Dogs (2 page)

Jess Langstrom walked into his office at 7:30 on Thursday morning to find six of Suzanne's pink “While You Were Out” slips on his desk. He poured himself a cup of coffee, but before he'd had even one sip, Suzanne herself emerged from the bathroom, even more breathless than usual. “Jess—did you see? Did you?”

“See what? What've we got, a whole herd of deer hit on the highway?” The way commuting was picking up, Jess wouldn't have been surprised. More and more people living in northern Maryland, or even over the state lines in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and commuting to D.C. to work. Three or four hours a day in the car. Crazy.

“No deer. They're all dog bites!”

“Dog bites?”

“Six! Dogs! That bit!”

Suzanne, always inclined to hyperbole, had now puffed up with it, taller and, somehow, even bigger busted. Which was saying a lot. Twenty-two and gorgeous, Suzanne was the first member Jess had ever met of that fabled group, cop groupies. Not that an Animal Control Officer was exactly a cop, but Suzanne was resourceful enough to work with what was at hand. So far Jess had resisted her blandishments. She was twenty-two to his forty; she was his subordinate; she was an airhead. Enough said.

That she turned up in his wet dreams was not said, nor would it ever be.

He studied the six slips of paper. Suzanne was an airhead, but she gave good message: who, what, where, when. Four people had left messages overnight reporting bites from dangerous dogs; two more had called in the last twenty minutes. In all six cases, someone had sought medical attention, and in all six cases, now someone wanted Jess to do something about the dangerous dogs.

He scowled at the pink bits of paper. Four point seven million people in the United States were bitten by dogs every year, and seventeen percent of those went for medical attention. In fact, medical help was sought for a dog bite every forty seconds somewhere in the country. But six bites within twelve hours here in his own small jurisdiction—what were the odds of that?

It didn't matter what the odds were. It only mattered that he took care of each out-of-control animal. “Okay, where's Billy?”

“Not in yet.”

“
Get
him in.”

“You want me to call him, Jess?” Suzanne took one step closer to him.

“Yes, I want you to call him! And tell him if he's not here in ten minutes, he's fired. God, he only lives across the street.”

“Tough guy,” Suzanne murmured, gazing up at him from under her lashes. Jess retreated to his car.

Three minutes later Billy Davis—at thirty-eight, he still didn't want to be called “Bill”—tumbled into the car beside Jess. His shirt was half-buttoned and he smelled of sex. “Hi, Jess. Sorry about being late. This little lady from the Moonlight Lounge—”

“I don't want to hear about it,” Jess said, and hoped that Billy knew he meant it. Both of them knew that Jess tolerated Billy, his lateness and unreliability, only for old-time's sake, although Billy was a very good animal handler when he settled down to it. One look at Jess's face and Billy settled now, buttoning his shirt and saying professionally, “What we got?”

“Six dog bites since closing last night.”

“Six?”

“That's what the man said.”

“Who? Give me the slips.”

Jess did, starting the car and peeling out of the parking lot, a bit of juvenile acting out that only made him irritated with himself as well as with Billy. “You were supposed to be on call last night, Billy. How come you didn't answer any of these?”

“Never got the calls,” Billy said blandly. “Telephone system must be screwed up again. You know last month it didn't route to my cell, either.”

Jess said nothing, and Billy knew enough to shut up. He started making the call-backs while Jess drove to Susan Parcell's place out Old Schoolhouse Road.

It was a small country farmhouse gussied up to look a century older than it really was: new fieldstone chimney, cast-iron coach lights, faux Federalist detailing. As Jess pulled up, a man raced outside, carrying a plastic garbage bag.

“Wait!” Jess said. “We're from Animal Control, we received a call that—”

“You're too late,” the man said brutally. “I shot the bitch!”

Jess and Billy glanced at each other. The man looked distraught, unshaven, wild-eyed. Billy's hand rested lightly on the gun at his hip. Jess hoped suddenly that "bitch" referred to a female dog.

The man resumed his rush toward his car. Deftly Jess stood in front of the driver's door and said soothingly, “Look, this will just take a moment, I promise. We need some basic information. Are you Mr. Parcell?”

“No, Parcell is my ex-wife's maiden name, she took it back after the divorce. I'm Daniel Kingwell. Look, I have to go back to the hospital, I just came to get some of Jenny's things, Big Pink, she never goes anywhere without it—” Abruptly he looked away.

Jess could just discern the outlines of a pink stuffed animal of some sort bulging within the plastic bag. “Jenny is your daughter, Mr. Kinwell? The dog-bite victim? Please tell me briefly what happened.”

The man seemed to respond to the tone of voice. It was Jess's chief asset, that voice. Deep and soothing, it could calm when others failed, elicit information others could not. Billy was a better animal handler and, Good Ol' Boy that he was, a better shot. Jess handled that most difficult animal,
Homo sapiens
.

The man talked in quick, agitated bursts. “I came last night to pick up my kids for the evening… Sue decided she wanted to live all the way out here in the country, even though driving up from D.C. is…never mind that, I'm sorry, I'm a bit…we were in the kitchen when Donnie, my son, let in Princess. He said she'd been gone for a day or two, she's been the family dog for years, and she was always such a sweet…she's old, too! Nearly eleven! She attacked Jenny and bit her neck and face and…I tried to get her off. Princess just wouldn't let go. Then Sue tried and I ran out to my car and got my gun from the glove compartment and shot Princess. We called 911 and an ambulance came and—I have to go!”

“Of course you do,” Jess said. “Just three more fast questions, sir. Do you have a license for that gun?”

“Yes!”

“Was Princess up-to-date on her rabies vaccinations?”

“Yes!”

