The Dog Who Knew Too Much (30 page)

I barked and barked.

“Chet?” Bernie said. “What’s up, big guy?”

“Do you think he’s upset, remembering what was in there or something?” Suzie said.

Bernie shook his head, although I couldn’t be sure of that, because by that time I was clawing at the rubble for all I was
worth, which I now knew was twenty grand, by the way, not too shabby.

“What’s going on?” Suzie said, her voice echoing deep in the mine.

Bernie didn’t answer. He was down on his knees, digging alongside me to the best of his ability, which was pretty good for a human. Dust swirled in the light of the headlamps, and the air got thick and hard to breathe. We uncovered the chest first, worked our way up to the face. It was Guy.

TWENTY-NINE

G
uy, and shot in the head, just like Turk. “I don’t understand,” Suzie said. Bernie turned to her, lit her up in his headlamp. She had her hands on her face; her eyes were wide; her shadow on the wall wasn’t steady.

“This is what arrogant men do,” Bernie said. “The kind who think they’re smarter than everyone else.”

Good luck with that. Bernie was always the smartest human in the room, end of story.

“What arrogant men are you talking about?” Suzie said.

Bernie knelt again and started covering Guy back up, reburying him under the rubble. I did what I could to help, but uncovering is more my thing.

“Judge Stringer, for one,” Bernie said.

“He killed Guy?”

“Or had it done.”

“Why?” Suzie said.

Bernie glanced over his shoulder at her, laid a last rock over Guy. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

* * *

So nice to be back outside in the sunshine, maybe the nicest the outdoors had ever felt in my whole life. I was together with Bernie again, and of course Suzie was a gem; and maybe soon she’d be heading back to the Valley, leaving us to crack this case the way we always did, except for once when we got there too late, opened up that broom closet and—I didn’t want to think about that night. So I didn’t, but at the same time I no longer felt quite as tip-top.

Suzie hunched her shoulders and shivered. “I’m developing this sickening theory,” she said.

My ears—which didn’t match, something I’d learned from people commenting about them right in front of my face— pricked up. How often had I heard Bernie say that it helped to have a theory of a case? Take the Dalton divorce, where Bernie made a chart on the whiteboard all about Mrs. Dalton’s improving golf scores and realized she was having an affair with the pro, case closed.

“Go on,” Bernie said, his voice quiet.

“Maybe the judge thought that Guy had made the incriminating recording himself,” Suzie said. “And was using us as a weapon against him.”

“That sounds about right,” Bernie said.

“Oh, my God,” Suzie said. “Don’t you see what that means?”

“Means Stringer’s on the losing side,” Bernie said, “whether he knows it or not.”

Suzie backed away a little, blinking. “You’re a hard man, Bernie, aren’t you? Don’t you understand? I got Guy killed. I’m—I’m responsible for the death of a human being.”

“No, you’re not,” Bernie said. He reached out and took her chin in his hand, not roughly but not gently either. “Not even one percent.” Percent! I loved when Bernie brought that up—it meant his brain was working at its very best. He let go of Suzie’s chin,
leaving faint finger impressions on her skin; they faded right away. “Stringer and whoever helped him are responsible,” Bernie went on, “and Guy started all by himself on the road to getting killed.”

“How do you know?” Suzie said.

“He’s—he was—a type, Suzie. A type we’ve dealt with many times.”

Bernie couldn’t have been more right about that, and given time, I’m sure I could have come up with an example or two. But Suzie had her face set in a way that made me think she wasn’t buying it, like she was … could it be possible? She was digging in her heels? Wow! Suzie and I had something in common.

“What you learn in this business,” Bernie went on, “is that the most you can usually expect is to clean up at the margins. Big changes are hardly ever possible, dealing with the kind of people we deal with. But every so often, you get a chance to pull off something big. This is one of those times.”

“What are you talking about?” Suzie said.

“Devin,” said Bernie, shrugging his pack up a bit, the way he did when it was time to hit the trail.

