Under the Dog Star: A Rachel Goddard Mystery #4 (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (29 page)

“Oh, no,” Rachel groaned. They waited a couple of minutes, but the fourth dog didn’t reappear. They didn’t have much time to get the tranquilized animals into the van, muzzled and tied up, before they started coming around. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get them.”

The dogs in cages looked on silently while they lifted the three unconscious animals into the van. Joe fastened collars and tethers to them and Rachel muzzled them.

“What do you want to do about the little runt that’s left?” Joe asked.

“I’m going to get him,” Rachel said. “I’m not leaving him out here by himself.”

“You know, we could leave him some food and water—”

“No. You can take these dogs to the sanctuary, but I’m staying. I don’t want to lose sight of him.”

“Rachel,” Tom said, leaning into the van, “it’s one dog. We’ve got the rest. We did good. Let’s all go—”

“I said no. He’ll die one way or another if we don’t take him in. I’m not leaving without that dog.”

Tom sighed. “Okay. Joe, you go on to Holly’s place. Rachel and I will stay here.”

She felt like kissing him. When she hopped out of the van, she did.

“You are the most willful woman I’ve ever known,” Tom said, but he was smiling. “I’ll keep the dart gun. We can put him in the back seat of my car once he goes under. We just have to wait for him to come out again so I can get a shot.”

“I’m not sure he will,” Rachel said. “He’s terrified. All the other dogs disappearing, one by one. He’s probably as far back in the cave as he can get.”

Rachel placed more food on paper a couple of feet outside the cave entrance, and they waited. As time passed, she began to worry about nightfall. Could they do this in the dark? She glanced at the sky. Overcast, and more clouds rolling in from the west. They wouldn’t have the light of the moon tonight.

“I’m going in after him,” she told Tom.

“What? Have you lost your mind?”

“I’ll take the dart gun. I know how to use it.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Tom said. “I’m not letting you crawl into a cave with a wild dog.”

“It’s not wild. It’s a discarded pet that’s scared to death.”

“Which makes him dangerous. You know that as well as I do.”

She did. But the dog was small, and there was a good chance that a combination of fear and need would make him submissive. “I’m going in there, with or without the dart gun. At least let me borrow your flashlight.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Tom raked a hand through his hair. “Rachel—”

“We’re wasting time,” she said. “Let’s get this done.”

Tom thought about it, his face working with indecision, irritation. Rachel waited, barely controlling her impatience.

“I’ve been in that cave,” he said at last. “Once you’re inside, it’s wide enough for two people side by side, but we’ll have to crawl. It’s not high enough to stand up. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

She smiled. “Let’s get the flashlight.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

Tom crawled into the cave first. Rachel followed, wincing as her knees came down on hard little pebbles in the dirt. Tom’s flashlight lit the way ahead, but Rachel had to feel along the ground with her hands to avoid protruding rocks. She’d expected the cave to be cold, but it felt no cooler than the outside.

The place reeked of wet dog, unwashed dog, musky male dog.

As they approached the end of the cave, Rachel heard a faint whining. Tom turned the light full on the little dog. The whine turned into a long, mournful cry. The animal pressed against the wall of the cave, its whole body shaking violently.

Rachel came up beside Tom. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered to the dog. “Tom, he can’t see us with the light in his eyes.”

Tom swiveled the light between the dog and Rachel. “Be careful,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Let me dart him.”

“No. We don’t need to.”

Murmuring to the terrified dog, she crawled forward slowly. A few feet from him, she shifted and sat with her legs crossed. “It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t hurt you. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

He cried out again, then lapsed into a loud whine.

“You’re all right now,” she said. “It’s all right.”

Rachel talked quietly to the dog for five minutes, afraid all the time that Tom would become impatient and interrupt. But he held the light and didn’t interfere.

The dog’s whine subsided to a whimper, then he fell silent, his big eyes riveted on Rachel.

Moving slowly, she pulled two dog biscuits from her jeans pocket and held one out to him. She could hear him sniffing. He whimpered and inched closer, staring at the treat. “Come on,” she whispered. “You can have it. You must be so hungry. Come on.”

The dog looked up at her, back at the biscuit. Rachel murmured to him. He went down on his belly and crawled toward her, whining. He snatched the biscuit from her fingers. After he’d devoured it, she opened her palm to show him the second biscuit. He crawled closer and took it.

When Rachel touched his head he flinched, but he stayed where he was. She stroked his head and talked to him quietly until his tail thumped a couple of times. “Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go someplace better and have a good dinner. How does that sound?”

He thumped his tail again.

Tom stayed out of the way, and the dog didn’t seem to mind his presence. The animal was fixated on Rachel, and she kept his attention by talking to him continuously in a soothing voice. She turned around, and he stayed in front of her, between her arms, as she crawled out of the cave. Outside, he smelled the leftover food and went straight for it, downing it in one gulp.

He didn’t resist when Rachel scooped him up and carried him to Tom’s car. The size of a Jack Russell, he had curly hair, black except for dirty white on his throat and muzzle. He was starvation thin and felt like an insubstantial ball of fluff in Rachel’s arms.

He lay on Rachel’s lap in the back seat during the ride to the sanctuary. Stroking and scratching him, she hated the thought of locking him in a pen by himself.

As if sensing her thoughts, Tom said, “Rachel, we can’t take this dog in. We’ve got Billy Bob and Frank and Cicero—”

“Holly might like him.”

“They’ve already got dogs in the house, and they just took in another one.”

“Well, like Mrs. Turner said, it’s a big house.”

***

“Good god,” Tom said, powering down his window as the guard let them through the sanctuary gate. “Listen to that.”

The howls and yelps carried all the way from the pens behind the house.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Rachel said from the back seat. “I’m sure the alpha dog got them started.”

