The Dog Who Knew Too Much (15 page)

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “Gets cold up there at night, even in summer. Devin didn’t mind that?”

There was a silence, except for a faint scratching behind the nearest wall, the sort of scratching mice do, but no one except me seemed interested.

“I guess he kind of did,” said Tommy at last.

“But?” said Bernie.

Tommy took a deep, deep breath and let it out with a groan. For a moment I was worried he was going to be sick, poor kid. “He just couldn’t stand it anymore,” Tommy said.

“Preston’s bullying?” said Bernie.

Tommy took another deep breath. “Not just Preston,” he said. “It was all of us.”

“Okay,” Bernie said. “And this idea—the good idea of Devin moving out of the tent—who came up with that?”

Tommy turned toward a window. Nighttime, now, the real dark nighttime you don’t get in the city. “It was after supper, in the tent, and all this stuff about how the packs wouldn’t have been so heavy if we didn’t need so much food for Devin, and Devin sort of started crying for the first time, real loud and noisy, kind of scary even, and Turk opened the flap and said, ‘What’s all this
shit?’ and ‘If you can’t fuckin’ get along, one of you’s gonna have to sleep outside,’ and …” Tommy went silent. Funnily enough, he was sitting like Bernie now, hands on his knees. He gazed down at his hands—nice, squarish hands, with a small scar on the back of one of them.

“So the idea was actually Turk’s?” Bernie said.

“Sort of, I guess,” Tommy said. “Did, um, you talk to Turk about this?”

Bernie has great eyebrows, if I haven’t mentioned that already, eyebrows with a language all their own. Right now they were showing me that Bernie was surprised. “Good question,” he said. “I did.”

“And, uh …”

“You’re wondering if he said the same thing? That it was his idea?”

“Yeah.”

“He did not. Turk said it was Devin’s idea.”

Tommy shook his head.

Bernie rose, went to the window, gazed out at the blackness. Did he hear something out there? I listened real hard, heard nothing but the mice and a slight buzz from one of the ceiling lights.

“You don’t believe me,” Tommy said.

Bernie turned to him. “What makes you say that?”

Tommy shrugged.

“You think adults always take the word of adults over kids?” Bernie said.

Tommy shrugged again.

“The truth is,” Bernie said, “in this business, we take the word of no one.”

“Oh.”

“But if what we hear matches up with what we already know, that’s a different story.”

“So you do believe me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell Turk?”

“Tell him what?”

“That I, you know, ratted him out.”

“No,” said Bernie. “You don’t have to worry about Turk.”

The way Tommy was sitting on the bench changed, like something inside him had softened.

“Our only worry,” Bernie said, “is Devin. So let’s take it from when Turk poked his head in the tent.”

“It was dark inside. Turk, uh, had the flashlight. He pointed it at Devin.” Tommy went silent. He shook his head, a slight side-to-side movement.

“Something the matter?” Bernie said.

“He was crying.”

“Right. You mentioned that.”

“But the sight of it, all of a sudden like that. You know—his face.”

“And then?” Bernie said.

“He kind of got his sleeping bag and stumbled out of the tent. Turk shone the light on us and said to shut our goddamn mouths.”

“Which you did?”

“Yeah.”

“Preston, too? He shut his mouth?”

“Maybe not that second.”

“What was he saying?”

“Just more stuff.”

“About Devin.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then?”

“Things got quiet. We fell asleep.”

“The kids in the tent?”

“Yeah.”

“But not you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were noticing that the others—Preston, Luke, and Keith—had fallen asleep. So you were awake. How come?”

“I dunno.”

“Are you a light sleeper?”

“What’s that?”

“Someone who has trouble falling asleep, wakes up a lot during the night, that kind of thing.”

“My mom says I sleep like a rock.”

“So therefore … ?” Bernie said. That got my attention, which actually had been starting to slip, something that happens when humans get to going on and on, no offense. But I always perk up when Bernie starts with the so therefores, one of his top specialties.

