Gun Shy Read online

  I started calling as soon as anyone could reasonably be expected to be in the office Monday morning, and I was a bit disappointed when the two biggest agencies, Leader Dogs for the Blind and Canine Companions for Independence, both reported that the tattoo number I read off was not one of theirs. After that, I decided to concentrate on agencies in the Southeast. On the fifth try—Coastal Assistance Dogs, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina—I hit pay dirt.

  The man who came to the phone after I had been put on hold sounded friendly but concerned. “Miss Stockton,”he said, “my name is Wes Richards. I understand you’ve found one of our dogs?” That last part seemed to hold a note of skepticism, as though he didn’t want to accuse me of misrepresenting myself, but could hardly believe one of his dogs was actually lost.

  I sat up from the slumped position I had taken in my chair at the kennel office, instantly alert and revitalized. “Your dogs?” I repeated. “Then he is one of yours? That’s your tattoo number?”

  “His name is Nero,” replied Wes, “a four-year-old yellow Lab, neutered, approximately sixty-five pounds, tattoo number 6520034. Is that correct?”

  “That’s him,” I said, and released a huge sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.” Nero. That explained why he had appeared to respond to his name when I called him Hero. Although dogs can eventually learn to recognize hundreds of very specific words and associate their meanings, names for them are just sounds. Nero and Hero, to a dog, sound almost exactly the same.

  “But I’m afraid I don’t understand. You said you found him? Ms. White has been an excellent partner for Nero and I can’t imagine him leaving her under any circumstances. I just checked our overnight messages and there was nothing about Nero being missing. Could you tell me where he was found?”

  I set down the coffee cup from which I had been about to take a self-congratulatory sip, wincing at the unpleasant duty I now had to perform. I said, “He didn’t leave her, Mr. Richards. At least not on purpose.”

  As briefly as I could, I described how the yellow Lab had ended up with me. There was a shocked silence when I finished.

  Finally he murmured, “How . . . dreadful. I don’t think anyone here would have guessed that she was unstable. . . . I mean, of course no one did, or we never would have placed the dog. We have very high standards. I just . . . don’t know what to say.”

  “The police will be calling you for information on the owner. Up until now, we haven’t had any way of identifying her.”

  “Oh,” he said distractedly. “Yes, of course, whatever you need. Her name was Michelle White. Everyone called her Mickey. We’re a small agency, Miss Stockton, and we keep very close track of our placements. We require them to come in once a year for evaluation and what we like to call fine-tuning of the training.” Now that he was talking about dogs, not death, his voice began to take on more confidence. I understood this completely.

  “You know, as a team works together they discover certain quirks or peculiarities, and sometimes the handler will develop special needs that we try to address by refining a behavior or even teaching a whole new set of behaviors. The relationship between a person with disabilities and his dog is an ever-changing, ever-evolving one, and at Coastal Assistance Dogs we provide ongoing support.” He seemed to stop himself. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m rambling. You’re not interested in all that. It’s all just—such a shock.”

  “I’m very interested,” I told him. “I’m a dog trainer myself. Mostly search and rescue, and some local therapydog work. I’ve never tried anything as complicated as training a service dog, though.”

  “Our dogs are in training for two years before we place them,” he explained, seeming to relax again now that he knew he was talking to a “dog” person. “Then we work with the handler and the dog one-on-one for up to six weeks before we send them home, depending on the needs of the person with whom we’re placing the dog. For the first year, we do home visits every three months, and after that we ask the team to return to the training center for evaluation once a year.”

  “When was Mickey White last in?”

  I could hear the tapping of a keyboard. “August,” he said after a moment. “And there’s absolutely no notation here that either the trainer or the social worker noticed anything out of the ordinary. She was very happy with Nero, and Nero was working out even better than we had hoped. Of course, she understood that as her condition continued to deteriorate, she would depend on her dog more and more, and it was very important that we continue to refine his training.”