“And where is the dog's body now?”

“Inside!”

Billy, making Jess's promised three questions into four, said, “Can we go in? Do we got your permission?”

“Yes!”

Jess and Billy mounted the steps. Jess could get the rest of the information he needed from 911, county records, and Tyler Community Hospital.

The kitchen matched the outside of the house: tasteful, ersatz Early American. Copper pans hanging overhead, farmhouse table, pie safe in distressed oak. Princess lay on the kitchen floor, a hole in her side, blood and tissue spattered over the faux plank floor. Jess could imagine how the scene had looked last night, everybody screaming, the little girl's head in the dog's jaws. He pushed the picture away.

Billy said, “Funny.”

“What is?”

“Female golden retriever, nearly eleven years old, spayed, no sign of foam on the mouth, winter months…she don't fit the profile for a biter.”

This was true. Male dogs were six times more likely to bite than females, unneutered more likely than neutered. Among serious bites, over half were inflicted by pit bulls, Rottweilers, and German shepherds. Even the season was unusual; most bites happened between April and September. The only thing that fit the profile was that fifty percent of all dog attacks were on kids.

Jess said, “What do you make of it?”

“Don't make nothin' of it,” Billy said cheerfully. “I'm no vet. Let's get a tarp and get this ol' girl out of here. Doc Venters is gonna want a look at this one.”

They went back outside. Daniel Kingwell had not left for the hospital after all. He stood slumped by his car, his cell phone in his hand, the tears freezing on his face in the morning winter air.

If you are an FBI agent, you cannot marry an Arab.

This was not official policy. No one at the Bureau would publicly endorse it, advocate it, or admit it.
Cowards
, Tessa thought as she parked downtown in an overpriced, nearly full commercial lot. She'd lost her parking privilages at the Bureau, of course, when she quit.

She'd lost a lot of things in the last three months.

In December, Salah had been killed by a drunk driver who failed to navigate DuPont Circle at midnight. No covert international plot to terrorize agents by knocking off their spouses: the scared and achingly remorseful drunk had been a seventeen-year-old celebrating his high school's basketball win. His blood alcohol level was 0.12. Nonetheless, the Bureau had investigated, and had come up empty. Tessa believed it. Salah had not even been Muslim. He was a lackadaisical Catholic, a convert during the long, expensive Parisian education provided by an old and rich Tunisian family who had cooperated with the West since the French ruled North Africa.

They'd met while Tessa was on vacation in Greece, a ten-day tour sponsored by the Smithsonian. He'd spotted her in a taverna, asked her to dance, and made off with her heart. This was something no one had done in thirty-five years. Tessa usually went very slow with men, postponing the inevitable, messy end so as to savor the sweet beginning. It was different with Salah; everything was different with Salah. She danced with him, made love with him, and ran every possible deep-background check on him, his family, and his friends.

It all came up clean. Two months later, she married him. He moved to D.C. and took a job at the World Bank, who were overjoyed to hire a native speaker from one of the few Arab countries friendly to the United States. Suddenly money was not a problem in Tessa's life. Salah and she bought a townhouse on Capitol Hill. They redecorated, gave dinner parties, made love. Tessa was happy. The only fly in the truffle was that she kept being passed over for promotions she deserved, promotions her outstanding record had earned.

But not, of course, because she had married an Arab. There was no such official policy.

She hiked up E Street to the Hoover Building, thinking for the thousandth time that it looked like an ugly, lopsided fortress, and stopped at Security. “Hello, Paul. John Maddox called me back in.”

“Yes, ma'am, he called down about it. Good to see you back, Agent Sanderson.”

“It's not Agent Sanderson anymore, Paul. But thank you.”

“I'm afraid you have to go through the metal detector. And can I have your bag and coat, please?”

Tessa submitted to having her purse and jacket searched, and to walking through the metal detector. Paul said fumblingly, “You're looking good, ma'am.”

“Thank you again.” She made for the elevators.

Well, she
was
looking good. She'd planned it that way. New coat in her favorite dark red, short skirt, red lipstick, shine gel in her black hair. No way she was coming back here looking either like a whipped frump or like an agent wannabe, in dark pantsuit and no make-up.

“Hello, John,” she said to Maddox; Mrs. Jellison had waved her right in. “What intelligence chatter concerns me?”

“Right to the point, as always,” Maddox said. “Sit down, Tessa. How are you doing?”

“Fine. What intel chatter?”

He grimaced, a weird movement of mouth and eyes she'd come to know well over the years of working with him. It meant he didn't like what he had to say but was going to say it anyway. “I can't show you the direct translations, Tessa, not anymore. All I can say is that your name and Salah's have been reported as turning up in conversations with overseas agents. In Paris, in Tunis, and in Cairo. So I need to run some other names by you, people we're watching, and see if you can put any of it together. Hakeem bin Ahmed al-Fulani?”

Tessa shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

“Aktar Erekat?”

“No.”

Maddox went through more names; Tessa had heard of none of them. She said, “What else has been consistent throughout the reports? Anything?”

Maddox hesitated, then said, “Nothing.”

“Uh-huh,” Tessa said. The hesitation meant there was more but Maddox couldn't officially say so. Not to her, not anymore.

“Does the chatter look amateur?” Amateurs babbled—before, during, and after attacks. They bragged to family, colleagues, friends. Pros said nothing. In terrorism, silence was the mark of the truly dangerous. The FBI hadn't known the Oklahoma City bombing was coming until it happened.

Maddox said, “I can't tell you that, either.”

“What are you doing looking at Arabic-language intel reports, anyway?” That was not within Maddox's area.

“I wouldn't be looking at them if your name and Salah's weren't in there.”