Dog On It (7 page)

“Maybe a bit.”

Bernie rose. Me, too. Enough of this chitchat. It was time to crack this case the way we usually do, with me sniffing out the perp. Bernie handed Tim his card. “Anything new comes up, anything you forgot, call me right away.”

Tim nodded. “You think Ruben’s like, um . . .”

“We’re going to find out.”

We left. On the way, I made a quick detour under the kitchen table, scarfed up the Cheerios. The honey-coated kind: my favorite.

Now entering Modena,” said Bernie, honking at a low-rider car that swerved in front of us. “What we’ve got here is waste-land, pure and simple.”

Wasteland smelled good to me: grease and nothing but, all kinds of grease—pizza grease, car grease, french-fry grease, human-hair grease. I was sitting up as tall as I could in the shotgun seat, taking in everything, my nose quivering. We were in a great mood, me and Bernie, on the job—not some horrible divorce case but our specialty, missing persons. Bernie was wearing one of his best Hawaiian shirts, the one with the martini-glass pattern. I wore my brown leather collar with the silver tags; I’ve also got a black one for dress-up.

“You know what this used to be, Chet? And not so long ago? Ranchland, as far as the eye could see.”

We’d gone to a ranch once, me, Bernie, Charlie, Leda. Don’t get me started on horses—prima donnas, every one, dim and dangerous at the same time. I preferred Modena just like this, greasy and horseless.

We turned onto a side street, the pavement all cracked and
full of potholes, the houses on either side small and worn-down. Bernie stopped in front of one of them. He unlocked the glove box, took out the gun, a .38 special, stuck it in his pocket. That didn’t happen often.

“Just a precaution,” Bernie said. “Let’s go.”

I hopped out.

“All better, huh?” said Bernie.

All better? All better from what? What was he talking—Oh yeah. I gave myself a shake. Bernie opened the gate. We crossed a dirt yard with a dusty couch in the middle of it, rusty springs sticking out here and there. Bernie stepped up to the door and knocked.

A voice sounded inside. “That you, Decko?”

“Yeah,” said Bernie.

The door opened. A guy looked out, a young guy, and huge. His eyes, narrow to begin with, narrowed some more. A real big guy with slitty eyes: I didn’t like him, not one little bit.

“You’re not Decko,” he said.

“Very acute,” said Bernie. I missed that one: He was calling this guy cute? That wasn’t Bernie. “I’m a private investigator,” Bernie was saying. He held out his card. The guy didn’t even glance at it. “I’m looking for a former Heavenly Valley High student named Ruben Ramirez.”

“Never heard of him.” The guy started to close the door. Bernie stuck his foot inside. I’d seen that move before, one of Bernie’s best.

“No?” Bernie said. “What’s the RR stand for?”

“Huh?”

“On the gold chain around your neck,” Bernie said. “That RR.”

The guy fingered the chain, the thick, heavy kind. His lips moved, but he couldn’t come up with anything.

“How about Roy Rogers?” Bernie said. “There’s one right around the corner.”

“Huh?” the guy said again. I was a little confused myself.

“Tell you what, Ruben,” Bernie said. “Now we’ve got the introductions out of the way, how about we go inside, sit down, sort this all out?”

“Sort what out?” said Ruben.

“This case we’re working on.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about it.”

“A missing-persons case,” Bernie said. He had a way of just plowing forward, a way Leda had never liked. But I did. “Turns out the missing person’s a friend of yours, a Heavenly Valley sophomore named Madison Chambliss.”

“Never heard of her.”

Bernie nodded, this nod of his that had nothing to do with agreement. “I’m getting a real funny feeling, Ruben, a funny feeling that she’s inside your house right now.”

To my surprise—and I’m pretty sure Bernie’s, too—Ruben turned out to be one of those huge guys who could also move. I barely saw what happened, and I doubt Bernie even caught a glimpse. Ruben’s fist, bigger than a softball—a kind of ball I had no use for at all—flashed up from under with a whoosh of air and caught Bernie right on the point of the chin. Bernie didn’t go down—it took a lot to put Bernie down—but he staggered back. At that point I saw red, despite Bernie’s belief that I’m incapable of seeing red. The next thing I knew, Ruben and I were in the house, rolling around on a sticky floor.

