Laying Down the Paw (26 page)

While Megan cuffed the man Brigit had taken down, the dog sniffed him up and down. She recognized his scent. He was one of the men who she and her partner had encountered on Saturday at the store. Unlike his friend, who'd given Brigit a nice treat of dried meat, this man had no jerky in his pockets. Well, then. Brigit had no use for him.

She trotted along behind Megan as her partner led the man to the cruiser and shoved him into the back. Megan led Brigit around to the other side then, and directed her to climb back into the car and into her cage. Brigit did as she was told, though she didn't like the cage. It was much smaller than the enclosure in their special K-9 cruiser and less comfortable. She also had a harder time seeing outside the car.

“Good girl!” Megan said, dropping liver treats through the bars of the cage. “Good Brigit!”

Brigit snatched up the treats and gobbled them down.
One, two, three, four, five.
Interesting. Five treats meant the man she'd taken down was a big haul, someone important.

She glanced over at the man.
Hmm.
He didn't look like much to her. But, whatever. It was Megan's call.

 

THIRTY-NINE

SPITTING IMAGE

Dub

It was four o'clock by the time Dub returned to the apartment. He wondered whether his mother would be up by now or whether she'd still be sleeping off her meth high.

He slid the key into the lock. As always, he had to jiggle it to get the door open. As he stepped inside, an arm grabbed him and pulled him down into a headlock. His heart hammered in his chest. A face appeared next to his, a face he found so ugly but that was so much like his own, all the way down to the cowlick.

Spitting image
, people said.

Appropriate
, Dub thought.
After all, spit is disgusting.

A loud, obnoxious laugh filled his ears. “Hey, there, sonny boy! Daddy's home!”

Daddy.
What a fucking joke. Leandro had never been a father to him. His name didn't appear on Dub's birth certificate in the space designated for
Father
. That part had been left blank. Hell, Dub didn't even known Andro's last name. The man had never played ball with Dub, or read him a story, or taught him how to ride a bike, all those things normal fathers did with their sons. He'd never paid to put a roof over Dub's head, or food in his mouth, or shoes on his feet. Hell, he'd heard Andro threaten his mother with a beating if she filed for child support and forced him to take a paternity test.

Paternity test or not, there was no doubt Andro was Dub's father. From the tips of their toes—with the curled-under pinkie—to the tops of their dark, curly heads, the two were as alike as any father and son could be. But their similarities were only skin deep. Andro was a total sleaze, a scumbag, a waste of carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and calcium and all the other elements that make up a human being. Dub had learned all about that in science class.

Leandro was Portuguese-American, the second generation to be born on American soil. His ancestry gave him olive skin and dark hair. His drug use gave him an unpredictable, often explosive temper. This afternoon, he appeared to be in one of his rare good moods.

“Can you believe it?” Andro let Dub out of the headlock. “I ran into your mother Friday night. What are the odds of that?”

Pretty good
, Dub thought,
given that she'd probably gone looking for Andro at those skanky, piss-scented pool halls where he liked to hang out.

Dub took a look at the man who'd fathered him. His black boots were scuffed. His jeans were faded and worn through in places. His striped cotton shirt hung wrinkled and unbuttoned over a dingy white undershirt. Andro wasn't tall, but at five feet seven he was still two inches taller than Dub. Dub guessed the man outweighed him by a good forty pounds, too. Not that Andro was overweight. He was in good shape. Some might even call him ripped. Looked like he'd been working out.

Dub wanted to kill the man.

Right then, right there.

But he knew he couldn't take him.

Dub felt hot tears in his eyes. Rather than be called a
pussy
or a
homo
or a
candy ass
or whatever insult his father would throw at him, he went to the fridge, pulled it open, and stared into it until he could blink the tears away. He grabbed a burrito and hurled it into the microwave, jabbing the buttons to set the oven to cook for ninety seconds.
God, he'd love to jab his finger right through his father's eye.

