Give the Dog a Bone (7 page)

“Maggie, down.” When she didn’t respond, I grabbed her collar, pulled her off the bed using all of my strength, then said, “Good dog,” and ushered her out the door, shutting it behind me. She was soon howling, undoubtedly annoying my mother in the other bedroom. I muffled Maggie’s cries by sandwiching my head between two pillows and, eventually, fell asleep.

At seven A.M., I tried to get Maggie back into my car. This dog would either be my personal crowning achievement—as far as redefining her behavior patterns—or a glaring failure. She recognized immediately the harness for the dog car seat and resisted my attempts to put it on her.

Even with my mother’s help, we had a difficult time. Eventually, however, we out-persisted the dog, and I soon found myself fighting my way through the remains of commuter traffic.

The traffic was worse than usual, and it was after eight-thirty by the time Maggie and I reached Ken’s trailer park. The entire park seemed eerily quiet. As I pulled into Ken’s gravel parking space, I eyed the property of both of his neighbors, Ruby and Yolanda, but their places seemed quiet as well.

Maggie meanwhile was straining for all she was worth to get out of her seatbelt and inside her home to see her beloved owner. I decided that there was little risk in her running off, so I broke one of my own cardinal rules and, the moment I’d undone her harness, allowed her to run out without a leash. She was waiting with her front paws up on the door yipping happily to get in before I could climb the steps.

Keeping my eye on Maggie, I gave a quick glance at Maggie’s bone stash. The bones were gone, but the police had left the yellow plastic police-scene tape surrounding the area that they’d excavated from Ken’s front lawn.

I rang the doorbell, thinking how this was one of the joys of my job. I love to see happy reunions between dogs and owners. Dogs give us what we fully grown humans aren’t capable of always giving—unconditional love.

There was no answer, and I tried to waylay the sense of concern that immediately hit me. He had gotten home really late and could be expected to oversleep. Still, between the bell and Maggie’s plaintive cries, he would have to be quite a sound sleeper to miss all the racket.

“Maggie, down,” I instructed as I tried to pull open the screen door, or that portion of it which wasn’t already shredded from Maggie’s claws. She obeyed in her eagerness to rush around this door.

The solid wood door was unlocked, as he’d said it would be. Immediately, I regretted not having said something to him last night. Leaving a door unlocked after all of the bizarre goings on yesterday seemed an unnecessary risk.

Maggie bulled her way through the door, using her muzzle as such an effective wedge that the doorknob was wrenched from my grasp.

“Ken? It’s Allida.”

No answer.

There was an eerie aura about the place that made my skin prickle. And, if possible, the house was messier today than it had been yesterday.

Maggie raced ahead and into a room down the narrow, dark hallway. There were still no sounds of Ken’s rising and greeting his dog.

I waited for a moment, hoping to hear Ken’s voice. When no acknowledgment came in answer to Maggie’s sharp barks, my angst increased tenfold.

“Ken?”

The household was still silent, save for Maggie’s little whines and the beating of my own heart. Something was wrong. He had been so anxious to see Maggie, I couldn’t believe he’d simply leave his house before we could arrive.

Much as I didn’t want to, I followed Maggie’s path down the hall and into the last room on the right.

Maggie had jumped onto the bed where Ken’s massive form lay prone, dressed in boxers and an undershirt. The dog was nuzzling Ken’s hand desperately, trying to get him to respond.

One look at his face—at his wide-open mouth, the fixed expression of horror on bulging, unseeing eyes, and the blue skin tones—told me that Maggie’s efforts were useless.

Ken Culberson was dead.

Chapter 7

I looked away quickly, but knew that the hideous sight had already been emblazoned into my memory. My initial shock gave way to an overwhelming sense of sadness and outrage. Was this natural causes, or had Ken been murdered?

My senses were reeling. Sick and dizzy, I staggered toward the door, but dimly realized that, behind me, Maggie was whining and nuzzling Ken’s motionless fingers. I couldn’t leave her like this.

