Dead Dogs and Englishmen (28 page)

“Here's where the game begins in earnest.” Cecil leaned close. I felt his excitement as his breath brushed across my ear. He gave a short, happy laugh.

“Knock,” he ordered. “Go ahead. Knock.”

I reached out, keeping one hand clamped over my nose against the odor of him, and tapped at the wooden door with one knuckle.

“I said knock. Give it a good one,” he ordered, poking the gun barrel against my spine.

I balled my hand and hit the door hard.

“Listen.” He put a finger to his lips, shushing me. “Move in closer. Put your ear to the crack. You'll hear …”

“Please …” The word came from the room beyond the heavy door.

I listened harder. “Jeffrey?” I yelled and pounded hard at the door.

There was nothing. After a while the voice, very weak, almost unrecognizable, called again, “Emily? It's dark. There are … dead bodies in here.”

“Oh my God, Jeffrey. People are coming …”

The gun dug into my back. “Would you like to join him?” Cecil was close, whispering at my ear.

I turned to face him. The worst he could do was kill me.

“Let him out of there, you bastard.”

He pushed the gun against my stomach, slowly, looking as if he enjoyed the closeness. “Think of it as punishment for trespass. I found him where he didn't belong. Like that other agent, the woman. But don't worry. He won't last much longer.”

Cecil cocked his head back and gave me a speculative look. “But you, Emily. You've hurt me badly, all that twaddle about my book being no good. Why, I think you're the evil one. What a cruel thing to say to another person. Especially when you haven't the talent to recognize good writing when you see it.”

He backed off and motioned again with the gun, forcing me down the hill toward an octagonal building I could only partially see. “I've something better for you. Wait until you see. Remember the sheep? Oh, this is so much fun.”

I walked ahead of him feeling as if I'd left my real body behind. There was a disconnection, a truly out-of-body moment, when my brain took me from where I was, who I was with, and what was happening to me. As if I stood aside and watched with interest, as I was prodded on down the path, my mind noticed dandelions still in bloom, it noticed that the sky, to the north, was getting dark, and that my shoe was loose, as if my feet might be shrinking.

I forced myself back to Cecil and the gun, watching for an opening to elbow Cecil in his stomach, or trip him and fall on top of him while grabbing the gun, or I would point at something and distract him long enough to run.

All I had to do was stall. If I kept my head, it would be over soon. Dolly and the other cops would get there. Jeffrey would be released.

“You killed Lila.” I pretended the idea had never occurred to me before.

“You know I didn't. I was in the hall with you.”

“Then Toomey did it for you. He killed for you, like a trained dog.”

“Oh, you've guessed our little secret.” He sighed. “She was useless. And she really was leaving me. Can you imagine? Not with Jackson Rinaldi. No, Lila's death was just for fun. Ending the party with a death. What a lark! Like one of our English mysteries—death in the library and all of that. Noel would have loved my twist on
Blithe Spirit
.”

As we made our way down the grassy slope, I turned to look hard behind us, expecting cops with guns coming up over the slope of the fields to our left. For a second I thought I saw Dolly, ducking behind the corner of a tall corn crib. I was sure that was her head. But the sun was high and hot, blinding me so I saw nothing but grassy slopes and more buildings.

“Where are we going?” I dug my heels into the grass.

“You'll be amazed,” he chortled as he put his fat hand on my neck and squeezed. I thought I was going to fall to my knees. My disgust at his touch was nearly more than I could take. I tried shaking him off but he only laughed again and hung on. There was no stopping what he planned for me.

“Too bad it has to be the way it is—if only you'd been smart enough … well, here we are.”

We stopped in front of the almost-circular barn. The building was gray with a dark-green metal roof, no windows. It had the look of a fortress. The double door was shut, and locked. I heard the jingle of keys behind me. Cecil reached around and put a key in the lock, turned it, and easily pushed the door aside. I kept my eye on the gun as much as I could. I looked over my shoulder for what I figured was a last time and prayed I'd see Dolly creeping toward us, ready to take Cecil Hawke down at any minute.

