The Sound and the Furry (14 page)

“How about explaining why you suspect Ralph?” Bernie said. “Is there any actual evidence?”

The sheriff leaned forward, looked Bernie in the eye, tapped his fingertip on the
desk, just the once but very firmly. “Don’t like that phrase, ‘actual evidence.’ Not
the way you said it.”

Bernie made no reply.

“I suppose,” said the sheriff, sitting back a bit now, “the Boutettes told you they
can’t get justice in this town.”

“Can they?” Bernie said.

The sheriff took a deep breath and let it out real slow through his nose. That made
a sound I like a lot—wind through the trees only a lot smaller—but the point is that
when humans do that, it means something’s going on in their mind, exactly what was
a mystery.

“They’ve got it into their messed-up heads that we’re mortal enemies going back to
the Civil War,” the sheriff said.

“A Zouave uniform dispute, I believe,” Bernie said.

“You’re kidding,” the sheriff said. “They went into that?”

“The Zouave thing I heard elsewhere.”

“Mind telling us where? Just out of curiosity.”

Bernie hesitated. Didn’t see that very often. I could feel him thinking. “Mack Larouche,”
he said. “The shrimp dealer.”

“There’s a surprise,” Scooter said.

“But it could have been anybody,” the sheriff said. “The whole parish is crazy.”

“Batshit crazy,” Scooter said, hanging me up right there. The night a bat flew into
the house, back in the Leda days, and Bernie chasing after it with a broom, swatting
and swatting the air! Had I ever been more excited in my life? Those screams of Leda’s:
I can still hear them. Had the bat left any poop behind? Would I have missed something
like that? Does the bear shit in the woods? That was too much. I lost the thread completely.

“. . . but,” the sheriff was saying some time later, “this so-called feud is a figment
of their imagination. Or totally one-sided. We—meaning the Robideaus—are long past
it. Even if we weren’t, I’m running an up-to-date, by-the-book operation here. There’s
no room for any of that nonsense.”

“Good to hear,” Bernie said. “But I witnessed a little scene between the two grannies
that didn’t look too friendly.”

“Excluding them, I should’ve added,” the sheriff said. “They’re beyond hope. But here’s
how I know Ralph was in on the heist. One—Lord Boutette’s not smart enough to conceive,
plan, or carry out anything like that. He can barely conceive, plan, and carry out
taking a piss. Two—Ralph’s taken off.”

“But Ralph’s known for being on the straight and narrow,” Bernie said.

Or something of the sort. What was that piss thing again?
Was anything in life easier? I’d have to rethink Lord from the ground up.

“True,” the sheriff was saying. “But he’s a Boutette first and always. Family is number
one.”

“And what about you?” Bernie said. “Robideaus first and always?”

The sheriff made that single fingertap again. “The law is first and always,” he said.
“At the moment, we only want to pull Ralph in for questioning. And in that spirit,
Scooter’s going to start canvassing the town, and he’s also going to file an MP ASAP—”

“I am?” said Scooter.

“—with a five grand reward, the maximum our budget perm—”

“I thought it was—” Scooter began.

“Scooter?”

“Yup.”

“ASAP meaning now.”

Scooter rose, scraping his chair in a way that hurt my ears, opened a door at the
back of the room, reached around the corner, grabbed a set of keys off a hook, and
closed the door. Then he went out the front and headed for a cruiser. But I wasn’t
really watching that. Instead, my attention was on that closed door at the back of
the room. The door had only been open for a moment, but I’d glimpsed another room
behind it, and in that room a dude was sitting at a desk, wearing headphones and glancing
up in a startled way. A sort of familiar dude in a dark suit. Familiar from where?

I glanced at Bernie. He was listening to the sheriff, maybe had missed that back room
scene.

“You’ll have our complete cooperation,” the sheriff said.

Bernie nodded.

“In exchange for yours.”

“Understood.”

A sort of familiar dude in a dark suit. Wearing headphones, which was why . . . why
he’d taken off his small-brim cowboy hat, which had been hanging on the wall behind
him! The dude from Donnegan’s who’d offered us a high-dollar gig, the details gone
from my mind, if they’d ever been there: Cale Rugh.

Bernie and the sheriff looked my way.

“What’s he barking about?” the sheriff said.