“Maggie. Come,” I called from just inside the doorway, unable to look. She ignored me. I took a deep breath and walked up to her, but nearly gagged when I stepped on something soft. Luckily, it was just Ken’s pillow.

Though my hands were shaking and I was battling nausea, I managed to snap the leash onto Maggie’s collar, then pulled her away from Ken’s body and into the kitchen. After some searching, I located his phone, dialed 9-1-1 and told the male dispatcher that Ken Culberson, the owner of this trailer, was dead. He asked me a series of questions, which I answered with my thoughts focused on my own question: Why?

A second insidious question popped unbidden into my mind: Had Ken known his life was in imminent danger? His dog was a service dog, as designated by his doctor. I had never even asked what the diagnosis had been; Ken could have had a sleep-apnea disorder to which Maggie was attuned. Maybe my failure to bring her to him when he asked me to had caused his death.

The dispatcher said something about whether or not anyone else was “on the premises.”

I felt faint. “I don’t . . . I’ve got to go outside.”

“Allida? A patrol car will be there momentarily. Stay on the line and—”

I hung up the phone and stumbled outside, dragging Maggie with me on her leash. I sat down on the cinderblock back steps, trying not to think about the scene in his bedroom. I struggled to keep taking deep breaths, to not lose control.

Maggie, too, was trembling. I was giving her as much room on her leash as possible. She sensed that something was dreadfully wrong with her owner, for she wanted to stay next to me now, rather than with Ken. Letting out one last whimper, she lay down on the step below mine and rested her chin on my feet. Her attitude broke my heart. I cried softly and stroked her fur, saying, “I’m so sorry,” over and over again.

“Hey!” a raspy voice cried, “You there!”

I dried my eyes and looked up. Ruby marched toward me, her strong jaw set in a frown. She was wearing a slightly stained peach-colored blouse and shorts.

Trailing behind her, T-Rex struggled to keep up. His head was hanging and his gait implied that he was ready to lie down and sleep the moment his owner stopped tugging on his collar.

At the approach of another dog, Maggie got up intending to investigate. She let out a little whine of protest when she found that her leash was too short and my grip on it was too strong.

Ruby dropped the leash to place her hands on her hips and give me a full body-English glare. “I got a bone to pick with you!” Despite the hour, she seemed drunk; her speech was slurred and her equilibrium slightly off kilter.

Meanwhile, T-Rex yawned and lay down where he stood—on the hardpacked dirt behind my car. Unable to find my voice, I merely met Ruby’s eyes and waited for her to release the hounds of her anger upon me.

“You got some nerve! You told that veterinarian that I can’t read, didn’t you!”

All I wanted to do was make her vaporize—tell her to get the hell away from me, that I couldn’t deal with this now.

“Answer me, damn it! You gone deaf?”

“It was in your dog’s best interest to let Dr. Palmer know that,” I muttered.

“You had no right! I can read just fine! I’ll have you know I got myself a high school diploma.”

I managed not to retort: Maybe so, but can you
read
it? “Ruby, I meant no harm. Clomicalm and acepromazine are serious drugs that can do more harm than good if administered incorrectly. I was simply concerned that your dog get the correct dosage from this point forward.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. You were wrong about him. T-Rex is on just the right amount of medication. Dr. Palmer said so. And my dog’s just fine now. See?”

She gestured at her dog, who was now lying on his side, asleep on the hard earth in another dog’s territory, which, for a healthy, lucid dog, was unheard of. Ruby was attempting to stare me down, hands on her hips.

“Your dog looks lethargic to me, Ruby.”

“Yeah, well—” with a jerk of her elbow she gestured at Maggie “—if that’s true, he probably caught it from Maggie.”

I said nothing, but made a mental note to lower my vocabulary several grade levels when speaking with Ruby.

At long last, sirens in the distance grew louder, and Ruby seemed to put a couple of things together. Her angry scowl changed into a look of alarm. “Hey! What are you doing here alone? Where’s Ken?”

“Still in bed.”

As the sirens drew closer, she searched my face, her over-plucked eyebrows raised in eager curiosity. “Did something happen? Are the police coming here because of you?”