As the door opened, sound came at me. Growling, barking. Dogs waiting to attack, or attacking. There was a cacophony of snarling and yipping—a dog in pain. I looked down hard into where he was forcing me and was instantly blinded by high overhead lights. Then blinded again as Cecil, chuckling behind me, turned on more lights.

That awful cologne of his got into my nose. It was thicker than before. It mixed with his sweat and his apparent sexual arousal. The smell of him was feral.

The room, what I could see with part of it in glaring, white light and the other in deep shadow, was some kind of amphitheater. There were benches—rows of them going down from shadowed places toward a central, brightly lighted circle. The lights focused on that central pit. There were no ropes. Only a waist-high wall surrounded the ring that wasn't a ring.

The barking started again. Snarling—louder than I'd ever heard.

Cecil prodded me forward. Pushing me toward a row of rough steps between the benches. I had to watch my footing. Though the center of the building was well lighted, the aisle was shadowy, the steps crude and steep.

I stumbled, and grabbed at a bench. My mind ran back and forth. There had to be something I could do. A moment when he would be off guard. I looked ahead of us, down into the dirt ring below.

Dogs. There were two bloody dogs down there. The growls and screams were terrible as the dogs locked in mortal combat.

I looked at my feet. That was all I could think to do: watch where I walked; hold on tightly to every row of benches; move ever so slowly. Dolly would be there.

One slow step …

I wasn't going to let him get me all the way down to the pit. I would run. Let him shoot.

I knew one thing—I wouldn't go into that pit where two dogs were tearing at each other's throats.

One bench at a
time.

He didn't hurry me now. He stepped down as I stepped down, talking to himself from time to time, laughing, then waiting behind me.

I bent forward, feeling my way along the crude wooden benches
until there was only a single row of benches between me and the edge of the pit where I hesitated, thinking hard and fast, listening for something behind us.

I felt Cecil's foot at my back. I gasped as he kicked me hard, sending a burst of pain around my kidneys. I fell forward, into dirt and sawdust, where I lay sprawled. As good a place as any to hang on, I told myself. He poked me with the toe of his shoe, then bent and put the gun down beside my ear. I got up slowly, grabbing at the edge of the wall in front of me. Once on my feet, I glanced over the wall into the pit.

I stared straight into hell.

The dogs were huge, and yellow. Both had torn strips of flesh hanging from their bodies. On one I saw the white flash of an exposed bone. Bloody spittle flew around their heads as they shook, quivers running along their sides and flanks.

The place stunk of shit and heat. Overheated—all of it. If death had a single stink, I was smelling it.

Off somewhere up around the edges of the arena, other dogs barked and howled, and rattled cages.

“
Mad Dogs and Englishmen …”
Cecil sang in a falsetto voice, maybe mimicking me, a woman, or Noel Coward, or just enjoying himself. I didn't care. I pretended to trip again, falling sideways. As I fell I twisted my body, kicking out hard at Cecil, catching him midway, in the stomach.

He grunted and fell to his side, down into the dirt. He righted himself immediately, before I could roll out of the way, or move. He leaned toward me and pushed the gun against my right cheek. The cold barrel hurt my teeth. It would go off now and I was too tired to care.

“That was good, Emily.” He was in my face, his eyes cold, even amused. “I was afraid you were going to go without a fight. Wouldn't that have been a shame? We've had such a good jousting relationship. You've really made for a great game. I'd hate to have you disappoint me now.”

He pulled me to my feet, the gun going to the back of my head, forcing me against the wall that came to just above my waist. I put out a hand, grabbing the edge and steadying myself. As my fingers closed on the concrete, one of the dogs flew toward me across the pit, teeth snapping at the hand I pulled back just in time.

I tried to fall off to the side, maybe push my body so close to the wall he couldn't move me, but Cecil pressed his body against mine, closed his arms around me, and whispered something I was too panicked to hear.