Suzie rubbed her chin, then nodded. She did that pack-shrugging thing, just like Bernie. “All set,” she said.

Bernie smiled. Then he picked up a stick and began drawing in the dirt.

“Ch—et?”

Uh-oh. Bernie drawing in the dirt with a stick always got me going. I trotted over to a nearby rock and lifted my leg. Over the splashing sounds—turned out I’d been holding on for a while—I heard Bernie saying things like, “… here on the back side of the mine …” and “… where this ridge should lead to …” and “… has to be the back door—this real busy back door, which is what I missed—over to Jackrabbit Junction.”

Jackrabbit Junction: I’d heard that before, but it hadn’t sunk in. Now it did. Not lacking in rabbit experience, Chet the Jet. One of the things I’d learned was how those amazing ears of theirs could pick up sound from far, far away, but I was ready.

“And what happens in Jackrabbit Junction?” Suzie said.

“Whatever brought Guy and Stringer together,” said Bernie.

We moved away from the mine, but instead of heading back down toward the creek, we walked in the other direction, following a narrow path with the cliff face rising on one side and a steep slope of rocks and scrub dropping off on the other. Up and up we climbed, Bernie, me, and Suzie, then soon me, Bernie, and Suzie. Up, but also in a long curve that led us slowly around to the other side of the mountain, something I didn’t realize until I suddenly stepped into shadow, glanced back, and saw the jagged peak blocking the sun.

We paused—others had paused in the same place, easy to tell from the scraps of toilet paper lying around—and took in the view. First, we had a steep, treeless stretch, the trail disappearing in the scree, scree being hiking lingo. At the base of the steep part lay a small lake, kind of football-shaped, and on the other side the trees began, a dark- and light-green forest sloping on and on, eventually out of the mountain’s shadow and into bright sunshine. And then a whole chain of other mountains came marching in from the side, and where the base of the last and smallest reached the forest, I could see a thin plume of smoke rising straight up through the trees.

Bernie pointed it out to Suzie; her face was a bit pinkish again. “Jackrabbit Junction,” he said. “Actually closer than it looks.”

“Then let’s get going,” Suzie said. “Unless you need a breather.”

“Lead the way,” said Bernie.

Excuse me? No way would—but what was this? Bernie’s hand on my collar? I turned my head right around, looked up at him. He has a look that says “Ch—et?” without actually saying it. That was the look he gave me now. We started down: Suzie, Bernie, me.

Did we go as fast as we did with me up front? Not in my opinion. But at least we didn’t get lost, and the sun was still fairly high in the sky when we came to the lake. Was there time for a swim? Maybe a real quick one. And while I was out there—what a feeling!—Suzie took off her boots and socks, rolled up her jeans, and waded in. There was something about her calves, their shape, and the way the water rippled around them, that caught my eye, hard to explain why, exactly. But a very nice sight. I noticed that Bernie, sitting on a log, a cigarette—oh, Bernie—in his hand but the hand frozen in midair—was watching her, too. I paddled to shore, shook off, beads of water shooting everywhere, kind of like the pearls off Leda’s necklace when I—but forget that part—and sat beside Bernie.

He puffed at the cigarette and blew out a little cloud of smoke, a faraway look in his eye. “What I’m worried about,” he said, “is that Devin has lost his value.”

I couldn’t get to the bottom of that one, didn’t even know where to begin. Suzie stepped out of the water. Bernie spun the cigarette stub into the lake; it sizzled and sank from sight. We got back on the trail.

A very narrow trail at first, with big rocks and roots sticking up—we were in the trees now—but after a while it broadened enough so Bernie and Suzie walked side by side. No huffing and puffing now from either of them, maybe because we were going
down; they both breathed deep and evenly, and here was something interesting: a lot of the time they were in the same breathing rhythm. Had I ever noticed that with humans before? Not that I could remember, although during Leda’s yoga period hadn’t there been a—

Whoa. What was that? I went still, one front paw raised. Voices, yes, voices for sure, somewhere ahead. I sniffed the air, picked up no human smells, but the breeze was blowing the wrong way, flowing down the mountainside. I looked back. Bernie and Suzie came into view, topping a rise and stepping around a boulder in the middle of the trail. They saw me.