Before she could repeat the question, two police squad cars and one sheriff’s car pulled up, and Maggie stood up and began to bark. This finally roused T-Rex, who rose and joined Maggie in a barking chorus.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Ruby asked while two police officers and a sheriff approached. Her voice was shrill and she jerked her head to look at the officers and then back to me. She looked like a human version of her barking dog.

The officer from the first car asked her, “Do you live here, ma’am?”

“No, that’s my place there.” She pointed.

“Go home, please, ma’am. We’ll come speak to you in a few minutes.”

She ignored his request and looked again at me. “Where’s Ken, Allie? Is something wrong with him?”

The officer began guiding her to her trailer, saying quietly, “Please, ma’am. We’ll be over to speak to you as soon as possible.” She continued to protest, but the officer kept cajoling till she finally relented and entered her home.

A second uniformed policeman came up to me in the meantime. “I’m Officer Hobbes. Are you . . .” He paused as he glanced at his notes.

I answered for him, “Allida Babcock. Yes. I placed the call to nine-one-one. He’s in there.”

“Anyone else on the premises?” a second officer asked from behind him.

“No. Not as far as I know, anyway.”

Beside me, Maggie was barking as loud as she could.

“Show us where you found him.”

“Wait. Whose dog is that?” one of the policemen asked.

“She belonged to Ken Culberson,” I answered, “the man who died.”

“We can’t let that dog back in the trailer right now.”

“Did he live alone?” Officer Hobbes asked me. “Just him and the dog?”

“Yes.”

The other officer nodded. “I’ll call Animal Control. Is there some place you can put her in the meantime?”

“There’s no need to have Animal Control lock her up. I’ll take care of her for a couple of days myself.”

“I’ll take her,” a woman called. I turned toward the voice. It was Yolanda Clay. She was wearing the same housedress she had on yesterday. Her pockmarked face bore a scowl and she strode toward me with a no-nonsense march. “The dog can stay with me for a while.”

I protested, “But I can’t—”

“Would you rather keep her in your car, miss?” the officer suggested.

I felt incapable of making any decisions, so I went with the easiest one and handed the leash to Yolanda. “I’ll come get her as soon as I can.”

“Did somebody kill Ken last night?” Yolanda asked one of the officers. I saw two officers immediately freeze at the question and exchange glances.

“Did you see or hear anything that makes you think so?” he asked her in reply.

She nodded. “I seen that Rachel Taylor, Ken’s social worker, come snooping around here at something like three in the morning.”

“Did you see her go into Mr. Culberson’s trailer?” the officer asked.

“No. She was just driving past when I saw her, but she’s your killer.”

“You think that Mr. Culberson was murdered?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes, looked him up and down, and held up a palm. “Oh, that’s right. Could’ve been natural causes. Even though the whole neighborhood’s talking about how y’all hauled him off to jail yesterday. And how a skeleton was dug up in his yard.”

“Well, ma’am, we’ll have someone come speak to you.”

“Uh huh. In other words, get outta the way. Come on, Maggie. Let’s go home.”

I led the officers inside Ken’s home. At the corner of the hallway, I said, “He’s in there, on his bed.” I looked at the officer who seemed to be assigned to keeping an eye on me. “Can I go sit outside, please?”

“Sure. I need to ask you a few questions. I’ll come with you.”

The officer opened the front door and we went out to the front steps. “What’s your relationship to the deceased? Friend? Neighbor?”

“I’m his dog’s . . . therapist.”

He grinned, then seemed to immediately realize that this wasn’t an appropriate response and nodded somberly, making yet another notation. I carefully told the officer my story—how I’d come to be here in the first place and discovered Ken’s body. Afterward, I explained, “Supposedly, Ken was wealthy. He paid me a thousand-dollar advance out of a shoe box hidden in a stack of newspapers. The second one to the right of the front door in the living room. You’d better see if it’s still there.”

“We’ll . . . do that.”

I turned back toward Officer Hobbes and asked, “I’d like to go check on Maggie for a minute.”

“Maggie?”

“The dog. Ken’s dog.”

