes you, Hannah, is to rat. Fitting, isn’t it?”

  Again, Hannah! Again, I made no protest.

  “They wanted you to go and confess to Harvard yourself. They didn’t want to rat. But in your own way, you sure did make them squeal.”

  “Your mind is unpolished,” Randall informed me, “but not entirely devoid of potential.”

  “Speaking of potential,” I said, sneaking a glance out the window, “here’s the thing I don’t get. Why did you bother? Why didn’t you just write your own dissertation?”

  He gave a chuckle that I think was supposed to sound British. “Money, madam! Filthy lucre! The unfortunate state of my financial affairs forced me to act in haste. In those days—perhaps the rule has changed—one had to be registered for the semester in which one received one’s degree. My course work was done, my pockets were all but empty, and Harvard”—here, he stretched out his patrician vowels—“and Harvard, Fair Harvard, expected me to hand in an acceptable dissertation instanter or fork up for the next semester.”

  “How long did Jack Andrews give you to turn yourself in?”

  “A fair man. A gentleman. He attempted to die like one. I watched. Common sense forced upon me that repugnant precaution. Alas, the man was an addict. All too common, far too common in one of a refined sensibility. Addicted to caffeine. On that Friday, the first of November, he called me to his offices, a rat’s nest, I might comment, to grant me a week in which to settle my affairs, as he put it, and present the full truth to the esteemed George Foley, who, if the veritas be known, probably hadn’t done more than scan the pitiful work before officiously shipping it off. On that occasion, I noticed that the fellow Andrews was hopelessly addicted to caffeine, which he consumed in the form of coffee from a large thermos. On the following Monday, supplied with the means of my salvation and having made an appointment with Mr. Andrews to discuss my supposed crime, I returned after that ridiculous excuse for a publishing house had closed for the day, I waited for my opportunity, I medicated the coffee, and I tarried to observe.”

  “Professor Foley didn’t give you a week, I gather.”

  “The code of the gentleman is not, alas, what it once was. He demanded immediate action. I obliged. But enough of all this. ‘The time has come,’ as the Walrus said. Rats, I find, are a great convenience. One is so tempted to set out poison.”

  “I have dogs. I would never put out rat poison.”

  “Your devotion, my dear Hannah, is apparent.”

  “My devotion is very well known.”

  “Having accidentally killed the beasts, you would unhesitatingly swallow the stuff yourself.”

  I said nothing.

  “I am,” Randall said, “engaged in a deep internal debate, to wit, whether ’tis more fitting to dose you first and permit your stalwart guardians to stand by as you perish, or whether to let you survive to savor the sight of your hairy friends as they consume their din-din.” Unwrapping the raw meat, he said, “The latter, I suppose. One is pulled in both directions.” He placed the hamburger on the counter next to the copy of Lewis Clark’s book. With infinite care, he unscrewed the cap on the glass bottle.

  “Stay,” I quietly told the dogs. The ax called to me. I could almost feel the familiar handle in my hand.

  Lights. Headlights. In Kevin’s spot. Through the window, I saw Kevin heave his bulk out of his car.

  What did I have to lose?

  Desperate to sound an alarm, I shot my arm past Rowdy to the door of the kitchen closet, the closet where I store the dry dog food. How much was left in the forty-pound bag? Half, I thought: twenty pounds of premium, meat-based kibble. Rowdy bounced and whined. Kimi yelped. As Randall Carey tipped the poison bottle over the raw meat, I wrenched open the closet door and shoved my way past the hungry dogs, who already had their noses to the bag of dog food and were already jockeying with each other. Rowdy, who’d started out next to the closet, was the first to force his head deep into the bag, but with a deep, menacing snarl, Kimi nipped at his neck and hurled herself on top of him. As Rowdy swung his head around to administer a painful lesson in the perils of stealing his food, Kimi took advantage of his momentary inattention to ram her head past his and straight into the bag.

  I grew up with big dogs. From my earliest days, I’d been warned never, ever to tease a dog with food and absolutely never to try to break up a dog fight. Another prohibition went without saying: It never occurred to my parents that I’d deliberately trigger a dog fight. What’s more, with the peaceable golden retrievers of my childhood, the task would have been difficult. Two rivalrous males would’ve quarreled over a female with a come-hither scent; nothing but the eternal canine triangle, however, could’ve persuaded our sweet-tempered kennelmates to turn on one another. I certainly hadn’t had to tether my goldens at opposite ends of the kitchen to give them dinner. Rowdy and Kimi were devoted to each other. Malamute devotion, however, had nothing to do with sharing food.