  “She had a deteriorating condition?” I said, wondering whether the deterioration had been progressing faster than she had expected, and whether that had led to the despair that caused her to pull the trigger. “Can you tell me what it was?”

  He hesitated. “Technically, our records are private.”

  I said, “I understand. I was just wondering about the kinds of things the dog learned to do for her. Was she completely dependent on her chair?”

  He answered, “She used a chair most of the time, but so far the paralysis had affected only one side. As a trained service dog, though, Nero was able to perform just about any task she might need—from helping to take off her shoes to turning on light switches, picking up dropped items, carrying purchases, even bringing medicine bottles and bottled water. He was thoroughly reliable.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That explains a lot.” Then, “What is your policy about the dogs? I mean, what will happen to him now? Does he go to the next of kin, or what?”

  “He will return to us,” Wes assured me, “as per our contract with Ms. White. He’ll be retrained, and hopefully placed with someone else. Where did you say you were?”

  I told him.

  “I can probably have a volunteer drive out to pick him up this coming weekend,” Wes said. “If it’s a problem for you to keep him until then—”

  “No, it’s not a problem. What’s one more?”

  “Generally we’d ask you to just put him on a plane but—”

  “No planes fly between here and there,” I assured him. “Really, it’s okay.”

  “I’ll call you back with the details as soon as I have them. Meanwhile, if you’ll give me your fax number, I can send you some information about him—his diet, his command words, that sort of thing.”

  “That would be great.” I read off the number.

  “I really appreciate your help with this, Miss Stockton, not only for taking care of Nero but for going to all the trouble of tracking us down. He’s a very special dog, and we’d hate to lose him.”

  I said, “It was my pleasure. I’ve been calling him Hero.” I added, “I thought it was odd that he seemed to respond. I guess that’s because it sounds like his real name.”

  “I doubt he can distinguish such a subtle difference.”

  “Just as long as I don’t do any permanent damage by calling him by the wrong name.”

  “I think the fact that he responds at all is a testament to his excellent training.”

  “I agree.”

  I was about to bring the conversation to an end when something occurred to me. “Mr Richards, you said Mickey White was paralyzed on one side. Do you happen to know which side it was?”

  He answered, “Yes, I do, actually. It was her right side.”

  I hung up the phone slowly, unable to rid my mind of the picture of those swollen fingers and the gun lying on the floor just beneath them. If Mickey White was paralyzed on her right side, how had she shot herself with her right hand?

  I picked up the phone again and dialed the sheriff’s office.

  Maude came in just as I hung up the phone. Cisco, who had been entertaining himself in the front kennel run, came bouncing in with her and launched his paws onto the front of the desk in search of treats. I said, “You won’t believe this. He’s a service dog!”

  Maude glanced at Cisco as she removed her plaid barn coat and hung it on a hook. “That one? Not bloody likely.”

  I gave Cisco
a stern look and he dropped all four paws to the floor, grinning.

  “No, Hero. The Lab. I found a tattoo in his ear last night. I finally linked him up with Coastal Assistance Dogs just a few minutes ago.”

  “Good work,” said Maude, impressed. “And of course they were able to identify his owner.”

  I nodded. “Her name was Mickey White. The police will have to go through the identification procedures, but it’s starting to look like this might not have been a suicide.”

  Cisco went over to the toy basket, grabbed a stuffed elephant and brought it to me, tail swishing. Maude raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “She was in a wheelchair,” I explained, “and paralyzed on one side. Anyway, the state medical examiner has the body, and Uncle Roe says they should know something by the afternoon.”

  I took the toy elephant from Cisco’s mouth and placed it on the desk. He returned to the basket.

  Maude said, “It looks as though someone would have mentioned finding a wheelchair in the cabin. And where was the dog’s harness?”

  “Not to mention her car,” I added. “Uncle Roe thinks she may have come up here with her husband.” Briefly, while extracting yet another toy from Cisco’s mouth, I explained the conversation with Jeff at the Feed and Seed.