The dog on her lap had begun whining, and when Tom looked around he saw the animal sitting up, eyes wide and ears cocked. Tom closed the window, but when they approached the pens the racket was too loud to be shut out. The dog Rachel held got more worked up by the second. Instead of driving all the way back to the pens, Tom stopped next to the house. “I guess you don’t want to add that one to the mix,” he said.

“No,” Rachel said. “He’s scared out of his wits. I’ll stay in the car with him. Tell Holly I need to see her, and tell Joe to get the alpha dog out of here right now, or the others will be impossible to handle.”

Taking the tranquilizer rifle with him, Tom got out and walked around behind the house. He found Holly and her grandmother going from one pen to another, trying to quiet the barking, howling dogs with treats. The animals ignored the women, paced their enclosures, responded with yelps and howls every time the pack leader barked. Tom pulled Holly aside and sent her to Rachel.

Joe Dolan stood before the alpha dog’s pen, watching the animal lunge at the fencing over and over. When he saw Tom, he yelled over the uproar, “It’s about time! I needed that an hour ago.”

Tom handed over the gun, already loaded with a dart.

“This is gonna take more than one,” Joe said. “I’ll be right back.” He ran toward his van nearby.

The snarling, growling dog turned his attention on Tom. Although Tom knew he was safe, the wild ferocity of the animal as it backed up and hurled itself at the fence stirred a primitive fear in him. The rest of the feral dogs had probably been pets from birth and might be saved, but this brute seemed beyond redemption. The dog had suffered at the hands of people, had likely never known any kindness, and it could be too late to turn him around now. Rachel would be disappointed, but Tom hoped sentiment wouldn’t blind her to the truth.

When Joe returned, he thrust the end of the tranquilizer rifle through an opening in the chain link. The dog leapt at it, snapping, and Joe jerked it back just in time to keep him from grabbing it. “Good Lord almighty. Distract him for me, will you?”

Tom walked a few feet away, and the dog followed, snarling at him. Tom crouched, closer to the fence than felt comfortable. If no barrier separated them, he wouldn’t dare make eye contact with a hostile animal, but in this case it was the best way to keep its attention. He stared into the dog’s eyes, and its fury rose, building to full-blown mania. The dog lunged, pawed at the fence, growled and barked.

The other dogs responded with a chorus of howls.

When the first dart struck home, the alpha dog didn’t even notice the prick. And as several minutes passed, he showed only a mild reaction to the tranquilizer, wobbling a little but keeping up the intensity of his attack on Tom.

The second dart got a reaction, a whine that sounded especially pathetic to Tom, coming from an animal whose viciousness was its only defense against a cruel world.

Within a couple of minutes, the dog quieted, swayed, and slowly folded onto his belly in the dirt.

Rachel ran up then. “Is he ready to go? Oh, God, Joe, you had to dart him twice? He’s had a lot of that stuff in less than twenty-four hours. We’re going to kill him at this rate.”

That might be the kindest thing to do, Tom thought, but he kept silent.

Joe muzzled the tranquilized dog and Tom helped him carry the animal to the van and place him in a cage. Rachel checked his heart rate and respiration, pronounced them normal, and locked him in.

She stood with Tom, her face bleak, as they watched Joe drive off to the pound. The other dogs had already begun to calm down. Only a few whines and soft barks broke the quiet.

Tom laid a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “What did you do with the little guy?”

“Holly took him in the house. It was love at first sight. She’s going to give him a flea bath right now so he won’t have to spend the night in the basement.”

“Holly and her grandmother can’t make pets of all of them,” Tom said. He swept his gaze down the long line of runs, most of them filled now with other people’s rejected dogs. And more would come, more abandoned animals tossed onto the roads of Mason County like trash.

When Rachel didn’t answer, Tom put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey, come on. Let’s go home and wash off the dirt and fleas and god knows what else we’ve picked up. Then I’ll go get Billy Bob. Let’s have a nice quiet evening for a change.”

Rachel looked up at him. “No work tonight? Nobody to question or hunt down?”

“I just need to make a few phone calls for updates from the other guys.”

“But you don’t have to go anywhere?”

“I don’t have to go anywhere.”

He could hope, anyway.

Chapter Thirty

The jangling phone woke Tom from a deep sleep. Groaning, he pulled his arm out from under Rachel’s head, checked the time on the bedside clock’s LED, and fumbled for the receiver.

“What?” he answered.

“Hey, Tom, it’s me, Joe.”

“What the hell? It’s after two in the morning.”

“Yeah, I know, sorry. But I got a situation here.”

“A situation?”

Beside Tom, Rachel stirred. “What’s happen—” A yawn cut off her question.

Tom pushed himself up and switched on the lamp. Frank blinked from the foot of the bed and Billy Bob groaned in his spot by the door.

“Well,” Joe said, “I was kinda worried about this dog, you know, afraid he was gonna hurt himself trying to get loose, and I couldn’t sleep for worrying, so I came back over here to the pound to check on him, and it’s a good thing I did.”

Tom clasped a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes briefly, praying for patience. “Your point, Joe? You’ve got a point?”

“The lock on the back door was busted, and I walked right in on Pete Rasey trying to get that dog out of his cage with wire cutters.”

“What?” Wide awake now, Tom threw off the covers and swung his feet to the floor. “He was trying to steal the dog?”

“Tom?” Rachel sounded alarmed. “Which dog? What’s going on?”

Tom waved a hand to hush her. “Is he still there?”

“You bet he is,” Joe said. “I held the little bastard at bay with the tranq gun, and I locked him in the kennel. He’s making more noise than the dog. Trying to kick the door down.”

“Don’t let him get loose. I’m on my way.”