“That's my boy!” Andro laughed again, came over, and grabbed Dub by the back of the neck in a hold that felt like a death grip. “Always hungry!”

Andro got that right. Dub had been hungry. He'd
gone
hungry. A lot. But there'd been nothing funny about it.

Andro walked out of the kitchen, grabbed Dub's mother, and pulled her into the recliner with him. She giggled like a girl. Sure, she was laughing now. But it was only a matter of time before those laughs would turn to cries of terror and pain.

The recurring nightmare.

How the hell could she forget?

When the microwave beeped, Dub removed the burrito and ate it standing at the kitchen counter, having to swallow hard to force it down past the tightness in his throat. It burned his tongue but he hardly noticed.

“Where you been all day, boy?” Andro called from the chair, where he sat with an arm around Dub's mother, the two of them cuddling like longtime sweethearts.

Where I've been is none of your fucking business
, Dub thought.

“He's got himself some work,” his mother answered for him, her burden suddenly a source of pride. “He does odd jobs. You know, raking leaves and yard work and whatnot. He even got himself a van!”

“A van?” Andro's head snapped back in Dub's direction. “I gotta see this.”

Shit.

Andro unwrapped his arm from around Dub's mother, got up from the chair, and came to the kitchen. “What are you waiting for, son? Show your dad your new wheels!”

A minute later, they stood before the old van.

“Suh-weet!” Andro ran a hand over the side and kicked one of the bald tires. “This will hold way more stuff than my car. I'll get my tools. You and I have a house to hit.”

Andro always kept a toolbox in the trunk of whatever piece-of-shit car he was driving at the moment. Today, the piece of shit was a blue 1998 Subaru Impreza with an aftermarket spoiler welded on the back. After retrieving his red metal toolbox, he held out a hand. “Give me your keys.”

“I'll drive,” Dub said. After all, the van belonged to him.

“Like hell you will.” Andro stepped up to Dub, got right in his face, so close Dub could smell the tuna fish sandwich he'd had for lunch. “Give me the goddam keys or I will rip that tongue right out of your mouth.”

So Dub gave him the goddam keys. Climbed into the passenger seat as he was ordered, too, even though he'd rather be anywhere than there, in that van, with Andro.

Andro stuck the keys in the ignition, started the van, and pulled what looked like a paper luggage tag from his pocket. He took a look at the address printed on it before tossing it onto the dashboard.

As Andro drove across town, Dub plotted ways he could kill Andro and never be caught. Too bad he didn't have his brass knuckles. A couple of fists to the face and he could knock out every one of Andro's teeth. Maybe Dub could put rat poison in Andro's liquor, tie some cinder blocks to his arms and legs and dump his body in the Trinity River. Or he could take a screwdriver out of the toolbox and jam it through Andro's ear, shoving it straight into his brain. Or he could grab the steering wheel right now and turn the van into the path of the oncoming dump truck.

Tempting …

“After all these years,” Andro said, pulling the van to a stop at a red light. “We're back in business.”

“Business?” Dub snapped from the passenger seat. “Since when does robbing houses count as a business?”

The hand came out and smacked Dub upside the head. “Don't get smart with me, boy.”

Smart?
Andro wouldn't know smart if it bit him on the ass.

Andro looked over at Dub. “You haven't asked me what I've been up to since the last time we seen each other.”

'Cause I don't give a shit
.

Despite the lack of interest Dub had shown, Andro continued to speak. “I've been busy.”

Busy getting drunk and high on meth and womanizing, no doubt.
Dub looked out the side window.
Maybe I can find an anvil somewhere, drop it off a building, and crush him to death.
He turned to Andro. “Do you know where they sell anvils?”

Andro scowled and ignored Dub's question. “I got me a job at the airport. Handling baggage.”

That explained his father's new muscles. Moving fifty-pound suitcases around the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport all day would be a workout. It was also a better job than the ones he'd had before, which had mostly involved delivering some type of food. Pizza. Chinese. Sub sandwiches. He'd worked all over the city. Dub remembered his father saying he knew the streets of Fort Worth better than any bus or taxi driver.

