Dogs (3 page)

“Bernini is taking it that seriously?”

“He is.”

“So are we about to go Code Red because of me?”

Maddox let that one go by.

Tessa leaned forward. “Are
you
taking this seriously?”

Maddox seemed to realize that they were now talking about more than a few Arabic/English transcripts. He said carefully, “We investigated Salah pretty thoroughly when you married him.”

“And has anything happened to make you change your mind about him since then? Has it? You know the goddamn answer is no!”

“Calm down, Tessa. Take an even strain.”

She didn't want to take an even strain. She didn't want to be sitting here, didn't want this stupid fucking slur on her dead husband's name. Salah had loved his adopted country. And he'd been a peaceable, sweet-natured man. He had never, not once in his prematurely ended life, had anything to do with anything destructive, let alone terrorism. To even
imply—

“Have a tissue,” Maddox said.

“I don't need a tissue, damn it! And if you wanted to be so fucking sympathetic about Salah, you should have come to his funeral!”

Maddox stood, walked to the window, walked back, sat again.

“I'm sorry, Tessa. I wanted to go. More than you can know. But—and I'm not telling you this, please, you didn't hear it here—there was a memorandum. From Bernini.”

“The A-DIC said for people to stay away from Salah's
funeral?
”

“He was thinking that so many agents massed in one place…especially so many from counter-terrorism…it would have been a perfect target for an incident.”

“I was
domestic
counter-terrorism!”

“I know,” Maddox said. Of course he knew—he was Special Agent in Charge for domestic counter-terrorism. “I tried to argue Bernini out of it.”

“He always was a prick,” Tessa said, something she never could have said if she still worked here. She stood. “Is that all?”

“I have to ask you one more question. Please don't get mad, and please consider it carefully. Is it at all possible, under any circumstances, that there was more to Salah's life
after
you married him, after both you and the Bureau finished clearing him, than he might have told you?”

Shock held her immobile for a moment. That Maddox, who had known Salah personally, who had sent them a wedding gift, who had brought his wife Jennifer to dinner at the Capitol Hill townhouse, could even suggest…even Maddox….

She managed, with dignity from God-knew-where, “No. It is not possible. I knew everything important about Salah's life. Good-bye, John.”

He stood, too. “I don't have to tell you not to say anything about this to anyone or—”

“Eat it,” Tessa said, which wasn't fair, because Maddox was basically a good guy. It was Bernini that she wanted to curse at, but she couldn't reach him.

“Take care, Tessa,” Maddox said, holding out his hand.

She ignored the hand. But at the door she turned. “John, you asked me a hard question, and now I'm going to ask you one.
Was
I passed over for promotion all those years because I was married to Salah? The truth, between old colleagues.”

He gazed at her, said nothing. The silence stretched on.

“I thought so,” Tessa said, held her chin high, and left the Hoover Building. Good riddance.

But in her car, she allowed herself to rest her head for a moment on the cold steering wheel. Bright sunlight poured through the windshield, deceptively warm. Horns honked and cars streamed through downtown D.C.

Who was talking about her and Salah in Paris, Tunis, and Cairo? And why?

Steve Harper didn't like dogs, and never had. They were messy, noisy, potentially dangerous. Like all cops, he'd seen a lot of trouble caused by dogs:
Your dog shit on my lawn. Your dog's barking keeps me up nights! Keep that dog away from my garbage can/flower bed/kids or else! Officer, I'm calling to report a loose dog. The dog bit the mailman
. The world would be a better place if people kept cats, and kept them inside.

Then he and Diane had Davey, and suddenly dogs were a part of Steve's world. Davey seemed to have been born loving dogs. If a dog existed within three blocks, Davey knew it. He lurched upward in his stroller and shouted “'Oggie!” and the dog always ran to him, licking his face in a germ-laden mutual love fest. Steve didn't like it but Diane just laughed. “It's in his genes,” she said. “He's probably part terrier himself. Look at that sharp little face and wet nose.”

Steve hadn't thought that was funny. He still didn't.

“Come on, Davey-Guy, we're going to Grandma's. Daddy's got to get to work.”

“'Oggie!”

“No 'oggies.
Grandma
.” Steve tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. None of this was Davey's fault. The little guy couldn't help it that his whore of a mother had run off with another man, or that his father was so stressed out juggling his job with full custody. Not that Steve would ever turn Davey over to Diane, that cheating bitch.

He got Davey into his snowsuit and drove across town.

Steve's mother took Davey from him at the front door. “Here's my little angel…you have time for coffee, Stevie?”

“Can't, Ma, I'm already late.” He pushed the stroller, laden with a huge bag of diapers, clothes, bottles, toys—God, the
stuff
a two-year-old needed!

“Leave the stroller on the porch here, we're going to the park. Can you believe this weather for February?”

“Yeah, it's great, 'bye, thanks.” Steve escaped to his patrol car. His mother was great, and God knows what he'd do without her, but she never shut up.

He had started the ignition and pulled away from the curb when the brown mastiff raced around the corner.

Fast—faster than possible!—the dog sprinted to the porch and leapt up the steps. Steve slammed on the brakes and grabbed his gun. His mother screamed. She tried to maneuver around the stroller to back through the front door, but with Davey in her arms she wasn't quick enough. The mastiff sprang, knocking her backward over the stroller.

Steve tore toward the house. By the time he reached the doorway, the mastiff had dragged Davey from his grandmother and was shaking him violently in his jaws, like a terrier with a rat. Steve fired at the dog's hind end, to avoid hitting Davey, again and again, until his nine-millimeter was empty.