“No idea,” Bernie said.

“Nice looking dog. Think he’d like a treat?”

“Safe bet.”

But this wasn’t about a treat! This was about Cale Rugh, sitting in the back room
with headphones on, and that startled look on his face. Something was wrong.
Bernie! Open that door! Check out the back room!
I kept barking. The sheriff gave me a Milk-Bone, the very biggest size. I stopped
barking.

“Wanted a treat, all right,” said the sheriff.

“Looks that way,” said Bernie.

Or something like that. The Milk-Bone had pretty much my whole attention. Did that
make them right about me? What a thought! It broke into many, many pieces and zipped
on out of my mind.

N
otice how the Robideau brothers are kind of educated and smooth—even a bit unregional—and
the Boutette brothers are not?” Bernie said as we drove back across the bridge. “How
did that happen?”

No clue. I felt a Milk-Bone crumb on my muzzle—I’m pretty good at feeling things on
my muzzle—and made short work of it.

“Are families the key?” Bernie continued, or maybe we were on to something else. “Not
just in this case, but in everything?” Everything: wow. Not so easy to think of everything
at once, but that was Bernie. “How about mine for starters?” he went on.

Bernie’s family? This was interesting. Starting with for starters, there was his mom,
a piece of work who sometimes comes to visit—take last Thanksgiving—bringing her own
gin and calling Bernie kiddo. “Never feed a dog at the table,” she says. “He’ll get
into bad habits.” But at the table she sneaks tasty morsels to me behind her back,
so maybe I didn’t get what she meant; plus the bad habits thing is a new one on me.
Then there’s Charlie, of course, and also Leda, back in the pre-divorce days. Who
else? I waited to hear.

Bernie turned off the bridge, drove by the dock on the Boutette side of the bayou,
his eyes on something far away. “My great-grandfather, Ephraim Little, graduated from
Princeton. My grandfather went there for two weeks and then hopped a steamer out of
Newark. My dad didn’t even get through high school. Then the downward escalator stops,
sort of, and I end up at West Point—but a total fluke and only because of my high
school baseball coach. What does that all add up to?”

No clue there either, and if escalators were involved, I wanted no part of any of
this. I’d been on an escalator once. Never again. I’m the type who likes to get up
and down stairs on my own. Meanwhile, huge dark clouds were taking over the sky, making
the houses and the trailers and the bayou and the trees all look small. I kept my
eyes on those clouds.

“And what about Charlie?” Bernie said. “Where’s he headed?”

Charlie? He was a great kid and I loved him. Other than that, I had zilch.

Bernie pulled up in front of a trailer raised up on blocks. The sign in front was
shaped like a member of the nation within. This was a vet’s clinic: the smells can’t
be missed.

“Chet?” Bernie looked down at me. “What are you doing on the floor?”

I was on the floor? Maybe so, but why the vet? Did a bullet once take a little notch
out of one of my ears? I knew something about that, but if so it was long ago. I was
feeling tip-top, hadn’t been shot at in ages.

Bernie laughed. Something was funny? “C’mon, big guy. This has nothing to do with
you. Are we working a case here or what?”

We were working a case at the vet? I remembered nothing about that, but if Bernie
said so then . . . then I didn’t have to remember. Hey! With Bernie around, maybe
I didn’t have to bother
remembering anything at all! My mind could be free just to . . . just to . . .

At that moment the phone buzzed.

“Hey,” said Bernie.

Captain Stine’s voice came over the speakers, harsh and hoarse, like he partied every
night, although in fact, according to Bernie, he never partied, not even back in his
college days.

“How’re you doing?” he said.

“Fine,” Bernie said.

“Still in one piece?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No particular reason,” Stine said. “Spent much time in the Lone Star state?”

“Not recently,” Bernie said. “I was based at Fort Hood way back when.”

“Make any enemies while you were there?”

“Spill it.”

“I was enjoying working up to this at my own pace,” Stine said.

“Have your fun elsewhere,” Bernie said.

Stine laughed. He had the kind of laugh that sounded like it needed oil, if that made
any sense, which it didn’t, but too late now. “And here I thought we were buddies,”
Stine said.

Bernie said nothing, one of his best techniques, if that hasn’t come up already.