  “I can well imagine that this husband, if that’s who he turns out to be, is a person of great interest to the police at this moment.”

  I nodded. “But what doesn’t make sense to me—”

  My words were cut off by a concussion of gunfire— Pow! Pow!—that was loud enough to cause Cisco to drop his latest treasure and almost made me tip over backward in my chair.

  “I swear to—”

  Again, gunshots cut off my words. Cisco ran to the window and jumped up with his paws on the sill, barking frantically. From behind the concrete walls that separated the office from the kennel area, more than a dozen canine voices joined in.

  Maude said matter-of-factly, “I meant to tell you, I think I spotted the culprits as I came in. Their vehicle is parked at the bottom of the old logging trail across the road. I suspect they’ve got a deer stand in Granny’s Meadow somewhere.”

  Granny’s Meadow was a creek-side glade about five hundred feet up the mountain—and less than a rifle shot away from my back door. I said, “Cisco, quiet!”

  When he didn’t even glance over his shoulder at me, I got to my feet and marched over to him, taking him firmly by the collar. I gasped when I saw what he was barking at. “Oh, my God!”

  It was Hero. Somehow he had escaped the house and was making a mad dash around the yard. How had he gotten out? What had happened?

  I flew out the door and into the yard, slipping on the colorful carpet of dried leaves as I raced across the expanseof ground between the kennel and the house. The yellow Lab was lunging in a frenetic zigzag pattern between the front porch of the house and the chain-link fences that enclosed both the backyard and the side kennel area. His tongue was lolling, his eyes were wild and his muzzle was flecked with foam. There were dark streaks on both his forelegs and he was clearly in the grip of a panic attack. Right now he was running because he was trapped and running was all he knew how to do, but it was only a matter of time before he discovered, by accident or intent, that the fences did not meet. All he had to do was turn the other way, and he would be racing toward the highway.

  A golden blur of barking frenzy sailed past me, heading toward the terrified Lab. All I needed was a dogfight—or, worse, for the two of them to take off together to parts unknown. I skidded on a pile of leaves as I grabbed for Cisco’s collar and ended up on my hands and knees. But before I hit the ground, years of dog training instinct took over and I bellowed, “Down!”

  “Come” is a good command to know in an emergency, as long as it is absolutely, one hundred percent reliable. “Down” is a better one. A dog who is moving— even if he’s moving toward you—can still get hit by a car, bitten by a snake, or attacked by another dog. A dog who responds to the command “down” well enough to drop to the ground in midstride and remain motionless until told otherwise will very likely one day save his own life.

  Fortunately, Cisco was as well trained as I was. We had practiced this a hundred thousand times for fun and food, and as far as he was concerned, this was just another game. He dropped to the ground a few yards ahead of me, grinning delightedly and panting with exertion and excitement.

  And so, to my amazement, did the Labrador retriever.

  Maude was beside me before I could even release a breath of relief. A quick glance told her I was okay, so she barely broke stride as she continued toward the Lab. I was half a step behind her.

  “Good, Cisco, good. Down,” I said breathlessly, and I flicked him a treat from my pocket as I bent to ruffle his ears. “Great dog! Good job! Now, stay.”

  He looked disappointed but brightened when I tossed him another treat as I hurried off.

  Maude was kneeling beside the yellow Lab, gently examining his forelimbs as she murmured reassuring words. I could see his convulsive shivers as I approached, and when I dropped down on the other side of him, I realized that the dark streaks on his legs were blood.

  “Oh, Hero, I’m so sorry, boy. What happened? Are you okay?” I looked at Maude in anguish. “I should have brought him to the kennel with me, but he seemed fine with the other dogs, and I wasn’t going to be gone long. Do you think it was a fight? Is he okay? How did he get out of the house?”

  “Just a scratch,” Maude said briskly. “A little peroxide will do the trick just fine. Don’t baby him, Raine, you’re only reinforcing his fear.”