“I'm in a union now,” Andro added. “Got a card and everything. Nobody can't hardly fire me, even if I screw around.”

Dub had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes.

“Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy.”

Uh-oh.
Andro's voice had taken on that familiar, unforgettable edge. Dub glanced in Andro's direction, hoping it would be enough for the bastard. He hated that, at fifteen, he still feared his father, still let the asshole tell him what to do, boss him around. But he knew what his father was capable of. Until Dub was sure he could best him, he'd be an idiot to take on Andro.

Andro pulled forward when the light turned green. “I've saved up nearly two grand. I'm thinking about taking me a vacation to Hawaii.”

With any luck, Andro would get drunk and fall into a live volcano.

“Maybe I'll take your mother with me.”

“She could use a vacation.”

Dub only said it because he knew it would never happen. Andro would never be so generous. Hell, Dub couldn't remember a single time when Andro had taken his mother out for dinner or even to a movie. The only thing Andro ever did was bring his mother meth, and he only did that because she'd give him sex in return. Dub had figured that out years ago.

Andro consulted the GPS app on his phone, slowed down, and took a right turn onto 8th Avenue. “You remember the drill?”

How could he forget? From the time he'd been old enough to climb through a window his father had been forcing him to go along when he burglarized houses. Dub had hated every minute of it. Going into houses where photographs of smiling families hung on the walls, knowing they wouldn't be smiling when they came home and found their televisions, game consoles, laptops, and jewelry missing. Funny, he'd never envied them for their valuables. But he'd felt a painful squeeze in his heart when he saw the children's handprints in hardened clay sitting on bookshelves, bronzed baby booties on the mantle, perfect attendance awards and third-place field day ribbons proudly hanging on the refrigerator.

Andro turned onto Elizabeth Boulevard, driving past the tall columns at the entrance to the Ryan Place neighborhood. The area included several streets of nice, older homes with perfect yards.

The man's lip curled back in a smile that looked more like a snarl. He patted the dash. “This van will make us look legit. Anybody sees us, they'll just think we're at the house doing plumbing work.”

Dub would love to do some plumbing work. He'd love to shove a pipe down Andro's throat until the man choked to death.

Andro took another right onto Willing Avenue, driving slowly past the house he'd picked out, his head tilting first one way, then the other as he cased the place. “They've got one of them fancy doors with the glass in it. That'll be a cinch.”

A cinch for Andro. He wasn't the one who'd have to reach through jagged glass to release the deadbolt.

Andro gestured at the house. “These folks flew out to Paris, France. Ooh la la, eh?”

He must have obtained their address from the tag on their luggage. Probably he looked for tags with addresses in central Fort Worth. Andro had never liked to go out of his way for anything, even to commit his crimes.

Lazy ass.

“Don't see nobody around. Looks like we're good to go.” Andro backed into the driveway, pulling up so close to the garage door he nearly hit it. “Get out and do your thing, boy.”

Dub slid his hands into the work gloves he'd purchased, grabbed the toolbox, and climbed down from the van. It took everything in him not to take off running. But where would he go? Who would help him?

He had nowhere to go.

No one to turn to.

And if he ran his father would catch him and beat the shit out of him.

Dub stepped up to the front porch and rang the bell. Better to make sure the people who lived there hadn't hired a house sitter to keep an eye on things while they were gone. The last thing he wanted was for someone to stumble upon him and Andro robbing the place. Dub would run, but Andro … Well, Dub didn't want to find out what he might do.

Dub rang the bell a second time and, when nobody answered, used the hammer to smash the etched glass. He paused for a moment to see if an alarm would sound. None did. He reached through the opening, his new Mavs jacket snagging on the pointed shards. “Dammit!”

He felt around with his gloved hand until his fingers found the lock. He turned until it clicked, then opened the door. Stepping back to the driveway, he motioned to Andro that the house was open.