Stine stopped laughing. “We got an ID on the Quieros dude who tried to take you out.
Angel Melendez, Guatemalan national with no visa or green card, living in Houston,
second ward.”

“Never heard of him.”

“And the Quieros?”

“We’ve been through that already.”

“Maybe you offended one of them without knowing it,” Stine said. “They’re very touchy,
what with all that machismo shit they have to carry around twenty-four seven.”

What a horrible job those guys had, whoever they were. I couldn’t help feeling bad
for them.

“Nothing like that happened,” Bernie said.

“Nothing like you offending someone happened?” said Stine. “Did I hear that right?
Must be a bad connection.”

“What do you want to do?” Bernie said. “Score easy points off me or solve the case?”

“Right back at ya,” said Stine.

Click.

Bernie looked at me. “Know what I think?” I waited to hear, ears cocked way up high.
“It was a car theft job gone wrong, with a second dude around somewhere, maybe getting
scared off when I came outside.”

Second dude? Could I have missed that?

Bernie smiled at me. “I’d bet the house you sniffed out a second dude that night,
could clear this all up in a second.”

Bet the house? But I hadn’t smelled a second dude, not a whiff. I barked at Bernie,
a bark of the sharp and loud attention-getting kind. Losing the house was out of the
question.

Bernie laughed. “I’m right, huh?” I barked again. He laughed some more. I barked some
more. He gave me a pat. “That’s enough, big guy. Let’s get to work.” I tried to hit
the brakes on the barking thing, maybe didn’t quite get it done. “Ch—et?”

We hopped out of the car. I gave myself a good shake, not the long kind that goes
from head to tail and back again—no time for that if we were on the job—but enough
to clear my mind. The feeling of a clear mind? One of my favorites. And it’s a feeling
I get
just about every day! We climbed a couple of cement block steps and entered the vet’s
trailer.

There was a small room in front, the rest of the trailer walled off. Behind those
walls all sorts of barking started up right away, plus some meowing. The person at
the desk was the kind Bernie calls a no-nonsense woman—I knew that from the expression
on her face: a square-shaped face that had been in lots of weather, a face you often
saw on no-nonsense women. She looked at me, then Bernie, back at me, then raised her
voice.

“Knock it off.”

The barking and meowing stopped at once. That was when I noticed the bird in the woman’s
hands, a black-and-white bird with some orange here and there, although it was hard
to be sure about the colors on account of the bird being covered practically from
beak to tail with some oily stuff. It had small eyes the same color as the oily stuff,
but they weren’t fierce the way birds’ eyes usually are. Instead, they looked dull
and even . . . not happy. Not that birds ever seemed happy to me, but this particular
bird was actually sad, no question about it, and even though birds are way down on
my list, I got a sudden urge to give it a lick. How crazy was that! Especially with
the bird being covered in all that gloop, which I didn’t want anywhere near my tongue.

“You the vet?” Bernie said.

“Uh-huh,” said the woman.

“I’m Bernie Little, and this is Chet.”

Her eyes shifted toward me. “Something wrong with him? We’re closed right now—I forgot
to put up the sign.”

“Nothing wrong with Chet,” Bernie said. “Is that a tern?”

“Black skimmer,” said the vet, dabbing at a folded wing with a cotton ball.

“Was there an oil spill?” Bernie said.

The vet’s lips, already thin, got thinner. “Not that I’m aware of.” She picked up
a fresh cotton ball, dipped it into some liquid, wiped off a blob of gloop. The vet
had big strong hands, but her grip on the bird was kind of loose.
Take off, bird. Fly away.
I tried to make the bird get a move on with my mind, if that makes any sense. Not
to the bird: it didn’t even twitch.

“Is it going to be okay?” Bernie said.

The vet had dark eyes, almost as dark as the bird’s, and now they turned fierce in
a very birdlike way. “Almost certainly not. And if you’re not here for an emergency,
we’re closed for business right now, like I said.”

“I don’t know for a fact that it’s an emergency,” Bernie said. He laid our card on
her desk. Her glance moved over to it.

“You’re a detective?”

“Hired by the Boutette family to find Ralph.”

She looked quickly up at Bernie. “Did something happen to Ralph?”

“He’s missing.”

The vet opened her mouth to say something, but Bernie spoke first.