There was a spun-out moment when the brown mastiff raised its head and looked straight at Steve. A single long string of saliva and blood hung from its mouth, obscenely connecting the dog to the child. Then the mastiff toppled sideways.

Steve grabbed Davey. It was too late. Davey's eyes stared, sightless, at his father. Steve's mother went on screaming, a shrill ragged sound, but Steve barely heard her. All he could hear, in a strange bubble of silence and disbelief, was Davey. His son, joyously crying “'Oggie!”

“Another one?” Cami Johnson said disbelievingly.

“Yes,” the charge nurse said, the phone still in her hand. “They're coming in red, ETA five minutes. Six-year-old boy, unstable, set up the trauma room with the peds cart. Dr. Kirk is still in OR, and I've called in Baker and Olatic. Move, Nurse!”

Cami moved. The charge nurse at Tyler Community Hospital scared her, but that was all right because the other nurses had reassured Cami that Rosita Perez scared them, too, and they'd been here a lot longer than Cami's two weeks. However, not even Rosita was as scary as what was happening in the ER this morning.

Three dog bites, and a fourth one in an ambulance on the way in. And one, the little Kingwell girl, had died.

Cami had seen her when she came in, bleeding and torn up…her poor little face…why did people own vicious dogs like that? Especially people with little children? Cami had no kids, she was only twenty-one and this was her first ER duty, but she had a dog. A very gentle half-collie, Belle. Cami would never own any breed that could hurt anyone. She—

“Move, move!” Rosita. Cami was moving as fast as she could, but Rosita never let up. Well, maybe that was okay, even if the other nurses didn't like it. The Tyler Community ER was very well run, everybody said so. Last year they'd gotten an award for it.

A mini-van pulled up under the portico and Cami rushed over.

This patient was an old lady and the bite was on her leg. Blood and shredded flesh obscured the depth of the wound. She had to be in pain, but old people so often tried to not display it. Instead her wrinkled face showed enormous bewilderment. “He
bit
me,” she kept saying. “Dragged himself over to my chair and
bit
me. Older than I am practically, no trouble all these years, and he
bit
me.”

“We'll get you all fixed up, Mrs. Carby,” Mary Brown said soothingly. She was good at soothing patients, Mary was. Cami admired her.

“But he
bit
me! I called 911 right away, but…why on God's green Earth would he bite me?”

“I can handle this, Cami,” Mary said. “You wait for the peds patient.”

Cami hurried over to Rosita just as Dr. Olatic, Chief of Medicine, walked into the ER. Probably Dr. Baker would arrive soon. Rosita had the phone in her hand again. She addressed Dr. Olatic. “Two more dog bites coming in, one possibly fatal. Pit bull. 911 is sending them here by car now, no more ambulances are available. That makes six bad bites this morning.”

“Six?” Dr. Olatic said.
“Six?”

“Six.”

Dr. Olatic questioned Rosita about the patients and then said, “Where are the animal control people?”

“Jess Langstrom called to find out if
we
knew what was going on, Doctor. His team is out following up and collecting dog bodies.”

“Collecting?” Olatic said sharply. “Are the dogs dying?”

“I don't know. But apparently some owners have shot them after they bit, and some are shut up in houses, and— ”

The phone rang again.

Rosita stared at it a fraction of a second, picked it up, and listened. When she hung up, her usually sharp black eyes held an expression Cami had never expected to see there: fear. “Another two, Doctor. Both teenagers bit by the same dog. 911 told their parents to bring them here.”

“Jesus.” For a moment nobody spoke. Then Dr. Olatic said to the wide-eyed secretary, “Call Public Health. Get Alec Ramsay on the line and tell him I said they should call the CDC.”

Jess and Billy had two dog bodies in the truck, Princess and a dachshund named Schopenhauer, who had also been shot. The dachshund had left its own property, which the shaken owner said it never did, and attacked a woman shoveling her driveway. The woman's husband heard screams, rushed out with his hunting rifle, and shot the dog.

“I don't understand it,” the owner said. He was a very thin middle-aged man who, he said, lived alone. “Schopenhauer never leaves our property, never. And he is—was—so good with people!”

Not this time,
Jess thought grimly. He'd collected the information from the owner, and it followed what was by now a familiar pattern: unprovoked dog suddenly goes berserk for no reason and bites the nearest person, snarling like there was no tomorrow. Eight cases this morning.

Billy, after a stretch of uncharacteristic silence, said, “What the hell do you think is going on, Jess?”

“I don't know. Maybe some kind of dog sickness spreading…I'm no vet. That's Dr. Venters' territory.”

“Doc Venters couldn't find his ass with both hands. I wouldn't let him treat me for a hangnail.”

“I don't think dogs get hangnails,” Jess said, and Billy laughed. The laugh was one of the reasons he'd hung in there with Billy all these years. Straight from the belly, full and large and unfettered, the laugh of a man who enjoyed life.

“Well, shoot, sure they—”

“Jess?” came Suzanne's voice on the dispatch. Billy grew attentive. He'd been after Suzanne since she'd been hired. And she went after Jess, who went after nobody, an endless little game of musical chairs with no movement and one chair empty.

“Yes, Suzanne,” Jess said.

“New call, you better take it right away.” No flirtatiousness in her voice, no teasing. “Pit bull attacked two kids. One of them might be dead. Kids and parents are on the way to Community, but the dog's still in the house, got an older kid cornered on top of the sink.”

“Christ,” Billy said.

“It's the Wright place again, 1649 North Edmond. Are you near there?”

“Not far. Thanks, Suzanne.” She sounded scared. Jess didn't blame her.