I thrust hard, with all I had left in me, against him, keeping my face from the edge of the wall where, I knew now, one of the dogs could spring up and tear my face off. I used all my force, but Cecil was too strong and had too good a position behind me, bearing down, his body close and hard so the wall of the pit pressed into my stomach. There wasn't an inch of room anywhere. He forced my face higher above the wall.

I looked into the pit through blood streaming into my eyes, trying see where the dogs were. One had moved to the other side of the ring. It stood there, bleeding from bites all over his body, watching me as if in speculation: how much of a leap it would take to pull my head off.

The other dog stood at the exact center of the dirt pit. I breathed hard and looked at him. He could be at me in a second.

This dog bled too. Ragged tears of skin hung from his body. His sides heaved in and out with what he'd already been through. His breathing was loud. It rattled over the barking of the caged dogs behind us.

Cecil lay against me, whispering things I wouldn't hear.

The dog I stared at had only one eye. The other eye was sewn shut, running with fluids and with blood.

Freddy.

I would have laughed, if I could. Cecil was going to throw me to Freddy, a dog I'd tried to befriend.

I looked at the one-eyed dog and held my breath. Freddy looked back at me, that one eye wild and murderous. He was crazed with the smell of blood and by his own pain.

Cecil stopped pushing me. I felt a hand at the waistband of my jeans, and one at my hair, pulling.

“All for you, Emily,” he said and lifted me into the air. I was going over the edge. I tried to get a hold on him, reaching out for his jacket, his eyes—anything I could hang on to or gouge out, but I felt the cement of the wall scrape against my bare stomach.

There was a sudden, hard crash from behind, straight at me. Cecil was off my back, flailing at the wall as I had been, his gun arcing into the air. He was over the edge into the pit, with someone hanging on to him. A blue uniform. A flat hat flying.

Dolly fell into the pit with Cecil, hitting him with everything she had as Cecil fell to his knees and hands. Dolly was on him when he tried to crawl away from her. She straddled his back and choked him.

I screamed, watching the dogs stand at attention, interested, then taking a step closer to the two rolling bodies.

“Dolly.” I threw myself as far over the wall as I could reach. “Take my hand!”

She turned wild eyes at me and then back down at Cecil. She pushed his face into the muck of the pit. The toupee was gone. There was no hair to hang on to so she grabbed the ears and pushed his face back into the muck. For a moment he lay there stunned as she scrambled off his back and reached up for my hand.

I grabbed on to her and pulled. She used her other hand to grasp the wall, then moved her feet up the cement. With a deep grunt, she launched her body hard over the top and down beside where I stood, still hanging on to her. She lay there for just a moment. Then the moaning began. She grabbed at her stomach.

Behind us I heard the running feet of the big cops I'd prayed for. Brent was there. Omar was there, kneeling beside Dolly.

“Get an ambulance,” I yelled at them. “Don't let her lose her baby.”

When I got to my feet and looked back over the wall, Cecil stood clumsily, bent double, his face smeared with excrement and dirt.

Freddy watched, standing very tall and straight, his head high, ears up like a show dog's. He looked at Cecil with an almost quizzical twitch of one of his eyebrows.

Cecil hissed something, then hissed again. Maybe a signal for Freddy to kill the other dog.

For a brief moment, Freddy turned that one seeing eye up toward me. It burned with something buried there. Freddy began to move, not away from Cecil but toward him. There wasn't time for me to look away. I stood frozen, the way Cecil Hawke was frozen, staring at his dog.

Around me, no one moved, or made a sound.

Freddy took a few more hesitant steps, then broke into a run. He leaped high, hitting Cecil with tremendous force so his body rose up and backward. Freddy grabbed his master by the throat, sinking his huge teeth into flesh and then, with snapping sounds, into bone. He began to shake the man.

Cecil's screams went on until one of the cops near me took out his gun.

The sound of that single shot overpowered everything else in the echoing building.