“I love when he stands like that,” Suzie said.

“Shh,” said Bernie, raising his hand palm up. He tilted his head, then whispered, “Do you hear anything?”

Suzie tilted her head. “No.”

Not a surprise. They came up to me, taking those sort of slo-mo steps humans take when trying to be quiet. Bernie gazed down the trail, which disappeared around a bend not far away. He tilted his head again, even scrunched up his face a bit—hey! that made him look like Charlie—listening his very hardest. “Still don’t hear anything,” he said, just a quiet murmur.

Suzie murmured, too, a very nice sound. “Maybe there’s nothing to hear.”

“Chet heard something,” Bernie said.

No doubt about it, and I was hearing more at that very moment, specifically a man saying, “Twelve gauge.”

“Like what?” Suzie said.

“Could be lots of things,” Bernie said. “Let’s go, but nice and quiet.”

Bernie was the best, no question about that, now and forever,
but this one particular time—not at all important, I’m sure—it couldn’t have been a lot of things: a man had clearly said, “Twelve gauge.”

We moved on, down the trail, around the bend, around another bend. No more voices, but there were smells: flowers, tree rot, pine needles, peanut butter. Peanut butter was not a favorite of mine, way too sticky under the roof of the mouth and along the back of the throat, although I had no objection to just plain butter, either on toast or right off the butter dish, and English muffins were also—

I topped a crest and there was a clearing in the woods, just steps away. Men were in that clearing, mostly sitting around eating sandwiches. They looked like hikers—real fit hikers—all of them dressed in blue hiking outfits. One of them—a guy with a short haircut—in fact, they all had short haircuts—glanced up and saw me.

“Hey,” he said, pointing. “Is that a wolf?”

The others turned fast in my direction. “We call that a dog, city boy,” one said.

“Here, fella,” said another.

A gray-haired guy—the only gray-haired one in the bunch— stood up and reached into the pocket of his vest. At that moment, Bernie and Suzie came over the rise.

They saw the men and halted beside me. We gazed at them; they gazed at us.

“Hi,” Bernie said.

“Hi,” said the gray-haired guy.

We walked down into the clearing, me between Bernie and Suzie. She felt tense. Bernie did not, so neither did I.

The men were all on their feet now, some holding their sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, mostly, but also ham and cheese, tuna, and one BLT.

“Nice dog,” said the BLT guy. All at once I felt this urge to move a bit closer to him, but my job was to stay by Bernie.

“Thanks,” said Bernie.

“You on a hike?” the gray-haired guy said.

“Yup,” said Bernie. “You guys?”

“Uh-huh,” the gray-haired guy said. “Where you headed?”

“Jackrabbit Junction,” Bernie said.

“Ever been there?”

“Nope,” Bernie said. “You?”

“Where you coming from?” said the gray-haired guy.

“Big Bear trailhead.”

The gray-haired guy checked his watch. “Must’ve started early.”

“We’re making good time,” Bernie said.

“Leave a car back there?” the gray-haired guy said.

“Friend dropped us,” Bernie said. “He’s picking us up in Jack-rabbit Junction.”

First I’d heard of that. And what friend? But Bernie was Bernie. I was Chet, pure and simple.

“Four-wheel drive?” the gray-haired guy was saying.

“Yup,” said Bernie.

“’Cause that first section’s kind of rough.”

“So I hear.”

We gazed at them; they gazed at us. The BLT smell grew stronger and stronger. Other than that, I had no idea what was going down.

“Not much doing in Jackrabbit Junction,” the gray-haired guy said. “No restaurants or hotels, nothing like that.”

“Heard that, too,” Bernie said. “Dinner in Durango’s the plan.”

“Sounds like a good one,” said the gray-haired guy. The others all went back to sitting down, eating their sandwiches. “Have a nice day,” the gray-haired guy said.

“Likewise,” said Bernie.