I got a real good grip on his pant leg. Ruben wore very wide pants—I had a whole mouthful. He grabbed something off the floor, a lamp, maybe, and started beating me on the head. “Gonna kill you,” he said, and called me a lot of bad names. I growled at
him and held on. And then Bernie was there, down on the floor with us. He got his arm around Ruben’s thick neck, in one of those grips he knew, and Ruben went all floppy.

Bernie rose. “Okay, Chet, let him go. C’mon, boy, you did great, now let go. Chet?”

I let go, maybe not right away. Denim scraps hung from my mouth, snagged on my teeth.

Bernie picked them out. “Good man. You all right?”

Never better. I didn’t feel a thing. Bernie turned, went quickly through the house. I stood over Ruben. His eyes fluttered open. I barked in his face. He flinched. You’re not the first, buddy boy.

Bernie came back. “She’s not here,” he said. “But you’ve got some interesting weapons, Ruben.” Bernie had an AK in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other. “And all that dope—what do you think? Eight, nine pounds?”

Ruben sat up, rubbing his neck.

“It can stay our little secret,” Bernie said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to Ruben, the shotgun pointed casually at his head, “the weed, the guns, but I’ll need your cooperation about Madison.”

“Get your fuckin’ dog away from me.”

“Language,” said Bernie.

“Huh?”

“Can’t talk to Chet that way.”

Ruben blinked. “Get your dog fuckin’ away from me.”

“Good enough,” Bernie said. “We’re pretty reasonable, Chet and I.”

Ruben gave me a funny look. Like what? Like I wasn’t reasonable?

But I backed off, as Bernie wanted. And backing off, I noticed a half-eaten burger on the counter, a burger with the works. Didn’t touch the thing. Made no sense, but I just didn’t feel like it.

Bernie tapped Ruben’s shoulder with the shotgun, not hard. “Madison Chambliss,” he said. “Start talking.”

“Like, whaddaya wanna know, man?”

“Take it from the movie line at the North Canyon Mall.”

Ruben shrugged. “I was hanging out there, cruisin’ around, and she goes, ‘Hey, Ruben.’”

“So you knew her already.”

“Yeah.”

“From where?”

“Huh?”

“From school?” Bernie said. “Were you in any classes together?”

“Classes, man? Nah.”

“Was she a customer?”

Ruben looked at Bernie, then at me. I had this sudden urge to give his leg a nip.

“Yeah,” Ruben said. “A customer. She goes, ‘Hey, Ruben,’ and we talk a little, she’s in the market kind of thing. So we swung by here.”

“And?”

“I sold her a nickel bag.”

“And then you drove her home?”

“Yeah.”

“Where does she live?”

Ruben didn’t answer. I inched closer to his leg, staying in the sit position but dragging my butt along the floor.

“Or did you drop her at the mall?” Bernie said.

“Yeah, the mall.”

“Want to hear a prediction?” Bernie said. “Your future’s not too bright.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s move on. When was the last time you saw her?”

“Say what? That was the last time.”

“How about two days ago?”

“Two days ago?”

“Thursday,” Bernie said. “When Madison disappeared.”

“She disappeared?”

“Want a tip?” Bernie said. “Only smart people can pull off playing dumb.”

“Don’t get it, man.”

I was one short lunge away now. My lips curled back from my teeth all by themselves.

“Account for your whereabouts,” Bernie said, “starting from Thursday morning.”

“Thursday morning?” said Ruben. “I was still at County.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was locked up, man. They got me for speeding Wednesday night, found some warrants. I didn’t make bail till a few hours ago.”

Bernie gave him a long look. Then he put the AK aside and took out his cell phone. “Damn, no service.”

“Wanna use mine?” Ruben said.

Bernie used Ruben’s. He dialed a number. “Gina? Bernie Little here. Trying to confirm processing times for a possible recent booking down at County, name of Ruben Ramirez.”

We waited. Ruben gazed at my teeth. The biting urge—I hardly ever get it, but when I do, oh boy—grew stronger.

“Thanks, Gina.” Bernie clicked off, handed Ruben his phone. “Your story checks out.”

“You gonna apologize?”

Bernie laughed. I loved Bernie’s laugh. There’s this crazy run I do in the yard, zooming back and forth, that always works.

“What’s funny?” Ruben said.

Bernie stopped laughing. He tapped Ruben’s shoulder with the shotgun, this time much harder. Ruben winced. “Paying attention?” Bernie said.

“I was at County, man. Why the hell—”

“Forget that part,” Bernie said. “How did Madison get home from your place?”