“Guess I couldn’t get to sleep,” Tommy said.

“Were there noises outside?”

“That came later. Why I couldn’t get to sleep was ’cause of how … how we, you know …”

“Treated Devin?” Bernie said.

Tommy nodded.

“You can take yourself off the hook about that, Tommy,” Bernie said.

I glanced around. No hooks in the vicinity, a good thing: I’d had a nasty run-in with a fish hook in some perp’s shed one time,
ended up with stitches in my paw and a bandage that wouldn’t stay on no matter how much I knew it was supposed to.

“… much more interested,” Bernie was saying, “in those noises outside.”

“That was later,” Tommy said. “I was almost asleep. Like first I thought I was dreaming these voices. But I opened my eyes and I could still hear them.”

“Did you recognize the voices?”

“One was Turk.”

“And the others?” Bernie said.

“There was only one other,” said Tommy. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“What did he sound like?”

“You know, a man.”

“Anyone you’d heard before?”

“No. I don’t think.”

“What were they talking about?”

Tommy scrunched up his face. Humans do that sometimes when they’re thinking real hard. When we’re thinking real hard— I mean, we in the nation within the nation—our faces stay the same. As for cats, I couldn’t tell you.

“Coke,” Tommy said.

“Coke?”

“Like the drink. Not drugs.”

“What made you think that?”

“Because the man—this other man, not Turk, said, ‘Things go better with Coke.’”

“And then?” Bernie said.

“Then the voices got farther away so I couldn’t hear.”

“How long did the talking go on for, all together?”

“Not too long.”

“I’m assuming when you woke up, that the other man wasn’t there.”

“No.”

“Did you hear him leave?”

Tommy shook his head.

“Did you say anything to Turk about all this in the morning?”

“I kind of forgot about it,” Tommy said. “Turk was all upset, with Devin wandering off and having to search for him, and—” His eyebrows, dark and kind of prominent, sort of like Bernie’s, rose suddenly. “Did the other man take Devin away or something?”

“Real good question, Tommy. I don’t suppose Turk mentioned anything about him.”

“No,” said Tommy. “But you’re going to ask him now, right?”

“That’s the next logical move,” Bernie said. “But—”

The door to the dining hall opened and in came Sheriff Laidlaw. He walked toward our table, a bit bowlegged in his cowboy boots, and said, “Got a moment?”

“Okay,” said Bernie. He patted Tommy on the knee. “You’ve been a big help.”

Tommy rose. “Are you going to find Devin?”

“We’ll do everything we can,” Bernie said. “Can’t promise more than that.”

Tommy nodded. He turned and left the dining hall, his arms hanging stiff and motionless.

The sheriff remained standing. “What was that all about?” he said.

“New information about Devin’s disappearance,” Bernie said. “We need to talk.”

“That we do,” said the sheriff. Then, over his shoulder, he called out, “Boys!”

Two uniformed deputies came through the door. One held a shotgun, pointed at the floor. The other was carrying Bernie’s backpack—very easy to identify, on account of the duct tape patches. Where had I last seen the backpack? In Ranger Rob’s office? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that Sheriff Laidlaw had changed a bit. His flat little eyes were no longer dull, now held a sparkle. Usually that makes a human more attractive, but not this time.

Bernie rose. Me, too. “What’s going on?”

“Conducted a legal search of your pack,” the sheriff said. “Here’s the warrant, signed by Judge Stringer, funny old coot.” The sheriff handed Bernie an envelope. “In the course of our legal search we came across a firearm.”

“A licensed firearm,” Bernie said.

“Good to hear,” said the sheriff. “The thing is, your duly licensed firearm smelled to me—and the boys, correct, boys?—”

The two deputies nodded.

“—like it had recently been fired,” the sheriff continued. “So based on that and other evidence we’ve been developing, and pending ballistics tests, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Turk Rendell.”

Bernie laughed. “What’s this? Some kind of backwoods humor?”

“Wish it was for your sake,” said the sheriff. “One of you boys read Mr. Little here his duly licensed constitutional protections.”