“All right. Afterwards, can I give you a ride to the police station? We’d like to ask you some questions, take your statement. Just a formality.”

“Sure,” I replied as if I weren’t frightened to the core. It was obvious to me that, if Ken’s death was not by natural causes, the police were prepared to make me a prime suspect.

Officer Hobbes and I sat in an unexceptional room at the Boulder Police Department. Our conversation had been interrupted several times, when he’d had notes handed to him and sometimes excused himself from the room entirely. So far, I had explained yet again about my phone call from Ken at two-twenty A.M. and how I’d arrived at around eight thirty-five. I had seen enough cop shows to expect that his kindness to me so far was an act, intended to convince me that he and I were confidants. As such, it seemed to me that it was his turn to answer a question or two. “How did Ken die? Was he murdered?” I finally asked.

“The autopsy results will tell us that, but in the meantime we’re considering this a suspicious death.” He glanced at the papers in front of him. “I see that you’re the one who called yesterday about the bones in Mr. Culberson’s yard.”

“Yes. There were a pair of bones that looked like those from a human’s forearm, and apparently I was correct.”

He nodded and said nothing, as if expecting me to go on, but I had nothing more to say on the subject.

“You saw the dog carrying this bone after she’d run away from you?” he prompted.

“That’s right. I’d put a collar on her, the same one she’s wearing now, and she ran right through the screen door, which I hadn’t anticipated. When she returned, she was carrying a bone.”

“Had you known about her collection of bones prior to that?”

“No.”

“Not even that she had a likelihood to pick up a bone, if she found one?”

A
likelihood?
I mentally repeated. “Well, most dogs will pick up a bone they find, unless they’ve been specifically trained not to.”

Hobbes leaned back in his chair. “As a dog expert, maybe you can help me figure out something. If I were to, say, toss a bone into a park where there are a number of dogs off-leash, I could be fairly certain a dog would discover it?”

“Of course.”

“Right away, would you say?”

“Yes,” I answered with a shrug that showed my impatience. “Isn’t this common knowledge? That dogs collect bones?”

“I suppose it is. So then, going back to my example of tossing a bone into a public area, wouldn’t it be hard for me to ensure that one specific dog got hold of a particular bone I wanted him to have?”

“Yes. Unless you tossed it to that specific dog. Or that dog was the only one around when you tossed it into the public area.”

“I see.” He nodded as if what I’d said had been enlightening.

I furrowed my brow, wondering where all this was going.

“Ever heard of—” he paused and consulted his notes “—acepromazine?”

I stiffened. “ACP. Yes, it’s commonly known as ‘doggie downers.’ It’s usually prescribed for particularly stressful situations, such as when a dog’s going on a trip in an airplane. Ken’s neighbor, Ruby Clay, had an ACP prescription for her dog. Why?”

“Ever carry them on you, for use with your dog clients?”

I was fully alert now and my thoughts were racing. Why would he be asking me about this? Could Ken have been drugged into a stupor? “Never. Nor do I prescribe them. I can’t. I don’t have a veterinary license.”

The officer looked again at his notes and nodded, scratching his cheek. “Did you recently crush a tablet in Mr. Culberson’s kitchen while you were working with his dog? Or suggest that he do so?”

“No. And I can’t ever picture Ken giving a soporific drug to his dog. I didn’t know him for very long, just since yesterday in fact—the one day—but I do know how he treated Maggie, and I don’t believe he would sedate her under any circumstances.”

The officer had shed his casual act and was now staring at me intently.

I continued, “As I’m sure you know, acepromazine would make a person, as well as a dog, drowsy.” And would have rendered poor Ken, that bear of a man, much easier to suffocate, I thought. I fought back a shiver of revulsion at the memory of stepping on the pillow on his floor. Was that the murder weapon?

Officer Hobbes stared at me for what seemed like several minutes, but was probably only a few seconds. I also knew that ACP had been used in suicides, but I was not about to bring up that possibility, because I was absolutely certain that Ken did not commit suicide. Officer Hobbes asked, “What are you planning on doing with his dog?”