“Already told you,” Ruben said. “I drove her.” Or something like that. I didn’t really hear because at that moment my jaws were suddenly clamping around Ruben’s leg. Not hard, no blood drawn or anything dramatic, but the big baby let out a scream like he was being ripped in two. “All right, all right, I didn’t drive her. Call off your damn dog.”

“Language.”

“Oh God, come on, man.” Ruben wriggled around on the floor.

“Chet?”

I unclamped. It took everything I had.

“Maybe take a moment or two, Chet.”

Bernie was right. I walked around a bit, snapping up the burger in an absentminded way.

“If you didn’t drive her,” Bernie was saying, “how did she get home?”

“She walked out, that’s all I know.”

“Into a bad area? Why would she do that?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“Think,” Bernie said. “We really want to know, Chet and I.”

Ruben glanced at me, fear in his eyes, no doubt about it. I was licking burger juices off my lips. “Nothin’ happened,” he said. “I was feelin’ a little romantic. She wasn’t in the mood.”

“You don’t look like the romantic type.”

Ruben frowned in a thoughtful way, like maybe he was learning something about himself. “I didn’t touch her,” he said. “Or hardly. She just walked out.”

“In what direction?”

“Toward Almonte.”

“You watched?”

“I wasn’t really watching her,” Ruben said. “There was this strange car out front.”

“What was strange about it?”

Ruben raised and lowered his heavy shoulders. “Not from around here.” He looked toward the window; there was tape on one of the panes. “Maybe the dude offered her a ride.”

“What dude?”

“This blond dude in the car. He opened the door as she went by, kind of held out his hand.”

“Held out his hand?”

“You know,” said Ruben. “To stop her. But she didn’t stop. Maybe even started running, now I think of it. Up to Almonte, kind of thing.”

“And the blond dude?”

“He got back in the car, drove off.”

“After her?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Think.”

Ruben squeezed his eyes shut. Time passed.

Bernie sighed. “What make was the car?”

“A Beamer,” said Ruben. “Which was how come I noticed in the first place.”

“Model?”

“Don’t know the models.”

“Color?”

“Blue.”

When Bernie was worried about something, his eyebrows got closer together, and his eyes seemed to be looking inward. That was happening now. On the way back to the car, I sprayed markings on the gate and maybe one or two other spots.

We tried the convenience store on Almonte. No one there remembered Madison. I started worrying, too, about what I didn’t know.

Here’s a scenario,” Bernie said, starting to lose me right off the top. “It makes sense, but I kind of wish it didn’t,” he went on, finishing the job. We were driving up our street, Mesquite Road. I spotted Iggy, watching from the window at the front of his house. He spotted me, too, and barked, a bark I couldn’t hear. Iggy ran back and forth behind the glass. I stood taller in the shotgun seat and turned toward him, ears cocked. Then he was out of sight.

“Suppose,” Bernie was saying, “that someone tried to snatch her twice. Madison might not even have realized what was going on the first time outside Ruben’s, maybe wrote it off to routine hassling from some creep. But even if it scared her—and I don’t think it did—didn’t Tim Fletcher say she hadn’t seemed upset?”

Bernie paused, glanced over at me. Tim Fletcher? Who was he again?

“The point is, scared or not, she wasn’t about to tell her mother, because that would have led to the unraveling of the
Dr. Zhivago
cover story. See where this leads?”

I didn’t. How come Ruben Ramirez wasn’t the perp? He looked and smelled like so many perps we’d taken down.

“It leads,” Bernie said, “to the conclusion that this wasn’t spur-of-the moment but a premeditated snatch. Whoever it was failed the first time, coming out of Ruben’s, and got her the second, how and where to be determined. And if that’s true, we’re looking for a blond guy in a BMW. A blue BMW, according to Ruben—maybe not the most reliable witness.” He paused. Car identification, colors: neither of them my strengths, although I knew blue, the color of the sky and also Charlie’s eyes. Bernie turned in to the driveway. “And wasn’t the car in the mall that—”

He cut himself off. All this talk of cars, and now here was another one in the driveway, big and black, unfamiliar to me.

Bernie parked on the street. A man got out of the big black car, came toward us. We got out, too. The man was about Bernie’s height but not as broad; he had a goatee, which always caught my attention, and I was staring at it when his smell reached me, the very worst smell in the whole world: cat. The man in our driveway smelled of cat. It was all over him.