  I knew that, but it’s hard not to pet and comfort a dog who is lying prostrate on the ground, sides heaving, wracked with shivers. Besides, wasn’t it she who had been murmuring good-dog talk to him when I first came up?

  I repeated, “What happened?” I wasn’t sure whether I addressed the question to her or to Hero, but when I followed the direction of Maude’s pointed gaze, I knew the answer.

  Glass glittered on the front porch beneath one of the windows, and a breeze sucked the edge of one of my mother’s lace curtains through the newly formed opening. “Oh, my God,” I said softly, “He jumped through the window.”

  Maude gently slipped a loop leash over the dog’s head. “Poor thing. He must be gun-shy.”

  I looked at her grimly. “Wouldn’t you be?”

  I got to my feet. “Can you take care of him?”

  “Of course. But—”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I called, “Cisco, load up,” as I strode to my car, and less than thirty seconds later Cisco and I were barreling down the dirt drive at a speed that left plumes of dust in our wake.

  A sleek black Range Rover was parked just off the highway on the old logging road, just as Maude had described it. I pulled up beside it and got out of my car, slamming the door. I marched over to the Range Rover and grabbed the door handle, hoping to set off the security alarm. But the fool who owned it hadn’t even locked it, and the door swung open at my tug. In retrospect, I think this was probably a good thing, because my next move was going to be to smash out the window with a rock. Sometimes I have a temper.

  I reached inside and leaned on the horn with all my weight. I kept up the loud, steady, wailing pressure while Cisco scrambled to the front seat of my car and, propping his front paws on the dashboard, joined in the cacophony with a chorus of alert, excited barking. I kept up the pressure until my arm began to ache and I had to shift my weight to maintain my balance on the rocky ground. I would happily have kept it up until I ran the car battery down, but after what was probably no more than four minutes there was a crashing in the undergrowth where the logging road disappeared into the woods, and two men came rushing and stumbling out of the shadows.

  They were dressed like models in an L.L.Bean catalog, in tan corduroy hunting jackets with leather-trimmed pockets and flannel-lined caps with the earflaps turned up. They carried their rifles aloft like spea
rs, waving them madly to keep their balance when they skidded on dead leaves or tripped over vines. I abruptly released the pressure on the horn, my jaw dropping in astonishment. Any ten-year-old around here knows you never carry a rifle in anything other than breach position—broken over your arm—and you most certainly never, ever run through the woods with a loaded gun. I felt as though I ought to duck.

  One of them, an overweight, red-faced man, came huffing and puffing across the lane toward me, shouting, “What the hell is going on here? Get away from that car!” The other, leaner and bespectacled but obviously in no better shape, struggled to keep up.

  Cisco barked sharply and excitedly through the partially lowered window of my vehicle. There was nothing he loved better than an adrenaline rush first thing in the morning. The two men, noticing him, and taking stock of me as I stepped back from behind the open door of the Range Rover, slowed their frantic pace a little. But the red-faced one did not look any less annoyed just because he had discovered the vandal to be a woman with a dog.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Do you have a current hunting license?”

  He looked taken aback, and his companion, just then coming abreast of him, gasped, “Is there—a problem here?”

  The slight wheeze to his breathing suggested an asthmatic who had no business being out here amidst all this leaf mold, much less traversing rugged countryside with a gun. My contempt became mitigated by pity, but not enough to overcome my anger. Before I could snap back a reply, another man emerged from the woods. He wore his jacket open and his gun slung over his shoulder on a strap, which demonstrated that he might possess a modicum more intelligence than his companions, and he strode rather than ran. But he was every bit as city smooth and woods stupid as his two cohorts.

  He was scowling as he came toward us. “What’s going on here, Jack?”

  Cisco barked a greeting to the newcomer and the scowl cleared as he looked from the big, bouncing golden retriever inside the SUV to me. He said, “Is something wrong?”