The Dog Who Knew Too Much (14 page)

“We’re not dropping the case,” Bernie said. “And we can worry about the fee later.”

Bernie: lock it in now!

But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Has Devin had much trouble from bullies?”

“Some little monster at school teased him for a while about being—about his weight,” Anya said. “The teacher put a stop to it. That’s how I found out—Devin hadn’t breathed a word. The whole camp thing came out of that episode—Guy thought it would toughen him up.”

“And what about bullying here?” Bernie said.

“None that I know of,” Anya said. “The kids are supposed to write once a week, so I’ve just had the one card.”

“Saying what?”

“You can see for yourself,” Anya said. She dug a postcard from her purse, handed it to Bernie.

Bernie held it up to the fading light. “‘Hi, Mom,’” he read. “‘I’m at camp. Getting lots of exercise and not having seconds. The food’s crappy anyway. I saw a real fox! I sleep in a tent with other kids. It’s all right. Can’t wait to get home. Love, Dev.’”

Bernie’s face got real hard. Was that about the fox? I couldn’t think of any other reason.

“Are you saying he’s been bullied here at camp?” Anya said. Silence from Bernie. “Should I have known? How could I have?”

Bernie gave the postcard back. “C’mon, Chet. Let’s get to work.”

We met with Ranger Rob in his office in the big cabin. Ranger Rob sat on one side of his desk, us on the other.

“This is just a nightmare,” Ranger Rob said. “What am I going to tell the campers? They loved Turk.”

“They did?” Bernie said.

Ranger Rob looked up sharply. Hey! He was older than I’d thought. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Turk’s conduct up on the mountain was negligent at the very least,” Bernie said. “And sneaking off in the middle of the night the way he did speaks of guilty knowledge.”

“Guilty knowledge? What are you saying?”

“I suspect that Turk had inside information regarding Devin’s disappearance,” Bernie said, “may even have been an accomplice.”

“Accomplice to what?” said Ranger Rob. “This is crazy.”

“The nature of the crime—meaning the exact charges that will be filed when this is all over …” Bernie paused right there and looked Ranger Rob directly in the eye. Ranger Rob tried to meet his gaze but gave up pretty damn quick, maybe the quickest I’d seen. Loved when Bernie did that pausing and gazing thing, although what was going on could have been clearer to
me. “… is what we’re working on right now. Anything you can do to help will be appreciated by me, by law enforcement, and by the judge when this all comes to court.”

Ranger Rob sat back in his chair. “You seem to be bullying me for some reason. I don’t like being bullied.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Bernie said. “Some of the boys bullied Devin so badly that he slept outside the tent on the hike, up above thirteen thousand feet.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s a fact,” Bernie said. “There’ll be more like it, and coming in fast, so your best move now is to stop fighting them.”

Ranger Rob opened his mouth in a way that made me think he wasn’t at all ready to stop fighting, but at that moment a big clunky phone rang on his desk.

“I thought you didn’t have a sat phone,” Bernie said.

“Do you question everything?” Ranger Rob said. “Park Service gave it to me this morning.” He picked up the phone, said, “Big Bear,” and listened. “All right,” he said, and hung up. He turned to Bernie, the fight leaking out of him fast. “That was search and rescue, up on the mountain. No trace of the boy, and they’re suspending operations for the night. Sheriff Laidlaw’s coming back down in the chopper and … and he hopes that you stick around to help.”

Bernie nodded.

“You can bunk in the guest cabin,” said Ranger Rob.

“Thanks,” said Bernie. “Right now I want to talk to Tommy, the boy from tent seven.”

“What about?”

“Finding Devin.”

“You think Tommy knows where Devin is?”

“There are leads that need following up,” Bernie said. “That’s what we do. And in missing kids’ cases, time is always against us.”

“Well, I suppose if I’m in the room—” Ranger Rob began.

“Nope,” Bernie said.

“But I haven’t even made the announcement about Turk yet.”

“And you’re not going to until we get done with Tommy.”