Both of the deputies were big and pear-shaped with real close-together eyes, one deputy’s even more close-together than the other’s. That was the deputy who took out a card and began reading.

FIFTEEN

G
onna have to pat you down,” Sheriff Laidlaw said to Bernie. I knew patting down, of course, which had nothing to do with patting. This hairy-faced dude—his mustache grew right into his sideburns—had it in mind to pat down Bernie? A soft growling started up in the dining hall at Big Bear Wilderness Camp.

The sheriff took a step back; afraid of me, no doubt about it.

“You’re making a mistake,” Bernie said. “Talk to Moondog.”

“I intend to,” said the sheriff. “But I also intend to pat you down.”

“For Christ sake,” Bernie said, his voice rising. “The ballistics aren’t going to match, plus my weapon hasn’t been discharged in months.”

“No?” said the sheriff. “Sure didn’t smell that way to me. How did it smell to you, Claudie?”

“Like it had been fired recent,” said the deputy with the less-close-together eyes.

“Mack?” said the sheriff.

“Real real recent,” said the other deputy.

They were talking about the .38 Special? I couldn’t remember the last time we’d fired it, but if Bernie said months then it was months, whatever those happened to be. The growling grew louder.

“Control your animal,” the sheriff said, backing away another step.

Animal? That was all of us in the room, amigo. I barked, loud and angry. The barrel of the shotgun rose, the muzzle swinging around to point in my direction.

“Chet,” Bernie said, his voice soft and quiet. I went quiet myself.

The sheriff’s eyes shifted, the way a thought inside the human head sometimes shifts the eyes. His gaze went to me, and then settled on Bernie. “Raise your hands,” he said. “Spread your legs.”

Bernie did what he was told, slow and careful. The look on his face, so hard, was one I’d seen only a few times before. The guys on the receiving end hadn’t ended up well.

Sheriff Laidlaw stepped forward, patted Bernie down. “Some-thin’ in this pocket?”

Bernie turned out his pocket, handed the sheriff his cell phone.

The sheriff patted the other front pocket. “And this ’un?”

“There’s noth—” Bernie began, then stopped. What was this? He looked a bit … hesitant. How was that possible?

“Turn it out.”

Bernie turned out his other pocket. The big gold nugget fell on the floor, rolled up against the sheriff’s boot.

There was a silence. The nugget glittered on the floor, made everything else seem dark. “Well, well, well,” said the sheriff. “What have we here?”

“Um,” said Mack.

“Kind of looks like a gold nugget,” said Claudie.

“How about picking it up?” said the sheriff.

Claudie picked up the nugget and squinted at it, not a pleasant sight with his eyes being the way they were to begin with.

“Give,” the sheriff said.

Claudie gave him the nugget. The sheriff hefted it in his hand. “Gold for sure.” He turned to the deputies. “Either of you guys laid your baby blues on a bigger nugget?”

The baby blues thing confused me, and maybe the deputies, too; their eyes were muddy brown, for one thing. They shook their heads in a slow confused kind of way.

“Nugget like this remind you of anything?”

More head shaking.

“Think, for Christ sake,” Sheriff Laidlaw said.

Claudie said, “Hittin’ the lottery?”

The sheriff sighed. “Nugget like this, Claudie,” he said, “takes me back to all them stories about what come out of that old mine back in the day.”

“Oh, yeah,” said the deputies.

“One of you boys care to inform Mr. Little here, hotshot private dick from down in more sophisticated parts, of the most important fact about that ol’ mine of ours?”

“Like, uh, the abandoned part?” said Claudie.

“Or how it’s kinda dangerous, what with the cave-ins and—” Mack began.

“What the hell’s wrong with you morons?” the sheriff said. Those too-close-together eyes, for starters. Plus there was something rotten about their smells, like leftover fish was mixed in with their pear-shaped sweat. Hey! Was I cooking or what? I was just about to come up with more, when the sheriff said, “Start with the goddamn name of the mine,” he said.