Ranger Rob gave Bernie an angry look. “You’d better know what you’re doing,” he said.

Bernie said nothing. Of course we knew what we were doing. It went without saying, a favorite expression of Bernie’s, and mine, too. Missing kids were our specialty. We’d worked a zillion cases—and if not a zillion, then at least many—and found every single kid. Every single kid, but once we were too late: can’t leave that out. It was a case we thought about a lot, me and Bernie. First, I licked the little girl’s face and then Bernie lifted her out of the broom closet and tried and tried to get her breathing again. Those parents when we brought the bad news: you don’t forget things like that.

FOURTEEN

N
ight fell. Bernie and I sat in the dining hall, which was called the chuckwagon here at Big Bear Wilderness Camp. We have a wagon at home, and when Charlie was younger I’d pull him around on it. “Chet the Jet!” he’d be shouting. “Faster, faster, Chet the Jet!” Did we zoom around or what? This was back in the days when Iggy was still roaming outside. And guess what: Iggy didn’t race along with us, oh, no. Instead he liked to jump on the wagon, crowd in with Charlie, and steal a free ride. That Iggy!

Nice and quiet in the dining hall, just the two of us. Bernie sat at the end of long old wooden table, eating a bowl of chili. I stood beside him on the floor—a floor made of wide boards worn down smooth, soft and comfortable—eating a bowl of kibble. All kinds of kibble out there on the market, but this one from Rover and Company was the best. The owner, Simon Berg, is a buddy of ours, sometimes sends over samples from the test kitchen. We were living the dream, me and Bernie.

He took out his cell phone, called Suzie for the zillionth time, and that didn’t include the zillion times of not getting a signal. “Suzie? Suzie? If you’re there, pick up. Are you there? Suzie?
Suzie?” He clicked off, looked at me. “How the hell did I forget she was coming up here? Took me by surprise. If I’d been prepared, I could have …” He didn’t tell me what he could have done, but he didn’t have to because I knew it would have been perfect. So maybe he didn’t have to tell Suzie either, because she too would just know? A confusing thought, and not my usual kind at all. It slipped away, and I licked the last bit of kibble dust from the bottom of my bowl. Since licking was on my mind, I licked all around my mouth, and then the tip of my nose. Why not? It was something I could do, so I did. Once this perp named Walter “Honey” Potts bet Bernie a C-note that he could touch his nose with the tip of his tongue. Bernie took the bet—“No human can do that,” he said. But maybe Honey Potts wasn’t human— although he smelled, very powerfully, of human—because it turned out he could do it no problem. “Double or nothing?” he said. He was still laughing when we turned him over to Central Booking.

Hey! Bernie was watching me, head tilted at an angle. “Something on your mind, big guy?”

Me? Nothing at all. I got my tongue under control, sat down, shifted closer to Bernie, waited for whatever came next. How were we doing on the case? Not bad, right?

A kid came through the far door of the hall. I remembered him—a biggish dark-haired kid, a kid I liked, although I couldn’t think of one I didn’t, and then all of a sudden I could: Preston. But this wasn’t Preston.

Bernie smiled and said, “Hi, Tommy.”

Tommy came over, walking slow, the way humans—and especially kids—walked when they actually wanted to be going in the other direction.

“It’s okay,” Bernie said. “I don’t bite.”

Of course he didn’t! What would be the point, with those little teeth of his, not little for a human, but still?

Tommy stood before us, shuffling from one foot to the other. At that moment, I drew my lips way, way back, exposing my teeth. I had not the least intention of biting anybody, but with the idea of biting somehow in the air, I just couldn’t help it. Funny how the mind works.

Tommy stepped back. “His teeth are huge!”

I tried to get my lips back to where they belonged, but for some reason could not. It occurred to me to try licking my nose again, sort of on the way to reining in the lips, if that makes any sense.

“That’s just because Chet’s a big guy, period,” Bernie said. The nose-licking method worked, and there I was: mouth closed, attitude professional. “He likes kids,” Bernie said, “might even let you pat him, if you want.”

What a joker Bernie is sometimes! Of course, Tommy could pat me. I turned my head to give him a nice, direct opening. He reached out, kind of cautious, and laid his hand on my head, went pat pat. Not a great patter, compared to Bernie, maybe, and nothing like Autumn or Tulip who worked at Livia’s house of ill-repute and were off the charts when it came to patting, but still: no complaints.

“He has a nice coat, huh?” said Tommy.

“Chet likes spending time with the groomer,” Bernie said. He could say that again—I waited for him saying it again to happen, but it did not. Janie’s my groomer. She comes to us in her silver truck: what a great business plan. Janie’s a strong woman with a broad face, big hands, and dirty fingernails: who wouldn’t love her?

“Some dogs do well with allergic people,” Bernie said.

“Yeah?” said Tommy.

“The Maltese, for one,” Bernie said. “And Portuguese water dogs, if you want something bigger.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Something bigger.”

“Maybe your mom could spend an hour or so with a Porty, see how she does,” Bernie said.

Tommy’s eyes lit up: a nice sight, especially in a kid. “That’s a good idea,” he said, still patting me. He looked into my eyes, like he was trying to see something. I looked right back, trying nothing particular. “Chet helps you in your work?” he said.

“More the other way,” said Bernie.

Tommy laughed. What was funny?

“What we’re working on now,” Bernie said, “is finding Devin and bringing him back safe.”

Tommy stopped laughing. Then he sat down on the bench opposite us, his back to the table. Now we were all of us sitting together. Sitting conversations usually went better than the standing kind, the chasing after at full speed kind being the least promising; you learn these things in this business.

Bernie turned a bit, facing Tommy across the space between the benches. At that moment, I happened to spot what looked very much like the rounded end piece of a sausage lying under our table, in easy reach. I scarfed it up; yes sir, the rounded end piece of a sausage, nice and crunchy on the outside, juicy within. Nothing wrong with any part of a sausage, but end pieces were the cherry on the sundae, not that I’m a fan of either of those. This dining hall would be worth exploring if I had time, no doubt about that. Meanwhile, I’d maybe missed a bit of what was going down.

“… play any sports, Tommy?” Bernie was saying.

“Little League,” said Tommy.

“Got a favorite position?”

“Catcher.”

Catcher? Tommy and I had something in common.

“Great position,” Bernie said. “You like having the whole field in front of you, huh?”

Tommy looked surprised. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

“That’s kind of what Chet and I are trying to do right now, see the whole field,” Bernie said. “Devin’s out there somewhere.”

“Um,” said Tommy.

Bernie remained silent. That was a right we had, very important. One night over a bottle of bourbon, Bernie and Lieutenant Stine of the Valley PD had a big argument about it. How it turned out I don’t know, because things got too exciting for me and I had to take five out on the patio.

“Like,” said Tommy, after the silence had stretched on for what seemed a long time, “where?”

“We need help on that,” Bernie said. “When someone disappears, we always talk to the people who saw him last.”

“But you talked to us already,” Tommy said. “In the tent.”

“True,” said Bernie. “But now Chet and I have been up to that campsite by the creek, had a look-see that raised more questions.”

“You went up with Turk?”

“He showed us around—where the campfire was, the tent, all that.”

Tommy nodded.

“Remember that sock of Devin’s?”

Another nod from Tommy.

“Based on the scent off the sock, Chet was able to find the exact spot where Devin spent that last night.” Bernie sat back, placed his hands on his knees, relaxed and patient. This was an
interview—and Bernie’s a great interviewer—but I didn’t remember him ever sitting like that in an interview.

Tommy looked down at the floor. “He …” Tommy’s voice got thick, the way human voices did when tears were about to enter the picture, but no tears came. He cleared his throat, looked up, even meeting Bernie’s gaze for a moment or two, and said, “Devin didn’t sleep in the tent. He slept on the ground outside.”

“How did that happen?” Bernie said.

“It just seemed like a good idea,” said Tommy.